Scandalous Secrets. Michelle Douglas

dough for the morning. She was cradling a stinking poodle.

      But Matt was sitting by her side and she thought, I don’t care. Mum has Felicity if she wants a beautiful daughter. I’m happy here.

      It was a strange thought—a liberating thought. She tried to think of Brett. Or Felicity. Of the two of them hand in hand telling her they’d betrayed her.

      They can have each other, she thought, and it was the first time she’d felt no bitterness.

      Ten days of shearing had changed things. Ten days of sitting outside every night with Matt? But there were only four days to go.

      ‘You going to tell me about Malley?’ Matt asked. He’d given her time. He’d sensed there were things she was coming to terms with, but now he was asking again.

      What had she told him? Malley changed my mind.

      Yeah, he had, and she’d been upset and she should still be upset. But how hard was it to be angry when she was sitting with this man whose empathy twisted something inside her that she hadn’t known existed.

      ‘I phoned Malley the night I got here,’ she admitted. ‘He told me I was a...well, I won’t say what he said but the gist of it was that I was a fool for taking the route I did and he was an idiot himself for thinking a citified b...a citified woman could do the job. He said he’d find someone else. He called me a whole lot of words I’d never heard of. I guess I was pretty upset so when he rang back and expected me to drop everything...’

      And then she stopped. She hadn’t meant to say any more. What was it about this man that messed with her head? That messed with the plan of action she knew was sensible?

      ‘Drop everything?’ he said slowly, and she thought uh oh. She went to get up but he put his hand on her arm and held her still. ‘You mean abandon this place?’ He was frowning. ‘Is that what he meant?’

      ‘He rang me back two days after I got here,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s okay. I used a few of his words back at him. Not...not the worst ones. But maybe the ones about being an idiot for ever thinking I’d take the job.’

      ‘But why did he ring?’

      This was sort of embarrassing. She’d been dumb to say anything at all but Matt was watching her. He was frowning, obviously thinking through the words she’d let slip. She had no choice but to be honest.

      ‘He ended up almost as trapped as we are, so finding another cook wasn’t an option,’ she told him. ‘And it’s costing him. Malley’s hotel is the base for scores of stranded tourists. He has supplies but no one to cook. He’s losing a fortune.’

      ‘So?’ Matt said slowly.

      ‘So he knows one of the chopper pilots who’s doing feed drops up north. I gather for two days he fumed at how useless I was and then he realized he didn’t have a choice. So he bribed the chopper pilot to come and get me.’

      There was a loaded silence.

      ‘So why didn’t you go?’

      ‘You told me he had mice.’

      ‘And you told me you could clean.’

      ‘So I could,’ she said with sudden asperity. ‘But I didn’t see why I should clean for someone with such a foul mouth. The tourists can cook for themselves if they need to. Why should I go?’

      ‘But you came all the way here to take a permanent, full-time job.’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘And shearing finishes in four days.’ He frowned. ‘Why didn’t you accept? I don’t understand.’

      And she didn’t, either. Not totally. It had been a decision of the heart, not the head, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

      She reverted to being practical. ‘The chopper pilot was supposed to be dropping food to stranded livestock, so what was he about, agreeing to pick me up? How could I live with myself knowing cows were hungry because of me? Besides, they couldn’t fit my car into the chopper.’

      ‘You were the one who suggested leaving your car here until after the floods.’

      Drat, why did he have to have such a good memory?

      ‘So why?’ he asked again, more gently, and suddenly there seemed nothing left but the truth.

      ‘You needed me,’ she told him. ‘And...’

      ‘And?’

      Her chin tilted. This was something her family never got. Her friends never got. She’d been mocked for this before but she might as well say it. ‘I was having fun.’

      ‘Fun?’ He stared at her in amazement. ‘You’ve worked harder than any shearer. You’ve planned, you’ve cooked, you’ve cleaned. You’ve gone to bed as exhausted as me every night and you’ve got up every morning and started all over again. You call that fun?’

      ‘Yes.’ She said it firmly. It was a stand she’d defended for years and she wasn’t letting it go now. Cooking was her love, and cooking for people who appreciated it was heaven. ‘But you needn’t sound so amazed. Tell me why you’re here. You own a bauxite mine, one of the richest in the country. You surely don’t need to farm. You’re working yourself into the ground too. For what?’

      ‘Fun?’ he said and she smiled.

      ‘Gotcha.’

      ‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘I get it, though I’m imagining the work at Malley’s would have been just as hard. So where do you go from here? You knocked back a permanent job to help me.’

      ‘I knocked back a permanent job because I wanted this one. And, even without the mice, Malley sounds mean.’

      ‘The man’s an imbecile,’ Matt said. ‘To bad-mouth a cook of your standard? He obviously has the brains of a newt. To lose you...’

      And then he paused.

      The atmosphere changed. That thing inside her twisted again. To have someone defend her...value her...

      It’s the cooking, she told herself. She was never valued for herself.

      But suddenly his hand was covering hers, big and rough and warm. ‘Thank you,’ he told her and it sounded as if it came from the heart. ‘Thank you indeed—and I think your wages just went up.’

      * * *

      Fun.

      He thought of the massive amount of work she’d put in over the last ten days. He thought of the drudgery of planning, chopping, peeling, cooking and cleaning. He thought of the mounds of washing-up. How had he ever thought he could handle it himself? In the end he’d hardly had time to help her cart food across to the shed, but she hadn’t complained once.

      She was a pink princess, the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Australia, yet she’d worked as hard as any shearer.

      And in four days? Shearing would be over. The water was already dropping in the creeks. Cooking at Malley’s was obviously out of the question. Penny’s long-term plan to set up a catering company would take months. Meanwhile, what would she do?

      She’d come a long way to be here, and she’d come for a reason. She’d exposed her pain to him. She’d exposed the hurt her family had heaped on her. She was here to escape humiliation—and now, because she’d decided to help him she had little choice but to head back and face that humiliation again. Even if she went to another city the media would find her. He had no doubt the media frenzy during her sister’s wedding would be appalling.

      ‘Stay for a bit,’ he found himself saying. Until the words were out of his mouth he didn’t know he’d intended to say them, but the words were said. He’d asked the pink princess to stay.

      There was a moment’s silence. Actually, it was more than a moment. It stretched on.

      She