MELANIE MILBURNE - Top-Notch Doc, Outback Bride

Kellie turned to Matthew with wide eyes. ‘Do you think we’ll be all right?’ she asked.

He looked at her as if she had grown a third eye. ‘You have flown before, haven’t you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but not usually in something this small,’ she confessed.

He let out a sound, something between derision and incredulity. ‘You do realise you will be flying in a Beechcraft twin engine plane at least once if not three or four times a month, don’t you? It’s called the Royal Flying Doctor Service and out here lives depend on it.’

Kellie gave a gulping swallow as the plane gave a stomach-dropping lurch. ‘I know, but someone will have to stay at the practice surely? Tim Montgomery said it in one of the letters he sent,’ she said. Biting her lip, she added, ‘I was kind of hoping that could be me.’

His eyes gave a little roll. ‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ she asked, wincing as the plane shifted again.

His blue eyes clashed momentarily with hers. ‘This is no doubt Tim and his wife Claire’s doing,’ he said. ‘I asked for someone with plenty of outback experience and instead what do I get?’

‘You get me,’ Kellie said with a hitch of her chin. ‘I’ve been in practice for four years and I’m EMST trained.’

‘And you have a fear of flying.’ He settled his shoulders back against the seat. ‘Great.’

Kellie gritted her teeth. ‘I do not have a fear of flying. I’ve been on heaps of flights. I even went to New Zealand last year.’

She could tell he wasn’t impressed. He gave her another rolled-eye look and turned back to his book.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked, after the turbulence had faded and the seat-belt light had been turned off again. Talking was good. It helped to keep her calm. It helped her not to notice all those suspicious mechanical noises.

‘It’s a book on astronomy,’ he said without looking up from the pages.

‘Is it any good?’

Matt let out a frustrated sigh and turned to look at her. ‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Would you like to borrow it?’ Anything to shut you up , he thought. What was it with this young woman? Didn’t she see he was in no mood for idle conversation? And what the hell was she doing, arriving a week earlier than expected?

She shook her head. ‘Nope, I don’t do heavy stuff any more. The only things I read now are medical journals and magazines and the occasional light novel.’

‘I’m doing a degree in astronomy online through Swinburne University,’ Matt said, hoping she would take the hint and let him get on with his chapter on globular clusters. ‘There’s a lot of reading, and I have an exam coming up.’

‘You’re a very fast reader,’ she said. ‘Have you done a speed-reading course or something?’

Matt’s eyes were starting to feel strained from the repeated rolling. ‘No, it’s just that I enjoy reading,’ he said. ‘It fills in the time.’

‘So it’s pretty quiet out here, huh?’ she asked.

Matt looked at her again, really looked at her this time. She had a pretty heart-shaped face and her eyes were an unusual caramel brown. He couldn’t quite decide how long her hair was as she had it sort of twisted up in a haphazard ponytail-cum-knot at the back of her head, but it was glossy and thick and there was plenty of it, and every now and again he caught of whiff of the honeysuckle fragrance of her shampoo.

She had a nice figure, trim and toned and yet feminine in all the right places. Her mouth was a little on the pouting side, he’d noticed earlier, but when she smiled it reminded him of a ray of bright sunshine breaking through dark clouds.

‘No, it’s not exactly quiet,’ he answered. ‘It’s different, that’s all.’

She gave him another little smile. ‘So no nightclubs and five-star restaurants, right?’

Matt felt a familiar tight ache deep inside his chest and looked away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No nightclubs, no cinemas, no fine dining, no twenty-four-hour trading.’ And no Madeleine , he added silently.

‘What about taxis?’ she asked after a short pause. ‘Do you have any of those?’

His eyes came back to hers. ‘No, but I can give you a lift to Tim and Claire’s house. I take it that’s where you’re staying?’

She nodded. ‘It was so kind of them to offer their house and the use of their car while I’m here. They sent me the keys in the mail. Believe me, that would never happen in the city. People don’t lend you anything, especially virtual strangers.’

Matt wondered again what had attracted her to the post. He even wondered if Tim and Claire and Trish had colluded to make the job as attractive as possible in order to secure a female GP, a young and single female GP at that—or so he assumed from her ring-free fingers.

‘So what do people do out here in their spare time?’ she asked. ‘Apart from reading, of course.’

‘Most of the locals are on the land,’ he said. ‘They have plenty to do to keep them occupied, especially with this drought going on and on.’

‘That’s what I thought you were at first,’ she said. ‘I had you pegged as a cattle farmer.’

‘I’ve actually got a few hectares of my own,’ he said, doing his best to ignore the brilliance of her smile. ‘I bought them a couple of years back off an elderly farmer who needed to sell in a hurry. I’ve got some breeding stock I’m trying to keep going until we get some decent rain.’

‘Is that where you live?’

‘Yes, it’s only a few minutes out of town.’

‘So do you have horses and stuff?’ she asked.

Matt looked longingly at his book. ‘Yeah, a couple, but they’re pretty wild.’

‘I love horses,’ she said, snuggling into her seat again. ‘I used to ride a bit as a child.’

The captain announced that they were preparing to land and she looked out of the window at the barren landscape. ‘So where’s the creek?’ she asked, and, turning back to him, continued, ‘I mean, there has to be a creek somewhere. Culwulla Creek must be named after a creek, right?’

Matt only just managed to control the urge to roll his eyes heavenwards yet again. ‘Yes, there is, but it’s practically dry. There’s been barely a trickle of water for more than three years.’

Her face fell a little. ‘Oh…that’s a shame.’

‘Why is that?’ he found himself asking, even though he really didn’t want to know.

‘I live by the beach,’ she said. ‘I swim every day, rain or shine.’

Matt felt his chest tighten again. Madeleine had loved swimming. ‘That’s one hobby you’ll have to suspend while you’re out here,’ he said in a flat, emotionless tone. ‘That is, unless it rains.’

‘Oh, well, then,’ she said with a bright optimistic smile. ‘I’d better start doing a rain dance or something. Who knows what might happen?’

Who indeed, Matt thought as the plane descended to land.

Kellie unclipped her seat belt once the plane had landed and reached for her handbag. Matt had risen to retrieve her bulging cabin bag from the overhead locker and silently handed it to her before he took out his own small overnight travel case.

‘So how far is it to town?’ she asked as they walked across the blistering heat of the tarmac as few minutes later.

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Tim and Claire’s house is a couple of streets away from the practice, isn’t it?’ she asked as they waited for her luggage to be unloaded.

‘Yes.’

She waved away a fly. ‘Gosh, it’s awfully hot, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Right , Kellie thought, that’s it. I’m not even going to try and make conversation. She’d spent the last six years with a house full of monosyllabic males—the last thing she needed was another one in her life.