could sit and wait, but out here on the salt pans she had had no choice but to stay in the car. The air-conditioning had died with the engine, and even with all the windows down the sun beating on the metal roof had soon turned the car into an oven. Now, her face was red and blotchy and her curls clung limp and sweaty to her scalp.
Rubbing a knuckle under her eyes to remove any tell-tale tear-stains and hastily replacing her sunglasses, Prue could only hope that she didn’t look as if she had spent the last two hours snivelling pathetically, even if it were true.
Not that Nat Masterman seemed to care what she looked like. He was more concerned with the fuel situation. ‘These things have got pretty big tanks,’ he said, nodding his head at the car, a powerful four-wheel drive far bigger than anything Prue had ever driven at home. ‘It must have been just about empty before you left Cowen Creek.’
‘I know—and, yes, I know I should have checked it before I left,’ said Prue, forestalling him as he opened his mouth. ‘It was one of the first things the Grangers told me when I came to work out here.
‘The thing is, I’d had a really busy morning,’ she tried to explain her carelessness, ‘and I suddenly realised that we were out of flour and sugar and a whole lot of other things I need to cook the meal tonight. I reckoned I had just enough time to get into town and back before I had to start cooking, so I just jumped in the car and set off. I was thinking about…other things…and, well, I just forgot,’ she admitted.
And now here she was in another fine mess. Bitterly, Prue remembered the moment when the flashing red light had finally caught her eye, yanking her out of a wonderful daydream where Ross was marvelling at how they had ever managed at Cowen Creek without her.
He wouldn’t be marvelling tonight when he found out that she had spent the afternoon stranded halfway to Mathison and that there would be no pudding. She had planned to make his favourite, too.
Prue was suddenly close to tears. ‘I can’t believe I could be so stupid!’ she said fiercely, knowing that there was no one to blame but herself.
‘Not so stupid that you left the car and tried to walk.’
Nat’s voice was calm and insensibly comforting, and Prue looked at him gratefully. He might not be the type to make her go weak at the knees, like Ross, but he had always seemed like a nice man. Not that exciting, maybe, but quietly competent. If she had to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, she couldn’t ask for anyone better to rescue her.
Not even Ross, she thought disloyally. Ross would know what to do, of course, but he wouldn’t have been able to resist teasing her. Nat, she guessed, wouldn’t tease, and he wouldn’t rush to tell everyone how hopelessly unsuited she was to life in the outback either. He was the kind of man who only spoke when he had something important to say.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any spare diesel, have you?’ she asked him, hoping against hope that she would be able to avoid the ignominy of having to abandon the car altogether. If Nat had enough fuel to get her back to the homestead, she could make do for dinner and Ross might not ever have to know what had happened.
But Nat was already shaking his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
Prue tried, and failed, to swallow her disappointment. ‘Oh, well.’
So much for Ross not finding out. She would have to go back and confess, that was all.
Squaring her shoulders, she flashed Nat a determinedly bright smile. ‘Are you on your way to Cowen Creek?’ she asked, even though she knew the question was unnecessary. Once on this track, there was nowhere else to go.
He nodded. ‘I wanted to have a word with Bill Granger.’
‘Would you give me a lift?’
‘Sure,’ Nat began, but something in her smile, something in the way she turned despondently back to the car to collect her things, made him pause. ‘Unless you’d rather I took you into Mathison?’ he heard himself offer.
Prue stopped with her hand on the car door. She looked at him with such amazement that Nat wondered if she had misunderstood what he had said. ‘You could do your shopping while I get a can of fuel,’ he explained. ‘I’ll bring you back here, and then you can drive yourself back to Cowen Creek.’
He made it sound perfectly simple, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world for him to go back on his tracks and drive an extra forty or so miles along hot, dusty roads for a girl he hardly knew.
‘But…I thought you wanted to see Bill,’ stammered Prue, unable to believe that the miracle she had spent the last two hours dreaming about would turn up in the shape of a lean, quiet grazier in a hat.
Nat shrugged. ‘There’s no hurry,’ he said, incapable of explaining his impulsive offer to himself let alone to her.
No, there would never be a hurry as far as Nat Masterman was concerned, thought Prue enviously. He wouldn’t know how to begin flapping or fussing or panicking. You could tell by the steadiness of his gaze, by the slowness of his voice, by the easy way he moved, that hurry was quite simply an alien concept for him.
‘Even so, it would be taking you so far out of your way,’ she said doubtfully.
‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘But if you’d rather I took you back to Cowen Creek—’
‘No!’ Prue interrupted him, determined not to let her opportunity go. ‘I mean, if you’re sure you don’t mind, it would be wonderful if you could take me to Mathison!’ she admitted, and her smile was so dazzling that Nat blinked and wondered how he could have thought that she wasn’t particularly pretty.
He turned to open the door of the ute. ‘Hop in, then,’ he said in a dry voice.
Prue grabbed her hat and her shopping list from the car. She scrambled in beside him and collapsed back into the seat.
‘You’ve saved my life!’ she told him as he turned the ute with an economy of movement that already seemed typical of him and headed back the way he had come.
Nat raised an eyebrow at her dramatic statement. ‘You would have been OK as long as you stayed with the car,’ he pointed out. ‘The Grangers would have come to look for you eventually.’
‘Oh, I know. I wasn’t worried about my safety.’ The cab was blissfully cool after the crushing heat in the car. Prue leant forward to adjust the vent so that the cold air blew directly onto her face. She had never understood the appeal of air-conditioning until she had come to Australia.
‘You’ve saved me from having to explain what an idiot I’ve been,’ she went on, sitting back with a sigh of relief. ‘I was dreading it.’
‘I can’t see any of the Grangers getting angry with you,’ said Nat in the calm way of a man who had no idea what it was like to do anything stupid or be afraid of anything.
‘I know. That’s what makes it worse!’ sighed Prue. ‘They’re so nice and kind,’ she tried to explain, seeing Nat’s baffled look. ‘They’ve been wonderful to me. I’d always wanted to work on a real outback cattle station, and getting a job at Cowen Creek was like a dream come true. Mr and Mrs Granger are great—and Ross, of course.’
She had meant it to sound like a casual aside, but her voice came out ridiculously strangled instead. It was hopeless, thought Prue in despair. All she had to do was think about Ross and her heart clenched, squeezing the air from her lungs. She couldn’t even say his name without her throat thickening.
She coughed slightly to clear it. ‘Well, anyway, I just love being at Cowen Creek,’ she went on, ‘but I’m sure they must think I’m really stupid. They’re just too polite to say so.’
Nat glanced at her. She was staring disconsolately through the windscreen, her unruly hair pushed behind her ears to reveal a fine-boned profile. He didn’t think she looked stupid. Her face was warm, alert, quirky in an attractive way, but not stupid.
‘Why should they think