Australian Bachelors: Outback Heroes: Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride / A Wedding in Warragurra / The Outback Doctor's Surprise Bride

CHAPTER FIVE

KELLIE thought the airstrip looked even smaller than when she had arrived there only hours earlier. The arrivals building was no bigger than a suburban garden shed, and the red gravel runway looked too small for a car to brake suddenly, let alone an aircraft.

Before the plane had landed a team of locals had performed the mandatory ‘roo shoo’ which involved a couple of cars driving up and down the strip to clear away any wildlife such as kangaroos, emus or possums. Kellie could see one or two of the drivers standing chatting to the pilot as she and Matt approached.

Once Julie was settled on board, Brian King, the pilot, Nathan Curtis, the doctor, and Fran Bradley, the nurse, quickly introduced themselves.

‘It’s great to meet you,’ Fran said with a friendly smile. ‘I know of a few women out on the land who’ll be glad to know you’ve joined the outback clinic team.’

Kellie swallowed as she looked at the aircraft. ‘Er … yes, I’m sure it will be heaps of fun …’

‘Dr Thorne isn’t too keen on flying,’ Matt said with an unreadable expression.

Kellie glowered at him. ‘I’m sure I’ll get used to it if it’s not too rough.’ She turned back to the nurse. ‘I had a scary trip back from a rotation I did in Tamworth a few years ago. We had to make an emergency landing when one of the engines failed. A few of the passengers were seriously injured. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a coward ever since.’

Brian smiled reassuringly. ‘We’ll do our best to keep you safe out here,’ he said. ‘We don’t take unnecessary risks. I’ve only had to make one emergency landing in twenty years of flying in the outback.’

‘That’s very good to know,’ Kellie said, with another nervous glance towards the plane which, in her opinion, looked like it wouldn’t look out of place in a child’s toybox.

Julie was soon loaded on board and everyone stood back as the engine turned over in preparation for take-off. On the way back to his car Matt stopped to chat to Ruth. ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to manage Julie’s boys?’ he asked with a concerned pleat of his brow.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Ruth assured him. ‘They’ll keep me on my toes, no doubt, but it will be good for me. Take my mind off things.’

‘Can I help in any way?’ Kellie asked. ‘It’s not as if I’m not used to handling boys and I don’t start at the clinic until next week.’

‘If you’d like to, that would be lovely,’ Ruth said. ‘Julie’s house is on Commercial Road, number fifteen, I think it is from memory—no one really bothers with numbers out here. Anyway, it’s the house next door to the old community centre.’

‘I’ll find it,’ Kellie said with a confident smile.

Matt opened the car door for Kellie once Ruth had driven off. ‘You may have had plenty of experience handling your brothers but I can assure you Julie’s boys are something else. They’ve been running wild for years. I’ve had each of them for patients with every injury imaginable. How one of them hasn’t been killed before now is little short of a miracle.’

Kellie waited until he was behind the wheel before asking, ‘How old are they?’

He frowned as if searching his memory. ‘Ty is fifteen, Rowan fourteen and Cade is twelve.’

‘And how old is Julie?’

‘She’s not long turned thirty-one, I think.’

Kellie lifted her brows. ‘Gosh, she did start young. She was, what, just sixteen when she had the oldest boy.’

‘Yes, but out here that’s not unusual,’ he said. ‘I have several patients who are teenage mothers. It’s tough on them as they can’t really get out of the cycle of poverty without an education to fall back on. They end up having a couple more kids and living on welfare for years on end.’

Kellie couldn’t help thinking of how different her life had been in spite of her mother’s untimely death. She at least had been able to complete her training even while juggling her father’s and brothers’ needs. She hadn’t really realised until now how lucky she was to have done so. She could so easily have chosen another path, like so many others did in times of grief and trauma.

‘Ruth told me about your fiancée,’ she said after a lengthy silence. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t realise how tough this weekend must have been for you.’

All the air inside the car seemed to be sucked out on the harshly indrawn breath he took. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m over it. Life moves on. It has to.’

Kellie glanced at his white-knuckled grip on the steering-wheel and wondered if that was entirely true. He reminded her of her father, stoic and grittily determined to ignore how much life had changed, pretending he was coping when each day another part of him seemed to shrivel up and die.

‘What did she do?’ she asked, after she’d let another little silence pass. ‘Was she a doctor, like you?’

‘No,’ he said, staring at the road ahead. ‘She was a teacher.’

‘What grade?’

‘First grade.’

‘How did you meet?’

He glanced at her as if he found her questions both annoying and intrusive. ‘We went to school together.’ He looked forward again and paused for a second or two before adding, ‘We dated since senior high school.’

Oh, boy, Kellie thought. Losing a childhood sweetheart was a tough call. So many memories were intertwined. It was almost impossible to move forward without some sort of survival guilt. Her father was living proof of it. He and her mother had met on the first day of high school and had never had eyes for anyone else but each other.

Kellie, on the other hand, had had plenty of casual male relationships during her adolescence but after her mother had died her only serious relationship had been with Harley Edwards. It worried her that with just under a year until she turned thirty she was way behind her peers in terms of experience. But with the responsibilities of juggling both her studies and her needy family she hadn’t had time to socialise in the same way her peers had done.

When Harley had come along, with his easygoing charm, she hadn’t given the relationship enough thought before she had committed herself to being his lover. She had known enough about her body and its responses to know she had often been a little short-changed when it had come to their very occasional intimate moments. She had always put it down to overwork and tiredness on her part, but after feeling the fine sandpaper-like touch of Matt McNaught’s hands earlier, she wondered if had more to do with not meeting the right person.

She glanced at Matt’s hands again and suppressed a tiny shiver. They looked like the sort of hands that would know their way around a woman’s body. Long fingered and strong, capable and yet gentle when he needed to be. She had seen that when he had examined Julie’s wound earlier.

‘Look, if you’re really not keen about flying out here, I’m quite happy to do the remote clinics while you hold the fort in town,’ Matt said into the silence. ‘I hadn’t realised you’d had such a frightening experience. An emergency landing would be enough to shake anyone’s confidence.’

Kellie felt her heart swell at his gesture of consideration for her feelings. ‘Thank you, but I really think I need to conquer my demons,’ she said. ‘That’s part of the reason I came out here. I hate being beaten by something. I knew it would be tough and that there would be flying involved, but patients have to take priority over personal feelings, right?’

He met her gaze briefly. ‘Out here patients always take priority,’ he said. ‘Our feelings don’t come into it at all.’

‘I guess they don’t if you’ve got them locked away so tightly no one can even get close,’ she commented wryly.

His mouth tightened into a flat white line. ‘If I choose not to wear my heart on my sleeve, that’s surely my business and no one else’s,’ he said in a curt tone. ‘Ruth had no right to tell you all the details of my private life. She was way out of line.’

‘She cares for you,’ Kellie countered. ‘In fact, I think she understands more than most what you’re going through.’

He was still looking straight ahead. ‘I suppose you mean because we’ve both lost someone we loved.’

‘Yes. She’s a mother who has lost her daughter,’ she said. ‘You’re a man who has lost his fiancée. You have a lot of common ground. Grief is a great leveller—sure, we experience it in different ways but it’s still grief. Take Julie, for instance. She’s lost the father of her children, not from death but because her husband decided he wanted something other than what she could offer. She’s left to bring up three boys on her own. In some ways she might have coped better if her husband had died rather than being left to live with the stigma of being rejected for another woman.’

Matt frowned as he thought about what Kellie had said. He had tried over the years to move on from his grief and each year he felt as if he had taken a few more important steps away from it. But then as Madeleine’s birthday crept up on him each October he felt the guilt start to gnaw at him, like a tiny pebble inside one of his shoes. It didn’t help that Madeleine’s parents expected him to be the same broken man he had been six years ago.

For the first time since he had been travelling to Brisbane each year, Matt had felt like a fraud. He had felt almost sickened this time by the way John and Mary Donaldson persisted in maintaining their daughter’s bedroom like a shrine to her memory. It was as if Madeleine’s parents had never quite accepted their daughter was finally gone. Madeleine’s clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe, even her wedding dress and veil this time had reminded Matt of that scene out of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations where the jilted Miss Haversham lived in a constant state of wearing her wedding finery, even as it creased and rotted around her aging form.

Madeleine’s bed was still made up as if she was coming home to slip in between the neatly pressed sheets, her school trophies and certificates and university degree were on the wall, and her bedside clock was plugged in as if her slim hand would reach out and switch off the alarm the next morning …

Matt gripped the steering-wheel even tighter, fighting against the groundswell of feeling rising inside him. He realised it wasn’t grief but frustration that Madeleine’s parents were not just holding onto their daughter, but to him as well. ‘I’m dealing with it in my own way and in my own time,’ he said. ‘I don’t like talking about it—it brings it all back.’

‘I felt the same about my mother’s death for ages,’ Kellie said. ‘I could barely mention her name. But I’ve come to realise it’s much healthier to deal with what you’re feeling at the time rather than push it aside. It festers under the surface otherwise, and you can’t move on with your life.’

‘As a child, no matter what age you are, you more or less expect to outlive your parents,’ he said tightly. ‘It’s not the same thing at all, losing the person you were expecting to marry a couple of days later. There are issues that crop up from time to time, reminders, that sort of thing. It never seems to go away.’

Kellie took a moment to absorb what he’d said to consider if she agreed with it or not. Losing her mother had been devastating. It had been devastating for her father and brothers as well as it had come right out of the blue. One moment their forty-seven-year-old active and energetic mother had been happy and healthy, doing all the things loving mothers did, and the next she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

It had felt at the time like the family had suddenly slammed head first into a brick wall. Life was never going to be the same again and each of them had known it. Yes, they’d had a few months to say what had needed to be said so their mother could die in peace, but it hadn’t really lessened the grief. If anything, it had prolonged it, as they had watched her waste away before their eyes, each of them watching helplessly until she’d taken her final breath and slipped away.

‘I’m not sure I totally agree with you,’ she said. ‘I miss my mother terribly. There are still days when I reach for my phone to call or text her about something and then I realise she’s not here any more. I know for a fact it will get worse if or when I become a mother myself. I have my father, of course, who is absolutely wonderful but no one can ever replace your mother.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve managed without one for the last twenty-six years so I’m not sure I totally agree with you,’ he returned.

Kellie looked at the embittered set of what she could see of his features as he continued to focus fixedly on the road ahead. ‘You lost your mother when you were a kid?’ she asked, frowning.

‘She left when I was seven,’ he said taking the turn into the street where the Montgomerys’ cottage was situated. ‘Apart from the occasional birthday card and cheap Christmas present up until I was about ten, I haven’t seen or heard from her since.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said, biting her lip as she thought of how hurt he must have felt at such a young age. Her experience with her younger brothers made her very much aware of how incredibly sensitive young boys were. They hid it to protect themselves but it didn’t mean they were incapable of deep feelings.

‘What about your father?’ she asked.

‘My father?’ His mouth twisted cynically. ‘My father still likes to think if it hadn’t been for me my mother wouldn’t have run off with another man. The burden of looking after a small child, or so he thinks, was the reason she took off for greener pastures. I see him when duty calls, which basically means when he runs short of money, but other than that I keep my distance.’

‘That’s so sad,’ she said with deep sincerity. ‘Do you have any siblings?’

‘No.’

Soon after that he pulled into the driveway of the cottage but he didn’t kill the engine. Kellie knew he had probably regretted revealing as much as he had and was keen to get away before she got even further under his carefully guarded emotional radar.

‘Thank you for the lift,’ she said, opening the passenger door before he could stride around to do so.

‘No trouble,’ he said, not even looking her way. ‘I’ll send someone around tomorrow to fix that window for you. They’re probably all a bit stiff. It’s the heat at this time of year. It practically melts the paint.’

‘Thanks,’ she said with a little smile. ‘I’d really appreciate it.’

She stood and watched as he drove away in a cloud of dust, the fine red particles his car stirred up making her eyes suddenly start to water.

Kellie spent a restless night in the cottage. The heat, in spite of the air-conditioning, was oppressive and there were noises throughout the night that had her senses constantly on high alert. First she thought she heard footsteps on the roof, but after she heard the distinctive territorial screech of a possum she settled down again.

A few minutes later she heard two cats spitting and yowling just outside her bedroom window. She got out of bed and, pulling aside the curtains, gritted her teeth as she opened the stiff window just enough to lean out and shoo the snarling cats away.

She was just about to close the window when she caught sight of a shadow moving stealthily across the neighbouring vacant property. Her blood stilled in her veins, her heart missed a beat, her throat closing over with fear as she saw the figure disappear into the scrub at the back of the block.

Sleep was almost impossible after that. The old house seemed to be full of squeaks and creaks; even the sound of the refrigerator intermittently regulating its thermostat was enough to have Kellie springing upright in bed each time in wide-eyed terror.

She hadn’t realised living alone would be so … so … creepy.

What if someone was inside the house right now? What if they were not aware it was currently occupied and were on their way in? Kellie had heard of intruders reacting violently when confronted by the occupant of a residence they had assumed was vacant.

‘I need to get myself a dog,’ she said, not even realising she had spoken out loud until she heard the eerie echo of her voice in the stillness of the darkness.

The cats started up again outside her bedroom window and Kellie lay back on her pillow and began counting all the different breeds of dogs she could until through sheer exhaustion she finally drifted off to sleep …

CHAPTER SIX

THE morning sun was bright but without the sting of the day before so Kellie decided to use the cooler air to get in some exercise. Although the rolling ocean was her usual choice she was no stranger to jogging, and out here where the roads were seemingly endless and with little traffic she felt she could clear her head and prepare herself mentally for the months ahead.

She was well on her way when she realised it might have been a good idea to bring a water bottle with her and maybe even a map of the local area. She had taken a few left and then right turns on side roads to break the monotony of the long straight road but now she wasn’t quite sure which way led back to town. The flat dry landscape all looked the same. An occasional gnarled gumtree offered a landmark now and again but as soon as she turned in another direction there was another one just like it.

The sun was beating down with increasing force and her mouth started to feel like she had been sucking on a gym sock for hours. The thought of something wet and cold was almost enough to make her begin to hallucinate. She even thought she could hear the rattle of ice cubes in a glass and the slight tang of a twist of lemon …

She bent down, her hands on her knees as she dragged in a couple of dry, rasping breaths. Her brand-new running shoes were no longer pristine and white. Instead, they were stained with the ochre-coloured dust of the outback.

She gradually became aware of the sound of a motorbike on her left and she straightened to see a man approaching from behind a fenced property, where a herd of cattle was watching from the limited shade of a cluster of gumtrees, their wide eyes seeming—along with the motorbike rider and the kelpie riding on the back—to be seriously questioning her sanity.

Matt’s first words confirmed her impression. ‘What the hell are you doing this far out here without water?’ he barked.

Kellie hated the ditsy, helpless female role. There was no way she was going to admit she had made a mistake, even if she knew she had indeed made one and a potentially life-threatening one at that. ‘It’s barely seven in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been running for half an hour or so.’

He frowned at her darkly. ‘Then you must be an Olympic champion because you’re at least nine kilometres from town. If you turn back now that will be a eighteen-kilometre round trip, which is just asking for muscle meltdown without adequate fluids in this sort of heat.’

Kellie narrowed her gaze to take in the acubra hat on his head. ‘Well, now, Dr McNaught,’ she said in a pert voice. ‘Aren’t you a fine one to be preaching health and safety issues with me when you’re not wearing a helmet? You could have a fall off that bike of yours and end up concussed or brain injured.’

His jaw clenched slightly as his dark blue eyes tussled with hers. ‘I’m on private property and driving at less than forty kilometres per hour.’

Kellie planted her hands on her hips and continued to stare him down. ‘You could be driving at ten kilometres an hour and still come off and hit your head against a rock or something,’ she pointed out.

He took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah, well, it’s too hot to wear one.’

‘I’m afraid that excuse won’t quite cut it with the cops if they pull you over on the road,’ she countered, trying not to stare at the bulge of his biceps as his hands returned to grip the handlebars of the bike.

His eyes nailed hers. ‘I don’t ride my bike on the road.’

The dog, who up until this point had been perched—somewhat precariously in Kellie’s opinion—on the back of the bike jumped off, and with an agility she could only envy wriggled on its belly underneath the fence and came over to nuzzle against her.

She bent down in delight and gave his velvet ears a gentle stroke, crooning to him softly. ‘Well, hello, there, gorgeous boy. Have you been helping your daddy on the farm? What a good dog you are, and very clever too. I saw you balancing there like a gymnast on the back of that big bad old bike. Not many of the city dogs I know could do that.’

Matt felt like rolling his eyes but secretly he was a little impressed. Spike wasn’t usually so good with strangers. He was a cautious dog, leaning a little towards the anxious if anything, but that was because he had been badly mistreated before Matt had rescued him from the dogs’ home in Brisbane.

He watched as the dog melted under her touch, Spike’s brown eyes turning to liquid as Kellie tickled him under the chin.

‘Here, Spike,’ he called, and whistled through his teeth.

Spike pricked his ears and looked at him, but then turned back to Kellie and rolled over in the dust, exposing his belly for a scratch.

‘Oh you darling, darling boy,’ Kellie gushed, scratching and stroking him simultaneously. ‘You like that, huh? Yeah, well, I’ve never met a man yet who didn’t like his stomach stroked, or his ego, too, for that matter. But you don’t strike me as the overblown-ego type. You’re a real sweetie, aren’t you?’

Matt could feel his blood surging to places it hadn’t surged to in years as he watched Kellie’s hand move over his dog’s exposed belly. But then the long length of her toned legs in those shorter-than-short running shorts was enough to set anyone’s blood boiling, he thought. Her soft, sensual voice was like a whispery caress along the stiffness of his spine, and his deep abdominals switched on with a deep clench-like kick as he thought of how it would feel to have those slim, soft fingers skating over his naked flesh …

Kellie grinned as she straightened, the dog still nudging her hand with its head. ‘He’s so cute,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking last night how much I’d love to have a dog. Do you know anyone who’s got one for sale?’

Matt hastily assembled his features into a stern frown. ‘Dogs are not like toys to be picked up and played with at random. It takes commitment and patience to own and train one, especially a working dog. Besides, what would you want with a dog? You’re only here for a few months. What will you do with it when you leave?’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Duh! I’ll take it with me, of course,’ she said. ‘I love dogs. We’ve had dogs ever since I was a toddler. Our last one only died a few months ago. That was another reason I took this post. I couldn’t bear to leave before Sadie lived her last days. I wanted to be there when she died.’

‘And were you?’

Kellie couldn’t quite read his expression due to the angle of the morning sun. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was the one who took her to the vet when I realised things were rapidly going downhill. When she was put down the vet left me alone with her and she died cradled in my arms. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. It reminded me of my mother’s death. It made me realise no one should ever die alone, not even the family pet.’

Matt looked at Spike, who was still licking Kellie’s fingers as if they were coated in thick chocolate. ‘If you want to share the space with Spike on the back, I’m willing to give you a lift back to the homestead and then on to town,’ he said gruffly.

She raised her brows at him. ‘On the bike?’

‘Only back to the homestead,’ he clarified. ‘After that you can have the assurance of airbags, stability control and ABS brakes all the way into town.’

‘We-ll,’ she said, shifting her lips from side to side as she considered his offer.

‘I promise to drive extra-slowly,’ he added.

‘OK, then,’ she said, and moved towards the fence with the dog at her side. ‘Now, then, Spike, I’m not sure I’m going to do it your way. I think I’ll go over the top.’

Matt propped his bike on its stand so he could offer his assistance but she had already snagged her jogging shorts on the top rung of barbed wire by the time he got there.