stomach tighten into a hard knot. But he was obsessively involved with regaining his birthright, remember? Hadn’t he already decided he couldn’t get involved with Shelley Logan? Yet in the space of half an hour he had developed quite a taste for her.
Brock’s gaze moving over her left Shelley with a sensation of shivery excitement. He had one arm lazily resting above her head on the doorjamb, and was just staring down at her. He was so tall.
“I’m glad you like it.” It cost an effort but her voice came out normally. “I didn’t have anything suitable to wear so I raced down to the local dress shop. I found this in the nick of time.”
“My good fortune.” He grinned. “Shall we go? I’ve made reservations. They tell me Harriet’s menus are so great people have to book ahead.”
“Did you speak to Harriet herself?” She had to break through this confusion, this spell, otherwise the excitement would be impossible to stop.
He took the key of the door from her fingers. “That’s how we’ve managed to get in. Harriet told me she’d look after us. Harriet’s a big fan of yours.”
“That works both ways.” She looked at the span of his shoulders as he closed her door, suddenly bedevilled by the memory of what it was like to be swept up in his arms. Yet something about Brock Tyson, for all his macho image, made her heart break. What a dreadful penance it must have been for his mother and him, having to remain on Mulgaree after his father had deserted them. It was such a sad house. Like her own.
“I’ve not been to Harriet’s since it opened,” she remarked, pitching her tone to conversational. “I was invited to the gala night, but Amanda wanted to go and I wasn’t happy leaving my mother. You wouldn’t believe the migraines she gets.”
He took her arm as they walked the corridor, so slender, so delicate, he felt he could encircle it. “How we sacrifice our lives to misery.”
“My mother is afraid to be happy. She believes that it would be a disloyalty to Sean.”
“Sounds a terrible waste. It’s depressing, but I can’t say I don’t understand,” he replied sombrely.
They had to move past a sea of smiling, highly interested faces on their way out of the pub. Everyone seemed thrilled to have Brock back. Brock was quite calm with it all, returning shouted greetings from the bar. Shelley felt herself blush. What was she doing on Brock Tyson’s arm? Just being with him seemed a tremendous event.
They walked in a vaguely fraught silence until they reached Harriet’s, where lights from the restaurant spilled out onto the pavement. Inside it was lovely and cool, the décor green and white, with feathery stands of bamboo in pots, graceful arches, and old sepia photographs of the town’s past decorating a wall. From the night it had opened Harriet’s had been a very popular gathering place for the locals as well as people from the outlying stations.
Harriet, looking marvellous in a mandarin-yellow Thai silk caftan that flowed softly around her slim body, came forward to greet them jauntily.
“Welcome, welcome!” She bent forward to kiss her ex-pupil Shelley’s cheek. “Where have you been all this time, Brock? We’ve really missed you.”
“Ireland.” He looked into Harriet’s eyes, finding them kind and very shrewd. He named a famous stud farm.
She nodded, having heard of it. “The life must have agreed with you. You look marvellous. But someone told me as I came up that you lost your dear mother?”
For a minute he couldn’t answer, grief and wildness spoiling in him. “She’s where she wanted to be, Harriet. The home of her ancestors. There was no home for her here.” Pain and bitterness played about his chiselled mouth.
“My heart aches for you, Brock. You’ve taken a hard blow.” Harriet pressed his arm, looking with great sympathy into his brilliant eyes. “We’ll talk of this again, but for now you’ll be wanting to find some peace and comfort. I have a good table for you in the courtyard. Come through. You look lovely, Shelley.”
Harriet smiled with great encouragement at her. Shelley was a young woman she very much admired. A brave person of high intelligence, Shelley Logan could have gone far in any one of the big cities, but she had stuck with her highly dysfunctional, unappreciative family. What it was to be tied by the bonds of love and loyalty! And a quite un-deserved feeling of guilt, Harriet thought.
“Great to see you, Brock!”
Brock’s hand was caught and held over and over, slowing their progress, but finally they were seated at a secluded table for two in the courtyard, with its white rattan glass-topped tables and white rattan chairs and huge golden canes in glazed pots. The comfortable upholstery was in white Indian cotton with a pattern of green bamboo leaves to continue the theme, while near them white ceramic elephants held pots of colourful flowers on their backs. It all looked enormously attractive.
The restaurant was only open three times a week—after all Harriet was well into her sixties and couldn’t risk burn-out—on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, for lunch and dinner. But far from stretching her to the limit, Shelley thought affectionately, Harriet looked years younger and on top of the world.
“An experience awaits you,” Harriet was saying with a flourish, passing them what looked like a fairly extensive menu for a small restaurant. “Oriental-style cooking is the speciality of the house, but if you would like something else we can whip it up for you.”
“You’re a wonder, Miss Crompton,” Brock told her, his face respectful but still holding more than a trace of that wicked daring that had so distinguished him as a boy.
“Tell me that when your meal is over.” Harriet smiled. “Now, I must return to the kitchen—but one of my girls will be here shortly to take your order. Would you care for a drink in the meantime?”
“Shelley?” Brock looked across the table at his companion, so pretty he had no desire to look anywhere else.
“May I have a glass of white wine?”
“Certainly. Why don’t we push the boat out and have champagne?” It had been a rotten day. He could do with a few bubbles, and Shelley might like it. “Okay?”
“Perfect,” Shelley agreed.
Harriet smiled. “I’ll have someone bring it over.”
CHAPTER TWO
OVER the leisurely meal Brock left the soul-destroying world of Mulgaree with all its bleak memories behind him. Shelley was lovely enough for any man—so interested in what he was saying, asking such intelligent questions that he found his whole body, for months coiled tight as a spring, relaxing. And dinner rated highly. He’d had some fine, unforgettable meals in the gourmet restaurants of Ireland and France, where he’d visited constantly on the stud farm’s business, but the well-travelled Harriet was right up there with them. No mean feat for a small Outback town on the edge of nowhere.
They’d opted for Thai food, as it was the speciality of the house: magnificent chilli prawns, flown in from the tropical north, garnished with crispy curry leaves and served with a wonderfully flavoured cream sauce, followed by a chicken dish in a peanut sauce, accompanied by shredded cucumber, carrots and spring onions. Then they’d enjoyed little jellied fruits, beautifully arranged, to finish. Delicious, imaginative and innovative,
