Scandalous Secrets

She shrugged again. ‘And it worked for a while. With me around to stand up for her, Dad stopped being such a bully. That took the pressure off Mum and things looked better. For Mum, though, not for me. And then Brett decided to court me.’

‘Brett?’ He shouldn’t ask but how could he help it?

‘It seems every guy I’ve ever dated has turned out to be fascinated by my parents’ money,’ she said bluntly. ‘So I should have known. But maybe I was vulnerable, too. Brett’s yet another toad, but I was too dumb and, to be honest, I was too unhappy and caught up in family drama to see it. I hadn’t realized until I got home how close to the edge Mum was, and I was scared. I was trying every way I knew to make her feel good. Brett’s a financial guru, smart, savvy and he knows how to pander to Dad. He’s also good-looking and oh, so charming. In those awful months Brett helped. He honestly did. You have no idea how charming he was. He made me feel...special, and when he asked me to marry him I was dumb enough to say yes.’

‘So celebrations all round?’

‘You think?’ she said bitterly. ‘You know, the moment I said yes I had my doubts but I’m my mother’s daughter. Dad was happy. Mum was well. For a while it was happy families all round. But then Felicity returned and Brett realized Felicity was Dad’s absolute favourite and he could be part of our family and not have to sacrifice himself with the dumpy one.’

‘Humiliation piled on humiliation,’ he said softly and she cast him a glance that was almost scared.

‘Yeah. I was paying too big a price to keep people happy and I’ve realized it. I’m over it.’

‘I’m sure you’re not.’

And she managed a smile. ‘Maybe not quite, but I will be after a year’s cooking at Malley’s.’

‘You can’t go there.’

‘When the water goes down, of course I can.’

‘You’ll hate it. The last time Malley set a mouse trap... Well, I’ve never seen one. What I have seen are dead mice.’

‘Ugh!’

‘Everywhere. He baits them and doesn’t bother to clean.

‘I can clean,’ she said in a small voice.

‘I bet you can but you shouldn’t have to. Don’t Mummy and Daddy supply you with enough money to be fancy-free?’

‘That’s offensive.’

‘True.’

‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘Dad holds the purse strings but a legacy from Grandma left me basically independent. Not rich, but okay. Eventually I might set up a catering company in Adelaide or in Brisbane, but for now I need time to get my head together. I need to be as far from Sydney as possible.’

‘Which is why you headed into the outback in that car?’

Now she grinned. ‘Isn’t it fun? Dad probably wants it back, though. He gave it to me when Brett and I got engaged. With a huge pink ribbon on it. I was momentarily the golden girl.’

‘Shall we take it back to the creek and launch it? Let it float ceremoniously a few hundred miles to the ocean?’

She stared. ‘Pardon?’

‘We could take pictures of it floating out of sight and send them to your father. Very symbolic.’

She choked. ‘Dad’d have a stroke. To say he’s careful is an understatement.’

‘But not careful of his daughter,’ Matt said, his voice softening.

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Get sympathetic. I’m fine as long as no one minds.’

‘So no one minds?’

‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘No one at all. That last awful dinner, when Brett and Felicity walked in hand in hand, Mr and Mrs Smug...I was too gobsmacked to yell and Mum didn’t have the strength to stand up for me. But I guess that was my line in the sand. I can’t help Mum and I won’t keep trying to please my father. And in a way it’s liberating. I’ve walked away. I’m free.’

Then she paused. The night stilled and he thought of what he should say next.

But she got there before him.

‘So what about you?’ she asked.

He’d finished his beer. He was tired beyond belief. He should pick up his dishes and head via the kitchen to bed.

‘What do you mean, what about me?’

‘Who minds?’ she asked. ‘That’s what you asked me. Who cares, Matt Fraser? You live here by yourself. No girlfriend? Boyfriend? Whatever?’

‘I have a...’ he said slowly, and then he paused. He didn’t want to talk about Lily.

But this woman had just opened herself to him. She might say she was free, she was over being hurt, but he knew vulnerable when he saw it.

She’d trusted him with her story. How mean would it be not to give the same to her?

He tried again. ‘I have a daughter,’ he told her. ‘Lily’s thirteen years old and lives in the States with my ex-wife.’

She’d been gazing out over the farmland but now she swivelled to stare at him. He hadn’t turned the porch lights on, but the moonlight and the light filtering from inside the windows was enough for her to see.

Not that he wanted her to see. He wanted his face to be impassive.

Which was pretty much how he wanted to be when he thought of Lily.

‘Thirteen! You must have been a baby when she was born,’ she stammered and he thought: Yep, that just about summed it up.

‘I was twenty-four.’

‘Wow.’ She was still staring. ‘So your wife took Lily back to the States. Isn’t that hard to do? I mean...did you consent?’

‘Darrilyn met an investment banker, coming to investigate...a project I was working on. He was rich, he lived in New York, she was fascinated and he offered her a more exciting life than the one she had with me. She was also four months pregnant. When you leave Australia with your child, the child needs the permission of both parents. When you’re pregnant no one asks.’

‘Oh, Matt...’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, even though it wasn’t. ‘I have the resources to see her a couple of times a year.’

‘Does she look like you?’

And, for some reason, that shook him.

The guys on the farm knew he had a daughter—that was the reason he took off twice a year—but that was as far as it went. When had he ever talked about his daughter? Never.

‘I guess she does,’ he said slowly. ‘She has my black hair. My brown eyes. There’s no denying parentage, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I guess. I didn’t mean anything,’ she whispered. ‘I’m just thinking how hard it would be to leave her there.’ She gave herself a shake, a small physical act that said she was moving on from something that was clearly none of her business. But it seemed she did have more questions, just not about Lily.

‘So you,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you all about my appalling family. Your mum and dad?’

‘Just mum.’ Why was he telling her this? He should excuse himself and go to bed. But he couldn’t. She was like a puppy, he thought, impossible to kick.

Or was there more? The need to talk? He never talked but he did now.

‘This farm,’ she was saying. ‘I assumed you’d inherited it.’

‘Sort of.’

‘So rich mum, hey?’

‘The opposite.’ He hated talking about it but he forced himself to go on. ‘Mum had me when she was eighteen and she had no support. I was a latchkey kid from early on, but we coped.’ He didn’t say how they’d coped. What use describing a childhood where he’d been needed to cope with his mother’s emotional messes?

‘Give me a hug, sweetheart. Sorry, I can’t stop crying. Can you go out and buy pies for tea? Can you go down to the welfare and say Mummy’s not well, we need money for food? But say I’ve just got the flu... I don’t want them sticking their noses in here...’

He shook himself, shoving back memories that needed to be buried. Penny was waiting for him to go on.

‘When I was twelve Mum took a housekeeping job about five hundred miles inland from Perth,’ he told her. ‘Sam Harriday was an eighty-year-old bachelor. He’d worked his parents’ farm on his own for years and was finally admitting he needed help. So off we went, to somewhere Mum hoped we’d be safe.’

‘Safe?’

‘Sorry.’ He caught himself, but now he’d said it he had to explain. A bit. ‘There were parts of Mum’s life that weren’t safe.’

She was silent at that, and he thought she’d probe. He didn’t want her to but he’d asked for it. But when she spoke again she’d moved on. Maybe she’d sensed his need for barriers. ‘Good for your mum,’ she told him. ‘But so far inland... You were twelve? How did you go to school?’

‘School of the Air.’ He shrugged and smiled at the memory of his not very scholastic self. ‘Not that I studied much. I took one look at the farm and loved it. And Sam...’ He hesitated. ‘Well, Sam was a mate. He could see how hungry I was to learn and he taught me.’

‘But—’ she frowned, obviously trying to figure the whole story ‘—this isn’t his farm?’

‘It’s not,’ he told her. ‘Cutting a long story short, when I was fifteen Mum fell for a biker who got lost and asked for a bed. She followed him to the city but Sam offered to let me stay. So I did. I kept up with School of the Air until I was seventeen but by then I was helping him with everything. And I loved it. I loved him. He died when I was twenty-two and he left me everything.’ He shrugged. ‘An inheritance seems great until you realize what comes with it. The death of someone you love.’

‘I’m sorry...’

‘It’s a while back now and it was his time,’ he said, but he paused, allowing a moment for the memories of the old man he’d loved. Allowing himself to remember again the pain that happened when he’d been needed so much, and suddenly there was no one.

‘So the farm was mine,’ he managed, shaking off memories of that time of grief. It was rough country, a farm you had to sweat to make a living from, but it did have one thing going for it that I hadn’t realized. It was sitting on a whole lot of bauxite. That’s the stuff used to make aluminium. Apparently geologists had approached Sam over the years but he’d always seen them off. After he died one of them got in touch with me. We tested and the rest is history.’

‘You own a bauxite mine?’ she said incredulously and he laughed.

‘I own a great sheep property. This one. I own a couple more properties down river—economies of scale make it worthwhile—but this place is my love. I also own a decent share of a bauxite mine. That was what got me into trouble, though. It’s why Darrilyn married me, though I was too dumb to see it. But I’m well over it. My current plan is to make this the best sheep station in the state, if not the country, and the fact that I seem to have hauled the best shearers’ cook I can imagine out of the creek is a bonus.’

He smiled and rose, shaking off the ghosts that seemed to have descended. ‘Enough. If I don’t go to bed now I’ll fall asleep on top of a pile of fleece tomorrow. Goodnight, Penny.’

She stood up too, but she was still frowning. ‘The mine,’ she said. ‘Bauxite... Sam Harriday... It’s not Harriday Holdings?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Oh, my,’ she gasped. ‘Matt, my father tried to invest in that mine. He couldn’t afford to.’

‘The shares are tightly held.’

‘By you?’

‘Mostly.’

She stood back from him and she was suddenly glaring. ‘That must make you a squillionaire.’

‘I told you I’d pay you. Now you know I can afford to. And I doubt I’m a squillionaire.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t even know what one is. And, by the way, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t broadcast it. The locals don’t know and I have no idea why I told you.’

‘Because it’s our night for secrets?’ She hesitated and then reached out to touch his hand. ‘Matt?’

He looked down at her hand on his. It looked wrong, he thought. This was a gesture of comfort and he didn’t need comfort. Or maybe she intended to ask a question that needed it.

‘Yes?’ That was brusque. He tried again and got it better. ‘Yes?’

‘Where’s your mother now?’

How had she guessed? he thought incredulously. How had she seen straight through his story to the one thing that hurt the most?

‘Dead.’

‘I’m sorry. But something tells me...’

‘Don’t!’

She hesitated and then her hand came up and touched his cheek, a feather-touch, a fleeting gesture of warmth.

‘I won’t ask but I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m even more sorry because...you might be a squillionaire, but something tells me that all the whinging I’ve just done doesn’t come close to the pain you’re hiding. Thank you for rescuing me yesterday, Matt Fraser. I just wish I could rescue you right back.’

CHAPTER SIX

IF EVER THERE was a cure for humiliation piled on humiliation, it was ten days of cooking for shearers. Ten days of pure hard work.

‘We’ve only two more mobs left,’ Matt told her with satisfaction. ‘That’s four days shearing and we’re done. We’ve had the best weather. The best food. The best shear I’ve ever organised. You’re our good luck charm, Penny Hindmarsh-Firth. I’ve a good mind to keep you.’

Matt hadn’t stopped for ten days, Penny thought. He’d worked until after midnight almost every night. He said he went to bed but she saw his light at the far end of the veranda.

She had his situation pretty much summed up by now. Five sheep properties. A bauxite mine worth heaven only knew how much. Responsibilities everywhere.

The drapes in his bedroom were often pulled back. She could see his shadow against the light, sitting at his desk, working into the night.

He had a massive desk in his study. He wasn’t using that.

Because she was here? She knew it was, but he wasn’t avoiding her.

They’d fallen into a routine. Matt left the house before dawn, she saw him only briefly at meals but at dusk she sat on the veranda and talked to the dogs and he’d finally fetch his plate of leftovers from the warming drawer and come out to join her.

He was always dead tired. She could hear it in his voice, in the slump of his shoulders. Sometimes he seemed almost too tired to talk and she respected that, but still he seemed to soak up her company. And for herself? She liked him being here too, and she didn’t need to talk. She was content to sit and watch the moon rise over the horizon, to breathe in the night air and let go of her fast-paced day.

And it was fast-paced. She’d set herself a personal challenge. Each day’s cooking had to be at least as good as the days’ before. It was worth it. ‘Great tucker,’ a shearer growled as he headed back to work. Or, ‘Strewth, Pen, that sponge’s almost as good as my gran used to make.’

And Matt had nothing but praise. ‘I’d have pulled a rhinoceros out of the creek to get cooking like this,’ he’d told her after the first couple of days and she had no idea why that throwaway line had the capacity to make her feel as if her insides were glowing.

The way he ate her food at night was compliment enough. He was always past exhaustion but he sat and savoured her food as if every mouthful was gold. He was enjoying his dinner now, as she sat and watched the moon rise.

She thought about the way he’d smiled at her when she’d handed him his plate. Somehow he didn’t feel like an employer. She wasn’t sure what he felt like, but...

‘Malley doesn’t know what he’s getting.’ Matt’s low growl from where he sat behind her made her jump. She’d been dreaming. Of a smile?

Idiot!

She didn’t answer. There was nothing to say to such a compliment. There was no reason his comment should have her off balance.

Though, actually, there was.

There were four more days of shearing to go. The floodwaters were slowly going down. She could probably leave now, though it’d still be a risk. And Matt still needed her.

But in four days...

‘You are still going to Malley’s?’ Matt asked and she tried to think of a way to say it, and couldn’t.

But he guessed. Maybe her silence was answer enough. ‘You’ve changed your mind?’ Matt put his empty plate aside and came across to where she sat on the edge of the veranda. He slipped down beside her and the night seemed to close in around them, a warm and intimate space that held only them.

What was she thinking? Intimate? He was her boss!

He was a man and she didn’t trust herself with men. Didn’t they always want something? Something other than her? Even Matt. He needed her to cook. She was useful, nothing else.

So stop thinking of something else.

‘Malley changed my mind,’ she managed, and was disconcerted at the way her voice worked. Or didn’t work. Why were emotions suddenly crowding in on her?

And it wasn’t just how close Matt was sitting beside her, she thought. It was more. In four days she wouldn’t be needed. Again.

Wasn’t that what she wanted?

Oh, for heaven’s sake, get over it, she told herself and swung her feet in an attempt at defiance.

As if sensing his mistress needed a bit of support, Samson edged sideways and crept up onto her knee. He was filthy but she didn’t mind. Penny had given up on the bathing. Samson was now a farm dog.

If her mother could see her now she’d have kittens, Penny thought. She was filthy too, covered in the flour she’d used to prepare the bread dough for the morning. She was cradling a stinking poodle.

But Matt was sitting by her side and she thought, I don’t care. Mum has Felicity if she wants a beautiful daughter. I’m happy here.

It was a strange thought—a liberating thought. She tried to think of Brett. Or Felicity. Of the two of them hand in hand telling her they’d betrayed her.

They can have each other, she thought, and it was the first time she’d felt no bitterness.

Ten days of shearing had changed things. Ten days of sitting outside every night with Matt? But there were only four days to go.

‘You going to tell me about Malley?’ Matt asked. He’d given her time. He’d sensed there were things she was coming to terms with, but now he was asking again.

What had she told him? Malley changed my mind.

Yeah, he had, and she’d been upset and she should still be upset. But how hard was it to be angry when she was sitting with this man whose empathy twisted something inside her that she hadn’t known existed.

‘I phoned Malley the night I got here,’ she admitted. ‘He told me I was a...well, I won’t say what he said but the gist of it was that I was a fool for taking the route I did and he was an idiot himself for thinking a citified b...a citified woman could do the job. He said he’d find someone else. He called me a whole lot of words I’d never heard of. I guess I was pretty upset so when he rang back and expected me to drop everything...’

And then she stopped. She hadn’t meant to say any more. What was it about this man that messed with her head? That messed with the plan of action she knew was sensible?

‘Drop everything?’ he said slowly, and she thought uh oh. She went to get up but he put his hand on her arm and held her still. ‘You mean abandon this place?’ He was frowning. ‘Is that what he meant?’

‘He rang me back two days after I got here,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s okay. I used a few of his words back at him. Not...not the worst ones. But maybe the ones about being an idiot for ever thinking I’d take the job.’

‘But why did he ring?’

This was sort of embarrassing. She’d been dumb to say anything at all but Matt was watching her. He was frowning, obviously thinking through the words she’d let slip. She had no choice but to be honest.

‘He ended up almost as trapped as we are, so finding another cook wasn’t an option,’ she told him. ‘And it’s costing him. Malley’s hotel is the base for scores of stranded tourists. He has supplies but no one to cook. He’s losing a fortune.’

‘So?’ Matt said slowly.

‘So he knows one of the chopper pilots who’s doing feed drops up north. I gather for two days he fumed at how useless I was and then he realized he didn’t have a choice. So he bribed the chopper pilot to come and get me.’

There was a loaded silence.

‘So why didn’t you go?’

‘You told me he had mice.’

‘And you told me you could clean.’

‘So I could,’ she said with sudden asperity. ‘But I didn’t see why I should clean for someone with such a foul mouth. The tourists can cook for themselves if they need to. Why should I go?’

‘But you came all the way here to take a permanent, full-time job.’

‘I did.’

‘And shearing finishes in four days.’ He frowned. ‘Why didn’t you accept? I don’t understand.’

And she didn’t, either. Not totally. It had been a decision of the heart, not the head, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

She reverted to being practical. ‘The chopper pilot was supposed to be dropping food to stranded livestock, so what was he about, agreeing to pick me up? How could I live with myself knowing cows were hungry because of me? Besides, they couldn’t fit my car into the chopper.’

‘You were the one who suggested leaving your car here until after the floods.’

Drat, why did he have to have such a good memory?

‘So why?’ he asked again, more gently, and suddenly there seemed nothing left but the truth.

‘You needed me,’ she told him. ‘And...’

‘And?’

Her chin tilted. This was something her family never got. Her friends never got. She’d been mocked for this before but she might as well say it. ‘I was having fun.’

‘Fun?’ He stared at her in amazement. ‘You’ve worked harder than any shearer. You’ve planned, you’ve cooked, you’ve cleaned. You’ve gone to bed as exhausted as me every night and you’ve got up every morning and started all over again. You call that fun?’

‘Yes.’ She said it firmly. It was a stand she’d defended for years and she wasn’t letting it go now. Cooking was her love, and cooking for people who appreciated it was heaven. ‘But you needn’t sound so amazed. Tell me why you’re here. You own a bauxite mine, one of the richest in the country. You surely don’t need to farm. You’re working yourself into the ground too. For what?’

‘Fun?’ he said and she smiled.

‘Gotcha.’

‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘I get it, though I’m imagining the work at Malley’s would have been just as hard. So where do you go from here? You knocked back a permanent job to help me.’

‘I knocked back a permanent job because I wanted this one. And, even without the mice, Malley sounds mean.’

‘The man’s an imbecile,’ Matt said. ‘To bad-mouth a cook of your standard? He obviously has the brains of a newt. To lose you...’

And then he paused.

The atmosphere changed. That thing inside her twisted again. To have someone defend her...value her...

It’s the cooking, she told herself. She was never valued for herself.

But suddenly his hand was covering hers, big and rough and warm. ‘Thank you,’ he told her and it sounded as if it came from the heart. ‘Thank you indeed—and I think your wages just went up.’

* * *

Fun.

He thought of the massive amount of work she’d put in over the last ten days. He thought of the drudgery of planning, chopping, peeling, cooking and cleaning. He thought of the mounds of washing-up. How had he ever thought he could handle it himself? In the end he’d hardly had time to help her cart food across to the shed, but she hadn’t complained once.

She was a pink princess, the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Australia, yet she’d worked as hard as any shearer.

And in four days? Shearing would be over. The water was already dropping in the creeks. Cooking at Malley’s was obviously out of the question. Penny’s long-term plan to set up a catering company would take months. Meanwhile, what would she do?

She’d come a long way to be here, and she’d come for a reason. She’d exposed her pain to him. She’d exposed the hurt her family had heaped on her. She was here to escape humiliation—and now, because she’d decided to help him she had little choice but to head back and face that humiliation again. Even if she went to another city the media would find her. He had no doubt the media frenzy during her sister’s wedding would be appalling.

‘Stay for a bit,’ he found himself saying. Until the words were out of his mouth he didn’t know he’d intended to say them, but the words were said. He’d asked the pink princess to stay.

There was a moment’s silence. Actually, it was more than a moment. It stretched on.

She was considering it from all angles, he thought, and suddenly he wondered if she was as aware as he was of the tension between them.

Tension? It was the wrong word but he didn’t have one to replace it. It was simply the way she made him feel.

She was little and blonde and cute. She played Abba on her sound system while she worked and she sang along. This morning he’d come in to help her cart food over to the shed and found her spinning to Dancing Queen while balancing a tray of blueberry muffins. She’d had flour on her nose, her curls had escaped the piece of pink ribbon she’d used to tie them back and Samson was barking at her feet with enthusiasm.

He’d stopped at the door and watched, giving himself a moment before she realized he was there. He’d watched and listened and he’d felt...

It didn’t matter how he’d felt. He didn’t do women. His mother and then Darrilyn had taught him everything he needed to know about the pain of relationships and he wasn’t going there again. Especially with an indulged society princess.

The label wasn’t fair, he told himself, and he knew it was the truth. Penny had proved she was so much more. But past pain had built armour he had no desire to shed, and right now he felt his armour had to be reinforced. Yet here he was asking her to stay.

‘Why would I stay?’ Penny asked cautiously and he tried to think of an answer that was sensible.

‘I... This place...I was thinking maybe I could open it up a bit. Get rid of a few dustcovers. There’s a possibility my daughter might come and visit.’ That was the truth, though he wasn’t sure when. ‘I wouldn’t mind if it looked a bit more like a home when she came. Maybe you could help. I’d pay.’

‘I don’t need...’

‘I know you don’t need to be paid,’ he said. ‘But I pay for services rendered. The shearers will move on, but I’d need you for another two weeks in total—a few days’ slack then getting the house in order. Of course—’ he grinned suddenly ‘—cooking would be in there as well. Donald and Ron and Harv would kill me if I didn’t say that. They’ve been in heaven for the last ten days.’

And then he paused and tried to think about why he shouldn’t say what came next. There were reasons but they weren’t strong enough to stop him. ‘And so have I,’ he added.

* * *

Heaven...

That was pretty much what she was feeling.

She was breathing in the scents from the garden, watching the moon rise over the distant hills, listening to the odd bleat of a sheep in the shearing pens and the sound of a bird in the gums at the garden’s edge.

‘What’s the bird?’ she asked. It was an inconsequential question, a question to give her space and time to think through what he was proposing. There was a part of her that said what he was suggesting was unwise, but she couldn’t figure out why.

Or maybe she knew why; she just didn’t want to admit it. The way he made her feel... The way his smile made her heart twist...

‘It’s a boobook owl,’ Matt said, quietly now, as if there was no big question between them. ‘It’s a little brown owl, nocturnal. He and his mate are the reason we don’t have mice and places like Malley’s do. Malley’s stupid enough to have cleared the trees around the hotel and he’s probably even stupid enough to shoot them. They’re great birds. Listen to their call. Boobook. Or sometimes people call them mopokes for the same reason. So there’s a question for you. Do you side with mopoke or boobook?’

It was an ideal question. It gave her time to sit and listen, to settle.

‘Mopoke,’ she said at last. ‘Definitely mopoke.’

‘I’m a boobook man myself. Want to see?’

‘You need to go to bed.’

‘So do you, but life’s too short to miss a boobook.’

‘A mopoke.’

He grinned. ‘That’s insubordination,’ he told her. ‘I believe I’ve just offered you a job for the next two weeks. Therefore I demand you accept your boss’s edict that it’s a boobook.’

‘I haven’t agreed to take the job yet.’

‘So you haven’t,’ he said equitably. ‘But you are still employed for four more days. So it’s boobook tonight.’ He pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand to help her up. ‘Come and see.’

She looked at his offered hand and thought...I shouldn’t.

And then she thought: Why not? There were all sorts of reasons, but Matt was smiling down at her and his hand was just there.

She shouldn’t take it—but she did.

* * *

What was he doing?

He was more than tired. By this stage in shearing he was operating on autopilot. He’d averaged about five hours of sleep a night for the past ten days and, apart from the tiny window of time on the veranda at night, every minute he was awake was crammed with imperatives. Most of those imperatives involved tough manual labour but he also had to be fine-tuned to the atmosphere in the shed. One flare-up could mess with a whole shear. Angry shearers usually meant sloppy shearing and the flock suffered.

So far the tension had been minimal. The shearers had worked through each run looking forward to Penny’s next meal, bantering about the last. This shear was amazing and it was pretty much thanks to the woman beside him. So surely he could take a few minutes to show her a boobook?

Besides, he wanted to.

He had a torch in his pocket. It was strong but it was small, casting a narrow band of light in front of them as they walked. They needed to go into the stand of gums behind the house. The ground was thick with leaf litter and fallen twigs so it was natural—even essential—that he keep hold of her hand. After all, she was a vital cog in his business empire. He needed to take care of her.

Even though it made him feel... How did he feel?

Good. That was too small a word but his mind wasn’t prepared to think of another. Her fingers were laced in his and her hand was half his size. His fingers were calloused and rough, too rough to be holding something as warm and...trusting?