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

  Tom smiled. ‘I’ll always be here,’ he said, and for a moment she thought he was making a promise and her silly heart jittered with excitement. Then he continued, ‘Thanks to Penny and Bob, not to mention Barb at the supermarket, the whole town now thinks we’re engaged, so anyone inviting either of us anywhere will naturally invite the other.’

  ‘Oh!’

  It wasn’t a particularly adequate response but it was all Anna could manage right then. The thought of being socially linked to Tom for the rest of her stay in Merriwee was too overwhelming to take in all at once. Especially as the part of her that wasn’t in control was acting all excited over the prospect.

  ‘How’s Penny?’ she asked, seeking a conversational escape from personal matters.

  ‘Spots fading nicely. The only problem was restraining Pat from flying up to nurse her.’

  He rubbed the back of his neck as if in physical pain, and added, ‘I don’t know—I come up here to escape a houseful of women and suddenly I’ve got three in residence and another threatening.’

  Anna felt a fleeting sympathy for his predicament, then remembered an earlier conversation.

  ‘You’ve three in residence? I thought you said Grace and Carrie were leaving on Monday.’

  Tom nodded gloomily.

  ‘They were, but apparently Carrie’s decided she’s in love with Bob so wants to stay a little longer. She wangled some extra time from her editor. And Grace tells me she has six weeks’ leave from work so might as well stay on until her cast’s off. I think she realises that if she went home she’d have to look after herself, whereas here she’s got Carrie to fuss over her.’

  ‘Here in Merriwee, or here at your place?’ Anna asked, feeling squidgy in the stomach although it was none of her business where Grace stayed.

  ‘The latter!’ Tom admitted, becoming even gloomier.

  ‘But the motel can’t still be booked out!’ Anna protested.

  Tom shrugged his impossibly broad shoulders and now the gloom on his face segued into embarrassment.

  ‘I can’t just turn them out!’ he said. ‘You know how big that house is. I can’t say I don’t have room for them. And, to a certain extent, it makes things a bit easier for me because of Pen. I know she’s old enough to leave on her own if I’m called out at night, but I still don’t like it. At least now I don’t worry about her the whole time.’

  ‘That’s an excuse,’ Anna told him, then she shook her head in amazement. ‘You really can’t say no, can you? Penny told me that, and I didn’t believe it.’

  ‘I can so say no,’ Tom retorted, then heard how childish he’d sounded and smiled. But he backed up his denial with an example. ‘Just the other day, Phil Webster out at Longalook wanted me to go out and spay some young heifers at night, just because he had them in the yard and it suited him to get them done then. I said no to him.’

  The look Anna gave him was downright disbelieving.

  ‘Probably because you knew you could muck up the job. I imagine it’s difficult at the best of times, but at night, even under the best of lights, it would be near impossible.’

  She was so beautiful, and arguing so earnestly with him, he wanted to keep looking at her—talking to her.

  Even arguing.

  ‘And what would you know about spaying cattle?’ he asked, and was rewarded with one of the flashing smiles that made his heart thunder in his chest in a way that told him all the red alert warnings in his head hadn’t prevented him from falling in love with this woman.

  ‘Not a lot,’ she admitted, and seemed about to say something else when Beryl bore down on them.

  ‘Come on, you two, you’ve had enough time together. Now I want to introduce Anna to a few people.’

  She took Anna’s arm, then turned back to Tom.

  ‘And I expect you to mingle,’ she told him. ‘There are a couple of new forestry rangers here—they’re over in the corner near the bar. Start with them.’

  ‘He’s so good,’ Beryl said to Anna, ‘at talking to people, especially women, of course, and making them relax. But, then, you’d know that.’

  She squeezed Anna’s arm.

  ‘You’re a very lucky girl, but I suppose you know that too. Not that he’s not lucky to have a beautiful fiancée like you. Now, how did you meet? Someone said it was over the internet.’

  Fortunately, before Anna had to reply they joined a group of businesspeople, and Beryl was too busy introducing Anna to demand an answer to her question.

  Anna acknowledged the introductions and stayed to chat, moving on as one person or another offered to introduce her to more people. Someone escorted her to the buffet where she filled her plate with an assortment of meat and salad, someone else brought her a drink—a punch of some kind that looked peculiar, being pink, but tasted absolutely delicious.

  But all the while part of her mind—and most of her body—was attuned to Tom’s presence. Every time she turned her head she’d catch a glimpse of him, and more often than not find him turned her way. He’d wink, or smile, and Anna would desperately rub her thumb against the gold of Philip’s ring and remind herself it was all pretence.

  ‘You did that brilliantly,’ he said, materialising by her side only minutes after she’d declared the art show open. ‘And now we’ve both done our duty and been suitably social, the locals will expect us to spend some time together.’

  Anna studied his face, trying to read his mood. The words were light-hearted enough but she sensed more behind them. Sensed that spending more time with him, even in a crowd, wasn’t a good idea.

  ‘I think we should break off this engagement,’ she told him. They were standing in front of a painting of a bullock team, and she studied the play of light on the animals’ coats so she didn’t have to look at him.

  ‘With Grace still here—and Carrie?’ he said, making it sound like the worst idea since the atom bomb.

  ‘It’s deceitful,’ Anna persisted. ‘And the townspeople are so kind and welcoming, I hate deceiving them.’

  ‘We could make it real,’ Tom suggested, shocking Anna so much she forgot the artist’s masterly way with light and turned towards him.

  ‘We can’t!’ she said, using as much vehemence as would fit into a whisper. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, I’m already engaged. To Philip!’

  ‘Well, that’s his problem,’ Tom told her, the twinkle that always disconcerted her sparkling in his eyes. ‘For letting you out of his sight. The man must be mad! Believe me, Anna Talbot, if I really was engaged to you, I wouldn’t want to be parted from you for a minute.’

  ‘He did it for me—because I wanted so badly to come,’ Anna told him, anxious to defend her absent fiancé. ‘Anyway,’ she added defiantly, ‘it won’t be for the whole six months—he’ll come and visit when next he’s in Australia.’

  Tom’s gleeful smile told her she’d said the wrong thing, and he didn’t leave her in doubt about it for long.

  ‘Well, that will be fun!’ he said, taking her left hand and lifting it as if to examine her engagement ring. ‘The doctor’s two fiancés! The town will love it!’

  In spite of the heat generated by Tom’s clasp on her hand, Anna shivered. She tried to think but the enormity of what Tom had just pointed out was too big to comprehend.

  Why hadn’t she thought of it? Thought of what would happen when Philip came?

  He’d understand, of course, the pretend engagement situation. Once she’d explained…

  Yes, of course he would…

  But the townsfolk?

  ‘Oh, hell!’ she said, then, to make matters worse, when Tom put his arm around her—in a comforting manner, nothing more—she actually felt like snuggling up against him and letting him take care of all her problems.

  The country air must be addling your brain, she told herself, but it didn’t stop a little snuggle up against his solid, strong, oh, so desirable body.

  Heavens! Had she really thought desirable? Surely that should have been reliable…


  ‘How do you know so much about power-tools?’

  The question, coming when she was thinking about desirable—or reliable—bodies, threw her completely. She stared at Tom, trying to make sense of the shift in conversation.

  ‘Out at the Cullens’ place,’ he prompted. ‘You knew an angle-grinder from a chainsaw—most women wouldn’t. I’ve been wanting to ask ever since that night.’

  Thinking of how she knew an angle-grinder from a chainsaw prompted Anna to smile.

  ‘My dad,’ she said softly. ‘He was a power-tool junkie and I guess, because he didn’t have a son, he had to make do with sharing his toys with me.’

  Tom returned her smile with one that started thoughts of desire if not desirability.

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mind making do with you,’ he murmured, making it sound like the most romantic compliment Anna had ever been paid.

  A loud wailing siren stopped her wayward thoughts, and most of the conversation in the room.

  ‘Damn!’ Tom said. ‘Hope it’s not a bad one.’

  Then, to Anna’s astonishment, he bent his head and kissed her swiftly on the lips.

  ‘Till next time, sweetheart,’ he said putting on a gruff American accent, then he strode away.

  Anna turned to watch him go, totally flummoxed by his behaviour. Until she realised other men and a couple of women were also heading for the door, while somewhere in the dark night outside the siren continued its noise.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, turning to a woman who was looking anxiously out into the night.

  ‘It’s the fire siren,’ the woman explained. ‘I suppose we should have expected it, with the wind that’s got up.’

  Anna understood the fire siren part of this explanation, but not why so many people had left the room.

  ‘Is the town in danger?’ she asked, thinking she’d better get back to the hospital in case she was needed there.

  ‘I wouldn’t think so. Most of the fires are out on properties, or on forestry land that’s leased to local farmers. Though a couple of years ago a big one swept close to town. The place was grey with ash for days.’

  ‘But why did the people leave?’ Anna asked.

  The woman turned towards her.

  ‘They’re on duty,’ she said, as if that explained everything, then, perhaps seeing Anna’s blank look, she continued, ‘We don’t have a regular fire brigade in town, only the volunteer fire service. It’s the same in nearly all country towns. Most of the younger men and a lot of the younger women are volunteers. They train on certain nights, they have a proper fire engine and all the right gear, and they’re rostered on and off duty. So when the siren sounds, if you’re on call, you go, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Your Tom, he’s usually on call at night because during the day he mightn’t be able to leave his job. Not if he’s operating on someone’s dog, or something.’

  Anna nodded, but didn’t—couldn’t—speak. She understood the situation now, but anxiety for Tom, heading out into the bush to fight a raging fire, had tied her tongue in knots.

  ‘Most people will go home now,’ her kindly informant said. ‘We’ll wait there for news. If it’s a big fire and the men will be out for a while, a group of women—we’re on a roster, too—will make sandwiches and fill Thermoses with coffee to take out to the firefighters, and we keep food and drinks going back at the community hall for when a crew comes in for a break.’

  ‘Thank you for explaining,’ Anna managed to say, though she hadn’t liked any of the information.

  She found Beryl, said goodbye and joined the exodus. As she walked around the corner towards where her car was parked, her mobile rang. Pleased it hadn’t happened while she’d been opening the show, she pulled it out of her handbag and answered it.

  ‘Peter here, Anna. You heard the sirens? I don’t know if Paul explained the drill before he left but, if not, that was a fire siren and our job is to be prepared for any casualties that might come in. If it’s bad, we set up a first-aid post closer to the scene, but until we hear the extent of it, the ambulance and the hospital just stay on alert.’

  ‘I’m on my way back now,’ Anna told him. ‘Should I wait at the hospital or at the house?’

  ‘Go home, but be prepared to be called in,’ Peter said. ‘The nursing staff know the ropes. They’ll have everything we need on hand should things turn nasty.’

  Anna thanked him, though she hated the information he’d delivered even more than the things she’d heard earlier. ‘Things turn nasty’—what had he meant by that?

  ‘Fires can turn around and trap the firefighters,’ Jess told her when she arrived at the hospital. Peter might have said to wait at home, but she knew she was too anxious to sit there doing nothing, so had come to the hospital instead. ‘The wind gusts are so unpredictable, and because of the high oil content in eucalypt leaves, bush fires travel through the tops of trees, leaping from one tree to another, even across roads and fire-breaks.’

  Anna realised that the more she asked—or the more she learnt—the worse she felt, as anxiety for Tom now knotted her intestines as well as her tongue.

  She walked through into the small A and E room, and saw packaged sterile dressings and bandages laid out on trolleys, bottles of saline for washing wounds, bags of fluid already hanging on drip stands.

  ‘Just pray we don’t need any of it,’ Jess, who’d followed her, said quietly.

  ‘Do you often need it?’ Anna asked, though it was a fifty-fifty chance she’d not like the answer.

  ‘Not often,’ Jess replied.

  Ah, the relief—until Jess spoke again.

  ‘Though when we do need it, it’s usually bad. Three Gorges lost three of their volunteers a couple of years ago. Of course, down there, the fires race through the gorges, and if they turn, the men are more easily trapped.’

  Thinking there could be no worse way to die, Anna shuddered, and though Jess was quick to point out that more people were murdered in the city each year than killed as volunteer firefighters, Anna wasn’t comforted.

  She checked on all three of the patients she had in hospital, sat in the office and did some paperwork, walked through the dim corridors a few more times, and finally, after Jess pointed out a fire could burn for days and Anna wouldn’t be much use to anyone if she didn’t get some sleep, she went back to the house.

  The phone was ringing as she walked in, and she answered it to hear a suspicious sniff, then Penny’s voice.

  ‘I heard the fire siren. Was Tom on call?’

  ‘Yes, he was, Penny,’ Anna said. ‘Are you OK? Are Grace and Carrie there?’

  Another sniff.

  ‘No. They went to Bob’s.’

  Anna’s heart went out to the young girl. She might act like thirteen going on thirty, but she was still a child—and a child who’d already lost her father and would be doubly fearful of losing a beloved brother.

  ‘I’ll come right over. I’ll bring night things. The hospital can phone me on my mobile if they need me.’

  A whispered ‘Thank you’ then the click of the receiver being replaced.

  Poor kid.

  Anna grabbed her nightdress and a toilet bag, then, deciding she’d better not turn up at the hospital to tend burn victims in her best green dress, she added her jeans and a T-shirt to the pile. She thrust everything into a bag, checked Cass had water, then left, driving swiftly through the night.

  Penny was waiting on the veranda.

  ‘I’m really all right,’ she told Anna, greeting her with a hug.

  ‘I know you are.’ Anna hugged her back, but as she clasped the girl’s solid body against her, she felt a sob escape, and knew tears would follow.

  ‘Let’s sit down—out here would be nice,’ she suggested, knowing Penny might be embarrassed to be seen crying. ‘We can look at the stars, talk if you want to, or just sit if that’s what you’d prefer.’

  They shuffled over to the steps and sat down on the top one. The smell of smoke drifted thr
ough the air and, sniffing it, Penny began to cry again.

  ‘I talked to a lot of people after the sirens went off,’ Anna said, hoping to reassure her friend. ‘And they all said the firefighters know what they’re doing. At the hospital I heard it wasn’t a bad fire—just a grass fire. And there’s practically no wind—that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

  Penny nodded, but continued to cry.

  ‘There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there, pet?’ Anna said, tightening her arm around Penny’s shoulders.

  ‘Not really.’ The words were muffled by a handkerchief. ‘It’s just that everything keeps changing. Mum got married and Patience went off to university and Tom came up here.’

  Anna let her talk, encouraging her when the tidal wave of sorrow seemed to dry up, knowing it was better for Penny to let it all out. Then she probed, asking questions that would make Penny find the answers to her own dilemma. Yes, she liked Keith, yes, she had good friends of her own at home, no, living here with Tom was nice now, but she wouldn’t want to stay for ever.

  And slowly the girl calmed down, then promptly fell asleep against Anna’s shoulder. She was wondering whether to let Penny sleep for a while, or wake her and guide her back to bed, when car headlights pinned the pair of them like a spotlight hitting actors on a stage.

  The lights went off, and within seconds Tom was by her side.

  ‘What’s wrong with Penny?’ he demanded, though quietly so he must have seen his sister was asleep.

  ‘She was upset—over you being out at the fire and then a lot of other stuff came out. I think she’s probably still physically weakened by the chickenpox, and she’s been through a lot of emotional change this year as well.’

  She couldn’t see Tom’s frown, but sensed it. Sensed also his unspoken question—Why the hell’s she telling you this?

  ‘She phoned me to ask if you’d gone to the fire, and sounded upset so I came over.’

  Tom dropped down onto the step beside them and touched first his sister, then Anna lightly on the hair.

  ‘The fire’s out—it was only a minor blaze. But Penny? She sounded upset and you came over?’

  Anna nodded, though sitting next to Tom in the admittedly smoky moonlight wasn’t a particularly good idea.