so fast the knife was a blur. ‘I could leave them unwashed but I have an aversion to dirt.’ She gave herself half a second to glance with disgust at his boots. ‘Even if you don’t. You finished?’
‘Almost.’ He poured the last jar over the pastry and spread it to the edges. ‘Done.’
‘Then I want this salami all over them. Rough and thick—we have no time for thin and fancy.’ She hauled the mushrooms out of the sink and dumped them on a couple of tea towels, flipping them over with the fabric to get most of the water out. World’s fastest wash. ‘Back in two seconds. I’m getting herbs.’
And she was gone, only to appear a moment later with a vast bunch of basil. ‘Great garden,’ she told him, grabbing another chopping board.
He was too stunned to answer.
They chopped side by side. There was no time, no need to talk.
And suddenly Matt found himself thinking this was just like the shearing shed. When things worked, it was like a well-oiled machine. There was a common purpose. There was urgency.
His knife skills weren’t up to hers. In fact they were about ten per cent of hers. He didn’t mind. This woman had skills he hadn’t even begun to appreciate.
Wow, she was fast.
It was the strangest feeling. To have a woman in his kitchen. To have this woman in his kitchen.
She was a society princess with a pink car and a poodle and knife skills that’d do any master chef proud.
Her body brushed his as she turned to fetch more mushrooms and he felt...
Concentrate on salami, he told himself and it was a hard ask.
But three minutes later they had six trays of ‘pizza’ in the oven.
‘The herbs go on when it comes out,’ she told him.
‘We won’t have time to garnish...’
‘Nothing goes out of my kitchen unless it’s perfect,’ she snapped. She glanced at the clock. ‘Right, it’s nine minutes before ten. This’ll take fifteen minutes to cook so I’ll be exactly ten minutes late. I hope that’s acceptable. Come back at eight minutes past and help me carry it over.’
He almost grinned. He thought of his shearing team. Craig was the expert there, and Matt was wise enough to follow orders. Did he have just such an expert in his kitchen?
‘How can it be ready by then?’ He must have sounded incredulous because she smiled.
‘Are you kidding? I might even have time to powder my nose before I help you take it out there.’
* * *
Taking the food over to the shed was an eye-opener.
A campfire had been lit on the side of the shed. There were a couple of trestle tables and a heap of logs serving as seats. Three billies hung from a rod across the fire.
The fire was surrounded by men and women who looked as filthy as Matt—or worse.
One of the men looked up as Penny and Matt approached and gave a shrill, two-fingers-in-the-mouth whistle. ‘Ducks on the pond,’ he called and everyone stopped what they were doing and stared.
‘Hey.’ It was hard to tell the women from the men but it was a female voice. ‘You idiot, Harry. Ducks on the pond’s a stupid way of saying women are near the shed. What about Marg and me?’
‘You don’t count,’ one of the shearers retorted. ‘You gotta have t... I mean you gotta have boobs and legs to count. You and Margie might have ’em but they’re hidden under sheep dung. Put you in a bikini, we’ll give you the respect you deserve.’
‘Yeah, classifying us as ducks. Very respectful.’ One of the women came forward and took plates from Penny. ‘Take no notice of them, sweetheart. I’m Greta, this is Margie and the rest of this lot don’t matter. If they had one more neuron between them, it’d be lonely.’ She glanced down at the steaming piles of pizza. ‘Wow! Great tucker.’
And then there was no more talk at all.
The food disappeared in moments. Penny stood and watched and thought of the two frittatas she had ready to go in the oven.
How long before the next meal?
But Matt had guessed her thoughts. He’d obviously seen the pathetically small frittatas.
‘There are a couple of massive hams in the cool room,’ he told her. ‘We can use your pretty pies as a side dish for cold ham and peas and potatoes. Penny, you saved my butt and I’m grateful, but from now on it doesn’t matter if it’s not pretty. At this stage we’re in survival mode.’
And she glanced up at him and saw...sympathy!
The team had demolished the food and were heading back to the shed. Matt was clearly needing to head back too, but he’d stopped because he needed to reassure her.
He wanted to tell her it was okay to serve cold ham and peas and potatoes.
She thought again of that dinner with her parents, the joy, the certainty that all was right with her world, and then the crashing deflation.
This morning’s pizza had been a massive effort. To serve quality food for every single meal would see her exhausted beyond belief.
She could serve his horrid cold ham, she thought, but that would be the equivalent of running away, as she’d run away from Sydney. But there was nowhere to run now.
She braced her shoulders and took a deep breath, hauling herself up to her whole five feet three. Where were stilettoes when a girl needed them?
‘I’ll have lun...dinner ready for you at twelve-thirty,’ she told him. ‘And there won’t be a bit of cold ham in sight.’
* * *
He should be back in the shed. These guys were fast—they didn’t have the reputation of being the best shearing team in South Australia for nothing. The mob of sheep waiting in the pens outside was being thinned by the minute. He needed to get more in.
Instead he took a moment to watch her go.
She was stalking back to the house. He could sense indignation in the very way she held her shoulders.
And humiliation.
She’d been proud of her lamingtons.
They were great lamingtons, he conceded. He’d only just managed to snaffle one before they were gone. There was no doubt she could cook.
She’d pulled out a miracle.
He watched as she stopped to greet Donald’s dog. She bent and fondled his ears and said something, and for some reason he wanted badly to know what it was.
She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her bouncy curls were caught in a ponytail. The media thing he’d read yesterday said she was twenty-seven but she looked about
