Yes, he did, she thought. For the next few days her boundaries needed to shift. Not to be taken away, she reminded herself hastily. Just moved a little. She needed to stop thinking about him as her boss and start thinking about him as someone who should be grateful to her for providing emergency accommodation.
She’d made a start, deliberately getting rid of her corporate gear, making a statement that this weekend wasn’t entirely an extension of their work relationship.
He could lock himself in his room for the duration, she thought. She’d sent a flurry of texts to Letty on the subject of which room they’d put him in. The attic was best. There was a good bed and a desk and a comfy chair. It had its own small bathroom. The man was a serious workaholic. Maybe he’d even take his meals in his room.
‘He’s not singing,’ the elderly woman beside her said. Meg had struck up an intermittent conversation with her, so she knew the connection. ‘Your boss. Is he not happy?’
‘He’s stuck in Australia because of the airline strike,’ Meg said. ‘I suspect he’s homesick.’
Homesick. She’d spoken loudly because of the singing, but there was a sudden lull between verses and somehow her words hit silence. Suddenly everyone was looking at William.
‘Homesick,’ the woman beside Meg breathed, loud enough for everyone to hear; loud enough to catch William’s attention. ‘Oh, that’s awful. Do you have a wife and kiddies back home?’
‘I…no,’ William said, clearly astonished that a stranger could be so familiar.
‘So it’ll just be your parents missing you,’ the woman said. ‘Oh, I couldn’t bear it. Where’s home?’
‘New York.’ The two syllables were said with bluntness bordering on rudeness, but the woman wasn’t to be deflected.
‘New York City?’ she breathed. ‘Oh, where? Near Central Park?’
‘My apartment overlooks Central Park,’ he conceded, and there was an awed hush.
‘Will it be snowing there?’ someone asked, and Meg looked at her boss’s grim face and answered for him. She’d checked the forecast. It was part of her job.
‘The forecast is for snow.’
‘Oh, and the temperature here’s going to be boiling.’ The woman doing the questioning looked as if she might burst into tears on his behalf. ‘You could have made snowmen in Central Park.’
‘I don’t…’
‘Or thrown snowballs,’ someone added.
‘Or made a Snowman Santa.’
‘Hey, did you see that movie where they fell down and made snow angels?’
‘He could do that here in the dust.’
There was general laughter, but it was sympathetic, and then the next carol started and William was mercifully left alone.
Um…maybe she should have protected him from that. Maybe she shouldn’t have told anyone he was her boss. Meg looked across at William—immersed in his work again—and thought—I’m taking my boss home for Christmas and all we’re offering is dust angels. He could be having a white Christmas in Central Park.
With who?
She didn’t know, and she was not going to feel bad about that, she decided. Not until he told her that he was missing a person in particular. If he was simply going to sit in a luxury penthouse and have lobster and caviar and truffles and open gifts to himself…
She was going home to Scotty and Grandma and a hundred cows.
That was a good thought. No matter how appallingly she’d messed up, she was still going home for Christmas.
She was very noble to share, she told herself.
Hold that thought.
Tandaroit wasn’t so much a station as a rail head. There’d been talk of closing it down but Letty had immediately presented a petition with over five thousand names on it to their local parliamentarian. No matter that Letty, Scotty and Meg seemed to be the only ones who used it—and that the names on the petition had been garnered by Letty, dressed in gumboots and overalls, sitting on the corner of one of Melbourne’s major pedestrian malls in Scotty’s now discarded wheelchair. She’d been holding an enormous photograph of a huge-eyed calf with a logo saying ‘Save Your Country Cousins’ superimposed.
Tandaroit Station stayed.
When Letty wanted something she generally got it. Her energy was legendary. The death of her son and daughter-in-law four years ago had left her shattered, but afterwards she’d hugged Meg and she’d said, ‘There’s nothing to do but keep going, so we keep going. Let’s get you another job.’
Meg’s first thought had been to get some sort of accountancy job in Curalo, their closest city, but then they’d found Mr McMaster’s advertisement. ‘You’d be away from us almost completely for three months of the year but the rest we’d have you almost full-time. That’d be better for Scotty; better for all of us. And look at the pay,’ Letty had said, awed. ‘Oh, Meg, go for it.’
So she’d gone for it, and now she was tugging her bag down from the luggage rack as William extricated himself from his wedged in position and she was thinking that was what she had to do now. Just go for it. Christmas, here we come, ready or not.
Her bag was stuck under a load of other people’s baggage. She gave it a fierce tug and it came loose, just as William freed himself from his seat. She lurched backward and he caught her. And held.
He had to hold her. The train was slowing. There were youngsters sitting in the aisle, she had no hope of steadying herself and she had every chance of landing on top of a child. But her boss was holding her against him, steady as a rock in the swaying train.
And she let him hold her. She was tired and unnerved and overwrought. She’d been trying to be chirpy; trying to pretend everything was cool and she brought someone like her boss home for Christmas every year. She’d been trying to think that she didn’t care that she’d just ruined the most fantastic job she’d ever be likely to have.
And suddenly it was all just too much. For one fleeting moment she let her guard down. She let herself lean into him, while she felt his strength, the feel of his new-this-morning crisp linen shirt, the scent of his half-a-month’s-salary aftershave…
‘Ooh, I hope you two have a very happy Christmas,’ the lady she’d been sitting near said, beaming up at them in approval. ‘No need for gifts for you two, then. No wonder you’re taking him home for Christmas.’ And then she giggled. ‘You know, I married my boss too. Best thing I ever did. Fourteen grandchildren later…You go for it, love.’
And Meg, who’d never blushed in her life, turned bright crimson and hauled herself out of her boss’s arms as if she were burned.
The train was shuddering to a halt. She had to manoeuvre her way through the crowds to get out.
She headed for the door, leaving her boss to follow. If he could. And she wouldn’t really mind if he couldn’t.
The train dumped them and left, rolling away into the night, civilisation on wheels, leaving them where civilisation wasn’t. Nine o’clock on the Tandaroit rail head. Social hub of the world. Or not. There was a single electric light above the entrance, and nothing else for as far as the eye could see.
‘So…where exactly are we?’ William said, sounding as if he might have just landed on Mars, but Meg wasn’t listening. She was too busy staring out into the night, willing the headlights of Letty’s station wagon to appear.
Letty was always late. She’d threatened her with death if she was late tonight.
She couldn’t even phone her to find out where she was. There was no mobile reception out here. And, as if in echo of her thoughts…