‘He did a runner,’ Kerrie said, with feigned indifference. ‘Milking for Meg’s the only thing between me and bankruptcy.’
And William glanced over at Meg, caught her urgent, unspoken message and knew it was true.
‘So you’re milking morning and night all over Christmas.’
‘I like it,’ Kerrie said.
‘So if I said I’d do it for you…’
Both women drew in their breath. Meg’s face went still. She obviously hadn’t expected this.
‘If it’s okay with Meg, that is,’ he said and swooshed a mess of stuff from the ramp. Swooshing felt excellent.
Meg smiled. He liked it when she smiled. How come he hadn’t noticed that smile way before now?
‘It’s fine by me,’ Meg said, ‘but…’
‘But I can’t afford it,’ Kerrie said, suddenly breathless. ‘I mean…it’s a lovely offer but…’
‘But nothing,’ Meg said, suddenly rock solid, smiling at William as if he was Santa in person. ‘William’s offering to do it for free. I’m sure of it. I’ve budgeted for your pay so this is his gift to you. Let the man be magnanimous.’
‘Magnanimous?’ Kerrie ventured.
‘Manly,’ Meg said, grinning. ‘This is a very manly gesture.’
‘If you’re sure,’ Kerrie whispered, sounding awed.
‘Of course he’s sure,’ Meg said, smiling and smiling. ‘There’s so much women’s work to be done over Christmas, and what do the men do? They buy a bottle of perfume at the last minute, if we’re lucky. Even Scotty. He’s left his Christmas shopping to the last minute and I have to take him to Curalo this morning. I’ll stand outside the shop while he buys me the perfume I’ve told him I like and then I’ll drive him home and that’s his manly duty done. So here’s one offering to be truly useful…’
‘Wow,’ Kerrie said.
‘Yep, get and go before I change my mind,’ William said. ‘Or before I turn my hose on your boss. Happy Christmas, Kerrie.’ He moved his hose so the water arced in a wide semi-circle. How long since he’d done something this hands-on? There was a pile of dried dung beside the fence. He aimed his hose and the dung flew eighteen inches in the air before heading for the drain. Deeply satisfying.
‘Oh, wow,’ Kerrie breathed again, and she abandoned the kids and hugged Meg. Then she eyed William-with caution-anyone would regard him with caution right now-but finally emotion got the better of sense and she darted over the yard and hugged him as well. Then she flew back to her kids and bustled them into the car and away before anyone had a chance to change their mind.
‘Hey, that felt good,’ Meg said, heading back into the vat room and replacing the dipstick sort of thing she was holding into the slot at the side of the vat. ‘Did it feel good to you?’
He sent another cowpat into the air. ‘Absolutely.’
‘If you knew how much that means to Kerrie…’ Then she hesitated. ‘Um… Sir… What are you doing with that hose?’
Sir? She’d called him sir. Of course, that was what he was. Wasn’t it? But she was looking bemused so he turned his attention back to the hose. It had made a left turn and was now aimed straight into the drain behind the cow’s drinking trough, forcing the contents of the drain up and in.
Uh-oh.
‘I guess the drinking trough now needs to be cleaned,’ Meg said. ‘We’ll need to empty it, scrub it, rinse it three times and then fill it up again. We don’t want contamination, do we?’
‘Um…no,’ he said and thought maybe there were a few skills he needed to concentrate on.
The milk tanker arrived just as he finished. The driver climbed from the cab and greeted Meg with delight.
‘Hey, Meggie.’
‘Meggie?’ William said softly.
‘Just try it…Willie,’ she said with a glower that made him grin, and went to meet the driver. William listened in while they caught up. Their talk was all about milk yields and fat content and bacterial levels. Meg sounded as he was accustomed to hearing her, smoothly competent, in charge of her world. But it was such a different world.
They gossiped on while he cleaned the trough and cleaned the yard surely cleaner than it had ever been cleaned before. Then the driver started emptying the vats and Meg strode over and turned his hose off. He felt bereft.
‘I was just getting good,’ he said sadly.
‘You can do it again tonight,’ she said and he started winding the hose around the reel by hand. She leaned over and grabbed the wheel and started turning. She was showing him up here.
But there was something else happening. The angel…
Her little Christmas angel was still hanging around her neck, and it was sliding down her breasts. He noticed.
She was wearing grungy old overalls, sort of mud-brown. She was wearing…what had she called them? Gumboots. Her hair was pulled back with an elastic band and she had mud smeared down the side of her face.
The top three buttons of her overalls were undone. Her angel was nestling on the soft swell of her breasts.
Lucky angel.
Why had it taken him until now to realise how beautiful she was?
‘Earth to William,’ she said and he blinked and grabbed the wheel and started turning it himself, so fast the hose slipped off and he had to stop and start again.
Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe he had to get away.
A thought…
‘You need perfume?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, bemused.
He didn’t think so. Perfume would hardly fit with what she was doing right now. But…
‘But Scott wants to buy you perfume.’
‘He wants to go Christmas shopping. I promised I’d take him to Curalo. That’s our closest major shopping centre-twenty miles from here.’
‘But you have things to do here, right?’
‘Right,’ she said cautiously.
‘So could I take him?’
‘You,’ she said, stunned, and he thought about whether he should take personal affront at the thought that she obviously thought him-and the rest of the male species-useless, and then he caught another glimpse of that angel and thought maybe not.
‘Would he mind if I took him?’ he asked. ‘I could find an Internet place in town and do my contacting-kill two birds with one stone.’
‘That’d be fantastic,’ she breathed. ‘Craig here says we should have signed the contract for our milk quota before Christmas. The manager’s still at work, so Craig says I can get a lift back in with him. He can bring me back when he does the next farm. But then I promised Letty I’d help do the pudding. I need to check on Millicent. I need to see to the water troughs. I’m having trouble making everything fit.’
‘So it’s a good idea?’
‘It’s a fabulous idea,’ she said admiringly. Her eyes were twinkling… Maybe she was manipulating him and it was such an odd experience…
People didn’t manipulate him. Had she just manipulated him?
Who knew? This was one clever woman.
‘Would you be confident driving Letty’s car?’ she said. ‘I know you can drive on our side of the road.’ More admiration?
‘Yes, but…’
‘Scotty would love to go with you. Christmas shopping with his sister, or go Christmas shopping with a guy, someone who won’t make him wait outside lingerie shops? What a choice.’
‘You don’t!’
‘He’s always scared I might.’ She hesitated, and the laughter died. ‘I… he’s had a tough time. He’d enjoy going shopping with you rather than with me.’
‘His leg…’
She glanced across at Craig but Craig was bending down to pat Killer and was obviously not in too great a rush. She turned back to William and he realised he was being assessed. She held his gaze for a long moment and then gave a decisive little nod. Whatever test there’d been, it seemed he’d passed. Manipulation was past. It was time for honesty.
‘Scott’s been through hell and back,’ she said bl
untly. ‘His leg was so badly smashed they had to put in a rod instead of bone. It healed but then they had to insert another rod because he grew. That got infected.’ She swallowed. ‘He almost died. Again. The leg still hasn’t completely healed but it will and he’s okay to get around. He’s really good on crutches. If you could…just do what he wants. And if you can think of anything he’d like, I’d appreciate that too. I’ve bought him so many computer games he surely must be over them but I’m hopeless at thinking of what a teenage boy wants. He’s so restricted-but he needs a manly present.’
Her frankness was working as manipulation never could. But he could do this. He even puffed his chest a little. ‘So you’d like me to take your kid brother Christmas shopping for manly presents? I can do that.’
‘Ooh, you’re not my boss, you’re my hero,’ she said and before, he could begin to guess what she intended, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. It was a feather kiss, almost a mockery, but not quite. It was a kiss of laughter and of sudden friendship, and why it had the capacity to make him feel…
How did it make him feel?
He didn’t know and it was too late to find out. Craig was replacing his hoses and yelling, ‘Are you coming or not?’
‘I’m coming,’ she called. ‘I’ll just go lose my overalls and check with Scott. But this is a great idea. My milking’s sorted, my brother will be happy and I have a superhero in the dairy. What more could a girl want?’
It took Meg an hour to get to the factory and back, by which time William and Scott had been gone for an hour as well. Which left Meg back at home, with no way of knowing when they’d get back.
She was worrying about her brother. She was also worrying about why she’d kissed her boss. It had been an impulsive gesture, the sort she’d make to anyone who’d done her a big favour, but somehow…it seemed more.
She couldn’t think of kissing her boss. That made her feel weird. She went back to worrying about Scott.
‘You’re worrying he’s taken him back to New York?’ Letty demanded as she caught Meg looking out of the window for maybe the twentieth time.
‘He can’t. There are no planes.’
‘You’ve worked for the man for three years. Don’t you trust him?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then why worry? Two hours is hardly time to Christmas shop.’ But then she hesitated. ‘Oh, but wait. These are guys. Half an hour there, half an hour back, five minutes at the perfume counter-yep, they should be back by now.’ She grinned. ‘But maybe they’re doing some bonding. He misses his father, does Scotty. Pass the raisins.’
‘You want me to mix the ingredients?’
‘I handed you the bowl five minutes ago-so you could look at it?’
Whoops. ‘Sorry.’ She applied herself to her creaming. ‘Why didn’t you do this before?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t puddings supposed to have been made a month ago?’
‘You didn’t get any time off and I was milking. I’m not getting any younger. But, back to your young man…’
‘My boss.’
‘He doesn’t seem to mind hard work.’
‘You say that like it’s a compliment. He’s addicted to work.’
‘Plus he’s really cute,’ Letty said and eyed Meg sideways.
‘He’s my boss. I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Right,’ Letty said dryly.
Right?
So, okay she had noticed. What normal warm-blooded woman wouldn’t notice W S McMaster?
But what use was there in noticing? For the three years she’d worked for him their relationship had been totally businesslike. Her boss worked far too hard for it to be anything else. He never noticed her, she thought. She was just one of his four PAs.
But sometimes… Sometimes when they’d been on a trip together, when they’d been working late, when she’d suddenly been a little too close, maybe even a little too familiar as tiredness crept in at the edges, she’d thought he made a conscious decision not to notice her, as if there were some barrier he couldn’t cross.
As, of course, there was. He was her employer.
He was a billionaire.
She mixed the ingredients with her hands, letting the warmth of her hands meld the mixture. She was still staring out of the kitchen window, but she was no longer looking for the absent Scott and William. She was thinking of William as he’d been this morning. Mucking round with his hose. Enjoying himself.
She’d kissed him.
It had been nothing but a silly gesture, she told herself. It meant nothing.
Only that wasn’t quite true. Meg Jardine had kissed William McMaster. The lines between boss and secretary had blurred.
Leading where?
‘You think that might be creamed enough?’ Letty demanded and she looked down into the bowl and thought yep, it was getting so warm it was starting to melt.
There was an analogy somewhere here. Melting…
‘You want me to chop some nuts?’ she managed and Letty grinned some more and handed them over.
‘Go right ahead. A girl’s gotta vent her spleen on something. You’re wondering how much perfume those boys are intending to buy, or are you wondering something else entirely?’
CHAPTER FIVE
THEY didn’t appear for lunch and an hour later Meg was really starting to worry. ‘I’ll take the tractor over to Jenny’s and phone him from there,’ she muttered. ‘They should be back.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Letty told her. ‘They’ll have found a football game or gone to the movies or chanced on something really interesting that only boys can understand. You didn’t tell them a get-home-by time, for which I’m grateful because it’s time we stopped mollycoddling our Scotty. Our Scott.’ Then she spoiled it by glancing at the clock. ‘But I hope Will’s fed him. And he didn’t take any painkillers. If his leg’s hurting…’
‘See,’ Meg retorted and they both smiled, shamefaced.
‘Shortbread next,’ Letty declared, so they made a batch, and then another, and they were almost desperate enough to start a third when finally the car turned into the drive. Meg just happened to be looking out of the window when it did.
‘What on earth have they got on behind?’ she demanded, heading for the door.
The dogs were flying down from the veranda. Meg managed to stroll out with what she hoped was a little more dignity.
‘Don’t say we were worried,’ Letty hissed beside her and she agreed entirely. They hadn’t been worried at all.
What did they have behind the car?
A trailer. A really large trailer. And on the trailer…
‘They’ve bought a car,’ she muttered in amazement. Or…two cars?
‘So much for perfume,’ Letty muttered. ‘This is never going to fit into a stocking.’
‘Come and see, come and see.’ Scott was out of the car, shouting his excitement, and the dogs were barking hysterically in response. William emerged from the driver’s side, leaned back on the car door and crossed his arms-a genie who’d produced magic and was now expecting appreciation. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved open-topped shirt. He looked…great. He must have stopped at a clothes shop, Meg thought, and then she thought I kissed him-and then Scott’s excitement tugged her attention back to what was on the trailer
At the front of the trailer was a Mini Minor, the kind that had been almost the coolest car on the planet back in the seventies. Though maybe it hadn’t been quite as cool as the Volkswagen Combi.
Um…what was she thinking? She hadn’t even been born in the seventies. This Mini, however, looked as if it had been. It was truly derelict. The little red and rust-red car had no wheels, no glass in its front windscreen and its hood was missing. What looked like grass was sprouting from where the engine should be.
And tied on behind was part of another Mini, in even worse repair. Instead of suffering from neglect, this one looked as if it had been smashed from behind. The back had been squashed almost to the front.
There was
also a pile of assorted bits tied on top, meaning the trailer looked like a mini wrecker’s yard.
‘It’s William’s Christmas present to us all,’ Scott shouted and her boss beamed and she thought again-he looks great. Denim made him look so-o-o-o sexy-but somehow she managed to give her hormones a mental slap and ventured off the veranda to see.
William’s Christmas present to us all…
‘We saw a sign just out of town.’ Despite his bad leg, Scott was practically jigging his excitement. ‘It was in a paddock and it said For Sale. And parts as well. The guy restores Minis but his wife’s put her foot down. He has three finished Minis in his garage and two more to restore and his wife says the rest have to go. So he sold us this. Two cars’ll make one. He says there’s enough here to make a complete one. He reckons if I start now, by the time I get my licence I’ll have it on the road. If I get it going before then, I can practice in the paddocks. I can phone him any time I want, and if I’m really stuck he’s even offered to come out here to help.’
‘He really will,’ William said, still smiling. ‘This won’t be any work for either of you. I promise.’ His lovely, lazy smile lit his face and Meg thought frantically she’d have to give those hormones another slap.
‘I have faith,’ he went on. ‘This’ll mean eventually the farm has two cars. By the way, we also went to the motor place in Curalo and bought bits for your wagon, Letty. Your exhaust pipe has to be replaced and the silencer and so does the carburettor. If it’s okay with you, I might make a start this afternoon.’
‘You…’ Meg said, dazed.
‘I can fix cars,’ he said neutrally. ‘And Scott would like to learn.’
‘You want to fix my car?’ Letty said, while Meg simply stood with her mouth open.
‘If it’s okay with you.’
‘Marry me,’ Letty said, and Scott and William laughed-only, for some reason, Meg had trouble laughing. The sight of her boss in jeans was disconcerting enough, but she was looking at Scott’s flushed face and his shining happiness and she thought, why hadn’t she thought of this?
Scott was practically stranded here on the farm. His bad leg left him isolated. There were so many days when he simply gazed at his computer, in misery and in loneliness.
Christmas with her Boss Page 6
