Blackpeak Station (18 page)

‘Oh yes, I forgot about your sophisticated past.’ He grinned down at her. ‘But come on, really — where have you been apart from here?’

‘Lots of places.’ She picked at the paint on the step. ‘Queenstown, Wanaka … Timaru … I go to Christchurch once a year …’

Luke poked at the spiderweb again. ‘Ever been on a plane?’

‘Ever been on a horse?’

‘Ever been to the North Island?’

‘Leave that poor spider alone, it’s not hurting you.’

Withdrawing his foot, Luke stroked the back of her neck. ‘What about Paris? London? The pyramids, the Great Wall …?’ He pinched her gently. ‘Disneyland?’

Charlotte studied her toes.

‘Come on — if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it, really.’ Even to her, that sounded bad. She tried to explain. ‘You know, being here, you’re just working all the time to get through the season, get onto the next thing … wondering what’s going to go wrong, what you’ll do if you don’t get enough rain, what you’ll do if you get too much … this place is always changing, you’ve got to keep an eye on everything all the time …’

‘You know, there’s this little bakery in Rome where you can get a fresh cornetto at four in the morning — the locals go there for breakfast after the clubs close. You can watch the sun come up over the Forum. In the French Alps, you can ski to Switzerland for lunch. In Arles, you can watch a bullfight in a Roman arena—’

‘Gross.’

‘We could go to Prague …’

She looked up at him sharply. ‘We? How do you mean?’

‘For a holiday. Tour Europe for a month or so.’ His voice dropped, the green gaze flicking over her face. ‘I could show you Paris.’

‘A month?’ He had to be kidding. ‘I mean, it sounds great, but there’s no way I could leave the station for a whole month. What about the Sammartinos? And Michael? I don’t think he’d be too pleased if I took his cash and buggered off to Europe.’

Luke raised his eyebrows — for a moment, she thought he was going to argue with her, but in the end he just sipped his coffee. ‘Okay,’ he soothed. ‘So maybe we don’t go right now. But once you’ve got things set up, you can leave it to people like Rex and Jen to do the day-to-day stuff, right? You can just concentrate on the bits you like.’

‘Those are the bits I like.’

‘But not
every
day.’ He sounded like he was talking to a small child. ‘If you had the right people, you wouldn’t have to be here all the time. You could spend a few weeks here, then a couple of months in Christchurch …’

What? Maybe she was a bit thick. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

Luke looked startled. ‘Well, I thought …’ He broke off.

Oh. The penny dropped at last. They were having a serious conversation.

‘Let’s just say,’ he continued in a much cooler voice, ‘you and I had some kind of future.’

Her heart sank.

‘It’s not going to work with you down here all the time and me in Christchurch, is it?’ Extending his foot, he demolished the spiderweb. ‘And let’s face it, unless you hook up with some lonely shepherd, you’re always going to run into the same problem, aren’t you?’

‘Well, there’s always the guy with no career who’s into baking.’ Jen chucked another hunk of dismembered mutton
into the dog-tucker bin. ‘Come on, Charlie, you must have known this would happen? Remember Rob?’

Ouch. Not if she could help it, no. Charlotte kicked disconsolately at the butcher’s block. ‘But Rob never asked me to leave.’

‘No,’ said Jen acidly. ‘He didn’t.’

‘I just …’

Jen waited, hacksaw poised.

‘I just thought it’d all work out somehow. You know.’

‘Well, maybe it will.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Last time I looked, they were still making lonely shepherds.’

‘Who don’t mind working for the wife?’

‘Oh, I’m sure there are any number who wouldn’t mind taking Blackpeak off your hands.’ Jen nudged her arm. ‘Cheer up — if you’re still single at sixty, I’ll marry you.’

Charlotte smiled. ‘Luke’s right though — I probably will be. How’s it ever going to work with anyone, me living here?’

‘With anyone or with Luke?’

‘Either. What’s the difference?’

Jen eyed the carcass grimly. ‘How long have you got?’ She sawed through a rib. ‘You know, you could always take a more hands-off approach. I mean, how many runholders actually live on the place these days?’

‘Ugh. You realise that would make my father actually right? Didn’t I want a husband and babies, he’d say, and I’d say, no, not ever — not if it meant not living at Blackpeak. I’d never do that.’

Jen smiled. ‘You were very young.’

‘He used to say that, too.’ She shook her head. ‘He thought it was funny till I was about fifteen. After that, he stopped laughing.’

Back at the homestead, Charlotte found Luke already packing his bag.

‘But — are you going right now?’ Turning her back on him, she wandered over to the window and, looking out at the blurry garden, swallowed hard.

‘I have to get back.’

‘Shanghai calls?’

‘It will tomorrow.’ He sighed. ‘And so will Michael, bright and early. He’ll do his nut if I’m not there.’

She walked him out to the car, where he kissed her distractedly. God, he looked like he couldn’t wait to be gone — his mind was out of the gates already. Charlotte watched the Range Rover drive off, picking up speed as it disappeared down the drive. She had no idea if she’d see it, or Luke, again.

Chapter
SIXTEEN

The morning was cold, the grass flattened under a heavy dew. The horses stamped and snorted as the chill pricked their nostrils, their breath steaming in the still air. A dog scurried for cover as a hoof lashed out. In the sky to the north, the throb of the helicopter was growing. Gradually, it drowned out the small sounds of the dawn, the wash of its rotor blowing the dew from the grass and plastering back the fur of the dogs as it touched down.

Charlotte climbed into the passenger seat and belted herself in. Her dogs, Tinks, Jess and Fly, leapt into the back, along with Jen and her dogs. The grass fell away beneath them, and they rose into the clear autumn sky. Below, Matt and Rex mounted up and headed out for the
lower beats. The muster had begun.

Close to the summit of Black Peak, she jumped from the helicopter’s skid onto wind-flattened tussock, the dogs close behind. The helicopter veered away, taking Jen down to the next beat. Charlotte breathed the cold, thin air deep into her lungs. All of Blackpeak Station was spread out below her, from the almost imperceptible line of the road away east to the snow-dusted alps at her back, north and south —
as far as the eye could see
. For a moment, a lump rose in her throat. It was really hers now. Signed and sealed. Well, just over a quarter of it, at least.

Tinks dropped her shoulders to the tussock and slowly raised one paw. Away down the slope, an old ewe eyed them suspiciously. Charlotte reached for her whistle. The hunt was on.

The musterers straggled down to the hut as the last of the light was fading. The gate was already shut on their day’s take — in the holding pen at the edge of the scrub, the captured sheep milled, restless. Otherwise, the little flat was still, the smoke from the hut’s chimney rising straight into a lavender-washed sky.

Sustained by the prospect of a hot meal on its way, Charlotte coaxed her aching legs across the flat. The dogs sank wearily into the creek and lapped up the icy water.

Opening the door of the hut, she was surprised at how appetising she found the smell. Above old woodsmoke, socks and sweat, a quite acceptable aroma of curry was rising. Charlotte had scratched her head for days over a packie. In the end, she’d gone with old Tim Hurrence again — just as she had last year.

‘No!’ Jen had moaned. ‘Not Hurry-Curry again, please.’
Hurry’s fondness for unusual spicing was infamous, and not to everyone’s taste.

‘Hurry’s all right,’ Rex put in, staunchly. ‘He’s been packing for musters since Adam was in his cradle — his cooking hasn’t killed anyone yet.’

‘There’s always a first time.’

But despite Jen’s protests, Charlotte had made the call, and old Hurry had turned up yesterday in his ancient ute, his craggy face looking no worse for the extra year since they’d last seen him. Opening his door — which groaned loudly — he’d slid out with surprising grace and given Rex a slap on the back that made him stagger.

‘How are you, you old bastard?’

‘I’m good, Hurry,’ Rex had gasped. ‘How are you?’

Hurry had sighed happily. ‘I’m old, mate. This’ll be my last time up the hill, you know.’

Everyone had smiled. He’d had been saying that for the last ten years.

It didn’t really matter that Hurry couldn’t cook. No packie could, that she’d ever heard tell of. The point — as her father had always said to anyone who complained — wasn’t how the food tasted, but that it was there, every day, on time, and in big enough quantities. And no one could fault Hurry there.

Charlotte scanned the hut. Locating the bag Hurry had packed in for her waiting on one of the bunks, she sat down beside it and peeled off her sweaty boots. Hurry ignored her — and everyone else. She watched him fuss with the fire under his pots, humming something to himself that sounded vaguely classical, and smiled. He was more than just a reliable hand — Hurry was a mustering institution, a leftover from the old days on the hill. When the dishes were done, no one told a better story.

‘Grub’s up.’

It wasn’t that bad. Charlotte, like everyone, shovelled it down. She was really too tired to taste anything anyway, she thought, chewing valiantly.

When Rex and Matt had finished cleaning out the contents, Hurry took his pots out to scour in the creek, hung the billy for tea and settled himself on his bunk, looking into the fire.

‘So …’ Grimacing only slightly, Rex flexed his bad knee. ‘What’ve you been up to all year, Hurry? Keeping out of trouble?’

‘Oh, you know …’ Hurry’s eyes rose to study the woodsmoke hugging the roof of the hut. ‘Bit of this, bit of that. I walked up Mount Everest a bit last summer.’

‘You did what?’

‘Yeah. Went to Nepal. Been meaning to do it for years. Nice place … lovely people.’

Perfect. Charlotte sighed bitterly. Now even bloody Tim Hurrence had been off to see the world. What was wrong with her?

‘Mate!’ Matt leaned forward, impressed. ‘What was Everest like?’

Hurry shook his head. ‘The sky, mate … you should see it. Deepest blue I ever saw. And the mountains, all around, three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Most beautiful place I’ve ever been. God’s truth, mate — made me shiver.’

‘That much better than here?’ Charlotte was dubious.

Hurry looked up, straight into her eyes, his own crinkling into well-worn furrows. ‘There’s never anywhere better than here, girl, if here’s where you want to be.’

He got up and checked the billy.

‘How high up did you go?’ Matt was asking eagerly.

Hurry poured the tea, adding a tablespoon-sized squeeze
of condensed milk to his own. ‘Got as far as Base Camp.’

He was still talking when Charlotte finally took to her sleeping bag. She drifted off, as she did every year, to the comfortable sound of his voice, and woke to the clatter of his pots as he set about cooking their breakfast.

Rain ushered in the final day of the muster. Throughout breakfast, it drummed against the roof of the hut, and they had to raise their voices to make themselves heard. Outside, the sodden sky showed no hint of clearing. The mountains were lost above a ceiling of cloud that hung just above the bush line.

Water streamed off the corrugated iron, finding its way down Charlotte’s neck as she bent to adjust her boot. She sighed. It was going to be a long day. No other option but to keep her chin down and think of tonight’s hot shower, Kath’s roast dinner and the clean sheets waiting for her back at the homestead.

Behind her, Hurry shouldered the hut door open, his arms full of buckets. Pausing under the narrow eave, he stared out at the curtain of water.

‘Great day for it, huh?’ she observed.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yep. So much for a nice ride home.’

‘At least it’s someone else’s turn to cook tonight.’

‘True enough.’ Hurry put down the buckets and adjusted his hat. ‘Right now it’s the washing up I’m not looking forward to, though.’ With a sigh, he picked up the buckets again and disappeared into the rain.

Eight hours later, it was over — drenched and exhausted, they left the sheep at the top of the first winter block and rode for the flats. Hurry’s horse was already turned out in
the paddock. After they’d seen to theirs, Rex headed home for a shower.

‘I’ll just pop in and say hi to Siri first,’ said Matt, looking hopeful. Siri had come over from Glencairn to help Kath out while they were away.

He walked back to the homestead with Charlotte and Jen. The rain still hadn’t let up, but they didn’t bother rushing — they couldn’t get any wetter. In the porch, they pulled off oozing boots and socks and padded, barefoot and dripping, into the kitchen, where Siri was indeed waiting.

Picking her up, Matt gave her a kiss. ‘Oops — now you need a change of clothes too.’ Siri giggled.

‘Go on, both of you.’ Kath smiled. ‘We’ll see you back for tea.’

‘I’ve got first shower,’ bagsed Jen, as the happy couple made for the door.

Charlotte groaned.

Kath glanced at the puddle forming on the kitchen floor. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a towel, dear?’

Grabbing one from the hot water cupboard, she wrung out her ponytail, and glanced hopefully at the phone. ‘Any messages?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Kath shot her a sympathetic look. ‘Nothing, dear.’

Charlotte slunk off to her room and took off her wet clothes. What had she expected? It had been over three months. Only a complete idiot would still think Luke was going to call.

Getting her turn in the bathroom at last, she stood under the shower and tried to put him out of her mind. Not easy, given his last visit. She turned the water up to scalding. By the time she got out, she’d done a reasonable job of forgetting Luke. It was wonderful just to be warm and — now — dry,
with clean clothes to get into. She pulled on her sweatpants and fleece and headed back to the kitchen.

None too soon — the others were already waiting around the table. Hurriedly, she broke out the beers. ‘Cheers, guys. Here’s to another year. Well done, eh?’

‘Good on you, girl,’ growled Hurry.

Rex finished sharpening the carving knife and sat down. Reaching across the table, he clinked his glass against Matt’s bottle.

‘Three weeks today and you’ll be a married man, mate. You sorted out where you’re going for your honeymoon yet?’

Siri, busy chopping beans, looked over her shoulder. ‘Somewhere warm and dry, I hope. With a beach.’

‘You’ll all just have to wait and see,’ Matt answered archly. Siri narrowed her blue eyes at him. ‘Yeah, that means you too, babe.’

The next morning, Charlotte wrote out Hurry’s wage cheque and drove down to the quarters. The rain was still coming down. Vast brown puddles were spreading over the road. She scanned the cloud still masking the tops. Lucky they’d finished the muster — the creeks’d be getting tricky if they got much more of this.

Hurry was sitting on the old sofa out on the porch, a mug of tea on his knee, studying the rain.

‘I’ve brought your cheque down,’ she explained.

‘Good on you.’ He didn’t stir. ‘I was just on my way up.’

‘No worries.’

There was a silence. Shattering it, a pair of paradise ducks flew up the road, honking loudly, and settled by a puddle. Hurry watched them. ‘It’s good country you’ve got here.’

‘Yeah.’ She watched the ducks too. ‘At least, I think so.
Not that I’ve really been anywhere else.’

‘You want to go somewhere else?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it lately.’

‘Why’s that?’

She picked at something unpleasant stuck to her bush shirt. ‘Maybe I need to see the world. Travel … you know. It’s the thing to do, isn’t it? Everybody does it at some stage.’

‘Everybody?’ Hurry sniffed. ‘You don’t want to go listening to them, girl.’

‘You’ve done it.’

‘Yeah, well I’ve always been a bit of a wanderer, me. Some of us are. Others, they put down roots in a place.’

‘But how do you know which one you are?’ Looking up, Charlotte found Hurry smiling at her.

‘You know damn well, girl.’

She shook her head. ‘I always thought I did. But … well, they say you never really know until you give something a try.’

‘
They
?’ His eyes gleamed. ‘They’re even worse than everybody.’

Charlotte got up from her desk and added another couple of pieces of wood to the fire. The nights were getting cold again already. Out in the hall, the grandfather clock struck ten. Sitting back down at the computer, she scrolled through the stats of yet another potential ultrafine merino sire. This was definitely the way to kickstart the Sammartino stud, but bloody hell, it was going to be an expensive gamble.

Jen poked her head round the door. ‘I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.’

‘Good night.’

At the base of her screen, the new message icon blinked. Another email from Nick. Everything about Milan was so fabulous — the food, the wine, the Sammartinos’ villa on the lake, the way everyone dressed … Charlotte hit delete in disgust.

Okay … so, just out of interest, what did Argentina have in the Saxon ram line? A lot of stuff in Spanish, that was what. She flicked back and entered her preferred Australian bloodline into the flock model.

‘You look busy.’

Charlotte’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be. She looked up. As he’d done in many a late-night fantasy, Luke leaned in the doorway, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder. Oh God. For a moment, she didn’t even think about how he’d got there, he just looked so achingly, impossibly —

‘Your door was unlocked’ — Oh, not the voice as well — ‘so I let myself in.’

She jammed her thighs together. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Well …’ He moved forward, slowly draping his jacket over the arm of a chair. ‘I’m going to start with you.’

‘Like hell you are.’

The corner of his mouth twitched. He paused, his green eyes flicking over her as he loosened his tie.

‘You don’t seriously think you can just walk in here after all this time and—’

Luke edged closer. ‘And what?’

Charlotte caught her lip in her teeth. Oh no, oh no. What was wrong with her?