Baby At Bushman's Creek

Clare was unimpressed. ‘It’s still not exactly teeming with excitement, is it?’

‘I guess that depends what you find exciting,’ he said. There was a faint undercurrent of amusement in his voice, and Clare looked at him suspiciously. ‘What does it take to excite you?’ he added with a sidelong glance.

His face was perfectly straight, but she was sure that he was laughing at her. Lifting her chin in an unconsciously haughty gesture, she met his eyes defiantly.

‘More than a few lost cows and a couple of kangaroos,’ she said in a tart voice. ‘Is that the best Bushman’s Creek has to offer?’

‘That depends what you’re looking for,’ countered Gray, and this time she definitely saw one corner of his mouth curl upwards before he looked away.

They flew on and on, until Clare began to wonder if they were ever going to get there, but at length Gray pointed out a line of trees snaking across the landscape, their leaves notably greener than the others. ‘That’s the homestead creek,’ he told Clare. ‘Even when it’s dry like it is at the moment you can still find a few waterholes. And that’s the homestead down there.’

Clare peered out of the window, but she couldn’t make out more than a jumble of tin roofs flashing in the harsh sunlight and shaded by a cluster of green plants and trees that looked a surprisingly lush set against the bare brown paddocks that surrounded them.

The plane dipped down over the nearby yards, where what seemed to Clare an enormous number of cattle were corralled. She could make out a couple of men who waved a greeting as the plane flew over and touched down at last, about half a mile from the homestead, bumping to a halt on the rough airstrip.

‘Welcome to Bushman’s Creek,’ said Gray.

Having slept peacefully through the noise and vibration of the flight, Alice woke up the moment they lifted her out of the plane. She was fractious as they got into the inevitable ute that had been left standing in the shade of a boab tree, and cried all the way back along the rough track to the homestead.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Gray, eyeing the screaming baby uneasily.

‘There’s nothing wrong with her,’ snapped Clare, her nerves frayed by Alice’s distress. ‘She’s hungry and she needs her nappy changed, that’s all.’

She was so concerned to make Alice more comfortable that she had little time to take in much of the homestead. ‘You’d better use my room,’ said Gray, carrying the case into the welcome coolness of the house. ‘It’s the only one that’s been used for a while. At least you won’t have to sweep the dust away before you can find somewhere to put her down.’

His room was dim and cool and plainly furnished. There was a wide bed with a cover loosely thrown across it, a chest of drawers and a sturdy chair. The effect was one of uncluttered masculinity, quiet, comfortable and practical. Not unlike Gray himself, Clare couldn’t help thinking as she laid Alice down on the bed and changed her nappy. She wished she could lie down herself, but she knew that once she did she would fall asleep. The excitement of the flight had somehow kept exhaustion at bay for a while, but now that they had finally arrived Clare felt it sweep back with a vengeance.

Bracing herself against it, Clare tucked Alice back into her clothes and picked her up. Alice’s sobs had subsided slightly, but she was still grizzly, and Clare kissed her and patted her back as she carried her in search of the kitchen. ‘I know, I know, you’re hungry. I’ll get you some lunch.’ Somehow she was going to have to get through until Alice’s bedtime, she realised wearily. There was no way she could sleep while Alice needed her.

Finding herself in a large, open living area, Clare slowed and looked about her. The homestead wasn’t at all as she had imagined it. It was newer than she had thought it would be, and had an improvised air, as if rooms had been added onto this central area as and when they were needed, but the atmosphere was surprisingly cool, thanks to the deep verandah that went right around the homestead and kept out any direct sunlight. Every door and window was fitted with a fine mesh screen to keep out insects but to let any breeze into the house.

Clare hadn’t expected to find it such a restful house, but Gray had been right about one thing. It was badly in need of a clean. Dust lay thickly on every surface, and when she turned round she could see her own footsteps clearly marked on the floor.

‘I did say it was dirty,’ said Gray, appearing with the last of Clare’s bags and reading her expression without any difficulty.

‘I know,’ said Clare. ‘I just didn’t realise quite how dirty you meant! Don’t you possess a broom?’

‘I’m hoping that you’ll find it,’ said Gray dryly.

‘I think I’d better!’ She clicked her tongue as she looked around her in dismay. ‘How could you let it get into this state?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a question of priorities. I only use the homestead to sleep at the moment. I’m out all day, I eat in the cookhouse with the stockmen, and if I do sit down it’ll be in the office or on the verandah, never in here.’

Alice was still grizzling, and Clare cast her a harried glance. ‘I’ll have to worry about the cleaning later,’ she told him. ‘I need to feed Alice first. Where’s the kitchen?’

‘In here,’ said Gray, leading the way. ‘I’m not sure there’s much to eat in here, though.’

‘That’s all right. I’ve got some jars of food for her. All I need is to be able to boil some water at the moment, and later I’ll have to set up the steriliser.’

‘I expect we can manage that,’ he said, opening a door into a large room complete with fitted units, an enormous cooker and an array of steel fridges. ‘That’s where the beer’s kept,’ said Gray, seeing Clare’s eyes follow a trail of footprints through the dust to the fridge at the end. He didn’t actually smile, but the creases on either side of his mouth deepened in a way that made something shift inside Clare, and she turned away, suddenly brisk.

‘Where would I find a kettle?’

‘What about you?’ Gray asked as she opened a jar. ‘I could find you something to eat in the cookhouse,’ he offered, but she shook her head.

‘I’m not really hungry. A cup of tea will be fine.’

Alice was a messy eater, even by the standards of most babies, and Clare wasn’t surprised when Gray left them to it after seeing what she did with the first few mouthfuls. He said that he would go and see how the men were getting on in the yards.

Clare didn’t expect to see him again that afternoon, but she was just removing Alice’s bib when he came back into the kitchen. ‘I think there might be an old highchair somewhere,’ he said, watching as Clare lifted Alice out of the backpack.

Clare’s face lit up. ‘Oh, that would be wonderful!’ she said eagerly, and smiled at him, surprising a strange expression in the brown eyes before they were quickly veiled. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a cot, too, is there?’

‘There might be. As far as I’m aware, my mother never threw anything away, and all the stuff she used when Jack and I were small just got dumped in the unused quarters. I’ll get one of the men to look them out tomorrow.’

Having taken Alice out of the backpack, Clare realised that there was nowhere to put her down. ‘I think you’d better stay there until I find that brush,’ she said to the baby, settling her back into the seat. Alice looked puzzled to find herself back where she had started, but she made no objection, merely sticking her fingers in her mouth and sucking them as she regarded Clare thoughtfully.

Gray was watching Clare too. She was straightening her shoulders in a gesture of unconscious weariness, and he frowned. ‘You’re not going to start cleaning now?’ he asked sharply.

‘That’s what I’m here for,’ she said, with a smile that somehow turned into a yawn.

‘You can clean tomorrow,’ said Gray in a brusque voice, looking at the smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes. ‘Right now you need some sleep,’ he added bluntly.

‘I can’t.’ Clare tucked her hair behind her ears and wished Gray hadn’t even mentioned the word sleep. ‘Alice slept in the plane. She’ll be wide awake for hours now.’

‘I’ll look after her.’

Clare had the feeling that Gray had taken himself by surprise as much as her. ‘You?’ she said blankly.

‘Why not?’

‘I thought you were busy?’

‘Things seem to be going all right at the yards. I’ll need to go and check how they’re getting on, but there’s no reason why she shouldn’t come with me, and in the meantime I’ve got plenty of paperwork to catch up on. She can be in the office with me.’

‘But…that wasn’t the arrangement,’ stammered Clare. ‘You don’t want to be bothered with a baby.’

‘I don’t want to cope with her when you’ve collapsed with exhaustion either,’ said Gray roughly. ‘You’re no use to me as a housekeeper if you’re so tired you can hardly stand upright.’

Clare tried to push aside the tantalising prospect of being able to lie down and close her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, worried. ‘Alice can be difficult…’

‘I manage four thousand square kilometres out there,’ said Gray, nodding his head in the direction of the window. ‘Are you telling me I can’t manage a baby?’

‘One baby takes just as much attention as a cattle station,’ Clare pointed out. ‘If not more! You can’t just prop her on a fence and forget about her while you get on and do whatever you do to all those cows! You won’t be able to take your eyes off her for an instant.’

‘You’ll have to trust me,’ he said, putting an end to argument by calmly lifting Alice out of her seat once more. Then, when Clare just stood irresolutely chewing her lip, he took her arm in a firm grip with his free hand. ‘Come with me.’

Clare found herself propelled back across the living area to his bedroom. ‘Maybe just for an hour,’ she mumbled, succumbing to temptation and the force of his will. She had held out against the exhaustion for so long that no sooner had her resistance cracked than she was overwhelmed by a great, crashing wave of tiredness, so that she stumbled and would have fallen if Gray hadn’t held her up.

Beyond thinking up any more objections, or even thinking at all, she let him pull back the cover and sit her down on the bed before he carried Alice over to the window to pull the blinds.

‘Get some sleep,’ he said gruffly, but when he turned to close the door behind him, Clare was still sitting there, watching him in a daze, too tired even to lie down.

Gray hesitated, then went back and set Alice down on the bed beside her. He bent and took off Clare’s sandals before easing her back onto the pillow and lifting her legs up onto the bed. Covering Clare with the sheet, he picked up Alice once more and for a moment they looked down at her as she lay there like a child, looking back at them with great, blurry grey eyes.

Dimly, Clare knew that she ought to thank him, but all she could manage was a wavering smile, and by the time Gray and Alice had reached the door she was asleep.

When Clare woke, several hours later, it was to find herself lying in a strange room and a strange bed. Disorientated, she lay for a while, blinking at the unfamiliar ceiling and trying to disentangle dreams from reality in the swirl of unconnected images in her head. She was in Australia, she remembered eventually. She was at Bushman’s Creek, in Gray Henderson’s bed.

Gray…It was disconcerting to discover just how clearly she could picture a man she had only met for the first time that morning. Clare turned her head on the pillow as if to dislodge the memory of the creases around his eyes, the brown, competent hands, the way his uncompromising mouth had relaxed into such an unexpected smile. She had a nasty feeling Gray’s smile had played an overlarge part in her dreams.

Frowning slightly as reality returned, Clare pulled herself up on the pillows. Gray hadn’t wanted her to come, but he had accepted Alice in the end. He had even been kind, offering to let her sleep, closing the blinds, even taking off her shoes.

She had a vague memory of smiling up at him and seeing the oddest expression in his eyes, but that was probably a dream, she decided. Gray wouldn’t have been looking down at her with a mixture of tenderness and desire. No one would look at a housekeeper like that, and a housekeeper was all she was and all she would ever be as far as Gray was concerned.

As far as I’m concerned too, said Clare firmly to herself as she pushed back the sheet and swung her legs to the floor. She wasn’t here to wonder about Gray Henderson and how he would look at a woman he really wanted to be lying in his bed. She was here for Alice, and if that meant being a housekeeper, that was what she would be.

CHAPTER THREE

CLARE was horrified to discover when she looked at her watch that she had slept for nearly five hours. Her first impulse was to rush out and find Alice, relieving Gray of the responsibility, but one look in the mirror was enough to make her change her mind. Her hair was tangled, her skin puffy and pasty and her linen dress irretrievably crushed. If Gray had coped with Alice all afternoon, he could surely cope for ten minutes longer. She had to have a shower!

Dressing quickly in narrow stone-coloured trousers and a white shirt, Clare felt able to face Gray Henderson once more. That sleep had done her the power of good. She felt much more like herself, she decided as she combed her wet hair behind her ears and fastened the belt of her trousers. It was time to show Gray the real Clare Marshall, crisp and capable and very different from the exhausted woman who had been too tired to take off her own shoes.

Outside, all seemed very quiet, but when Clare walked into the living area she could hear Alice’s incomprehensible chatter, and she followed the sound to a room on the far side, where a door stood open. Through it, she could see Alice sitting on the floor, surrounded by an assortment of objects, as if Gray had ransacked the homestead to find anything safe that she could play with only to find his offerings discarded out of hand.

Gray himself was hunkered beside Alice, proffering a wooden spoon, and Clare was amused to note that he was looking a lot less imperturbable after five hours with his small niece. He wasn’t exactly pulling his hair out, but she thought that there was a distinctly frazzled edge to the way he smiled at Alice. Unnoticed in the doorway, she watched as Alice grasped the spoon and stuck one end straight in her mouth.

‘There you are,’ said Gray, levering himself cautiously to his feet. ‘You play with that for a while, and I’ll—’ He broke off as Alice, having given the spoon a cursory suck, dropped it disdainfully.

‘Gah!’ she said in no uncertain terms.

‘And I’ll find you something else to play with,’ he finished with a sigh.

Alice’s eye fell on Clare just then, and her face split into a huge, welcoming grin. Gray had been bending to retrieve the spoon, but at her smile he glanced behind him, to see Clare standing in the doorway, looking trim and pretty. The strange, silvery-grey eyes were clear, and she was smiling lovingly back at Alice.

There was an odd little silence as he straightened and turned. ‘Hullo,’ he said, and there was a note in his voice that Clare couldn’t identify. ‘You look better.’

‘I feel better,’ she told him honestly, but for some reason she found she couldn’t look at him directly, and it was a relief to be able to turn her attention to Alice, who was holding up her arms and babbling a greeting. The words might not make any sense, but it was clear that she wanted Clare to pick her up now!

Swinging her up into her arms, Clare gave her a kiss. ‘Have you been good?’ she asked.

‘She’s been…fine,’ said Gray with a little reserve.

Clare glanced down at the objects scattered across the floor, and then at the desk, where an area out of the reach of baby arms had obviously been cleared. ‘How much paperwork did you get done?’ she asked innocently.

‘Not a lot,’ he admitted, and then, when Clare lifted her brows, he gave a reluctant smile. ‘All right, I didn’t get any done! I didn’t realise one small person could restrict your activities so much!’

‘Oh, Alice!’ said Clare, trying not to smile. ‘Have you been keeping him busy?’

‘She’s been busy,’ he told her. ‘I put her in the backpack and took her down to the yards, so she’s met the men and seen her first cattle.’

‘Wasn’t she frightened?’ Clare asked a little dubiously. Alice had never seen anything like a cow before, she realised, and she would have thought it would be quite alarming to be introduced to a thousand at once.

‘We didn’t get that close,’ Gray reassured her, ‘but she didn’t seem to be. She never stopped talking the whole time!’

Clare tickled Alice on the nose. ‘Yes, she’s chatty, isn’t she?’

‘Can you make any sense of it?’ he asked curiously.

She laughed. ‘No, it doesn’t mean anything. She’s just making sounds—but she can usually make herself understood when she wants something! It looks as if she managed to convince you that she didn’t want to sit quietly in her chair all afternoon, for instance,’ she added, amused.

‘Oh, yes, she got that message across all right,’ said Gray with feeling. ‘I tried doing some work with her sitting on my lap, but she kept throwing papers on the floor, and in any case it wasn’t that easy to concentrate on figures with her chatting away, so I gave up after a while. I wasn’t sure where you had packed her toys so I had to see what I could find around the homestead, but she didn’t seem to be interested in anything for more than two seconds.’

‘I only brought a couple of toys with me,’ said Clare. ‘She doesn’t really play with anything at the moment. Everyday objects are just as fascinating to her right now, but she was probably enjoying your attention more than anything else.’ She hesitated, then said almost shyly, ‘I’m sorry you had to give up your afternoon when you’re so busy, but I really am grateful. That was the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. Thank you so much for looking after her.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was quite an education. I’ve done a lot, but I’ve never had to change a baby’s nappy before.’

Clare stared at him. ‘You changed her nappy?’

‘With some help,’ he confessed, a little shame-faced. ‘I had to get Joe to show me how to do it. He’s got children, but they’re grown up now, and I don’t think he was much of a hands-on father anyway, so he wasn’t much help. In the end there were four of us standing around the bed, scratching our heads and looking from the baby to the nappy and back again. We worked it out in the end, though,’ he added. ‘Or we think we did! You might have to check.’

Clare couldn’t help laughing at the idea of four grown men puzzling over such a simple task. ‘You could have told them, couldn’t you, Alice?’ she smiled, swinging Alice up until she laughed too with glee.

Her laughter was so infectious that after a moment Gray gave in and laughed too. Clare’s smiling glance went from Alice’s merry face to his, and her heart seemed to stumble, and when her eyes met his she found her laugh faltering for some reason.

It was as if they had both realised at the same time that they were relaxed and laughing together like old friends, when they ought to be remembering that they were virtual strangers with conflicting interests and nothing in common but one small baby. Their smiles faded simultaneously, and Clare’s gaze slid away from his face.

‘You should have woken me,’ she said awkwardly, settling Alice on her hip.

‘I looked in on you after an hour, but you were sound asleep, and I thought it would be better to leave you,’ he said.

Clare didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that the impersonal note was back in his voice. It was impossible to tell what he had thought as he’d looked down at her, sprawled in sleep in the middle of his own bed.

‘Well…thank you,’ she said, ‘and don’t worry, I won’t ask you to do it again!’

He shrugged slightly. ‘We managed.’

‘I know, but…well, the idea wasn’t that you would spend your time looking after Alice while I caught up on my sleep.’ She paused, choosing her words with care. ‘I do appreciate what you’ve done today, Gray. This isn’t an easy situation for you either. You’ve got no way of knowing whether Alice really is your niece or not, and I would have understood if you’d refused to let us come here at all, let alone give up an afternoon to entertain Alice.’

Clare took a breath and went on. ‘I just want you to know that I’m grateful, and that I won’t take anything for granted. You’ve been very kind to Alice—and to me—this afternoon, but I know it doesn’t mean that you’ve accepted Alice as your niece. From now on, we’ll try not to interfere with you.’ She wished she could gauge how Gray was reacting. He was just standing there, watching her with that unreadable expression, and she could feel herself babbling like Alice, and probably making just as much sense. ‘With any luck, you’ll forget we’re here,’ she finished with a bright smile.

Gray looked at her. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, somehow,’ he said in his slow voice. ‘I’m not sure how much use you’ll be as a housekeeper if you spend your time keeping out of my way!’

‘I didn’t mean that.’ Clare pushed her hands through her hair in frustration. At home, she was a calm, articulate administrator, with a reputation for sorting out communication problems in the office, but there was something about Gray’s brown dispassionate gaze that turned her into a stammering idiot. ‘I just meant…well, that I won’t make any more demands on you.’

‘Fine.’

Gray was straight-faced, but there was an unsettling gleam of mockery in his brown eyes and Clare’s lips tightened. She was only trying to be polite and reassuring. He might at least make the effort to pretend that he took her seriously in return!

‘It’s getting late,’ she said coldly. She was obviously going to have to work a little harder to convince him of her coolness and competence. ‘I should give Alice some supper and then put her to bed. Is there a spare room we could have?’

‘This way.’

He led her down the corridor and opened the door of the room opposite his own.

‘But…it’s clean!’ said Clare stupidly as she looked around her.

‘Alice and I gave it a sweep while you were sleeping,’ said Gray. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do about Alice, but I made up the bed for you.’

She looked at the bed and had a sudden picture of Gray bending over it, his brown hand smoothing over the sheet, and colour stole up her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ she said.

‘I assumed you wouldn’t want to stay in my bed,’ he said in a dry voice, and her blush deepened.

‘Of course not,’ she said almost sharply. ‘I could have made up my own bed, though.’

Gray ignored that. ‘Like I said, I wasn’t sure what to do about Alice. She’s too small to sleep in a bed, isn’t she?’

‘I put her in a drawer last night.’ Clare was glad of the change of subject. ‘One from that chest of drawers will do fine until we can find her a cot.’

In fact, by the time Alice had been fed and bathed, she was ready to sleep anywhere, and she let Clare tuck her up in the drawer without protest. Clare pottered around the room until she was sure Alice was asleep, and then went in search of Gray.

She found him on the verandah with a shy, lanky youth introduced as Ben. Ben, it appeared, had offered to listen out for Alice while Gray took Clare over to the cookhouse for a meal.

‘If you’re going to do the cooking, we’ll all eat in the homestead tomorrow,’ said Gray as they walked over to the long, low building set a little way from the house.

Darkness had fallen with disconcerting speed while Clare had been putting Alice to bed, and she felt rather disorientated to find herself suddenly walking through the night. It was very dark, and the air was shrill with the whirring, clicking sound of invisible insects. They sounded alien to Clare, used to a background noise of traffic and sirens and voices in the street, of music played too loud in the house next door and the ticking sound of waiting taxis and the subdued roar of the planes coming in to land at Heathrow.