Outback Baby. Barbara Hannay
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the tinned stuff we brought with us. I’ll take a run into town first thing tomorrow morning. We should make up a shopping list.’
Gemma was so grateful they were no longer talking about Max’s women that she spent the afternoon being particularly obliging and co-operative. Max made cold roast beef sandwiches for their lunch and they ate them at a table on the side verandah and washed them down with huge mugs of strong tea while Mollie played with her blocks on the floor nearby. Out in the paddocks the white cockatoos screeched raucous greetings as they returned to the grass seed to feed.
Then, after lunch, as Max had never bothered with a housekeeper, together they dusted and vacuumed spare rooms for her and Mollie’s use. They set up Mollie’s folding cot and her other equipment in a bedroom on the cool side of the house, with doors opening onto the verandah.
Gemma’s bedroom was right next door. She had stayed in it before—a pretty room, very feminine, with pink and white curtains and a white candlewick bedspread on the old-fashioned iron bed. The bed-ends were decorated with shiny brass knobs and pretty pieces of porcelain painted with rosebuds.
She was startled to see a silver-framed photo of Dave and herself on the mahogany dressing table. It had been taken five years ago—in the days before Dave met Isobel—when Gemma was eighteen and she and Dave had still been ‘going together‘. Their liaison had been a casual arrangement that they’d drifted into as they grew older. She’d come back from university for his twenty-first birthday.
In the photo, they were dancing. Dave, dressed in a formal dinner suit, was laughing, and she was smiling at the camera and looking very pleased with herself in a pale blue evening gown with thin straps, a fitted bodice and a softly floating, long skirt. There were tiny white flowers dotted through her dark brown hair. At the time, she’d thought she looked very romantic.
Now she shuddered as a painful memory forced itself on her.
The night of Dave’s party had ended with a shameful and embarrassing incident. A scene she had worked desperately hard to forget over the years. Surely Max had wanted to forget it, too? At the time he had been as upset as she was about what happened.
Shaking, she turned to him now. ‘Why didn’t you throw this old photo away?’
Max set down her suitcase, straightened and frowned in its direction. An unreadable emotion flashed in his eyes and his mouth tightened. After a moment, he said with a shrug, ‘Didn’t cross my mind.’
Rigid with tension, it took Gemma a moment or two to take in his words. Then relief flooded her. He must have forgotten what had happened that night! Either that or the incident that had caused her so much grief over the years had never really bothered him. Gemma forced herself to shrug as nonchalantly as he had. ‘Fair enough,’ she said.
She knew she should be relieved, but it took some time for her to feel calm again and to convince herself that she was happy with his detached reaction.
By evening, they had worked out how to barricade off the section of the verandah adjacent to the study, so that Mollie could have a safe area to crawl and play while Gemma worked. Gemma had unpacked her clothes and had showered to wash off the dust from her journey. She’d bathed the baby girl in the old claw-foot tub in the main bathroom and fed her mashed vegetables. Max had ambled down to one of the ringers’ huts to discuss station matters and explain about his visitors.
When he returned, he fixed a simple supper of steaks and salad while Gemma gave Mollie her bottle and settled her for sleep.
Everything went like clockwork. Gemma couldn’t believe how obliging Mollie was and how conciliatory Max had been. She was beginning to feel calm and confident and even optimistic about the whole venture. Surely this mood wouldn’t last?
They ate together, and their steaks were followed by a simple, no-frills dessert of chocolate chip ice cream and tinned apricots. Then coffee. They chatted about people they both knew from around the district and Max was a surprisingly entertaining host—slipping humorous anecdotes and juicy titbits of gossip into the conversation.
As he drained the last of his coffee, he put his cup down and leaned back in his chair. ‘I should have offered you a nightcap. Would you like a liqueur or brandy?’
She shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I’m quite tired, but you have one.’
‘Not tonight.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You haven’t told me anything about the trip you made to England after university.’
‘I didn’t think you’d be interested,’ she answered stiffly.
His eyebrows rose the tiniest fraction. ‘I don’t need a travelogue, but I’d like to know whether you found what you were looking for.’
The coffee cup in Gemma’s hand rattled against its saucer. ‘I went to London for two years’ work experience.’
After a little, Max said, ‘I suspected you were running away.’
He’d dropped the charm and reverted to Big Brother mode and Gemma’s sense of relaxation was falling away at breakneck speed. She should have known the truce had been too good to last. ‘What would I have been running away from?’
He frowned. ‘You and Dave were so close for so many years. Everyone in the district thought of you as a couple.’
‘Yes, but I’m sure everyone knew it wasn’t serious.’ She was stunned to think that Max might have thought she’d been pining after Dave. ‘Heavens, Max, Dave and I just sort of hung out together out of habit. I mean—being with him was always fun and sweet and everything, but when we parted it was quite painless and definitely for the best.’ She added quietly, ‘There was something missing in our relationship.’
Heat leapt into her cheeks. She didn’t add that there had seemed to be something missing in every relationship she’d attempted. Gemma had a dreadful suspicion that there was something missing in her own personality. She feared she just wasn’t suited to romance. No matter how handsome and charming and eager to please her the young men she’d met had been, none of then had ever once made her feel giddily, genuinely in love. Not the kind of love she was hoping to find.
‘You thought you would find that missing something…in London?’ Max’s eyes were lit with a puzzling intensity.
Blue fire.
The way their gaze locked onto hers robbed her breath. This man of all people shouldn’t be asking her such questions.
‘No, I wasn’t hoping for that,’ she said at last, and prayed that he couldn’t guess she was lying through her teeth.
‘No suave English gentleman swept you off your feet?’
It was time to finish this conversation. Gemma didn’t like it at all. She especially didn’t like the way her heart began beat so frantically when Max looked at her.
Unless she put an end to this now, she might end up admitting to him that although she’d met plenty of nice young men, none of them had captured her heart. And the very last thing Gemma wanted was for him to continue this line of questioning and uncover her embarrassing secret.
None of her family or friends knew the truth about her love life. Or rather her lack of a love life. Gemma was quite certain that she was the only twenty-three-year-old female outside a nunnery who was still a virgin.
She lifted her chin to what she hoped was a challenging angle. ‘There were several men,’ she told him. ‘But, Max, you’re not my big brother. I’m not giving you an itemised account and you don’t need to keep watch over me. It’s none of your business how many men I’ve met or—or how many affairs I’ve had.’ Pushing back her chair, she jumped to her feet. ‘I haven’t asked you one tiny question about your breakfast companions.’
He stood also and looked down at her from his menacing height. ‘What would you like to know?’ he asked while a poorly suppressed grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.
‘I have absolutely no interest in