‘Wow,’ Kerrie said.

‘Yep, get and go before I change my mind,’ William said. ‘Or before I turn my hose on your boss. Happy Christmas, Kerrie.’ He moved his hose so the water arced in a wide semi-circle. How long since he’d done something this hands-on? There was a pile of dried dung beside the fence. He aimed his hose and the dung flew eighteen inches in the air before heading for the drain. Deeply satisfying.

‘Oh, wow,’ Kerrie breathed again, and she abandoned the kids and hugged Meg. Then she eyed William-with caution-anyone would regard him with caution right now-but finally emotion got the better of sense and she darted over the yard and hugged him as well. Then she flew back to her kids and bustled them into the car and away before anyone had a chance to change their mind.

‘Hey, that felt good,’ Meg said, heading back into the vat room and replacing the dipstick sort of thing she was holding into the slot at the side of the vat. ‘Did it feel good to you?’

He sent another cowpat into the air. ‘Absolutely.’

‘If you knew how much that means to Kerrie…’ Then she hesitated. ‘Um… Sir… What are you doing with that hose?’

Sir? She’d called him sir. Of course, that was what he was. Wasn’t it? But she was looking bemused so he turned his attention back to the hose. It had made a left turn and was now aimed straight into the drain behind the cow’s drinking trough, forcing the contents of the drain up and in.

Uh-oh.

‘I guess the drinking trough now needs to be cleaned,’ Meg said. ‘We’ll need to empty it, scrub it, rinse it three times and then fill it up again. We don’t want contamination, do we?’

‘Um…no,’ he said and thought maybe there were a few skills he needed to concentrate on.

The milk tanker arrived just as he finished. The driver climbed from the cab and greeted Meg with delight.

‘Hey, Meggie.’

‘Meggie?’ William said softly.

‘Just try it…Willie,’ she said with a glower that made him grin, and went to meet the driver. William listened in while they caught up. Their talk was all about milk yields and fat content and bacterial levels. Meg sounded as he was accustomed to hearing her, smoothly competent, in charge of her world. But it was such a different world.

They gossiped on while he cleaned the trough and cleaned the yard surely cleaner than it had ever been cleaned before. Then the driver started emptying the vats and Meg strode over and turned his hose off. He felt bereft.

‘I was just getting good,’ he said sadly.

‘You can do it again tonight,’ she said and he started winding the hose around the reel by hand. She leaned over and grabbed the wheel and started turning. She was showing him up here.

But there was something else happening. The angel…

Her little Christmas angel was still hanging around her neck, and it was sliding down her breasts. He noticed.

She was wearing grungy old overalls, sort of mud-brown. She was wearing…what had she called them? Gumboots. Her hair was pulled back with an elastic band and she had mud smeared down the side of her face.

The top three buttons of her overalls were undone. Her angel was nestling on the soft swell of her breasts.

Lucky angel.

Why had it taken him until now to realise how beautiful she was?

‘Earth to William,’ she said and he blinked and grabbed the wheel and started turning it himself, so fast the hose slipped off and he had to stop and start again.

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe he had to get away.

A thought…

‘You need perfume?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said, bemused.

He didn’t think so. Perfume would hardly fit with what she was doing right now. But…

‘But Scott wants to buy you perfume.’

‘He wants to go Christmas shopping. I promised I’d take him to Curalo. That’s our closest major shopping centre-twenty miles from here.’

‘But you have things to do here, right?’

‘Right,’ she said cautiously.

‘So could I take him?’

‘You,’ she said, stunned, and he thought about whether he should take personal affront at the thought that she obviously thought him-and the rest of the male species-useless, and then he caught another glimpse of that angel and thought maybe not.

‘Would he mind if I took him?’ he asked. ‘I could find an Internet place in town and do my contacting-kill two birds with one stone.’

‘That’d be fantastic,’ she breathed. ‘Craig here says we should have signed the contract for our milk quota before Christmas. The manager’s still at work, so Craig says I can get a lift back in with him. He can bring me back when he does the next farm. But then I promised Letty I’d help do the pudding. I need to check on Millicent. I need to see to the water troughs. I’m having trouble making everything fit.’

‘So it’s a good idea?’

‘It’s a fabulous idea,’ she said admiringly. Her eyes were twinkling… Maybe she was manipulating him and it was such an odd experience…

People didn’t manipulate him. Had she just manipulated him?

Who knew? This was one clever woman.

‘Would you be confident driving Letty’s car?’ she said. ‘I know you can drive on our side of the road.’ More admiration?

‘Yes, but…’

‘Scotty would love to go with you. Christmas shopping with his sister, or go Christmas shopping with a guy, someone who won’t make him wait outside lingerie shops? What a choice.’

‘You don’t!’

‘He’s always scared I might.’ She hesitated, and the laughter died. ‘I… he’s had a tough time. He’d enjoy going shopping with you rather than with me.’

‘His leg…’

She glanced across at Craig but Craig was bending down to pat Killer and was obviously not in too great a rush. She turned back to William and he realised he was being assessed. She held his gaze for a long moment and then gave a decisive little nod. Whatever test there’d been, it seemed he’d passed. Manipulation was past. It was time for honesty.

‘Scott’s been through hell and back,’ she said bluntly. ‘His leg was so badly smashed they had to put in a rod instead of bone. It healed but then they had to insert another rod because he grew. That got infected.’ She swallowed. ‘He almost died. Again. The leg still hasn’t completely healed but it will and he’s okay to get around. He’s really good on crutches. If you could…just do what he wants. And if you can think of anything he’d like, I’d appreciate that too. I’ve bought him so many computer games he surely must be over them but I’m hopeless at thinking of what a teenage boy wants. He’s so restricted-but he needs a manly present.’

Her frankness was working as manipulation never could. But he could do this. He even puffed his chest a little. ‘So you’d like me to take your kid brother Christmas shopping for manly presents? I can do that.’

‘Ooh, you’re not my boss, you’re my hero,’ she said and before, he could begin to guess what she intended, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. It was a feather kiss, almost a mockery, but not quite. It was a kiss of laughter and of sudden friendship, and why it had the capacity to make him feel…

How did it make him feel?

He didn’t know and it was too late to find out. Craig was replacing his hoses and yelling, ‘Are you coming or not?’

‘I’m coming,’ she called. ‘I’ll just go lose my overalls and check with Scott. But this is a great idea. My milking’s sorted, my brother will be happy and I have a superhero in the dairy. What more could a girl want?’


It took Meg an hour to get to the factory and back, by which time William and Scott had been gone for an hour as well. Which left Meg back at home, with no way of knowing when they’d get back.

She was worrying about her brother. She was also worrying about why she’d kissed her boss. It had been an impulsive gesture, the sort she’d make to anyone who’d done her a big favour, but somehow…it seemed more.

She couldn’t think of kissing her boss. That made her feel weird. She went back to worrying about Scott.

‘You’re worrying he’s taken him back to New York?’ Letty demanded as she caught Meg looking out of the window for maybe the twentieth time.

‘He can’t. There are no planes.’

‘You’ve worked for the man for three years. Don’t you trust him?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then why worry? Two hours is hardly time to Christmas shop.’ But then she hesitated. ‘Oh, but wait. These are guys. Half an hour there, half an hour back, five minutes at the perfume counter-yep, they should be back by now.’ She grinned. ‘But maybe they’re doing some bonding. He misses his father, does Scotty. Pass the raisins.’

‘You want me to mix the ingredients?’

‘I handed you the bowl five minutes ago-so you could look at it?’

Whoops. ‘Sorry.’ She applied herself to her creaming. ‘Why didn’t you do this before?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t puddings supposed to have been made a month ago?’

‘You didn’t get any time off and I was milking. I’m not getting any younger. But, back to your young man…’

‘My boss.’

‘He doesn’t seem to mind hard work.’

‘You say that like it’s a compliment. He’s addicted to work.’

‘Plus he’s really cute,’ Letty said and eyed Meg sideways.

‘He’s my boss. I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Right,’ Letty said dryly.

Right?

So, okay she had noticed. What normal warm-blooded woman wouldn’t notice W S McMaster?

But what use was there in noticing? For the three years she’d worked for him their relationship had been totally businesslike. Her boss worked far too hard for it to be anything else. He never noticed her, she thought. She was just one of his four PAs.

But sometimes… Sometimes when they’d been on a trip together, when they’d been working late, when she’d suddenly been a little too close, maybe even a little too familiar as tiredness crept in at the edges, she’d thought he made a conscious decision not to notice her, as if there were some barrier he couldn’t cross.