‘You’re not staying here,’ Maud stated, imperious in her decisiveness. Rachel clutched her hand, rigid with tension, and Amy knew the sensible thing would be to accept Maud’s offer.
Why didn’t she want to stay with Hugo?
For the same reason he wasn’t saying anything now. For the same reason he glanced at her and looked away fast. There was this thing between them. This indefinable thing. They both knew it was there. They could feel it. It was tangible, real.
It was real and it was dangerous.
Staying in the same house as him for the next few days would be crazy. But...
‘Maud, is it okay if we stay with you?’ Rachel was saying. ‘I want to.’
Uh oh, indeed. This was the first definite decision she’d heard from Rachel since the accident.
What to do?
She could tell Rachel to shut up—or she could let things happen.
She glanced at Hugo. Could she let things happen without...things happening?
What was she thinking? Of course she could. She’d danced in the tight community of a ballet company for years. During rehearsals and performance, dancers lived in a hotbed of emotional tension. Relationships flared, erupted, ended. She’d learned to stay aloof, so all she needed to do was stay aloof for the next few days.
While she stayed in Hugo’s house.
Maud’s house. She was staying with Maud, not Hugo. Hugo would simply be a guy on the periphery.
Except she looked at Hugo and she thought this wasn’t a guy who was on the periphery of anything.
* * *
They accepted Maud’s very gracious offer. Hugo turned the car south—and looming before them was Uluru. Ayers Rock. It was still over ten miles away but it was still the most amazing sight Amy had ever seen.
‘Stop,’ she breathed.
Hugo obligingly stopped.
It was after dark. Amy hadn’t expected to see anything of the rock tonight but the moon had risen, a great tangerine ball lighting the desert. The horizon was stark and endless, and the rock rose from the darkness like the vast, ancient monolith it was.
She and Rachel had dreamed of seeing this for so long, and now to be here... The place their grandmother had talked of. Their dreaming place.
She could scarcely believe it.
‘It feels like coming home,’ Rachel whispered and Amy thought she was right. Home.
Their childhood home had been rented rooms, poverty, anywhere Bess could afford to keep her granddaughters in the bleakness of a vast city. After Bess’s death there’d been foster homes. For Amy, home—of sorts—had then become the ballet and, for Rachel, university. But for all the time, for both of them, in the background had been the thought of this place, their grandmother’s home. A rock, a place—but so much more.
The concept of belonging?
Walking away from the ballet had been gut-wrenching. What Rachel had been through was worse.
Somehow the thought of this place had seemed a kind of answer.
‘Did your family come from here?’ Hugo asked softly into the night, and Amy managed to nod. For some absurd reason, it seemed right that Hugo was here with her. The thought was unsettling—the man was unsettling—but she needed to find him an answer.
‘Our grandma was born here,’ she said, trying to sound prosaic. ‘She left as a kid, sent away to school and never got back. Coming here seems like doing it for her.’
‘I’m glad,’ Hugo said simply and disappeared into the background and let them be.
No explanation. No fuss. He’d simply retreated from this most personal of moments. Inexplicably, Amy’s heart twisted. She should be totally focused on the rock, but something had just happened. Some shift in the way she felt.
Why?
She didn’t know.
What she was feeling for Hugo was surely a transitory weakness, she told herself. Here, in this place, surely she should vow to put such feelings away, to focus on what was important.
But what was important?
Inevitably, it was Maud who told her.
‘Buster’s getting restless,’ she called from the car. ‘Does he need to pee?’
That was important, Amy told herself as she turned to take care of her dog. Practicalities—and not falling into the emotional abyss Rachel had suffered.
But the way she was feeling about Hugo...
He was a Thurston, she told herself. He was also a soldier. There was no future for her in either of those parts of his life, so she might as well school herself now.
To do what? Not to...feel?
How many days until the next train?
* * *
The hostel Amy had chosen had been basic. The Thurston house wasn’t. They pulled into the driveway and Amy could only gaze in wonder. From arid desert, they’d suddenly entered a green and lush oasis.
‘What is this place?’ she breathed.
‘Thurstons’ mines are south of here,’ Hugo told them. ‘But Grandpa loved this place, so when he negotiated for mining rights he also negotiated to build this. It’s supposedly a base for his mine managers but in truth it’s his and Maud’s personal refuge.’
‘But it looks...’
‘Like an over-the-top homestead?’ He grinned. ‘It’s surely that. There’s an underground spring so we can have a garden. Grandpa planted almost every indigenous plant that’ll live here. In the morning you’ll see wildlife—everything in a hundred mile radius makes use of this garden and waterhole. Meanwhile, come inside and see if we come up to the same standard as your backpackers’ hostel.’
There was never any doubt that it did.
The homestead was built on classic lines, long and low, with a wide veranda running its length. The garden seemed to merge seamlessly with the veranda. Long French windows were open, their curtains fluttering outward, the lights on and welcoming.
‘Does anyone live here?’ Amy breathed.
‘Scott and Wendy have their own house out the back,’ Maud said, beaming at her reaction. ‘Scott looks after the grounds and Wendy’s the housekeeper.’
‘They know we’re coming,’ Hugo told them. ‘I told them there was a possibility of two more, so the beds will be ready. Welcome to Natangarra.’
And he flung the doors wide and the house welcomed them inside.
Wow.
This was what it was to be seriously rich, Amy thought. To have a place like this, on call, whenever you needed it...
‘There’s a swimming pool,’ Rachel breathed, looking through into the internal courtyard.
‘We needed to build it inside,’ Maud said. ‘Otherwise we’d have kangaroos fighting for swimming rights. But we have a magnificent waterhole out the back—you’ll be able to see it in the morning. No animal goes thirsty here. Now, what do you girls want to do while you’re here?’
Stay here, Amy thought, feeling stunned. Sit by this swimming pool and stop. Let someone else worry about Rachel for a change.
She and Rachel had just the one thing they must do...and, to her astonishment, Rachel was being proactive about it.
‘I want to walk around Uluru,’ she said. ‘I won’t be able to get all the way but I’d like to try. And...and there’s something we need to do there. Something private. Then I’m sending Amy out for rock samples.’ She suddenly looked doubtful. ‘But we planned this from the resort. We had bus tickets.’
‘That’s what Hugo’s here for,’ Maud said and beamed. ‘He needs
excitement.’
‘Driving us round the country is hardly exciting,’ Amy said, glancing at Hugo and thinking the guy looked hunted. As well he might. But she didn’t feel too sorry for him. She glanced through to the magnificent living room, with its vast squishy sofas, its ceiling fans, its gorgeous air of faded comfort. This house was huge and the property must be just as vast. Bossy grandma or not, the man had serious compensations.
‘Do you have a spare vehicle?’ she asked. ‘A farm truck or something I could borrow? That’d make Rachel and me independent.’
Hugo’s face cleared. ‘Of course...’
‘Nonsense,’ Maud said briskly. ‘It’ll do you good to play chauffeur. You’ve been bored to death with just your grandmother to take care of. Now... supper and bed. In the morning Hugo can take you to the base of Uluru. We’ll work out the rest of the itinerary from there. We have four days, and we must make the most of them.’
‘Aren’t you staying longer?’ Amy ventured. ‘I mean... it’s only us who need to get back on the train after four days.’
‘What gave you that idea?’ Maud demanded. ‘We’re doing the whole thing, like you. Adelaide to Darwin. Then we’re taking a boat ride from Darwin to Broome. After that...’ She looked doubtfully at Hugo and her cheerfulness faded a little. ‘After that, Hugo has to make up his mind whether he’ll take over the company or go back to Afghanistan. He has some hard thinking to do, and it’s lovely that he has some company while he does it.’
* * *
How could a man sleep? The bed was too soft. The night was too still—and Amy was right through the wall.
Finally he headed outside, across the home paddock to the spring-fed waterhole beyond.
The waterhole had been dug forty years ago, and now seemed part of the landscape. It was surrounded by natural foliage, a protected place where creatures of the night could come and drink their fill.
He walked stealthily, with the tread of a soldier. The night creatures ignored him and kept on with their business. He headed for a huge flat rock, a place where he could watch over the water and see Uluru with the moon behind it.
He sat and watched, and tried to still his mind. A wallaby was drinking beside him. That was the only company he wanted.
Decisions.
Ruling Thurston Holdings, or returning to Afghanistan?
Taking his place as head of the company his grandfather had founded, or taking refuge in the danger and adrenalin that was his life as a soldier?
He had the knowledge to take over the company. Ever since childhood, his grandfather had talked him through what he was doing with the company he loved. All his life he’d received a weekly letter from his grandfather, outlining what was happening, the repercussions of decisions, the day-to-day minutiae of Thurstons.
For the last twenty years, those letters had been Hugo’s link to home, but what he hadn’t realised until now was how much they’d taught him of the company, from the inside out.
So all he had to do was say yes. Step into the limelight. Be the Thurston who headed Thurstons.
Did he have a choice? He’d been putting it off, but the alternative was Thurston Holdings becoming just another corporate power. With Thurstons behind him, he could do more good in the world than one man ever could in Afghanistan.
His last tour of duty had been appalling. A roadside bomb. Two of his closest colleagues...
They stayed with him in his dreams, and to go back there...
The alternative meant stepping back into the media spotlight he’d hated as a child. But he could handle it, he thought bleakly. He’d learned a lot about life in his long years in the army. He could handle anything, as long as he was alone.
So tonight...why was a slip of a girl who could pirouette on damp sand messing with his head?
‘Because I’m stupid,’ he said aloud and the wallaby was startled and leaped away.
‘Sorry,’ he said as he realised the wallaby wasn’t the only creature he’d shocked. ‘I need to get a grip.’
By tomorrow. By the next time he saw her.
Four days with Amy?
So why did the prospect have him sitting outside, thinking of her more deeply than the huge changes in his life that lay before him?
Why did the prospect seem as huge and as troubling as his decision to take over Thurstons?
CHAPTER SIX
MAUD was in charge. On her turf she was like a general commanding her troops. Nobody argued.
Hugo knew better than to argue. He sat at breakfast and watched Maud bully Rachel to eat. He watched Amy relax, and he thought these two could both use some grandmotherly support. It’d also take pressure off him if Maud grandmothered them instead of him. Win-win for everyone.
‘What are you grinning at?’ Maud demanded as she pushed a second coffee at Rachel. Creamy coffee. ‘You have work to do. If we don’t have the car ready soon it’ll be midday and too hot to enjoy it.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said and went to get the car.
Buster was staying at home. ‘Dogs aren’t allowed in the Uluru reserve,’ Maud said, and Amy wasn’t pushing this one. Wendy, the housekeeper, was lovely, and more than happy to care for one small dog. Hugo brought the car to the front door and they were ready.
Amy was carrying her purse. Her big purse.
‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘Wendy’s promised to take excellent care of him. There are good reasons why dogs aren’t permitted in the National Park.’
‘It’s not Buster.’
‘Steak sandwich recipes, then?’ And then he saw the look on her face and stopped.
Her purse was bulging, but not with dog. Something angular and solid.
He looked at Amy’s face and saw tension—and he looked at Rachel and saw the same.
He saw their matching expressions and suddenly he knew.
A grandmother who’d always wanted to come home. A baby.
The way Amy clutched her bag.
They’d come all this way?
‘I won’t be doing a purse search,’ he said gently, and Amy’s shoulders sagged, just a little. He thought: she’s been carrying this burden for far too long.
He smiled at her and she tried to smile back, but it didn’t come off. She cast him a look of gratitude that did something to his insides. Something he’d never felt before.
* * *
Maud chattered happily all the way to Uluru, and he didn’t stop her. They all needed Maud’s chatter.
Every now and then he glanced in the rear view mirror. Rachel looked pale and tense, and he saw Amy was holding her hand.
His gut twisted at the look on Amy’s face.
Soon, he promised her silently. Soon at least one burden will be lifted.
* * *
He knew.
How he’d guessed she didn’t know, but the way he’d looked at her... It was as if he could read her, she thought, and she wasn’t sure whether to like it or reject it out of hand. She should reject it, she thought, but this was Hugo and there was something about Hugo...
Don’t go there.
They drove to the base of Uluru. Hugo showed them the walking trail round the base of the rock. He showed them the waterholes, the places they might be private. Then, suddenly, he was suggesting Maud might like to see something new since last time they’d been here, plants he thought would look great in her garden.
Maud and Hugo seemed to melt away, leaving Amy alone with Rachel—and the con
tents of her purse.
They walked on.
Uluru.
Their grandmother had talked about this place with such awe, with such love, that Amy had scarcely believed it could be so amazing. She’d thought the magic of the rock must be partly a figment of a child’s nostalgic longings. But now, as she and Rachel watched water from recent rain trickle in rivulets down the gigantic rock face, as she laid her hands on the sun-warmed rock, weathered by thousands of years’ exposure to the desert winds, she thought no, this place called to her as it had called to Bess.
She glanced at Rachel and saw she was feeling the same.
‘I’m glad we came,’ Rachel said simply, and then they found the right place and they did what they’d come to do.
For years Bess’s ashes had lain in a concrete plinth in a city crematorium. It had never felt right, but now they sat on a sun-warmed rock, and two lots of ashes, one large, one small, were joined and sprinkled into the water. The water here pooled, clear and beautiful, then ran on through the rocks, down into some secret waterway under the earth.
This was right, Amy thought, as the ashes washed underground, under this vast rock, this place Bess had called home.
And when it was done something had cleared from Rachel’s face. ‘This is right,’ she said softly. She looked up at the vast rock face and she sighed. ‘What happened can’t mess with my life any more. My daughter’s here and she’s with Grandma, and it’s time to let her go.’
She was weeping. Amy turned to give her some privacy and she glimpsed Hugo in the distance—holding Maud back.
He waved, a barely perceptible movement, but his meaning was clear. Take as long as you want. As long as you need.
She closed her eyes in gratitude, for this man, for this place, for now. She’d brought Rachel to the place where Bess had promised they could find peace, and they had. She could move on from this moment.
And somehow, the fact that Hugo knew, the fact that Hugo understood, made it better.
Her Outback Rescuer Page 8
