‘Ross is all right,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘He’s just young.’
‘He’s twenty-seven, two years older than me. It’s not that young.’
‘It’s not that old either. There’s plenty of time before Ross needs to think about settling down.’
‘And when he does, he’s going to pick a good outback girl who’ll make him a practical wife,’ said Prue miserably.
Nat thought that was more than likely, too. For all his charm of manner, Ross had always struck him as having a hard head on his shoulders. ‘Is that what he says?’ he asked, deciding to stay neutral.
‘He doesn’t have to.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘He’s made it very clear that he doesn’t think I can cope with life on a station like Cowen Creek. I’m just someone else he can have a good time with, not someone he would ever think about spending his life with.’
Her voice wobbled slightly, but she was determined not to give in to tears the way she had done when the car had first spluttered to a halt and left her stranded with only the thought of how much her stupidity just seemed to prove Ross’s point. She stiffened her lip. ‘I don’t belong,’ she finished bleakly, ‘and Ross thinks I never will.’
‘You can’t blame him for thinking about how you would manage,’ said Nat cautiously. He had the nasty feeling that he was getting out of his depth. ‘It’s a hard life out here, if you’re not used to it.’
‘All I want is the chance to get used to it,’ said Prue with another sigh.
To Nat’s relief, they were approaching the turn-off onto the sealed road, where the track was marked by an old tractor tyre on which ‘Cowen Creek’ had been painted. He changed gear, wishing that it were as easy to disengage a conversation.
‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,’ he said as he looked up and down the long, straight, empty stretch of road before pulling out. ‘By the end of the season you’ll be carrying on like you were born here, and who’s to say Ross won’t change his mind? You just need to give him time.’
‘But I haven’t got time,’ Prue protested. ‘That’s just it. I’ve got to go home in three weeks.’
He shot her a look of surprise. ‘Has your visa run out already?’
‘No, my sister’s getting married.’ Prue’s tone didn’t suggest she found it much cause for celebration. ‘Originally they were going to have an autumn wedding, but then Cleo decided it would be much nicer for everyone if they had it in summer instead, so I’ve got to cut short my trip. I promised I’d be there, and I can’t let her down.’
She stared disconsolately out of the window, imagining London with its grey streets and its grey buildings and its grey clouds. Here the sky was an intense, glaring blue and the air was diamond-bright and the heat shimmered over the red earth and wavered along the vast, distant horizon. And somewhere out there Ross was riding his horse, sitting easily in the saddle, smiling that smile of his…
‘I wish I could stay,’ she sighed. ‘It’s not just because of Ross. I love it here. I suppose I always had a pretty romantic idea of the outback, and I didn’t really know what to expect. When I heard about the job at Cowen Creek I was half afraid that I would be disappointed, but the moment I arrived I fell in love with the place.
‘It was like coming home,’ she said slowly, the grey eyes dreamy and unfocused as she remembered how she had felt. ‘It was as if I’d always known the light and the stillness and the silence. I love the birds and the trees along the creeks, and the way the screen door bangs.’
She glanced at Nat, half-defiant, half shame-faced. ‘That’s why it bothers me so much that I don’t belong, why I wish so much that I could. Does that sound stupid?’
‘No, it doesn’t sound stupid.’ He turned his head and smiled at her, a warm smile that illuminated his quiet face and left Prue oddly startled, even breathless, at the transformation.
‘It doesn’t sound stupid at all,’ he said again. ‘That’s the way I feel about the outback, too.’
‘Really?’
Slewing round as far as she could in her seat-belt, Prue studied Nat with new interest. She had never taken much notice of him before, beyond registering his air of unhurried calm, but now she looked at him properly and was surprised at what she saw.
It wasn’t that he was handsome, at least not in the way Ross was handsome. His hair was an indeterminate shade of brown, his eyes were brown—in fact, everything about him seemed to be brown. Brown skin, brown watch, strong brown hands on the wheel. He was even wearing a brown shirt.
But still, there was something about him. It was more to do with his air of quiet self-assurance than any particular arrangement of his features, Prue decided. If he wasn’t so understated, he might even be quite attractive. His colouring might not be very obvious, but there was nothing indeterminate about that lean jaw, or the angles of his face, or the cool, firm mouth that had smiled with such astonishing effect.
Prue’s eyes rested on it speculatively. It was a pity Nat didn’t smile more often, she thought, remembering how white his teeth were, the way his eyes had crinkled at the corners and the creases had deepened in his cheeks, and for some reason a tiny, almost imperceptible tingle tiptoed down her spine and made her shiver.
Puzzled by her silence, Nat looked across to check that she was all right and their eyes met for a brief instant. There was nothing in his expression to suggest that he was aware of how closely she had been studying him, but Prue felt a blush steal up her cheeks and she jerked her gaze away.
‘You’re lucky,’ she muttered, averting her face and conscious of a quite inexplicable feeling of shyness. ‘You belong here. You don’t have to go to London and wonder if you’ll ever see the outback again.’
Nat didn’t answer immediately. A road train was bearing down on them, and he lifted a hand to acknowledge the driver’s wave as it thundered past with four long trailers.
‘You’ll just have to come back after the wedding,’ he said when it had gone, able to put his foot down on the accelerator at last. ‘The Grangers will still be here, and I’m sure they’d give you another job.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that.’ Prue had recovered from her momentary confusion. ‘It took me ages to save the money for this trip, and I’ve spent it all now. If I wanted to buy another ticket, I’d have to start all over again.’
‘Couldn’t you do that?’
‘I could, but by the time I’d got enough money together I’d probably be too old to get a work permit—and even if I wasn’t, they would have had to have found a new cook for Cowen Creek.’
What was the betting that the next cook would be young, and pretty, and completely at home in the outback? Just the type to convince Ross that it was time to settle down, in fact. Desperation clutched at Prue’s heart as she imagined coming back to find that Ross had given up waiting for her to get used to the bush and married someone much more suitable instead.
‘So what you need,’ said Nat, following his own train of thought, ‘is a short-term job that will pay you enough to cover your fare back to Australia?’
Prue nodded. ‘Except I’ll probably need at least two jobs in order to save anything. I could get some office work during the day and waitress in the evenings, and if I stay with my parents I won’t have to pay London rents, which would make a difference. It’ll be all right if it’s not for too long,’ she tried to convince herself.
It would still take months before she could get back to Australia, she calculated in despair, and she sighed. ‘Perhaps I could rob a bank or something!’
‘What about a job that paid your flight back to Australia instead?’