Bella's Run (5 page)

Macca moved up beside Patty, slung his arm around her and led her off, whispering something which sent Patty into whoops of tired laughter.

Bella heard Patty say, ‘Bossy? You call
that
bossy? You haven’t seen nothin’, mate. You should try and live with her.’ Bella lost Macca’s reply as the pair jumped into the girls’ borrowed ute. Pulling away, they headed towards the station gateway and town.

Rodney and Sheila were already in their vehicle and moving off back towards Sheila’s house. Sheila yelled to Bella from the open passenger-side window, ‘I’ll sort out the other two boys. If they’re still at the quarters kitchen give us a yell. I’ll send someone over to pick them up.’

‘Righto.’

And with that, Bella and Will were left standing, silent and alone, looking anywhere but at each other.

‘So . . .’ said Bella at last, chancing a look Will’s way. ‘What are you blokes doing here anyway?’ She could see the beginnings of a grin, and his dimples made her catch her breath again. She was a sucker for dimples on a bloke, and these were rippers: gorgeous, deep-set, one on either side of his mouth.

She took in his tanned and rugged face, his molasses eyes so liquid she just wanted to roll in the sweetness of them. Standing a few inches above her five-foot-seven, he wasn’t overly tall, but the muscled breadth of his shoulders within his chambray shirt and the curl of sun-bleached hair peeping from above the blue singlet spoke of a man used to working outdoors.

Bella’s heart was thumping so loudly she was sure the whole world could hear it –and she was certain it wasn’t just leftover adrenaline from dealing with the accident.

Where had she been
living
for the past twenty-two years? William O’Hara was Patty’s brother. He was pretty much a neighbour. Why hadn’t she noticed him before? The answer came to mind instantly: he’d always been so much
older
. A blurry figure in the background, off doing ‘big brother’ stuff, at ag college and hanging out with older mates. Sure, sometimes he’d been working at Tindarra while she and Patty had been tearing around having fun, but she’d seen him as a grown-up. He’d never registered on her radar. He was far too old for her. Heck, at twenty-eight he was ancient, gorgeous or not.

‘So,’ she repeated. ‘What are you and Macca doing here?’

She knew she sounded belligerent but couldn’t help herself. First she had missed out on mustering and had to cook. Then there was the accident. And now this. Her body was instinctively responding to Will, leaning like a drunken fence post seeking firmer ground. Where the hell had her free will departed to in the last half-hour? HE. WAS. TOO. OLD. Plus she didn’t need serious man complications. And a bloke like this would mean
serious
.

‘We’ve been up around Mount Isa for a bit, checking out some trucking work for Macca’s old man, your Uncle Bryce. I’m surprised your mum didn’t tell you.’

Bella was surprised too, mentally cursing her mother for forgetting to share
that
piece of information. Forewarned was forearmed, or something like that anyway.

‘The drought is pretty bad at home and there wasn’t much doing. I’ve sold most of my stock and the lucerne isn’t ready to cut yet. Dad’s irrigating my place as well as his own while I’m away. He’s growing a bit of lucerne now too.’ Will paused and raised an eyebrow. ‘You knew that when my Uncle Bill died, I took over his property next door to Dad’s place at Tindarra?’

Bella nodded. She’d heard that from Aunty Maggie, who also lived at Tindarra, next door to Will and Patty’s parents. Bella might’ve grown up on her family’s dairy farm at Narree a couple of hours away but her aunt always kept her informed of the goings on up in those mountains. A lifetime of weekends and school holidays staying with Aunty Maggie, and roaming the surrounding hills with Patty, had given Bella a sense of place and home at both Tindarra and Narree.

Will went on: ‘Macca and I wanted to have a look at a few properties up around Isa while we were there, to see something different. Was good to get away for a bit. We’re on our way home now and thought we’d look you two up.’

Come to think of it, Bella vaguely remembered Patty saying something about her brother being away for a while. She’d thought he was in the Territory, though, and hadn’t realised her cousin was with him.

‘It was quicker coming home through Charters Towers, rather than going down the coast. So here we are. Scenery’s a whole lot better too.’ His grin was wicked. His eyes caressing her body without touching, burning without flame, making her flush with heat.

Will wasn’t sure when or how that pigtailed, skinny runt of a kid had turned into this luscious, sexy creature standing before him. Tumbling ringlets of white-gold peeked from beneath the broad-brimmed hat. A cleavage so well rounded, sweaty and sweet, a man would have to be a priest not to want to bury his head in it. Legs so long, slim and well formed, they could have wrapped around his waist two times over – well, nearly.

And the face.

Tanned snubby nose, high-boned lightly freckled cheeks and blue eyes that flicked and fluttered with so much wantonness. He was in meltdown. And that was just her appearance.

Watching the confident and compassionate way she handled herself with that poor couple in the middle of the road. Will was sure glad it wasn’t him trying to help in that
situation. He wouldn’t have known what to do or say.

If anyone had told him ten minutes ago it was possible to be suddenly and utterly bewitched by a woman, he’d have said they were an idiot. Now
he
felt like the idiot – a besotted idiot.

But then there was her friendship with his sister to consider. In fact the Vermaelon and O’Hara families had been friends for three generations. They even had a mutual relative in Aunty Maggie, Bella’s aunt who’d married Will’s uncle, if anyone could work out that convoluted connection. And getting on the wrong side of Maggie wasn’t an option. Not to Will’s mind anyway. Maybe he should just turn and walk away.

So many thoughts swirled through his brain as he took in the girl in front of him. His senses were aroused. His blood was stirred. Testosterone was pumping and Will was smitten with lust.

‘So are you coming or are you going to stand there all afternoon?’ Bella was getting into the boys’ four-wheel drive.

‘Oh yeah. Coming.’

Bella watched as Will moved to the driver’s side and jumped in, dragging his cream felt hat from his head and tossing it behind the seat.

Turning, she looked out the passenger-side window. She was exhausted.

Maybe it was the drama of the afternoon. By profession she was an agricultural officer who advised people on landcare. She certainly wasn’t a medical guru who was used to keeping people alive.

Maybe it was meeting the man beside her – someone she’d known all her life without really knowing him at all.

Perhaps. But she wasn’t going to admit that to anyone, least of all herself. Fun, fun, fun in the sun was her motto for this year. She didn’t need emotional complications. Unfortunately her body had other ideas. Every nerve ending was buzzing. She breathed in his scent, felt his warmth. The transparent thread of attraction between them seemed to have somehow metamorphosed into a solid rope. Sharing the same airspace in the ute made her feelings seem so much stronger, louder, clearer. Again Bella mentally shook herself. Too old, too serious, too close, too much. Think of something else, she told herself firmly.

She trained her eyes out the window. A lonely ribbon of dirt unravelled across the plains in front of them. As the ute followed the track back towards the stockmen’s quarters, she could see billowing clouds of red dust in the distance; a mob of startled horses, moving, pounding their hooves in the lateafternoon light. As both ute and horses drew closer, Bella could see a multitude of colours: strawberry roan, bay, chestnut, palomino, dappled grey and even skewbald, their four-legged shadows silhouetted through particles of dust as the leaders swung the mob in flight at sight of the vehicle.

Then the horses were past.

The ute drove on.

Dropping her head back against the seat-rest, Bella allowed her surroundings to become the sole focus of her consciousness, her only frame of reference the bush outside. The scrub rolled out over hill and down gully; lancewood, bendee and rosewood, tragic-looking yapunyah and ironbark trees with limbs spread in supplication to the burning heat. Black speargrass, purple pigeon and bambatsi all clung to the ochre-coloured soil.

It seemed to Bella that the bush up here was wild with hostility for man’s intrusion but at the same time it sucked you in, made you become a part of it, like a parasite feasting on your soul. Before you knew it, it had you utterly bewitched and you felt like you could never live anywhere else in the world. It reminded Bella of Tindarra, the beguiling valley hidden amid the massive mountains of the Great Dividing Range at home in Gippsland, where her Aunty Maggie and the O’Haras lived.

On the opposite side of the ute, Will was thinking hard. He wanted to say something to the girl sitting quietly beside him chewing her red and luscious bottom lip.

But Will knew whatever he said would come out wrong. She made him feel like a fumbling seventeen-year-old on his first date. Her body language spoke volumes anyway, head and shoulders turned away. All he could see was a tumbling mass of curly hair, spilling down under the back of her hat.

Better not to say anything, he decided. Just shut up and drive.

Like a lazy Sunday afternoon spin on a sunny outback day.

‘Oh no!’ Bella sat up straight, and thumped the Jesus bar with frustration as they approached a hand-drawn sign indicating the turn-off to the stockmen’s quarters.

‘What’s up?’ asked Will, glad for something to talk about.

‘See that green Toyota wagon over there?’ Bella waved her hand in the direction of a group of dongas to their left. ‘That’s the boss from hell, and I’ve left a humungous mess in the bloody kitchen. Damn it!’ The Jesus bar copped another couple of thumps. ‘She was supposed to be in Rockhampton.’

‘Surely she can’t be that bad? Who is she anyway?’

‘
She
is Siobhan, the station manager’s wife. And
she
is my boss. I’ll be out on my butt over this one.’

‘Surely she can’t carpet you over a messy kitchen. You’ve just been saving a little boy’s life, for goodness sake. She’d have heard it all on the two-way radio anyway.’

Bella sighed. ‘Siobhan doesn’t keep the radio on. Got more important things to do than listen to station chitchat, she says.’

‘Just tell her then. She’ll understand.’

‘No, it’s you who doesn’t understand, Will. Siobhan hates my guts, has done since we arrived. I’ve been in awful trouble lately. You’ll see what I mean.’

Will swung the LandCruiser into the parking area and brought it to a halt in front of the ring-lock fence surrounding the group of buildings the stockmen and women called home. Bella jumped out of the ute and slammed the door. Jamming her hat further down on her head, she strode off towards the kitchen.

Following more sedately, Will admired the way Bella’s butt moved from side to side, her long legs eating the distance across the lawn. He increased his stride to try to catch up as she strode onto the kitchen verandah.

He could hear the shrill female voice even before he saw its owner. Through the huge side windows on the walk up to the sliding door, he glimpsed one scary sight. Standing adrift in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, she was wrapped in a copious pomegranate sheath that screamed expensive but looked hideous on a dumpy, pear-shaped body. Her painted face reminded him of a circus clown he’d once seen as a little kid – white with scarlet and black slashes. From memory, he’d been terrified. This creature tapped a pointy-toed, high-heeled, devil-red shoe against the laminate floor as her voice rose and fell, twisting with scorn like a striking snake.

‘Isabella? Isabella! What is the meaning of this
disgusting
mess? When I made you fill in for the weekend, I assumed you could actually
cook.
This is
not
what I would call cooking, young lady.
And
to just walk out and leave our supplies to the blowflies is simply
unacceptable!
You STUPID IDIOT!’ The pomegranate sheath whirled, doughy neck rolls quivered and white manicured hands flew through the air, punctuating the screeches. ‘
Where
have you been and
what
are you going to do about this MESS?’