Stranded with the Secret Billionaire Page 9

  But he didn’t take her back into his arms.

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ he ventured, but the ghosts had been right to tug him back. He had no intention of getting involved with any woman. He would not face that kind of grief again.

  But this wasn’t any woman. This was Penny.

  ‘We...we should be careful.’ She couldn’t quite disguise the quaver in her voice. ‘If we go any further we’ll shock the owls.’

  ‘Probably not wise,’ he managed.

  ‘None of this is wise,’ she whispered. ‘But I’m not sure I care.’

  It was up to him. And somehow he made the call. Somehow the ghosts prevailed.

  ‘I need to be up before dawn,’ he told her.

  There was a long silence. Then, ‘Of course you do.’ There was still a tremble in her voice but she was fighting to get it under control.

  Somehow he stayed silent. Somehow he managed not to gather her into his arms and take this to its inevitable conclusion.

  It almost killed him.

  But she had herself under control now. He could see her gathering herself together. This was a woman used to being rebuffed, he thought, and somehow that made it worse. But the ghosts were all around him, echoes of lessons long learned.

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Then goodnight, Matt,’ she whispered at last, and she reached out and touched his face in the most fleeting of farewell caresses. ‘Sleep well. Sleep happy and sensible.’

  And she turned and, without a torch, not even noticing the rough ground, she practically ran back to the relative sanctuary of the house.

  It was done.

  Sense had prevailed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEY WORKED SOLIDLY for the next four days. The timetable remained the same. They hardly saw each other during the day but at night Matt continued bringing his meal out to the veranda. Penny was always there, watching the moonlight, soaking up the stillness. Nothing had changed.

  Except everything had.

  There was a stillness between them. It was a kind of tension except it wasn’t a tension. There was something happening that Matt couldn’t figure.

  He’d hurt her. He knew he had, he thought, as he sat on the veranda four nights later. He’d seen her face as he’d pulled away that night. She’d practically thrown herself at him. Now she was humiliated and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  Saying sorry wasn’t going to cut it. Saying sorry would simply be saying she’d offered herself to him and he’d refused, but that wasn’t how it had been. The tug between them was mutual.

  But he’d had no choice. Penny had been honest enough to accept their desire was mutual, but the barriers he’d put up over the years had held. He wasn’t going down that path again.

  But what path? The path of grief he’d felt when his mother had left? When the old man who’d befriended him had died?

  Or the path of betrayal both his mother and his wife had shown him?

  He’d put Penny in the same bracket and she knew it. He’d humiliated her. He’d hurt her. He knew it but he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

  And maybe Penny was used to such humiliation because she simply got on with it. She smiled at him, she used the same casual banter, she sat on the veranda now and shared the silence and it was as if nothing had happened.

  Except the hurt was still there. How did he know? The sparkle of fun behind her eyes had changed, just a little. She was good at hiding hurt, he thought. If he didn’t know her so well...

  How did he know her so well? He didn’t have a clue. He only knew that he did and he also knew that it had him retreating.

  If he went one step further...

  He couldn’t. The next step would be a crashing down of those boundaries. A shattering of armour.

  After all those years, how could he do that?

  Penny rose. They’d been sitting on the veranda for only twenty minutes or so and they usually stayed an hour, but tomorrow was the last day of the shear. He had things to do and maybe she did too.

  Or maybe this thing between them was too much.

  ‘I’m making bulk choc chip cookies before I go to bed,’ she told him. ‘The team’s heading on to McLarens’ tomorrow and they’re already whinging about the cooking they’ll get there. I thought I’d send them with a goodbye kit.’

  ‘They’ll expect you back next year,’ Matt told her and she paused and looked down at him in the dim light.

  ‘I’ll be well into organizing my catering company by then,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘But if you pay me enough I’ll come.’

  ‘Is that what you plan to do? Set up a catering company?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, almost as if she was speaking to herself. ‘I’ll make it a success. I know it. Maybe I can find enough competent staff interested in outback experiences to let me offer catering for shearing.’

  And he had to ask. ‘So will you come, or will it be your competent staff?’

  ‘Who knows?’ She said it lightly but he still heard the pain.

  ‘Penny?’

  ‘Mmm?’ She leaned down to lift his empty plate from the bench beside him but he reached out and took her wrist before she could lift it.

  ‘Are you staying for the next two weeks?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t said.’

  She stilled. She looked down at her wrist.

  He released it. No pressure.

  What was he thinking, no pressure? There was pressure everywhere.

  ‘Do you still want me to?’

  And of course he should say no. He should say the thought had been a dumb one when he’d made the offer. His barricades needed reinforcing.

  He’d hurt her and he had no intention of hurting her again. He needed to back off and let her go.

  But the night was still and Penny didn’t move. His grip on her wrist was light. She could pull away if she wanted.

  She didn’t.

  And all at once he thought: To hell with barricades. Let’s just...see.

  ‘This thing between us...’ he managed and she stayed silent. What happened next was obviously down to him. As it should be.

  ‘Penny, the way I feel...it’s been so long. And, to be honest...’ He shook his head and finally released her wrist. ‘Penny, you’ve been hurt. You know how it feels. But me?’

  And then he stopped. How could he explain? How could he tell anyone the hurt of those long years?

  But then he thought this was Penny and he’d hurt her. He couldn’t let it stay like this. He needed to let down the barricades a little.

  He needed to talk.

  ‘If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t need to,’ she said gently.

  She was giving him an out. Her generosity almost took his breath away, and it tore away the last of his reservations.

  She sat beside him, as if she understood he needed time. He couldn’t look at her. For some reason it seemed impossible to say what had to be said when he was watching her.

  But her body was touching his and the warmth of her, her closeness—her trust?—made it imperative to tell her what he’d told nobody. Ever.

  And finally he did.

  ‘Penny, my mother was a serial relationship disaster,’ he said at last. ‘She went from man to man to man. Every time she fell deeply, irrevocably in love, and every single relationship meant our lives were turned upside down. Romance for my mother inevitably ended in chaos and heartbreak. Moving houses, moving schools, debt collectors, sometimes even assault, hospitals, the courts. The best thing Mum ever did for me was run from a calamitous relationship and take the housekeeping job on Sam’s farm. That was my salvation. If she hadn’t done that, heaven knows where I’d have been. Sam’s farm was my first and only taste of stability and I stayed there for
ten years. Sam left me the farm and I thought I’d stay there for ever. And then I discovered the bauxite and Darrilyn discovered me.’

  ‘More chaos?’ Penny whispered. She was looking out at the moonlight too, giving him space. Giving him silence to work out what he needed to say.

  ‘More chaos,’ he said grimly. ‘I was naïve, little more than an idiot kid, and I was besotted. I didn’t put the discovery of bauxite and the sudden interest of the neighbouring farmer’s gorgeous daughter together. I married her and when we found out she was pregnant I was over the moon. But marriage and pregnancy had been her only goals. Legally, they gave her the right to the money she wanted. She headed to the US with a guy who knew her worth and was probably in on her plan from the beginning. So that’s it. I see Lily twice a year and it breaks my heart.’

  ‘But now?’ She sounded as if she was walking on eggshells. ‘You said she might be coming home.’

  ‘Home?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Does she have such a thing? Her mother’s relationships have broken down again and again. Lily’s been given the same raw deal as me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Her mother’s always refused to let her come to Australia. I leave the farm with the boys twice a year and spend as much time with her as I can, and every time I leave it rips me in two. But even if I moved there Darrilyn wouldn’t give me more access. So that’s it, Penny. That’s where I’ve been with relationships. Burned. I don’t need them.’

  ‘So...’ Penny took a deep breath ‘...Matt, what’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ And it was an honest answer. How could he explain what he didn’t understand himself? ‘Penny, how I feel...’

  ‘Must be like I feel,’ she ventured when he couldn’t go on. ‘Like I’ve been an idiot and how can I trust myself to try again? Only your ghosts must be harder on you than mine. My parents have their faults but they’ve given me stability.’ Her gaze raked the moonlit landscape. ‘You know, this is the most settled place I’ve ever been in. I’m imagining how you must have felt as a child when you finally made it to Sam’s farm. And now. Here’s your home and life is good. You wouldn’t want to mess with that for anything.’

  ‘You mean I wouldn’t want to mess with that for you?’

  ‘I’m not putting words into your mouth,’ she said with sudden asperity. She rose, breaking the moment, and a tinge of anger entered her voice. ‘I can’t help you, Matt. I have my own demons to deal with and, believe me, the fact that I’ve been monumentally dumb is a huge thing to accept. I don’t need a relationship either.’ She took a deep breath as if she was having trouble forcing the words out, but finally she managed it.

  ‘But you know what? Regardless of relationships, I’m moving on. Being here has kept my demons at bay, regardless of...of what’s happening between us. And I still have the same problem—media interest in my appalling sister and her equally appalling fiancé. I like working here,’ she confessed. ‘It feels good and I suspect if I made a pile of meals and stocked the freezer, you guys would be grateful.’

  ‘We would.’ He definitely would.

  ‘There you go, then. Maybe that’s my bottom line. There’s cooking to be done and organization in the house. I can put my head down and go for it.’

  ‘I don’t want you to work...’

  ‘I’m staying to work, Matt,’ she said, still with that trace of astringency. ‘Anything else...who knows? As I said, we each have our own demons. But should they affect the next two weeks? Maybe not. So let’s make this an employment contract only. Two more weeks of work—at shearers’ cook rates.’

  ‘Hey! You’re not cooking for a team. Shearers’ cook rates?’ But he felt himself starting to smile.

  She arched her brows and met his gaze head-on. ‘I’m filling the freezer and that’ll be like cooking for a team. Shearers’ cook rates or nothing. That’s my offer, Matt Fraser, and it’s final. So...do you still want me to stay or do you not?’

  She was looking up at him, resolute, courageous, firm.

  When he’d first met her he’d thought she was ditzy. She wasn’t. She had intelligence to spare.

  She was beautiful.

  Suddenly he wondered—was this the courage to try again?

  And then there was no choice. The night righted itself. He rose and took her hands.

  ‘Penny, I want you to stay.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Then I accept. I’m on a great wage. You have big freezers and I like a challenge. What’s not to love?’

  What’s not to love?

  It was all he could do not to kiss her. And then he thought: Why not?

  So he did and, amazingly, wonderfully, she didn’t object. She responded.

  But this wasn’t the kiss of passion they’d shared on the night of the owls. It was tentative—a question—and when they pulled apart the question was still in their eyes.

  ‘You know, when you’re around I have trouble being interested in how empty my freezers are,’ he confessed.

  ‘Well, you should be.’ She was smiling as she stepped back. She seemed suddenly a woman in charge of her world, ready to move on. ‘Because you’re paying me heaps.’ She tugged her hands back and he let her go. ‘For the rest, let’s just see. But for now... Matt, I need to go bake some cookies. Freezers, here I come.’

  * * *

  He headed out to check on the last pens of sheep, the last runs before the end of shearing.

  Penny headed for the kitchen.

  She’d promised the shearing team takeaway choc chip cookies. Right. She could do that.

  Samson snoozed by the fire. The kitchen felt like a refuge.

  She mixed her two flours and then stared at the mixture and stared at the flour sacks and wondered—had she just used half self-raising flour, half plain, or had she put in two lots of plain?

  Uh oh.

  She started again, this time trusting herself so little that she made a list of ingredients that were usually in her head and ticked them as she put them in.

  But how could she think of ingredients?

  Matt had kissed her. Twice. Matt wanted her to stay.

  And she understood him. From that first day when she’d seen him on his gorgeous black horse she’d thought of him as a man in charge of his world, and little had happened to change that. The shearers looked up to him and it wasn’t because he owned the place. She’d learned enough of human nature now to know bosses earned respect; they didn’t buy it.

  So Matt was a man of strength, intelligence and honour, but she’d just been allowed a glimpse of the building blocks that had made him. It felt like an enormous privilege.

  She put both her hands in the bowl and started mixing. The feel of the cookie dough under her hands was a comfort. It was a task she’d loved doing for years.

  The family cook had taught her to do this. Her parents hadn’t been around much but they’d been in the background.

  Who’d baked choc chip cookies for Matt?

  No one. She knew it as surely as she knew what he’d told her was scarcely the tip of the iceberg that was the nightmare of his childhood.

  ‘Bless you, Sam,’ she told the old farmer who’d finally taken the young Matt under his wing. ‘I wish I could make you choc chip cookies.’

  And suddenly her eyes filled with tears. Why? It hardly made sense. She sniffed and told herself she was a dope but the tears kept coming.

  ‘So we’re adding a little salty water into the mix,’ she said out loud. ‘My secret ingredient.’

  Two weeks to cure a lifetime of hurt?

  That wasn’t the way it worked. Matt didn’t see himself as someone who needed curing, and she was hardly qualified to help.

  ‘But he might kiss me again...’

  The tears disappeared. Hope
was suddenly all around her, a bright, perky little voice that bounced with delight. Enough with the past. She had freezers to fill.

  And demons to scatter?

  ‘I hope he likes choc chip cookies,’ she told the sleeping Samson. ‘Because I’m about to fill his freezers with a ton.’

  * * *

  He’d hired her for two more weeks. He’d told her his past.

  Was he nuts?

  He checked the pens and then walked down the paddocks to check the newly shorn sheep. The weather was brilliant, as it had been for the whole shear. The starkly white sheep didn’t even appear to notice that they’d lost their coats. They were relaxed, hardly edging away as he walked the boundaries of the holding paddocks. There were no problems with the flock that he could see. No problems on the horizon either.

  He opened the gates of the house paddocks to the pastures beyond. To all intents and purposes, the sheep were free.

  Like he intended to be.

  Freedom. That was what he’d craved when he’d somehow hauled himself together after Darrilyn walked out. His mother had moved from one hysterical mess to another. He’d spent his childhood dealing with her tears, her drama, her hopelessness, and his one foray into marriage had been more of the same.

  Freedom had looked good. This place was his solace, his refuge, his love.

  But now? Not only had he just opened himself up to Penny, exposing pain he’d never thought he’d reveal, but he’d pushed her to stay for two weeks.

  And a question was starting to niggle.

  Did he have the courage to try again? With a pink princess with a past almost as troubled as his?

  He walked on. In the distance he could still see the house. The lights were on at the south end, which meant the kitchen was still in use. Penny would be cooking.

  He could go and join her. He could sit at the kitchen table and watch her hands create food to die for. He could watch the flour accumulate on her nose—she always seemed to have flour on her nose.

  Maybe he could offer to help—he could wash while she wiped.

  There was a romantic thought.

  He stopped and closed his eyes. The silence was almost absolute. Even the owls were silent and he thought suddenly: It’s as if something momentous is about to happen.