by Margaret Way
“God forbid!” Amber shuddered, taking a container out of the refrigerator that held freshly ground coffee.
“But he’s definitely got his good points.”
“Naturally, that’s not my view of him,” she said in disgust.
“Give it time. He’ll cool down.”
“Are you saying I don’t have to stay gone?”
“Not for ever,” he said.
“Great! Only here’s the tricky bit. In the meantime, he’s made it impossible for me to get work.”
“That’s why I’m here.” He pinned her with his crystal gaze. “I want to help.”
“Pardon?” She lifted supercilious brows. The cool ease was getting to her. It shouted money. Lots of it. A life of privilege, though she didn’t doubt for a moment he worked hard. That showed as well.
“Hear me out.” His voice was smooth and reassuring. A voice one listened to.
“How can you help when you’ve just told me your grandfather is furious at your apparent support of me thus far? He would see it as an additional act of gross disloyalty.”
“Let’s forget my grandfather. He doesn’t figure in this.”
“That’s all right for you to say! But I have nowhere else to turn. For the time being, anyway. The word has gone out. Wyatt’s finished in the business.”
“Look, do you want me to make the coffee?” he asked as progress on that front had stopped.
“God, you’re a piece of work!” she muttered. “You just sit there.” She shrugged out of her jacket, placing it carefully over the back of a chair. Had she known in advance she was going to be sacked she would never have bought such an expensive outfit.
“I thought you wanted to be a writer?” he was saying, sliding onto one of the high bar stools along the counter. She suddenly saw him as what he was. The Cattle Baron. A man of the great outdoors. He was superbly fit, every movement full of languid grace and perfect co-ordination. The fact that he looked particularly good in formal clothes was just an added bonus. His body gave class to whatever he wore.
“I hadn’t intended to start quite so soon.” She spooned coffee into the stainless steel basket. “But hang on. Maybe I can get a grant from the Arts Council? Unless Gramps has influence there too?”
“How do you know your chance doesn’t await you right now?” he countered.
She gave him a long considering look. “You’re telling me to go for broke?”
“You must have a little money put aside?”
“Hey, I’m not in your league. I’m probably somewhere between broke and doing nicely provided I have a steady income. I lease this apartment. I don’t own it.”
He looked back, a slight frown between his strongly marked brows. “I bet your landlord loves you. I’d say you make the perfect tenant. Only they allow you to hang all the paintings on the wall? Holes in the plaster and so forth?”
She stared back with frosty eyes. “Sure the Body Corporate didn’t send you?” She waved the spoon, like a teacher with a cane. “A good friend of mine bought the apartment for an investment—”
“And he’s allowed you to rent it.” He nodded as though he quite understood.
“Who said it was a he?” She came close to throwing the spoon.
“Just a lucky guess.”
“You’re not improving my temper, MacFarlane,” she warned.
“Why so aggressive all of a sudden?” He threw up his hands. “Though I bet you’re a real firecracker when you get going. I meant no offence, ma’am. Just a guess.”
“I’m not a firecracker. I have a lovely nature.” For some reason a tear slid down her cheek.
“Why, Amber!” He stood up immediately, radiating warmth and a comforting male presence.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” She dashed at her eyes. “That tear got away from me. It’s anger, by the way.”
“Sure. Let me finish that off.” He walked around the counter, took the percolator off her, screwed it together tightly, then set it on the hotplate.
She stood for a moment watching him. Everything he did was so precise. “You must really need that cup of coffee.”
“I didn’t get one for breakfast so I’m suffering withdrawal.”
“So what’s the plan?” She was desperate to hear it. She busied herself setting out coffee cups and saucers. Fortunately, she had some very fancy chocolate biscuits on hand, though she went easy on biscuits and cakes.
“One I’m sure is going to lift your spirits. At least I hope it does.” He turned to face her, his green eyes alight. “How would you like a long vacation on one of the nation’s premier cattle stations? You said you wanted to write. Start your saga there. Colleen McCullough used a sheep station for one of her settings in The Thorn Birds. Why not a cattle station? Jingala has a lot to offer. Have you ever been Outback?”
She didn’t think she could sustain the epic pace.
“Well, have you?”
“I’m too amazed—nay too grateful—to speak.”
“So you accept my offer?”
She took a deep breath, her voice unsteady. “I didn’t say that at all. I said—”
“You were grateful. Think about it. You’ll come as my guest. That means you won’t have to find a cent. You didn’t answer my question. Have you visited the Red Centre, the Channel Country, the Kimberley?”
She gazed back at him, turning a little pink. “I think I’ve seen more of Europe than my own country, outside the big cities and tropical North Queensland. Now I’m ashamed to say it.”
“As you should be.” The censure was unmistakable. “So now’s the time to discover the real Australia. I promise you it will be an experience you won’t forget.”
“I’m sure.” She was feeling more agitated than she thought possible. A friend had recently come back from the Alice and had found the trip to the Centre and its great monuments fabulous. “Listen, I’m still stunned.” She looked right at him. “I take it there’ll be no hanky panky?”
“Absolutely not! Unless you want it. Seriously, I was brought up a gentleman, Ms Wyatt. No from a woman and I’m gone! Out of there!”
“I bet there’ve been precious few nos,” she said sharply.
“A gentleman doesn’t tell. If you can be ready, we can leave in the morning.”
She held up a hand. “Whoa, there! I’m still too dumb-founded to give you an answer.”
The coffee had begun to perk. “That’s okay. I don’t want to rush you. Take your time. But I’ll need to know before I leave.”
The pure utter simplicity of the idea!
CHAPTER FIVE
AMBER’S trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard, to the North Queensland rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, marvellous wine country in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, the great cities of the world—nothing had even given her a glimpse into what was the Great Australian Outback. The sheer dimensions were overwhelming. The isolation frightening. It was like looking out at the world at the time of Creation, with no human habitation. Wilderness fanned out to eternity…
She had been concentrating so much on the journey her head felt tight. The Cattle Baron sat beside her at the controls, splendidly serene. Flying his own plane was a piece of cake to him. Equivalent to her taking a cab. She was very grateful to him. He had offered her salvation. For a time, anyway. An unexpected chance to do what she had always wanted to do since she had been caught up as a child into the wonderful realm of books:
Write one herself.
She’d had ideas mulling around in her head for years. She didn’t expect to measure up to her great favourites, but she thought she could turn out something that might rate getting published. In her heart she welcomed and embraced this extraordinary chance. And what a setting! She already had the sense of great separation. This was another world from the lush Eastern seaboard. She would be seeing the Interior through fresh, marvelling eyes. She would be seeing it too through his eyes. This was Cal MacFarlane’s world. He had offered her escape and a chance
. Now it was up to her. The shock and unexpectedness of it all had shoved the extremes of being jilted, the public humiliation and the loss of her job right to the back of her mind. Truth be known, she felt downright energised!
They were on the last lap of the journey, flying into the MacFarlanes’ desert fortress, Jingala. It must have been a phenomenal slog to have achieved so much in this place that few people to this day had ever seen. Over the long journey she had witnessed the landscape totally changing its character. Now its most striking feature, apart from the empty immensity, was the dry, vibrating colour. And what colour! It was spectacular. The great vault of the sky was a vigorous cobalt-blue. It contrasted wonderfully with the flaming orange-red of an ancient land that pulsed in oven-baked heat. The rolling red sand dunes surrounding it were a source of fascination. They ran in endless parallel waves with the anti-clockwise rhythm of the wind curling them over at the top, mimicking the waves of the legendary sea of pre-history.
Spinifex, burnt gold and shaped like spherical bales, gave the impression of the greatest crop ever sown on earth. The mirage she had heard so much about lay beneath them like silvery quivering bolts of material that seemed to change form and shape as she watched. Trees grew in the arid terrain, gnarled and twisted into living sculptures. She could easily spot the ghost gums with their blazing white boles. This was Dreamtime country. Venerable.
As they descended, she caught the full dazzle of chain after chain of billabongs, some silver, some palest blue like aquamarine, others the cool green of the Cattle Baron’s eyes. These lakes, waterholes, billabongs and breakaway gullies were the lifeblood of this riverine desert called the Channel Country that lay deep into the South-West pocket of the giant State of Queensland, bordering the great Simpson Desert. She knew it was second only to the Sahara in area.
Thick belts of trees marked the course of the maze of waterways that snaked across the landscape. From the air, the foliage appeared to be more a light-reflecting gun-metal grey than green. She could see kangaroos in their hundreds bounding their way across the desert sands. Her eyes could pick up camels too. She knew they were not indigenous to Australia. Outback camels, progeny of the camels brought into the country by their Afghan handlers as beasts of burden for the Outback’s trackless regions, had thrived and multiplied to some seven hundred thousand. Some said this was a bad thing. Camels were long-lived and they did so much damage to the fragile desert environment. Others went along with a live and let live policy. There was something rather romantic about them, she thought, but she could well see the serious side of the problem.
Acutely alert to everything coming up before her, she had her first sight of Jingala’s great herds. She couldn’t begin to count the number of head in one area alone. A smallish section of the herd was being watered at a creek. She could see camps alongside. Whole collections of holding camps, cattle packed in, men on the ground, men on horseback, supply vehicles. Not so far off, wild horses were galloping at breakneck speed, a stallion most likely in the lead, the others running four abreast. What a thrilling sight! City born and bred, it was just as well she was at home on a horse. She might not have rated an invitation had she said she was scared of horses, as a lot of people were. Horses were very unpredictable animals. She had taken a few spills in her time, mercifully without major injury.
MacFarlane gestured to her.
The homestead was coming up.
Her first thought as they were coming in to land was that they were arriving at a desert outpost that a small colony of intrepid settlers had made their home. The silver roof of a giant hangar was glittering fiercely in the sun, emblazoned with the legend Jingala. Beyond that, outbuildings painted white to throw off the sun fanned out in a broad circle surrounding a green oasis that had to be the home compound. She could see a huge dark bluish tiled roof, roughly three times the size of any city mansion. But so far no real sighting of the actual house. A line of dark amethyst hills in the distance took her eye. They had eroded into fantastic shapes with the shimmering veil of mirage thrown over them. The brightness of it all was splintering her eyes. The far-off hill country, though of no great height, by comparison with the endless flat plains served as the most spectacular backdrop. It was paradise in its own strange way. Even at this early stage, it was already establishing a grip on her. Hard to believe the continent had once been covered in rainforest. That was one hundred million years ago. But still a blip in geological time.
Never for a moment of the trip had she felt an instant’s fear, though she had heard plenty of scary tales about light aircraft crashes in the wilds of the rugged Outback. Something about desert thermals bouncing light aircraft around. She would have to ask the Cattle Baron. As expected, he was a fine pilot. She guessed he was a fine just about everything. And a devilishly handsome man. After her sad experience, she was determined she wasn’t going to be swept away by his undoubted charisma. Better to turn the cheek than do the kissing. A whole lot safer too.
After hours in the air, they were ready to land…
The homestead itself was an unforgettable sight. She had expected the sort of colonial architecture she had seen in the big coffee table books, the rather grandiose mansions of the Western Districts of Victoria or South Australia, reminders of Home that almost exclusively had been the British Isles, maybe the classical architecture of New South Wales and Tasmania, but what confronted her was her idea of a great country house that wouldn’t have been out of place in South East Asia. She had enjoyed several trips to Thailand. The house put her in mind of that part of the world and she said as much to the Cattle Baron.
He gave her a smile that brought her out in the trembles. “You got it in one. A big section of the original homestead was destroyed by fire in the late nineteen-forties. My grandfather razed what remained to the ground, then brought in a friend of his, a Thai prince he had met on his travels, who was also an architect, to design the new homestead. It’s a one-off for our neck of the woods.”
“And it’s wonderful,” she said. “Not at all what I expected. You should have peacocks patrolling the grounds.”
“Maybe we can rise to a few emus.”
“You can’t tame emus, surely?”
“Yes, you can,” he said, watching her. He had set her a number of little tests to gauge her reactions when removed from her comfort zone. She had passed all of them with flying colours. He didn’t know if he was pleased or the fact bothered him. This astonishingly beautiful woman belonged in the city, surely? That was her future. Jingala was a far cry from anything she was used to. His mother couldn’t hack it.
She was staring up into his face, noting the darkening change of expression. “I never know if you’re serious or fooling.”
“You’ll know when I’m serious.”
Some note in his voice had her flushing. To hide it, she turned away, resuming her study of this fascinating and totally unexpected house. For all its size, it sat unobtrusively in its oasis of a setting, which she put down to the fact that it was constructed almost entirely of dark-stained timber.
“The pyramid form is exactly right.”
“Glad you like it. Five in all, as you can see, with broad overhangs to shelter the upper verandas. The central section is the largest. It acts as a portico.”
“So you have a group of separate places.”
He nodded. “What we call the Great Room is the common room, our reception room.”
“I recognise the Khmer style. I’ve been to Thailand three or four times. The roof and window treatment, the timber grilles and framework are all recognisably Khmer style.”
“Educated eyes, obviously.”
She glanced up at him to see if there was mockery involved. Even then she wasn’t sure. “The house is perfect for the tropics, yet it appears equally well at home in the desert. Not that everything around us resembles a desert. The grounds are thriving.”
“We had a wonderful drenching over the cooler months. But we do have an underground source of water fro
m the Great Artesian Basin. My great-grandmother saw to it that the grounds were heavily planted out with date palms and desert oaks. She was one smart lady, all the way from the Scottish Highlands. The other trees and plants were selected to cope with the hot dry environment.”
“You must tell me about this clever great-grandmother of yours,” she said. “That’s when you have the time.”
“Ms Wyatt, I’ll make time,” he said with considerable aplomb. “We’ll go inside. Surely you’re feeling the heat of the sun?” Amazingly, she looked as if she wasn’t feeling it one bit. In fact, she looked magnolia-cool.
“It is hot,” she agreed. “But I can tolerate dry heat. It’s the humidity of the tropics that gets to me. Anyway, being a redhead, I always use sunblock.”
“And a good wide brimmed hat would be very helpful. You’ve packed one, I hope?” He frowned slightly.
“Well, I didn’t have time to race out to buy an Akubra, if that’s what you mean. But I threw in a couple of decent broad brimmed hats.”
“Thank God for that! I can only hope and pray our Outback does nothing to harm that exquisite skin. Tell me, did you ever have freckles?”
The way he looked at her caused little sparkles in her blood. Not that there was anything overtly sexual about it. He just happened to be a very sexy man, which wasn’t all that easy for even a good-looking man to pull off. “It may be news, but the answer is no,” she said lightly. “I don’t know that my mother ever let me out of the house without a hat. I was never able to bask beachside, for instance. But I don’t crinkle and wrinkle in the sun either. Why, are you disappointed I don’t have a few freckles?”
He laughed. “The short answer is no. So come into the house. Chips, one of our groundsmen, will attend to your luggage and bring it to your room.”
