Leah manoeuvred her chair through their office door. Alex dropped the debrief folder onto his desk.
‘Being away for the weekend put me so far behind,’ he said.‘I have a mountain of work to get through just to catch up.’ He leaned towards her and whispered, ‘But it was the best weekend I’ve had since I can’t remember when.’
‘Phil and Dee seem to be talking again,’ Leah said. She wasn’t getting into a conversation about the weekend. Ben and Tony were still chatting in the contractor’s office. Alex raised his eyebrows.
‘Yeah, I reckon they’ve kissed and made up. Phil’s never going to leave his wife, and Dee knows that, but every now and then she gets pissed off about it and they fall out and don’t speak for a week or two. Then she makes eyes at Frank, Phil pretends to be jealous . . .’ Alex paused, scratching his head. ‘Then they make up and are at it like rabbits again.’
‘Oh, don’t go there.’ Leah shuddered, and then sneezed.
‘Why don’t you go back to your room, have a hot shower and go to bed? I’ll ask Ruby to send over some food.’
‘I haven’t done tomorrow’s permits. Tony left a note about what his boys would need but there’s nothing from Frank. There’re the notes from the debrief, and . . .’ Leah dabbed at her puffy, watery eyes with a tissue, then blew her nose. ‘And I feel disgusting.’
Alex poked his head out into the main office. Ben and Tony had left; the place was deserted. He kicked shut the office door. ‘Come here,’ he said and reached for her.
‘I don’t want you to catch my cold.’
‘Do I look as if I care?’
‘Nope.’ She slipped her arms around his waist and, with a satisfied sigh, nestled her head into his shoulder.
They stood like that for several minutes, Leah revelling in the warmth and feel of his arms around her.
‘Don’t go to sleep on me,’ he said and she smiled against his neck.
‘Don’t worry about food, I’m not hungry. My first priority is sleep. Thanks anyway.’
‘All right, but go straight to bed. Drink plenty of fluids. And don’t skip breakfast again in the morning.’
He released her reluctantly and she shivered when she moved away to turn off her computer.
‘Goodnight,’ she said. ‘And make sure you have dinner.’
He grunted, not looking up from his screen, already immersed in his work. She smiled and left him to it.
In the twilight Paul stumbled on the uneven path, surprised the sensor light hadn’t come on. The house was in darkness; no mellow glow from the kitchen window. He shivered, as though someone had walked over his grave.
In the garage he’d parked his Lexus beside Eve’s Mazda 3. Eve hadn’t mentioned any plans for going out that evening. But if she wasn’t home, she must be out with someone. Paul frowned. Unusual for her to do that without a quick phone call or a text message. Apprehension lodged in his throat.
He let himself in through the back door, stopping for a moment to listen. Cold, eerie silence. ‘Eve?’ he called and switched on the kitchen light, unexpectedly relieved when a rapid sweep of the room confirmed it was empty.
Methodically he worked his way through the house, turning on lights, until he found her in his study. She was curled up on the two-seater sofa with a mohair rug thrown across her legs. Her hair was in disarray, and she was wearing the same clothes she’d worn the day before.
‘Eve,’ he said softly, some of the tension leaving his body, only for it to return when he spied the empty wine bottle and glass on the floor beside her.
She opened her eyes, squinting into the light. ‘Paul, you’re home,’ she said and scrambled to sit up. ‘What time is it?’
‘Six o’clock.’ He stared at her and a maelstrom of emotions raged through him: love and tenderness, anger and disappointment, guilt and despair. Most of all, fear.
One trembling hand went to her hair. She winced. ‘Please don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe.’
‘You’re scaring me, Eve.’
She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’m scaring myself, Paul.’ She reached for the empty bottle, the glass dangling from her fingers. ‘I’ll have a shower, throw together some dinner.’
‘We could go out, or get takeaway.’
Her face brightened momentarily, but she said, ‘No, there’s plenty of food. I’ll thaw out something in the microwave.’
She moved to dodge him as he reached for her, but came stiffly into an awkward embrace. ‘I love you, Eve,’ he said, pressed his lips to her temple. She remained mute. Frigid fingers squeezed his heart. ‘What’s happened today?’
Her shoulders lifted but she didn’t look at him. ‘Another thanks but no thanks,’ she said. ‘No one wants to employ a woman over sixty.’
‘Eve —’
‘I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother.’
‘You can’t go on like this. You need to talk to someone. How about we make an appointment with your GP tomorrow, take it from there?’
‘Aren’t you flying off up north tomorrow, for the usual meeting and testosterone fest?’ she said, extricating herself from his arms.
‘I’ll call in sick.’
She stilled, her mouth dropped open.
‘Don’t look so surprised. You need me. I’m here.’
She regarded him steadily with something akin to hope in her expression. ‘All right. I’ll go to the doctor if you come with me.’
Paul smiled. ‘Try and stop me. Things will get better soon, Eve. You have my word, when Alex agrees to step up into my position, I will retire.’
Her look of hope was rapidly replaced by scepticism. ‘You’ve been saying that since you turned sixty-five, Paul. Four years ago.’
‘I know. But this time I’m serious. Our finances are in good shape, and I’ve already talked to Alex.’
‘He won’t do it. He hates the city.’
‘I’m not so sure. Life is changing for him. His father has been sick, his boys are teenagers. They all need him closer.’
Eve rubbed her eyes. In her other hand the bottle clinked against the glass.
‘Here, I’ll take those,’ he said. ‘You go and shower while I find someone to replace me at the meeting tomorrow. Then I’ll help you get dinner.’
She looked at him for a long moment before traipsing off in the direction of their ensuite. Paul heaved a tired sigh and took the empty bottle to the brimming recycle bin out back.
On the morning of the management meeting, the first since her rest leave, Leah buzzed about getting her routine tasks done before the drive to Nickel Bluff. When Alex told her they’d have two passengers travelling with them both ways, she wanted to kick something. She’d been looking forward to time alone with him.
Paul wasn’t at the meeting; some other representative from the company’s ivory tower came in his place. Leah guessed Paul’s stand-in, Travis, to be at least five years younger than she was, attractive in a slick, city kind of way. His hair was swept back with product and he smiled a lot. At lunchtime he came and sat beside her in the mess.
‘Haven’t we met before?’ he said and Leah barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes.
‘I don’t know, have we?’
Beginning to feel uncomfortable under his open scrutiny, she was relieved when he waved a hand and exclaimed, ‘I know! It was the wind farm. I came with a couple of other engineers to sort out some problems.’
‘You have a far better memory than me,’ she said. ‘But then again, in those first days I met heaps of people. There was a lot to take in and it was all a bit of a blur. And there were always problems.’
‘From what I remember, you gave the impression you knew what you were doing,’ he said. ‘I think it’s fabulous to see women employed in jobs like yours. They bring another perspective to the workplace. Keeps us blokes on our toes.’
Leah laughed out loud
at that.
‘What, you don’t agree?’ he said, seeming genuinely curious.
‘No, I agree wholeheartedly. There should be more of us – we’re skilled and ready! You men will gradually get used to us being around.’ She threw a covert glance down the table to where Alex sat, deep in conversation with the man next to him. ‘Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way.’
Travis looked surprised but didn’t argue, tucking into his salad sandwich. After lunch he said goodbye. ‘I’ll walk back to the admin office, catch up on emails while I wait for my flight,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask someone to run me out to the airport later.’
‘Nice to meet you. Alex and I are off to do the rounds – the substation build, and then out to look at a powerline under construction.’
‘Perhaps we could get together some time, have a drink?’
He looked so hopeful. Leah didn’t have the heart to give him an outright no. ‘Perhaps,’ she said but didn’t volunteer a phone number, or ask him for his. He wasn’t her type at all. The man in the faded jeans and khaki shirt loitering a few steps away, pretending not to listen was more her type. She waved to Travis and climbed into Alex’s LandCruiser.
‘He was keen,’ Alex said before they were even out of first gear.
‘Yeah. I guess he’s on a career path, still young and enthusiastic. None of the usual cynicism has crept in yet.’
Alex’s lips twitched. They both knew that wasn’t what he’d meant.
‘You’ve got to admit, his opening line was totally lame.’
Leah laughed. ‘Nothing wrong with your hearing.’
They passed a construction yard and a fuel depot. Dust billowed in their wake. All the buildings were discoloured by the fine desert sand that settled onto everything. In minutes they were on the outskirts of the mining village.
‘Do you get that much?’
‘Get what much?’
‘Blokes asking you out.’
Leah shifted in her seat. His tone of voice gave nothing away. She wished he’d take off his sunglasses so she could see his eyes.
‘It happens. Probably no more or less than it would in any other work environment. When men know you’re single, you’re fair game, if you know what I mean. But I don’t sleep around, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘No, it wasn’t what I was asking.’ He parked the vehicle outside the high wire mesh fence surrounding the substation construction. Rows of barbed wire were angled outwards on the top of the barrier to deter adventurers from climbing over. When the substation was finished and powered up, it would be alive with electricity and a deadly place for anyone who didn’t fully appreciate the risks.
Alex pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and stared through the insect-spotted windscreen. ‘I’m asking how it is for you, a woman, being in such a male-dominated environment. I’ve always focused on managing the problems that occur when you put a lot of men and very few women together in a remote location. I’d never considered what it would actually be like for you. The isolation, no real peers of your own gender. Then to have blokes hitting on you all the time.’ He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, his lips quirking in a wry grin. ‘Me included.’
‘Yeah, right. I’d hardly call you trying to get rid of me on my first day hitting on me.’
‘Yes, but I was imagining you naked while I was doing it.’
Leah snorted a laugh.
‘I’m doing it right now,’ he said, turning to face her, ‘but I don’t have to imagine anymore.’ His blue eyes darkened to indigo. Leah swallowed and pressed her knees together.
‘And you haven’t answered the question,’ he said.
Leah fanned herself with one hand. ‘I might need a second to cool off first.’
He smiled and waited for her reply.
‘I suppose the majority of men accept a no when it’s given. Mostly they get it that I’m not interested. And I’m forever conscious of never giving the wrong signals. Unfortunately, for some men, it doesn’t take much – if you have breasts and you’re breathing, they consider it a come on.’ Take Frank Ballard, for example, Leah thought but didn’t say. There were some things she and Alex would never agree on.
Alex gave the steering wheel a final tap. ‘You know, if that guy over there wasn’t watching us, I’d kiss you to within an inch of your life, right about now.’
The silence sizzled between them, dispelling the chill that had crept in when Frank had entered her thoughts.
‘Mmm, I see what you mean. We’d better move.’ Leah reached for her hard hat. ‘I have audits I need to do.’
‘How long?’
‘Half an hour?’
‘Done.’
Leah paused before getting out of the car. ‘And for the record, Alex, you’re the only one since Richard took off. And there were only ever a couple of short-term relationships before him.’ She hopped out before he could reply.
They were twenty minutes out of Nickel Bluff on their way back from the bore fields when Alex slowed the vehicle and turned off the main road onto a lesser, rougher track. Unless you knew it existed you would have missed it.
‘Where are we going?’ Leah looked up from her tablet.
‘It’s a surprise,’ he said, smugly. ‘We have a spare hour and a bit before we need to be at the airport.’
Leah put her work away and sat up straighter, taking in the passing scenery. On her very first trip to Camp One she remembered thinking that the landscape all looked the same. But it didn’t. Expanses of gibber were interspersed with low sand dunes, claypans and drainage depressions, providing a diversity of vegetation and habitats.
‘I’m glad you know where you’re going,’ she said, the track almost invisible on the stony terrain.
‘It’s private station property and, before you ask, I have permission to drive out here.’
After a gate and fifteen minutes, the gibber gave way to sand and sparse, low shrubland. In the distance Leah could see a dark bump in the otherwise flat panorama.
‘Is that where we’re going?’
‘It is,’ Alex answered.
The shadowy prominence became recognisable as a scrub-covered mound, the track sandier and more undulating the closer they got. Leah gripped the hand-holds as the vehicle steadily ploughed through.
‘We’re not going to get bogged, are we?’
‘Trust me,’ Alex said, his focus on negotiating the sandy incline before cresting the ridge.
‘Oh, will you look at that!’ Stretching out before them was an unexpected and delightful sight. Sunlight glinted on a blue-green expanse of water the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It was fringed by a swathes of reeds and narrow-leaved bulrushes. At one place, free of reeds, acacia scrub grew close to the water’s edge.
‘An oasis in the desert,’ Leah cried, unbuckling her seatbelt. She was out the 4WD the moment it came to a stop. Alex followed her to the water’s edge.
‘It’s called a mound spring,’ Alex said.
‘If I couldn’t see it, I wouldn’t believe it. We’re in the middle of a desert!’ She turned her face to the sun, smiling into its warmth.
‘All up there’s about five thousand springs in the state’s far north; the springs of the Great Artesian Basin. They were central to the survival of the Aboriginal people in this area, and the pastoralists of the nineteenth century wouldn’t have made it without them.’
‘You are a veritable fount of information, no pun intended.’ Leah grinned up at him. He smiled back, draping his arm across her shoulders and pulling her to him. Her arm snaked around his waist.
‘You’d be surprised the things I know.’
They stood for a few minutes and absorbed the beauty of the spring, a splotch of verdant colour in the overwhelmingly ochre landscape.
‘Listen,’ he said, and Leah angled her head towards the wetland.
‘Frogs!’
‘The water isn’t very deep, less than a metre at its deepest, but there are frogs, and probably
fish. From memory, there are six or eight different fish species found in mound springs.’
They scouted their way around to the spot where the scrub came close to the water. Leah could see multiple animal tracks where the kangaroos and emus, and perhaps a dingo, had come to drink.
‘I can understand why the station owner wouldn’t want anyone and everyone traipsing in and out of here.’
‘No, they definitely don’t want that. Some of the spring sites I’ve seen over the years have been seriously degraded by cattle and humans.’ Alex squinted up at the sky. ‘As much as I’d like to stay, we’d better get going. I just wanted to show it to you so you could see there was more to the desert than endless claypans and gibber.’
‘Here, before we go, hold on to my hand.’ Leah wrapped her fingers around his. ‘I want to dip my hand into the water, see how it feels, and I don’t want to fall in, or get stuck in the mud.’
His hand was warm, and when his callused fingers tightened around hers, Leah knew he wouldn’t let her go. She leaned forward until she could knife her fingers through the water. ‘It’s not cold at all. You’d think it would be in this weather.’
He pulled her to her feet, away from the slippery edge.
‘Thank you for sharing this with me,’ she said, reaching up to plant a chaste kiss firmly on his lips.
She backed away; he stopped her.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said. His eyes caught hers and held, and his intent was clear. She let him gather her into the circle of his arms. Strong hands cupped her behind, urging her closer. His blue eyes burned. Desire rolled through her as their lips met to tease, taste, and refresh what they already knew about each other, and learn more.
The harsh screech of a galah sounded overhead and broke them apart. A breeze sent ripples across the water. Leah shivered, suddenly cold. Alex looked at his watch.
‘Now we really need to get going,’ he said, voice thick with regret.
‘I wish we didn’t have to.’
‘No,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I wish we didn’t have to either.’ He reached out, and she let herself lean into him, draping her arm around his waist as they made their way back to the LandCruiser.
No Job for a Girl Page 22
