Outback Boss, City Bride

by Jessica Hart

  But he would let her go.

  Meredith jerked another lemon free, then stopped in surprise as she heard the phone ring in the office. There were rarely any calls at this time. Most people who wanted to get in touch knew that Hal was out most of the day and tended to ring at mealtimes. She had better get it in case it was important.

  But, as she turned to run for the veranda, the ringing stopped. Hal must still be there, she thought with relief. He had come back from the yards a little earlier saying something about road trains and agisment as he’d headed into the office and Meredith had just nodded, understanding that he was going to make some calls but nothing more than that.

  Slowly, she made her way back to the lemon tree. It was such a treat to pick your own lemons. She wouldn’t be able to do that in London.

  There were a lot of things she wouldn’t be able to do in London, Meredith realised sadly. She wouldn’t be able to watch Hal walk across the yard with a thrill of possession, knowing that when everyone else had gone he would be all hers. She wouldn’t be able to slide her hands over him and kiss her way down the long, lean body. She wouldn’t be able to sleep curled into his solid back and wake with the safe weight of his arm across her.

  Inside the office, Hal held the phone to his ear and watched Meredith reach up for a lemon. She pulled it from the tree, then held it to her nose to breathe in its freshness and its scent. She was wearing his old shirt, and the thought of the lush body beneath the soft material made his body tighten.

  It was hard to remember now how brisk and unappealing she had seemed at first, before he knew her sweetness and her warmth and her strength. She moved more slowly now and she had a glow, a bloom, that hadn’t been there before. She didn’t look like a city girl any more. She looked as if she belonged here.

  God, he was going to miss her.

  With an effort, he dragged his attention back to the phone call.

  ‘So you see,’ Lucy was saying, ‘it’s really important that Meredith comes home as soon as possible.’ She hesitated. ‘Has she told you how she feels about Richard?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Hal.

  ‘She probably told you that she’s not in love with him any more,’ said Lucy. ‘She insists that she’s over it, but Meredith isn’t the kind of person who loves easily, and if she does love you, she doesn’t just stop. She’s just not like that. I know she comes across as a bit brisk sometimes, but underneath she’s the warmest and kindest person you could ever hope to meet.’

  Hal looked at Meredith through the window. He didn’t need Lucy to tell him that. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘The thing is, I think Richard’s perfect for her and he’s been talking about her so much…Well, I’m sure that if she came home now she’d find that everything had changed. He keeps saying how much he misses talking to her.’

  He would miss talking to her, Hal wanted to shout, and it hadn’t taken an accident to make him appreciate Meredith.

  ‘I know this might cause problems for you, Hal,’ Lucy was saying. ‘I’m really sorry to let you down.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s all a bit complicated, but…well, I don’t think I’ll be coming back after all. But if I tell Meredith that, she’ll insist on staying until you’ve found someone else and I really think she should come home now. I owe this to her. She’s the best person in the world and she deserves to be happy.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hal slowly. ‘She does.’

  Lucy seemed so determined to prove to him how perfect Richard was for Meredith and how Meredith would have her heart’s desire if only Hal would let her go, that in the end Hal could stand it no longer.

  ‘I’ll get Meredith for you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You should really talk to her.’

  He went out on to the veranda and called to Meredith, who was on her way back from the lemon tree. ‘It’s Lucy,’ he said, wondering if he looked as bleak as he felt. ‘For you.’

  Meredith stiffened and Hal suddenly realised that he did look that bleak. She probably thought that Lucy had bad news. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘Richard’s fine.’ He forced a smile. ‘It’s good news.’

  Meredith hadn’t been thinking about Richard, in fact. One look at Hal’s face and she had known that the golden time was over and that everything was about to change.

  Her heart was heavy as she picked up the phone. ‘Lucy? It’s me. What’s happened?’

  It was some time before she finally managed to say goodbye to Lucy and, by the time she did, Meredith was feeling completely numb. Very carefully, she put the receiver back in its cradle and went along to the kitchen, where Hal was waiting for her.

  His grey eyes sharpened with concern at her expression. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I think so…yes…’ But Meredith didn’t sound too sure.

  Hal tried a hearty smile. ‘That was good news, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Lucy obviously told you.’

  She needed to do something with her hands. For want of anything better, Meredith found the zester and started to zest the lemons she had picked.

  ‘She said that Richard has realised that it’s you he really wants.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Meredith quickly. ‘She said she thinks I’m the one he really wants to see, but she doesn’t know for sure. I gather Richard was quite embarrassed when he realised that Lucy had come all the way back from Australia for him. That was my fault,’ she said with an edge of bitterness, putting one lemon aside and starting on the next.

  Hal didn’t know how to help her. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Meredith.’

  ‘It was,’ she insisted. ‘I just assumed that was what he wanted and I made it happen. You were right,’ she acknowledged dully. ‘I should just let people get on with their own lives.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.’

  Meredith’s hands stilled on the lemon. She glanced at him and then away. ‘Lucy’s sure that I’m still in love with Richard,’ she confessed suddenly, ‘but I really don’t think I am.’

  How could she be in love with Richard when she was in love with Hal?

  She couldn’t tell Hal that, of course. It would sound as if she wanted him to ask her to stay. And, if she did, Hal might even say yes, even though they both knew that it would end in disaster, no matter how much they might want to stay together now. They had different lives, different expectations, different futures.

  Meredith couldn’t even complain that this had come as a surprise. She had always known that this was going to happen sooner or later. The trouble was that she wasn’t ready for it to happen just yet.

  Some time in the hazy future, but not yet.

  ‘Maybe when you see Richard again, you’ll realise why you loved him before,’ Hal suggested with difficulty.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Meredith, really wanting to believe it, but not quite convincing herself. She reached for another lemon and mustered a smile. ‘I mean, Richard’s perfect for me, isn’t he?’

  ‘You said once that he was everything you’d ever wanted.’

  Everything he wasn’t, Hal reminded himself. Richard was sensitive and artistic and cultured. He was a city man and Meredith was a city girl. He could offer Meredith the kind of life she was used to, the kind of life she wanted.

  Hal thought about what Lucy had said. She deserves to be happy. He wanted Meredith to be happy too, and the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach came from realising that Richard would make her happier than he could.

  How could he promise her happiness when he knew how hard outback life could be, especially when he was-how was it she had put it?-a man with major commitment issues? Meredith was too important to him for him to start making promises that neither of them might be able to keep.

  He swallowed. ‘I promised Lucy I wouldn’t stop you going home,’ he told her. ‘I told her I’d make sure you got the first flight possible.’

  Meredith nodded without speaking. She was still zesting with a kind of desperation, but she stopped suddenly and stared
from the lemon in her hand to the growing pile of bright yellow strips on the table before her.

  ‘Oh, God, I don’t need all this!’ she exclaimed, only to find her voice breaking.

  Pressing her lips tightly together in a perfectly straight line to stop her mouth wobbling, she scowled ferociously and willed herself not to cry. She never cried. She hadn’t cried when her father had left her with Lucy all those years ago, and she wasn’t about to start crying now. Crying wouldn’t help.

  Hal couldn’t bear the look on her face. Stepping forward, he pulled her hard into his arms, where he didn’t have to look into her eyes and he wasn’t tempted to beg her to stay and make things even more difficult for her than they were already.

  ‘Meredith,’ he said, his mouth in her hair, breathing in the fresh, clean scent of her. ‘Maybe this is for the best. You did love Richard,’ he reminded her. ‘Remember how you told me you were prepared to wait for someone perfect? You said you weren’t prepared to settle for anything less, and Richard was perfect once. He probably will be again when you get back, especially now that he’s come to his senses and realised what a special person you are.

  ‘He can make you happy,’ Hal went on raggedly, ‘and I…I don’t think I can.’

  Meredith nodded wordlessly against his shoulder. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but hold on to him.

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ he told her, his voice cracking. ‘I’ll miss you more than I can say, but there’s no future for us. You know that.’

  ‘I know,’ she managed, muffled by his shirt, her arms around his back, clutching him. ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re a city girl, and I live in the outback. If you stayed, you’d get bored, sooner or later, and then you would want to go.’

  And you couldn’t take being abandoned again, Meredith thought to herself. She couldn’t take the risk of hurting him. She nodded again. ‘I know, Hal. You’re right.’

  ‘Richard lives the same kind of life as you,’ Hal went on, as if determined to prove to himself that saying goodbye was the right thing to do. ‘You told me that you liked the same things. You both like music and food and going to Italy, all that kind of stuff. You’d miss all that eventually.’

  ‘Yes, I probably would.’ Meredith struggled to help him. She knew he was finding this as hard as she was. ‘And we always said it was just a temporary thing, didn’t we? That was what we both wanted.’

  ‘Yes.’ Just at that moment, Hal couldn’t remember why he’d wanted it, but he knew that it was right.

  ‘I just…don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to you,’ she burst out.

  Hal’s arms tightened around her. ‘It’s going to be hard,’ he acknowledged, ‘but we were always going to have to say it some time.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Meredith pulled herself determinedly away from him and forced her wobbly mouth into an approximation of a smile. ‘It looks like it’s time to start being sensible again,’ she said.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ said Hal, although his throat felt so tight it was hard to get the words out.

  ‘So…’ She straightened her shoulders. The last thing Hal needed was her turning weepy and clingy at this point.

  She found another smile, a better one this time. ‘You go back to the yards and I’ll make this cake, and then I’ll find out about flights back to London. And we’ll find a way to say goodbye when the time comes.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘GOT everything?’

  Meredith took a last look around the kitchen. She hadn’t brought much with her, and she wasn’t taking anything away. Except memories.

  She picked up her laptop. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Hal had her case in one hand. He held open the screen door with the other and Meredith walked through it for the last time. Her shoes clicked on the wooden veranda and down the steps to where the truck was parked.

  At the bottom she stopped and looked towards the creek where the ghost gums leaned, and then up at the tree where the galahs gathered. They were there now, huddled together along the branches in lines of pink and grey. It was very quiet.

  Hal put her case in the back of the truck and, as if at a signal, the galahs erupted off the branches with much squawking and flurrying of feathers. They took off into the brilliant blue sky in a blur of pink, turning as one so that their wings flashed silver in what might have been farewell.

  Meredith’s vision blurred as she got into the truck. This is the last time, she had been thinking ever since last night. The last time she would make love with Hal, the last time she’d lie against him and feel him breathing, the last time she would clutch at his hair and gasp his name. The last time she’d hear his boots on the steps, the last time she would see him put his hat on his head, the way he was doing right now.

  Hal didn’t speak as they drove down the track, and Meredith didn’t look back. She sat staring straight ahead of her, concentrating on not crying, on just sitting there and breathing deeply.

  On being sensible.

  Hal was going to fly her into Whyman’s Creek where she would pick up the plane to Darwin as Lucy had done, not so long before. Meredith had never been in such a small plane. It had four seats and a single propeller on its nose, but she was too wretched even to feel nervous, and Hal seemed to know what he was doing. He checked the controls, his eyes cool and calm, his fingers deft, and then the little plane was speeding down the runway, faster and faster, until it lifted into the air.

  Meredith’s stomach dipped as the ground dropped away beneath them. Had Lucy felt like this? she wondered. As if her heart were being torn out of her as the plane lifted into that immense sky?

  Hal banked over the homestead and, as they turned, Meredith saw the corrugated iron roof flash in the sunlight. There was one last glimpse of the grey-green trees along the creek and then were they climbing, turning and climbing up into the blue. She craned her neck, suddenly desperate not to lose sight of it, but the homestead was already receding, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the vast, featureless brown landscape and was gone.

  They flew in silence. There was nothing to say. There was too much to say. You’re being sensible, Meredith kept telling herself. It’s the sensible thing to do. Just say goodbye and go.

  Hal landed the plane at Whyman’s Creek’s tiny airport and taxied over to where several small planes like his were parked in a row. When he cut the engine and the propeller died, the silence was overwhelming.

  Hal took a deep breath. ‘Meredith-’ he began, but she interrupted him.

  ‘Wait!’ she begged him. ‘You don’t need to say anything, Hal. In a moment, I’m going to get out and take my case and say goodbye. I’m going to get on the Darwin plane and I’m going to go home, and I’m not going to look back because we both know it’s the right thing to do.’

  She drew an unsteady breath and made herself go on. ‘But…but I want you to know that the last few weeks have been the best of my life, and whatever happens there will always be a bit of me that still loves you the way I do now.’

  Hal had turned in his seat to look at her and now he cupped her face between big, gentle palms. ‘I love you too,’ he said, very simply, because in the end, what else was there to say? They kissed, not a deep, passionate kiss, but one that was warm, tender, and heartbreakingly sweet, and Meredith’s eyes were starry with tears when their lips parted at last.

  ‘I won’t ever forget you, Meredith,’ Hal told her. ‘I just wish…’

  ‘That we weren’t the people we are?’ she finished for him as his voice trailed off hopelessly. Losing the battle with a tear that spilled over her lashes, she wiped it away with a hurried finger.

  He nodded. ‘I wish we could do something about it, but we can’t.’

  ‘No.’ Meredith took a deep, steadying breath. ‘No, we can’t.’

  She gathered up her laptop. ‘I think I’d better go, Hal. Don’t come with me. I don’t think I can bear it. Let’s say goodbye here.’
>
  So he simply lifted her case out of the plane and pulled up the handle so that she could trundle it along behind her. Meredith hoisted her laptop on to her shoulder and hesitated, holding her sunglasses in her hand.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, her voice high and cracked with strain, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to say goodbye.’

  ‘Then we won’t say it,’ said Hal. His chest was so tight he could hardly breathe. ‘Travel safely, Meredith. Be happy.’

  She looked at him for one last moment, her vision swimming with unshed tears, and then she put on her sunglasses, took hold of her case blindly and walked away across the tarmac to the hut that passed as a terminal at Whyman’s Creek.

  Hal stood in the shade of the little plane and watched her disappear inside. A few minutes later the Darwin plane landed. It disgorged two passengers, and four more came out from the terminal and walked up the steps. Meredith’s walk was so familiar to him by now that he could have spotted her even in a crowd.

  He saw her hesitate at the bottom of the steps and glance his way, and he raised a hand to her. She lifted hers back and then went on up the steps and into the plane.

  Come back! Hal wanted to shout.

  He wanted to run over and pull her out, down the steps, back to Wirrindago, but the door was closing, the steps were being pushed back out of the way and the plane was taxiing to the end of the runway. It paused there for a moment and then launched itself forward, trundling faster and faster until, with a great heave, it lifted itself into the sky.

  His heart like a stone in his chest, Hal watched it climb higher and higher into the glare until it was no more than a speck, and then even that vanished. Only then did he get back into the plane and fly home to Wirrindago.

  Meredith tried. She really tried. She spent the long journey back to London telling herself that as soon as she got home, Hal and Wirrindago would be like a dream. It had only been a few weeks. How could it be more than a dream? It hadn’t been real. It had just been a time out of time, when she had played at being someone else for a while.