Biting her lip, Lucy basted the joint. ‘I wish there was something I could do to help.’

‘There is.’ Meredith took a breath. ‘I think-it’s not just me, though, his parents and the doctors think it too-we all think that the sound of your voice might be what it takes to bring Richard round.’

Lucy’s head came up at that, and she froze in mid-baste. ‘What?’

‘The doctors told us to keep talking to him,’ Meredith hurried on, ‘so that’s what everyone’s been doing, but I’m sure it’s you he wants to hear. I’m sure he would wake up for you.’

To her horror, she found her voice cracking a little at the end and she clamped her lips together in a fiercely straight line for a moment. ‘I just think that if you were to sit next to him,’ she went on after drawing a steadying breath, ‘if you were to hold his hand and tell him that you were there, I think Richard would make that extra effort that he needs.’

Lucy put the roast back in the oven. ‘You want me to go back to London?’ she said in a dull voice.

‘Yes.’ Meredith nodded eagerly. ‘Richard’s parents have given me the money for your ticket. They just want you there as soon as possible.’ She paused, seeing the reluctance in her sister’s expression. ‘It wouldn’t be for ever, Lucy. You could come back to Australia as soon as Richard was out of danger, but…yes, please come back with me,’ she said. ‘It would mean so much to Richard.’

‘And to you?’ asked Lucy.

Meredith looked away, unable to meet her eyes. ‘I just want him to get better,’ she said in a low voice. ‘That’s all.’

Lucy sighed. Pulling out a chair, she sat down at the table and rubbed her eyes. ‘I’m on a contract,’ she said. ‘I’m committed to staying here for another four months, at least.’

‘Hal Granger told me about that,’ said Meredith. ‘It sounds to me as if he was taking advantage of you, Lucy. He can’t hold you to it if you want to leave.’

‘But that’s just it, I don’t want to leave,’ Lucy confessed, raising her head. ‘I love it here.’

She half smiled at Meredith’s expression. ‘I know it’s not your kind of place, but I feel as if I’ve finally found the place I want to be and the man I want to be with.’

‘You’ve fallen in love again?’ said Meredith, resigned, and Lucy bridled.

‘Don’t say it like that! This time it’s for real…it is!’ she insisted, offended by her sister’s sceptical expression. ‘Kevin’s different from anyone else I’ve ever met. You’ll understand when you meet him.

‘He’s so…’ She hugged her arms together, trying to find the words to describe him. ‘Well, he’s special,’ was the best she could come up with. ‘It’s an incredible feeling when you look at someone and your knees go week, and you just think, That’s the one!’

Meredith didn’t say anything. She was thinking about the first time she had met Richard. She had taken one look into his smiling brown eyes and her heart had done a strange flip. There you are, she had thought. I’ve been waiting my whole life for you.

‘I really love him,’ Lucy was saying, ‘and I’m sure-well, almost sure-that Kevin feels the same way about me. We’ve been getting on really well. Kevin’s not someone who rushes into things-he’s not like me, which is a good thing, isn’t it?-but I’ve just got this feeling, here,’ she said, thumping her heart, ‘that’s it’s meant to be.’

‘I see,’ said Meredith flatly.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to help Richard,’ Lucy said. ‘I do. I’m very fond of him. He’ll always be a friend and, even if he wasn’t, I’d do it for you, Meredith, but…’

She bit her lip. ‘If I go, I won’t be able to come back,’ she said. ‘Hal Granger is a hard man. He’d be furious with me if I broke my contract, and I know he wouldn’t let me come back. And how could I leave Emma and Mickey on their own? The poor kids have just arrived and they’re horribly homesick. Hal’s too busy to look after them and-’

Lucy stopped abruptly, catching sight of the look on Meredith’s face. She covered her face with her hands and shook her head slowly. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, appalled at herself. ‘I shouldn’t be talking like this when Richard’s so ill. I’m sorry, Meredith.’

Lowering her hands, she took a deep breath. ‘Do you really think it will make such a difference if I go back?’

It was Meredith’s turn to hesitate. She hadn’t realised until now quite what she was asking Lucy to give up. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said slowly. ‘I wish we had some way of finding out how he was. If he’s come round already, then of course there would be no need for you to go back, but how can we know? I tried ringing Richard’s mother when I got here, but then I remembered that my phone wouldn’t work.’

‘I’ll ask Hal if we can use the phone in the office,’ said Lucy, pushing back her chair. ‘He’s hard, but he’s not mean.’

Barely five minutes later, Meredith was listening to Richard’s mother weeping down the phone. ‘He’s still just lying there,’ she said through her tears. ‘We’re at our wits’ end. The doctors say we need to find something to stimulate him, but we’ve tried everything. If only Lucy were here! Have you found out where she is yet?’

Meredith hesitated, not wanting to commit her sister to anything before she was ready, but Lucy, who had been listening in, reached calmly across and took the phone from her.

‘Yes, she’s found me, Ellen. I’m coming back as soon as I can.’

‘Lucy…’ said Meredith a little helplessly when she had put down the phone.

‘It’s OK.’ Lucy smiled at her. ‘Richard being ill didn’t seem quite real when you told me about it, but hearing Ellen so upset brought it home to me. Of course I’ll go back.’

‘What about Kevin?’

‘He’ll wait for me,’ said Lucy, determinedly bright. ‘I know he will. I’ll come back to him. Something will turn up. Maybe he could find a job on another station and I could join him there.’

‘Or,’ said Meredith slowly, ‘you could come back here.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘I wish I could, but Hal is a man who means what he says. If I break my contract now, there’s no way I’d ever be able to come back. Don’t worry about it, Meredith. It’s Richard that matters, really, and there’s nothing you can do about Hal.’

But Meredith wasn’t a girl who liked to be told that there was nothing she could do. Her lips pressed together in a determined way and there was a look in her eye as she thought through her plan that Lucy recognised with a little lift of her heart. When Meredith looked like that, Meredith made things happen.

‘We’ll see about that,’ she said.

The homestead was much bigger and more rambling than it seemed from outside, and it took Meredith some time to find Hal. Preoccupied by supper and the decision she had just made, Lucy had waved vaguely in the direction of the back of the house and said he would probably be on the back veranda.

He was. At least, Meredith assumed that it was the back veranda, since that was where she found him. He had showered and shaved and was wearing clean jeans and a faded red shirt, although she didn’t notice at first.

‘Oh,’ she said as the screen door that separated every room from the outside clattered to behind her and she found herself staring at quite the most spectacular sunset she had ever seen.

The kitchen was on the other side of the house and, although she had been vaguely aware that the light was fading, nothing had prepared her to step through the door into a blaze of gold and red and orange. It was so dramatic that for a long moment she could just stand and gape.

‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ Hal’s voice from the end of the veranda startled her out of her trance and she walked slowly down to join him, her eyes still on the sunset.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she acknowledged. ‘But a bit overwhelming too. It’s so big and so…so there. You feel like you could almost reach out and touch it.’

‘Watch,’ said Hal, and she stood next to him in silence as the golden sky flushed deeper and deeper until it was a fiery red and the range of bare hills in the distance darkened into purple and then black. A strange hush marked the moment when the great ball of the sun sank behind below the horizon, and the breath caught at the back of Meredith’s throat. It was as if the earth itself had stopped turning and the whole world was waiting for a sign that the evening could begin.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over. An insect rasped somewhere. She could hear Lucy clattering dishes in the kitchen and Emma and Mickey’s voices raised in a squabble.

Meredith let out a shaky breath and cleared her throat. ‘Gosh,’ she said weakly.

Hal was glad that the sunset at least had impressed her. Nothing else about the outback had. Then he wondered why he cared whether she was impressed or not.

And why he was so aware of her standing next to him.

‘You’re looking better,’ he said gruffly.

Meredith put a hand up to her clean hair, remembering with a grimace how long it had taken her to wash out the dust and the tangles. ‘I certainly feel better,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long it will take to get all the sand out of the shower, though. I’ve never been that gritty before!’

She didn’t look gritty now. She looked soft and warm and voluptuous, and Hal could actually feel his hand tingling with the temptation to reach out and see if her skin felt as smooth as it looked.

Averting his eyes, he leant on the veranda rail and wished she hadn’t mentioned being in the shower, wished he wasn’t finding it quite so easy to picture her there. In spite of keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the darkening sky ahead, he was very conscious of her body as she stood beside him, which was strange as she was doing absolutely nothing to draw attention to it.

The loose, flowing skirt and top with its V-neck and three-quarter-length sleeves could hardly have been less revealing. The skirt was a little out of place, but otherwise Hal had to admit that she was dressed sensibly enough, certainly more so than she had been earlier.

So there was no reason to notice that the top outlined curves that he hadn’t noticed before. No reason to find her feminine and somehow alluring, in spite of the fact that her expression was perfectly composed. She was cool and businesslike and not in the least interested in trying to attract him.

Any more than he wanted to be attracted.

‘I was wondering if I could have a word,’ she said, sounding exactly as if she had popped her head round an office door to talk to a colleague.

The realisation that she was all business while he was struggling like an awkward adolescent to keep his eyes off her riled Hal.

‘If you’re going to try and talk me into changing my mind about Lucy, forget it,’ he said brusquely. ‘I made the situation clear when I hired her and she accepted the conditions.’

‘I appreciate that,’ said Meredith, ‘but I do have a proposal to put to you.’

Hal scowled. Why did she have to make everything sound like a business strategy? Why couldn’t she sound sultry and seductive, the way that mouth should sound? ‘What sort of proposal?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘A sensible one, I think.’

It would be, of course. She might have a body meant for fun and flirtation, but Hal was prepared to bet that Meredith’s head would always stay cool and clear.

‘As far as I’m concerned, the only sensible solution is for Lucy to stay and do the job she’s contracted to do,’ he said.

‘But it’s getting the job done that’s important to you, rather than who does it?’

‘I guess so,’ he said grudgingly, wondering where all this was going.

‘Then it wouldn’t matter to you if I took Lucy’s place and did the job for her, would it?’

‘You?’ Hal straightened from the rail in surprise. He wasn’t quite sure what he had been expecting her to say, but it certainly hadn’t been that.

‘Why not?’ said Meredith coolly. ‘I’m quite capable. I can do everything Lucy can do. I can cook and, while I don’t have much experience of children either, I don’t see why I shouldn’t help Emma and Mickey with their lessons. I’ve got a degree and they’re not going to be studying brain surgery, are they?’

She looked, thought Hal, completely serious, and for a moment he could only stare at her, trying to think of a reason why it was so obviously a ridiculous idea. ‘You would hate it out here,’ he said at last and Meredith shrugged.

‘I’m not proposing to stay long,’ she pointed out. ‘Just long enough for Lucy to get to England, do what she can for Richard and come back as soon as possible.’

‘And how long will that be?’

‘That depends how Richard is. We can’t tell until she gets to the hospital. Maybe two or three weeks?’