Why life had suddenly become desperate.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘JENNA, Mr Jackson’s hammering.’

Jenna surfaced with reluctance. It had been hours before she’d slept the night before, finally falling into uneasy slumber some time before dawn, but Karli was bouncing beside her, big with news.

‘He’s working and working and we should be up and helping him.’

Jenna groaned. Karli was immediately concerned.

‘Are you sick?’

‘No. I’m tired.’

‘How can you be tired? We’ve slept for hours.’

‘Hours.’ She rolled over to check her watch and she landed on a rock. ‘Ouch!’

‘My fossil. Don’t bend my starfish.’

‘Your starfish bent me.’

There was no sympathy from Karli. ‘We should get up and help Mr Jackson.’

‘You help Mr Jackson.’

‘I will,’ Karli announced. ‘You look after my starfish.’


It wasn’t yet seven o’clock. By rights Jenna should disappear back into sleep. But the hammering continued. She heard it pause as Karli obviously approached. There was an intense conversation, a few giggles and then the hammering resumed. Only now there were two hammers.

Hammering before seven o’clock was surely against union rules. Where was a union when she needed one?

But sleeping with a rocky starfish was losing its attraction. If she only had two more days with Riley Jackson…well, she was darned if she was wasting them by sleeping with a rock.


They were outside. All she had to do was follow the sound of the childish questions, the low, gruff answers and the rhythmic hammering. He had her intrigued. He was so good to Karli. She slowed as she approached, listening in.

‘Will we fly in your aeroplane?’

‘Yes.’

‘To your other house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your other house as horrible as this one?’

Jenna winced, but Riley chuckled.

‘It’s different.’

‘Does it have as much dust?’

‘We have much nicer dust at Munyering. And Maggie is a dust fixer, just like Jenna is a dust fixer. They’re very similar women.’

‘Is Maggie nice?’

‘She’s very nice.’

‘Jenna’s nice, too. Do you think Jenna’s nice?’

Did she imagine it or was there a moment’s hesitation. And then a certain amount of wariness. ‘She’s very nice.’

‘She’s not always dusty.’

‘I can see that.’ The laughter was back in Riley’s voice.

Enough. Eavesdroppers heard no good of themselves and she was playing with fire. She ducked under a makeshift clothesline where six shirts and assorted socks and jocks were flapping in the wind. They were already dry. Laundry day on the farm?

They didn’t see her approach and for a moment Jenna stood among the laundry and watched them. Riley had ceased hammering. He was sawing ancient weatherboards to size. Karli was sitting in the dust in her nightgown, banging a board onto the house with a nail as big as her hand and a hammer that was huge. She was concentrating absolutely and the nail was going in true.

And Riley was stripped to the waist, his broad chest was glistening with sweat as he sawed, and he looked…he looked…

Like the sort of guy you should run a mile from, she thought. An outback hero in a romance novel of the bodice-ripper variety. Toe-curlingly gorgeous.

Her toes were definitely curling.

He looked up from his work, he saw her and he grinned.

‘Well, well. Sleeping Beauty rises. Karli and I decided you may well snooze for another hundred years.’

‘There’s something not very companionable about a rock,’ she told him. ‘Which is all Karli left me to sleep with. And might I remind you that it’s not yet seven o’clock. Aren’t there rules about industrial noise in residential areas before seven?’

‘Is it almost seven?’ he demanded. ‘Heck. Almost lunch time.’

‘What time did you wake?’

‘Five.’

‘So you’ve done your laundry.’

‘Well noticed.’

‘Won’t Maggie do it for you?’

‘Yep, but I’m fresh out of clean shirts and I need to keep myself nice for Miss Karli here.’

‘They’re hardly whiter than white,’ she said, eying them with caution. ‘Don’t they dry hard in this water?’

‘We outback men are tough,’ he told her and grinned-and the bodice-ripper image intensified. So did the toe-curling.

Drat the man.

Riley handed a weatherboard to Karli, then squatted down and helped her fit it. Together they nailed. He was treating the child as if she were really a help, Jenna thought, and, damn, here came that stupid lump in her throat that was never far away when this man was close. Why?

She knew why.

With the weatherboard fitted, Riley rose and surveyed his handiwork. ‘Enough,’ he told Karli. ‘It’s time for lunch.’

‘We haven’t had breakfast yet.’

‘How about brunch as an alternative?’ He grinned. ‘Seeing I’ve declared this as a day of domesticity I’ve even managed time to cook. I lay in my cot last night and thought: these two visitors from the old country have obviously categorised me as a rotten housekeeper so the best thing I can do is to show them I’m not a total wuss.’

Which was so far from what Jenna was thinking of him that she blinked.

‘You mean you’ve actually managed to heat your baked beans?’ she managed, and his smile widened.

‘Nope. At great personal sacrifice I’m forgoing baked beans this morning. It’s pancakes. I’ve already made the batter. Let’s go.’ He took Karli’s hand and they started walking toward the back door. Jenna was left with no choice but to follow them, which she did, feeling like a small, obedient pup. A stunned pup.

‘What do you mean, pancakes?’ she asked his retreating back.

‘Don’t they have pancakes in England? Surely it’s not all black pudding and spotted dick?’

‘Well, yes. But…’

‘Trust me, lady.’ Riley ushered Karli through the back door, and then stood aside for Jenna to precede him. She walked past and her skin brushed his. She was wearing a halter top and shorts. Not enough of her skin was covered. Not enough of his skin was covered.

Did he have any idea of the effect he had on her? Trust him? He had to be joking.

Luckily Riley didn’t notice her discomposure-or if he did he ignored it. Jenna had time to find her composure, sit herself down at the table with Karli and school her features into something akin to polite interest.

Polite interest, she told herself desperately. That was all she was allowed to feel.

Impossible ask.

‘I like pancakes,’ Karli announced. ‘Can you really cook them?’

‘You’d better believe it.’

They had no choice but to believe. While they watched in wonder, Riley poured batter into a hot pan, swirled, flipped and then flicked the finished product onto waiting plates.

‘You’ve done this hundreds of times,’ Jenna accused, and if her voice wasn’t quite normal it was close enough. She hoped.

‘Just as well for you guys,’ Riley admitted. ‘I make them with powdered milk, so they’re one of the few foods that cooks up well out here. Mind, I had to scrape my first attempts off the ceiling.’ He grinned. ‘I got a bit ambitious with my flipping to start with. Okay. Hop in. There’s a tin of jam in the crate behind you.’

‘A tin?’

‘You were expecting home-cooked preserves?’ Another pancake flipped onto the pile and he sat down, cooking finished. ‘The only thing to preserve here would be saltbush, and I don’t fancy saltbush jam.’

‘Ugh.’

‘My sentiments exactly.’

‘How can you make pancakes without egg?’ Jenna was glaring as though suspecting him of some conjuring act.

‘Powdered egg,’ he told her briefly. He gave her a smug smile. ‘It works better for pancakes than for chocolate cake-but you have to be a very experienced cook to know that. Now stop asking questions and eat.’

Jenna glared again, but Riley was ignoring her and concentrating on the important things in life. Pancakes. So was Karli. There was nothing for Jenna to do but concentrate as well.

The pancakes didn’t just look delicious. They were delicious. Or maybe it was just the sensation of sitting at the table with this enigmatic man of whom Jenna knew nothing.

She did know nothing, she reminded herself desperately. It was silly to feel as she was feeling.

But as he teased Karli, as they discussed how much jam one pancake could hold, as they giggled like two five-year-olds and Karli blossomed into the laughing, happy little girl Jenna knew she could be, all she knew was that she was falling deeper in love by the minute.

That was what could be described as delicious, she acknowledged. Delicious, exhilarating-and altogether too stupid for words!

‘Who taught you to cook pancakes?’ Jenna asked as she surfaced for air three pancakes later. Karli had disappeared back to her hammer and nails-her newfound love of carpentry was far too important to be delayed by something as dull as food.

Jenna had been intent on scraping up a last morsel of jam as she asked. There was no immediate answer. She looked up and found Riley’s face was suddenly grim. ‘I said no more questions.’

‘Until I ate my pancakes. If I eat one more I’ll pop. So tell me. Your mum?’

‘Not likely.’

The words were said harshly, and Jenna looked curiously across the table at Riley.

‘That sounds like your childhood might have shades of mine,’ she told him. ‘Did it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’ She hesitated-but then, what had she to lose? Riley’s good opinion? In a few days she’d be nothing but a memory to this man, she thought. She might as well be a pesky memory.

‘The nurses I work with… The patients I care for…’ she continued, watching his face. ‘I can usually tell who’s come from a happy background. I used to be incredibly jealous of kids whose parents loved them, so much so that it got to be a bit of a masochistic habit-choosing the people with a happy family.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m willing to bet your parents weren’t into happy families.’