A shearer’s cook would be taking over this kitchen from tomorrow morning. Maybe she could help, she thought, but she’d worked in enough kitchens to know how possessive cooks could be.
‘I might be allowed to wash dishes,’ she told Samson morosely.
She found a tea bag—actually, she found about a thousand tea bags. They weren’t generic, but they weren’t lapsang souchong either.
‘We’ll have to slum it,’ she told her dog, and made her tea and headed out to the veranda.
The big, old collie she’d seen earlier was still snoozing on the step. He raised his head and gave his tail a faint wag, then settled back down to the serious business of sleeping.
An old man was dead-heading roses. He was stooped and weathered with age, almost a part of the land around him. He glanced up from his roses as she emerged from the back door, and startled as if he’d just seen a ghost.
‘Hi,’ Penny called. ‘I’m Penny.’
He didn’t answer. Instead he dropped the canvas bag he’d been carrying and backed away. Ghosts, it seemed, were scary.
Penny sighed. She plonked herself down on the edge of the veranda and gazed out over the garden to the rolling plains beyond. Samson eyed the old dog warily, and then plonked down beside her.
‘This is a beautiful view,’ she told Samson. ‘But I might just get sick of it after two weeks.’
Samson put his nose into the crook of her arm and whined. Samson, it seemed, was in complete agreement.
* * *
To say the men were unhappy would be an understatement.
‘So who’s going to cook?’ Bert, self-proclaimed shearers’ foreman, sounded incredulous.
‘Me,’ Matt told him. ‘It means I can’t spend much time in the shed, but Ron and Harv will have things under control.’ Ron was his right-hand man, Harv his jackeroo. They were both capable sheep men.
Leaving the shed in their hands was still a risk. Half the trick of a smooth shear was the owner being hands-on. Men worked at full capacity, day after day, pushing themselves to the limit because the sooner they finished the sooner they’d be paid, and that was a recipe for problems. Tensions escalated fast. Ron and Harv were both men who disliked conflict and backed away from it—there was a reason they both worked on such an isolated property. Matt didn’t like conflict either, but he could deal. He had the authority to dock wages, to kick a drunk shearer off the team or, worse, to recommend to other station owners which teams not to employ.
But Ron and Harv couldn’t cook to save their lives. They lived on a diet of corned beef, beer and the occasional apple to prevent scurvy. At least Matt could do a decent spag. bol.
He had no choice. The kitchen was his.
‘So we’ll be eating pasta and boiled beef for two weeks?’ Bert demanded and Matt shrugged.
‘I’ll do my best. Sorry, guys. I’m as unhappy about this as you are.’
‘So what about the Sheila we just saw you drive in with?’ Bert demanded. ‘Have you replaced Pete with a bit of fluff?’
‘I haven’t. She was stuck in the creek and I pulled her out. She’s stuck here too and, before you ask, I suspect she might be able to brew a decent tea but not much else.’
‘Great,’ Bert growled. ‘That’s just great.’
‘Sorry,’ Matt told him. ‘But that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it.’
And also a cute blonde with curves?
Do not go there. What was wrong with him? That was the second time he’d thought it.
Two weeks...
Stay well clear, he told himself. The last thing he needed was yet another woman complicating his life.
MATT RETURNED TO FIND Penny on the veranda, trying to make friends with Donald’s dog. He greeted her curtly. There was a lot to be done before he could sleep. If she was expecting to be entertained he might as well make things clear now.
He showed her which bedroom she could use. It was big, it overlooked the garden and it had the extra advantage of being as far away from his as possible. Plus it had its own bathroom. For a Hindmarsh-Firth it might still be slumming it, he thought, but it’d be a thousand times better than the accommodation she’d get at Malley’s Corner.
What on earth was she intending to do at Malley’s? He’d ask some time, he thought, but he had to be up before dawn to make sure the first mob was ready to go, he had to check the sheep again tonight and he needed to eat.
But he should offer to feed her, he decided. From tomorrow he was faced with feeding the multitude. He might as well start now.
‘Dinner’s in half an hour,’ he told her as he dumped her gear in her bedroom—how much stuff could one woman use? ‘At seven.’
‘I can help.’ She hesitated. ‘I’d like to.’
‘I’ll do it.’ He wanted to eat and run, not sit while she fussed over something fancy. ‘Thirty minutes. Kitchen. Oh, and there’s dog food...’
‘Samson has his own dog food.’
‘Of course he does,’ he said shortly and left her to her unpacking.
Showered, clean of the river sand, he felt better but not much. He tossed bacon and tomatoes into a frying pan, put bread in the toaster and set plates on the table.
Right on seven she walked in the door. She’d changed too. She’d obviously showered as well, for her curls were still damp. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and she’d caught her curls back in a ponytail.
He glanced around as she came into the room and had to force himself to turn back to the frying pan.
She looked fresh and clean and...cute? More than cute.
Curvy? Bouncy?
Sexy.
Cut it out, he told himself and concentrated on the bacon.
‘The house is lovely,’ she told him. ‘Thank you for taking me in.’
‘It’s not like I had a choice.’ He thought about that for a moment and decided he sounded a bore. ‘Sorry. You’re welcome. And yes, it’s lovely. Eggs?’ Then he figured as a conversational gambit it needed a little extra. ‘How many?’
‘Two, please.’ Her feet were bare. She padded over to the bench beside the firestove and hauled herself up so her legs were swinging. ‘You can fry on this? I’ve never used a slow combustion stove.’
‘It’s a skill,’ he said, deciding to sound modest.
‘What else can you do on it?’
Uh oh. She’d called him out. He grinned and cracked an egg into the pan. ‘Sausages,’ he told her. ‘And I can boil stuff.’
‘So you use the big oven?’
‘Not usually. The firestove suits me. If it’s a cold morning I put my boots in the oven. Oh, and the occasional live lamb.’
‘You put lambs in the oven?’
‘It’s the best place for a lamb that’s been caught in the frost,’ he told her. ‘I can fit a lamb and boots in there all at once. Lamb and boots come out warm and ready to go. It’s a win-win for everyone. Who needs an oven for baking?’
‘But you can still bake in it?’
‘I