Buch lesen: «Inherited: Twins»

CHAPTER ONE

PRUE was slumped miserably over the steering wheel when the sound of an approaching vehicle made her jerk upright. At last! Scrambling out of the car, she saw a utility truck bowling along the track towards her, a cloud of red dust billowing behind it.

Too tired to realise that the car was effectively blocking the track on its own, she began to wave her arms frantically and even though she knew that no one in the outback would drive past a vehicle in trouble, she felt weak with relief as the ute slowed and stopped at last a few feet in front of her.

The driver wound down his window and leant out. ‘You look like you could use some help,’ he said in a laconic voice.

He had a quiet, pleasant face that was vaguely familiar. Prue groped desperately for his name. Nat…Nat something was the best she could do. He was one of the Grangers’ neighbours, if you could really call anyone who lived seventy miles away a neighbour.

‘Hello,’ she greeted him, wincing inwardly at how clipped and English she sounded compared to his slow Australian drawl. Taking her sunglasses off, she bent down to look at him through the window, and Nat found himself looking back into a pair of silvery-grey eyes that bore distinct traces of tears on the long, sooty lashes.

‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you!’ she said. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I’d be here all night!’

Nat switched off the engine and got out of the ute. He was a rangy man in his thirties, with the spare, self-contained look that Prue had grown used to seeing in the outback.

‘It’s Prue, isn’t it?’ he said, settling his hat on his head.

Prue looked at him in surprise. ‘That’s right.’

‘I’m Nat Masterman.’

Masterman, that was it! ‘Oh, I know,’ she said hastily. ‘I remember you coming to Cowen Creek. I was just surprised that you recognised me. Not many people notice a cook.’

Nat was puzzled himself to have remembered her so clearly. She was slight with a cloud of brown hair and a face that was piquant rather than pretty. He hadn’t noticed that much about her on the few occasions he had seen her, only her eyes, which were an unusual silver colour, and the way she had lit up whenever Ross Granger smiled at her.

‘That depends on how good the cook is,’ he said tactfully. ‘You made the best apple pie I’ve ever had.’

‘Really?’ Prue smiled at him gratefully. It was nice to think that she was good at something. ‘Thank you!’

Yes, he had noticed her smile, too, Nat remembered. He adjusted the brim of his hat. ‘What’s the trouble, Prue?’ he asked.

Reminded of her situation, Prue’s smile faded. ‘I’ve run out of diesel,’ she said glumly.

Nat’s brow rose slightly. ‘Are you sure?’

She nodded. ‘The red warning light has been blinking at me for miles, but by the time I noticed it I’d gone too far to go back. I was hoping to get to the sealed road at least—’ she went on, kicking one of the tyres in remembered frustration ‘—but the engine started to cough and splutter just up the track, and then it just died.’

She blew her fringe wearily off her face. ‘I’ve been here over two hours.’

It felt more than twice as long.

Prue saw Nat glance at her curiously and was suddenly acutely aware of what a mess she must appear. There were plenty of ways to look good, but being stuck in a car in the middle of the outback for a couple of hours was certainly not one of them.

It might not have been so bad if there had been any shade where she could sit and wait, but out here on the salt pans she had had no choice but to stay in the car. The air-conditioning had died with the engine, and even with all the windows down the sun beating on the metal roof had soon turned the car into an oven. Now, her face was red and blotchy and her curls clung limp and sweaty to her scalp.

Rubbing a knuckle under her eyes to remove any tell-tale tear-stains and hastily replacing her sunglasses, Prue could only hope that she didn’t look as if she had spent the last two hours snivelling pathetically, even if it were true.

Not that Nat Masterman seemed to care what she looked like. He was more concerned with the fuel situation. ‘These things have got pretty big tanks,’ he said, nodding his head at the car, a powerful four-wheel drive far bigger than anything Prue had ever driven at home. ‘It must have been just about empty before you left Cowen Creek.’

‘I know—and, yes, I know I should have checked it before I left,’ said Prue, forestalling him as he opened his mouth. ‘It was one of the first things the Grangers told me when I came to work out here.

‘The thing is, I’d had a really busy morning,’ she tried to explain her carelessness, ‘and I suddenly realised that we were out of flour and sugar and a whole lot of other things I need to cook the meal tonight. I reckoned I had just enough time to get into town and back before I had to start cooking, so I just jumped in the car and set off. I was thinking about…other things…and, well, I just forgot,’ she admitted.

And now here she was in another fine mess. Bitterly, Prue remembered the moment when the flashing red light had finally caught her eye, yanking her out of a wonderful daydream where Ross was marvelling at how they had ever managed at Cowen Creek without her.

He wouldn’t be marvelling tonight when he found out that she had spent the afternoon stranded halfway to Mathison and that there would be no pudding. She had planned to make his favourite, too.

Prue was suddenly close to tears. ‘I can’t believe I could be so stupid!’ she said fiercely, knowing that there was no one to blame but herself.

‘Not so stupid that you left the car and tried to walk.’

Nat’s voice was calm and insensibly comforting, and Prue looked at him gratefully. He might not be the type to make her go weak at the knees, like Ross, but he had always seemed like a nice man. Not that exciting, maybe, but quietly competent. If she had to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, she couldn’t ask for anyone better to rescue her.

Not even Ross, she thought disloyally. Ross would know what to do, of course, but he wouldn’t have been able to resist teasing her. Nat, she guessed, wouldn’t tease, and he wouldn’t rush to tell everyone how hopelessly unsuited she was to life in the outback either. He was the kind of man who only spoke when he had something important to say.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any spare diesel, have you?’ she asked him, hoping against hope that she would be able to avoid the ignominy of having to abandon the car altogether. If Nat had enough fuel to get her back to the homestead, she could make do for dinner and Ross might not ever have to know what had happened.

But Nat was already shaking his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

Prue tried, and failed, to swallow her disappointment. ‘Oh, well.’

So much for Ross not finding out. She would have to go back and confess, that was all.

Squaring her shoulders, she flashed Nat a determinedly bright smile. ‘Are you on your way to Cowen Creek?’ she asked, even though she knew the question was unnecessary. Once on this track, there was nowhere else to go.

He nodded. ‘I wanted to have a word with Bill Granger.’

‘Would you give me a lift?’

‘Sure,’ Nat began, but something in her smile, something in the way she turned despondently back to the car to collect her things, made him pause. ‘Unless you’d rather I took you into Mathison?’ he heard himself offer.

Prue stopped with her hand on the car door. She looked at him with such amazement that Nat wondered if she had misunderstood what he had said. ‘You could do your shopping while I get a can of fuel,’ he explained. ‘I’ll bring you back here, and then you can drive yourself back to Cowen Creek.’

He made it sound perfectly simple, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world for him to go back on his tracks and drive an extra forty or so miles along hot, dusty roads for a girl he hardly knew.

‘But…I thought you wanted to see Bill,’ stammered Prue, unable to believe that the miracle she had spent the last two hours dreaming about would turn up in the shape of a lean, quiet grazier in a hat.

Nat shrugged. ‘There’s no hurry,’ he said, incapable of explaining his impulsive offer to himself let alone to her.

No, there would never be a hurry as far as Nat Masterman was concerned, thought Prue enviously. He wouldn’t know how to begin flapping or fussing or panicking. You could tell by the steadiness of his gaze, by the slowness of his voice, by the easy way he moved, that hurry was quite simply an alien concept for him.

‘Even so, it would be taking you so far out of your way,’ she said doubtfully.

‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘But if you’d rather I took you back to Cowen Creek—’

‘No!’ Prue interrupted him, determined not to let her opportunity go. ‘I mean, if you’re sure you don’t mind, it would be wonderful if you could take me to Mathison!’ she admitted, and her smile was so dazzling that Nat blinked and wondered how he could have thought that she wasn’t particularly pretty.

He turned to open the door of the ute. ‘Hop in, then,’ he said in a dry voice.

Prue grabbed her hat and her shopping list from the car. She scrambled in beside him and collapsed back into the seat.

‘You’ve saved my life!’ she told him as he turned the ute with an economy of movement that already seemed typical of him and headed back the way he had come.

Nat raised an eyebrow at her dramatic statement. ‘You would have been OK as long as you stayed with the car,’ he pointed out. ‘The Grangers would have come to look for you eventually.’

‘Oh, I know. I wasn’t worried about my safety.’ The cab was blissfully cool after the crushing heat in the car. Prue leant forward to adjust the vent so that the cold air blew directly onto her face. She had never understood the appeal of air-conditioning until she had come to Australia.

‘You’ve saved me from having to explain what an idiot I’ve been,’ she went on, sitting back with a sigh of relief. ‘I was dreading it.’

‘I can’t see any of the Grangers getting angry with you,’ said Nat in the calm way of a man who had no idea what it was like to do anything stupid or be afraid of anything.

‘I know. That’s what makes it worse!’ sighed Prue. ‘They’re so nice and kind,’ she tried to explain, seeing Nat’s baffled look. ‘They’ve been wonderful to me. I’d always wanted to work on a real outback cattle station, and getting a job at Cowen Creek was like a dream come true. Mr and Mrs Granger are great—and Ross, of course.’

She had meant it to sound like a casual aside, but her voice came out ridiculously strangled instead. It was hopeless, thought Prue in despair. All she had to do was think about Ross and her heart clenched, squeezing the air from her lungs. She couldn’t even say his name without her throat thickening.

She coughed slightly to clear it. ‘Well, anyway, I just love being at Cowen Creek,’ she went on, ‘but I’m sure they must think I’m really stupid. They’re just too polite to say so.’

Nat glanced at her. She was staring disconsolately through the windscreen, her unruly hair pushed behind her ears to reveal a fine-boned profile. He didn’t think she looked stupid. Her face was warm, alert, quirky in an attractive way, but not stupid.

‘Why should they think that?’ he asked.

‘Because I am,’ said Prue glumly. ‘I can’t seem to do anything right. I fainted dead away once when I cut myself with a knife, and I couldn’t even watch when they were dehorning the calves. And then the other day I nearly had a fit when I found a snake in the onion sack—they all thought that was really funny,’ she remembered with a sigh. ‘They said it wasn’t poisonous but I didn’t know that, did I?’ she added, turning to Nat almost belligerently, as if he had been the one who had laughed at the sight of her screaming blue murder in the storeroom.

‘There’s no reason why you should,’ he agreed gravely, and Prue subsided a little.

‘I’d love to be able to ride well,’ she went on, ‘but all their horses seem to be half wild, and I keep falling off.’ Her cheeks burned with humiliation as she remembered how Ross had grinned as he picked her up. ‘I just seem to be hopeless at everything.’

‘Except cooking,’ Nat pointed out. ‘Bill Granger told me you’re the best cook they’ve ever had.’

‘Anyone can cook,’ said Prue dismissively. ‘I want to be able to do the things everyone else can do out here.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like lasso a calf. Like mend a fence or fix a water pipe. Like brand a cow without passing out. Like remembering to check the fuel before setting out to drive to town!’ She folded the shopping list sadly in her lap, turning it over and over until it was no more than a tiny square. ‘I’m a liability the moment I step outside the homestead!’

‘You’re just getting used to a different way of doing things,’ said Nat, but Prue refused to be consoled.

‘I’ve already been here three months,’ she grumbled. ‘How much longer is it going to take?’

‘Why does it matter?’ he asked. ‘You can’t help what you are.’

‘But that’s just it! I don’t want to be like me! I was born and brought up in London, but that doesn’t mean I’m condemned to be a city girl my whole life, does it? I don’t want people to think of me as a prissy Pom mincing around the outback, no good for anything except peeling a few potatoes or making a cake. I want to be…’

The kind of girl Ross would fall in love with. The kind of girl he would marry.

She could hardly tell Nat Masterman that, though, could she?

‘…I want to belong,’ she finished instead. She turned to Nat, and he was very aware of the intense, silver-grey gaze on his face. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’

Nat kept his eyes firmly on the track ahead. ‘Why not?’

‘Ross doesn’t think it is.’ Prue dropped her eyes and concentrated on unfolding the shopping list. ‘He thinks you have to be born here to belong. I’ve been trying so hard to prove him wrong, and now I’ve gone and made a fool of myself all over again by forgetting to check the fuel in the car! If you hadn’t come along, it would have looked as if I couldn’t even manage to go into town and pick up a few groceries without them having to come out and rescue me. I know they wouldn’t have been angry, but they’re all so busy at the moment and it would have been a real nuisance…’

She trailed off, imagining the scene if Ross or one of the stockmen had been sent out to find her, and her eyes lifted to Nat’s calm profile once more. ‘That’s why I said you’d saved my life,’ she told him.

‘You know, you’re worried about nothing,’ said Nat. ‘The Grangers like you. They’ve told me so, and they’re not the kind of people who pretend. You’re fun for them to have around and, more importantly, you’re a good cook. They’ve got stockmen to help them outside. What they really want is someone to produce meals for everyone on time, and you can do that. If they don’t want you to be different, why should you?’

‘Because Ross wants me to be different.’ The words were out before Prue could stop them and she bit her lip, turning her head away and letting her hair swing forward so that when Nat glanced at her he could see only the curve of her jaw and the long line of her throat.

‘Are you sure about that?’ he asked dryly after a moment. ‘When I saw the two of you together at Ellie Walker’s wedding, it looked as if he liked you just the way you were.’

Surprise brought Prue’s head round. ‘You were at the wedding?’ She frowned slightly. ‘I didn’t notice you.’

There had been no reason for her to have noticed him, Nat thought without resentment. He didn’t have Ross Granger’s famous looks or charm. He had only noticed her because of the way her eyes had shone that night. It was as if a light had been switched on inside her. She’d seemed to be literally glowing with happiness. Nat remembered wondering what it would be like to have a girl look at him the way Prue had looked at Ross.

‘I got the impression you didn’t notice anyone except Ross,’ he said with a wry sideways look.

It was true. Prue had had eyes only for Ross that night. The other guests, even the bride and groom, had been no more than a background blur to the wonderful, glorious fact that she was with him. It had been a perfect evening. Ross had ignored all the other girls there. He had flirted only with her, danced only with her, and then he had driven her back to Cowen Creek and kissed her in the car outside the homestead.

Prue had been so certain that that night was to prove the beginning of the rest of her life. Ross was everything she’d ever wanted, and for a while she had floated dreamily through the days, imagining how happy they would be together, writing home to tell her family that she had at last found the love of her life.

And she had. It was just that Ross didn’t seem to think that he had found his.

She smoothed the shopping list in her lap. ‘I’m in love with Ross,’ she said in a low voice, unable to resist the urge to talk about him, not quite sure why she had chosen Nat to confide in other than the fact that he seemed so solid and dependable. There was something steady about him, something strong and sure about his hands on the steering wheel.

She had been longing for someone to talk to. The only other woman at Cowen Creek was Ross’s mother, who was very kind but not the sort you could pour your heart out to, and although the jackaroos were more or less her own age, Prue’s mind boggled at the idea of trying to discuss emotions with them. Nat might not be the ideal confidant, but he wouldn’t sigh or sneer or roll his eyes the way the others would. And he wouldn’t gossip. You could tell just by looking at him that gossip, like haste, was an alien concept.

‘I’ve never felt like this about anyone before,’ she went on without looking at him, and now that she had started talking she couldn’t stop. ‘I fell in love with him the moment I saw him, just like in all the books. He was waiting to pick me up when I got off the bus from Alice Springs, and that was it. He’s like a dream come true.’

Prue looked out at the heat shimmering over the saltbush, but she was seeing Ross as he had been that day, with his dancing blue eyes and his devastating smile and that body…

She swallowed at the very thought of him. ‘It’s not just the way he looks,’ she said. ‘He’s funny and he’s charming, but he’s down to earth at the same time…oh, I can’t explain,’ she confessed helplessly, the tumbling words slowing at last. ‘He’s just…the only man I’ll ever want.’

Nat’s gaze flickered to Prue’s face and then back to the track. What was it about Ross? he wondered. He was a good-looking bloke, of course, but there must be something else to reduce a girl like Prue to this kind of state. She was obviously besotted, the way every other girl in the district under the age of thirty seemed to have been besotted with him at one stage or another.

‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

Prue was taken aback by the sudden question. Thinking about Ross, she had almost forgotten that she was talking to Nat. ‘Problem?’

‘I guess you wouldn’t be telling me this if Ross felt the same way.’

‘No.’ Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. ‘He likes me, I suppose, but he doesn’t love me. As far as Ross is concerned, our relationship will only last as long as my visa. The Grangers get a girl in to cook during the dry season every year, and Ross probably flirts with all of them.’ It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘I’m just the current model.’

Knowing Ross, and the succession of girls who had worked at Cowen Creek, Nat thought it was more than likely, but he didn’t think that Prue would want to hear that.

‘Ross is all right,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘He’s just young.’

‘He’s twenty-seven, two years older than me. It’s not that young.’

‘It’s not that old either. There’s plenty of time before Ross needs to think about settling down.’

‘And when he does, he’s going to pick a good outback girl who’ll make him a practical wife,’ said Prue miserably.

Nat thought that was more than likely, too. For all his charm of manner, Ross had always struck him as having a hard head on his shoulders. ‘Is that what he says?’ he asked, deciding to stay neutral.

‘He doesn’t have to.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘He’s made it very clear that he doesn’t think I can cope with life on a station like Cowen Creek. I’m just someone else he can have a good time with, not someone he would ever think about spending his life with.’

Her voice wobbled slightly, but she was determined not to give in to tears the way she had done when the car had first spluttered to a halt and left her stranded with only the thought of how much her stupidity just seemed to prove Ross’s point. She stiffened her lip. ‘I don’t belong,’ she finished bleakly, ‘and Ross thinks I never will.’

‘You can’t blame him for thinking about how you would manage,’ said Nat cautiously. He had the nasty feeling that he was getting out of his depth. ‘It’s a hard life out here, if you’re not used to it.’

‘All I want is the chance to get used to it,’ said Prue with another sigh.

To Nat’s relief, they were approaching the turn-off onto the sealed road, where the track was marked by an old tractor tyre on which ‘Cowen Creek’ had been painted. He changed gear, wishing that it were as easy to disengage a conversation.

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,’ he said as he looked up and down the long, straight, empty stretch of road before pulling out. ‘By the end of the season you’ll be carrying on like you were born here, and who’s to say Ross won’t change his mind? You just need to give him time.’

‘But I haven’t got time,’ Prue protested. ‘That’s just it. I’ve got to go home in three weeks.’

He shot her a look of surprise. ‘Has your visa run out already?’

‘No, my sister’s getting married.’ Prue’s tone didn’t suggest she found it much cause for celebration. ‘Originally they were going to have an autumn wedding, but then Cleo decided it would be much nicer for everyone if they had it in summer instead, so I’ve got to cut short my trip. I promised I’d be there, and I can’t let her down.’

She stared disconsolately out of the window, imagining London with its grey streets and its grey buildings and its grey clouds. Here the sky was an intense, glaring blue and the air was diamond-bright and the heat shimmered over the red earth and wavered along the vast, distant horizon. And somewhere out there Ross was riding his horse, sitting easily in the saddle, smiling that smile of his…

‘I wish I could stay,’ she sighed. ‘It’s not just because of Ross. I love it here. I suppose I always had a pretty romantic idea of the outback, and I didn’t really know what to expect. When I heard about the job at Cowen Creek I was half afraid that I would be disappointed, but the moment I arrived I fell in love with the place.

‘It was like coming home,’ she said slowly, the grey eyes dreamy and unfocused as she remembered how she had felt. ‘It was as if I’d always known the light and the stillness and the silence. I love the birds and the trees along the creeks, and the way the screen door bangs.’

She glanced at Nat, half-defiant, half shame-faced. ‘That’s why it bothers me so much that I don’t belong, why I wish so much that I could. Does that sound stupid?’

‘No, it doesn’t sound stupid.’ He turned his head and smiled at her, a warm smile that illuminated his quiet face and left Prue oddly startled, even breathless, at the transformation.

‘It doesn’t sound stupid at all,’ he said again. ‘That’s the way I feel about the outback, too.’

‘Really?’

Slewing round as far as she could in her seat-belt, Prue studied Nat with new interest. She had never taken much notice of him before, beyond registering his air of unhurried calm, but now she looked at him properly and was surprised at what she saw.

It wasn’t that he was handsome, at least not in the way Ross was handsome. His hair was an indeterminate shade of brown, his eyes were brown—in fact, everything about him seemed to be brown. Brown skin, brown watch, strong brown hands on the wheel. He was even wearing a brown shirt.

But still, there was something about him. It was more to do with his air of quiet self-assurance than any particular arrangement of his features, Prue decided. If he wasn’t so understated, he might even be quite attractive. His colouring might not be very obvious, but there was nothing indeterminate about that lean jaw, or the angles of his face, or the cool, firm mouth that had smiled with such astonishing effect.

Prue’s eyes rested on it speculatively. It was a pity Nat didn’t smile more often, she thought, remembering how white his teeth were, the way his eyes had crinkled at the corners and the creases had deepened in his cheeks, and for some reason a tiny, almost imperceptible tingle tiptoed down her spine and made her shiver.

Puzzled by her silence, Nat looked across to check that she was all right and their eyes met for a brief instant. There was nothing in his expression to suggest that he was aware of how closely she had been studying him, but Prue felt a blush steal up her cheeks and she jerked her gaze away.

‘You’re lucky,’ she muttered, averting her face and conscious of a quite inexplicable feeling of shyness. ‘You belong here. You don’t have to go to London and wonder if you’ll ever see the outback again.’

Nat didn’t answer immediately. A road train was bearing down on them, and he lifted a hand to acknowledge the driver’s wave as it thundered past with four long trailers.

‘You’ll just have to come back after the wedding,’ he said when it had gone, able to put his foot down on the accelerator at last. ‘The Grangers will still be here, and I’m sure they’d give you another job.’

‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that.’ Prue had recovered from her momentary confusion. ‘It took me ages to save the money for this trip, and I’ve spent it all now. If I wanted to buy another ticket, I’d have to start all over again.’

‘Couldn’t you do that?’

‘I could, but by the time I’d got enough money together I’d probably be too old to get a work permit—and even if I wasn’t, they would have had to have found a new cook for Cowen Creek.’

What was the betting that the next cook would be young, and pretty, and completely at home in the outback? Just the type to convince Ross that it was time to settle down, in fact. Desperation clutched at Prue’s heart as she imagined coming back to find that Ross had given up waiting for her to get used to the bush and married someone much more suitable instead.

‘So what you need,’ said Nat, following his own train of thought, ‘is a short-term job that will pay you enough to cover your fare back to Australia?’

Prue nodded. ‘Except I’ll probably need at least two jobs in order to save anything. I could get some office work during the day and waitress in the evenings, and if I stay with my parents I won’t have to pay London rents, which would make a difference. It’ll be all right if it’s not for too long,’ she tried to convince herself.

It would still take months before she could get back to Australia, she calculated in despair, and she sighed. ‘Perhaps I could rob a bank or something!’

‘What about a job that paid your flight back to Australia instead?’

‘I can’t see there being many of those advertised in the jobs pages,’ said Prue glumly. ‘Robbing a bank would be easier than finding a job like that. I might as well think about sprouting wings and flying back myself!’

‘You shouldn’t be so negative,’ said Nat. ‘Do you know anything about babies?’

Prue was momentarily thrown by the sudden change of subject. ‘Babies?’ she echoed uncertainly. ‘As in very small people, dirty nappies and sleepless nights?’

Nat grimaced. ‘It sounds as if you do know about them,’ he said in a dry voice.