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‘Fair dinkum?’
‘Yes. I’m a genuine Sunday school teacher.’
He cocked his head to one side and studied her. ‘What else do you do?’
What else did she do? Annoyed by the underlying taunt in his manner, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin to an even more dignified angle. If only she could offer this man an impressive answer. If only she could manage to lie without feeling guilty.
What else she did was less than impressive.
While most of her school chums had gone away to travel, or to university, or to jobs in London, she’d stayed behind in Hollydean to help her father and Tim. Whenever her friends came home, they took pains to point out that she’d been living in a time warp since she left school.
She knew Kane McKinnon wouldn’t be impressed by the news that she played a vital role in the parish—taking care of the rectory household, accompanying the choir practice, teaching at Sunday school, visiting the elderly and the sick…
And it was of no use to point out to him that she was so indispensable to the running of the parish that the ladies in the Mothers’ Union had organised themselves into a roster to take over her tasks while she was away.
Nevertheless, her green eyes flashed and she cast him a look ablaze with haughty pride. ‘I am an excellent housekeeper,’ she said.
His lips pursed as he released a low whistle. ‘Are you now? That’s very interesting…’
Letting out an impatient huff, she folded her arms across her chest. She’d had enough of his teasing. ‘I seem to remember you mentioned breakfast?’
‘That’s right. I did. Are you ready?’
‘I could be if I knew what you’ve done with my shoes…’
Bending down, he fished for something under the end of her bed, then he straightened and held out her sandals, dangling them by the straps. ‘These do?’
‘They’ll be fine, thank you.’ With icy composure she accepted them and slipped her feet into them, but she felt strangely self-conscious and fumble-fingered while he waited and watched her lean down to do up the buckles.
‘Now I’m ready,’ she said crisply.
‘Good. Let’s go down to the dining room.’ He opened the door and stood aside to let her past. ‘Once you’ve got some decent tucker inside you, we should have a chat. I’ve got a suggestion that might interest you.’
‘Your housekeeper?’
The way she said the word your set Kane’s teeth on edge. She might as well have come right out and said she’d be happy to take care of any other house on the planet—except his.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ he said, spearing a juicy sausage with his fork then attacking it with his knife. ‘If you’re going to insist on looking for your brother, you need somewhere to stay, and Reid and I need someone to cook and do the housework.’
‘It would probably do your brother and you the world of good to fend for yourselves for a week or two,’ she said in a preachy voice that he supposed she’d perfected during her years as a Sunday school teacher.
‘It would probably do your brother the world of good if he was left to carry on with his life without his sister breathing down his neck.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘And neither do you.’
They scowled at each other across the table, green eyes and blue sparking with equal ferocity. Then Kane gave a resigned shrug and resumed eating while Charity pushed the food around on her plate. Apart from sipping daintily at her pineapple juice and nibbling at her toast, she’d hardly touched the rest—only a little of the mushrooms and tomatoes.
‘You may as well eat up,’ Kane said. ‘A big pile of greasy food is good for a hangover.’
She looked ill, but he ate steadily on, relishing every speck of food on his plate—softly scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and sausages with tomato sauce, a lamb chop, mushrooms—
‘Very well, I’ll do it.’
Her sudden statement caught him by surprise. He looked up to find her watching him with a deadly earnest expression.
‘I’ll take the job as your housekeeper because it serves my purpose as well as yours,’ she said. ‘But I’m putting you on notice, Mr McKinnon. The only reason I’m coming out to your homestead is because I need accommodation and because I believe that someone in this district will be able to explain my brother’s disappearance.’
‘I can’t promise you anything on that score.’
‘I know you’ve tried to deter me, but that doesn’t change my opinion.’
Kane shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘And I’ll come to look after your home on the strict condition that you—’ In mid-sentence her composure crumpled. A tide of colour swept up her neck and into her cheeks.
Not for the first time, Kane wondered how a clergyman’s daughter could have such pagan prettiness. This girl’s lissom figure, vibrant hair and dewy green eyes would distract any red-blooded man.
And now this rosy blush…pretty as a sunrise. A Sunday school teacher out of her depth shouldn’t look so damn appealing.
His throat seemed to close and he had to swallow. ‘What was that? You mentioned a strict condition.’
She took a sip of pineapple juice and looked at him over the rim of the glass and her eyes seemed to plead with him to understand.
‘What condition?’ he repeated.
She still didn’t answer. But, as her blush deepened, Kane understood.
Pushing his plate to one side, he propped an elbow on the edge of the table and rested his chin on his hand. ‘Perhaps I should explain my conditions,’ he said.
‘You have conditions?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Then by all means, please explain.’
‘There are very few women I would ask to move into my home.’
Her eyes were huge and she nodded without speaking.
Leaning forward, he said quietly, ‘Apart from Annie, there are no women living on Southern Cross. There’s an old stockman who looks after the yard and he and my brother Reid and I are all bachelors—bachelors, living on an isolated cattle property.’
‘Oh,’ she said very softly and her pink mouth stayed in the shape of a circle.
‘Three men and a pretty young lady living alone could start tongues yapping from one end of Star Valley to the other. A hint of scandal runs through this district like a bushfire. So it needs to be made clear right from the start that there must be no involvement of—how can I put this delicately?’
‘You don’t need to,’ she cried. By now her face was fire truck red. ‘I understand perfectly and I wouldn’t dream—’
Keeping his face solemn, Kane offered his hand to shake hers. ‘Our arrangement is strictly business.’
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. That is exactly what I was trying to say.’
‘Then it seems we’re perfectly suited, Miss Denham.’
She looked as if she’d swallowed a grasshopper.
‘Oh, and one other thing,’ he said. ‘Try to stay away from the gin while you’re working for me.’
Charity fumed as she helped Kane load the back of his utility truck with stores. It had been completely unnecessary for him to spell out the need for propriety. And she knew that he knew that. Which meant that once again he’d been deliberately teasing her. And, indirectly, he’d also been making sure she understood that he didn’t desire her.
As if that wasn’t obvious! One look at Marsha had told her she would never be Kane McKinnon’s type.
‘I thought there was only yourself, your brother and one other man on Southern Cross,’ she said as she carried a box rattling with bottles of various sauces and mayonnaise to the truck. ‘Just how many will I be cooking for?’
She was stunned by the quantity of food Kane had ordered. Crates of oranges and apples, bags of flour, rice and sugar, a drum of olive oil, packets of pasta, boxes of tinned vegetables and fruit juice and crates of beer all had to be stowed away along with her suitcase.
‘There will probably be just the three of us—plus yourself, at least for the first few days,’ he said. ‘But we have to stock up properly.’ He took the box from her and stowed it next to a stash of toilet paper rolls. ‘You can’t come running back into town every five minutes.’
‘I realise that.’
‘There’s always a chance that the fencing team we’re expecting later in the month could arrive early,’ he said. ‘It depends on how their previous jobs pan out. But you could handle cooking for a few extras, couldn’t you?’
‘Of course.’ She was determined to sound confident, no matter how many challenges this man threw at her. At least she was getting to Southern Cross where she’d be able to speak to Reid McKinnon. And perhaps in time she would find a way to get more information out of Kane. She was sure he hadn’t told her everything he knew about Tim.
It was a pity his sister Annie had gone to the city; but Charity was sure that if she was patient she would find people in the district who were prepared to answer a few discreet questions.
Kane threw a tarpaulin over the load and began to secure it with rope. ‘That should keep most of the dust out,’ he said when he’d finished. He turned to her.
‘Okay, that’s it. Let’s hit the road, Chazza.’
‘I beg your pardon? Who’s Chazza?’
He dropped his gaze to the dusty toes of his riding boots and grinned. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out. We’re an uncouth lot in this country. We do terrible things to names. Barry becomes Bazza; Kerry is Kezza. So you’ll find yourself getting called Chazza. Or would you prefer Chaz?’
‘Do you have a problem with my real name?’
‘No. But I’m afraid nicknames tend to happen out here whether you like it or not.’
‘Then in that case I’ll take Chaz.’
‘Chaz it is then.’
He grinned again, but her own attempt to smile faltered.
Australians were very in-your-face. Tim had mentioned in his letters that the ringers liked to toss him teasing jokes to see how he handled them. No doubt it was their way of testing a newcomer. And as a new chum she was expected to throw one back.
Her brother would have been able to handle it. She, on the other hand, had always been too earnest to be good at witty exchanges.
She repeated the word Chaz softly under her breath and decided she probably liked it. Chaz. Chaz Denham. It sounded upbeat and trendy. She had never in her life been trendy. But no way would she admit to Kane that she quite liked the idea of being Chaz.
After she had climbed up into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut and buckled her seat belt, she said, ‘I have to admit an old-fashioned name like Charity can be something of a burden. Tim is lucky he isn’t my sister.’
‘Do you think a sister might have been christened Faith or Hope?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Perhaps.’ It was time to give him a taste of his own medicine. ‘My father excelled himself when he chose my middle name.’
‘Yeah?’ An unmistakable spark of curiosity flashed in his blue eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘Chastity.’
His jaw dropped. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’ For almost a minute he sat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the key in the ignition, staring at her, his expression cagey, as if he were sizing her up. Then a knowing smile dawned. ‘This is payback time, isn’t it, Sunday school teacher?’
‘For the way you’ve teased me mercilessly all morning?’
‘Rubbish. I’ve shown lots of mercy.’
‘Forgive me for not noticing, Mr McKinnon.’
He grinned and turned the key in the ignition and as the motor revved he said, ‘So are you going to tell me your real middle name?’
His arrogant assumption that she would tell him was so annoying—especially when he wouldn’t tell her one measly thing about Tim. And, although it was trivial by comparison, the thought that he really wanted to know her middle name was exquisitely satisfying.
‘Never,’ she said.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY took off down Mirrabrook’s main street, passing a little wooden church, the police station and the tiny post office, several shops and offices, a freshly painted café, and a larger modern building which housed the library and the Mirrabrook Star, the local newspaper.
Then followed a row of little timber houses with iron roofs, deep, shady verandas and front gardens bright with flowers, and suddenly gum trees crowded close to the narrow blue bitumen and the road plunged into bush again.
Shortly after that they came to a signpost pointing to Breakaway Station and Southern Cross Station and they took a dogleg turn off the main road and were rattling along a dusty and bumpy outback track.
Beneath a startling blue sky the stark landscape flashed past in a blur of brown and khaki streaks—dusty green foliage, grey-brown tree trunks and pink-red earth showing through a scant covering of dry grass. In the distance menacing mountains loomed, studded with black granite boulders. The Star Valley was nothing like the pretty valley Charity had expected. She didn’t understand how civilised people could give this wilderness such a charming name. The valleys of her experience were pleasant green and grassy dips in a gentle English landscape, more like folds in a green velvet skirt.
Of course, she had known that a valley in Outback Queensland would be different from one in Derbyshire. Her brother’s letters had told her about the vast and rugged outback, but somehow she’d never quite grasped how very vast and how exceedingly rugged it was.
And now, as she looked out into the rushing bush, she shuddered. It was into this wild, hostile wilderness that Tim had vanished. Seeing the inhospitable landscape for herself made his disappearance even more impossible to accept, too awful to believe. Where, oh, where was her fearless, daredevil little brother?
The truck hit a deep wheel rut and she was forced to clutch the door handle and brace herself with her feet against the floorboards. Why on earth had Tim been so eager to come to Australia? If she had had the chance to travel, she would have chosen to visit elegant European cities like Paris or Venice, Vienna or Prague.
Not this endless bush.
She’d read an article on the plane that said Australia was twenty-four times the size of Great Britain—and Tim could be anywhere in this enormous country.
They travelled on and on over the winding dirt road, dipping down to cross rocky, dry creek beds, climbing out on the other side between steep red banks and then continuing across the plains till they reached yet another dry creek crossing.
What startled Charity most was that there were no signs of human habitation. And yet there had to be people somewhere because someone had placed a sign that said:
