Woman at Willagong Creek Read online

  She spent the rest of the day speculating about Guy’s presents. Slotting a cassette into the player, she finished the bookshelves to the sound of one of Mozart’s concertos, but even the music filling the room wasn’t enough to take her mind from the silk nightdress and how it would feel to wear it lying next to Guy that night.

  When the time came, Olivia was curiously reluctant to put it on. She left Guy sitting on the veranda, and stood at the bedroom window, pulling the silk through her hands. The T-shirt she had been wearing in bed was hot and uncomfortable, but it was safe. The silk nightdress was soft and seductive, and not safe at all.

  It whispered over her skin as she slipped it on, and she smoothed the material nervously over her flat stomach. The silk was cool and luxurious, and cut beautifully to emphasise her slenderness, falling to her ankles in one long, fluid line. Olivia kept thinking of Guy holding the nightdress in his hands, the hands that could bring a wild horse under control, and she felt her spine shiver. She was agonisingly aware of her own body, of her nipples stiff and aroused beneath the silk.

  Desperate to distract her mind, she crossed to the chest of drawers, the silk swishing against her legs, and picked up her letters. Think about London, think about friends, think about anything except Guy’s hands against silk against her skin.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and tried to concentrate on Tim’s letter, but the words danced before her eyes, and she was staring mindlessly at the paper when the door opened and Guy came in.

  Olivia stared at his sudden appearance, and dropped the letter. The light airmail paper drifted lazily to the floor to land at Guy’s feet. He bent to pick it up.

  ‘Re-reading your love-letter?’ he asked harshly.

  ‘It’s not a love-letter.’ Olivia slid into bed and pulled the sheet over her. Ivory silk was an inadequate protection with his eyes upon her, and she felt more confident with the cotton sheet tugged up to her neck.

  Guy seemed angry. ‘What did he want, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tim. That’s who it’s from, isn’t it? The sophisticated lover you miss so much.’

  Safe behind her sheet, Olivia stiffened at the contempt in his voice, and her eyes flashed in challenge. It would have been easy to have simply explained Tim’s letter, but she saw no reason to while Guy was being so aggressive. ‘I don’t have to tell you what’s in my private correspondence!’ she snapped, and held out her hand. ‘I’d like it back, please.’

  ‘Come and get it.’ Guy held the letter up and shook it enticingly. ‘If it matters that much to you, stop hiding behind that sheet and come and get it!’

  Olivia bit her lip. She didn’t know why Guy was so suddenly hostile. The shimmer of silk against her body seemed somehow more provocative, more disturbingly erotic than if she had been wearing nothing at all.

  Slowly she threw back the sheet and stood up. The silk slithered over her thighs and swung to the floor. Across the room, her eyes met Guy’s. He hadn’t moved. He just stood there, holding the letter, and watching her, and unconsciously Olivia moistened her lips with her tongue.

  ‘Well, are you coming or not?’

  She walked towards him. His jaw was set, his lips pressed together in a firm line, but his eyes seemed to burn with suppressed emotion as they moved over her, from the seductive hollows between throat and clavicle, the honey-warm skin of her shoulders, down to the taut swell of breasts and on, over slenderness, sliding from stomach to the long, slim, ivory silk line of her legs. Olivia felt her skin afire with awareness; where his eyes moved, the silk seemed to burn and caress her skin, sliding against her in tingling intimacy.

  She stopped. Her heart was thumping, her mouth dry. Guy was less than an arm’s reach away. She could see the clench of his jaw, the muscles working in his throat.

  ‘Can I have my letter?’ she managed in a cracked voice, unable to bear the tension any longer.

  His eyes seemed to focus abruptly on her face, then dropped to the letter in his hand as if he had forgotten all about it. Very deliberately, he folded it up and, reaching out, tucked it into the shadowy valley between her breasts. His fingers just brushed against her skin, and she drew a sharp breath, half in dread, half in anticipation.

  ‘Here, have it, if that’s what you want so much!’ he said in a tight voice. Wheeling round, he went out, banging the door behind him and leaving Olivia standing in the middle of the floor, her eyes filled with tears.

  He came back later, but no mention was made of the letter or the nightdress. He simply climbed in beside her and settled himself for sleep. That was the pattern for the weeks that followed. Olivia might as well have been another pillow in the bed for all the notice Guy took of her at night.

  By day, things were easier, and life fell gradually into a routine. Most afternoons, she would walk with David along the creek. She told him stories, and sometimes they would talk about Diane. David never said much, but she would feel his small body lean wordlessly against hers, as much comforting as comforted.

  Succumbing at last to the combined pressure of Guy, David and the ringers, Olivia allowed herself to be persuaded on to a horse, where she clung with grim determination to the saddle while Guy rode slowly beside her. She refused to do more than walk. David soon got bored and cantered ahead, but Guy was unhurried, unperturbed by their leisurely progress.

  Olivia wished she looked that at home on a horse. Guy rode through the dry bush as if he were part of it. He pointed out things to her that she would never have noticed, and little by little she learnt about the land and the cattle.

  The cassettes he had given her filled the house with music as she cooked and cleaned, and occasionally she caught herself humming along. If it hadn’t been for the nights when she had to lie, restless in silken awareness, next to an unresponsive Guy, she might have thought that she was … well, almost happy.

  Olivia never forgot the day of the muster. She was up at half-past four to cook breakfast for the men, who were bringing all the cattle from one of the huge paddocks north of the homestead back to the stockyards. There the calves would be separated from their mothers and then branded, castrated and dehorned. Joe, in a rare burst of loquaciousness, had explained the whole process to her in gory detail the night before.

  David was in a fever of impatience all day, waiting for the muster to reach the stockyards, and even more importantly to see the helicopter which was going to spot stray cattle from the herd and drive them towards the herd. Guy had told David that Robin, the pilot, would fly straight to Kalunga early in the morning, and wouldn’t get to the homestead until the muster did, about five, which meant that David drove Olivia mad by demanding to know the time every few minutes.

  She was rolling out pastry for an apple pie when he came pell-mell up the cookhouse steps. ‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’

  Wiping her hands on her apron, she followed him out to the stockyards. A cloud of dust on the horizon was moving steadily towards them, and she watched in awe as the pounding hoofs rumbled and vibrated along the ground like far-off thunder. ‘How many cattle have they got out there?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Lots,’ said David.

  One moment they were standing alone in the still heat, the next the air was full of bellowing and choking red dust and cracking whips and the piercing yip-yip cries of the men on horseback as the cattle surged past into the stockyards in an unstoppable mob.

  Alarmed by the noise and rush, Olivia drew David back slightly and placed restraining hands on his shoulders. He was tense with excitement, his eyes shining.

  She coughed and blinked through the swirling dust at the scene. Most of the cattle seemed to be inside the sturdy wooden rails by now. They milled around with aggrieved bellows, and, as the dust settled slowly, individual figures emerged. There was Ben, leaning forward on his horse to close the last gate, there were Darren and Joe swinging out of the saddle, and Guy -

  As she caught sight of him through the confusion, Olivia’s heart missed a beat an
d then did a jolting kick-start into hammering life again. She wished it wouldn’t do that. Guy was sitting on the huge chestnut horse, hat tilted slightly forwards, lasso looped casually round the pommel of his saddle. He was shouting orders to Ben over the noise and holding the horse easily with one hand as it snorted and sidled away from the milling cattle.

  It was only a man on a horse. There was absolutely no reason for her heart to start jumping around like that, Olivia told herself crossly. No reason for him to have noticed her through the dust as she had noticed him.

  ‘I’m going back to the kitchen, David,’ she said abruptly. ‘Don’t get under their feet.’

  ‘He can come with me if he likes, Mrs R,’ said Corky, materialising beside her. ‘I’m going to pick up Robin.’

  ‘Robin?’ Olivia repeated, preoccupied with her own thoughts.

  ‘From the chopper.’ Corky jerked his head in the direction of the airstrip. ‘Saw it land a few minutes ago. You wouldn’t have heard it, with all the noise here.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Olivia glanced down at David with a smile. ‘You’ve been dying to see the helicopter, haven’t you, David?’

  David nodded, eyes shining with anticipation, and trotted off beside Corky, while Olivia made her way back to the cookhouse and told herself that she didn’t care in the least that Guy hadn’t looked over and acknowledged her presence with a smile …

  Covering the apples with pastry, she knocked up the edges and cut some ‘leaves’ for decoration. Always an odd number - it was one of the few things she remembered from her cordon bleu course. She admired the pie as she put it in the fridge to rest. Really, she was getting quite good at this kind of thing - apple pies, housework, riding; perhaps she’d make an outback woman yet.

  She was chopping parsley when Guy came in. At her request, he had brought her parsley pots back from Townsville. She had planted them in the shade of the cookhouse and nurtured them tenderly. If she was going to have to cook good, plain food, it would at least look nice. The ringers had got used to their evening meal prepared with subtle garnishes. It had become a challenge to Olivia, to see how beautiful she could make something look before eyebrows were raised and doubtful looks exchanged.

  Guy looked hot and tired and dusty as he brushed off his hat in a characteristic gesture. ‘It’s been a long day,’ he said.

  The urge to go to him and touch him and smooth the tired lines from his face was suddenly so strong that Olivia had to bend her shining head over the chopping board and clench the knife tightly in her hand. ‘Would you like a beer?’ she asked, sounding stiff and formal.

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Guy tossed his hat on top of the fridge, opened the door and pulled out a frosty can. He propped himself on a stool opposite her. ‘You want to be careful you don’t cut yourself with that knife,’ he warned. ‘It’s specially sharpened for butchering.’

  ‘That’s precisely why I’m using it!’ Olivia said sharply. It was easier to be irritable than to think about touching him. ‘It’s hopeless trying to chop herbs with a blunt knife. You don’t have to be born and bred in the outback to know how to handle a knife. I know perfectly well what I’m doing.’

  ‘You could have fooled me, the way you’re waving that one around.’ Guy broke off as the ute rattled to a halt outside and doors banged. ‘This’ll be Robin.’

  Expecting another lanky, laconic stockman, Olivia carried on chopping until the screen door opened to admit a petite girl, about five years younger than herself, dressed in the ubiquitous lightly checked shirt, jeans and boots. She had short, softly curling brown hair and a fresh, pretty face. Olivia, who had expended much thought trying to make herself look practical in black leggings and a baggy peacock blue shirt, immediately felt gaudy and out of place.

  She laid down the knife and looked enquiringly at the girl, puzzled by her unexpected arrival, and then at Guy. He didn’t look surprised. He was smiling at the girl, and Olivia’s eyes narrowed fractionally.

  David followed close on the girl’s heels and looked up worshipfully. ‘This is Robin,’ he announced.

  Olivia’s mouth dropped open. ‘Robin? But I thought Robin was a pilot!’

  ‘I am.’ The other girl’s smile flickered over to Guy with a hint of complacency. ‘I suppose you were expecting a man. I’m Robyn with a “y”. Didn’t Guy tell you?’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘No,’ said Olivia coldly.

  ‘Have a beer,’ said Guy to Robyn, handing her a can. ‘You’ve earned it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Robyn sent him a sparkling glance of complicity. ‘I’ve been waiting for this ever since you promised it to me this morning!’

  Olivia savagely resumed her chopping. It was revolting, the way she was simpering up to him, and as for Guy! She hadn’t known he could look so fatuous!

  ‘Robyn showed me her helicopter and I sat at the controls!’ David was obviously as besotted as Guy, and Olivia suppressed a twist of hurt that Robyn had won him over so easily when it had taken her weeks to break through his shell. ‘She’s going to give me a ride in it tomorrow!’

  ‘If that’s OK with you, Olivia?’ Robyn added.

  ‘Of course.’ Olivia mustered a smile. ‘As long as it’s safe.’

  ‘Safe as houses - Guy and I spent most of the morning in it!’

  ‘Really?’ Olivia said frostily, and glanced at Guy who was leaning against the fridge and watching them both with his usual unreadable expression.

  Very much at home, Robyn perched herself on the table and swung her legs, but in spite of her little-girl posture her brown eyes were cool as she raised her can to Olivia. ‘Anyway, congratulations.’

  ‘Congratulations?’ Olivia looked blank.

  ‘On your marriage,’ Robyn explained, with a speculative look. ‘We’d all given up hope of Guy ever getting married.’ She was obviously wondering why on earth he had picked such a patently unsuitable wife. ‘You hadn’t known each other very long, had you?’

  ‘No.’ Olivia was quick to pick up the suspicious note in the other girl’s voice, and she looked uneasily at Guy. He met her look blandly, and she lifted her chin as she turned back to Robyn. Was she the girlfriend David had mentioned? ‘How long have you known Guy?’ she asked stiffly.

  ‘Oh, forever! I grew up on the neighbouring property. We’re practically family! I flew Guy round Willagong Creek when he first bought it - do you remember, Guy? It looks a bit different now!’

  ‘You’ll see a difference in the homestead too,’ Guy told her. ‘Olivia’s cleaned it all out.’

  ‘I always rather liked it the way it was,’ Robyn said prettily. ‘Still, you’re lucky to have found yourself such an efficient housekeeper. I’m awful,’ she turned to Olivia with a confiding air, ‘I hate being stuck in a house. That’s why I learned to fly; it gets me outside with the men.’

  ‘You’re obviously one of the lads,’ Olivia said with a tight smile, hating Robyn, who was accepted by the men, who wasn’t prepared to do the dreary woman’s work that she clearly thought was all Olivia was fit for.

  ‘I’ve always been a tomboy,’ Robyn sighed with mock regret. ‘I don’t mind cooking if I have to - in fact, my Anzac biscuits are famous, aren’t they, Guy?’ Without waiting for his answer, she went on, ‘I took some with me for smoko. The boys love them.’ She paused. ‘Your rock cakes were good too, of course, Olivia.’

  Of course, Robyn with a “y” would have taken something for smoko! Olivia, who knew quite well that her rock cakes had been disastrously hard and burnt - she had tried to make them several times for Joe, who claimed they were his favourites, but the secret had so far eluded her - tightened her hands round her knife and carried on chopping.

  ‘David,’ Guy intervened quietly, ‘why don’t you show Robyn over to the homestead when she’s finished her beer?’

  ‘Oh, I know my way!’ Robyn drained her beer and jumped off the table. ‘Where shall I put my stuff? In my usual room?’

  ‘I made up the bed next to David’s,’
Olivia said in a glacial voice. ‘I don’t know if that’s your usual room or not.’

  There was silence in the cookhouse as David trotted off beside Robyn, chattering about helicopters.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Robyn was a woman?’ Olivia asked at last, accusingly.

  Guy sat back on his stool. ‘I didn’t think about it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, really?’ Olivia slammed down the knife and went to put the apple pie in the oven. ‘Funny thing not to think about when you’re such good friends!’

  Guy was unresponsive to her sarcasm. ‘I’ve known Robyn since she was a kid,’ he said calmly, ‘and she’s been a lot of help to me since I bought this property. She’s a real outback girl; she understands how things work out here.’

  ‘Unlike me, I suppose!’

  ‘Unlike you,’ he agreed equably.

  Olivia scraped the parsley into a bowl and began to peel some onions. ‘I don’t suppose her usual room could be the one I’m sleeping in, could it? I’d hate to think I was keeping such soul mates apart!’ Sure you wouldn’t like me to move out and let her take my place?’

  She put the knife down nervously as Guy placed both hands flat on the table and leant forward so that his eyes were boring into hers. ‘Bed-hopping may be par for the course where you come from, but it’s not out here. You’re my wife, Olivia, not Robyn, and that means you sleep with me.’ He straightened. ‘You’re giving a fine impression of a jealous wife. You don’t need to pretend when it’s just me, you know.’

  ‘Jealous?’ Olivia shook back her hair angrily and picked up another onion. ‘I’m not jealous. I couldn’t care less what you get up to together in her precious helicopter!’

  Guy sat back on his stool. The almost-smile was lurking about his mouth. ‘I hate to spoil your image of me, but it would take a better man than me to make love to a woman in a helicopter just a few feet above the ground, chasing cattle and avoiding trees at the same time.’ He paused and looked at Olivia, her face stormy above the vivid blue of her shirt. ‘Depends on the woman, of course.’