‘For arvo tea?’ She grinned. ‘I even have the jargon right. There’ll be cakes tomorrow, now I’m more organized.’
‘I’ll pay you.’
‘I don’t need...’
‘I’d have paid Pete. A lot. You’ll get what he was contracted for.’
‘You’re giving me board and lodging.’
‘And you’re feeding a small army. I know it’s a mere speck in the ocean compared to the money your family has, but I need to pay you.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can yell at you?’ He grinned. ‘I haven’t yet but you should hear the language in the sheds.’
‘Margie and Greta don’t mind?’
‘They use it themselves. As an official shearers’ cook, you’re entitled as well.’
‘Thank you. I think.’
He chuckled and they walked back to the house together. The night seemed to close in on them.
The moon was rising in the east. An owl was starting its plaintive call in the gums above their heads.
She was so close...
‘There’s a plate of food in the warming oven,’ she said prosaically and he gave himself a mental shake and tried to be prosaic back.
‘There’s no need. I could have cooked myself...’
‘An egg?’ She gave him a cheeky grin. ‘After my lesson last night you might do better, but if you’re hungry check what’s in the oven first.’
‘You’re going to bed now?’
‘If it’s okay with you, I might sit on the veranda and soak up the night until I settle. It’s been a crazy day and here’s pretty nice,’ she said diffidently.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ He hesitated and then decided: Why not? ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘It’s your house.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
She stopped and looked up at him. Her gaze was suddenly serious. There was a long pause.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t mind if you join me. I don’t mind at all.’
* * *
She should go to bed. She shouldn’t be sitting on the edge of the veranda listening to the owls—waiting for Matt.
Why did it seem dangerous?
It wasn’t dangerous. He was her employer. Today had been a baptism of fire into the world of cooking for shearers and she needed downtime. He’d asked to join her—it was his veranda so how could she have said no?
She could change her mind even now and disappear.
So why wasn’t she?
‘Because I’m an idiot with men. The only guys I’ve ever dated have turned out to be focused on my family’s money.’ She said it out loud and Samson, curled up by her side, whined and looked up at her.
‘But I do a great line in choosing dogs,’ she told him, and tucked him onto her knee and fondled his ears. ‘That’s my forte. Dogs and cooking.’
He still looked worried—and, strangely, so was she. Because Matt Fraser was coming to join her on the veranda?
‘He’s my employer,’ she told Samson. ‘Nothing else. He could be a seventy-year-old grandpa with grandchildren at heel for all the difference it makes. I’m over men. Matt’s my boss, and that’s all.’
So why were warning signals flashing neon in her brain?
* * *
Leftovers? He stared at the plate incredulously. These were some leftovers!
The midday meal had been crazy. For the shearers it was a break, a time where they stopped and had a decent rest. They’d come in and seen Penny’s food and basically fallen on it like ravenous wolves. Then they’d settled on the veranda to enjoy it.
Meanwhile, Matt had grabbed a couple of rolls and headed back to the shed. The shearers’ break was his only chance to clear the place and get it ready for the next hard session.
Shearing was exhausting. He’d been supervising it since he was a teenager and he’d never become used to it. Even when Pete was here, the best shearers’ cook in the district, Matt usually ended up kilos lighter by the end of the shear. He’d come in after dark and eat what he could find, which generally wasn’t much. Shearers didn’t leave much.
But Penny must have noticed, for in the warming drawer was a plate with all the best food from midday.
It hadn’t been sitting in the oven all afternoon either. She must have guessed he’d come in at dark, or maybe she’d asked one of the men.
He poured himself a beer, grabbed his plate and headed out to the veranda. He settled himself on one of the big cane settees. Penny was in front of him, on the edge of the veranda, her legs swinging over the garden bed below.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply.
‘You’re welcome.’
Silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence though. Matt was concentrating on the truly excellent food and Penny seemed content just to sit and listen to the owl and swing her legs. She was idly petting her dog but Samson seemed deeply asleep.
Samson had spent the day investigating chooks, making friends with the farm dogs and checking out the myriad smells of the place. This afternoon he’d even attempted a bit of herding but some things were never going to work. Matt had plucked him from the mob, hosed him down and locked him in the kitchen with Penny.
There’d be worse places to be locked, Matt thought idly, and then thought whoa, Penny was his shearers’ cook. It was appropriate to think of her only as that.
‘So where did you learn to cook?’ he asked as he finally, regretfully finished his last spoonful of pie.
‘Not at my mother’s knee,’ she said and he thought about stopping there, not probing further. But there was something about the night, about this woman...
‘I’d have guessed that,’ he told her. ‘The article I read... It doesn’t suggest happy families.’
‘You got it.’
‘So...cooking?’
She sighed. ‘My family’s not exactly functional,’ she told him. ‘You read about Felicity? She’s my half-sister. Her mother’s an ex-supermodel, floating in and out of Felicity’s life at whim. My mother was Dad’s reaction to a messy divorce—and, I suspect, to his need for capital. Mum was an heiress, but she’s a doormat and the marriage has been...troubled. To be honest, I don’t think Dad even likes Mum any more but she won’t leave him. And my sister... Even though Mum’s been nothing but kind to Felicity, Felicity barely tolerates Mum, and she hates me. My life’s been overlaid with my mother’s mantras—avoid Felicity’s venom and keep my father happy at all costs. So my childhood wasn’t exactly happy. The kitchen staff were my friends.’
‘So cooking became your career?’
‘It wasn’t my first choice,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted to be a palaeontologist. How cool would that have been?’
‘A...what?’
‘Studier of dinosaurs. But of course my father didn’t see a future in it.’
‘I wonder why not?’
‘Don’t you laugh,’ she said sharply. ‘That’s what he did. I was the dumpy one, the one who hated my mother’s hairdresser spending an hour giving me ringlets, the one who’d rather be climbing trees than sitting