years she’d had to bribe and threaten and cajole each of her brothers into reading anything besides the back of the cereal packet each morning.
The flight attendant approached and, smiling at Kellie, asked, ‘Would you like to purchase a drink or snack from the trolley this afternoon?’
Kellie smiled back as she undid the fold-down table. ‘I would love a diet cola with ice and lemon if you have it.’
The flight attendant handed her the plastic cup half-filled with ice and a tiny sliver of lemon before passing over the opened can of soda. ‘That will be three dollars,’ she said.
Kellie bit her lip. Her bag was stuffed as far under the seat in front as she could get it and, with the tray table down, retrieving it was going to take the sort of flexibility no one but Houdini possessed. ‘Er…would you mind holding these for me while I get my purse from my bag?’ she asked.
He took the cup and can with a little roll-like flutter of his eyelids but didn’t say a word.
Kellie rummaged in her bag for her purse and finally found the right change but in passing it over to the flight attendant somehow knocked the opened can of cola out of the man’s hand and straight into his lap.
‘What the—’ He bit back the rough expletive that had come to his lips and glared at her as he got to his feet, the dark bubbles of liquid soaking through his moleskins like a pool of blood.
‘Oops…’ Kellie said a little lamely.
‘I’ll get some paper towels for you, Dr McNaught,’ the flight attendant said, and rushed away.
Kellie sat in gob-smacked silence as the name filtered through her brain.
Dr McNaught?
She swallowed to get her heart to return to its rightful place in her chest. It couldn’t be…could it?
Dr Matthew McNaught?
She blinked and looked up at him, wincing slightly as she encountered his diamond-hard dark blue glare. ‘You’re Dr Matthew McNaught?’ she asked, ‘from the two-GP practice in Culwulla Creek?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his lips pulled tight. ‘Let me guess,’ he added with a distinct curl of his top lip. ‘You’re the new locum, right?’
Kellie felt herself sink even further into the limited space available. ‘Y-yes,’ she squeaked. ‘How did you guess?’
CHAPTER TWO
THE flight attendant came bustling back just then with a thick wad of paper towels and Kellie watched helplessly as Dr McNaught mopped up what he could of the damage.
‘I hope it doesn’t stain,’ Kellie said, trying not to stare too long at his groin. ‘I’ll pay for dry-cleaning costs of course.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘Besides, there’s no dry cleaner in Culwulla Creek. There’s not even a laundromat.’
‘Oh…’ Kellie said, wondering not for the first time what she had flung herself into by agreeing to this post. ‘I’m not usually so clumsy. I have a very steady hand normally.’
He gave her a sweeping glance before he resumed his seat. ‘You’re going to need it out here,’ he said. ‘The practice serves an area covering several hundred square kilometres. The nearest hospital is in Roma but all the emergency or acute cases have to be flown to Brisbane. It’s not going to be a walk in the park, I can tell you.’
‘I never for a moment thought it would be,’ Kellie said, a little miffed that he obviously thought her a city girl with no practical skills. ‘I’m used to hard work.’
‘Have you worked in a remote outback area before?’ he asked.
Kellie hesitated over her answer. She was thinking her six-week stint in Tamworth in northern New South Wales probably wouldn’t qualify. It was a regional area, not exactly the outback. ‘Um…not really,’ she said. ‘But I’m keen to learn the ropes.’
His eyes studied her for a moment. ‘What made you decide to take this post?’ he asked.
‘I liked the sound of working in the bush,’ she answered. And I desperately needed to get away from my family and my absolutely disastrous love life, she mentally tacked on. ‘And six months will just fly by, I imagine.’
‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,’ he said. ‘The hours are long and the cases sometimes difficult to manage, with the issues of distance and limited resources.’
‘So who is holding the fort right now?’ she asked.
‘There’s a semi-retired GP, David Cutler, who fills in occasionally,’ he said. ‘He runs a clinic once a month to keep up his skills but his health isn’t good. His wife, Trish, is the practice receptionist and we have one nurse, Rosie Duncan. We could do with more but that’s the way it is out here.’
Kellie let a little silence slip past before she asked. ‘How long have you been at Culwulla Creek?’
His gaze remained focused on the book in the seat pocket in front of him. ‘Six years,’ he answered.
‘Wow, you must really love it out here,’ she said.
He hesitated for a mere sliver of a second before he answered, ‘Yes.’
Kellie watched as his expression closed off like a pair of curtains being pulled across a window. She had seen that look before, far too many times, in fact, on the faces of her father and brothers whenever she happened to nudge in under their emotional radar. It was a male thing. They liked to keep some things private and somehow she suspected Dr Matthew McNaught, too, had quite a few no-go areas.
‘By the way, I’m Kellie Thorne,’ she said offering him her hand.
His hand was cool and firm as it briefly took hers. ‘Matthew McNaught, but Matt’s fine.’
‘Matt, then,’ she said, smiling.
He didn’t return her smile.
‘So…’ She rolled her lips together and began again. ‘Do you have a family out here with you? A wife and kids perhaps?’
‘No.’
Kellie was starting to see why he hadn’t been successful thus far in landing himself a life partner. In spite of his good looks he had no personality to speak of. She felt like a tennis-ball throwing machine—she kept sending conversation starters his way but he didn’t make any effort to return them.
Not only that, he hadn’t once looked at her with anything remotely resembling male interest. Kellie knew she was being stupidly insecure thanks to her disastrous relationship—if you could call it that—with Harley Edwards, but surely Matt McNaught could have at least done a double-take, like the young pilot had on the tarmac before they had boarded the plane.
Kellie had looked in enough mirrors in her time to know none of them were in any danger of breaking any time soon. She had her mother’s slim but still femininely curvy figure and her chestnut
