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‘I never for a moment thought it would be,’ Kellie said, a little miffed that he obviously thought her a city girl with no practical skills. ‘I’m used to hard work.’
‘Have you worked in a remote outback area before?’ he asked.
Kellie hesitated over her answer. She was thinking her six-week stint in Tamworth in northern New South Wales probably wouldn’t qualify. It was a regional area, not exactly the outback. ‘Um … not really,’ she said. ‘But I’m keen to learn the ropes.’
His eyes studied her for a moment. ‘What made you decide to take this post?’ he asked.
‘I liked the sound of working in the bush,’ she answered. And I desperately needed to get away from my family and my absolutely disastrous love life, she mentally tacked on. ‘And six months will just fly by, I imagine.’
‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,’ he said. ‘The hours are long and the cases sometimes difficult to manage, with the issues of distance and limited resources.’
‘So who is holding the fort right now?’ she asked.
‘There’s a semi-retired GP, David Cutler, who fills in occasionally,’ he said. ‘He runs a clinic once a month to keep up his skills but his health isn’t good. His wife, Trish, is the practice receptionist and we have one nurse, Rosie Duncan. We could do with more but that’s the way it is out here.’
Kellie let a little silence slip past before she asked. ‘How long have you been at Culwulla Creek?’
His gaze remained focused on the book in the seat pocket in front of him. ‘Six years,’ he answered.
‘Wow, you must really love it out here,’ she said.
He hesitated for a mere sliver of a second before he answered, ‘Yes.’
Kellie watched as his expression closed off like a pair of curtains being pulled across a window. She had seen that look before, far too many times, in fact, on the faces of her father and brothers whenever she happened to nudge in under their emotional radar. It was a male thing. They liked to keep some things private and somehow she suspected Dr Matthew McNaught, too, had quite a few no-go areas.
‘By the way, I’m Kellie Thorne,’ she said offering him her hand.
His hand was cool and firm as it briefly took hers. ‘Matthew McNaught, but Matt’s fine.’
‘Matt, then,’ she said, smiling.
He didn’t return her smile.
‘So …’ She rolled her lips together and began again. ‘Do you have a family out here with you? A wife and kids perhaps?’
‘No.’
Kellie was starting to see why he hadn’t been successful thus far in landing himself a life partner. In spite of his good looks he had no personality to speak of. She felt like a tennis-ball throwing machine—she kept sending conversation starters his way but he didn’t make any effort to return them.
Not only that, he hadn’t once looked at her with anything remotely resembling male interest. Kellie knew she was being stupidly insecure thanks to her disastrous relationship—if you could call it that—with Harley Edwards, but surely Matt McNaught could have at least done a double-take, like the young pilot had on the tarmac before they had boarded the plane.
Kellie had looked in enough mirrors in her time to know none of them were in any danger of breaking any time soon. She had her mother’s slim but still femininely curvy figure and her chestnut brown hair was mid-length, with just a hint of a wave running through it. Her toffee-brown eyes had thick sooty lashes, which saved her a fortune in mascara. Her teeth were white and straight thanks to two and a half years of torture wearing braces when she’d been in her teens, and her skin was clear and naturally sun-kissed from spending so much time with her brothers at the beach.
Maybe he was gay, she pondered as she watched him read another chapter of his book. That would account for the zero interest. Anyway, she wasn’t out here on the hunt for a love life, far from it. So what if her one and only lover had bludgeoned her self-esteem? She didn’t need to find a replacement just to prove he was a two-timing sleazeball jerk with …
OK. That’s enough, Kellie chided herself as she wriggled again to get comfortable. Get over it. Harley probably hasn’t given you another thought since that morning you arrived to find him in bed with his secretary. Kellie winced at the memory and looked out of the window again, letting out the tiniest of sighs.
This locum position couldn’t have come at a better time and the short time was perfect. Living in the outback for a lengthy time was definitely not her thing. She would see the six months out but no longer. She had been a beach chick from birth. She had more bikinis than most women had shoes. Not only that, she was a fully qualified lifesaver, the sound of the ocean like a pulse in her blood. This would be the longest period she had been away from the coast but it would be worth it if it achieved what she hoped it would achieve.
The seat-belt light suddenly came on and the captain announced that there might be some stronger than normal turbulence ahead.
Kellie turned to Matthew with wide eyes. ‘Do you think we’ll be all right?’ she asked.
He looked at her as if she had grown a third eye. ‘You have flown before, haven’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but not usually in something this small,’ she confessed.
He let out a sound, something between derision and incredulity. ‘You do realise you will be flying in a Beechcraft twin engine plane at least once if not three or four times a month, don’t you? It’s called the Royal Flying Doctor Service and out here lives depend on it.’
Kellie gave a gulping swallow as the plane gave a stomach-dropping lurch. ‘I know, but someone will have to stay at the practice surely? Tim Montgomery said it in one of the letters he sent,’ she said. Biting her lip, she added, ‘I was kind of hoping that could be me.’
His eyes gave a little roll. ‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ she asked, wincing as the plane shifted again.
His blue eyes clashed momentarily with hers. ‘This is no doubt Tim and his wife Claire’s doing,’ he said. ‘I asked for someone with plenty of outback experience and instead what do I get?’
‘You get me,’ Kellie said with a hitch of her chin. ‘I’ve been in practice for four years and I’m EMST trained.’
‘And you have a fear of flying.’ He settled his shoulders back against the seat. ‘Great.’
Kellie gritted her teeth. ‘I do not have a fear of flying. I’ve been on heaps of flights. I even went to New Zealand last year.’
She could tell he wasn’t impressed. He gave her another rolled-eye look and turned back to his book.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked, after the turbulence had faded and the seat-belt light had been turned off again. Talking was good. It helped to keep her calm. It helped her not to notice all those suspicious mechanical noises.
‘It’s a book on astronomy,’ he said without looking up from the pages.
‘Is it any good?’
Matt let out a frustrated sigh and turned to look at her. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Would you like to borrow it?’ Anything to shut you up, he thought. What was it with this young woman? Didn’t she see he was in no mood for idle conversation? And what the hell was she doing, arriving a week earlier than expected?
She shook her head. ‘Nope, I don’t do heavy stuff any more. The only things I read now are medical journals and magazines and the occasional light novel.’
‘I’m doing a degree in astronomy online through Swinburne University,’ Matt said, hoping she would take the hint and let him get on with his chapter on globular clusters. ‘There’s a lot of reading, and I have an exam coming up.’
‘You’re a very fast reader,’ she said. ‘Have you done a speed-reading course or something?’
Matt’s eyes were starting to feel strained from the repeated rolling. ‘No, it’s just that I enjoy reading,’ he said. ‘It fills in the time.’
‘So it’s pretty quiet out here, huh?’ she asked.
Matt looked at her again, really looked at her this time. She had a pretty heart-shaped face and her eyes were an unusual caramel brown. He couldn’t quite decide how long her hair was as she had it sort of twisted up in a haphazard ponytail-cum-knot at the back of her head, but it was glossy and thick and there was plenty of it, and every now and again he caught of whiff of the honeysuckle fragrance of her shampoo.
She had a nice figure, trim and toned and yet feminine in all the right places. Her mouth was a little on the pouting side, he’d noticed earlier, but when she smiled it reminded him of a ray of bright sunshine breaking through dark clouds.
‘No, it’s not exactly quiet,’ he answered. ‘It’s different, that’s all.’
She gave him another little smile. ‘So no nightclubs and five-star restaurants, right?’
Matt felt a familiar tight ache deep inside his chest and looked away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No nightclubs, no cinemas, no fine dining, no twenty-four-hour trading.’ And no Madeleine, he added silently.
‘What about taxis?’ she asked after a short pause. ‘Do you have any of those?’
His eyes came back to hers. ‘No, but I can give you a lift to Tim and Claire’s house. I take it that’s where you’re staying?’
She nodded. ‘It was so kind of them to offer their house and the use of their car while I’m here. They sent me the keys in the mail. Believe me, that would never happen in the city. People don’t lend you anything, especially virtual strangers.’
Matt wondered again what had attracted her to the post. He even wondered if Tim and Claire and Trish had colluded to make the job as attractive as possible in order to secure a female GP, a young and single female GP at that—or so he assumed from her ring-free fingers.
‘So what do people do out here in their spare time?’ she asked. ‘Apart from reading, of course.’
‘Most of the locals are on the land,’ he said. ‘They have plenty to do to keep them occupied, especially with this drought going on and on.’
‘That’s what I thought you were at first,’ she said. ‘I had you pegged as a cattle farmer.’
‘I’ve actually got a few hectares of my own,’ he said, doing his best to ignore the brilliance of her smile. ‘I bought them a couple of years back off an elderly farmer who needed to sell in a hurry. I’ve got some breeding stock I’m trying to keep going until we get some decent rain.’
‘Is that where you live?’
‘Yes, it’s only a few minutes out of town.’
‘So do you have horses and stuff?’ she asked.
Matt looked longingly at his book. ‘Yeah, a couple, but they’re pretty wild.’
‘I love horses,’ she said, snuggling into her seat again. ‘I used to ride a bit as a child.’
The captain announced that they were preparing to land and she looked out of the window at the barren landscape. ‘So where’s the creek?’ she asked, and, turning back to him, continued, ‘I mean, there has to be a creek somewhere. Culwulla Creek must be named after a creek, right?’
Matt only just managed to control the urge to roll his eyes heavenwards yet again. ‘Yes, there is, but it’s practically dry. There’s been barely a trickle of water for more than three years.’
Her face fell a little. ‘Oh … that’s a shame.’
‘Why is that?’ he found himself asking, even though he really didn’t want to know.
‘I live by the beach,’ she said. ‘I swim every day, rain or shine.’
Matt felt his chest tighten again. Madeleine had loved swimming. ‘That’s one hobby you’ll have to suspend while you’re out here,’ he said in a flat, emotionless tone. ‘That is, unless it rains.’
‘Oh, well, then,’ she said with a bright optimistic smile. ‘I’d better start doing a rain dance or something. Who knows what might happen?’
Who indeed, Matt thought as the plane descended to land.
Kellie unclipped her seat belt once the plane had landed and reached for her handbag. Matt had risen to retrieve her bulging cabin bag from the overhead locker and silently handed it to her before he took out his own small overnight travel case.
‘So how far is it to town?’ she asked as they walked across the blistering heat of the tarmac as few minutes later.
‘Ten minutes.’
‘Tim and Claire’s house is a couple of streets away from the practice, isn’t it?’ she asked as they waited for her luggage to be unloaded.
‘Yes.’
She waved away a fly. ‘Gosh, it’s awfully hot, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
Right, Kellie thought, that’s it. I’m not even going to try and make conversation. She’d spent the last six years with a house full of monosyllabic males—the last thing she needed was another one in her life.
She looked up to see an older woman in her mid-fifties coming towards them. ‘How did the weekend go, Matt?’ she asked in a gentle, concerned voice.
Kellie watched as Matt moved his lips into a semblance of a smile but it was gone before it had time to settle long enough to transform his features.
‘It was OK,’ he said. ‘John and Mary-Anne were very welcoming as usual, but you know how it is.’
The older woman grimaced in empathy. ‘It’s tough on everyone. Birthdays are the worst.’
‘Yeah,’ he said with another attempt at a smile. ‘They are.’
Kellie was intrigued with the little exchange but before she had time to speculate any further, the older woman glanced past Matt’s broad shoulder and smiled. ‘Well, hello there,’ she said. ‘Welcome to Culwulla Creek. Are you a tourist or visiting a friend?’
‘I’m the new locum filling in for Tim Montgomery,’ Kellie said, extending her hand. ‘I’m Kellie Thorne.’
‘Oh, my goodness, aren’t you gorgeous?’ the woman gushed as she grasped both of Kellie’s hands in her soft motherly ones. ‘I had no idea they had someone so young and attractive in mind.’
Kellie felt her face go hot but it had nothing to do with the furnace-like temperature of the October afternoon. She smiled self-consciously as she felt the press of Matt McNaught’s gaze as if he was assessing her physical attributes for the first time.
‘I’m Ruth Williams,’ the older woman said. ‘It’s wonderful you could come to fill in for Tim while he and Claire are overseas. So tell me, where are you from?’
‘Newcastle, in NSW. I did my medical training and internship there as well,’ Kellie answered.
Ruth smiled with genuine warmth. ‘What a thrill to have you here. We’ve never had a female GP before, have we, Matt?’
‘No,’ Matt said, frowning when he saw the luggage trailer lumbering towards them. In amongst the usual assortment of black and brown and battered bags with a few tattered ribbons attached to various handles to make identification easier, there were four hot pink suitcases, each of which looked as if their fastenings were being stretched to the limit.
Kellie followed the line of his gaze and mentally grimaced. Maybe she had overdone it on the packing thing, she thought. But how was a girl to survive six months in the bush without all the feminine accoutrements?
‘I take it these are yours?’ Matt asked, as he nodded towards the trailer.
She captured her bottom lip for a second. ‘I have a problem travelling lightly. I’ve been working on it but I guess I’m not quite there, huh?’
He didn’t roll his eyes but he came pretty close, Kellie thought but she also thought, she saw his lips twitch slightly, which for some inexplicable reason secretly delighted her.
‘It’s all right, Dr Thorne,’ Ruth piped up. ‘Dr McNaught has a four-wheel-drive vehicle so it will all fit in.’
‘Er …great,’ Kellie said, watching fixatedly as Matt’s biceps bulged as he lifted each case off the trailer.
