Rancher's Twins: Mom Needed Read online

  Holly had wielded many a spray can while making children’s library displays, and she’d discovered a creative streak she hadn’t previously known she possessed. ‘We—I mean you—would need to work from the top down,’ she said. ‘And you’d have to use something like cardboard as a shield.’

  ‘You’d help me, wouldn’t you?’

  She knew she shouldn’t feel so flattered. ‘I’d be prepared to give it a go.’

  ‘Terrific,’ he said, matching her enthusiasm.

  And then, looking straight into her eyes, he smiled. Oh, man. His smile packed a wallop.

  Not that she should be noticing.

  It shouldn’t have been so much fun—working hard and staying up till nearly midnight to get the last rainbow stripe in place. Holly enjoyed every second of the project.

  Early in the evening, while the undercoat was drying, Gray boiled a billy on a small gas ring and made tea. He had milk and sugar in a battered old cooler and even a packet of cookies.

  They sat on rickety camping stools in the middle of the messy shed, drinking sweet hot tea from chipped enamel mugs and eating cookies.

  ‘Yum,’ Holly said as she helped herself to a second one.

  ‘Good to see a girl with an appetite.’ Gray took a second cookie as well. ‘Chelsea was always so careful about what she ate.’

  ‘All dancers seem to diet. They’re very strong-willed,’ she suggested.

  ‘Obsessed,’ Gray said tightly.

  Holly now knew better than to pursue this sensitive topic. After all, she’d come here to hold out an olive branch.

  Smiling, she said brightly, ‘So tell me, Gray, does your hat still fit?’

  He looked at her with puzzled amusement. ‘Last time I tried it. Why?’

  ‘Janet and Ted have both been praising you to the skies this week and I thought you might have a swelled head.’

  Looking down at the curls of shaved wood on the floor, he shrugged. ‘That pair are biased.’

  ‘Maybe, but they’re not easily hoodwinked. They told me you’re a brilliant cattleman, highly respected and looked up to by others in your industry. Ted said that when you took over the reins here ten years ago, you dramatically improved the carrying capacity and diversified the cattle breeds. And you placed yourself at the cutting edge of land management and water conservation.’

  Gray was staring hard at his mug. ‘Sounds a bit grand when you put it like that, but when I’m out, driving around, I listen to a lot of agricultural radio programmes. It’s a good way to learn things.’

  ‘According to Ted, you hoard all that info in your brilliant memory and then put it into practice.’ Holly smiled. ‘He also said you’re fantastic with figures. He called you a human calculator.’

  Gray shrugged again. ‘That man has far too much to say. I’m not paying him to gasbag.’ His eyes flashed a cheeky challenge. ‘And why are you trying to flatter me?’

  ‘I’m not flattering you. I’m giving you positive feedback. You can blame my teacher training.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He gave a smiling shake of his head. ‘But shouldn’t we be working out how we’re going to paint these rainbow walls?’

  They decided on a plan. They would start at the top with orange just beneath the red roof, then progress downwards through blue and purple to finish with green at the base.

  With the plan settled and the undercoat dry, they got back to work. After a short trial run, Gray admitted that Holly could produce the most even spray paint finish, so they agreed that he should hold up the cardboard shield for her.

  As they worked, she engaged him in safe topics—mostly about the twins and their first week of school. She told him that Josh was very clever at arithmetic and had developed a passion for Natural Science—particularly frogs.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind. This afternoon we converted a pickle jar into a tadpole aquarium,’ she told him.

  Gray laughed. ‘I was mad about spiders when I was a kid. Tried to start a redback spider farm in an ice cream container.’

  ‘Eeeeww.’ Holly gave an elaborate shudder, then told him that Anna was the twin who was curious about spiders. ‘She also has beautiful handwriting and a musical ear and an exceptionally vivid imagination.’

  Holly enjoyed herself immensely, which surprised her, considering that once upon a time she’d looked forward to sharing this sort of task with Brandon. She’d even been silly enough to imagine that she and Brandon would paint a nursery for their first baby, and she’d actually picked out a colour scheme of white and sunshiny yellow with a brightly coloured rainbow frieze.

  How strange that this puppet theatre inspired her now almost as much as her old dream had.

  On Sunday morning, Gray rose just as the screeching corellas took off from the trees along the creek bank, and he crossed the frosty grass to the shed where the puppet theatre stood in all its rainbow-walled, red-curtained glory.

  He grinned when he saw it. It looked so bright and cheerful and, even if he did say so himself, very professional. Almost as good as the puppet theatre he and Holly had taken the children to see in New York.

  His kids were going to love it.

  All thanks to Holly, of course…

  Without her, he wouldn’t have known such things existed. And without Holly he wouldn’t have enjoyed the final decorating tasks nearly as much. She was so easy-going and comfortable to be with.

  Gray totally understood why his kids loved school when Holly was around to help make it fun.

  How would they cope when she left?

  Soon, he would have to seek her help in posting an ad for a replacement nanny, and then he’d also need her input when he vetted the applicants.

  Right now, Gray couldn’t think of a more unpalatable task, couldn’t imagine another woman filling Holly O’Mara’s shoes.

  A movie director couldn’t have created a more pleasing scene than Anna and Josh’s discovery of the puppet theatre. They bounced into the kitchen for breakfast, spied the theatre positioned just outside the flyscreen door, and reacted just as Holly had hoped they would—with dancing and squealing and their eyes almost popping out of their heads with excitement.

  ‘And it isn’t even our birthday,’ Josh exclaimed in grinning disbelief as he and Anna took turns to pull the cord that drew the splendid red curtains open and shut.

  Anna was beaming, too. ‘I can’t believe we have a theatre and our puppies. Wow, Daddy, this is so cool.’

  Together, the children squeezed inside the ‘back door’ and examined the stage. When they plied Gray and Holly with questions, they were stunned to learn that their dad had actually made this glorious construction with his own hands.

  Holly smiled at Gray, taking in the quiet satisfaction in his eyes.

  ‘They’ll remember this day for the rest of their lives,’ she told him quietly.

  He merely nodded, but this time when he smiled back at her, she had to look down. The crackling something in the air was suddenly too much.

  After breakfast, the children jumped straight into presenting their premiere puppet show on the veranda, and of course Holly, Gray and Janet were the audience, very happy to sit on a row of chairs, with the basket of puppies at their feet.

  ‘The puppies have to watch, too,’ Anna had insisted.

  Naturally, the show was received with thunderous applause, and afterwards the children rushed straight off to plan their next performance.

  ‘We’ll soon be calling them Shake and Speare,’ Janet muttered good-humouredly, before she returned to the kitchen to make a batch of scones for morning tea.

  Holly might have followed Janet if Gray hadn’t detained her with his hand on her arm. She jumped at his touch as if he’d burned her, and then she felt seriously foolish.

  ‘Would you like to come for a drive with me?’ he asked.

  ‘A drive?’ She needed a moment to catch her breath. ‘I’m sure we won’t be able to prise Anna and Josh away from their puppets.’

  The tanned skin aro
und his blue eyes crinkled. ‘I wasn’t planning to invite the children. I’m sure they’d rather stay here, and they’ll be fine with Janet.’

  ‘But—’ Holly’s heart gave a strange thump. ‘Are you sure Janet doesn’t have other plans?’

  ‘I’m certain of it, Holly. I’ve already spoken to her, and she’d love to spend a day with the twins. In fact, she’s already started on a picnic lunch for us.’

  ‘Oh? I…I see.’

  ‘You’ve earned a day off, and I thought you might like to see the gorge.’

  It was kind of Gray to take the trouble to entertain her. ‘Thank you.’ Holly’s voice was a shade too proper and polite. ‘I’d love to see the gorge. I’ll explain to Anna and Josh—’

  He held up a hand. ‘I can do the explaining while you get ready. You’ll need sunscreen and a hat and sturdy shoes.’

  She was being bulldozed—steamrollered—but for once she didn’t mind.

  In her room, as she grabbed her shady hat from its hook on the back of her dresser, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She was, as usual, in a boring old T-shirt and jeans, with her hair tied back and a new crop of freckles on her nose.

  If she was in New York, she was quite sure that if a new man invited her out for the day she would go to a great deal of trouble, hunting through her wardrobe for the perfect outfit, ringing her friends for fashion advice, going for a manicure, a pedicure, a leg wax.

  It was strange to think that she was now going to spend an entire day alone with a man who was not Brandon, and yet she didn’t feel an overwhelming urge to worry about how she looked. It was rather comforting to know she didn’t have to try too hard with Gray Kidman.

  After teaming with him on the puppet theatre, they’d reached a comfortable working relationship and she could save her dating charms for the new man she was bound to meet once she was back home again in the fall. The sizzle she felt around Gray Kidman was nothing more than hormones—and she supposed she should be grateful to know they were still in working order.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AS GRAY drove away from the homestead with a cloud of dust pluming behind his vehicle, Holly was reacquainted with how very isolated Jabiru Creek Station really was.

  They’d only just passed the last outbuilding before they were once again following a faint dirt track across endless plains that stretched and stretched to the distant horizon. She saw nothing but cloudless blue skies, red dirt and dusty faded grass, with occasional mobs of silvery hump-backed cattle sheltering in the scant shade of straggly white-trunked trees.

  ‘It must be fabulous to tear across this country on horseback,’ she said, partly because she meant it, and partly because she wanted to say something positive about the monotonous scenery.

  Gray turned to her, clearly surprised. ‘Do you ride?’

  ‘I haven’t for ages.’

  ‘But you know how to.’

  ‘Sure. There was a time when horse-riding was my favourite sport.’

  His eyebrows shot high. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I came here to be your children’s nanny. Not to prance around on horseback.’

  Still watching the track ahead, Gray shook his head. ‘But I’m sure you could squeeze in a little riding time while you’re here.’

  ‘That would be wonderful—although I’m sure I’d be sorry when I was stiff and sore.’

  His eyes sparkled as he turned to her. ‘You’ll soon loosen up.’ A little later he said, ‘I’m planning to teach Anna and Josh how to ride.’

  ‘Oh, good. They’ll love it.’

  ‘Even Anna?’

  ‘Especially Anna,’ Holly assured him. ‘She’s getting more into life in the Outback every day.’

  Gray smiled. ‘I’ll have to measure them up for riding helmets.’

  After that, he seemed to lapse back into thoughtful silence, and Holly sensed his focus shift from conversation to the ancient landscape all around him.

  Eventually, a red range of hills appeared, rising out of the flat land ahead of them. Holly was reminded of the backdrops of the old western movies her dad used to watch on Sunday afternoons, and she almost expected to see smoke signals puffing from the jagged ridges.

  When they crested a hill, Gray braked and in front of them the land dropped away, plunging, without warning, down sheer red cliffs.

  ‘Oh, my gosh!’ Holly was glad of her seatbelt. Leaning as far forward as the belt would permit, she peered through the dusty windscreen. ‘I guess this must be the gorge?’

  ‘It’s not quite the Grand Canyon.’

  ‘But it’s spectacular.’ She glanced back over her shoulder to the rear window and the view of the empty plains they’d just crossed. ‘Are we still on your land?’

  ‘Sure.’ Already Gray was opening the driver’s door. ‘Come and take a look. I love it out here.’

  Outside, the sun was scorching hot. Holly jammed her hat firmly on her head, but she wasn’t keen to step any closer to the edge of the gorge. It was an awfully long way down to the glinting water of the rock pools at the bottom. After just a hasty glance down there she felt dizzy.

  ‘Here, come with me.’ Gray had retrieved their backpacks from the rear of the truck and he handed the smaller one to Holly. ‘I’ll show you the best way to see the view.’

  She almost declined. She had quite a nice view from where she was standing, and she had a safe hold on the truck’s sturdy metal bull bar, thank you very much. But Gray was holding out his hand to her, and his air of confidence was very convincing.

  Summoning her courage, she managed to loosen her grip on the bull bar and his hand holding hers felt wonderfully strong and trustworthy, but she clung to him so tightly she was afraid she’d leave bruises.

  To her relief, he led her away from the cliff’s edge to what at first seemed like a hole in the ground, but turned out to be a man-made staircase cleverly hewn out of the rock.

  ‘This leads down through the roof of a cave,’ he said.

  ‘Wow. Did you make these stairs?’

  Gray laughed. ‘No way. They’ve been here for over a hundred years, but my grandfather helped to carve them out.’

  Intrigued, Holly allowed him to guide her down the rocky staircase. Already she could see that the cave below them wasn’t gloomy or dark, but filled with sunlight. And it had a wide sandy floor, so she began to feel calmer.

  By the time they reached the bottom of the steps, she looked around with amazed delight. The cave was set into the side of the escarpment and it formed a safe shelf, a fabulous, cosy viewing platform offering a spectacular view all the way down the gorge.

  ‘Gray, it…it’s fabulous.’

  His blue eyes met hers, watching her closely, as if he was intensely interested in her reaction. Apparently satisfied, he smiled. ‘Not bad, is it?’

  ‘It’s amazing. I think I’ll sit down though, so I can take it all in.’

  By this time, she’d become super-aware of their linked hands—of the heat of Gray’s palm against hers, of the pressure of his fingers as he gripped her firmly and safely. To her surprise, she was incredibly reluctant to release his hand before she lowered herself to the sandy floor.

  Once she was seated, Gray edged forward, closer to the mouth of the cave, and he hunkered down, taking in the view. He loved this place with its rock pools that reflected the sky and the spectacular sandstone escarpments carved out of the ancient landscape. He never failed to be moved by its grandeur.

  But today he was trying to imagine how the gorge might look through Holly’s eyes. He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, but he found himself hoping that she might somehow understand what it meant to him.

  At least she wasn’t talking non-stop. She seemed happy enough to drink in the atmosphere, or to quietly take photographs with her small digital camera.

  In the languid silence Gray let his shoulders relax against a warm wall of sandstone. He heard the warbling notes of a pied butcherbird and a flock of galahs calling in t
he distance. Below, on the water, a pair of grebes floated.

  After a while, he asked quietly, ‘So, what do you reckon?’

  ‘This is so beautiful,’ Holly said softly. ‘It feels almost…spiritual.’

  A good answer. ‘It is spiritual,’ he said. ‘At least it is for the Aborigines.’

  And for me, he added silently, thinking of the many times when his life had hit rock bottom and he’d come to this place to search for some kind of peace.

  Moving carefully on her hands and knees, Holly crawled a little closer, then sat cross-legged, looking out. ‘It’s awesome. Unforgettable.’ She spoke in a hushed undertone, the way people talked in church.

  She took a few more photos, then lowered her camera. ‘I’m sure this gorge has been here for ever. A dinosaur could come lumbering out from behind a rock and it wouldn’t look out of place.’

  Her face was soft, her dark eyes luminous with wonder. And Gray had to look away, concentrating his attention on a lizard as it disappeared down a crack in a rust-stained rock.

  He’d hoped Holly would like this place, but he hadn’t expected her to so totally get its timeless mystery.

  ‘Is it weird to feel that there’s someone here?’ she asked. ‘A gentle spirit, looking after us?’

  He had to swallow the hard lump in his throat before he could speak. ‘Not weird at all. That’s why I love it. Sitting here quietly, taking in the silence, always makes me feel stronger. Uplifted. The Aborigines call it “listening to country”.’

  He turned and saw Holly nodding slowly, a pretty smile lighting her eyes.

  ‘Listening to country,’ she repeated softly. ‘I like that. I used to do a lot of that when I was growing up in Vermont. On my way to school I used to love walking over the covered bridge on Staple’s Brook and along the banks beneath sugar maples and birches. Listening to country. I am so on that page.’

  Launching to his feet, Gray moved to the very mouth of the cave, appalled to realise he’d been on the brink of tears. He’d never expected to meet a woman like Holly, someone lovely and sweet and in tune with his world. For a heady moment there, he’d almost pulled her close and kissed her, tasted her smile, her laughter.