She was tired and vulnerable with the strain of coping alone for so long, and there was something very reassuring about his air of quiet strength. He might not have the looks to set her pulse racing, as Mark had, but right now the sense that he could deal calmly and competently with any situation that might arise was more appealing than any handsome face!
The hotel manager gave them a lift out to the airport in his truck. Clare was taken aback to see her things tossed unceremoniously into the back, while she was expected to squeeze into the front seat with Alice between the two men. ‘How far are we going?’ she asked nervously, remembering Pippa’s stories about long, bumpy drives across the outback.
‘Only to the airport,’ said Gray, resting his arm along the back of the seat behind her head. ‘It’s quicker to fly than to drive, and there’s usually someone around to give me a lift in to town from there.’
‘Oh.’ Clare was pleased to discover that she wasn’t going to have to spend the next two or three hours trying not to notice the strength of his thigh pressed against hers. Not that Gray seemed to find the situation at all uncomfortable. He was talking easily across her, and Clare might as well have been a bag of shopping on the seat between them for all the notice he took of her.
It was a relief when they reached the airport and she could move away from him, although she was not impressed by the single runway set for some reason in the middle of nowhere. Clare could turn around completely and see nothing but flat brown scrub stretching off to the horizon in every direction. It was like a toy airport, she thought disparagingly, with a windsock hanging limply in the midday heat and the ‘terminal’ no more than a hut offering shelter from the sun.
Gray seemed to know everybody. Even as they drove along the road, she had noticed the two men lifting fingers in greeting to the passing cars, and now, having exchanged words with the few passengers waiting for an incoming flight, he led the way across the tarmac to where a tiny plane with a propeller on its nose was parked.
‘We’re not going in that?’ said Clare involuntarily.
‘We certainly are.’ Gray patted the plane affectionately. ‘This old girl’s more reliable than any car over this kind of country, and she’s done this flight so often she could practically take herself home.’
Clare wasn’t sure that the great age and experience of the plane was that reassuring, and in spite of her belief in Gray’s competence she couldn’t help closing her eyes as they sped along the airstrip, propeller blurring, and lifted lightly off the ground. She felt the plane bank and continue climbing until after a couple of minutes they levelled off.
‘You can open your eyes now,’ said Gray in a dry voice.
Very cautiously, Clare unscrewed her eyes. ‘I’ve never been in such a small plane before,’ she confessed. She touched the door as if afraid it would fall off. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much keeping us up here.’
‘You’re safe as houses,’ he said. ‘Relax and enjoy the view.’
What view? Clare wanted to ask. Spread out below them, the land stretched out to the distant horizon, as flat and featureless as a piece of sandpaper, and almost exactly the same rusty-brown colour. The sky was a huge blue glare, arching over a vast expanse of nothingness. Clare looked down at it and wondered what on earth Pippa had found to love in such barren, intimidating country.
‘Is it all this…’ she searched for a tactful word ‘…this empty?’
‘It’s not empty at all,’ said Gray. ‘It just looks that way from up here. You’d be surprised how different things are when you’re on the ground. There’s lots to see—you just have to learn to look at it in the right way.’
‘Oh, yes?’
Her voice dripped polite disbelief, but Gray was unperturbed. ‘You can tell you’ve never been outback before,’ he said.
‘No,’ Clare sighed in agreement. This wasn’t her kind of place at all. ‘Municipal parks are the wildest places I usually see.’
‘Not an outdoor girl, then?’
‘Absolutely not,’ she said, smiling faintly at the very idea. ‘I’ve always been a city girl. Pippa was different. She couldn’t wait to bump along dusty tracks and pit herself against the elements, but I never saw the appeal. Cities seem much more interesting places to me. There’s always something happening, something to do, something to see.’
Gray glanced at her. ‘That’s what I feel about the bush.’
‘It’s not the same,’ objected Clare. ‘When you finish work, you can’t go out for a meal, or a glass of wine with friends. You can’t go to the theatre or a concert or an art gallery. You can’t wander around the streets watching people and seeing how different they all are.’
‘Is that what you do?’
She pushed her hair behind her ears with a sigh. ‘It’s what I used to do. I’ve had to put my life on hold for a bit.’
‘Because of the baby?’
‘Yes. She’s more important at the moment.’ Clare shrugged. ‘I’m lucky. I’ve got good friends, a great flat, a job I love and a wonderful boss who’s keeping my job open for me until I can go home. They’ll all still be there when I get back.’
There was a defensive, almost defiant undercurrent to her voice, as though she were trying to convince herself rather than Gray. He made no comment, asking only what she did as his eyes moved steadily between the instrument panel and the horizon and the ground below them.
‘I work for an agency that represents singers and musicians,’ she told him. ‘I’m not musical myself—I wish I were—but I am good at organisation, so I deal with the administrative side of things. I love working with creative people…’
She trailed off, assailed by a rush of nostalgia. If only she were there now, in the clean, familiar office, with the gossip and the jokes and the constant, exciting buzz of activity! She was the sensible, practical one in the office, and she wondered if anyone at work would be able to imagine her now, suspended above an alien landscape in this tiny plane with a man whose stillness made her look edgy and frivolous in comparison.
‘It sounds like being housekeeper on a cattle station is going to be a shock for you,’ said Gray, and Clare pushed her hair wearily away from her face.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, too tired and homesick to make the effort to sound enthusiastic at the prospect.
‘I can see why you’re anxious to contact Jack,’ Gray went on with something of an edge. ‘The sooner you can hand over the baby, the sooner you can get back to your job.’
Clare cast him a resentful look. ‘You make it sound like I can’t wait to get rid of her!’
‘Can you?’
Clare looked down at Alice on her lap. She was heavy with sleep, utterly relaxed as she lay in the curve of Clare’s arm, the ridiculously long baby lashes fanned over her round cheeks and her mouth working occasionally, as if she were dreaming about food. Clare could feel her breathing, and her heart ached with love for her.
‘I always thought I didn’t want children,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought a baby would be too messy, too demanding, too difficult to
