Bushfire Bride

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‘The fires are bad?’

‘The fires are a problem,’ he told her. He was splashing cold water on his face as if he needed to wake himself up, and his voice was muted. ‘The burn’s in the national park. There’s no private property threatened but the neck of land into town has been cut. When the fire shifted, everyone who wasn’t local got out of town before the road closed. You were in Theatre when the evacuation call came through. We didn’t give you that option.’ He rubbed his face on a towel and then looked at her. Really looked at her. And his voice softened. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel, but you’re stuck here for the duration.’

She swallowed and tried to think through the implications. ‘We could get helicopter evacuation,’ she said at last, and he nodded. Still watching her.

‘We could. If it was urgent. But Kim’s no longer an urgent case. Are you urgently required back in Sydney?’

Was she urgently needed?

No, she had to admit. At least, not by the hospital. As of last Friday she was officially on holiday. The trip to Cowral had been intended to be a weekend away followed by two weeks of lying in the sun. Back in Sydney, though. She’d have lain on Bondi beach so she could still visit Craig morning and night.

Craig needed her.

No. Craig didn’t need her. She needed to get her head around that, once and for all.

She couldn’t. But the reality was that no one would complain if she wasn’t back in Sydney for the next few days, least of all Craig. She may as well admit it.

‘Um … no.’

‘That’s great,’ he told her. ‘Because I may just need you myself.’

Hugo needed her. Great.

Everyone needed Rachel. Everyone always had. So what was new?

Dear God, she wanted to go home. Craig …

She didn’t have a choice. She was here. With Hugo. While Craig was …

Craig just was.

CHAPTER THREE

RACHEL walked slowly back to the showgrounds, dragging her feet in too-big sandals. She’d told Hugo she needed to see to Penelope. Kim’s parents were needing more reassurance. He’d been distracted and she’d slipped away.

He had enough to worry about without her worries. Which were considerable.

It was just on dusk. The evening was still and very, very warm. The sound of the sea was everywhere.

Cowral was built on a bluff overlooking the Southern Ocean. The stars were a hazy sheen of silver under a smoky filter. To the north she could see the soft orange glow of threatening fire. It was too far away to worry about, she thought. Maybe it’d stay in the national park and behave.

Meanwhile, it’d be a great time for a swim. But she had things to sort. Penelope. Accommodation.

Sleep!

Michael’s Aston Martin was parked at the entrance to the showgrounds and she looked at it with a frown. She’d thrown the car keys back at Michael. Were they in his pocket right now as he did his heroic lifesaving thing back in the city, or had he left the keys in Penelope’s dog stall?

It was all very well standing on one’s dignity, she thought ruefully, but if he’d taken his keys then she’d be walking everywhere. She didn’t like her chances of hot-wiring an Aston Martin.

Meanwhile … Meanwhile, Penelope. Rachel pushed open the wire gates of the dog pavilion and went to find the second of her worries.

Michael might have taken his car keys but he hadn’t taken his dog. Penelope was right where Rachel had left her, sitting in the now empty dog pavilion, gazing out with the air of a dog who’d been deserted by the world.

‘Oh, you poor baby.’ She hugged the big dog and hauled herself up into the stall to think about her options. ‘I haven’t deserted you, even if your master has.’

Penelope licked her face, then nosed her Crimplene in evident confusion.

‘You don’t like my fashion sense either?’ She gave a halfhearted smile. ‘We’re stuck with it. But meanwhile …’

Meanwhile, she was hungry. No. Make that starving! She’d had one bite of a very soggy hamburger some hours ago. The remains had long gone.

Penelope didn’t look hungry at all.

‘You ate the rest of my hamburger?

Penelope licked her again.

‘Fine. It was disgusting anyway, but what am I supposed to eat?’ She gazed about her. The pavilion was deserted.

Michael hadn’t left his keys.

Her bag was over at the caretaker’s residence where she’d showered. She could walk over there and fetch it, but why? The contents of the bag were foul. She had her purse with her—she’d tucked it into a pocket of the capacious Crimplene. She needed nothing else.

Wrong. She needed lots of things.

She had nothing else.

So … She had her purse, a dog and a really rumbling stomach.

‘I guess we walk into town,’ she told Penelope. The only problem was that the hospital and the showgrounds were on one side of the river and the tiny township of Cowral was on the other.

‘We don’t have a choice,’ she told the dog. ‘Walking is good for us. Let’s get used to it. The key to our wheels has just taken himself back to Sydney and we’re glad he has. Compared to your master … I hate to tell you, Penelope, but walking looks good in comparison.’

Cowral was closed.

It was a tiny seaside town. It was Sunday night. All the tourists had left when the roads had started to be threatened. Rachel trudged over the bridge and into town to find the place was shut down as if it was dead winter and midnight. Not a shop was open. By the time she reached the main street the pall of smoke was completely covering the moon and only a couple of streetlights were casting an eerie, foggy glow through the haze.

‘It looks like something out of Sherlock Holmes,’ Rachel told her canine companion. ‘Murderer appears stage left …’ She stood in the middle of the deserted street and listened to her stomach rumble and thought not very nice thoughts about a whole range of people. A whole range of circumstances.

Murder was definitely an option.

Her phone was in her purse. She hauled it out and looked at it. Who could she ring?

No one. She didn’t know anyone.

She stared at it some more and, as if she’d willed it, it rang all by itself. She was so relieved she answered before it had finished the first ring.

‘Rachel?’ It was Dottie’s bright chirpiness sounding down the line. Her mother-in-law who’d so wanted this weekend to work. ‘Rachel, I hope I’m not intruding but I so wanted to know how it was going. Where are you, dear?’

Rachel thought about it. ‘I’m standing in the main street of Cowral,’ she said. ‘Thinking about dinner.’

‘Oh …’ She could hear Dottie’s beam down the line. ‘Are you going somewhere romantic?’

‘Maybe outdoors,’ Rachel said, cautiously looking around at her options. ‘Under the stars.’ She looked through the smoke toward the sea. ‘On the beach?’

‘How wonderful. Is the weather gorgeous?’

Rachel tried not to cough from smoke inhalation. ‘Gorgeous!’

‘And you have such gorgeous company.’

Rachel looked dubiously down at Penelope. ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘You know we so wanted you to have a good time, Lewis and I. There’s no chance of extending your time there, I suppose?’

‘Actually, there may be,’ Rachel told her. She explained about the fires and the road being cut. ‘There’s nothing to worry about but … we may be held up here for a few more days.’ There was no reason to explain that ‘we’ meant Rachel and an Afghan hound. Not Rachel and a gorgeous hunk of eligible cardiologist.

But her words were just what Dottie wanted to hear. ‘Oh, my dear, that’s lovely.’ She could hear Dottie’s beam widen. ‘Unless the fires are a real problem?’

‘They don’t seem to be.’ Australians understood about bushfires. Most national parks burned every few years or so—they needed to burn to regenerate—and as long as they didn’t threaten townships they weren’t a worry. Dottie clearly thought this time they’d been sent from heaven.

‘Dottie,’ she said cautiously. ‘Craig …’

‘You’re not to worry. We told you and we meant it. His father and I have taken right over as we should have long ago. As you should have let us.’

‘But—’

‘You concentrate on yourself,’ Dorothy told her. ‘You concentrate on your future. On your romantic dinner under the stars. That’s an order.’

And the phone went dead.

Great.

She stared at it. Her link with home.

She should be back in the hospital right now. Why wasn’t she? Craig …

Don’t think about it. Think about now.

Now what?

If there was no dinner to be had in Cowral then she needed to think about her next need. Sleep. Accommodation.

Cowral Bay’s only motel—the place where Michael-the-rat had slept last night—was on the other side of the river.

She’d walk back over the bridge, she decided. She’d leave Penelope in her dog box in the pavilion and book herself into the motel. Hey, maybe the motel even had room service.

By the time she reached the motel her feet, in her borrowed sandals, were screaming that she had blisters. She’d bother with taking Penelope back to the pavilion later, she decided, so she tied the dog to a tree and walked into Motel Reception. To find no room at the inn.

‘Sorry, love,’ the motel owner told her, casting a nervous glance at Rachel’s dubious apparel. ‘There’s fire crews from the other side of the peninsula trapped here now and they’ve booked us out.’

‘Do you have a restaurant?’ Rachel asked with more hope than optimism, and was rewarded by another dubious look and another shake of the head.

‘Everyone’s closed. The Country Women’s Association are putting on food twenty-four hours a day for the firefighters in the hall over the bridge but you don’t look like a firefighter.’

Rachel swallowed. ‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘Are you OK, love?’ the woman asked. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t need one of them women’s refuge places, do you? I could call the police for you if you like.’

Great. That was all she needed. A girl had some pride but Rachel was really struggling to find it here. She took a deep breath and pulled herself together.

Maybe women’s refuges had food?

Good grief. What was she thinking?

‘Um, no. Thank you.’ She fished in her purse and found a couple of coins. There was a candy dispensing machine by the counter and the sweets looked really inviting. ‘I’ll ring a friend, but meanwhile I’ll just buy a couple of these …’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ the woman told her. ‘The machine’s broken. The technician’s due tomorrow—if he can get through the fires.’

Rachel walked outside and untied Penelope. Then she considered, trying really hard not to panic.

Panic seemed an increasingly enticing option.

She’d go back to the hospital, she decided. Hugo had said he needed her. How much? He was about to be put to the test. ‘If you need me you’ll have to house and feed me,’ she’d tell him.

‘No. Feed me first,’ she corrected herself.

And Penelope?

Maybe she couldn’t expect Hugo to take on Penelope. She’d take her back to the pavilion.

Bad idea. It had been almost an hour now since Rachel had collected Penelope. Penelope had been the last dog to leave and the showground caretakers had done their duty. At some time while Rachel had walked into town and back again, the high wire gates had been bolted closed.

The caretaker’s residence was in the centre of the grounds, well out of shouting distance.

Rachel put her head against the cyclone wire and closed her eyes. Great. Just great. The whole situation was getting farcical.

Where was this women’s refuge?

‘This has to go into the record books as the most romantic weekend a girl has ever had,’ she told Penelope, but Penelope looked at her with the sad eyes of an Afghan hound who hadn’t been fed.

‘You ate my hamburger,’ Rachel told her. ‘Don’t even think about looking at me like that.’