Scandalous Secrets. Michelle Douglas

stopped because he needed to reassure her.

      He wanted to tell her it was okay to serve cold ham and peas and potatoes.

      She thought again of that dinner with her parents, the joy, the certainty that all was right with her world, and then the crashing deflation.

      This morning’s pizza had been a massive effort. To serve quality food for every single meal would see her exhausted beyond belief.

      She could serve his horrid cold ham, she thought, but that would be the equivalent of running away, as she’d run away from Sydney. But there was nowhere to run now.

      She braced her shoulders and took a deep breath, hauling herself up to her whole five feet three. Where were stilettoes when a girl needed them?

      ‘I’ll have lun...dinner ready for you at twelve-thirty,’ she told him. ‘And there won’t be a bit of cold ham in sight.’

      * * *

      He should be back in the shed. These guys were fast—they didn’t have the reputation of being the best shearing team in South Australia for nothing. The mob of sheep waiting in the pens outside was being thinned by the minute. He needed to get more in.

      Instead he took a moment to watch her go.

      She was stalking back to the house. He could sense indignation in the very way she held her shoulders.

      And humiliation.

      She’d been proud of her lamingtons.

      They were great lamingtons, he conceded. He’d only just managed to snaffle one before they were gone. There was no doubt she could cook.

      She’d pulled out a miracle.

      He watched as she stopped to greet Donald’s dog. She bent and fondled his ears and said something, and for some reason he wanted badly to know what it was.

      She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her bouncy curls were caught in a ponytail. The media thing he’d read yesterday said she was twenty-seven but she looked about seventeen.

      ‘Hey, Matt...’ It was Harv, yelling from the shed. ‘You want to get the next mob in or will I?’

      He shook himself. It didn’t matter what Penny did or didn’t look like. He needed to get to work. He’d have to knock off early to go and make sure she’d sliced enough ham. Could she guess how many spuds she had to cook?

      He glanced at her again. She was heading up the veranda. She looked great in those shorts. Totally inappropriate for this setting but great. She’d squared her shoulders and she was walking with a bounce again. Rufus was following and for a weird moment he wouldn’t mind doing the same.

      * * *

      Food. Fast. Right.

      She stared at her two quiches and three sticks of bread dough doing their final rise in a sunbeam on the window ledge—an entrée for that mob, she thought. A snack.

      The reason that pantry was packed... Yeah, she got it.

      There were sides of lamb, pork and beef hung on great hooks in the coolroom. Whole sides.

      She usually bought lamb boned out and butterflied, pork belly trimmed to perfection.

      But she had done a butchering course. Once upon a time a two star chef who’d agreed to have her help in his kitchen had yelled it at her. ‘You want to understand meat, you need to understand the basics.’ He hadn’t made her kill her own cow but she had handled slabs of meat almost as big as this.

      But to cut it into roasts, marinade it, get it into an oven she didn’t know...

      ‘Not going to happen,’ she muttered. ‘But I reckon I could get chops cut and cooked in time. First, let’s get the bread divided and pies baked, and then I’m going to tackle me a sheep.’

      * * *

      Matt didn’t leave the shed until ten minutes before the team was due to head to the kitchen.

      He was running late. With Penny’s knife skills though, and now she knew how much they ate, surely she’d have plated enough?

      He opened the kitchen door—and the smell literally stopped him in his tracks. He could smell cooked lamb, rich sauces, apple pies redolent with cinnamon and cloves. Fried onions, fried chicken? His senses couldn’t take it all in.

      He gazed around the kitchen in stupefaction. The warming plate and the top of the damped-down firestove were piled high with loaded dishes, keeping warm. There were rounds of crumbed lamb cutlets, fried chicken, slices of some sort of vegetable quiche that looked amazing. Jugs of steaming sauces. Plates of crusty rolls. A vast bowl of tiny potatoes with butter and parsley. Two—no, make that three—casseroles full of mixed vegetables. Was that a ratatouille?

      And to the side there were steaming fruit pies, with great bowls of whipped cream.

      ‘Do you think we still need the ham?’ Penny asked demurely and he blinked.

      This wasn’t the same clean Penny. She was almost as filthy as he was, but in a different way. Flour seemed to be smudged everywhere. A great apricot-coloured smear was splashed down her front. The curls from her ponytail had wisped out of their band and were clinging to her face.

      And once again came that thought... She looked adorable.

      ‘I’m a mess,’ she told him when he couldn’t find the words to speak. ‘The team’ll be here in five minutes, right? If you want me to serve, I’ll go get changed. Everything’s ready.’

      And it was. The team would think they’d died and gone to heaven.

      ‘Or do you want me to disappear?’ Penny added. ‘Ducks on the pond, hey?’

      ‘Ducks is a sexist label,’ he told her. ‘Harry’s old school—Margie and Greta have spent the last couple of hours lecturing him on respect.’ He grinned. ‘But, speaking of respect... You, Penelope Hindmarsh-Firth, are a proper shearer’s cook and there’s no greater accolade. Don’t get changed. What you’re wearing is the uniform of hard work and the team will love you just the way you are.’

       CHAPTER FIVE

      THE TEAM KNOCKED off at five but Matt didn’t. Matt owned the place. No one gave him a knock-off time. He and Nugget headed out round the paddocks, making sure all was well. Thankfully, the night was warm and still, so even the just-shorn sheep seemed settled. He returned to the homestead, checked the sheep in the pens for the morning and headed for the house.

      Then he remembered the chooks; Donald hadn’t fed them for a week now. He went round the back of the house and almost walked into Penny.

      ‘All present and correct,’ she told him. ‘At least I think so. Fourteen girls, all safely roosted.’

      ‘How did you know?’

      ‘I saw you do it last night. I took a plate of leftovers down to Donald and saw they were still out. I don’t know how you’re coping with everything. You must be exhausted.’

      ‘It’s shearing time,’ he told her simply. ‘Every sheep farmer in the country feels like this. It only lasts two weeks.’

      She eyed him sideways in the fading light. He waited for a comment but none came.

      She’d changed again, into jeans and a windcheater. She looked extraordinarily young. Vulnerable.

      Kind of like she needed protecting?

      ‘Thank you for thinking of Donald.’

      ‘He wouldn’t come in with the shearers so I saved some for him. I think he was embarrassed but he took it.’ She hesitated a moment but then decided to forge on. ‘Matt...he told me he had to put Jindalee on the market but it broke his heart. And then you came. You renovated the cottage for him, even extending