LITMIR.BIZ

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am planning on telling everyone we’re engaged.’ He hesitated and then held out his hand to the jeweller. ‘Sorry, Alf,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’ve a lady with simple tastes. I’m thinking it’s one of the reasons I’ve asked her to marry me, so we’ll not go against that. Thank you for your help and good day. Coming, Jill?’

      ‘We’re not…?’

      ‘No, we’re not,’ he said forcefully, and propelled his chair out the door before she could argue.

      By the time Jill caught him up he was half a block away. She had to run to catch up.

      He realised, slowed and spun to face her.

      ‘Sorry,’ he said, rueful. ‘Telling me the size of my brother’s engagement ring pushed a few buttons I don’t like to have pushed.’

      ‘I can see that,’ she said cautiously. ‘And the way he treated you…’

      ‘I don’t care about the way he treated me. I’m used to it. But you… You don’t really want a three-carat diamond ring?’

      ‘I don’t want any ring.’ She hesitated, looking down at her hands. They were work hands, scrubbed a hundred times a day in her job as a nurse. They were red and a bit wrinkled. The nails were as short as she could cut them.

      ‘I’d look ridiculous with a diamond.’

      ‘How about an opal?’ Charles asked, and she hesitated. ‘If you don’t want one, just say so.’

      ‘I love opals,’ she said cautiously. ‘But—’

      ‘But nothing. George Meredith’s in town. Have you met him? He’s a local prospector—he spends his time scraping in dirt anywhere from here to Longreach. What he doesn’t know about opals isn’t worth knowing. I know he’s in town because I saw him for a dodgy back this morning. I told him no digging for a week, to stay in town, get himself a decent bed and put his feet up. He’ll be down at the hotel. I also know he has some really decent rock. Let’s go and take a look.’

      He had more than decent rock. He had ready-made jewellery.

      ‘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

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