‘Oh, no! I didn’t mean that. My friend makes up a house party at the homestead; it’s huge—the house, I mean! And he’s always delighted if I bring someone with me.’
Skye sighed inwardly and reminded herself she’d known that this could be on the cards. ‘Bryce, look, you’ve been lovely company but there couldn’t ever be any more to it than that, for me.’
‘Because of Nick Hunter?’
‘Yes,’ she said honestly.
‘He must be mad!’
Skye smiled wearily. ‘It was as much my fault as his but it…’ She gestured. ‘So I think I’m better off going home and I think you…are so nice, when the right girl comes along, she’ll thank her lucky stars she found you.’
He grimaced.
‘I mean it,’ Skye said sincerely.
‘I still think you should come with me. I promise not to make a nuisance of myself but it could make an interesting chapter for your book. They spit-roast pigs and sides of beef, they make traditional damper and billy tea, they cook witchety grubs…’
Unwittingly, Skye couldn’t help looking interested.
‘And there’s an awful lot of colour and activity,’ Bryce continued. ‘Real outback stuff—calf-roping, wood-chopping contests, a boxing tent—and I’m no mean hand with a camera. I’ve got some lovely shots of Haggerstone for you.’
Pictures were the one thing Skye had worried about. She’d come unprepared to make a photographic diary of her sojourn. Truth to tell, although she’d brought her laptop, she hadn’t seen herself as being in the frame of mind to write anything constructive.
And she knew Bryce did have an impressive array of cameras, underwater and others.
She said uncertainly, ‘I’ll…I’ll think about it. But…’
‘I always keep my promises,’ Bryce said earnestly. ‘Although, one day, if you ever get over him, well, who knows?’
Two days later, although she was still unsure of the wisdom of it, she flew to Cairns then on to Mount Gregory Station with Bryce Denver. He’d arranged a lift with a pilot friend of his who was flying to Weipa and who would pick them up on his return the day after the two-day race meeting.
An hour or so after they landed, she knew she had not only been unwise but quite mad, and not on account of Bryce. Nick was one of the house party. Nick with a beautiful companion in tow.
She should have suspected it when Jack Attwood, Bryce’s friend, and his wife, Sally, picked them up from the station airstrip in a Land Rover. Sally did a distinct double take, then asked in an awed but also slightly anxious voice whether Skye was who she thought she was.
Bryce assured her that this was Skye Belmont but she’d rather not have any fuss made about it.
Jack greeted her warmly, and said, ‘No, no, we—wouldn’t dream of it. Welcome, Skye, it’s a great pleasure, but…anyway.’ He stopped as if unsure how to proceed, then urged them all to get into the vehicle out of the blistering sun.
On the way to the homestead, he gave them a tour of the race track with its tent population starting to swell for the two-day meeting beginning tomorrow. And he told them that this race meeting had been held on Mount Gregory since his great-grandfather’s time and had become a local institution.
Skye felt a pulse of interest and excitement as she looked around. At the people, so many of them obviously outback types, at the horses, the colour, the dust, and the quaint ancient little two-tiered grandstand. It would make a perfect chapter for her book, she told Jack and Sally, if they were agreeable to her using Mount Gregory?
Sally said they would be enchanted, and they all chatted away on the drive to the homestead, with that odd little moment of anxiety forgotten, by Skye at least.
It came rushing back to her as she mounted the shallow steps to the veranda that ran around the vast old house. Afternoon tea was laid out on a long table and there were two couples enjoying it as they lounged in planter chairs.
She stopped dead as she saw who one of the men was, sitting beside a lovely girl of about her own age with a sensational figure and long dark hair, and with her hand on his arm with unmistakable familiarity. As she stopped, she heard Sally take an audible breath behind her, and Bryce tripped.
Jack broke the awful awkwardness of it in a way, he was later to confide to his wife, that was worse and definitely akin to putting his foot squarely into his mouth.
‘Skye,’ he said heartily, ‘you probably know this bloke better than we do!’
Skye closed her eyes briefly but it was no mirage. It was Nick all right, in khaki moleskins, a red and white checked shirt, short boots, with his dark hair just the same and an unreadable expression in his eyes.
It soon fled, that expression, to give way to the look of sardonic amusement he bestowed on his friend Jack Attwood, then become almost rueful as it rested on Skye.
‘Oh, dear,’ he murmured, ‘I left town because I’m everyone’s favourite villain and—so this mightn’t happen. I’m sorry, Skye, but I had no idea you were a friend of the Attwoods.’
‘I’m not,’ Skye heard herself say casually, and wondered where she was dredging the composure from. ‘We’ve only just met. It was Bryce’s idea. Uh—Nick, this is Bryce Denver. Bryce—Nick Hunter.’
Don’t trip again or knock anything over, she pleaded silently with Bryce as she introduced them.
But Bryce was perfect. He made the veranda with no further incident, held out his hand and said, ‘Great to meet you, Nick! Yes, it was my idea. Skye and I have just had the most wonderful holiday on Haggerstone Island and we couldn’t persuade ourselves to go home yet. So, here we are.’
If the scars within Skye hadn’t been so raw and new, she would have laughed at the way Nick was momentarily floored. He went perfectly still and there was a glint of sheer disbelief in his eyes as they rested on her then flicked back to Bryce.
But instead of laughing she found herself thinking two thoughts: why shouldn’t what was sauce for the gander be sauce for the goose? And had she meant so little to him, he’d waited barely a month before acquiring someone new?
But that little frozen moment broke up like a kaleidoscope pattern shifting at the end of a tube. The girl with Nick got up and introduced herself as Wynn Mortimer, and the other middle-aged couple introduced themselves as Peter and Mary Clarke, neighbours of the Attwoods.
Then they all sat down to afternoon tea.
Skye wasn’t sure how she got through it but, of course, she should have known. Skye Belmont, television personality, took over. She even saw Bryce look at her once with a trace of surprise, and she realized that she’d been a somewhat muted companion during their days on Haggerstone.
Nor could she regret it, when, not long into afternoon tea, Wynn displayed a high-powered personality. She was funny, she was extremely articulate as well as obviously sophisticated. She talked about her recent trip to Africa on a modelling assignment and had them all in stitches when she described a close encounter with five white rhino. She also revealed she was a champion water-skier.
Just what he needs, Skye caught herself thinking cynically. Not someone who would love to cook for him, by the sound of it. Or ruin her figure bearing his children. At that moment, she happened to encounter Nick Hunter’s dark eyes on her.
She felt a frisson run through her as he made no attempt to hurry his inspection of her denim pinafore shorts over a lovely dotted white voile blouse. Or her sun-lightened hair and golden skin, and her legs down to the pair of white sand shoes she wore.
‘You’re looking well, Skye,’ he said then, into a lull in the conversation.