Outback Doctors/Outback Engagement/Outback Marriage/Outback Encounter Read online

  OUTBACK DOCTORS

  OUTBACK ENGAGEMENT

  OUTBACK MARRIAGE

  OUTBACK ENCOUNTER

  MEREDITH WEBBER

  www.millsandboon.com.au

  CONTENTS

  Outback Engagement

  Outback Marriage

  Outback Encounter

  OUTBACK ENGAGEMENT

  Meredith Webber

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  PROLOGUE

  LETTER from Pat McMahon to Women! magazine:

  July 23rd

  Dear Editor,

  I enjoyed your story on lonely country bachelors seeking women to share their lives, but in my opinion you missed the best of them, my stepson, Tom. He lost his mother when he was three, and he was brought up by his father until I came into their lives when he was eight. His father and I had twelve glorious years—the men in that family are real men—and two lovely daughters together before my husband was tragically killed in a small plane crash.

  Tom, at twenty, took over the role of man of the house, and for ten years was both father and brother to his half-sisters who were six and two at the time of their father’s death. He was only freed of this role when I remarried a year ago, when he was able to follow his heart, return to the country and set up as a vet in a small outback town. His fiancée, however, was a city girl, and refused to go with him.

  But if there are women out there looking for a kind, considerate, caring, outback man, they couldn’t go further than our Tom.

  Part of an email from Tom Fleming to Grace Winthrop:

  August 6th

  Thanks for your email, Grace, it was good to hear from you. Yes, life back where I feel I belong in the country is really suiting me, and I know you won’t take it the wrong way when I say that I am really enjoying my bachelor existence. Of course, I miss what you and I had, but after all those years as the only male in a houseful of women, to be women-free is wonderful. Obviously, this won’t last, but I don’t think the novelty will wear off for a year or two at least. I can use the inside bathroom without dodging drying stockings or underwear, my razor is never clogged with leg hair, I can leave my dirty dishes in the sink all day, and only dust when I can actually write my name in what’s settled on the top of furniture. Not to mention eating steak and chips every night for dinner. Slobbish, I know, but I feel it’s my life at last.

  Great to hear your job is going well...

  Email from Sally Warburton to sister Grace:

  August 8th

  Hi, Gracie,

  I know you said lover-boy was safe from predatory women for the near future and you intended leaving him alone out there until he came to his senses, but have you seen this week’s Women! mag? Letters to the editor on Page 37!

  Sally

  Memo from Grace Warburton to her boss, Mark Collins:

  August 9th

  Mark, I know it’s short notice, but I’d like to take unpaid leave for six weeks, starting whenever you can find someone to fill in for me, but preferably from the end of the month. The matter is personal and urgent.

  Memo from Editor, Women! magazine to Carrie Kilmer, ace reporter:

  September 2nd

  Carrie, attached is letter from doting stepmother. Trouble is I printed it a few weeks ago and have already had more replies to it than we had to the article we ran on country bachelors. Have forwarded on letters to ‘Tom’ via the stepmother’s address, but feel someone should get out to his outback hide-away, sleuths tell me it’s a town called Merriwee, and interview him. Get photos with animals, the cuter the better. Think of the scoop if we can marry off this man. Have booked you on flight to nearest town with regular air service on Saturday 9th September. Ticket confirmation also attached.

  Email from Penelope Fleming to sister Patience, now in residence at women’s college at university:

  September 6th

  Hi, Patience,

  You wouldn’t believe the bags of letters Mum has sent on to Tom! All from women wanting to marry him. How Mum could have written that letter, I can’t imagine, but apparently she did it because she thinks he’s lonely. You know what Mum’s like about love and marriage—to her it’s the ultimate turn-on—and she wants Tom to experience it. He’s going to be absolutely besieged and you know how impossible he is at choosing women. Remember Anthea, the one before Ghastly Grace? The one who insisted he buy an Armani suit? Poor Tom! He hated it, but he’s so hopeless at saying no to women. I know it was Grace who proposed—I heard her. It was just sheer luck GG got the promotion at work so decided she couldn’t possibly move to the country. Not that she told Tom that was the reason—all she went on about were her allergies and how living in the country was impossible for her.

  Anyway, I think someone’s got to get out there to back him up and check out any of these women who might actually turn up. Actually, I have to go because you can’t leave uni and I’ve got nothing much on at school which is boring anyway. I know you’ll try to argue so I went ahead and booked a plane ticket over the internet.

  But could you come home on Friday, then we can say we’re going shopping on Saturday morning. That way, you can drive me to the airport and then, once I’m on the plane, you can phone Tom and explain to Mum. You can say I was so unhappy at school I just had to go up and see him. And once I’m there I know I can persuade him to let me stay a month, then it will be school holidays, and you and Mum will be coming up. If I haven’t sorted things out by then, we’ll have to give up!

  Email from Anna Talbot to fiancé Philip Ducartes:

  September 7th

  So, darling, I’m settled into my ‘outback’ town, and still very grateful that you understood how much it meant to me to come here. Only problem is with the cat I adopted while in Melbourne. It’s obviously a city cat and hates the country, refusing to get out of its travelling cage. I’ve tried everything I know, and so tomorrow, before I begin work, I shall have to find a vet...

  The rest of the email was personal.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ANNA looked around the small living room and gave a satisfied nod. The framed prints of colourful reef fish, lurking in vivid coral gardens, brightened the walls of the room, and the rug she’d thrown over the tired-looking beige lounge exactly matched the blue of the water in the pictures.

  Photos of her parents, and the animals she’d left behind—Kurt, the Doberman, Fancy, the cat, and Streak, her beloved though now aging Arabian horse—were clustered on top of the television. On the middle of the small round dining table she’d set an oblong mat, cross-stitched by her mother, and on it a brilliant blue vase she’d found in a second-hand stall during a prowl around the markets in Melbourne.

  As the yard around her small, government-provided house was bare of grass and lacking a garden, she’d picked some sprays of eucalyptus leaves from the lower branch of a tree that stood halfway between the house and the hospital. The scent of the leaves reminded her of home, and added the final touch of ‘homeliness’ to her new abode.

  ‘Now all I have to do is sort you out,’ she said, walking into the tiny kitchen, which opened off the dining area, and addressing a wire-topped animal carrier.

  The cat crouched in one corner of the open container and glared balefully up at her
.

  ‘Come on, you’ve got to eat,’ Anna coaxed. ‘And there must be other things that need attending to, so how about you get out of that box and take a look around the house? I’ve put your litter tray in the bathroom so you don’t have to venture outdoors.’

  The cat narrowed its vivid blue eyes to threatening slits and growled.

  Anna sighed. She’d missed her animals so much during the weeks she’d spent in Melbourne that she’d been happy to accept custody of Cassie, the cat of a friend who was going back to South Africa. And she’d imagined, over the next few weeks while she’d applied for jobs and waited for interview appointments, that she and the cat had bonded—as much as one could ever bond with an independent-minded Siamese.

  The three-day journey north to central Queensland had taught her differently. Cass hadn’t minded the car—in fact, she’d often travelled in it around the city, sitting up behind the back seat like a car ornament. However, it had soon become apparent she was a city cat. The great outdoors terrified her to such an extent she’d yowled and pulled against the lead she’d been trained to wear whenever Anna had tried to tempt her out of the car for a comfort stop or to stay overnight in a motel.

  ‘Your ancestors probably prowled the jungles of South-East Asia,’ Anna told the belligerent animal. ‘And look at you, cowering in your box like someone who’s never seen the outside of a city apartment.’

  The slitted eyes blinked slowly, and the proudly tilted head and steely stare conveyed the message that Cass’s ancestors had been the darlings of a royal court, not jungle marauders.

  ‘OK, stay there! I’ve only got two more days before I start work, and I’m not going to spend them persuading you out of that box. I’m going for a walk uptown.’

  It was stupid, talking to a cat, but as Anna had driven north through the vast empty stretches of inland Australia, she’d begun to share just a little of the cat’s apprehension. What had seemed like the ultimate adventure, to practise medicine in an Australian outback town, had become just a tiny bit scary for a woman born and bred in the city. It wasn’t that South Africa didn’t have a lot of outback-type country of its own, it was just that she hadn’t ever experienced it.

  Now all the emptiness through which she’d travelled had seemed to magnify the distance she’d already come from her home in order to fulfil a long-held dream.

  Six months…

  ‘No, I’m from Durban,’ she’d explained to Elizabeth Foster, the head of the hospital’s clerical staff, who’d welcomed her to Merriwee the previous afternoon then shown her over the hospital, introducing her to staff on duty then taking her across to the house.

  But though Anna had drawn a rough map of her country and had pointed out exactly where Durban was, she was left with the impression that Elizabeth still believed there were only two cities in South Africa—Johannesburg and Cape Town.

  ‘Well, my own ignorance of Australia was just as bad when I arrived,’ Anna admitted, still addressing the unresponsive cat because there was no one else to listen to her conversation.

  Then she shook her head at her own behaviour and, grabbing a wide-brimmed straw hat from the hook by the kitchen door, took herself off to explore the town.

  From what she’d seen on her first exploratory foray to the supermarket, Merriwee was divided into two parts by a railway line. The hospital was on the outskirts of the second, mainly residential section, while the shops and presumably the local council and business offices were across the tracks.

  Am I on the right side or the wrong side? she wondered as she strode past the hospital and up the long drive. The roads were paved, but the footpaths were for the most part stony, weed-infested strips of ground, inviting an unwary walker to turn an ankle. Anna stuck to the road. After all, the traffic was practically non-existent.

  She reached the main road through the town and turned left, walking towards the railway line. About to cross it—she’d never seen a train in the town so that wasn’t a problem—she noticed a sign she hadn’t seen before. White writing on a blue background proclaimed VET’S SURGERY. The sign pointed down another side street—this one running parallel with the railway line.

  Pity for the anxious and upset animal she’d inherited made her turn that way, following the road past the end of the railway line to a fence, though a cattle grid and a gravel track with a cluster of trees at the end of it suggested there might be a house—and presumably a vet’s surgery—hidden from view. She picked her way cautiously across the grid, not wanting to end up in her own hospital with a broken leg, and followed the track, smiling to herself as she realised she’d walked a long way around to get to a place that was virtually next door to her new home.

  Although it was late afternoon, the sun was still hot so the trees, when she reached them, provided welcome shade. They were planted closely, a mix of native eucalypts and shade trees familiar from home, jacarandas, poinciana, and broad-leafed figs. The result was an area of dense shade which grew denser as she walked on so the house, when she finally saw it, seemed in danger of being swallowed up by the vegetation.

  But the wide stoep—no, she’d have to learn to call it a veranda—would be cool, she realised, and the house would be well protected from winter winds.

  She looked around and saw a smaller building to the right of the house, and, guessing it would be the surgery, headed that way. It was locked, though the small sign on the door stating surgery hours—4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday—suggested it should be open.

  Anna knew it was Friday and was reasonably sure of the time, but she checked her watch automatically. Four-thirty. It should definitely be open.

  There was no mention of weekend surgery hours so, anxious about the cat, she walked around to the back of the building, hoping to find someone she could speak to.

  A row of small, wired runs with neat brick enclosures along one end suggested the vet might hospitalise his or her patients. Anna continued walking, peering into the long cage-like structures, pausing to talk quietly to a tired-looking German shepherd who lay, anxiously studying his plastered leg, in the doorway of his sheltered area.

  The dog failed to respond, and Anna moved on, then backtracked as she saw a movement behind the dog.

  ‘Hey! Are you hiding in there?’ she called to the figure she could just discern, crouched in the enclosed space behind the dog.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ a curt voice replied. ‘So why don’t you take the hint and leave?’

  Shocked by such rudeness in a country where she’d met with nothing but kindness, Anna stood her ground, peering through the wire to see if she could see more of the man who’d spoken.

  ‘But I need to talk to the vet,’ she said. ‘I’ve got this paranoid cat and haven’t a clue how to handle her.’

  ‘You’ve got a what?’ the voice said, then there was a shuffle of movement, the sound of a gate creaking open and the figure of a man—so tall he must have been terribly cramped in his hiding place—rose up on the far side of another wire-netting barrier. ‘What are you? English? Good grief, has Pat gone international now? Am I on the internet as well as Australia-wide?’

  Anna squinted through the wire at the man, who was obviously mad. The run was about eight metres long, and he was through the wire at the other end. On the outside, as she was, but she measured the distance between them with her eyes and knew she’d have time to run away from him if he came towards her.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, or who this Pat person is,’ she said, ‘but I’m not English. I’m South African. Or at least I think of myself that way because I grew up there, though I was born in England and—’

  ‘Spare me!’ the man muttered, putting his hand to his forehead as if her explanation—which he’d asked for, mind you—was the final straw in some immense disaster.

  But his disaster was none of her business—the cat was.

  ‘About my cat—are you the vet? If not, can you tell me where to find him? Or her?’

 
She spoke slowly and carefully in case the man had trouble understanding either her accent or simple English, but he ignored all but the least important part of what she’d said.

  ‘Or her? This is large-animal territory, lady. The big Brahman cattle around here would knock over most of the women vets I know. Quite a few of the men, too.’

  Anna slid her fingers into the wire of the cage, gripping it as if by finger pressure alone she could hold onto her temper. The man on the further side of the run looked normal enough—in fact, even through two lots of wire, he was remarkably good-looking. And he had a voice like peanut chocolate—smooth and rich but with something satisfyingly crunchy in it. Not that looks or peanut-chocolaty voices were any measure of mental ability or sanity.

  ‘I do not need someone to look at my Brahman cattle,’ she said firmly, after reminding herself that Philip also had a very pleasant voice—and he was very good-looking!—‘but at my cat.’

  ‘Do you have Brahman cattle?’

  The man at the far end of the run sounded almost interested, though there was a silkiness in the seductive voice which she automatically mistrusted.

  ‘Of course I don’t have Brahman cattle. What do you think? I’m on a working holiday in Australia with my herd of Brahman cattle?’

  ‘No, but you could have bought some as an excuse. I wouldn’t have put it past a determined woman to do just that.’

  This weird retort seemed to confirm that he was mad, but the conversation was peculiar enough—and personal enough now he was denigrating the female of the species—for her to pursue it.

  ‘Why would a determined woman buy Brahman cattle?’ she asked, pressing her face closer to the wire as if a better view of the man might help her understand what was happening.

  ‘Same reason they’d buy a cat!’ the man said triumphantly. ‘Because they read that stupid letter in the stupid magazine and thought the way to a vet’s heart was through animals. Well, you’re far too late, lady! I’ve been pursued by women with basset hounds, budgerigars and probably pet beetles if the truth be known, but I am not in the market for a wife—understand?’