‘Oh, but...’ Surely with so many...
‘No,’ he said, seeing where she was heading and cutting her off before she got started. ‘No one’s driving you anywhere. You’ll find an empty garage around the back. I need to take care of Nugget and talk to the men before I come in for the night, but the back door’s open. Put the kettle on and make yourself a cup of...what was it? Lapsang souchong. I’ll see you in an hour or so. Meanwhile, welcome to Jindalee, Miss Hindmarsh-Firth. Welcome to my home.’
* * *
Matt led Nugget into the stables, unstrapped his gear and started brushing. Nugget looked vaguely surprised. Knowing shearing was about to start, knowing life was about to get crazy, he’d given him a decent brush this morning. But two brushes in one day wouldn’t hurt and it might help get his head together.
In one sense the worsening flood was a blessing. The shearing team hadn’t listened to the weather forecast. They’d come straight from a property south of here this morning, and there’d been no hint of the flooding to come. That meant when they woke tomorrow and found he had no shearers’ cook they couldn’t leave in disgust. At least his sheep would be shorn.
But he was facing two weeks of disgruntled shearers. Plus two weeks of a society princess who asked questions.
Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth...
He took his phone from the waterproof protector he always used—thank heaven he’d had it today—and hit the Internet. Thank heaven for satellites too, he thought, glancing at the dish on the top of the house. If he’d used the Internet to good effect he could have tracked the speed of the flooding. He could have let the shearers know not to come, but he’d gambled. He’d known the water was on its way but he’d thought they’d be able to get through this morning. They had. He had two weeks’ work for them and a decent amount of supplies.
He’d also thought his cook could get through, but he’d been coming from another property in a different direction. And that had spelled disaster.
First World problem—shearers having to cook their own tucker? Maybe it was, but from time immemorial shearers had counted the quality of food and accommodation as a major enticement. This was a crack team and they expected the best. They couldn’t blame him but it would be a sullen two weeks.
‘So what are the odds of Miss Hindmarsh-Firth being able to cook?’ he asked Nugget and thought of the teapot and grimaced. He needed to know more about the blonde and her white poodle. He leaned back on his horse’s hindquarters and Nugget nibbled his ear while he searched Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth in his Internet browser.
And what sprang up were gossip columns—a list of them, longer than his screen. Current gossip.
‘Is one Hindmarsh-Firth as good as another?’ ‘Sister Swap!’ ‘Taggart’s gamble pays off...’
Bemused, he hit the first and read.
Brett Taggart, chief accountant to investment banker George Hindmarsh and heiress Louise Firth, has played a risky hand and won. He wooed the pair’s daughter, company PR assistant Penelope, with what we hope were honourable intentions... Familiarity, however, meant a change of direction for our dubiously intentioned Brett. As he was welcomed into the golden world of the Hindmarsh-Firth family, his attention was obviously caught by his fiancée’s older half-sister, glamorous social butterfly Felicity. Never let a promise get in the way of a good time, seems to be Brett’s philosophy, and rumour has it that he and Felicity might be expecting a Happy Event in the next few months.
Such a ruckus in the family might have some parents casting children out. ‘Never darken our door again!’ would have been this columnist’s reaction to such a back-stabbing sibling, but George and Louise seem to have taken the situation in their stride. In a recent tabloid interview George even insinuated he understands why Brett would choose the gorgeous Felicity over her dumpy, media-shy sister, and Louise refuses to comment. So one wedding has been swapped for another.
Ugh, Matt thought, feeling a wave of sympathy for the ‘dumpy, media-shy’ Penny.
And then he thought...dumpy? What a description for those curves.
Um...let’s not go there. He didn’t need distraction.
He did not need anyone—except a shearer’s cook.
‘At least she can make her own tea,’ he muttered to Nugget. ‘There’s a bonus. I wonder if she can make her own toast?’
* * *
Penny ventured in through the back door and was met by silence. Samson sniffed forward so she cautiously opened a few doors. The house was a beautiful...mausoleum?
It looked like a magnificent homestead built for a family of a dozen or so, with entertaining on a lavish scale. But it also looked like it hadn’t been used for years. The massive sitting room off the main entrance was covered in dust sheets, as were the two other rooms she ventured into. She peeked under the dust sheets and saw furniture that’d look at home in an antique store. An expensive antique store.
There was a small sun-drenched den that looked well used. It was crammed with farming journals, books, a computer, dog beds. Matt’s study? A wide passage led to what must be the bedroom wing but she wasn’t game to go there.
Feeling more and more like an intruder, she retreated to the kitchen.
Which was...spectacular.
Windows opened to the veranda, to the shearing shed in the distance and to the hills beyond. Sunbeams were dancing on the floor, the ancient timbers worn by years of use. A battered wooden table ran almost the full length of the room, with scattered mismatched chairs that looked incredibly inviting. A small, slow combustion stove stood to one side of an old hearth, as if a far bigger wood stove had been removed. Beside it was a vast industrial oven and cooktop. It looked as if it could feed a small army.
How many people lived here? Hardly anyone by the look of the closed-up rooms, but these ovens... Wow!
She glanced again at the firestove. It was lit and emitting a gentle warmth. She’d never used one. Could she make bread?
What was she thinking of? Baking?
This situation was a mess. She didn’t want to be here and Matt Fraser didn’t want her here. Her job at Malley’s Corner was in doubt. She’d ring them now but would they still want her when she arrived two weeks late?
She was stuck here for two weeks, with a man she didn’t know.
But she was suddenly thinking: did he have decent flour?
There was a door to the side which looked like it could lead to a pantry. She shouldn’t pry. The very stillness of the house was making her nervous, but he’d said she could make herself a cup of tea.
She did have tea but it was packed at the bottom of one of her crates. So she needed to check the pantry...
She opened the pantry door and gasped.
This pantry was huge, and it was stocked as if Matt was expecting to feed an army.
There were flour bins, big ones, topped to overflowing. There were bins of rice, of sugar. There were mountains of cans, stacks of packs of pasta. There was every dried herb and sauce she could imagine.
There were two vast refrigerators and freezers, and another door led to a coolroom. She saw vegetables, fruit, every perishable a cook could need. There were whole sides of beef and lamb. Who could eat this much meat?
The shearing team? She’d read descriptions of life on the big sheep stations. Gun shearers, working twelve-hour days, pushing themselves to the limits, while the farmer’s wife pushed herself to the limit feeding them.
Matt had no wife. There was no evidence of a housekeeper.
Was he planning to cook, or did one of those trucks out there belong to a cook?
She closed the lid of the freezer and saw an enormous list pinned to the wall. It was an inventory of everything she’d just seen.
It was printed out as an email. She flicked through to the end.
Can you get all this in stock and have i
t waiting? I’ll be there on the seventh by mid-afternoon, but my first cook will be smoko on the eighth. See you then.
So he did have a cook. He’d probably be over with the men now, she thought. Maybe Matt was there too. Maybe they were sitting round drinking beer while Matt told them about the dopey blonde he’d pulled out of the water.
And suddenly all the fears of the past few weeks crowded back.
She was stuck in the middle of nowhere, where no one wanted her. She was stuck for two weeks.
A shearer’s cook would be taking over this kitchen from tomorrow morning. Maybe she could help, she thought, but she’d worked in enough kitchens to know how possessive cooks could be.
‘I might be allowed to wash dishes,’ she told Samson morosely.
She found a tea bag—actually, she found about a thousand tea bags. They weren’t generic, but they weren’t lapsang souchong either.
‘We’ll have to slum it,’ she told her dog, and made her tea and headed out to the veranda.
The big, old collie she’d seen earlier was still snoozing on the step. He raised his head and gave his tail a faint wag, then settled back down to the serious business of sleeping.
An old man was dead-heading roses. He was stooped and weathered with age, almost a part of the land around him. He glanced up from his roses as she emerged from the back door, and startled as if he’d just seen a ghost.
‘Hi,’ Penny called. ‘I’m Penny.’
He didn’t answer. Instead he dropped the canvas bag he’d been carrying and backed away. Ghosts, it seemed, were scary.
Penny sighed. She plonked herself down on the edge of the veranda and gazed out over the garden to the rolling plains beyond. Samson eyed the old dog warily, and then plonked down beside her.
‘This is a beautiful view,’ she told Samson. ‘But I might just get sick of it after two weeks.’
Samson put his nose into the crook of her arm and whined. Samson, it seemed, was in complete agreement.
* * *
To say the men were unhappy would be an understatement.
‘So who’s going to cook?’ Bert, self-proclaimed shearers’ foreman, sounded incredulous.
‘Me,’ Matt told him. ‘It means I can’t spend much time in the shed, but Ron and Harv will have things under control.’ Ron was his right-hand man, Harv his jackeroo. They were both capable sheep men.
Leaving the shed in their hands was still a risk. Half the trick of a smooth shear was the owner being hands-on. Men worked at full capacity, day after day, pushing themselves to the limit because the sooner they finished the sooner they’d be paid, and that was a recipe for problems. Tensions escalated fast. Ron and Harv were both men who disliked conflict and backed away from it—there was a reason they both worked on such an isolated property. Matt didn’t like conflict either, but he could deal. He had the authority to dock wages, to kick a drunk shearer off the team or, worse, to recommend to other station owners which teams not to employ.
But Ron and Harv couldn’t cook to save their lives. They lived on a diet of corned beef, beer and the occasional apple to prevent scurvy. At least Matt could do a decent spag. bol.
He had no choice. The kitchen was his.
‘So we’ll be eating pasta and boiled beef for two weeks?’ Bert demanded and Matt shrugged.
‘I’ll do my best. Sorry, guys. I’m as unhappy about this as you are.’
‘So what about the Sheila we just saw you drive in with?’ Bert demanded. ‘Have you replaced Pete with a bit of fluff?’
‘I haven’t. She was stuck in the creek and I pulled her out. She’s stuck here too and, before you ask, I suspect she might be able to brew a decent tea but not much else.’
‘Great,’ Bert growled. ‘That’s just great.’
‘Sorry,’ Matt told him. ‘But that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it.’
And also a cute blonde with curves?
Do not go there. What was wrong with him? That was the second time he’d thought it.
Two weeks...
Stay well clear, he told himself. The last thing he needed was yet another woman complicating his life.
CHAPTER THREE
MATT RETURNED TO FIND Penny on the veranda, trying to make friends with Donald’s dog. He greeted her curtly. There was a lot to be done before he could sleep. If she was expecting to be entertained he might as well make things clear now.
He showed her which bedroom she could use. It was big, it overlooked the garden and it had the extra advantage of being as far away from his as possible. Plus it had its own bathroom. For a Hindmarsh-Firth it might still be slumming it, he thought, but it’d be a thousand times better than the accommodation she’d get at Malley’s Corner.
What on earth was she intending to do at Malley’s? He’d ask some time, he thought, but he had to be up before dawn to make sure the first mob was ready to go, he had to check the sheep again tonight and he needed to eat.
But he should offer to feed her, he decided. From tomorrow he was faced with feeding the multitude. He might as well start now.
‘Dinner’s in half an hour,’ he told her as he dumped her gear in her bedroom—how much stuff could one woman use? ‘At seven.’
‘I can help.’ She hesitated. ‘I’d like to.’
‘I’ll do it.’ He wanted to eat and run, not sit while she fussed over something fancy. ‘Thirty minutes. Kitchen. Oh, and there’s dog food...’
‘Samson has his own dog food.’
‘Of course he does,’ he said shortly and left her to her unpacking.
Showered, clean of the river sand, he felt better but not much. He tossed bacon and tomatoes into a frying pan, put bread in the toaster and set plates on the table.
Right on seven she walked in the door. She’d changed too. She’d obviously showered as well, for her curls were still damp. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and she’d caught her curls back in a ponytail.
He glanced around as she came into the room and had to force himself to turn back to the frying pan.
She looked fresh and clean and...cute? More than cute.
Curvy? Bouncy?
Sexy.
Cut it out, he told himself and concentrated on the bacon.
‘The house is lovely,’ she told him. ‘Thank you for taking me in.’
‘It’s not like I had a choice.’ He thought about that for a moment and decided he sounded a bore. ‘Sorry. You’re welcome. And yes, it’s lovely. Eggs?’ Then he figured as a conversational gambit it needed a little extra. ‘How many?’
‘Two, please.’ Her feet were bare. She padded over to the bench beside the firestove and hauled herself up so her legs were swinging. ‘You can fry on this? I’ve never used a slow combustion stove.’
‘It’s a skill,’ he said, deciding to sound modest.
‘What else can you do on it?’
Uh oh. She’d called him out. He grinned and cracked an egg into the pan. ‘Sausages,’ he told her. ‘And I can boil stuff.’
‘So you use the big oven?’
‘Not usually. The firestove suits me. If it’s a cold morning I put my boots in the oven. Oh, and the occasional live lamb.’
‘You put lambs in the oven?’
‘It’s the best place for a lamb that’s been caught in the frost,’ he told her. ‘I can fit a lamb and boots in there all at once. Lamb and boots come out warm and ready to go. It’s a win-win for everyone. Who needs an oven for baking?’
‘But you can still bake in it?’
‘I could try,’ he told her. ‘But anything I put in there might come out smelling of wet wool and boot leather.’
‘Yum,’ she said and then looked down at his frying eggs. ‘Don’t let them get hard.’
‘What?’ He stared down at th
e five eggs he’d cracked. He picked up the egg slice to flip them but Penny put her hand out and held his. Stopping him mid-flip.
‘You want runny yolks?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Runny’s nicer.’
‘Yeah, but...’
‘Just spoon a little hot fat over them. It’s much less likely to burst the yolks.’
‘I don’t have time for nice.’
‘Then let me,’ she told him and jumped down, grabbed a spoon and edged him out of the way.
Her body hit his and all of a sudden they were close. Too close.
He felt... He didn’t know what he felt. How long since he’d stood beside a woman in a kitchen?
This was not a sensation he needed to be feeling tonight.
He edged away fast, and stood and watched while she carefully spooned hot fat over the yolks.
‘Done,’ she said.
She flicked bacon and tomatoes he’d fried earlier onto the toast and then carefully slid the eggs on top.
How had she done that? It was weird but somehow she’d made it look...sort of gourmet? When he piled eggs and bacon onto a plate they looked like eggs and bacon. She’d sort of set the tomatoes at one side and then made a round of bacon. The eggs slid on top and it looked...great.
He’d been hungry. Now he was even hungrier.
And so, it seemed, was she. She sat down and tackled her eggs and bacon as if she hadn’t seen food in a week. She was enjoying every mouthful of this very plain meal.
He thought of the few women he knew and the way they ate. Not like this. This was almost sensual.
‘Wow,’ she breathed as she finished her first egg and tackled her bacon. ‘Yum!’
‘It’s all in the cooking,’ he said and she grinned. It was a great grin, he decided. Kind of endearing.
‘Yeah, great fat scooping.’ She shook her head. ‘Nope. These eggs... This bacon...’
‘Home grown,’ he told her. ‘They’re Donald’s projects.’
‘Donald?’
‘I told you about him. He used to own this property. He got too old to run it; he sold it but the thought of leaving broke his heart. I offered him one of the shearers’ cottages in return for keeping up the garden. He’s been with me for ten years now, running a few of his precious pigs, caring for his hens and keeping my garden magnificent. Win-win for everyone.’
Stranded with the Secret Billionaire Page 3
