Taming
Dr Tempest
Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

‘You don’t want to talk?’ Nick asked, contrarily put out that she was going to ignore him. ‘I thought this might be a good time to get better acquainted.’

Annabelle turned towards him and raised dark, expressive eyebrows.

‘We’re going to be living together for the next two months, not to mention driving huge distances together and camping out together—don’t you think we’ll have enough time then to get acquainted?’

Annabelle wasn’t sure why she was being so scratchy. Was it the shock of finding out that Nick Tempest was going to be her companion for the duration of the appointment?

Or the slightly uncomfortable feeling she’d always experienced in his presence?

Not that she knew him well—more by reputation than in person. But the reputation—playboy, womaniser, ambitious workaholic—made him the last person in the world she’d want to get to know. Not to mention the least likely person in the entire hospital—if not the planet—to be on this plane, heading for a two-month stint in the far Outback settlement of Murrawalla.

About the Author

MEREDITH WEBBER says of herself, ‘Some ten years ago, I read an article which suggested that Mills and Boon were looking for new Medical™ Romance authors. I had one of those “I can do that” moments, and gave it a try. What began as a challenge has become an obsession—though I do temper the “butt on seat” career of writing with dirty but healthy outdoor pursuits, fossicking through the Australian Outback in search of gold or opals. Having had some success in all of these endeavours, I now consider I’ve found the perfect lifestyle.’

CHAPTER ONE

ANNABELLE made the flight by the skin of her teeth. Kitty, who had volunteered to drive her to the airport, had insisted on taking ‘shortcuts', so here she was, clutching an armful of carry-on bags, hurtling down the aisle towards the one vacant seat she could see right near the front of the small regional plane.

Fortunately it was an aisle seat so she could flop straight into it and stuff her belongings underneath before the flight attendant arrived to check her seat belt.

But the late arrival meant the plane was taxiing before she turned to look at her fellow-traveller.

To look, then look again…

‘Dr—’

Typhoon, hurricane, cyclone—what in the name of glory was his real name?

‘Tempest,’ he said coolly, peering at her as if she were a complete stranger—maybe a patient he’d seen briefly in A and E. ‘Nick Tempest.’

‘Tempest, of course,’ she mumbled hurriedly. ‘I knew it was…’

She stopped before she made a bigger fool of herself, but her agitation was growing. What was the man they called Storm doing on this flight?

Was there more than one possible answer?

Hardly!

‘You’re going to Murrawalla?’

She couldn’t stop the question popping out, or hide the disbelief in her voice.

The plane lifted off the ground, the wings tilted, and it flew a wide, lazy arc over the city, but Annabelle barely noticed the houses growing smaller below her because as she looked past her companion towards the window, she discovered he was studying her.

Intently.

‘Hang on, aren’t you the new nursing sister? Been around for about four months? The one they call Belladonna?’

The hesitancy in his voice suggested he was far from certain it was her, but although Annabelle hated the nickname, she had to acknowledge he’d worked out who she was.

‘It’s Annabelle,’ she said, turning so she could look into the blue eyes that had most of the female population of the hospital swooning every time he walked into a ward—blue eyes that had snared more than one man’s share of female attention—or so the stories went. ‘Annabelle Donne.’

‘Ah!’ He nodded to himself. ‘I often wondered where it came from. You didn’t strike me as being a walking, talking, deadly poison. More a target of some kind, I would have thought, from the number of times some sick child threw up all over you, or some drunk puked on your shoes.’

He wasn’t smiling as he spoke so she took it as criticism and was about to point out that someone had to look after the patients with stomach upsets when he spoke again.

‘But you’ve cut off all your hair. That’s why I didn’t recognise you. No long schoolgirl plait trailing down your back, no tight little knot thing at the back of your head.’

Schoolgirl plait indeed, but, annoyed though the comment had made her, Annabelle could think of no suitable retort.

She made do with giving him a dirty look, though that didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest.

He studied her for a moment longer, then said, ‘Not that it doesn’t suit you, but hair that length must have taken ages to grow, so why cut it all off?’

There was a surreal aspect to sitting in a plane high above the earth, having a relatively personal conversation about her hair—the loss of which she deeply regretted—with a man she barely knew.

And assumed she wouldn’t like if she did know him…

Yet she found herself answering him.

‘Have you ever smelt bore water?’

He frowned at her, but shook his head.

‘It smells like rotten-egg gas and, as far as I’ve been able to discover, there’s no shampoo yet made that can mask the smell. I did it as much for you—if you are the doctor heading for Murrawalla—as for myself. Travelling long distances in a car with someone who smells like bad eggs isn’t pleasant.’

Nick Tempest stared at the woman in the seat beside him, a woman he knew yet didn’t know. In the A and E department of the big city hospital where both of them had worked, he’d seen her as a calm, competent nurse, quietly spoken and so self-effacing he’d wondered if anyone knew her well. Because she hadn’t been there long they hadn’t shared many shifts, never working on the same team, so maybe his impressions were all wrong. What he did know was that she never shirked the dirty work some other nurses—and doctors—avoided, and that her gentle but firm manner with patients could nearly always avert trouble.

But that woman—the nurse—was very different to this slight but curvaceous woman in the seat beside him. Was it because she was wearing worn jeans and a slightly faded checked shirt instead of a uniform that for the first time he actually registered her as a woman?

Or was it the way her newly cropped hair clung to her head like a dark cap, accentuating the size of her brown eyes, the straight line of her nose and the curve of beautifully defined lips?

No, hair had nothing to do with lips.

Realising his thoughts had strayed into dangerous territory, he made his way carefully back to where this introspection had begun.

‘You cut your hair off so it wouldn’t smell?’

The lips he’d been trying to not look at curled into a teasing smile which, as a man who’d consigned all women to the ‘only when needed’ bin, he shouldn’t have noticed at all, let alone registered as sexy.

Belladonna sexy?

More dangerous ground?

Definitely not! Lack of sleep, that was all it was. He’d been up half the night at the hospital, finishing reports and case-notes, and, naturally enough, though he’d not been on duty, answering calls for help when emergencies came in.

‘Mostly for the smell but also the dust,’ his companion was saying. ‘Dust?’

This conversation was rapidly getting out of hand. He knew she was speaking English, so it couldn’t be that parts of it were lost in translation, but—

‘Bulldust,’ she added, as if this explained everything.

In Nick’s head it just added another level of confusion, and he was sorry he’d started the conversation, although politeness alone meant he’d had to say something to her.

‘Is that an expletive? A slightly more proper form of bull—?’ he heard himself ask.

This time she didn’t smile, she laughed.

How long since he’d laughed?

Laughed out loud in that carefree way?

Relaxed to the extent that a laugh could be carefree?

‘You’ve never been out in the bush before, have you?’

He heard this question, too, but was too distracted by the laughter—the laughing face of the woman beside him and his inner questions—to respond immediately. Besides, the captain of the flight was introducing himself and telling them when they were expected to arrive in Murrawingi, adding that the weather there was fine and warm, and he didn’t expect any turbulence on the flight.

‘Murrawingi?’ Nick found himself repeating. ‘I thought the place we were going to was called Murrawalla. That’s assuming, of course, you’re the nurse half of the hospital team.’

‘No airport at Murrawalla,’ the nurse half explained. ‘As far as I know, the pair we’re replacing will take this plane back to Brisbane, leaving us the hospital vehicle to drive to Murrawalla.’

‘Well, that’s fairly stupid!’ he muttered, annoyed he didn’t know all these things—or perhaps annoyed that she did!

Or was he more unsettled than annoyed? Unsettled?

Because he didn’t know? Control had become important to him—he did know that!

Control had kept him on track when his world had imploded, Nellie ripping out his heart as casually as she’d—

Control!

But the pain he still felt in his chest when he thought of the baby was beyond control. No wonder he didn’t laugh out loud these days.

‘It’s fairly stupid, having to drive to Murrawalla?’ the woman queried.

‘No,’ he grumbled, clamping down on the pain, dismissing his unsettling thoughts and catching up with the conversation—reminding himself that he was looking to the future, not the past—and that he was heading west to learn. ‘Calling places by nearly the same names.’

His companion smiled again.

‘It happens all the time when aboriginal names are used. Further south, there’s Muckadilla and Wallumbilla right next door to each other and both are fairly similar names so it’s hard to remember if someone comes from one or the other.’

‘Were you the geography whiz at school?’ he asked, not because he wanted to know but for some perverse reason he wanted her to keep talking.

So he didn’t have to think about the past?

Probably, but, for whatever reason, it was weird when he considered he tuned out a lot of the conversations going on around him without any problem.

Idle chatter irritated him—although had it always?

More questions buzzing in his head! No wonder he felt unsettled…

‘Just well travelled,’ Bel—no, he had to start thinking of her as Annabelle—said.

The attendant came through to ask if anyone wanted a newspaper or magazine, but although Nick said no, Annabelle took the morning paper.

‘You don’t want to talk?’ he asked, contrarily put out that she was going to ignore him. ‘I thought this might be a good time to get better acquainted.’

She turned towards him and raised dark, expressive eyebrows.

‘We’re going to be living together for the next two months, not to mention driving huge distances together and camping out together—don’t you think we’ll have enough time then to get acquainted?’

Annabelle wasn’t sure why she was being so scratchy. Was it the shock of finding out that Nick Tempest was going to be her companion for the duration of the appointment?

Or the slightly uncomfortable feeling she’d always experienced in his presence?

Not that she knew him well—more by reputation than in person. But the reputation—playboy, womaniser, ambitious workaholic—made him the last person in the world she’d want to get to know, not to mention the least likely person in the entire hospital—if not the planet—to be on this plane, heading for a two-month stint in the far Outback settlement of Murrawalla.

The thought brought its own question.

‘Why are you here anyway? When I had my briefing, Paul Watson was coming out for this term.’

Her companion—did she call him Storm or Nick? Dr Tempest?—smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile.

‘Paul’s girlfriend’s pregnant and they’ve moved the wedding forward.’

‘And you were the next bunny on the list?’ Annabelle offered, certain there was no way this particular man would have volunteered.

But his next smile suggested she was wrong. It was positively smug.

‘I volunteered.’

Annabelle just stared at him.

‘Well, didn’t you?’ he demanded.

She nodded then added, ‘But I had a reason—I wanted the extra bonus money.’

He sat further back in his seat, as if studying her from a distance might make things clearer.

‘Well, well—monetary gain not dedication and self-sacrifice? I wouldn’t have suspected that of you, Belladonna.’

‘As you don’t know me at all, you’ve no right to be making assumptions,’ Annabelle snapped, really scratchy now as the man’s arrogance shone through the sarcasm. ‘And my name is Annabelle.’

He smiled as if glad he’d riled her, adding, with smarmy insincerity, ‘Of course, that just slipped out. Annabelle! Actually, it’s quite a pretty name. Old-fashioned—’

‘Reminds you of a cow,’ Annabelle finished for him, sure he was going to add the tease she’d had to endure at high school.

But he surprised her by laughing, a low rumble of a chuckle that lit his eyes and made his rather harsh features soften.

‘Don’t be silly, we all know Christabelle’s the cow. Annabelle’s different—classy.’

Which left her with nothing to say, although maybe that didn’t matter as Nick/Storm had turned away and was looking out the window at the whiteness of the clouds through which they were now flying.

Leaving her free to turn her attention to the paper, except…

‘Why did you volunteer?’

She shouldn’t have asked, she’d known that, but, well, he’d asked her…

This time his smile, as he turned, looked as if it had been drawn on his face and there was a suggestion of wariness in his eyes.

‘Why would my reason be any different from yours?’

‘Because you drive a Porsche and I drive a beat-up fifth-hand VW?’

It was too flippant an answer and as soon as the words were out she wished them back. As if it mattered what he drove! And hadn’t she heard some story about the car?

A gift?

Surely not. Maybe a lottery win.

‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the kind of person who judged people by their possessions.’

The blue eyes were cold, and the drawn-on smile was gone.

‘As you don’t know me at all, you can hardly judge, but you’re right,’ she muttered. ‘It’s none of my business what you drive or why you’re here.’

Hoping her cheeks hadn’t coloured in embarrassment, she turned her attention to the paper.

The twinge of regret was so unexpected Nick didn’t, at first, register it for what it was. He glanced at his companion, wondering if her concentration on the morning paper was pretence—a way out of an awkward situation.

Which he had caused with his cutting remark. It didn’t matter.

Better all round if they remained colleagues, not exactly distant but, well, professional.

Except that he’d admired the way she’d hit back at him, even if she’d coloured as she’d spoken and her voice had quavered slightly.

‘Actually, I did have a valid reason,’ he said, and she turned from the paper, her brown eyes widening so Nick was reminded of a small animal trapped in the headlights of a car at night.

‘I’m officially on leave—accumulated holidays—but I’m taking over as head of the ER when I get back and it seemed to me that, in the new position, I shouldn’t be choosing people for this outreach scheme when I didn’t know the first thing about it.’

It wasn’t the entire truth but it was a greater part of it. The other part—the idea that had been mooted—well, he’d have to wait and see, especially as Annabelle was speaking again.

‘You could have visited for a few days, or a week,’ she pointed out.

‘And learned what? I’d have seen the place and maybe done a clinic or two but would that really educate me about the job I’m asking people to do?’

‘No!’

But she frowned as she said it, studying him with questioning eyes.

His explanation had been so surprising Annabelle had no idea how to react. It was okay as far as it went—it did make sense for him to experience the placement—but trying to picture this man in a bush setting—for two months—impossible!

And there’d also been a pause in his explanation, as if he was holding back a little of it, though what it could be, and why he couldn’t say it, she had no idea.

Fortunately, the attendant appeared, pushing a heavy trolley, offering breakfast trays to the passengers.

‘They call this breakfast?’ Nick—she was going to call him Nick—queried minutes later, eyeing with distaste the rather squashed croissant, pat of butter and tiny container of jam on his tray.

‘There’s juice as well,’ Annabelle pointed out, reaching over to lift his sealed container of juice out of the coffee cup. ‘And fruit.’ She pointed to the square plastic container nestled in another corner of the tray.

‘In fact,’ she added, ‘you can have my fruit and my juice. The croissant and coffee is enough for me.’

Nick barely considered her offer, suddenly struck by the truth of what she’d said earlier about the togetherness they’d share over the next two months. It was as if it had already started, with Annabelle offering him bits of her breakfast as naturally as a lover—or wife—might offer leftovers. Not that the act of offering bothered him—he’d eat her fruit—but the false intimacy of the offer made him feel extremely uncomfortable. Have mine—as though they were friends…

He ate his fruit and hers, drank both juices and had just asked for coffee rather than tea when the intimacy thing happened again. Not right away, but almost naturally…

‘Two months still seems like overkill,’ she said. ‘If it’s not the money, are you hiding out for some reason?’ She must have realised how rude the question was for she lifted one dainty, slim-fingered hand and clapped it over her mouth. ‘Don’t answer that!’ she added quickly. ‘In fact, forget I asked. I’m not usually rude or inquisitive, it just seems strange…’

‘Strange?’ Nick echoed, wondering just what her impression of him was. His of her was fairly vague, good nurse who was always caught up in the worst situations in the A and E. ‘Why strange?’

She turned towards him, a flake of croissant pastry clinging to her lower lip. Without conscious thought Nick reached out and wiped it away, then saw a blush rise beneath her skin as she scrubbed a paper napkin across her mouth in case any other scraps were lingering there.

It wasn’t really intimacy, Nick told himself while Annabelle stumbled on in a kind of muddled explanatory kind of apology.

‘Well, the impression of Nick St—Tempest…The impression the gossips pass on fast enough is of someone who has it made. Private schooling, smart car, great clothes, once married to one of the country’s top models, always with a beautiful woman on your arm at hospital functions, easily mixing with the rich and famous, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I suppose that’s why I was shocked to see you on the plane.’

Nick flinched at her summing up of him—did he really appear so shallow to his colleagues? Did no one suspect it was all a front—that the beautiful women were nothing more than armour? That since Nellie there was no way he’d ever open himself up to such hurt again? That work was his sole focus? His life?

Why would they?

He hid the flinch behind a half-smile and pushed her a little further.

‘Never for a moment thinking it might have been pure altruism on my part? Doing my bit for the country?’ he asked, and Annabelle laughed.

‘Not for a nanosecond!’ she agreed, smiling so broadly he was momentarily thrown off track. Though that hitch in his chest couldn’t have had anything to do with this woman’s smile!

‘And,’ she continued, ‘you’ve already admitted it was a work-related decision, but doing it for two months still seems a bit excessive.’

He shrugged off the comment, unwilling to admit he was already regretting the impulse that had put him on this plane, especially since Annabelle had used the words hiding out. Now he considered this aspect of it, although he believed he was a man who could handle any situation, he had to admit there was an element of that in the decision, and a feeling of not exactly shame but something like it washed through him.

The hospital ball was coming up and he was tired of finding someone to take to official functions—tired of explaining to the beautiful women that he wanted nothing more than a companion for the evening. But he knew from experience that not attending prompted more talk and speculation than him taking a different woman every time.

Added to which, Nellie was due in Brisbane for the annual fashion week later in the month and her face would be plastered on billboards and smiling out of newspapers and television screens, and try as he may to control it—control again—his stomach still clenched at the sight of that dazzling smile.

At the cold-blooded treachery it hid.

At the thought of what she’d done.

Control!

Fortunately the attendant was now pouring the coffee, so conversation could be forgotten.

He drank his coffee, looking out the window as he sipped, watching the broad ribbon of land unwind beneath him. Thinking of the past—not only of Nellie but of other losses—knowing it was time to put it all behind him and move forward. The challenge of the new job was just what he needed. He’d be too busy getting on top of that for the past to keep intruding. Control!

But even as his mind wandered, his eyes still registered the scenery.

Every now and then the red turned green and he guessed at crops he didn’t know the names of because he had no real idea what grew where, out here in what all Aussies, he included, called ‘the bush'.

‘See the huge dams?’ Annabelle was leaning towards him, peering past him out the window, unaware her soft breast was pressing against his chest. ‘They’re for the cotton crops. They take more water out of our river systems than any other crop and it’s causing problems for people further down the rivers and also slowly poisoning the whole river system.’

‘You a greenie as well as a geography whiz?’ he asked, finding, as she pressed a little closer, that her short, shiny hair diverted him from thoughts of soft breasts, smelling of lemons, not rotten eggs.

‘Nope, but I think it’s stupid to grow crops that need water in places that don’t have all that much.’

‘Like it’s stupid for a man who doesn’t need the bonus money to take this placement?’

She sat back and frowned at him.

‘I didn’t say that, and I sure as heck wouldn’t criticise you coming out here for whatever reason you came. In fact, I’m really impressed to think you’d do it—to see it for yourself before sending people out. I was just surprised, that’s all.’

But when she gave a little huff of laughter, Nick doubted she’d told the truth.

Until she explained…

‘I was surprised to see you sitting there. In my mind you’ve always been the epitome of city-man. I mean, look at you. You’re wearing suit trousers and a white shirt and a tie, for heaven’s sake. And I bet there’s a suit jacket stashed up there in the luggage compartment. You haven’t got a clue.’

Nick felt a strange emotion wriggle around inside him and tried to identify it. He could hardly be feeling peeved—only women got peeved—yet if it wasn’t peevishness squirming in his abdomen, it was mighty close…

‘Do you insult everyone you meet or is this treatment reserved for the poor people who have to work closely with you?’

She laughed again.

‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t meant as an insult, just an observation.’

The laughter made him more peevish than before.

‘Well, perhaps you’d like to keep any future observations to yourself,’ he grumped, then he turned back to the window, determined not to speak to her for the rest of the journey.

Until he began to consider what she’d said to make him peevish. It had been about his clothes. His decision to come had been so last minute that he hadn’t for a moment considered clothes, simply throwing most of his wardrobe into his suitcase—a wardrobe chosen mostly by Nellie, back when they’d been married.

Now words he’d learned from her—words like ‘linen blend’ and ‘worsted', words like ‘flat-pleated waist’ and ‘silk-knit polo'—came floating back to him.

He turned back to Belladonna, her true name forgotten in his horror.

‘I’ve brought the wrong clothes. I didn’t give it a damn thought, and I haven’t a clue what a country doctor might wear, but you’re right—it won’t be a suit and white shirt.

What do I do?’

To his relief she didn’t laugh at him or say I told you so, but instead regarded him quite seriously.

‘You’ll have a pair of jeans in your case and a couple of polo shirts—you can make do with those.’

He shook his head. The one pair of jeans he’d taken into his marriage had been consigned to a charity shop by Nellie, who’d claimed he had the wrong-shaped butt for jeans.

And silk-knit polo shirts probably weren’t what Annabelle had in mind for everyday wear in Murrawalla.

His companion frowned for a moment then shrugged.

‘No matter. We can get you togged up in town—in Murrawingi—before we head west. There’s a caravan park, which will have a laundry, so we can scruff everything up a bit before washing it and—’

‘Scruff everything up a bit?’ he echoed, feeling as if he was on a flight to Mars rather than the weekly flight to Murrawingi.

‘You don’t want that “new boy at school” look, do you?’ his new wardrobe consultant demanded, and he shook his head, remembering only too clearly the insecurity stiff new clothes had produced when he’d first started at his private school, a scholarship kid from a different social stratum who’d known no one. Lonely but proud, he’d hidden his unhappiness from his classmates with a defiant aloofness, until he’d proved himself on the rugby field, gaining popularity through sport, his intelligence overlooked as an aberration of some kind.

Look forward, he reminded himself, turning his mind back to Annabelle.

‘But I don’t want to be spending money on new clothes either—especially clothes I’ll probably never wear again.’

It was Annabelle’s turn to shake her head.

‘I know you mix in high society, but even there, good-quality country clothing is acceptable. Two pairs of moleskins, a couple of chambray or small-checked shirts, a pair of jeans and an Akubra. Actually, how big’s your head?’

She checked his head. It was a nice head with a good bump at the back of it—not like some heads that went straight down at the back. And the silky black hair was well cut to reveal the shape.

You’re talking hats, not heads, she reminded herself, wondering why she was so easily distracted by this man.

‘My Akubra’s a good size because I always had to tuck my hair into it, so it will probably fit you and, being a woman, I can wear a new Akubra without looking like a new chum.’

‘I’m still back at the first mention of Akubra,’ Nick admitted, looking more puzzled than ever. ‘What the hell is an Akubra?’

Annabelle stared at him in disbelief.

‘What planet do you inhabit?’ she demanded. ‘Surely there’s no one in Australia, and possibly the world, who hasn’t heard of Akubra hats?’

‘Well, I haven’t!’

He spoke stiffly and Annabelle realised he was embarrassed. A wave of sympathy for him washed over her and she reached out and patted his arm.

‘I’m sorry. I won’t tease you any more. You’ve obviously led a sheltered life.’

Sheltered? Nick wondered. As if! Although from the outside, looking in, he supposed people would assume that, especially people who didn’t know how hard he’d had to work to reach his goals, or the sacrifices his parents had made to allow him to follow his dream.

He closed his mind on the past and turned his attention back to his companion. At least her chatter took his mind off things…

She had the paper open and was half smiling at whatever article she was reading. He wondered what she wanted the bonus money for—to spend on clothes, a man, an overseas holiday?

He had no idea, although he ruled out the man. His impression of her was that she was far too sensible—although without the hair she didn’t look at all sensible. She looked pert and cute and kind of pretty in an unusual way, her high cheekbones too dominant for real prettiness but giving her an elfin look. Some middle European blood would be responsible for the cheekbones, he suspected, although her name, Annabelle Donne, couldn’t be more plainly English.

‘Why do you need the money?’

He hadn’t intended asking her, but the fact that she was sitting there, calmly reading the paper, not the slightest bit interested in him now the wardrobe question had been sorted, had forced it out—more peevishness.

She closed the paper and folded it on her knee before turning to acknowledge she’d heard his question. Then she looked at him, dark eyes scanning his face, perhaps trying to read whether his question was out of genuine interest or simply a conversational gambit.

Whatever conclusion she reached, she did at least answer.

‘I want it to pay my sister’s HECS fees—you know, the higher education contribution for university studies. She’s finishing her pre-med degree this year then going into medicine and I don’t want her coming out burdened down by fees for the first few years of her career. I know people do it, and manage, but I can’t help feeling those horror years as an intern and resident will be easier for her if she’s not worrying all the time about money.’

‘Your parents can’t pay it?’ Nick found himself asking, although his parents hadn’t been able to pay, and the burden of debt had been hard in his early working years, especially once Nellie had come on the scene.

‘My parents…’

She hesitated and he read sadness in her eyes and the droop of her lips.

They’re dead, Nick thought, and I’ve just put my foot right in it.

‘Our parents,’ she began again, ‘aren’t always there for us. We’re a mixed-up family but Kitty—Katherine—and I have a special bond so we’ve always looked out for each other.’

Which ended the conversation so abruptly he felt aggrieved again and slightly annoyed with her so it was easy to add other grievances, the clothes talk, the way she teased him, and now she was reading the paper again as if he didn’t exist.

Well, he didn’t have to like the woman with whom he’d be working for the next two months—just as long as they could work well together.

CHAPTER TWO

HE CONCENTRATED on the scenery but unfortunately bits and pieces of what she’d been saying were rattling through his confused brain, taking him back to a much earlier conversation. What had she said? She’d been talking about bore water…

‘Camping out together?’

The words exploded out of him, disbelief making them sound far louder than he’d intended.

It certainly got Annabelle’s attention as she once again swivelled towards him, frowning now as she looked at him.

‘What’s wrong now?’ she asked, with the kind of sigh that women used when they considered themselves faced with the inadequacies or stupidity of men.

‘You said we’d be camping out together,’ he reminded her. ‘Earlier on when you were talking about your hair or my clothes or something. Why on earth will we be camping out together?’

No sigh but a smile in answer.

‘Well, for a start, if you’d bothered to read the programme we were given, there’s a B and S ball next weekend and then Blue Hills rodeo—or maybe it’s a campdraft—the weekend after that, and although the RFDS usually sends a plane and staff to those functions, we should still be there as it’s an opportunity to get to know the locals. Then there’s the—’

‘Stop right there!’ Nick held up his hand. ‘Now, back up. Start with this B and S ball—is that like the bulldust you talked of?’

‘You’ve never heard of a B and S ball?’ She shook her head. ‘Boy, you have led a sheltered life. B and S—bachelors and spinsters—is a country tradition. They’re held at different cattle or sheep stations all over the continent—hundreds of people turn up and not all from the country. Some young city folk will do anything to wangle an invitation. It’s also a bit of a ute convention as all the young men bring their utes and stand around comparing the modifications they’ve made to them—typical Aussie party, men in one group, women in the other.’

Nick was quite pleased that he didn’t have to ask for an explanation of ‘ute', his first vehicle having been an old utility he’d paid for himself, working at a fast-food outlet at weekends.

But he did need an explanation of why he’d be camping out at this festive occasion.

‘Do we go to the ball for the same reason we go to the rodeo—to meet the locals?’

Annabelle’s immediate reply was a dry chuckle, while her second wasn’t any more enlightening.

‘Wait and see,’ she told him, and returned to reading the paper.

Nick turned back to the window. Below him the red-brown country seemed to stretch for ever, no green of crops now, just stunted grey blobs that must be small trees and a narrow tarred road leading directly west. Every now and then he caught sight of a house, usually with a name painted in large letters on the roof.

Identification for the flying doctors? he wondered, but he didn’t feel like displaying any more ignorance so he didn’t ask Annabelle about the names.

The growl of the engines changed and flaps came down on the wings, the captain announced their imminent arrival and before Nick knew it they were on the ground.

‘It’ll be hot out there, and glary. You’ve got sunglasses?’

He nodded, although Annabelle wouldn’t have seen this reply, too busy fishing under her seat for the bags she’d carried on board.

All around them people were standing and stretching, reaching into overhead luggage lockers, talking loudly now the journey was done.

‘Where are they all going?’ Nick asked, as Annabelle sat patiently in her seat, waiting for the jam in the aisle to ease before heading for the rear of the plane, where the only exit was.

‘They’re oil drillers and riggers coming back on shift,’ she explained. ‘You know one of the reasons the two Brisbane hospitals are doing this outreach project is that the town of Murrawalla grew almost overnight with the discovery of a new oil basin about sixty kilometres to the west. They’re still drilling out there, and the men are flown in and out, two weeks on and two weeks off. There’s accommodation on site, but no medical staff, and although the RFDS had always had a fortnightly clinic at Murrawalla, once you had the miners out there, it wasn’t enough.’

‘I knew about the drilling site, of course. I’ve spoken to the CEO of the company, but I had no idea it was sixty kilometres away! Do we drive out there daily or just now and then?’

Annabelle stood up and gave him a look that suggested sarcasm didn’t sit well with her.

‘Whenever we’re needed,’ she said. ‘It’s the mining company that pays our bonuses, and contributes a large amount of money to the hospitals that supply staff, so don’t forget that.’ She led the way up the now all but empty aisle.

Outside it was hot—and this was winter? But the heat wasn’t like the heat at home—this heat seemed to burn into the skin, drying it of moisture, making his eyes itch and his nose tingle.

He followed Annabelle towards a small tin shed that obviously did service as the air terminal, wondering how the hell he had got himself into this situation. Then she began to run, and training had him running right behind her, the suit jacket he held over his arm flapping against his body as he followed her.

He heard the sounds of chaos as he drew closer. Loud shouts and yelling, swearing that would make a policeman blush, thumps and thuds and the occasional cry of a woman. Inside the tin shed, a fight was well under way, rough, tough men hurling round arm punches at friends and enemies alike—or so it seemed.

Annabelle apparently had a destination in mind, so he followed her as she squirmed between the bodies towards a counter on one side of the building. Around them, figures lurched and dodged until, suddenly, one of the altercations was far too close to Annabelle. Nick thrust forward, putting himself between two battling men and the slight woman, using the bulk of his shoulders to protect her until he could lift her out of the way of the struggle and set her safely down behind the counter.

She looked up at him, and grinned.

‘Sir Galahad?’ she teased, and he doffed an imaginary hat and bowed in front of her.

‘At your service, ma’am!’

It was a light-hearted exchange but Nick sensed a shift in the dynamics between them—a shift instinct warned him not to investigate…

In front of the counter, a man and woman were bent over a figure slumped on the floor.

‘Let’s see if we can get him up on the counter, take a look at him. If we leave him here, we’ll all be trodden on,’ Nick suggested.

The man glanced up.

‘You the new doc?’ he guessed, and the Nick nodded.

The man grinned at him. ‘Welcome to the wild west. I’m Phil Jackson, departing nurse.’

Together they lifted the injured man onto the counter, as a lone policeman came in through the front door, whistle blowing shrilly in an attempt to calm the melee.

‘This is Deb Hassett, the doc,’ Phil said, introducing the woman by his side and standing back while Nick examined the injured man. Annabelle introduced herself and Nick then, as the fight began to settle down around them, she suggested she and Nick take care of the injured man while the other pair readied themselves for departure.

Phil shook his head.

‘The plane won’t go for a while. This fellow is the dispatcher—the guy who checks everyone’s ticket and takes out the luggage and loads it on board. Guess the pilots will have to do it themselves now, so there’ll be a delay.’

The man on the counter began to move, moaning piteously and squirming around on the hard counter.

‘The bastard hit me,’ he said, trying to sit up as if determined to find his attacker and continue the fight.

Nick was pressing his fingers into the man’s jaw bone, already swelling beneath a red abrasion, feeling for any sign of movement that would indicate serious damage then continuing his exploration by pressing fingertips to his patient’s cheekbone and eye socket.

‘Everything seems to be intact,’ Nick finally declared, helping the man sit up, which was when they all saw blood, leaking from the back of the man’s head, pooled on the counter and soaked into his khaki shirt.

Annabelle headed for the bathroom, returning with a bunch of paper towels and her hat filled with water.

‘I couldn’t find another container,’ she muttered, when she saw the look on Nick’s face. ‘And we only need it to clean up the blood so we can find the injury.’

She proceeded to mop at the man’s head, seeking the source of what seemed like a massive haemorrhage but was probably only a freely bleeding scalp wound.

‘And surely there’s a first-aid box in this place,’ she added, looking around for Phil or Deb, who might know where it would be.

‘They went outside,’ Nick told her, finding the cut on the man’s head and pressing a wad of clean, dry paper towels to it.

He’d barely spoken when the pair reappeared, carrying what seemed like a large chest between them.

‘Why we don’t have small first-aid boxes in the vehicle I don’t know,’ Phil complained as he opened the box then looked up at Nick. ‘What do you need?’

‘Razor to clear some hair, antiseptic, local anaesthetic then sutures.’ He was on autopilot as far as tending the patient was concerned, so his mind was able to process a lot of other concerns. ‘Why are we doing this? Murrawingi is a big enough town to have a clothing store, surely it has a hospital and doctor and even an ambulance.’

‘You’re right.’ It was Deb who answered while Phil passed him a sterile pad soaked in brown antiseptic. ‘But there was a bad road accident a hundred k south of town early this morning and the whole team’s there.’

Phil nodded briefly towards the young policeman, now talking to the pilots from the plane.

‘That’s why we’ve only got the baby policeman here.’

‘He seems to be doing a good job,’ Annabelle said, feeling someone needed to defend the young man. ‘I mean, the fight stopped, didn’t it?’

‘Jim, one of the drillers, stopped the fight. He’s a big devil and he just lifted the bloke who started it up in his arms, carted him outside and told him to stay there until the plane was loaded. Not many people argue with Jim.’

Nick had just finished stitching the cut and was taping a dressing over it when the young policeman approached.

‘Where’s the dog?’ he asked, and although Nick and Annabelle could only shake their heads, the other pair obviously knew all about a dog.

‘That’s him you can hear barking out the back,’ Deb said. ‘This fellow got the dog into the container before the other guy hit him. Said he had to weigh him and he crated him at the same time, then he snapped a lock and wouldn’t give the other bloke the key so the dog’s owner hit him.’

The young policeman looked bemused, and this time it was Phil who came to his rescue.

‘We’d just checked our luggage in when it happened. Apparently the dog was booked to fly but as Henry Armstrong, travelling with Bill Armstrong, but when Henry turned out to be a dog, the clerk said he had to travel in a crate and Bill went berserk, insisting he’d paid for a seat and Henry had every right to sit in it.’

Annabelle was watching Nick as the story was revealed, watching the parade of emotions—mostly disbelief—passing across his face. But the question he finally asked was the last she’d expected.

‘The dog’s called Henry? Whatever happened to names like Spot and Rover?’

No one answered, the young policeman now intent on getting the passengers onto the plane, checking again with the pilots that they were willing to carry Bill Armstrong in spite of the trouble he’d caused.

‘As long as he agrees the dog goes in the crate, we’ll take him,’ one of them said, then he turned to Deb. ‘I don’t suppose you could carry a tranquillising dart with you just in case?’

Deb laughed, but Annabelle suspected the pilot wasn’t joking. No doubt he flew this route often and knew the rough, tough men he carried. Maybe it explained why a small plane on a country route had two pilots.

People were moving towards the doors leading out onto the tarmac.

‘That’s it?’ Nick said to Phil. ‘No one’s going to charge the fellow with assault? And what about our patient? Do we just leave him here, or take him to the hospital or what?’

‘I’ll take him up to the hospital when I’ve seen the plane off,’ the young policeman offered, before leaving them to help a couple of volunteers carry the luggage out to the plane.

Phil and Nick eased the patient off the counter and settled him on a chair behind it, while Deb and Annabelle cleaned up the mess.

‘Easier not to charge anyone,’ Phil explained. ‘If they booked someone every time there was a bit of a barney, they’d need a bigger jail and a full-time court sitting out here.’

He turned to Annabelle and dropped a bunch of keys into her hand.

‘I’ve locked the chest. You guys’ll take it back to the car? It’s the old troopie with the bent snorkel, can’t miss it, and Bruce’ll need a run before you head out on the road.’

He took Deb by the arm and headed for the plane. Annabelle hefted the keys in her hand, knowing they’d have to work out what they were all for—the car, the small hospital at Murrawalla where they’d be stationed, the house they’d share, and all the medical chests that held the necessities of their trade. The house they’d share…

She was considering this aspect of the two months and wondering why the thought made her feel distinctly uncomfortable when she realised Nick was speaking to her.

‘What the hell did he mean when he talked about a troopie with a bent snorkel and who, do you suppose, is Bruce?’

Annabelle turned to look at him, seeing bloodstains on his white shirt and dark stains smeared across his trousers, indication that the blood had spread, and that he’d definitely need some new clothes.

‘The troopie is our vehicle. It’s a Toyota, I think built originally to carry troops, hence the name. It’s one of the most uncomfortable four-wheel drives ever put on the road, but it will go anywhere with a minimum of fuss, which makes it ideal in this country.’

‘And the bent snorkel?’

Annabelle smiled at him.

‘I think the bend is accidental but when you see the snorkel you’ll understand. It’s like a snorkel you use when swimming, only a car one that takes the exhaust up over the top of the vehicle so if you’re going through deep water it can’t get into the exhaust pipe and cause the engine to overheat.’

Nick shook his head.

‘After showing that level of ignorance, I hardly dare ask about Bruce.’

This time Annabelle laughed.

‘Bruce, I imagine, is our dog.’ ‘Our dog?’

‘Ours for the next two months!’

‘I’ve got a dog called Bruce?’

‘No, no,’ Annabelle said, laughing so much she could hardly speak. ‘We’ve got a dog called Bruce!’

‘Well, you’d better keep him under control,’ Nick grumbled. ‘Because there is no way in this world I’m going to stand around calling out Broo-ooce, or, worse still, Brucie, to any darned dog.’

He crossed the room to where their fellow passengers were retrieving luggage from a trolley and picked out a new-looking suitcase, then turned towards Annabelle.

‘Which is yours?’ he asked, but she was already reaching past him, swinging a battered backpack onto her back then lifting a bulky roll with a strap around it off the trolley.

‘Swag,’ she said, no doubt reading the question on his face before he’d even asked it. ‘There’ll be swags in the troopie as part of our equipment but I like to use my own.’

‘I thought swags were what swagmen carried during the depression, a kind of bed roll.’

‘Exactly,’ Annabelle replied. ‘They’re back in vogue, you know. I doubt there’s a young man anywhere west of the main cities who doesn’t have a swag he can throw in the back of his ute.’

‘Not only a foreign place but a foreign language,’ Nick muttered to himself as he followed Annabelle out of the airport building. She appeared to be heading for a large, bulky-looking vehicle, custard yellow under a film of red dust. He studied it, seeking the snorkel, which he finally identified as a black pipe coming up alongside the driver’s side windscreen, this particular snorkel bent crazily forward at the top.

Annabelle had stopped and was fiddling through the keys, although as he joined her she nodded towards the bent pipe.

‘Backed it under a low branch I’d say, wouldn’t you?’

Nick nodded in turn. He was too bemused by the strangeness—by the hot, dry air, the red dust already coating his shoes, this battered vehicle and an undoubtedly capable nurse—to make a comment on the driving skills of his predecessors.

Then a question he should have asked earlier occurred to him and he studied the capable nurse.

‘How come you know all this country stuff?’ he demanded, and though he expected a teasing smile and some light remark in reply she said nothing, just concentrated on the bunch of keys as if the large one that had ‘Toyota’ written on it hadn’t already been singled out by her nimble fingers.

She unlocked the doors at the rear of the vehicle and threw her pack and swag into a narrow space between chests of medical equipment, large plastic containers of water and a small, chest-like refrigerator. Nick hoisted his suitcase and set it on top of another chest, then remembered they had to collect the one from the terminal.

‘I’ll get it,’ he offered, but Annabelle followed him anyway, knowing it would be easier to carry if they shared the load.

And as she followed she considered the question she hadn’t answered. How to explain that this was the country of her heart? Or that she’d volunteered not only for the bonus money but so she could come out here to face the past, and hopefully put it behind her, enabling her to move on, strong and confident, towards whatever the future might hold.

He’d have thought she’d lost her marbles, and the poor man was confused enough as it was.

She caught up with him and together they carried the chest out of the now-deserted terminal building. Back at the troopie, it was Nick who found where the chest went, behind the driver’s seat and accessible only by tipping the seat forward.

The success must have gone to his head for next minute he was demanding the keys and settling himself into the driver’s seat, man-confident there wasn’t a vehicle made he couldn’t drive.

Until he noticed the two gear sticks…

Annabelle smiled to herself as she climbed into the passenger seat and watched the frown deepen on his face as he tried to work it out.

‘Okay,’ he finally admitted, ‘tell me!’

‘One’s for the four-wheel drive,’ she said, pointing to the smaller of the two. ‘You put the main one into neutral before engaging four-wheel drive and you have to lock the hubs on the front wheels.’

His frown was now directed right at her.

‘And other city doctors who come out to this godforsaken place find this out how?’

‘I guess they read the manual, or perhaps the information is passed on from the departing pair—there’d have been plenty of time for Phil to explain if it hadn’t been for the fight.’

‘Can you drive it?’ Nick asked, and Annabelle nodded then watched him get out, walk around the bonnet and open the door on her side.

‘It’s all yours. I’ll read the manual while we’re travelling.’

She smiled at him as she slid back out to the ground.

‘Well, at least you’re not too stubborn to admit you don’t know something. I could name half a dozen doctors in A and E back home who’d cut their tongues out before admitting a woman might know more about a vehicle than they did.’

Nick returned her smile with interest, flashing a gleaming grin alight with teasing self-mockery.

‘My ego’s taken such a battering already, one more blow is hardly noticeable.’

They swapped seats but it wasn’t until Annabelle started the engine that she heard a short, sharp bark and remembered Bruce.

‘Ha! You don’t know how to drive it either,’ Nick said, but she was already out of the vehicle, looking around her, finally locating the dog tied in the meagre shade of a gidgee tree at the edge of the car park.

‘Bruce?’ she called, and got an answering bark, but as she approached the dog she wondered just how adaptable he was to the medical staff who came and went from Murrawalla. He seemed to be largely blue cattle dog, a dog known to be loyal to one master, but Bruce’s slavering, tail-wagging, stomach-crawling behaviour as she approached suggested he was happy to be in any human company.

She let him sniff her hand and, as he continued to greet her with grovelling wriggles and little whimpers of delight, she unhooked his lead from the tree, picked up the empty water bowl and led him back to the vehicle.

‘That’s not a dog, it’s a small wolf,’ Nick announced as the dog approached him, prepared to offer Nick as much love as he’d offered Annabelle. ‘And just where does he sit? Not on my knee, I hope.’

But his attention to the dog, the way he scratched between his ears and under his chin, convinced Annabelle that he was all talk. Bruce had won him over in a matter of seconds.

Bruce settled the matter of where he would sit when Annabelle opened the back doors. The dog leapt in and dropped down onto a padded mat on top of one of the chests, his head against the luggage barrier that divided the front seats from the back part of the troopie. One glance at Bruce’s favoured position was enough to convince Annabelle she’d drive as often as possible. Whoever sat in the passenger side was sure to get a good amount of Bruce’s drool down the back of his or her neck.

They drove into town, Annabelle pulling up in front of the general store, which she knew from the past sold everything from groceries to underwear, from water tanks to televisions. Across the road a group of men sat on the low veranda of the local pub, cool in the shade of the wide eaves. They nodded their acknowledgement of a couple of strangers in town and returned to their drinking without comment, although Annabelle did wonder what they’d made of Nick in his bloodstained suit.

Once inside the store a keen young man took charge, checking Nick’s size and producing a couple of pairs of moleskin trousers, a pair of jeans, and three shirts within minutes of their arrival, then hustling Nick towards a dressing room to try them all on.

Annabelle took the opportunity to try on the hats, finally settling on a neat black number with a good brim and the ability to tilt saucily down over one eye.

Could she afford it?

Not really, but it was a great hat and it really would be better for Nick to have her old one, rather than advertising his new chum status in a brand-new Akubra.

Although why she was worried about what people might think of Nick she wasn’t sure.

Was it because she sensed a hint of vulnerability beneath his unyielding exterior, not just the uncertainty natural to a newcomer to the bush, but something deeper—some pain—hidden behind the hard polished surface of Nick—Storm—Tempest?

She tried tilting the hat to the other side and considered herself in the mirror, considering also why the man’s vulnerability—imagined or otherwise—was any of her business. He was noted for his lack of commitment to the women he took out, while her one and only serious experience in the relationship department had been so disastrous she’d been forced to realise she had to start again, going back to the first man she’d loved—the first man who’d deserted her—her father.

Making her peace with him and the past so she could move forward…

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT do you think?’

Nick appeared from the dressing room, holding his arms wide so she could admire his new look.

Stunning, but she didn’t say it, feeling slightly ill because her heart had given a little lurch when she’d seen how the blue shirt accentuated the blue of his eyes and the way the moleskins clung to his long legs.

‘Well done,’ she did say, speaking to the sales clerk, not Nick. ‘Now all we have to do is rough them up a bit and he’ll be ready to face Murrawalla.’

‘I run my ute over my new clobber,’ the young man offered, and Annabelle wished she’d had a camera to catch the stunned-mullet look on Nick’s face.

‘Make sure the zips and buttons are done up,’ the salesman added, ‘although they don’t seem to suffer much damage—just sink into the dust.’

Nick made a kind of bleating noise, but was obviously still too bemused by this latest bush conversation to question it or protest, although he did make a token objection when Annabelle suggested he get back into his other clothes so all the new gear could be washed.

‘And driven over by the troopie?’ he managed. ‘Is that acceptable, or does it have to be a ute?’

Annabelle laughed.

‘We won’t run over the shirts,’ she told him kindly. ‘The trousers will pick up enough dirt to spread through the wash and tone them down a bit. You’re getting jeans as well? Boots?’

He stared at her and shook his head, but she knew he wasn’t answering her question, just portraying disbelief at the situation in which he’d found himself.

The scruffing, washing and drying of the clothes took them another hour, but as Nick changed in the ablutions block at the caravan park, he knew it had all been a good idea. The trousers were great, comfortable to wear, softer now than when they’d been pristinely new. And they looked good, as did the shirt with the two pockets. In fact, as he tipped Annabelle’s battered old hat into a rakish angle on his head and checked the mirror, he had to smile.

City-man, Annabelle had called him, but no one looking at him now would think that.

‘Finished admiring yourself in there?’

‘Is there a spyhole in the wall?’ he answered, picking up his soiled clothes and coming out to join her and Bruce at the troopie, parked in the shade of a huge tree, with long drooping branches that reminded him of a weeping willow.

But he knew they grew along creeks and rivers and as there were no creeks or rivers within coo-ee of this place, he wasn’t going to make a fool of himself by suggesting a name.

No, he’d work out how to drive the troopie, he’d lock and unlock wheel hubs and he’d never give Annabelle cause to call him city-man again.

Though why it mattered what she called him, he didn’t know.

‘I gave Bruce a run and filled up with fuel while you were watching your laundry dry,’ she told him. ‘I also got us some sandwiches to eat on the way and a couple of cans of soft drink as well. I have a feeling I should do a proper shop while we’re here, because although Murrawalla has a roadhouse that sells groceries, meat, fruit and veggies, the prices will be much higher.’

She looked sufficiently worried about this dilemma for Nick to ask, ‘Are we in a hurry that you’d prefer not to shop here?’

‘Not really. We’ve a way to go, but the road’s good. No, I’m more worried about not buying local. I mean, if everyone in Murrawalla—’

‘All one hundred and forty of them,’ Nick put in.

‘Yes, but if they all shopped here in Murrawingi then the roadhouse would stop stocking even the basics and that’s bad for their business but also for the town.’

Nick shook his head.

‘I was just telling myself you’d never call me city-man again, but for someone who’s used to corner stores and local supermarkets open twenty-four hours a day, this conversation is mind-boggling. However, I get your drift, we’ll shop locally, and if it costs us a little more, too bad. Now, show me how to drive this beast and let’s get going.’

Once he had the hang of the gears, he drove competently, Annabelle realised, but, then, he probably did everything competently, even expertly. His reputation as a doctor was that he was always thorough, always willing to go one step further with a patient if he suspected there might be hidden problems. It was only his social reputation—if one had such a thing—that had given her cause to wonder about him when she’d seen him on the plane.

Not that his social reputation was any of her business. She reached forward and turned on the two-way radio, tuning it so they could hear messages without the chat between truckies and farm workers overwhelming them.

‘Do we use that?’ Nick asked, indicating the handset.

‘Only if we need to,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in just chatting to people. The truckies do it to keep themselves alert, but I imagine it’s only in here for emergencies as far as we’re concerned.’

‘This is Eileen at Murrawalla hospital—is the doctor’s car receiving? Are you new guys there?’

‘You must have wished that on us,’ Annabelle told Nick, lifting the handset to her lips and pressing the button to transmit.

‘We’re the new guys and we hear you,’ she said, then switched to receive.

‘Good! Where are you exactly? There’s a problem out on Casuarina, if you tell me where you are I’ll give directions.’

‘We’re only sixty kilometres from Murrawingi—slight problem at the airport,’ Annabelle reported.

‘Well, that still makes you the closest and at least you won’t have to backtrack. About another fifteen k up the road you’ll see a mailbox made out of an old bulldozer track, turn right there and follow the road another fifteen k to some cattle yards, turn left and about thirty k further down that road there’s a bloke in trouble in a washout. When you’re done you can follow that road— it eventually leads back to the bitumen about twenty k south of town. Casuarina is sending a tractor over to get the truck out but he’ll travel slow. Radio if you need the ambulance as well.’

‘A bloke in trouble in a washout?’ Nick echoed, as Annabelle checked the distances she’d written on a small notebook she’d found bound to the sunshade by a thick rubber band.

‘Sounds like a single car accident,’ she explained. ‘This is channel country. It’s dry now but when you get good rain up north, the water travels south and this area becomes a maze of small creeks that criss-cross the whole area. Once off the bitumen you drive in and out of these all the time, and some of them have steep drop-offs at the bottom. There’s the mailbox.’

Nick looked towards where she was pointing and was amazed to see that the mailbox had indeed been fashioned out of the track of an old bulldozer. He turned right onto a narrow dirt road, making a note of the kilometres, although he was fairly sure he’d recognise cattle yards when he came to them.

‘Better stop and lock the hubs just in case,’ Annabelle suggested, and he pulled up and watched as she walked to the front wheel on her side, bending over to shift the hub from free to lock. He went back to his side and did the same thing.

‘Are we now in four-wheel drive?’ he asked, wondering about the next move.

She shook her head.

‘No, but we can go into it if we need to now the hubs are locked. We should lock them every so often whether we’re using the four-wheel drive or not, to keep them lubricated.’

She passed him as she spoke and climbed into the driving seat.

‘It’s not that I don’t trust your driving,’ she said, ‘but we should get to this guy as quickly as we can so it’s not the ideal time to be starting your new driving lessons.’

Nick didn’t argue, although as he climbed back into the troopie and felt Bruce’s hot breath on his neck, he did feel entitled to a small grouch.

‘It’s a good thing I’m a modern man who isn’t fazed by women’s lib or the fact that one particular woman is outdoing me at every stage of this adventure.’

Annabelle turned towards him, as if startled by his admission, then she smiled.

‘Not at every stage,’ she reminded him. ‘You did rescue me from being trampled back there in the airport.’

She smiled again, though Nick was starting to wish she wouldn’t. She had such an attractive smile—the kind of smile that not only made you want to smile back but made you want to keep her smiling.

He shook his head, sure it had to be the heat—heatstroke—that had his mind wandering this way.

Although the vehicle was air-conditioned…

‘Hold on!’

The clipped order had him grabbing for the bar on the front dashboard, catching it just in time to stop himself being thrown forward against his seat belt.

‘That’s a washout,’ Annabelle explained as she eased the troopie into its lowest gear so it had to growl and grumble its way out of the creek bed. ‘I’m sorry, but going in it didn’t look as steep as that. I’ll take them all much more slowly in future.’

Still uncertain about the geography of it, Nick opened his window and stuck his head out to have a look. Clouds of red dust whirled in, but behind them he could see what Annabelle had meant. The road had seemed to ease slowly into the cry creek bed, but at the bottom it had been cut away so the last two feet of the descent had been abrupt.

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