he could have knocked her back. How like a man!’
They’d looked at each other, then grinned simultaneously.
‘Daisy, in full flight, is a sight to behold,’ Chattie had acknowledged. ‘Perhaps I was being a bit hard on him. What about you?’
Lydia had blinked. ‘What about me?’
‘When are you going to lay Brad to rest and start living again?’
‘Not you too!’
‘Your father been giving you a hard time?’
Lydia had shaken her head. ‘Daisy. But I am living, and enjoying myself and really looking forward to this job!’
‘All right.’ Chattie had looked as if she’d been about to say more, but had desisted and hugged her niece instead. ‘Leave them to me; I’ll look after them!’
Lydia took off her pinstriped trouser suit, donned a velvet housecoat and sat down at her dressing table to brush her hair, after removing a few very dark strands from the brush.
She’d returned to this room and this single bed after a year of marriage, and some days it was hard to believe she’d ever left it.
She and Brad had met at university, he’d been studying economics, and the first thing to draw them together had been their common although unusual surname. But the attraction had been almost instantaneous, and mutual. It had also been a revelation to Lydia, because he’d been her first serious boyfriend, and to find someone she clicked with so completely had been totally unexpected.
To fall so much in love when she’d expected to spend her university years working hard to achieve her career goals had also been disconcerting, but that had been another wonderful part of their relationship. They’d been quite happy to allow each other the space to study.
So, after two years, and before she had graduated—although he had, and had joined an eminent firm of stockbrokers—they’d got married, got themselves a small flat and had a year of idyllic happiness.
It had been a matter of surprise to many, her family included, that she should have been the first sister to marry, and so young.
He’d been such fun, she thought sadly, the night before she went—not to Queensland, although via it to the Northern Territory. Not that you’d necessarily have known that behind his glasses and his computer-like brain there had lurked a delicious sense of humour. And he’d handled her growing ardour with surprising passion for a man who had always been able to tell you how many points the All Ordinaries or the Dow Jones had gained or dropped overnight.
It wasn’t fair. She’d thought it so many times, when her body had ached physically for him, and her mind had yearned for the warmth, tenderness and laughter they’d generated together.
She’d also suffered the growing conviction it would never happen for her that way again. So that, despite their good intentions, she hated it when people told her it was time to think of falling in love again—even her own sister.
She brushed steadily for a few minutes, trying to compose herself, and finally found some relief from her sad thoughts coming from an unusual direction…Joe Jordan and his hints that she was not as feminine as her gorgeous sister.
She put the brush down and studied herself in the mirror. What would he have thought, she mused, if he’d known that under her suit she’d been wearing—these?
‘These’, beneath her velvet robe, were a midnight-blue silk camisole deeply edged with lace and a matching pair of panties.
She stood up, opened her robe and, putting her hands on her hips, twirled slowly in front of the mirror. True, she conceded to her image, she was not like Daisy, who had an hourglass figure, but—how had Brad put it? Beneath her clothes she was slim, sleek and surprisingly sensuous, and her legs were to die for.
Of course, she told herself as she sat down again and grinned at herself, what appeals to one man may not appeal to another! And although her clothes were sometimes mannish it was only for comfort, and they were beautifully made. She also had a passion for shoes and bags and the finest lingerie.
So there, Mr Jordan, she thought, and was tempted to stick out her tongue at a mental image of him.
Then she sobered and wondered what on earth she was thinking. Only minutes ago she’d been consumed by sadness and the unfairness of fate—how could she be thinking of another man? A man her sister might be in love with—might even have slept with, moreover.
She closed her eyes and clenched her hands until Brad came back to her in her mind, and she remembered how he’d loved to cook, but had been quite hopeless at clearing up after himself…
CHAPTER TWO
SEVERAL days later she was winging her way to Katerina Station in the Victoria River District of the Northern Territory, five hundred kilometres south of Darwin. She’d flown first to Townsville, to spend two days with Brad’s parents in North Queensland, then on to Darwin to spend a day in the veterinary science department of the Northern Territory University.
The vet she was filling in for, although not precisely as a vet, was a friend from university, Tim Patterson. They’d kept in touch over the years, and several months ago he’d written to tell her that he was taking a break from his practice and doing something he’d always wanted to do—joining a mustering team on a cattle station where not only his horsemanship but his veterinary expertise would be useful.
Then, a few weeks ago, he’d written again to say that he was having the time of his life mustering cattle, that it was also wonderful experience for a vet interested in large animals, but for business and personal reasons he needed to take six weeks off and would she be interested in filling in for him? He’d assured her that the Simpson family, who ran Katerina Station, would welcome her enthusiastically and provide accommodation for her in the main homestead—when she wasn’t sleeping under the stars with the rest of the mustering team.
That had done it. She’d gone, cap in hand, to the senior partner of the practice she was working for in Sydney and showed him the letter. He’d given her six weeks’ leave and added enviously, ‘Half your luck, Lydia!’
She was now staring down at the grassy plains, rolling savanna and rocky outcrops of the Victoria River District, known locally as the VRD, as it glided past below. It was a fine, clear day and the sky was huge, so was the panorama beneath it, giving Lydia a sense of the vastness and the emptiness of the ancient continent she called home.
The VRD supported one of the most successful grazing enterprises in northern Australia, but to look down upon it you wouldn’t think a soul lived in it.
The station pilot was young and friendly, and he smiled at her wonderment and took an extra ten minutes to show her the various sets of cattle yards and bores as proof that cattle did exist in large numbers, then he buzzed the Katerina homestead to alert the occupants of his imminent arrival.
He also filled her in about the Simpson family. ‘Sarah is a daughter of the pioneering family that started Katerina,’ he explained. ‘She and her brother inherited it, but when she married she divided her share with her husband, Rolf, and he actually manages the place.’
‘What about the brother?’ Lydia asked.
‘He