Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter

by Meredith Webber

  Anger flared in Anna’s chest. The cheek of the man, walking into her house, lying on her floor and seducing her cat with sweet talk!

  She marched back to the front door and pushed it open.

  ‘Well, make yourself at home, why don’t you!’ she snapped. ‘Is privacy non-existent in the outback? Do people wander in and out of each other’s houses at will? And what do you think you’re doing with my cat?’

  Tom lifted the cat from his chest and sat up, his large hands still cradling the animal.

  ‘Curing her?’

  The cat now had the cheek to curl herself up on his lap.

  ‘I found your dirty clothes in the car and when the plastic bag jangled, I realised your wallet and keys were in your skirt pocket. So it seemed a perfect opportunity to check out the cat, which is why you’d come to me in the first place. And then, as I was coming this way anyway, I thought why not pick up a Chinese meal, as I’m starving and you’re sure to be hungry and I really do appreciate all the help you’ve given me today—first with the foal, but especially with Dani. She’s a good friend as well as an employee.’

  He finished this speech and smiled, as if proud of the thought processes that had led him to break into her house.

  Though if he’d used her key, maybe it hadn’t been, technically, breaking in.

  And now he’d mentioned food, she realised she was hungry…

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s all right,’ she grouched, then stepped backwards as he removed the cat from his lap and stood up, his long, lean body so close she felt a sense of…not quite invasion and not quite apprehension, but too tingly a reaction for an engaged woman to be comfortable about experiencing. It reminded her of the heat she’d felt when he’d first touched her hours earlier, and just thinking about it brought a return bout, so heat and tingles mixed and mingled in a truly shocking manner.

  To cover this physical chaos, Anna bent to pat the cat, but Cass, fickle creature that she was, ignored Anna’s coaxing hand and continued showing devotion to the man, winding around between his legs as he walked towards the kitchen.

  ‘You sit down while I bung the containers in the microwave,’ he said, still ordering Anna around. ‘I had no idea what you might like so I got a variety of dishes. I’ll give you a hoy when they’re all hot and you can come and choose whatever you fancy.’

  Anna had another new word to consider. Did ‘hoy’ mean a call? She was puzzling over this when Tom reemerged from the kitchen.

  ‘You’re not sitting,’ he scolded, and ushered her towards the lounge, before pressing a glass of what looked suspiciously like white wine into her hand. ‘Please, don’t tell me you don’t drink. Having a drink is almost obligatory in the outback. This is a very light white, and won’t do you any harm, and we can drink to the birth of the colt.’

  Realising it was futile to protest against this man’s bulldozing behaviour, Anna sank down onto the seat and lifted her hand to accept the glass of wine.

  The warm air had condensed against the glass and the beads of moisture caused her fingers to slip, but Tom’s reaction was instant, seizing both her hand and, within it, the glass, and holding both steady.

  Far from steady was the reaction of her heart, which, though the man had touched her many times already this afternoon—he was obviously a tactile kind of person—now suddenly found something intimate in this latest clasp of strong, slightly calloused fingers.

  You’re tired and hungry, Anna excused her strange internal behaviour, detaching her hand, now steady on the glass, from his and setting the glass down—just in case it wasn’t hunger causing her palpitations and another touch might make her tremble.

  Tremble? Her mind repeated the word in utter disbelief. Fortunately Tom had returned to the kitchen so she could carry on this internal debate without any fear of him picking up the vibes of her panic in the air around her.

  ‘OK, food’s up!’ he called, though how much later Anna wasn’t sure. She’d been sipping at her wine and trying to make sense of all the outlandish and unexpected things that had happened since she’d left her new home however many hours earlier to walk to town.

  She stood up and cautiously undertook the journey into the kitchen, hoping it wouldn’t become a similar odyssey.

  ‘I had expected the outback to be different,’ she admitted to the man who stood there, proudly displaying so many containers of food there’d be leftovers for a month, ‘but I’m not sure how I’ll cope if it keeps being as different as it’s been this afternoon and evening.’

  Tom laughed—Uncle Fred’s laugh again—then said, ‘You probably won’t have to help deliver a draught horse every day.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief!’ Anna told him, and, though she’d have liked to have joined in his laughter, a small warning voice in her head suggested she was better off concentrating on serving herself some food.

  Which, of course, would fix the palpitations she’d experienced earlier…

  Tom watched Anna devour the food she’d heaped on her plate. A slender woman with a good appetite! The way she tackled it, she must have been starving, so it was good he’d brought food—good, too, he’d sorted out her cat. Two pluses to this visit, although he knew he hadn’t come here for either reason. He’d come because he’d had to come. Because, as he’d driven home from the hospital, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, and in the end any excuse would have done.

  He must be mad…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANNA woke late the next morning with a sense of panic, as if she shouldn’t have been sleeping late, then she remembered it was Saturday—two full days to go before she officially started work. On her final visit to the hospital to check on Dani—at two in the morning—she’d met up with Paul Drouin, back from the rodeo and tired but willing to take over responsibility for the new patient.

  He’d assured Anna she’d made all the right decisions and, seeing Dani resting comfortably, Anna had known he had been telling the truth. So she’d gone home to bed and slept deeply, waking only when the sun rose high enough to shine directly through the window onto her face.

  ‘Curtains. I’ll have to get curtains or I’ll never have a proper sleep-in,’ she said aloud, though aware that talking to herself—the cat was nowhere in sight—could become a bad habit.

  Climbing out of bed, she saw the clothes she’d discarded when she’d fallen into it. Clothes belonging to Tom Fleming’s sisters—and Tom himself if you considered the underwear. She’d wash them and return them today—that way all connection to the man would be finished, and the strange sensations she’d experienced in his presence yesterday could be shut away in some far recess of her mind for ever.

  Buoyed by this thought, though uncertain of the protocol regarding returning used underwear, she pulled on her robe, gathered up the clothes and headed for the kitchen where a tub and small washing machine had been installed in a cupboard.

  The cat was back in her travelling cage!

  ‘Oh, blast you, Cassie!’ Anna said, then she decided maybe the cat just liked sitting there and would come out when she felt like it.

  ‘You’d better!’ Anna warned the animal. ‘Because I’m not getting that man around to coax you out again.’ She scowled as the cat shrugged its elegant shoulders and turned away, as if it was totally immaterial to her what Anna did. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of female solidarity?’ Anna muttered at it, then went in search of her own dirty clothes.

  They were in the living room, still tied in the plastic bag Tom had offered her, and she took them through to the little laundry alcove, dumping them in the tub and rinsing them under running water before shifting them to the machine. Then she set the lot to wash while she made herself a cup of tea and organised an easy breakfast of cereal and fruit.

  But as she moved around the kitchen, uneasiness hovered like a ghost behind her shoulders. At first she blamed the cat, sitting in the box but swivelling her head to follow Anna’s movements, but in the end she had to admit it was t
he memory of Tom Fleming—so at home in her kitchen the previous night—which was haunting her.

  ‘Nonsense!’ she muttered, spooning cereal into her mouth as if food might, again, provide an answer to her problem.

  But the uneasiness remained, leaving her only when she retreated to the living room where his spectral presence was less noticeable.

  Two hours later, with the washing she’d hung in the tropical sun already dry, she determined to get rid of all reminders of her strange afternoon and evening. She folded the borrowed clothes—though not the underwear, she’d buy a new pair the same colour and size and give him those—into a basket, scowled again at the cat, which remained stubborn and aloof in the open cage, and headed across to the hospital. She’d visit Dani then drive over to the vet’s, and once she’d dropped off the clothing she’d explore some of the district around the town. Someone had told her of a dam not far away, where people fished and swam and even sailed small skiffs.

  She’d have a look at it, and then go the museum, and generally learn her way around Merriwee.

  The plan went well until Anna pulled up in front of the vet’s surgery. Once again the place looked deserted, but this time no dusty vehicle suggested its owner was somewhere on the premises. Even Jim’s truck and horse trailer were missing. Had he moved on?

  With or without Tom’s furniture?

  Anna crossed to the stall where they’d settled the mare yesterday and saw her there, her son suckling lustily.

  ‘So your friend Jim won’t be far away,’ she said, reaching up to rub the big mare’s nose.

  She stayed for a few minutes, watching the colt move on legs that still splayed endearingly, then headed back towards the house, nervous and uncertain now she was approaching it.

  Stop being fanciful, Anna told herself. It’s just as well there’s no one here. You can leave the clothes on the veranda without getting involved in conversation or rescue missions. Just dump them on a chair and go—or perhaps they might be safer on the kitchen table. After all, Tom had made himself at home at her place, so he could hardly object to her taking two steps into his kitchen…

  Anna crossed the yard and took the low steps in a single stride. The front door was open and, thinking there could be someone inside, she knocked and called out, but was greeted by silence. An unlocked house was still a novelty—in fact, it was closer to a shock—so, no matter how much she justified it to herself, she still felt very much an intruder as she walked around the veranda towards the kitchen.

  It was as deserted as the rest of the place, though a half-empty cup of tea or coffee, resting on a pile of magazines on the kitchen table, suggested Tom might have been called away suddenly.

  Anna looked around—the letters were gone from the table, and the packets he’d said held more mail had also disappeared. Maybe she’d imagined that part of the most unusual afternoon she’d spent with Tom yesterday.

  She was so intent on her thoughts that a loud jangling noise made her jump. As it continued, she looked desperately around for its source, finally realising it was the phone and remembering Tom’s explanation about the modified ringing tone.

  ‘You’d probably hear it over at the hospital!’ Anna muttered to herself, pressing her hands to her ears to stop the terrible demand. Not that it helped much—the noise seemed to penetrate flesh and bone and was now clanging in her brain. Stopping it became a matter of self-preservation, and without much further thought, Anna reached out towards the wall-mounted instrument and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Vet’s place!’ she said crisply, hoping that answering someone else’s phone wasn’t a serious offence in Australia.

  ‘Who’s that?’ a young female voice demanded.

  ‘Anna Talbot, I’m the new doctor at the hospital. I came over to see the vet…’ To return his clothes? Not good, Anna! ‘…about my cat, but there’s no one here. Answering phones that ring is kind of automatic with me.’

  Silence greeted this—to Anna—quite logical explanation.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ Suspicion made the words sharp, but to Anna there also seemed an edge of desperation in them.

  ‘I don’t know, but he’s not here. As I said, I came—’

  ‘About your cat, yes, I know, but I need to talk to Tom or at least get a message to him.’

  ‘I could get a message to him,’ Anna volunteered. ‘I’m right here at his house. I can leave a note on his kitchen table then, if it’s urgent, I can keep phoning the house to make sure he gets it as soon as he comes back.’

  ‘I don’t know!’ There was a sob in the girl’s voice now, and a pause so long Anna wondered if they’d been disconnected.

  ‘Who did you say you are?’

  Anna explained again, then added, ‘Maybe if you tell me the problem, we can sort something out between us.’

  Another long silence, then, ‘Look, this will sound stupid, but I’m Tom’s sister, Patience. There are two of us, me and Penny. It’s Penny I’m phoning about. You see, she was unhappy at school and Mum’s not long ago remarried and she really, really, really wanted to see Tom—Penny that is, not Mum—so I’ve just put her on the plane to Three Gorges.’

  Another stifled sob at the other end then the explanation continued.

  ‘I couldn’t tell him until she was on the flight or he might have told Mum or tried to talk Pen out of it, but now she’s on the plane and it lands at Three Gorges at two, and it’s an hour’s drive from Merriwee, but you probably know that, but if we don’t get on to Tom soon then Pen will be stranded at the airport in Three Gorges. I didn’t think about him not being at home. Penny’s only thirteen!’

  Anna understood the panic on the part of the sister back in Brisbane, where flights to Three Gorges originated. But her heart went out to the young girl on the plane, already unhappy, coming in search of a beloved brother only to find he wasn’t there to meet her.

  ‘Look,’ Anna promised, ‘I’ll stay here and wait for your brother, and if he isn’t back in time to drive down to Three Gorges and meet the plane, I’ll go myself.’

  This offer was greeted by relief, but so quickly followed by doubt that it took some time for Anna to work out a plan whereby a series of phone calls would ensure Penelope’s safety, just in case she, Anna, might turn out to be a kidnapper.

  An hour and a half later, Anna stood in the lounge at Three Gorge’s airport and watched the passengers disembarking. It wasn’t difficult to work out which one was Penelope Fleming as she was the only unaccompanied child. Though she didn’t get off the plane for so long after the rest of the passengers Anna was beginning to wonder if the phone call had been a hoax. As she came closer, Anna saw the young girl was exactly as her sister had described her. The blunt-cut fringe and straight fall of black hair on either side of the young face framed wide-open eyes so dark a blue they were almost navy.

  The dark hair and blue eyes must be the father’s heritage, Anna decided, as no one seeing Penelope and knowing Tom could doubt their relationship.

  ‘Hi, I’m Anna,’ she said, approaching the girl and holding out her hand. ‘I was at Tom’s house when Patience phoned to say you were coming, and I told her if Tom wasn’t back in time to come down and collect you, I’d come myself.’

  The blue eyes studied her for a moment, then darted around the small lounge, scanning it, no doubt, for her brother.

  Was it because she couldn’t see him that she sidled closer to Anna?

  ‘You spoke to Patience?’

  ‘I did,’ Anna confirmed, as the girl continued to study the occupants of the lounge while almost hiding behind Anna. ‘She rang from the airport as soon as your plane took off but, because I’m a stranger, Patience suggested you call her on her mobile and confirm this, then I thought you might like to phone Merriwee hospital—I’m the new doctor there—and ask for someone who’s met me to tell you what I look like so you know it’s really me.’

  ‘And not some kidnapper!’ the child said, a grin lighting up her rather sombre face. She sighed th
en stepped back a little, as if the possibility of being kidnapped was somehow reassuring.

  Two phone calls and half an hour later, they were on the road.

  ‘The nurse at the hospital said you were South African, and you do have a funny accent so I guess that’s what it is,’ Penny—as she’d asked Anna to call her—said. ‘She described you well, too—the tall blonde part anyway. She didn’t know the colour of your eyes. They’re green, aren’t they?’

  Anna, aware of the huge road trains that thundered down these outback roads, was concentrating on her driving, but agreed her eyes were green.

  ‘This is awfully kind of you.’ Penny was obviously the kind of child who felt obliged to make conversation. ‘It was a bit of an emergency, getting up here to see Tom. We’re telling Mum it was because…’

  And so the story came out—first a brief family history that made Anna’s heart ache when she considered the significant losses Tom had suffered in his life. Then the tale of a man successfully disentangled from one—in the sister’s eyes rapacious—female, and now the target of who knew how many more desperate women.

  ‘The problem is, he’s hopeless at saying no to women, because he was brought up to be polite and thinks saying no is rude,’ Penny explained, causing Anna to conceal a smile. It must be sisterly love blinding the child to his true character, as the man had had no trouble at all being rude to herself the previous afternoon. She mentioned this, but Penny saw it as another symptom of his confusion.

  ‘See, he must be stressed by the letters. Tom’s never rude! And if he’s stressed, he’ll pick the wrong one for sure.’ Penny’s tone indicated just how dire this result would be. ‘That’s how he ended up engaged to Grace,’ she continued. ‘And, would you believe, Ghastly Grace was actually on the plane. That’s why I had to get off last and kind of hide behind you until she’d fixed up a hire car at the counter and actually left the terminal.’

  Apart from the liberal sprinkling of ‘actuallys’ in the conversation, the explanation was quite succinct, though Anna couldn’t help but wonder how the man she’d met the previous afternoon was going to take his sister’s arrival.