Outback Husband

Now, suddenly, he was no longer alone, and Juliet was there, warm and vibrant in a blue dress, but with that wary look on her face. Irrelevantly, he found himself wondering what she would look like if she relaxed and smiled for a change.

He lifted his hand to show the bottle. ‘I helped myself to a beer. I hope you don’t mind.’ He thought his voice sounded odd, but Juliet didn’t seem to notice anything wrong.

‘Of course not,’ she said, very formal.

There was a pause. ‘Is Natalie in bed?’ she asked at last, and Cal nodded.

‘She’s tired. It’s been a long journey for her.’ He hesitated. ‘Thank you for looking after her. She seems to have had a good time.’

’She was very helpful,’ said Juliet. ‘She’s a nice little girl.’ She would have liked to ask about Natalie’s schooling. Presumably she would do her lessons with the School of the Air. But Juliet suspected that Cal would interpret any questions as criticism, and, since they seemed to be being polite to each other for now, it was a shame to spoil it.

Instead, she went over to the oven and took out the supper. ‘How did you get on with the men?’ she asked as she set it on the table.

Cal pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘I think they know who’s boss now,’ he said, grimly remembering the scene in the stockmen’s quarters. He had been down to the stockyards before he went to see them, and had been so angry at the way everything had been neglected and allowed to fall into disrepair that he had been in no mood to make allowances.

‘And who is boss?’ enquired Juliet in a frosty voice as she took a seat opposite him.

‘As far as they’re concerned, I am. As far as I’m concerned, you are.’ Cal met her look evenly. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘Why is it so hard for them to accept that this is my property?’ she asked, disgruntled. ‘Is it because I’m a woman? Because I’m English?’

‘It’s because you don’t know anything about running a cattle station,’ said Cal flatly. ‘You admitted as much yourself. Yes, you’ve got a bit of paper that says you own Wilparilla, but these men aren’t interested in that.’

He nodded his head in the direction of the stockmen’s quarters. ‘They’re only going to work if they know that the person giving them orders understands what they’re doing, and in this case that’s me. Now, you can go down and give them a little lecture on property rights if you like, but you’re paying me to get them organised and get some work done on this station again, and I’ll only be able to do that if they think of me as boss for the time being. If you’re not happy with that, you’d better say so now.’

‘I don’t have very much choice but to be happy with it, do I?’ said Juliet a little bitterly.

Cal just shook his head in exasperation and applied himself to his meal. In a way, he was glad she was being unreasonable. It was much easier to find her irritating, to remember how perversely she was standing in way of all he wanted, than to notice how smooth and warm her skin looked, how her dark hair gleamed in light, how even when her lips were pressed together in a cross line, like now, her mouth hinted at a fiery, passionate nature beneath that brittle cool.

Why was she so obsessed about being boss anyway? She had no idea about Wilparilla. She didn’t know the land. She didn’t know the creeks and gullies the way he did. She had never ridden all day through the heat and the dust, or slept out under the stars while the cattle shifted their feet restlessly in the darkness.

She would never be the boss of Wilparilla, Cal vowed to himself. She didn’t belong on a cattle station. All she knew was this homestead. She probably wouldn’t even recognise a cow if she saw one, he thought contemptuously. Look at her! Sitting there like some exotic bird that had lost its way and found itself in the desert instead of the hot-house environment where it belonged. What was the point of wearing a dress that curved over her breast like that? A dress that let him glimpse the hollows at the base of her throat and made him wonder about the soft material whispering over her skin as she moved?

‘You don’t like me, do you?’ His face didn’t give much away, but Juliet could feel his dislike as clearly as if he had stood up and shouted it.

Cal took a pull of his beer and looked across the table at her. He might have known she would prove to be one of those women who wanted to be up front about their feelings. No, he didn’t like her, but he was damned if he was going to indulge her by admitting it. She would only start asking ‘why not?’ and before they knew what had happened they would be picking over emotions as if any of it mattered.

On the other hand, why should he make things easy for her by denying it? ‘I don’t think this is the right place for you,’ he temporised at last.

‘Why not?’

He had known that was coming! ‘I would have thought it was obvious,’ he said, irritated at having fallen into the same old trap. Why did women always have to know the reason? Why couldn’t they just accept things for what they were?

‘Not to me,’ said Juliet, who had hoped to put Cal out of countenance and was annoyed to find that he didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed at being confronted with his hostility.

Cal sighed. Well, if she was so anxious to know what he thought, he would tell her. ‘This is a working cattle station. Life out here is rough and dirty. It’s not a place where you put on a pretty dress and pretend you’ll never have to get mud under your fingernails.’

‘You’ve had a shower and changed your clothes,’ Juliet pointed out, dangerously sweet.

‘Yes, but not into the kind of clothes I’d wear to a smart restaurant.’

‘So I’m not allowed to wear anything but torn jeans and a checked shirt, is that it?’

Cal looked impatient. ‘It’s not a question of allowing,’ he said irritably. ‘I’m just saying that you’re not wearing the right clothes if you want to belong.’

‘But I do belong,’ said Juliet, pushing her plate aside. ‘This is my house,’ she told him deliberately, ‘and I can wear whatever I like in it. I advise you not to forget that.’

The haughty note in her voice made Cal’s lips tighten. It was almost as if she knew how much he hated her reminding him that Wilparilla belonged to her, and was taunting him deliberately. Yes, it had been his choice to sell, but the Laings hadn’t cared for the land. He was the one who had built Wilparilla up into a successful station, and in Cal’s heart it was still his.

Across the table, his eyes met Juliet’s challenging gaze. ‘I don’t think there’s much chance of me forgetting that,’ he said, and his voice was very cold.

They finished the meal in silence, constrained on Juliet’s part, apparently unconcerned on his. Afterwards, she had half expected him to make his excuses and leave, but instead he found a tea-towel and without being asked began to dry the dishes as she washed up.

It was strange for Juliet to have someone to help. She wasn’t used to anyone else being with her in the kitchen. Few people came out to the station, and anyone with business on the station had eaten with the manager and stayed in the stockmen’s quarters. It was certainly quicker with Cal there, but Juliet half wished that he had left her to do it on her own. She was very aware of him standing beside her, not saying anything, looking through the window at the darkness, absorbed in his own thoughts, not caring if she was there or not. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his hands moving, unhurried and competent, and she found herself watching them as if fascinated. They were brown and strong, and there were fine golden hairs at his wrist.

He wasn’t handsome, Juliet told herself. Not handsome in the way Hugo had been, anyway. Really, he was quite ordinary. Brown hair, grey eyes, nothing special.

There was something implacable about him, though. Something hard and strong and steady. A quiet coldness that mesmerised and unnerved her at the same time. Beneath her lashes, Juliet’s eyes rested on his mouth. That wasn’t the mouth of a cold man, she found herself thinking, and she remembered how he had smiled at the twins. The memory snaked down her spine, and something shifted deep inside her so that she jerked her gaze away.

She tried to concentrate on how obvious he had made his distaste, but all she could think about was him lying in the bed she had made, his long brown body bare against the cool sheet. She could imagine it so clearly that she sucked in her breath, and the tiny sound made Cal turn his head to find her eyes wide and dark and startled, as if she had just thought of something shocking.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’ Juliet’s fingers trembled as she pulled out the plug and made a big deal of rinsing out the sink. She had to get a grip of herself! ‘That is…’ She stopped. No, that wasn’t a good idea.

‘What?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Cal frowned irritably. If she had something to say, why didn’t she get on with it? ‘What doesn’t?’

Driven into a corner, Juliet wiped her hands on a tea-towel and wished she had never opened her mouth. But Cal obviously wasn’t going to let it drop, and maybe it needed saying after all.

‘I was just thinking that it might be a good idea if we established a few ground rules.’ She pushed her hair behind her ears, absurdly nervous for some reason.

He looked at her with that infuriatingly unreadable expression. ‘Ground rules?’

‘Yes. I mean, we’re going to be living together until we can get the manager’s house cleaned up, so perhaps we should agree a few things now.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I presume you don’t want to cook separately, so we need to decide about meals, that kind of thing and…well, you know…how we ensure that we both have some privacy,’ she finished lamely. It had seemed so sensible when she started, but under Cal’s dispassionate gaze she found herself faltering for some reason.

‘You’re very keen on rules, aren’t you?’ he said sardonically, and she flushed and lifted her chin.

‘Sometimes they save awkwardness.’

‘I don’t see what’s awkward about sharing a few meals.’

‘I didn’t just mean that,’ said Juliet. ‘I meant the situation generally.’

‘What situation?’ asked Cal, exasperated.

‘You know what I mean!’ she flared. He was being deliberately obtuse! ‘The fact is that the two of us will be alone together here for much of the time.’

‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, suddenly enlightened—as if he hadn’t known all along exactly what she was talking about, Juliet thought sourly. ‘You want some rules to make sure I don’t take advantage of you, is that it?’

‘Yes…no!’ she corrected herself frantically as Cal raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course not,’ she said more calmly. ‘All I’m trying to say is that we’re both adults, both single. If we don’t acknowledge that now, I can see a situation arising where we might…might…’ She could feel herself floundering again and wished she’d never opened her mouth. ‘Well, we might…might wonder…’

‘Might wonder what it would be like if I kissed you?’ Cal suggested in a hatefully calm voice, but she was too relieved to have the sentence completed for her to resent him.

‘That kind of thing, yes.’

She was standing by the cooker in her turquoise dress, hugging her arms together self-consciously and wearing a defensive expression that made her look very young. Cal looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then laid his tea-towel over the back of a chair.

‘Let’s find out now,’ he said, coming over to Juliet.

She looked at him blankly. ‘Find what out?’

‘What it would be like if I kissed you.’ He took her hands and unfolded her arms so impersonally that he had taken hold of her waist before Juliet had quite realised what was happening. ‘Then we won’t need to wonder,’ he explained briskly, drawing her towards him, ‘and we won’t need any rules.’

And with that he bent his head and kissed her.

Juliet’s hands came up quite instinctively to clutch at the sleeves above his elbows for support as his mouth came down on hers and the floor seemed to drop away beneath her feet.

It was a hard, punishing kiss, a kiss meant to teach her a lesson. Juliet knew that, but she was unprepared for the searing response that shot through her at the feel of his lips and his hands hard against her. It seemed to leap into life, jolting between them like electricity, at once shocking and dangerously exciting, so that the kiss which Cal had intended to be so brief somehow took on a life of its own and he tightened his arms around Juliet, moulding her against him as her lips parted beneath his.

Cal slid one hand up to the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in the silky hair. He had forgotten how she exasperated him, forgotten her stupid rules, forgotten everything but how warm and soft and pliant she felt in his arms. Caught off-guard by the piercing sweetness of her response, Cal was in the middle of gathering her closer and deepening his kiss when the realisation of just how close they both were to losing control stopped him in his tracks as effectively as a bucket of cold water.

Literally dropping Juliet back to earth, he stepped away from her and took a deep, steadying breath. Juliet was left to collapse back against the cooker, dazed and trembling. They stared at each other for a long, long moment.

‘Well, now we know,’ said Cal, when he could speak. ‘We won’t need to waste any more time wondering about it, will we?’ He could see Juliet’s mouth shaking, and the temptation to pull her back into his arms and forget everything else once more was so strong that he had to make himself turn away.

Juliet was still leaning against the cooker when he reached the door. ‘Thanks for the meal’, he said, and then he was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

‘DAD’S gone to have breakfast with the stockmen,’ Natalie announced when Juliet found her in the kitchen the next morning. ‘He said to tell you he won’t be back until this evening.’

‘When did he tell you this?’ asked Juliet, put out to discover that all the effort spent on steeling herself to face Cal with cool composure this morning had been completely wasted.

It had taken her ages dithering around in the corridor before she had got up the nerve to even open the kitchen door, and now he had just swanned off for the day without so much as a by-your-leave, leaving a casual message that he would be back later. No doubt she would be expected to have a meal waiting for him when he deigned to turn up, too!

‘Just now,’ said Natalie. ‘He only left a minute ago.’ She was anxious to help. ‘Shall I go and find him for you?’ she offered, halfway off her chair.

‘No!’ said Juliet quickly. She wasn’t up to a confrontation with Cal just yet. ‘I mean, no, it doesn’t matter, thanks,’ she added more gently.

Running her fingers through her hair in a weary gesture, she put on the kettle to make herself some tea. The twins were still asleep. Typical that the one morning she could have had a lie-in she had woken early, feeling hot and cross after a restless night.

It was Cal’s fault, of course. Why had he kissed her like that? How could she have let herself be kissed like that? Juliet had lain awake for hours, tossing fretfully from side to side, her heart still pumping at the feel of Cal’s hands on her bare arms, her lips still tingling with the touch of his mouth. She’d wanted to be angry with Cal—she was angry with him—but deep in her heart she’d known that he wasn’t entirely to blame. She hadn’t even tried to push him away.

It hadn’t even been that much of a kiss, she’d tried telling herself. Cal had been making a point, no more than that, but her own electric response had alarmed and shamed her.

She had been alone too long, that was all, Juliet had decided at last in the small hours. It was the only thing that could explain her own bizarre reaction to the way he had kissed her. If it hadn’t been for those long months of rejection by Hugo she would never have kissed Cal back as she had. She wouldn’t have wanted the kiss to go on and on, and she wouldn’t have felt so bereft when he’d let her go.

And she wouldn’t have been lying there, squirming with frustration, unable to stop wondering what would have happened if Cal hadn’t dropped her when he had. He would have been lying in bed, his body where her hand smoothed over the sheet. Juliet’s palms had twitched at the thought. She’d felt as if her nerves were jumping just beneath her skin. She’d wished she could stop thinking about what it would be like to touch him, to taste him, to shiver at his hands drifting over her, at his hardness covering her…

She had to stop this!

If Cal thought she was going to make a big deal out of one crummy kiss, he would be disappointed. Juliet had spent too long coping with Hugo’s sudden whims and changes of mood. She was in charge now, she reminded herself, and she wasn’t going to go to pieces just because some man had kissed her.

No, she had hired Cal to manage the station. He would just have to accept that she was his employer, not a convenient diversion for the empty outback evenings.

‘Sorry?’ Juliet suddenly realised that Natalie was talking to her and that she hadn’t heard a word. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, the kettle’s boiled,’ said Natalie, evidently puzzled by Juliet’s abstracted air.

As she drank her tea, Juliet wondered whether Natalie was upset at being abandoned by her father for the day, but she seemed to take it in her stride. She was happy to stay with Juliet and the twins, she told Juliet, adding conscientiously, ‘If you don’t mind.’

The only thing Juliet minded was the way Cal had simply assumed she would be there to look after his daughter, but she could hardly say that to Natalie, and anyway, the little girl turned out to be very useful. It was much easier to get things done knowing that she was keeping an eye on the twins, who were liable to get into all sorts of mischief if they weren’t watched like a hawk.

And Juliet had to admit that it was nice to have someone to talk to. It was just a pity that Cal wasn’t as open and friendly as his daughter.

Later that afternoon, when the heat of the day began to cool, Juliet took Natalie and the boys down to the paddock to see the horses that were corralled there, waiting their turn to be taken out on a muster, or ridden through the scrub and termite hills where even four-wheel drives couldn’t go.

Natalie’s eyes shone as she hung over the rail. ‘Dad’s going to get me a horse of my own, so I can go riding with him,’ she told Juliet proudly.

Juliet patted the neck of a roan that had come in search of a titbit. ‘I’d like to get a couple of small ponies for the boys to learn on,’ she said.

The twins had always loved watching the horses. They were standing on the rail next to Natalie, not at all afraid of the big mare tossing her head up and down. ‘The trouble is that I can’t leave one while I teach the other to ride, and I can’t control two ponies at once,’ she went on, half to herself. She had tried to work out a way round the difficulty many times since the boys had been old enough to walk, but the fact remained that she couldn’t teach two small boys to ride at the same time with only one pair of hands.

‘Dad could help you,’ Natalie offered, and Juliet smiled wryly.

‘I think Dad’s got more important things to do at the moment.’

‘He certainly has.’ Cal had come up behind them so quietly that when he spoke, Juliet jumped a mile. The man must move like a cat!

‘Where did you come from?’ she demanded, heart hammering. It was the shock, she told herself. Nothing to do with the sight of him, lean and strong and somehow immediate in the sharp outback light. Beneath his hat, his eyes were as cool and as impersonal as ever and his mouth—that mouth that she remembered so well from last night—was compressed in an angry line.

‘The stockyards,’ he said with an edge of impatience. What did it matter where he had come from? It wasn’t his fault she had nothing better to do than spend the afternoon leaning on the paddock rail and was so busy looking elegant in khaki trousers and a cream shirt that she hadn’t heard him coming.

He turned to Natalie. ‘Nat, why don’t you take the twins back to the homestead?’ he said. ‘I need a word with Mrs Laing.’

‘I call her Juliet,’ said Natalie, but she climbed off the rail.

Juliet bridled at the way Cal was ordering her sons around, but she didn’t want to start arguing in front of the children. ‘Yes, would you mind getting them a drink, Natalie?’ she said tightly. ‘I want to talk to your father.’

She watched Natalie lead Kit and Andrew out of earshot, holding carefully onto two sticky hands, before rounding on Cal. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d let me decide where and when we talk!’ she hissed. ‘You’re here to manage the station and nothing else. You can leave my children to me!’

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