Still, there was no point in letting him think he could walk all over her. Juliet had no intention of repeating the mistake she had made with the last manager. She would make sure right from the start that Cal Jamieson knew just who was boss!
Pulling off her apron as she went, Juliet went back into the homestead to splash cold water on her face and run her fingers through her dark hair. She grimaced at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The stress of the last year and the aching exhaustion in her bones had left her looking much older than her twenty-five years and hardly capable of bossing a three-year-old around, let alone a man as tough and self-assured as Cal Jamieson had sounded on the phone. If it came to a contest of vigour, competence and sheer bravado, the much-squeezed tube of toothpaste sitting on the edge of the basin would probably put up a better show than she could at the moment!
For an incongruous moment, she allowed herself to remember the girl she had been in London, so pretty, so vivacious, so certain that everything would work out for the best. That had been before she married Hugo, of course. Now here she was, on an isolated cattle station on the other side of the world, and the only thing she was certain of was that she would do whatever it took to keep Wilparilla safe for her boys. Even if it meant dealing with the unknown Cal Jamieson.
‘Mummy, Mummy, the manager’s here!’ cried Kit, running into the bathroom and bursting to use the new word that he had learnt.
‘Well, we’d better go and say hello, then,’ said Juliet. Now that the moment had come, she felt ridiculously nervous. Wilparilla’s future rested with the man waiting outside, but she mustn’t let him realise how desperately she needed someone to help her.
Kit rushed self-importantly ahead of her onto the verandah and down the steps to find his twin. A man was hunkered down next to Andrew, apparently engaged in serious conversation. All Juliet could see of him as she followed Kit more slowly through the screen door was that he was wearing moleskins and a dark blue shirt. His face was mostly hidden by his hat, but as he turned his head to smile at Kit’s eager arrival she caught a glimpse of white teeth beneath the shadow of its brim.
It seemed like such a nice smile that her hopes lifted, but when he glanced up and saw her watching him, it switched off so abruptly that Juliet felt as if she had been slapped. He straightened and took off his hat. ‘Mrs Laing?’
Her first impression was of a rangy, quiet-looking man, with a lean face, a cool mouth and cool grey eyes. No, not cool, Juliet corrected herself. Those eyes were cold, icy even, and something in their expression made her want to turn on her heel and bolt back into the homestead.
Mustering a smile from somewhere, she walked down the steps towards him instead. He was even taller than she had thought when she got close to him, and she was conscious of being at a disadvantage as she looked up at him. ‘Juliet, please,’ she said, and held out her hand. ‘You must be Cal Jamieson.’
‘Juliet, please,’ Cal mimicked her crystal-clear English voice to himself. It sounded just as it had on the telephone, so composed, so self-assured, with that nerve-grating suggestion of superiority, but otherwise she wasn’t at all as he had imagined her. That voice didn’t seem to belong to the girl who stood before him.
He hadn’t realised that she would be so young. She couldn’t be much more than twenty-five, Cal thought, eyeing her unsympathetically. Much too young to own a property like this. A station needed someone who knew the outback, not this girl with her brittle smile and her careful manners.
She was prettier than he had expected, too, Cal admitted grudgingly to himself. Very slender, almost thin, she had dark hair, exquisite cheekbones and wide eyes of so dark a blue they seemed almost purple. He might even have described her as beautiful if it hadn’t been for the bruised look about her. There were shadows under her eyes and she held herself warily. She reminded him of a racehorse, skittish and trembling with nerves before a big race. Cal didn’t have anything against racehorses, but they didn’t belong in the outback. This was brumby country, a place for tough, half-broken horses that could work. They might not be beautiful, but at least they were useful.
Looking at Juliet Laing, Cal doubted if she had ever been of use to anyone other than herself.
‘Yes, I’m Cal,’ he said in his deep, slow voice, and, because he had little choice, he took her outstretched hand. He had had plenty of time on the long drive from Brisbane to wonder if he was making a terrible mistake coming back to Wilparilla, but now that he had met Juliet for himself he was sure that he had done the right thing after all. This nervy, fragile-looking woman would never last out here. She would run back to England as soon as things got difficult and he would be back where he belonged at long last.
Her handshake was surprisingly firm, though. Cal looked down into her eyes and then wished he hadn’t. They were extraordinary eyes, the kind of eyes that could seriously interfere with a man’s breathing, and they held besides an expression that gave him pause. There was nothing weak or nervous about the look in Juliet’s eyes. It was steady and stubborn.
For a long moment they measured each other, and it seemed to Juliet that an unspoken challenge was issued between them. Quite what the challenge was, she couldn’t have said, but she knew that Cal Jamieson thought she didn’t belong here. Well, if he thought she was going to turn tail and run, he had another think coming!
‘Shall we talk on the verandah?’ she asked coolly.
Cal raised his brows. ‘Talk?’ He made it sound as if she had made an indecent proposal.
‘It wasn’t much of an interview on the phone,’ said Juliet, trying to keep the defensiveness from her voice.
‘It’s a little late for an interview, isn’t it?’ said Cal. ‘We agreed that I should come for a trial period as manager.’
What did he mean, we agreed? thought Juliet crossly. She had agreed to employ him on a trial basis.
‘I’ve been driving for the last four days to get here and do just that,’ he was saying, unaware of her mental interruption. ‘What happens if I don’t pass this “interview”? Do you expect me to turn round and go straight back to Brisbane?’
‘Of course not.’ Juliet set her teeth. This was going to be worse than she had thought. She hadn’t been imagining that undercurrent of hostility when she’d spoken to him on the phone. Not that he was aggressive. No, he just stood there looking calm and quiet and utterly implacable.
‘Look,’ she said, making a big effort to sound reasonable, ‘Pete Robbins has vouched for you, but all I know is that you’ve come from Brisbane and that you need a job. All you know about me is that I need a manager. Given that we’re going to be working so closely together, I think we should find out a little more about each other.’
He knew a lot more about her than that, Cal thought grimly. He knew that she and her husband had come out from England and bought this place on a whim. He knew that they’d alienated their neighbours, sacked the experienced stockmen and neglected the property he had worked so hard to build up, and that now, when her husband was dead and she had no reason to stay, she was stubbornly refusing all offers to buy the station from her. Holding out for more money, he decided in disgust, as if she didn’t have more than enough already. She was a spoilt, silly woman, and she was in his way.
Cal didn’t need to know any more about Juliet than that, just as she didn’t need to know exactly what he was doing here.
He would humour her for now, Cal thought as he shrugged an acceptance and followed Juliet up the steps to the verandah. Let her think
