Outback Husband. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ think I do.’

      She could only have been three when her mother had died—the same age as the twins. Poor Natalie, thought Juliet. Poor Cal.

      She wondered again about him as she made up the bed. She didn’t know what to make of him. He had seemed so taciturn and hostile at first, but he was so different when he played with the children, and Natalie had made him sound like a different man again. It was odd, Juliet thought idly, how clearly she could picture him already, almost as if she had always known those cool, quiet eyes and that cool, cool mouth.

      Smoothing down the bottom sheet, Juliet found herself imagining him lying there, lean and brown and tautly muscled. Her palm tingled, as if she were running her hand over his skin instead, and she swallowed. When Natalie cried ‘Dad!’ she spun round as if she had been caught in the act itself.

      ‘Dad, look, we’re making a bed for you!’

      ‘So I see,’ said Cal, but his grey eyes rested on Juliet’s flushed face, and he raised one eyebrow at her guilty expression. She was sure that he could see exactly what she had been thinking about.

      ‘We…I just thought…since you weren’t here…’ Juliet realised that she was floundering and forced herself to stop. This was her house and she had a perfect right to be here. She didn’t have to explain anything to anyone, least of all to Cal, who was (a) her employee, and (b) late.

      ‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Cal coldly, ‘but there was no need. I’ll finish it off.’

      Juliet felt dismissed. ‘I’ve…er, I wasn’t sure what you wanted to do about eating, but I’ve made supper if you’d like to eat later,’ she said awkwardly.

      ‘Thank you.’

      He didn’t say ‘you may go’, but that was what it felt like. He stepped out of the doorway and Juliet sidled past him and slunk back down to the kitchen. Behind her, she could hear Natalie excitedly telling him about Kit’s bedtime story, and how Andrew had splashed in the bath, and she felt a great wash of loneliness sweep through her. She had no one to tell about her day. How long was it since she had had anyone to talk to in the evenings?

      A long time.

      She had hoped that she would have been able to make some friends amongst her neighbours after Hugo had died, but everyone lived so far away, and she soon discovered that he had left her a legacy of distrust and disapproval. On the few occasions she had made the laborious journey to the nearest town, her attempts to be friendly had been met with politeness but no warmth, and she had been too tired and depressed to persevere. Rebuffed, she had retreated into herself, and relied on letters and phone calls to friends in England for support instead. She had told herself that she wasn’t lonely as long as she had the twins, but she had been.

      In an effort to cheer herself up, Juliet showered and changed into a cool cotton dress. She had bought it in London years ago, and the deep turquoise colour always made her feel more positive. Kit and Andrew were happy and healthy, she reminded herself, and with Cal as manager she had taken the first step towards saving Wilparilla. That was what mattered.

      Her equilibrium restored, she made her way back to the kitchen, where she found Cal looking out through the windows towards the creek. He swung round at the sound of her footsteps and stared at her. Juliet had the oddest feeling that he had forgotten her existence until that moment.

      Cal was, in fact, thrown more than he wanted to admit by the sight of Juliet standing in the doorway. The kitchen had been very quiet when he had come in, and he had been standing there, remembering the simple room it been before all the polished wood and gleaming chrome. He had spent long, long evenings alone in here after Sara had died, while Natalie slept down the corridor, torn between his instinct to stay at Wilparilla and the promise he had made to his dead wife.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ