Margaret Way - Outback Wives Wanted!

They obviously preferred talking to dancing, and it was no trivial chit-chat either. They might have been about to face a firing squad together. Another mystery there. She hadn’t seen them dancing together all night. But what perfect foils they were for each other! She supposed that might equally well apply to her and Guy. The striking difference in colouring, of course, the gold and the ebony. She had a presentiment that she should follow Kieran’s direction and take a separate path from the Radcliffes. It wouldn’t have escaped her so-proud brother’s attention that Alex was an heiress. It pretty well put a sign around her neck that read, strictly off-limits. Besides, when Alex was at home she was never without Roger Westcott in tow. A lot of people thought they would marry. The Westcotts were old squattocracy. It was the same old story. Money married money. People with a position in society married their own kind. It helped keep the family fortunes intact.

“Look, I’ll stay if you want to,” Simon was saying selflessly, though he didn’t really enjoy himself when Alana wasn’t around. And all the fellows he knew were looking their way, no doubt awaiting an opportunity to dance with her. “You’re so good with people. I envy you. I always get the feeling people don’t know what I’m saying. The only person in the world I can really relax with is you.”

Sadly, it was true. Rebecca’s brand of mothering had had a disastrous effect on him. Simon had made reticence an art form.

“And I worship Guy,” he tacked on, quite unnecessarily.

“Simon, dear, I don’t have the slightest doubt of that!” She wondered for the first time in her life if she didn’t worship Guy herself?

“Yet I always feel I should recharge the batteries when I’m around him. He’s so vital, so focused. And Alex is a lovely person, but I don’t really know her—she’s so deep. Kieran always gives me the impression he’d like to see me do a stint in the army. Little Rose, now, is sweet. I can see a little bit of you in her.”

Here was an opportunity. Alana seized it. “Well, isn’t that what I keep telling you? You have to get to know Rose better.”

“Let’s go. Let’s get out of here,” Simon said by way of an answer.

When they arrived at Briar’s Ridge, Simon, very properly, got out of the Range Rover to escort her to the door. “I won’t see you tomorrow if you’re going to Wangaree for lunch. You could come over for tea?” he suggested, giving her a beseeching look.

“Doesn’t your mother require a month’s notice?” Alana put up a hand and pinched his cheek, something she’d been doing since the First Grade.

“What about fish and chips down by the river?”

“My very favourite place! Down by the river it is.”

She reached up to kiss his cheek, before sending him on his way, only Simon decided it was his moment to act. The light of battle was in his sky-blue eyes.

“Simon!” she gave a warning wail, not wanting to hurt him, her dearest friend, yet at the same time possessed of a fierce urge to push him away.

But Simon wasn’t about to be put off. He was all buoyed up. “Lainie, I love you,” he declared. “I’ll kill myself if you don’t let me kiss you. You’re the most beautiful girl in the entire world!” He was almost choking with emotion. “Please … please … a proper goodnight kiss.” He placed his hands on her shoulders—she could feel his arms trembling as he gripped her—and dipped his dark head.

What followed was actually quite sweet. In fact Alana nearly thanked him. She’d had a lot of kisses worse than Simon’s. He could easily find a girl to love him, she thought, but no way were they on the cusp of a grand passion.

“I think I hear Dad,” she whispered, thinking that was a sure-fire way to get Simon mobile. Simon was marginally terrified of her father.

“I’d better go, then,” Simon whispered back. “Promise me I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll ring you.” Inside the darkened house there was a noise, as if something fairly light had toppled over. Alana latched on to it. “Could be Dad!” she warned, knowing full well it was most likely their cat.

“Night, then!” Simon took off down the short flight of front steps, then broke into a run.

BRIAR’S Ridge was into its first week of shearing. For most of the preceding week the brunt of getting the barracks ready for the shearing team had fallen on Alana. The men brought their own cook, and there was a kitchen, bathrooms, and a large communal shower room, but it all had to be cleaned, swept and dusted, mattresses aired, then beds made up with fresh sheets. Alana had had to dig deep to get through it all, but the last sheep was expected to be shorn by the end of the following week.

Wangaree, by far the biggest property in the valley, was already underway, with its shearing expected to go on for weeks.

Alana had loved shearing time from when she was a little girl, and the itinerant shearers—all regulars to Briar’s Ridge—had made a little mascot of her. An extra bonus for this week was the gratifying way her father had managed to remain sober and on the job.

When Alana wasn’t droving sheep to the shed, or taking shorn sheep back to the paddocks, part of her time was spent with the shearers—much to the delight of the men, in particular a newcomer to their ranks, with an excellent reference from a big Western Queensland station.

Even dressed in unisex jeans and a cotton shirt, there was no mistaking Alana for anything else but a beautiful, vibrant young woman with a powerful sex appeal that was entirely natural. Admiring glances came her way aplenty, but no man was fool enough to look at her directly with lust in his eyes. Alan Callaghan was still a daunting presence in the sheds and around the yards. There was her brother Kieran too, a great bloke, but fiercely protective of his sister. And then there were Alana’s dogs, a formidable pair. The upshot was that Alana went where she pleased without a moment’s hassle.

Apart from her golden beauty, the men admired her for her proven abilities and capacity for hard work. Alana could shear a sheep with the best of them. Maybe she didn’t have their strength and endurance, and she couldn’t keep up the count or the pace—she was a woman after all, very fit and in splendid shape but at the end of the day no match for a man—but she came into her own instructing her dogs to draft the sheep through the yards. It was fascinating to watch the dogs in action. Up, under, around, running along the sheeps’ backs. In the shed Alana worked hard, picking up the shorn white fleece the instant it was ready, then throwing it in a smooth arc onto a long slatted table.

That particular day when the men were more than ready for their mid-morning break—although there were no smokers any more, like in the old days, no pollution of human lungs let alone the wool—Thommo, their best and fastest shearer, even if he was the oldest, let her have a go finishing off the last sheep. Thommo had given her and Kieran lots of tips about shearing over the years, which they had taken on board.

“Come on, love. Your go,” Thommo said encouragingly.

“Thanks, Thommo.” There was still plenty to learn.

Beneath her blue shirt Alana was wearing a sports bra and a yellow singlet. All the exterior doors and windows were open, but it had grown very hot in the shed. Without a thought, unselfconsciously she ripped off her cotton shirt.

“Sheep-o!” Thommo yelled as he pulled a fairly hefty ewe from the pen. “You’re on the clock, love.”

And this, then, was how Kieran and Guy found her, when they walked down to the shed to check on how the wool was coming.