Mak wished they’d kept talking about trucking. Neena’s honest admission that she hadn’t been listening to his conversation, followed by such an enthusiastic acceptance of his presence made him feel tainted and uneasy—unclean, really, for all he’d showered. And when she’d smiled—well, almost smiled—his gut had tightened uncomfortably, but he was fairly sure he could put that aside as a normal reaction to such a beautiful woman. It was the deception bothering him the most, but he could hardly announce now that he was really here to suss her out.
‘I’ve made you toasted sandwiches with the meatloaf.’
Ned marched in, bearing a tray which he set down on a small table beside Mak’s chair. ‘And there’s a pot of tea, but don’t you go thinking you can have a cup, Miss Neena. You’re sleeping bad enough as it is. I’ll make you a warm milk if you want something.’
Mak smiled as Neena hid a grimace.
‘No, thank you, Ned. I drank some milk earlier, as you very well know, and how can I have a cup of tea when you’ve only put out one cup?’
‘You’d drink it from the pot if you got desperate enough,’ Ned muttered as he made his way out of the room, pausing in the doorway to add, ‘I’ve put clean sheets on the bed in the back room.’
A quick frown flitted across Neena’s smooth brow.
‘Does the back room have rats and cockroaches or is it just as far away from your room as it can possibly be?’ Mak asked, and won another smile from his hostess.
‘It’s certainly not the best spare room in the house,’ she admitted. ‘And Ned does get over-protective. But I don’t think there are rats or cockroaches.’
‘Even if there were, I doubt it would worry me,’ Mak said. ‘It’s a long drive and I’m tired enough to sleep on a barbed-wire fence. In fact, if it’s okay with you, I might take my tray through and have the snack there. That way we can both get to bed.’
She turned away but not before he saw a blush rise in her cheeks. Surely not because he’d mentioned both of them getting to bed—it was hardly suggestive, the way he’d said it…
‘Through here,’ she was saying, and, tray in hand, he followed her, noting the bathroom she’d talked about earlier on the right then another two doors before they reached the end of the passage and the back room.
‘Oh, dear,’ she murmured as she opened the door and looked in, then turned back and ran her gaze over him from head to toe. ‘I’d forgotten about the bed in here. You’ll never fit.’
And over her shoulder Mak saw what she meant for Ned had put sheets onto a rather small—perhaps child size—single bed, and even from the doorway, Mak could feel the heat emanating from the room.
‘I heard him say he’d sleep on a barbed-wire fence,’ the gravelly voice reminded them, and looking through a French door on the other side of the room, Mak saw Ned standing on the veranda.
On guard?
‘Well, he can’t sleep here. Honestly, Ned, sometimes I wonder if your main aim in life is to frustrate me. Come this way,’ Neena added to Mak. ‘There’s a double bed that should take your height, if you sleep crossways, in the next bedroom, and that bedroom has an air vent as well. I’ll get some sheets.’
She opened another door.
‘I’ll have it made up by the time you get your gear out of the car, and as far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to stay here. This is the doctor’s house after all.’
She was doing it to get her own back on Ned, Mak realised that immediately. He also realised it would give him an ideal opportunity to really get to know her!
So why did he feel uneasy?
Because of the deceit? Or because on first impression this woman was nothing like the manipulative gold-digger he’d envisioned?
‘You don’t have to put me up.’ It was a token protest, brought on by the uneasiness, but she waved it away.
‘Of course I don’t, but sometimes I get very tired of being bossed around by every single person in this town. Sometimes I’d like to be allowed to make my own decisions. Now, get your things—you know where the bathroom is. I’ll put some fresh towels in there.’
She whirled away, opening a cupboard near the back room, pulling out sheets and towels.
‘Leave the sheets on the bed, I’ll make it up,’ Mak told her, and she silenced him with a glare.
‘Don’t you start,’ she warned, marching back down the hall, slipping past him into the bedroom.
Mak set the tray down and left her to it, wondering just why the town would be so protective of her. Okay, so it was hard to get doctors to serve in country towns and the further outback you went the harder it became, but…
Maybe it was her pregnancy.
The phone was ringing as he re-entered the house, silenced when Neena must have answered it. He heard her say, ‘I’ll be right there,’ and the click of a receiver being returned to its cradle.
‘Bed’s made,’ she said, passing him in the passage. ‘Towels in the bathroom.’
And she kept walking.
Dumping his bag, Mak followed her.
‘You’re going out on a call,’ he said as his long strides caught up.
She nodded but her pace didn’t slacken as she crossed the veranda and ran lightly down the steps—running when being back out in the hot night air immediately sapped his energy.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, determined to get used to whatever the climate threw at him. ‘It’s what I’m here for, to see how you work.’
‘You’ve been driving all day and you’re tired,’ she said, opening the door of a big four-wheel-drive that stood just off the main circular driveway. Then she turned to look at him. ‘But it’s probably your kind of thing and I could certainly use some help. An accident at the drilling site. The ambulance was out of town but it’s on its way.’
Mak didn’t answer, instead striding around the car and climbing in the passenger side, relieved to find she’d already started the engine and had the air-con roaring.
‘Motor vehicle?’ he asked, and as Neena reversed the car competently onto the drive, she shook her head.
‘I don’t know how much you know about it, but if you’re employed by Hellenic Enterprises presumably you know they’ve gone past the initial exploratory drilling stage and are setting up an experimental geothermal power station. Basically they pump water down into the bowels of the earth onto shattered hot rocks, and the heat of the rocks turns the water to steam, which comes up through different pipes and is harnessed and used to make electricity.’
Her explanation had holes in it but as a basic description of a scientific process it wasn’t too bad.
‘And what’s happened?’
‘A
