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

  He threw his arms in the air, muttered, ‘Women!’ in a tone of utter loathing and turned from her, walking not around the cages towards Anna but away, so his figure grew smaller, and smaller and…

  She’d better go after him before he disappeared altogether. He might be mad, but he was also, apparently, the vet, and a mad vet was better than no vet at all when one had a paranoid cat.

  Hurrying around the end of the cages, Anna caught sight of him opening a gate into a small yard. Two goats greeted him with loud bleats of delight—or perhaps hunger—and distracted him sufficiently for Anna to reach the post-and-rail fence without him realising she’d followed.

  ‘About my cat,’ she began, and smiled to herself as her voice jolted him into a startled yelp. He spun around, stepping backwards when he saw her so close, and catching the heel of one elastic-sided boot on the animals’ water trough. Down he went in a tangle of long limbs and overexcited goat, crashing to the ground with a string of oaths which should have turned the air blue.

  Knowing she was at least partly responsible for his accident didn’t stop Anna laughing. In fact, he looked so funny she was still smothering giggles when she slipped through the fence and finally reached him.

  ‘Here, take my hand. See if you can stand up,’ she said, pushing off one goat with her right hand and holding out her left hand towards the fallen man.

  He gave her a look of intense dislike and managed to struggle to his feet unaided, then, bent double because he’d fallen inside the goats’ shelter, he moved cautiously out into the open. The spilt water had muddied his tan moleskins and his faded blue shirt, and his sense of humour—if he had one—was obviously not working, but to Anna’s professional eyes he looked OK.

  To her personal eyes, he looked more than OK—an exceptionally attractive man if you fancied dark, rugged good looks. She reminded herself she didn’t—that fair-haired men were far more elegant. She touched her thumb to the inner part of Philip’s ring and silently excused herself for thinking about another man’s appearance. After all, a woman would have to be dead not to notice this man. He oozed masculinity in the same way roses gave off perfume, without being consciously aware of the potency of that sensory attraction.

  Now, where had that thought come from?

  Anxious to block any more such notions, Anna shifted back to professional mode.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  He fired a look of scorn her way, from eyes so true a blue she thought of cornflowers.

  ‘No thanks to you,’ he growled, running his hands over his shirt. It was an ineffectual attempt to clean up as the mud spread further. But the movement attracted her eyes to the breadth of his chest within the shirt. ‘What’s with you, anyway?’ He rubbed his hands together to try to rid them of the sticky mess, then wiped them on the turned-up cuffs of his long sleeves. ‘Don’t you understand no means no? Or don’t South African women use that catch-cry?’

  Now he was denigrating her country as well as women. Anna forgot the broad chest and sensory attraction, and drew herself up to her full one hundred and seventy-seven centimetres. Then she shot him some scorn of her own, though she wasn’t sure her wishy-washy green eyes could produce as much of it as his blue ones had.

  ‘I understand that you are the most insufferably rude man I have ever met. I’ve also gathered you have an unhealthy antipathy towards women and possibly some kind of persecution complex, but apparently you’re also the vet and as I assume a town this size only has one such specialist, I have to put up with your peculiarities in order to get help for my cat.’

  He blinked and the expression in the blue eyes shifted from suspicion to a wary kind of confusion.

  ‘You really have a cat?’

  Anna, who’d been temporarily distracted by the shifting expressions in the blue eyes, nodded then stepped backwards, exiting the yard, as the man came towards her.

  ‘Do you think I made it up? That I travel around with an imaginary cat?’ she snapped, aggravated with herself as well as him now, because the distraction disturbed her. ‘Of course I’ve got a cat! Why else would I be here?’

  “‘Of course I’ve got a cat.’” He mimicked her accent then added in his own Australian drawl, ‘Though I can’t see any sign of one. In Australia it’s usual to bring the animal you want treated along with you when you come to the vet.’

  Anna took a deep breath. He might be the best-looking man she’d seen yet, in this country of good-looking men, but he was also the most irritating man she’d ever met, here or at home. And he was making her madder than a mud wasp whose nest had been disturbed!

  ‘I didn’t bring the cat because I wasn’t coming here. I was walking uptown when I saw your sign. And I wouldn’t have brought the cat anyway—partly because it’s advice I need but specifically because closing her back in the cage to carry her here might strengthen her psychological reliance on it.’

  The blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he narrowed them into much the same suspicious stare Cass had used earlier.

  ‘Your cat has a psychological reliance on a travelling cage?’

  Disbelief curled around the words like smoke from a campfire, but Anna ignored it. She nodded agreement, then put it into words.

  ‘She won’t get out. I’ve tried tempting her with every treat I can think of, including fried bacon which she usually loves. I’ve tried shifting her food and water dishes further and further away from the cage, but she refuses to move.’

  Disbelief still radiated from him in waves, but Anna sensed a smidgen of interest as well. She decided to push a little further.

  ‘Nor will she use her litter tray and she’s usually the most fastidious of cats.’

  The man was frowning now, studying her and frowning, and from the way the frown lines were deepening he wasn’t liking what he saw.

  ‘Is she eating?’

  ‘I told you, no.’

  ‘Drinking?’

  ‘A little milk.’

  ‘How can she drink some milk without leaving her cage if you’ve put the dishes further away?’

  He was being a pain, and standing far too close to her now he’d reached the yard rail and was leaning over it, so Anna glared at him.

  ‘Because I pushed the milk and water dishes over near her again,’ she said defiantly. ‘I couldn’t let her die of dehydration.’

  ‘And what do you think I can do? I’m a vet, not a cat psychologist.’

  ‘I would have thought your studies included some work on animal behaviours. In fact, I know they do. But for some reason, probably because I’m a woman and you’re in dire need of psychological help yourself as far as dealing with my half of the human race goes, you’re choosing not to help. Well, I happen to like that cat, and I’m not going to be put off getting help for her by some stubborn, boorish, misogynistic imbecile who hides from clients in a dog kennel.’

  She thrust her hands on her hips and dared him to defy her again, but to her surprise he didn’t argue.

  In fact, he laughed.

  ‘I hope you’re not laughing at me.’ She scowled to reiterate the message, but this new spurt of anger was caused by her own reaction to the laughter. It was a deep, belly-rumbling noise so joyous it made her want to join in. Perhaps because it reminded her of her Uncle Fred’s laugh—a sound so filled with merriment and goodwill she’d rarely heard it without smiling.

  This obstreperous stranger had no right to have Uncle Fred’s laugh!

  Though, in all fairness, she probably couldn’t hold that against him. It wasn’t as if he’d stolen it.

  She was watching one of the goats making mud pies in the spilt water and mentally listing all the things she could hold against the man when he moved, opening the gate and sliding through before shutting it behind him. Then he reached out and took her hand—her left hand—lifting it so the sun flashed off the diamond on her ring finger.

  ‘What’s this? An engagement ring? Well, that’s different. Though I guess it’s actually a cubic zircona.
Who could possibly afford a diamond the size of a fairly well-fed cattle tick?’

  Anna snatched her hand away, but not before she registered the hard calluses on his palm against her own soft skin.

  ‘A cattle tick? You’re likening my diamond to a cattle tick? I’ll have you know this is a top-quality, blue-white South African stone, of a purity rarely seen.’

  She gave him yet another glare, though they seemed to bounce right off him, and added with a touch of her own belligerence, ‘And the expression is ‘‘a diamond as big as the Ritz’’, not as big as a cattle tick!’

  He laughed again, shook his head, then linked his arm through hers.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go visit your cat.’

  Anna was at first startled by his familiarity—then even more shocked by her own reaction to it. The man’s touch scorched her skin like a hot veld wind and she had to fight an urge to snatch her arm away and rub at it to erase the lingering heat.

  Tom regretted touching her the moment he did it, but he could hardly push away from her now. The problem was, she’d reminded him of Penny—well, both his half-sisters would have stood toe to toe with him and argued as this woman had, but it was the younger, Penny, he missed most these days.

  Because she made him laugh?

  Probably.

  Anyway, in that instant he’d done what he would have done with Pen—or Patience come to that. He’d linked his arm through his visitor’s and guided her back around the surgery.

  ‘Where’s the cat? Do we need to drive?’

  The woman solved the proximity problem, which, for all his current aggravation with women, was reminding his body that they had their uses. She moved away from him, peering around his yard as if trying to get her bearings.

  ‘I can’t see for the trees,’ she said, ‘but isn’t the hospital just over there?’ She waved her hand in roughly the right direction. ‘I came down the road along the railway line, but surely there’s a shorter way to get back.’

  ‘The hospital? Why do you need to get to the hospital? Did you take the cat there?’

  He stared at her, partly from surprise but also because she was a remarkably attractive woman—maybe even beautiful if he could see more of her face under the hat. Shorter men than he might quibble over her height, but he’d ricked his back kissing small women in the past so he saw height as an advantage. Not that he had any intention of kissing her, of course.

  She was slender—probably spent half her life dieting—with long, long legs and long slim arms, attached to a body that curved in all the right places. And she looked about as at home in the country as a thoroughbred would look in a mob of wild brumbies. A slim miniskirt clung to her thighs, the stretchy top she wore ended just short enough to show a strip of tanned skin across her belly, while the silly footwear, platform thongs with a bright daisy between the big and second toes, would be covered in dust within a kilometre. That’s if she didn’t fall off them and break an ankle.

  But by now, possibly because of his silence, she’d looked up at him, so he had a better view of the oval face, with all the features in perfect symmetry, though dominated by almond-shaped green eyes fringed with long, golden brown eyelashes and framed by well-arched brows.

  Currently drawn together in a frown!

  So, she probably wasn’t studying him in the same assessing way he was studying her—or, if she was, she didn’t fancy what she saw. Though his sisters claimed he was OK in the looks department—a bit rough but that wasn’t a bad thing in a bloke, they said.

  But the stranger was studying him more as if he were an exhibit in a zoo—Homo sapiens but with a query after it.

  ‘Why would anyone take a cat to a hospital?’ she finally asked, and he guessed she didn’t really want an answer but had to verbalise her thoughts.

  ‘You said the cat was there,’ he reminded her.

  She smiled and a lot of the antipathy he’d been feeling towards females dissolved in the warm radiance of that simple shift of full, ripe, red and, oh, so kissable lips.

  Red alert! Red alert! That’s how they get to you, his inner voice reminded him. They tempt you with their bodies, tantalise you with their lips, seduce you into thinking an affair is all they want, then suddenly you’re engaged to be married and not sure it’s quite what you wanted…

  Though surely with Grace it had been what he wanted. Marriage, a family, kids…

  ‘The cat’s there because it’s where we’re going to be living, she and I. I’m the new doctor. Anna Talbot.’

  She held out her hand—not the one with the huge diamond on it—and in spite of new ‘red alert’ warnings clanging in Tom’s head he took it, shook it, then had trouble letting go.

  ‘The new doctor, eh?’ His gaze skimmed down her scantily clad figure. ‘Well, you sure should liven up the town.’

  He grinned then saw the panic in her eyes, and instantly regretted his smart remark.

  ‘You’re teasing me. I’m dressed all wrong, aren’t I? I wondered when I shopped the other day and everyone was nice, but they kept sneaking looks at me. But friends in Melbourne kept telling me how hot Merriwee would be. They said to take cool clothes…’

  ‘My sisters would think your outfit very cool,’ Tom assured her, giving the warm, soft digits he was still holding a reassuring squeeze. ‘And the town could do with a shake-up so dress any way you like. I’m Tom Fleming, by the way. And I’m sorry if I came across a bit weird back there, but…’

  Realising a look would be better than all the explanations in the world, he shifted his grip on her hand, and with a brusque ‘Come and see’ dragged her towards the house, up the back steps and into the kitchen.

  Three large packets of unopened mail lay on the floor, while the letters from a fourth were scattered across his kitchen table.

  ‘This last package just arrived today,’ he said, nodding at the one on the table.

  ‘Fan mail?’ she said, turning to look at him as if to check if she should know him. ‘What are you—a TV star masquerading as a country vet? Or is this one of those reality programmes—life as it is for a country vet?’

  She studied him intently for a moment, then shrugged. ‘I suppose they wouldn’t choose a downright homely vet for a TV series.’

  ‘I am not in a TV series.’ He cut off her speculation before she had a chance to get carried any further away. ‘And it’s hardly fan mail. But look at the amount of it, all from women who fancy they might want to marry me. And as well as that, though both Pat and the magazine were careful not to say where I live, at least eight women have sussed me out—tracked me down to Merriwee—and turned up on my doorstep.’

  His visitor laughed.

  ‘Which is why you hide out in the kennels?’ she asked, clapping her hands in gleeful delight.

  ‘There’s nothing funny about it,’ he told her. ‘And I wasn’t hiding—I’d just finished checking Rover’s plaster and was coming out when you arrived.’

  He paused then waved his hand towards the bulging packets of mail, adding grimly, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with all of this?’

  ‘Answer it?’

  She bent with a lithe grace—and a beguiling upward movement of the skimpy skirt—and lifted a letter from the floor as she hazarded this guess, then sniffed at it.

  ‘Scented paper—I thought that went out in my grandmother’s day. Where do they come from? What magazine? And who is Pat?’

  Tom tore his eyes off his visitor’s legs, sighed and sank down into one of three mismatched chairs that graced his kitchen table.

  ‘Pat’s my stepmother, and apparently the magazine in question ran a series of articles on lonely country bachelors who were all looking for a wife. One wife each, that is, not the one wife for all of them. Pat saw the articles and wrote to the magazine, to tell them they’d missed out on the most eligible of all. Namely me! I didn’t see the letter, but she must have said something special because I can’t believe all the poor blokes in the original story ended up
with this many letters. The women write to the magazine who send on the letters to me via Pat but, as I said, a bit of good detective work has brought a number of them to my door.’

  ‘And none you met were any good?’ his visitor—Anna—asked. She was straightening the letters on the table into piles and the way she leaned forward, the way her hands moved, distracted him.

  ‘It’s not a matter of them being any good or not,’ he growled, angry with himself for being distracted—by legs, by hands! ‘I don’t want a woman.’

  It wasn’t until she gave a little start he realised he’d yelled the words at her, but the look she shot him was more assessing than shocked.

  ‘Do you want a man?’ she asked, her unfamiliar accent meaning he took a moment to process the question. A moment too long as she followed it up with a gentle, ‘Is that difficult in a country town? Being openly gay?’

  His head felt as if it would burst with irritation.

  ‘No, it’s not!’ he stormed, then hesitated. ‘Well, it might be in some towns—but it is in some cities, too, so it’s not a ‘‘country’’ thing.’

  Tom was about to continue when he realised he’d got off track.

  ‘And I do not want a man.’

  That didn’t sound too good either, so he tried again.

  ‘Well, not as a partner—not in the sense your tricky feminine mind zeroed in on. I don’t want anyone, do you understand that? I want to live alone—I like living alone. Probably not for ever, but at least for now.’

  ‘Licking your wounds? Did some woman do the wrong thing by you? Hurt you terribly?’

  Green eyes, softened by sympathy, scanned his face, and he was about to pour out his aggravation over Grace’s behaviour when he realised it was aggravation he felt about Grace’s refusal to move to the country. He’d been annoyed that his plans had been disrupted, and angry she could do it to him, but there’d not been any sense of a deep emotional loss.