a battering already, one more blow is hardly noticeable.’
They swapped seats but it wasn’t until Annabelle started the engine that she heard a short, sharp bark and remembered Bruce.
‘Ha! You don’t know how to drive it either,’ Nick said, but she was already out of the vehicle, looking around her, finally locating the dog tied in the meagre shade of a gidgee tree at the edge of the car park.
‘Bruce?’ she called, and got an answering bark, but as she approached the dog she wondered just how adaptable he was to the medical staff who came and went from Murrawalla. He seemed to be largely blue cattle dog, a dog known to be loyal to one master, but Bruce’s slavering, tail-wagging, stomach-crawling behaviour as she approached suggested he was happy to be in any human company.
She let him sniff her hand and, as he continued to greet her with grovelling wriggles and little whimpers of delight, she unhooked his lead from the tree, picked up the empty water bowl and led him back to the vehicle.
‘That’s not a dog, it’s a small wolf,’ Nick announced as the dog approached him, prepared to offer Nick as much love as he’d offered Annabelle. ‘And just where does he sit? Not on my knee, I hope.’
But his attention to the dog, the way he scratched between his ears and under his chin, convinced Annabelle that he was all talk. Bruce had won him over in a matter of seconds.
Bruce settled the matter of where he would sit when Annabelle opened the back doors. The dog leapt in and dropped down onto a padded mat on top of one of the chests, his head against the luggage barrier that divided the front seats from the back part of the troopie. One glance at Bruce’s favoured position was enough to convince Annabelle she’d drive as often as possible. Whoever sat in the passenger side was sure to get a good amount of Bruce’s drool down the back of his or her neck.
They drove into town, Annabelle pulling up in front of the general store, which she knew from the past sold everything from groceries to underwear, from water tanks to televisions. Across the road a group of men sat on the low veranda of the local pub, cool in the shade of the wide eaves. They nodded their acknowledgement of a couple of strangers in town and returned to their drinking without comment, although Annabelle did wonder what they’d made of Nick in his bloodstained suit.
Once inside the store a keen young man took charge, checking Nick’s size and producing a couple of pairs of moleskin trousers, a pair of jeans, and three shirts within minutes of their arrival, then hustling Nick towards a dressing room to try them all on.
Annabelle took the opportunity to try on the hats, finally settling on a neat black number with a good brim and the ability to tilt saucily down over one eye.
Could she afford it?
Not really, but it was a great hat and it really would be better for Nick to have her old one, rather than advertising his new chum status in a brand-new Akubra.
Although why she was worried about what people might think of Nick she wasn’t sure.
Was it because she sensed a hint of vulnerability beneath his unyielding exterior, not just the uncertainty natural to a newcomer to the bush, but something deeper—some pain—hidden behind the hard polished surface of Nick—Storm—Tempest?
She tried tilting the hat to the other side and considered herself in the mirror, considering also why the man’s vulnerability—imagined or otherwise—was any of her business. He was noted for his lack of commitment to the women he took out, while her one and only serious experience in the relationship department had been so disastrous she’d been forced to realise she had to start again, going back to the first man she’d loved—the first man who’d deserted her—her father.
Making her peace with him and the past so she could move forward…
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHAT do you think?’
Nick appeared from the dressing room, holding his arms wide so she could admire his new look.
Stunning, but she didn’t say it, feeling slightly ill because her heart had given a little lurch when she’d seen how the blue shirt accentuated the blue of his eyes and the way the moleskins clung to his long legs.
‘Well done,’ she did say, speaking to the sales clerk, not Nick. ‘Now all we have to do is rough them up a bit and he’ll be ready to face Murrawalla.’
‘I run my ute over my new clobber,’ the young man offered, and Annabelle wished she’d had a camera to catch the stunned-mullet look on Nick’s face.
‘Make sure the zips and buttons are done up,’ the salesman added, ‘although they don’t seem to suffer much damage—just sink into the dust.’
Nick made a kind of bleating noise, but was obviously still too bemused by this latest bush conversation to question it or protest, although he did make a token objection when Annabelle suggested he get back into his other clothes so all the new gear could be washed.
‘And driven over by the troopie?’ he managed. ‘Is that acceptable, or does it have to be a ute?’
Annabelle laughed.
‘We won’t run over the shirts,’ she told him kindly. ‘The trousers will pick up enough dirt to spread through the wash and tone them down a bit. You’re getting jeans as well? Boots?’
He stared at her and shook his head, but she knew he wasn’t answering her question, just portraying disbelief at the situation in which he’d found himself.
The scruffing, washing and drying of the clothes took them another hour, but as Nick changed in the ablutions block at the caravan park, he knew it had all been a good idea. The trousers were great, comfortable to wear, softer now than when they’d been pristinely new. And they looked good, as did the shirt with the two pockets. In fact, as he tipped Annabelle’s battered old hat into a rakish angle on his head and checked the mirror, he had to smile.
City-man, Annabelle had called him, but no one looking at him now would think that.
‘Finished admiring yourself in there?’
‘Is there a spyhole in the wall?’ he answered, picking up his soiled clothes and coming out to join her and Bruce at the troopie, parked in the shade of a huge tree, with long drooping branches that reminded him of a weeping willow.
But he knew they grew along creeks and rivers and as there were no creeks or rivers within coo-ee of this place, he wasn’t going to make a fool of himself by suggesting a name.
No, he’d work out how to drive the troopie, he’d lock and unlock wheel hubs and he’d never give Annabelle cause to call him city-man again.
Though why it mattered what she called him, he didn’t know.
‘I gave Bruce a run and filled up with fuel while you were watching your laundry dry,’ she told him. ‘I also got us some sandwiches to eat on the way and a couple of cans of soft drink as well. I have a feeling I should do a proper shop while we’re here, because although Murrawalla has a roadhouse that sells groceries, meat, fruit and veggies, the prices will be much higher.’
She looked sufficiently worried about this dilemma for Nick to ask, ‘Are we in a hurry that you’d prefer not to shop here?’
‘Not really. We’ve a way to go, but the road’s good. No, I’m more worried about not buying local. I mean, if everyone in Murrawalla—’
‘All one hundred and forty of them,’ Nick put in.
‘Yes, but if they all shopped here in Murrawingi then the roadhouse would stop stocking even the basics and that’s bad for their business but also for the town.’
Nick shook his head.
‘I was just telling myself you’d never call me city-man again, but for someone who’s used to corner stores and local supermarkets open twenty-four hours a day,