The skin of her palm was soft and warm, and he found himself wondering what it would feel like to have her massage the aching tension out of his neck.

He pulled his hand away, as if by doing so he could tug himself away from where his thoughts were wandering. It had been so long since he had felt a woman’s touch. For six long lonely years he had ignored the natural and instinctive stirrings of his body, distracting himself with work until there wasn’t time or energy to think about what he was missing.

No one in all that time had made his skin lift and tighten simultaneously at the merest touch. No one’s eyes had met his and seen more than he wanted them to see. No one’s smile had melted or even chipped at the stone of sadness that weighed down his soul.

But Dr Kellie Thorne, with her featherlight touch and caramel-brown eyes and beautiful smile, certainly came close.

Perhaps a little too close.

Melanie Milburne says: ‘I am married to a surgeon, Steve, and have two gorgeous sons, Paul and Phil. I live in Hobart, Tasmania, where I enjoy an active life as a long-distance runner and a nationally ranked top ten Master’s swimmer. I also have a Master’s Degree in Education, but my children totally turned me off the idea of teaching! When not running or swimming I write, and when I’m not doing all of the above I’m reading. And if someone could invent a way for me to read during a four-kilometre swim I’d be even happier!’

Recent titles by the same author:

Medical™ Romance SINGLE DAD SEEKS A WIFE (Brides of Penhally Bay) THE SURGEON BOSS’S BRIDE HER MAN OF HONOUR

Did you know that Melanie also writes for Modern™ Romance? Her stories have her trademark drama and passion, with the added promise of sexy Mediterranean heroes and all the glamour of Modern™ Romance!

Modern™ Romance THE FIORENZA FORCED MARRIAGE THE MARCIANO LOVE-CHILD

TOP-NOTCH DOC, OUTBACK BRIDE

BY

MELANIE MILBURNE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TOP-NOTCH DOC, OUTBACK BRIDE

To my dear friend and confidante

Fiona Abercrombie-Howroyd.

You never fail to amaze me with how you take life on

with both hands, and when someone raises the bar you

don’t balk but leap right over it. I am so proud of you

and both of your gorgeous boys.

CHAPTER ONE

IT WASN’T the worst flight Kellie had ever been on but it certainly came pretty close. The three-hour delay at Brisbane airport had been annoying enough, but when she had finally boarded the twenty-seat regional service area plane she found a man was already sitting in her window seat.

‘Er…excuse me,’ she said, holding her boarding pass up. ‘I think you are in the wrong seat. I am 10A, you must be 10B.’

The man looked up from the thick black book he was reading. ‘Would you like me to move?’ he asked in a tone that seemed to suggest he thought it would be totally unreasonable of her to expect him to unfold his long length from the cramped space he was currently jammed into.

Something about the slightly arrogant set to his features made Kellie respond tartly, ‘I do, actually, yes. I always have a window seat. I specifically ask for it each time. I feel claustrophobic if I can’t see outside.’

Using his boarding pass as a bookmark, the man got to his feet and squeezed out of the two-seat row, his tall figure towering over Kellie as he brushed past her to allow her room to get in.

She felt the warmth of his body and her nostrils began to flare slightly as she tried to place his aftershave. Living with six men had made her a bit of an expert on male colognes, but this time she couldn’t decide if the primary citrus scent was lime or lemon based.

She gave him a cool little smile and wriggled past him to sit down, but just as he was about to resume his seat she realised she didn’t have enough space under the seat in front for her handbag as well as her hand luggage. ‘Um…’ she said, swivelling back around to face him. ‘Would you mind putting this in the overhead locker for me?’

He did mind, Kellie could tell. He didn’t say a word but his impossibly dark blue eyes gave a small but still detectable roll of irritation as he took her bag and placed it in the compartment above.

He sat back down beside her and, methodically clipping his belt into place, returned to his book, his left arm resting on her armrest.

Kellie inwardly fumed. It happened just about every time she flew and it was always a man, although she couldn’t help noticing that this one was a great improvement on any of the passengers she’d been seated next to in the past. He even smelt a whole lot better too, she decided as she caught another faint but alluring whiff of lemon-lime as she leaned down to stuff her handbag underneath the seat in front.

While she was down there she noticed he was wearing elastic-sided boots. They weren’t dusty or particularly scuffed, which probably meant he was a cattle farmer who had dressed in his best to fly down to the big smoke on business and was now returning home. His long legs were encased in moleskin trousers and the sleeves of his light blue cotton shirt were rolled halfway up his lean but strong-looking and deeply tanned forearms.

Yep, definitely a farmer, Kellie decided, although she couldn’t see any sign of him having recently worn a hat. Didn’t all Queensland cattle farmers wear hats? she mused. She noted his dark brown hair wasn’t crumpled but neatly styled, so neatly styled, in fact, she could make out the tiny grooves from a recent comb that had passed through the thick wavy strands.

She sat back in her seat and for the sake of common politeness forced herself to give him a friendly smile. ‘Thank you for moving. I really appreciate it.’

His dark eyes met hers and assessed her for a moment before he grunted, ‘It’s fine,’ before his head went back to the book he was holding.

Right, then, Kellie thought sourly as she searched for both ends of her seat belt. Don’t make polite conversation with me, then. See if I care.

She gave the left hand belt end a little tug but it wouldn’t budge from where it was lodged. ‘Er…excuse me,’ she said with a frosty look his way. ‘You’re sitting on my seat belt.’

The man turned to look at her again, his tanned forehead frowning slightly. ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’ he asked.

Kellie pointed to the unclipped device in her hand. ‘I need the other end of this and, rather than go digging for it myself, I thought it would be polite to ask you to remove it yourself,’ she said with a pert tilt of her chin.

Another faint flicker of annoyance came and went in his gaze as he removed the buckle and strap from the back of his seat and handed it to her silently.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her fingers brushing against his in spite of her effort to avoid doing so. She gave her fingers a quick on-off clench to remove the tingling sensation the brief touch had caused, but still it lingered under the surface of her skin as if he had sent an electric charge right through her body.

That he wasn’t similarly affected couldn’t have been more obvious. He simply returned to his book, turning the next page and reading on with unwavering concentration, and even though the flight attendant asked for everyone’s attention while she went through the mandatory safety procedure, he remained engrossed in whatever he was reading.

Typical thinks-he-knows-it-all male, Kellie thought as she made a point of leaning forward with a totally absorbed expression on her face as the flight attendant rattled off her spiel, even though Kellie knew she herself was probably better qualified if an emergency were to occur given what had happened two years ago on another regional flight.

But, then, after four years in a busy GP practice she felt she had enough experience to handle most emergencies, although she had to admit her confidence would be little on the dented side without her well-equipped doctor’s bag at hand. But at least it was safely packed in the baggage hold along with her four cases to tide her over for the six-month locum in the Queensland outback, she reassured herself.

Once the flight attendant had instructed everyone to sit back and enjoy the one-and-a-half-hour flight to Culwulla Creek, Kellie took a couple of deep calming breaths as the plane began to head for the runway, the throb and choking roar of the engines doing nothing to allay her fears. She scrunched her eyes closed and in the absence of an available armrest clasped her hands in her lap.

You can do this. She ran through her usual pep talk. You’ve flown hundreds of times, even across time zones. You know the statistics: you have more chance of being killed on the way to and from the airport than during the actual flight. One little engine failure in the past doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again. Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice, right?

The plane rattled and rumbled down the runway, faster and faster, until finally putting its nose in the air and taking off, the heavy clunk of landing gear returning to its compartment making Kellie’s eyes suddenly spring open. ‘That was the landing gear, right?’ she asked the silent figure beside her. ‘Please, tell me that was the landing gear and not something else.’

The bluer-than-blue eyes stared unblinkingly at her for a moment before he answered. ‘Yes,’ he said, but this time his tone contained more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘That was the landing gear. All planes have it, even ones as small as this.’

‘I knew that,’ Kellie said huffily. ‘It’s just it sounded as if…you know…something wasn’t quite right.’

‘If everything wasn’t quite right, we would have turned back by now,’ he pointed out in an I-am-so-bored-with-this-conversation tone as he returned his attention to his book.

Kellie glanced surreptitiously at the book to see if she recognised the title but it wasn’t one she was familiar with. It had a boring sort of cover in any case, which probably meant he was a boring sort of person. Although he was a very good-looking boring person, she had to admit as she sneaked another little glance at his profile. He was in his early thirties, thirty-two or -three, she thought, and had a cleanly shaven chiselled jaw and a long straight nose. His lips were well shaped, but she couldn’t help thinking they looked as if they rarely made the effort to stretch into a smile.

Her gaze slipped to his hands where he was holding his book. He had long fingers, dusted with dark hair, and his nails were short but clean, which she found a little unusual for a cattle farmer. Didn’t they always have dust or cattle feed or farm machinery grease embedded around their cuticles? But perhaps he had been away for a week or two, enjoying the comforts of a city hotel, she thought.

Kellie shifted restlessly in her seat as the plane gained altitude, wondering how long it would be before the seat-belt sign went off so she could visit the lavatory. She mentally crossed her legs and looked down at her handbag wedged under the seat. She considered retrieving the magazine she had bought to read but just then the flight attendant announced that the captain had turned off the seat-belt sign so it was now safe to move about the cabin.

Kellie unclipped her belt and got to her feet. ‘Excuse me,’ she said with a sheepish look at the man sitting beside her. ‘I have to go to the toilet.’

His gaze collided with hers for another brief moment before he closed the book with exaggerated precision, unclipped his seat belt, unfolded himself from the seat and stood to one side, his expression now blank, although Kellie could again sense his irritation. She could feel it pushing against her, the invisible pressure making her want to shrink away from his presence.

She squeezed past him, sucking in her stomach and her chest in case she touched him inadvertently. ‘Thank you,’ she said, feeling her face beginning to redden. ‘I’ll try not to be too long.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ he said with a touch of dryness.

Kellie set her mouth and moved down the aisle, her back straight with pride, even though her face was feeling hot all over again. Get a grip, she told herself sternly. Don’t let him intimidate you. No doubt you’ll meet thousands…well, hundreds at least…of men just like him in the bush. Besides, wasn’t she some sort of expert on men?

Well…apart from that brief and utterly painful and totally embarrassing and ego-crushing episode with Harley Edwards—yes, she was.

When Kellie came back to her seat a few minutes later she felt more than a little relieved to find her co-passenger’s seat empty. She scanned the rest of the passenger rows to see if he had changed seats, but he was up at the front of the plane, bending down to talk to someone on the right-hand aisle.

Kellie sat back down and looked out of the window, the shimmering heat haze of the drought-stricken outback making her think a little longingly of the bustling-with-activity beach-side home in Newcastle in NSW she had left behind, not to mention her father and five younger brothers.

But it was well and truly time to move on; they needed to learn to stand on their own twelve feet, Kellie reminded herself. It was what her mother would have wanted her to do, to follow her own path, not to try and take up the achingly empty space her mother’s death had left behind six years ago.

The man returned to his seat just as the refreshment trolley made its way up the aisle. He barely glanced at her as he sat back down, but his elbow brushed against hers as he tried to commandeer the armrest.

Kellie gave him a sugar-sweet smile and kept her arm where it was. ‘You have one on the other side,’ she said.

The space between his dark brows narrowed slightly. ‘What?’

She pointed to the armrest on his right. ‘You have another armrest over there,’ she said.

There was a tight little silence.

‘So do you.’ He nodded towards the vacant armrest against the window.

‘Yes, but I don’t see why you get to have the choice of two,’ she returned. ‘Isn’t that rather selfish of you to automatically assume every available armrest is yours?’

‘I am not assuming anything,’ he said in a clipped tone, and, shifting his gaze from hers, reached for his book in the seat pocket, opened it and added, ‘If you want the armrest, have it. It makes no difference to me.’

Kellie watched him out of the corner of her eye as he read the next nine pages of his book. He was a very fast reader and the print was rather small, which impressed her considering how for years she’d had to bribe and threaten and cajole each of her brothers into reading anything besides the back of the cereal packet each morning.

The flight attendant approached and, smiling at Kellie, asked, ‘Would you like to purchase a drink or snack from the trolley this afternoon?’

Kellie smiled back as she undid the fold-down table. ‘I would love a diet cola with ice and lemon if you have it.’

The flight attendant handed her the plastic cup half-filled with ice and a tiny sliver of lemon before passing over the opened can of soda. ‘That will be three dollars,’ she said.

Kellie bit her lip. Her bag was stuffed as far under the seat in front as she could get it and, with the tray table down, retrieving it was going to take the sort of flexibility no one but Houdini possessed. ‘Er…would you mind holding these for me while I get my purse from my bag?’ she asked.

He took the cup and can with a little roll-like flutter of his eyelids but didn’t say a word.

Kellie rummaged in her bag for her purse and finally found the right change but in passing it over to the flight attendant somehow knocked the opened can of cola out of the man’s hand and straight into his lap.

‘What the—’ He bit back the rough expletive that had come to his lips and glared at her as he got to his feet, the dark bubbles of liquid soaking through his moleskins like a pool of blood.

‘Oops…’ Kellie said a little lamely.

‘I’ll get some paper towels for you, Dr McNaught,’ the flight attendant said, and rushed away.

Kellie sat in gob-smacked silence as the name filtered through her brain.

Dr McNaught?

She swallowed to get her heart to return to its rightful place in her chest. It couldn’t be…could it?

Dr Matthew McNaught?

She blinked and looked up at him, wincing slightly as she encountered his diamond-hard dark blue glare. ‘You’re Dr Matthew McNaught?’ she asked, ‘from the two-GP practice in Culwulla Creek?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his lips pulled tight. ‘Let me guess,’ he added with a distinct curl of his top lip. ‘You’re the new locum, right?’

Kellie felt herself sink even further into the limited space available. ‘Y-yes,’ she squeaked. ‘How did you guess?’

CHAPTER TWO

THE flight attendant came bustling back just then with a thick wad of paper towels and Kellie watched helplessly as Dr McNaught mopped up what he could of the damage.

‘I hope it doesn’t stain,’ Kellie said, trying not to stare too long at his groin. ‘I’ll pay for dry-cleaning costs of course.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘Besides, there’s no dry cleaner in Culwulla Creek. There’s not even a laundromat.’

‘Oh…’ Kellie said, wondering not for the first time what she had flung herself into by agreeing to this post. ‘I’m not usually so clumsy. I have a very steady hand normally.’

He gave her a sweeping glance before he resumed his seat. ‘You’re going to need it out here,’ he said. ‘The practice serves an area covering several hundred square kilometres. The nearest hospital is in Roma but all the emergency or acute cases have to be flown to Brisbane. It’s not going to be a walk in the park, I can tell you.’

‘I never for a moment thought it would be,’ Kellie said, a little miffed that he obviously thought her a city girl with no practical skills. ‘I’m used to hard work.’

‘Have you worked in a remote outback area before?’ he asked.

Kellie hesitated over her answer. She was thinking her six-week stint in Tamworth in northern New South Wales probably wouldn’t qualify. It was a regional area, not exactly the outback. ‘Um…not really,’ she said. ‘But I’m keen to learn the ropes.’

His eyes studied her for a moment. ‘What made you decide to take this post?’ he asked.

‘I liked the sound of working in the bush,’ she answered. And I desperately needed to get away from my family and my absolutely disastrous love life, she mentally tacked on. ‘And six months will just fly by, I imagine.’

‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,’ he said. ‘The hours are long and the cases sometimes difficult to manage, with the issues of distance and limited resources.’

‘So who is holding the fort right now?’ she asked.

‘There’s a semi-retired GP, David Cutler, who fills in occasionally,’ he said. ‘He runs a clinic once a month to keep up his skills but his health isn’t good. His wife, Trish, is the practice receptionist and we have one nurse, Rosie Duncan. We could do with more but that’s the way it is out here.’

Kellie let a little silence slip past before she asked. ‘How long have you been at Culwulla Creek?’

His gaze remained focused on the book in the seat pocket in front of him. ‘Six years,’ he answered.

‘Wow, you must really love it out here,’ she said.

He hesitated for a mere sliver of a second before he answered, ‘Yes.’

Kellie watched as his expression closed off like a pair of curtains being pulled across a window. She had seen that look before, far too many times, in fact, on the faces of her father and brothers whenever she happened to nudge in under their emotional radar. It was a male thing. They liked to keep some things private and somehow she suspected Dr Matthew McNaught, too, had quite a few no-go areas.

‘By the way, I’m Kellie Thorne,’ she said offering him her hand.

His hand was cool and firm as it briefly took hers. ‘Matthew McNaught, but Matt’s fine.’

‘Matt, then,’ she said, smiling.

He didn’t return her smile.

‘So…’ She rolled her lips together and began again. ‘Do you have a family out here with you? A wife and kids perhaps?’

‘No.’

Kellie was starting to see why he hadn’t been successful thus far in landing himself a life partner. In spite of his good looks he had no personality to speak of. She felt like a tennis-ball throwing machine—she kept sending conversation starters his way but he didn’t make any effort to return them.

Not only that, he hadn’t once looked at her with anything remotely resembling male interest. Kellie knew she was being stupidly insecure thanks to her disastrous relationship—if you could call it that—with Harley Edwards, but surely Matt McNaught could have at least done a double-take, like the young pilot had on the tarmac before they had boarded the plane.

Kellie had looked in enough mirrors in her time to know none of them were in any danger of breaking any time soon. She had her mother’s slim but still femininely curvy figure and her chestnut brown hair was mid-length, with just a hint of a wave running through it. Her toffee-brown eyes had thick sooty lashes, which saved her a fortune in mascara. Her teeth were white and straight thanks to two and a half years of torture wearing braces when she’d been in her teens, and her skin was clear and naturally sun-kissed from spending so much time with her brothers at the beach.

Maybe he was gay, she pondered as she watched him read another chapter of his book. That would account for the zero interest. Anyway, she wasn’t out here on the hunt for a love life, far from it. So what if her one and only lover had bludgeoned her self-esteem? She didn’t need to find a replacement just to prove he was a two-timing sleazeball jerk with…

OK. That’s enough, Kellie chided herself as she wriggled again to get comfortable. Get over it. Harley probably hasn’t given you another thought since that morning you arrived to find him in bed with his secretary. Kellie winced at the memory and looked out of the window again, letting out the tiniest of sighs.

This locum position couldn’t have come at a better time and the short time was perfect. Living in the outback for a lengthy time was definitely not her thing. She would see the six months out but no longer. She had been a beach chick from birth. She had more bikinis than most women had shoes. Not only that, she was a fully qualified lifesaver, the sound of the ocean like a pulse in her blood. This would be the longest period she had been away from the coast but it would be worth it if it achieved what she hoped it would achieve.

The seat-belt light suddenly came on and the captain announced that there might be some stronger than normal turbulence ahead.

Kellie turned to Matthew with wide eyes. ‘Do you think we’ll be all right?’ she asked.

He looked at her as if she had grown a third eye. ‘You have flown before, haven’t you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but not usually in something this small,’ she confessed.

He let out a sound, something between derision and incredulity. ‘You do realise you will be flying in a Beechcraft twin engine plane at least once if not three or four times a month, don’t you? It’s called the Royal Flying Doctor Service and out here lives depend on it.’

Kellie gave a gulping swallow as the plane gave a stomach-dropping lurch. ‘I know, but someone will have to stay at the practice surely? Tim Montgomery said it in one of the letters he sent,’ she said. Biting her lip, she added, ‘I was kind of hoping that could be me.’

His eyes gave a little roll. ‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ she asked, wincing as the plane shifted again.

His blue eyes clashed momentarily with hers. ‘This is no doubt Tim and his wife Claire’s doing,’ he said. ‘I asked for someone with plenty of outback experience and instead what do I get?’

‘You get me,’ Kellie said with a hitch of her chin. ‘I’ve been in practice for four years and I’m EMST trained.’

‘And you have a fear of flying.’ He settled his shoulders back against the seat. ‘Great.’

Kellie gritted her teeth. ‘I do not have a fear of flying. I’ve been on heaps of flights. I even went to New Zealand last year.’

She could tell he wasn’t impressed. He gave her another rolled-eye look and turned back to his book.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked, after the turbulence had faded and the seat-belt light had been turned off again. Talking was good. It helped to keep her calm. It helped her not to notice all those suspicious mechanical noises.

‘It’s a book on astronomy,’ he said without looking up from the pages.

‘Is it any good?’

Matt let out a frustrated sigh and turned to look at her. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Would you like to borrow it?’ Anything to shut you up, he thought. What was it with this young woman? Didn’t she see he was in no mood for idle conversation? And what the hell was she doing, arriving a week earlier than expected?

She shook her head. ‘Nope, I don’t do heavy stuff any more. The only things I read now are medical journals and magazines and the occasional light novel.’

‘I’m doing a degree in astronomy online through Swinburne University,’ Matt said, hoping she would take the hint and let him get on with his chapter on globular clusters. ‘There’s a lot of reading, and I have an exam coming up.’

‘You’re a very fast reader,’ she said. ‘Have you done a speed-reading course or something?’

Matt’s eyes were starting to feel strained from the repeated rolling. ‘No, it’s just that I enjoy reading,’ he said. ‘It fills in the time.’

‘So it’s pretty quiet out here, huh?’ she asked.

Matt looked at her again, really looked at her this time. She had a pretty heart-shaped face and her eyes were an unusual caramel brown. He couldn’t quite decide how long her hair was as she had it sort of twisted up in a haphazard ponytail-cum-knot at the back of her head, but it was glossy and thick and there was plenty of it, and every now and again he caught of whiff of the honeysuckle fragrance of her shampoo.

She had a nice figure, trim and toned and yet feminine in all the right places. Her mouth was a little on the pouting side, he’d noticed earlier, but when she smiled it reminded him of a ray of bright sunshine breaking through dark clouds.

‘No, it’s not exactly quiet,’ he answered. ‘It’s different, that’s all.’

She gave him another little smile. ‘So no nightclubs and five-star restaurants, right?’

Matt felt a familiar tight ache deep inside his chest and looked away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No nightclubs, no cinemas, no fine dining, no twenty-four-hour trading.’ And no Madeleine, he added silently.

‘What about taxis?’ she asked after a short pause. ‘Do you have any of those?’

His eyes came back to hers. ‘No, but I can give you a lift to Tim and Claire’s house. I take it that’s where you’re staying?’

She nodded. ‘It was so kind of them to offer their house and the use of their car while I’m here. They sent me the keys in the mail. Believe me, that would never happen in the city. People don’t lend you anything, especially virtual strangers.’

Matt wondered again what had attracted her to the post. He even wondered if Tim and Claire and Trish had colluded to make the job as attractive as possible in order to secure a female GP, a young and single female GP at that—or so he assumed from her ring-free fingers.

‘So what do people do out here in their spare time?’ she asked. ‘Apart from reading, of course.’

‘Most of the locals are on the land,’ he said. ‘They have plenty to do to keep them occupied, especially with this drought going on and on.’

‘That’s what I thought you were at first,’ she said. ‘I had you pegged as a cattle farmer.’

‘I’ve actually got a few hectares of my own,’ he said, doing his best to ignore the brilliance of her smile. ‘I bought them a couple of years back off an elderly farmer who needed to sell in a hurry. I’ve got some breeding stock I’m trying to keep going until we get some decent rain.’

‘Is that where you live?’

‘Yes, it’s only a few minutes out of town.’

‘So do you have horses and stuff?’ she asked.

Matt looked longingly at his book. ‘Yeah, a couple, but they’re pretty wild.’

‘I love horses,’ she said, snuggling into her seat again. ‘I used to ride a bit as a child.’

The captain announced that they were preparing to land and she looked out of the window at the barren landscape. ‘So where’s the creek?’ she asked, and, turning back to him, continued, ‘I mean, there has to be a creek somewhere. Culwulla Creek must be named after a creek, right?’

Matt only just managed to control the urge to roll his eyes heavenwards yet again. ‘Yes, there is, but it’s practically dry. There’s been barely a trickle of water for more than three years.’

Her face fell a little. ‘Oh…that’s a shame.’

‘Why is that?’ he found himself asking, even though he really didn’t want to know.

‘I live by the beach,’ she said. ‘I swim every day, rain or shine.’

Matt felt his chest tighten again. Madeleine had loved swimming. ‘That’s one hobby you’ll have to suspend while you’re out here,’ he said in a flat, emotionless tone. ‘That is, unless it rains.’

‘Oh, well, then,’ she said with a bright optimistic smile. ‘I’d better start doing a rain dance or something. Who knows what might happen?’

Who indeed, Matt thought as the plane descended to land.

Kellie unclipped her seat belt once the plane had landed and reached for her handbag. Matt had risen to retrieve her bulging cabin bag from the overhead locker and silently handed it to her before he took out his own small overnight travel case.

‘So how far is it to town?’ she asked as they walked across the blistering heat of the tarmac as few minutes later.

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Tim and Claire’s house is a couple of streets away from the practice, isn’t it?’ she asked as they waited for her luggage to be unloaded.

‘Yes.’

She waved away a fly. ‘Gosh, it’s awfully hot, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Right, Kellie thought, that’s it. I’m not even going to try and make conversation. She’d spent the last six years with a house full of monosyllabic males—the last thing she needed was another one in her life.

She looked up to see an older woman in her mid-fifties coming towards them. ‘How did the weekend go, Matt?’ she asked in a gentle, concerned voice.

Kellie watched as Matt moved his lips into a semblance of a smile but it was gone before it had time to settle long enough to transform his features.

‘It was OK,’ he said. ‘John and Mary-Anne were very welcoming as usual, but you know how it is.’

The older woman grimaced in empathy. ‘It’s tough on everyone. Birthdays are the worst.’

‘Yeah,’ he said with another attempt at a smile. ‘They are.’

Kellie was intrigued with the little exchange but before she had time to speculate any further, the older woman glanced past Matt’s broad shoulder and smiled. ‘Well, hello there,’ she said. ‘Welcome to Culwulla Creek. Are you a tourist or visiting a friend?’

‘I’m the new locum filling in for Tim Montgomery,’ Kellie said, extending her hand. ‘I’m Kellie Thorne.’

‘Oh, my goodness, aren’t you gorgeous?’ the woman gushed as she grasped both of Kellie’s hands in her soft motherly ones. ‘I had no idea they had someone so young and attractive in mind.’

Kellie felt her face go hot but it had nothing to do with the furnace-like temperature of the October afternoon. She smiled self-consciously as she felt the press of Matt McNaught’s gaze as if he was assessing her physical attributes for the first time.

‘I’m Ruth Williams,’ the older woman said. ‘It’s wonderful you could come to fill in for Tim while he and Claire are overseas. So tell me, where are you from?’

‘Newcastle, in NSW. I did my medical training and internship there as well,’ Kellie answered.

Ruth smiled with genuine warmth. ‘What a thrill to have you here. We’ve never had a female GP before, have we, Matt?’

‘No,’ Matt said, frowning when he saw the luggage trailer lumbering towards them. In amongst the usual assortment of black and brown and battered bags with a few tattered ribbons attached to various handles to make identification easier, there were four hot pink suitcases, each of which looked as if their fastenings were being stretched to the limit.

Kellie followed the line of his gaze and mentally grimaced. Maybe she had overdone it on the packing thing, she thought. But how was a girl to survive six months in the bush without all the feminine accoutrements?

‘I take it these are yours?’ Matt asked, as he nodded towards the trailer.

She captured her bottom lip for a second. ‘I have a problem travelling lightly. I’ve been working on it but I guess I’m not quite there, huh?’

He didn’t roll his eyes but he came pretty close, Kellie thought but she also thought, she saw his lips twitch slightly, which for some inexplicable reason secretly delighted her.

‘It’s all right, Dr Thorne,’ Ruth piped up. ‘Dr McNaught has a four-wheel-drive vehicle so it will all fit in.’

‘Er…great,’ Kellie said, watching fixatedly as Matt’s biceps bulged as he lifted each case off the trailer.

‘I’m afraid there are no basic foodstuffs at Tim and Claire’s house,’ Ruth said with a worried pleat of her brow. ‘I would have bought you some milk and bread but we thought you were coming next week so I didn’t organise anything, and the corner store will be closed by now.’

‘It’s all right,’ Kellie assured her. ‘I had lots of nibbles in the members’ lounge while I waited for the flight to be called and I’ve got some chocolate in one of my bags. My brothers gave it to me. That will tide me over.’

‘That was sweet of them,’ Ruth said. ‘How many brothers do you have?’

‘I have five,’ Kellie answered, ‘all younger than me.’

Ruth’s eyes bulged. ‘Five? Oh, dear, your poor mother. How on earth does she cope?’

Kellie concentrated on securing her handbag over her shoulder as she reached for one of the pink suitcases. ‘She died six years ago,’ she said, stripping her voice of the raw emotion she—in spite of all her efforts—still occasionally felt. ‘That’s why I took this outback post.’ Or, at least, one of the reasons, she thought. ‘My father and brothers have become a bit too dependent on me,’ she said. ‘I think they need to learn to take more responsibility for themselves. It’s well and truly time to move on, don’t you think?’

Matt still wore a blank expression but Ruth touched Kellie on the arm and gave it a gentle comforting squeeze, her warm brown eyes misting slightly. ‘Not everyone moves on at the same pace, my dear, but it’s wise that you’re giving them the opportunity,’ she said. ‘It’s very brave of you to come so far from home. I hope it works out for you and for them.’

‘Thank you,’ Kellie said, glancing at the tall, silent figure standing nearby, his expression still shuttered. ‘I hope so, too.’

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS quite a juggling act, getting the whole of Kellie’s luggage into the back of Matt’s vehicle, even though he had only his carry-on bag with him. But there were other things in the rear of his car—tow ropes, a spare tyre and what looked to be his doctor’s bag, as it was very similar to hers, and a big box of mechanical tools, as well as a few pieces of hay scattered about.

Kellie stood to one side as he jostled everything into position and once the hatchback was closed she moved to the passenger side, but before she could open the door he had got there first and opened it for her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, feeling a little taken aback by his courteous gesture. Over the years she had become so used to her brothers diving into the family people-mover, each vying for the best seat with little regard for her comfort, that his gallantry took her completely by surprise.

‘Mrs Williams seems like a lovely lady,’ she said as she caught sight of the older woman driving off ahead of them to the road leading to town. ‘Did she come out to the airport just to see you? She doesn’t appear to have picked anyone up.’

‘Ruth Williams comes out to meet every flight,’ Matt said as he shifted the gears. ‘She’s been doing it for years.’

‘Why is that?’ Kellie asked, turning to look at him.

His gaze never wavered from the road ahead. ‘Her teenage daughter disappeared twenty years ago. Ruth has never quite given up hope that one day Tegan will get off one of the thrice-weekly flights, so she meets each one just in case.’

Kellie frowned. ‘How terribly sad. Did her daughter run away or was it likely to have been something more sinister?’

His dark blue eyes met hers for a moment before returning to the long straight stretch of road ahead. ‘She went missing without trace,’ he said. ‘As far as I know, the case is still open.’

‘Did she go missing from here?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘She was fourteen, nearly fifteen years old. She caught the bus home from school, she was seen walking along the main street at around four-thirty and then she disappeared. No one has seen or heard from her since. The police lost valuable time thinking it was just another bored country kid running away from home. Tegan had run away a couple of times before. Ruth’s now late husband, Tegan’s stepfather, apparently wasn’t the easiest man to live with. It was understandable that they assumed the girl had hitched a ride out of town. She was a bit of a rebel around these parts, truanting, shoplifting, driving without a licence, that sort of thing.’

‘But no one’s ever found out what happened to her?’ Kellie asked with a frown.

He shook his head. ‘There was no sign of a struggle or blood where she was last seen alive and her stepfather had an iron-clad alibi once the police got around to investigating things a little more thoroughly. And, of course, even after two decades there has been no sign of her body.’

Kellie was still frowning. ‘So after all these years Ruth doesn’t really know if her daughter is alive or dead?’ she asked.

‘No, but, as I said, she lives in hope.’

‘But that’s awful!’ she said. ‘At least when my mum died we had a few months’ warning. I miss her terribly but at least I know where she is. I was there when she took her last breath and I was there when the coffin was lowered in the ground.’

Matt felt his gut clench but fought against it. ‘What did your mother die of?’ he asked.

‘Pancreatic cancer,’ she said. ‘She became jaundiced overnight and started vomiting and within three days we had the diagnosis.’

‘How long did she have?’

‘Five months,’ she said. ‘I took time off from my surgical term to nurse her. She died in my arms…’

Matt felt a lump the size of a boulder lodge in his throat. ‘At least you were there,’ he said, his tone sounding rough around the edges. ‘Spouses and relatives don’t always get there in time.’

‘Yes…’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘At least I was there…’

Silence followed for several minutes.

‘So where did you go on the weekend?’ Kellie asked.

Matt’s hands tightened fractionally on the steering-wheel. ‘I went to visit some…’ He paused briefly over the word. ‘Friends in Brisbane. It was their daughter’s thirtieth birthday.’

‘It was my birthday a week ago,’ Kellie said. ‘I’m twenty-nine—the big one is next year. I’m kind of dreading it, to tell you the truth. My family wants me to have a big party but I’m not sure I want to go to all that fuss.’ She swung her gaze his way again. ‘So was your friend’s daughter’s party a big celebration?’

His eyes were trained on the road ahead but Kellie noticed he was gripping the steering-wheel as if it was a lifeline. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was very small.’

Another silence ticked away.

‘How old are your brothers?’ Matt broke it by asking.

‘Alistair and Josh are twins,’ she said. ‘They’re four years younger than me at twenty-five. Sebastian, but we always call him Seb, is twenty-three, Nick’s twenty and Cain is nineteen.’

‘Do they all still live at home?’

‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘They’re a bit like homing pigeons—or maybe more like locusts—swooping in, eating all the food and then moving on again.’

Matt noticed her fond smile and marvelled at the difference between his life and hers. He had grown up as an only child to parents who had eventually divorced when he’d been seven. He had never quite forgiven his mother for leaving his father with a small child to rear. And his father had never quite forgiven him for being a small, dependent, somewhat insecure and shy boy, which had made things even more difficult and strained between them. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to either of his parents. They hadn’t even met Madeleine.

‘What about you?’ Kellie asked. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

‘Are both your parents still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you ever answer a question with more than one word?’ she asked.

The distance between his brows decreased. ‘When I think it’s appropriate,’ he said.

‘You’re not the easiest person to talk to,’ she said. ‘I’m used to living in a household of six men where I have to shout to get a word in edgeways, unless they’re in one of their non-communicative moods. Talking to you is like getting blood out of a stone.’

Matt felt his shoulders tensing. ‘I’m not a chit-chat person. If you don’t like it, tough. Find someone else’s ear to chew off.’

She sent him a reproachful look. ‘The least you could do is make some sort of an effort to make me feel at home here. This is a big thing for me. I’m the one who’s put myself out to come here to fill a vacancy, a vacancy, I might add, that isn’t generally easy to fill. Outback postings are notoriously difficult to attract doctors to, especially given the timeframe of this one. You should be grateful I’ve put my hand up so willingly. Not many people would.’

‘I am very grateful, Dr Thorne, but I had absolutely nothing to do with your appointment and I have some serious doubts about your suitability.’

‘What?’ she said, with an affronted glare. ‘Who are you to decide whether I’m suitable or not?’

‘I think you’ve been sent here for the wrong reasons,’ he said.

Kellie frowned at him. ‘The wrong reasons? What on earth do you mean? I’m a GP with all the right qualifications and I’ve worked in a busy practice in Newcastle for four years.’

He was still looking at the road ahead but she noticed his knuckles were now almost white where he was gripping the steering-wheel. ‘This is a rough-and-tough area,’ he said. ‘You’re probably used to the sort of facilities that are just not available out here. Sometimes we lose patients not because of their injuries or illnesses but because we can’t get them to help in time. We do what we can with what we’ve got, but it can do in even the most level-headed person at times.’

Kellie totally understood where he was coming from. She had met plenty of paramedics and trauma surgeons during her various terms to know that working at the coal face of tragedy was no picnic. But she had toughened up over the years of her training and with the help of her friends and family had come to a point in her life where she felt compelled to do her bit in spite of the sleepless nights that resulted. She had wanted to be a doctor all her life. She loved taking care of people and what better way to do that than out in the bush where patients were not just patients but friends as well?

‘Contrary to what you think, I believe I’ll manage just fine,’ she said. ‘But if you think it’s so rough and tough out here, why have you stayed here so long?’

‘I would hardly describe six years as a long time,’ he said, without glancing her way.

‘Are you planning to stay here indefinitely?’ she asked.

‘It depends.’

‘On what?’

He threw her an irritated look. ‘Has anyone ever told you you ask too many questions?’

Kellie bristled with anger. ‘Well, sor-ry for trying to be friendly. Sheesh! You take the quiet, silent type to a whole new level.’

He let out a sigh and sent her a quick, unreadable glance. ‘Look, it’s been a long, tiring weekend. All I can think about right now is getting home and going to bed.’

‘Do you live alone?’ she asked.

His eyes flickered upwards, his hands still tight on the steering-wheel. ‘Yes.’

Kellie looked out at the dusty, arid landscape; even the red river gums lining the road looked gnarled with thirst. ‘I guess this isn’t such a great place to meet potential partners,’ she mused. Swivelling her head to look at him again, she added, ‘I read this article in a women’s magazine about men in the bush and how hard it is for them to find a wife. It’s not like in the city where there are clubs and pubs and gyms and so on. Out here it’s just miles and miles of bush between neighbours and towns.’

‘I’m not interested in finding a wife,’ he said with an implacable edge to his tone.

‘It seems a pretty bleak existence,’ she remarked as the tiny township came into view. ‘Don’t you want more for your life?’

His dark blue eyes collided with hers. ‘If you don’t like it here, there’s another plane out at five p.m. on Saturday.’

She sent him a determined look. ‘I am here for six months, Dr McNaught, so you’d better get used to it. I’m not a quitter and even though you are the most unfriendly colleague I’ve ever met, I’m not going to be run out of town just because you have a chip on your shoulder about women.’

His brows snapped together irritably. ‘I do not have a chip on my shoulder about women.’

Kellie tossed her head and looked out at the small strip of shops that lined both sides of the impossibly wide street. It was certainly nothing like she was used to, even though Newcastle was nowhere near the size of Sydney or Melbourne, or even for that matter Brisbane.

Culwulla Creek had little more than a general store, which was now closed, a small hardware centre, a hamburger café, a service station, a tiny school and a rundown-looking pub that was currently booming with business.

‘The clinic is just over there in that small cottage,’ Matt said, pointing to the left-hand side of the road just before the pub. ‘I’ll get Trish to show you around in the next day or so once you’ve settled in at the Montgomerys’ house.’

As they drove past the pub, people were spilling out on the street, stubbies of beer in hand, squinting against the late afternoon sunlight.

‘G’day, Dr McNaught,’ one man wearing an acubra hat and a cast on his right arm called out. ‘How was your weekend in the big smoke?’

‘Shut up, Bluey,’ another man said, elbowing his mate in the ribs.

Matt slowed the car down and leaned forward slightly to look past Kellie in the passenger seat. ‘It was fine. How’s your arm?’

The man with the hat lifted his can of beer with his other arm and grinned. ‘I can still hold my beer so I must be all right.’

Kellie witnessed the first genuine smile crack Matt’s face and her heart did a funny little jerk behind her chest wall. His dark blue eyes crinkled up at the corners, his lean jaw relaxed and his usually furrowed brow smoothed out, making his already attractive features heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

‘Take it easy, Bluey,’ he said, still smiling. ‘It was a bad break and you’ll need the full six weeks to rest it.’

‘I’m resting it,’ Bluey assured him, and peered through the passenger window. ‘So who’s the little lady?’

‘This is Dr Thorne,’ Matt said, his smile instantly disappearing. ‘She’s the new locum.’

Kellie lifted her hand in a fingertip wave. ‘Hi, there.’

Bluey’s light blue eyes twinkled. ‘G’day, Dr Thorne. How about joining us for a drink to get to know the locals?’

‘I have to get her settled into Tim and Claire’s house,’ Matt said before Kellie could respond. ‘She has a lot of baggage.’

Kellie glowered at him before turning back to smile at Bluey. ‘I would love to join you all,’ she said. ‘What time does the pub close?’

Bluey grinned from ear to ear. ‘We’ll keep it open just for you, Dr Thorne.’

Matt drove on past the tiny church and cemetery before turning right into a pepper corn-tree-lined street. ‘Tim and Claire’s house is the cream one,’ he said. ‘The car will be in the garage.’

Kellie looked at the cottage with interest and trepidation. It was a three-bedroom weatherboard with a corrugated-tin roof, a large rainwater tank on one side and a shady verandah wrapped around the outside of the house. There was no garden to speak of, but not for want of trying, she observed as she noted the spindly skeletons of what looked to be some yellowed sweet peas clinging listlessly to the mid-height picket fence. There were several pots on the verandah that had suffered much the same fate, and the patchy and parched lawn looked as if it could do with a long soak and a decent trim. There were other similar cottages further along the street, although both of the houses either side of the Montgomerys’ appeared to be vacant.

Fixing an I-can-get-through-this-for-six-months expression on her face, Kellie rummaged for the keys she had been sent in the post as Matt began to unload the luggage. She walked up to the front door and searched through the array of keys to find the right one, but with little success. She was down to the last three when she felt Matt come up behind her.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me.’

Kellie felt the brush of his arm against her waist as he took the keys and her heart did another little uncoordinated skip in her chest. She watched as his long, tanned fingers selected the right key and inserted it into the lock, turning it effortlessly before pushing the door open for her.

‘You go in and have a look around while I bring in your bags,’ he said as he opened the meter box near the door and turned a switch. ‘The hot water will take a couple of hours to heat but everything else should be OK. There’s an air-conditioning control panel in the lounge, which serves the main living area of the house.’

Kellie looked guiltily towards his car where her bags were lined up behind the open hatchback. ‘I don’t expect you to be my slave,’ she said. ‘I can carry my own bags inside.’

‘Then you must be a whole lot stronger than you look because I nearly bulged a disc loading them in there in the first place.’

She put her hands on her hips as if she was admonishing one of her younger brothers. ‘I am here for half a year, you know,’ she said. ‘I need lots of stuff, especially out here.’

‘I hate to be the one to tell you this but the sort of stuff you need to survive out here can’t be packed into four hot pink suitcases, Dr Thorne,’ Matt said, stepping back down off the verandah to his car.

‘What is it with you?’ she asked, following him to his car in quick angry strides. ‘You seem determined to turn me off this appointment before I’ve even started.’

Matt carried two of her cases to the verandah as she yapped at his heels like a small terrier. She was exactly what this town didn’t need, he thought. No, strike that—she was exactly what he didn’t need right now. He wasn’t ready. He wondered if he ever would be ready and yet…

‘Give me that bag,’ she demanded. ‘Now.’

Matt mentally rolled his eyes. She looked so fierce standing there with her hands on her slim-as-a-boy’s hips, her toffee-brown eyes flashing. For a tiny moment she reminded him of…

He gave himself a hard mental slap and handed her one of the bags. ‘I’ll bring in the rest,’ he said. ‘And watch out for snakes as you go in.’

She stopped in mid-stride, her hand falling away from the handle of her bag. ‘Snakes?’ she asked. ‘You mean…’ She visibly gulped. ‘Inside?’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘SNAKES are attracted to water,’ he said as he picked up another one of her bags. ‘This has been one of the longest droughts in history. They can slink in under doors in search of a dripping tap. One of the locals had one come in under the door a few blocks from here. They lost their Jack Russell terrier as a result. I just thought I’d warn you. It’s better to be safe than sorry.’

Kellie eyed the open front door with wide, uncertain eyes. Snakes were fine in their place, which for her had up until this point been behind a thick sheet of glass at a zoological park. She had never met one in the wild, and had certainly never envisaged meeting one in her living space. She was OK with rats and mice; she was even fine with spiders—but snakes?

She suppressed a little shudder and straightened her shoulders as she faced him coming up the verandah steps with a bag in each hand. ‘I suppose the next thing you’ll be telling me is the house is haunted.’

Something shifted at the back of his eyes. ‘No, it’s not haunted,’ he said, and moved past her to take the bags he was carrying to one of the bedrooms off the passage.

Kellie followed him gingerly down the hallway, her eyes darting sideways for any sign of a black or brown coil lying in wait to strike, but to her immense relief nothing seemed to be amiss. It looked and felt like any other house that had been unoccupied for a while—the air a little hot and stale and the blinds down over the windows, which added to the general sense of abandonment.

The sudden wave of homesickness that assailed her was almost overwhelming. A house was meant to be a home but it couldn’t be that without people in it and she—for the next few months—was going to be the only person inside this house.

It was a daunting thought, Kellie realised as she wandered into the kitchen. The layout was modern but very basic, as if Tim and Claire Montgomery had not wanted to waste money on top-notch appliances and joinery.

The rest of the house was similar, tasteful but modestly decorated, the furniture a little dated though comfortable-looking.

Matt came back in with the last of her bags and put them in the largest of the three bedrooms before he came back out to the sitting room where she was trying to undo one of the two windows. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

‘I want to air the house but I think this window is stuck,’ she said giving it another rattle.

‘Here, let me have a go.’

Kellie stepped back as he worked on the latch and pushed the window upwards with his shoulder, the timber frame creaking in protest.

‘It needs to be shaved back a bit,’ he said, inspecting the inner section of the window. ‘I’ll send someone around to fix it for you.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate it.’

He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Flipping it open, he pulled out a business card and handed it to her. ‘Here are my home and mobile and the clinic numbers.’

Kellie caught a brief glimpse of a photograph of a young woman just before he closed his wallet. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

His expression closed down and his tone was guarded and clipped as he responded, ‘Who is who?’

‘The woman in your wallet,’ she said.

His brows moved together in a frown. ‘Do you make it a habit of prying into people’s wallets?’ he asked.

‘I wasn’t prying,’ she protested. ‘You had it open so I looked.’

‘Would you like to count how much money I have in there while you’re at it, Dr Thorne?’ he asked with a sardonic curl of his lip.

Kellie glared up at him. ‘If that is your girlfriend in your wallet then I don’t know what on earth she sees in you,’ she said. ‘You’re the most obnoxiously unfriendly man I’ve ever met and let me tell you I’ve met plenty. I just didn’t realise I had to travel quite this far to meet yet another one.’

Blue eyes battled with brown in a crackling-with-tension silence that seemed to go on indefinitely.

Kellie was determined not to look away first. She was used to the stare-downs of her brothers but something about Matthew McNaught’s midnight-blue gaze as it wrestled with hers caught her off guard. She found herself blushing and averted her head in case he saw it. ‘Thank you for the lift and bringing in my bags,’ she said in a curt tone. ‘No doubt I’ll see you at the clinic some time.’

‘Yes, I expect you will.’ His tone was equally brusque.

Kellie listened as his footsteps echoed down the hall. She heard the screen door squeak open and close and then the creak of the weathered timber of the verandah as he stepped on it before going down the three steps leading to the pathway to the gate. She heard his car start then the grab of the wheels on the gravel as he backed out of the driveway and the growl of the diesel engine as he drove back the way they had come, turning right, away from town at the corner.

And then all Kellie could hear was the sound of her own breathing. It seemed faster than normal and her heart felt like it was skipping every now and again just to keep up.

She turned from the window and looked at the space where moments before Matt had been standing, frowning at her, those incredibly blue eyes searing and yet shadowed at the same time…

A sudden knock on the front door made her nearly jump out of her skin but when she heard Ruth Williams’s friendly voice calling out, her panic quickly subsided. ‘Dr Thorne? I managed to get some milk and bread for you. I rang Cheryl Yates who runs the general store and she made up a survival pack for you. You can pay her later.’

Kellie pushed open the screen door. ‘That was very thoughtful of you both.’

‘Not at all,’ Ruth said, handing over the basket of groceries.

‘Please come in,’ Kellie said. ‘I’m still finding my way around but I can rustle us up a cup of tea if you’d like one.’

‘I would love one,’ Ruth said, puffing slightly. ‘I think Cheryl’s even put some of those fancy teabags in here somewhere and some chocolate biscuits. You’d better put them in the fridge, though, as this heat would melt stone.’

‘Yes, it is rather hot, isn’t it?’ Kellie answered as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘But I’m sure I’ll get used to it in a day or two.’

‘You know when you first stepped off the plane with Dr McNaught I thought I was seeing a ghost,’ Ruth said as she started to help unpack the groceries.

Kellie turned and looked at her. ‘A ghost?’

Ruth’s smile had a hint of sadness about it. ‘Yes. Although your hair is a different colour, you reminded me a bit of Madeleine,’ she said, ‘Dr McNaught’s fiancée.’

Kellie felt her eyes widen in surprise. No wonder he’d said he wasn’t looking for a wife, although she couldn’t imagine who would be brave enough to take him on. ‘Dr McNaught is engaged?’ she asked.

‘Was engaged,’ Ruth corrected. ‘She was killed in an accident two days before their wedding.’

‘Oh, dear…’ Kellie said, a wave of sympathy washing over her, followed by a rising tide of insight into why Matt was so standoffish and formal. She mentally cringed at his dislike of her prying into the photograph in his wallet.

‘He doesn’t talk about it much, of course,’ Ruth went on. ‘But that’s the male way, isn’t it?’

Kellie nibbled at her lip. ‘Yes…yes, it certainly is…’

Ruth handed her a carton of milk. ‘It was her birthday on Saturday,’ she said. ‘That’s why he went to Brisbane—to visit her parents.’

‘That was nice of him,’ Kellie offered, still feeling utterly wretched about her rapid judgement of him.

Ruth gave her another sad smile. ‘Yes, he does it every year.’

Kellie put the milk in the fridge and filled the kettle before she sat down opposite the older lady. ‘Dr McNaught told me about your daughter,’ she said. ‘It must be very hard for you…you know, not knowing where Tegan is or what happened to her.’

Ruth let out a little sigh. ‘It is hard,’ she said. ‘The hardest thing after all this time is that no one is actively searching for her any more. I feel that I’ll go to my grave without knowing what happened to her.’

‘The police keep most missing-person files open, though, don’t they?’ Kellie said. ‘I’ve seen a few news stories about old cases that have been solved, using DNA to match perpetrators to crimes.’

‘That’s true,’ Ruth said, ‘but out here there isn’t the manpower to do any more than maintain law and order. Doctors aren’t the only people who resist remote country appointments— police are pretty thin on the ground out here, too.’

Kellie met the older woman’s brown eyes. ‘You don’t believe she’s dead, do you?’ she asked.

Ruth held her gaze for several moments. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I feel it in here.’ She placed a hand over her heart. ‘She’s out there somewhere, I just know it.’

Kellie felt deeply for the poor woman. She had a pretty clear idea of the process of denial—she had witnessed it in her father for the last six years. He still acted as if her mother was going to walk in the door. He even occasionally spoke of her in the present tense, which made the job of getting on with his life so much harder for him and his family, not to mention Aunty Kate.

‘Well, I must let you settle in,’ Ruth said a few minutes later after they had finished the tea. ‘It’s an isolated place out here—but it’s not an unfriendly one.’

‘I’m very glad to hear that,’ Kellie said with genuine feeling. ‘This is a leap into the unknown for me. I’m right out of my comfort zone but I need the challenge right now.’

‘Well, it will certainly be challenging, it always is when the unexpected happens in places as far out as this,’ Ruth said as she gathered up her bag. ‘But Matthew McNaught is a very capable doctor. He’s experienced and caring. I am sure you’ll enjoy working with him, especially once you get to know him. This last weekend was a tough one for him. It’ll take him a few days to get back to normal.’

‘I think we’ll get along just fine,’ she said to the older woman with a smile. ‘In any case, I’ve got a week up my sleeve to get a feel for the place. I kind of figured it would be wise not to rush headlong into a close community like this.’

‘You might not have any choice, my dear,’ Ruth said with a sombre look. ‘Things can happen out here in a blink of an eye.’

Soon after Ruth left Kellie decided to walk the short distance to the pub. She had always enjoyed male company and while the pub looked nothing like the family-friendly bistros she was used to, she didn’t see any harm in getting to know some of the locals in a relaxed and casual atmosphere.

She was barely in the door before Bluey, the man with the broken arm, came ambling over. ‘What would you like to drink, Doc?’

Kellie smiled so as not to offend him. ‘It’s fine, really. I’ll get my own.’

‘Nah,’ he drawled as he winked at his two mates. ‘It’s been a long time since I bought a pretty lady a drink. Don’t spoil it for me. What’ll you have?’

Kellie agreed to have a lemonade, lime and bitters and sat at the table with Bluey and his cronies, who turned out to be two other farmers looking as though they had spent many a long day in the sun.

‘So what brings a nice girl like you out to a place like this?’ Jeff, the oldest of the three, asked.

‘I saw Tim Montgomery’s advertisement in the Australian Medical Journal and thought it would be a great chance to do my bit for the bush,’ she answered. ‘A house, a car and a job all rolled into one sounded too good to miss.’

‘It sounds too good to be true, right, Jeff?’ Bluey said with a gap-toothed grin.

Kellie wasn’t sure what he meant and didn’t have time to ask as just then she heard a commotion from behind the counter of the pub.

‘Quick, call the doctor!’ a female voice shrieked. ‘I think I’ve cut off my finger!’

Kellie leapt to her feet and approached the bar. ‘Can I help?’ she asked. ‘I’m a doctor.’

The face of Bruce, the barman, was ashen as the woman was clutching a blood-soaked teatowel to her right hand. ‘It looks pretty bad,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better call Matt McNaught.’

Kellie stood her ground. ‘By the time Dr McNaught gets here I could at least stem the bleeding and assess the damage.’

‘Good point, but I’ll give him a call in any case. He’ll know what to do, you being new in town and all,’ Bruce said, and lifted a section of the bar to allow her access to where the woman was sitting visibly shaking as she cradled her hand against her chest.

Kellie introduced herself to the woman, Julie Smithton, who told her she had been using a sharp knife to cut up some lemons when the knife had slipped and cut through the top of her finger.

‘Let me have a look at the damage,’ Kellie said, gently taking the woman’s hand in hers. She carefully unpeeled the teatowel to find a deep laceration across the palmar surface, indicating there was a possibility the flexor tendon could be severed.

‘Have I cut it off?’ Julie asked in a thread-like voice.

Kellie smiled reassuringly. ‘No, Julie, you haven’t. The finger’s completely intact. But it looks like you might have damaged a tendon. Do you think you can try and bend your finger, like this?’ She demonstrated the action of moving her index finger up and down in a wave-like action.

Julie gingerly lifted her hand but even though she was clearly trying to move her finger there was no flexion response. ‘I can’t do it,’ she cried.

‘It’s all right,’ Kellie said gently. ‘It’s something that can be easily fixed with a bit of microsurgery. You’ll be back to normal in no time.’

Julie’s eyes flared in fear. ‘Microsurgery?’

‘Yes,’ Kellie said. ‘It’s done by a plastic surgeon, but it will soon be—’

‘But can’t Dr McNaught do it?’ Julie asked. ‘I don’t want to travel all the way to Brisbane. I’ve got three kids.’

‘Who’s looking after them now?’ Kellie asked.

Julie lowered her eyes. ‘They’re on their own at the house,’ she mumbled. ‘They’re not little kids any more. I guess they might be all right for a day or so.’

‘What about their father?’ Kellie asked. ‘Couldn’t he look after them?’

A dark, embittered look came into the young woman’s eyes. ‘He left us close to three years ago. Got himself a new family now in Charleville, last I heard.’

Kellie looked at the woman’s prematurely lined and weather-beaten face and wondered how old she was. She wasn’t sure but she didn’t think she was that old, but clearly the strain of bringing up three children on her own had taken its toll, not to mention the unforgiving outback climate.

‘You’ll only be in hospital a few days, five at the most,’ Kellie said. Turning to the hovering Bruce, she asked, ‘Do you have a first-aid kit here, Bruce? My doctor’s bag is back at the cottage. And I’ll need the number of the flying doctor service. I left the card Dr McNaught gave me with all the contact numbers on it back at the cottage.’

Once the call had been made Julie asked to be taken to her house to see her kids and organise things before the flying doctor arrived.

‘I’ll take you,’ Bluey offered as he came to where they were gathered.

‘Yeah, right,’ Julie said with a look of disdain. ‘You’re exactly what I need right now, a broken-armed drunk to come to my rescue in a beat-up hulk of a car.’

Bluey looked affronted. ‘I’m no drunk, Jules. I’ve only had two light stubbies. Sure, there’s a spot of rust or two in the old Holden, but I can drive it with one arm tied behind my back…’ he grinned and added, ‘or my front.’

‘What’s going on?’ Matt’s voice sounded deep and controlled as he came in, carrying a doctor’s bag in one hand.

‘Julie has a lacerated flexor tendon and I’ve organised transport to Brisbane with the flying doctor service,’ Kellie informed him. ‘I called them and they’re only half an hour away on another trip from the station out at Gunnawanda Gully.’

Matt took Kellie aside and, looking down at her seriously asked, ‘I notice you have blood on your hands,’ he said. ‘Do you realise you should be wearing gloves? You could put yourself at risk of infection.’

Kellie felt a little tremor of unease pass through her. ‘I didn’t have my doctor’s bag with me,’ she said. ‘I simply responded to a call for help and acted accordingly.’

‘There’s no point putting yourself at risk,’ he admonished her. ‘Once you had established it wasn’t a life-threatening injury you should have taken universal precautions. You should have called me and met me at the clinic where we could have explored the wound, gloved up at the very least.’

‘I realise that but—’

‘Furthermore, if it turns out Mrs Smithton doesn’t have a tendon injury, you would have wasted thousands of dollars of community money, getting an air ambulance out here for nothing.’

Kellie was incensed. She knew a tendon injury when she saw one—her brother Seb had severed his during an ice-hockey match when he’d been sixteen—so she considered herself somewhat of an expert on that particular injury.

‘Not only that…’ Matt was still dressing her down like a junior colleague. ‘You are not officially on duty until next week.’

‘I don’t see why that should make any—’

Matt ignored her to turn back to the group surrounding Julie. He opened his bag and, putting on some surgical gloves, gently inspected the wound. ‘What about if I call Ruth Williams?’ he asked Julie. ‘She’ll be happy to help you out with the boys.’

‘I called her a few minutes ago,’ Bruce piped up. ‘She’s gone to the house to get some things together for Julie for the hospital. She said she’ll meet you at the airstrip.’

‘Good,’ Matt said, and stripped off his gloves. ‘You’ll be OK, Julie. It’s a bit of bad luck but it could have been a lot worse.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Julie said with a despondent set to her features. ‘I won’t be able to work for a couple of weeks and I need the money right now.’

Matt put his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. ‘The boys will be fine, Julie. Ruth will love being with them, don’t worry. I’ll keep my eye on things as well, OK?’

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