‘I don’t normally make it up,’ he told them. A big, shy man, quietly spoken but with enormous pride in the stones he produced to show them, he stood back as they fingered his fabulous collection. ‘I sell it on to dealers. But a mate of mine’s done some half-decent work and while the back’s been bad he’s been teaching me to do a bit. These are the ones I’m happiest with. When me back’s a bit better I’m heading to Cairns—I reckon the big tourist places will snap this lot up. Hang on a sec.’
They hung on. George had spread his stones out on the coverlet of his hotel bed for them to see. Now he delved into a battered suitcase and produced a can of aftershave. He glanced suspiciously at his visitors, then grinned as if he’d decided suspicions here were ridiculous, but all the same he turned his back on them so they couldn’t see what he was doing. He twiddled for a bit and then spun back to face them. The aftershave can was open at the base and a small, chamois pouch was lying in his open palm.
He opened it with care, unwrapping individual packages. Laying their contents on a pillow.
Four rings and two pendants. Each one made Jill gasp.
‘They’re black opal,’ George said with satisfaction. ‘You won’t find better stuff than this anywhere in the world. You like them?’
Did she like them? Jill stared down at the cluster of small opals and thought she’d never seen anything lovelier.
She lifted one, drawn to it before all the others. It was the smallest stone, a rough-shaped opal set in a gold ring. The stone was deep, turquoise green, with black in its depths. But there was fire, tiny slivers of red that looked like fissures in the rock, exposing flames deep down. The opal looked as if it had been set in the gold in the ground, wedged there for centuries, washed by oceans, weathered to the thing of beauty it was now.
She’d never seen anything so beautiful.
‘Put it on,’ George prodded, and as she didn’t move Charles lifted it from her, took her ring finger and slid the ring home.
It might have been made for her.
She gazed down at it and blinked. And tried to think of something to say. And blinked again.
‘I think we have a sale,’ Charles said in satisfaction. Both men were smiling at her now, like two avuncular genies.
‘It ought to go on a hand like that,’ George said. ‘You know, that stone… I almost decided to keep it. I couldn’t bear to think of it on some fancy woman’s hand, sitting among half a dozen diamonds and sapphires and the like. If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am,’ he said, ‘your hands are right for it. Worn a bit. Ready for something as lovely.’
‘Not a bad pitch,’ Charles said appreciatively.
‘I mean it,’ George growled, and from the depth of emotion in his voice Jill knew he did.
But…
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘This is black opal.’ She hadn’t lived in a place such as Crocodile Creek without knowing the value of such a stone. ‘You can’t…’
‘I can,’ Charles said solidly. ‘Jill, why don’t you go down to the bar while George and I talk business?’
‘I—’
‘Go,’ he said, and propelled her firmly out the door.
They went to dinner at the Athina. They were greeted with pleasure and hugs and exclamations of delight before they so much as made it to their table.
Word was all over town.
‘Oh, but it’s beautiful,’ Sophia Poulos said mistily, looking at the ring and sighing her happiness. ‘If you two knew how much we hoped this would happen…’
‘We’re only doing this for Lily,’ Jill said, startled, but Sophia beamed some more.
‘Nonsense. You wear a beautiful ring. You wear a beautiful dress. You are a beautiful woman and Dr Wetherby…he’s a very handsome man, eh? And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. You’re doing this for Lily? In my eye!’ She gave a snort of derision and headed back to her kitchen. ‘Hey,’ she yelled to her husband. ‘We have lovers on table one. Champagne on the house.’
It was silly. It was embarrassing. It was also kind of fun. But as the meal wore on, as the attention of the restaurant patrons turned away, there was a sudden silence. It stretched out a little too long.
It’s just Charles, Jill told herself, feeling absurdly self-conscious. It’s just my boss.
‘What’s happening tomorrow?’ she asked, and it was the right thing to ask for it slid things back into a work perspective. Here they were comfortable. For the last eight years they’d worked side by side to make their medical service the best.
‘There’s three days’ work happening tomorrow,’ Charles growled. In the project ahead Charles held passion. The kids’ camp on Wallaby Island had been a dream of Charles’s since he’d returned to Crocodile Creek. Jill had been caught up in his enthusiasm and had been as devastated as Charles when the cyclone had wreaked such havoc.
But tragedy could turn to good. With public attention and sympathy focussed on the region, funding had been forthcoming to turn the place into a facility beyond their imagination. Charles was heading there tomorrow to welcome the first kids to the restored and extended camp. It was a wonder he’d found time to talk to the social worker about Lily, Jill thought ruefully, much less take this evening off to wine and dine a fiancée.
And give her a ring.
As they talked about their plans—or, rather, Charles talked and Jill listened—her eyes kept drifting to her ring.
She’d never owned anything so beautiful. Despite what George said, it didn’t look right on her work-worn hand.
But Charles had always known what she was thinking. She had to learn to factor that in. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said gently, interrupting what he was saying to reassure her, and she flushed.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s me who should be sorry. This is no night to be talking about work.’
‘We don’t have a lot more in common,’ she said bluntly, and then bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to sound so…tart.
Maybe she was tart. Maybe that was how she always sounded. She’d stop pretences years ago.
One of the reasons she’d relaxed with Charles over the years had been that he seemed to appreciate blunt talking. He asked for her opinion and he got it.
She needed to soften, though, she thought. He wouldn’t want a wife who shot her mouth off.
‘We have Lily in common,’ he reminded her, and she nodded.
Of course. But… ‘I’m not sure why you want her,’ she said cautiously. ‘I know your reaction when her parents died was the same as mine—overwhelming sadness. But you do already have a daughter.’
‘I have Kate,’ he said. ‘A twenty-seven-year-old
