LITMIR.BIZ

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together in say an hour?’ He glanced at his watch.

      Marissa sprang up with alacrity. ‘No problem!’ Her mood was suddenly euphoric. She had a job. She would have Riley with her. Dusty would be looked after.

      ‘Dusty will go back in the ute, so I’ll need the keys.’ His voice brooked no argument. ‘It’s just not possible to take him on the chopper.’

      ‘He’ll be fine,’ Marissa nodded her acceptance. ‘I’ll explain the circumstances to him.’

      He looked down on her as though what she said was preposterous. ‘You’re joking, right?’

      She shook her head. ‘No, I mean it. Dusty understands perfectly well what I’m saying. Besides I don’t want him nipping your driver.’

      That laugh again! ‘Highly improbable, Ms Devlin. Bart is in no danger whatever of getting nipped by the likes of your guard dog. Besides, cattle dogs have an inbuilt instinct for knowing who’s a friend and who isn’t.’

      ‘That’s all to the good,’ Marissa answered soberly. ‘Because none of us can get by without friends.’

      ‘Let’s hold on to that thought, Ms Devlin,’ he said dryly.

      CHAPTER THREE

      RILEY was thrilled out of his mind by the ride in the chopper. It was all so exciting! Marissa found it just as thrilling—her first time in a chopper, as well—but she managed to keep her youthful excitement under wraps. It would have taken them probably a gruelling hot and sweaty two hours to get to the station in the ute. By helicopter, they were over Wungalla, a staggeringly vast cattle station, verging into the Simpson desert, far too quickly.

      A giant silver hangar was coming up. Erected on the outskirts of the huge station complex it comprised so many outbuildings to Marissa’s fascinated eyes it looked like a world to itself. The station name and logo were emblazoned in royal blue, yellow and white on the silver roof of the hangar that looked like it could comfortably house a couple of Boeing Airbuses. Another yellow chopper, similar to the one they were in, sat squat as a duck a short distance away from the hangar, several trucks and a couple of Jeeps parked nearby.

      She fully expected Holt McMaster would land the chopper on the runway, instead they kept whirring on until they were right over what was obviously the home compound, a startlingly green oasis dotted with lovely shady trees and garden beds of various shapes. It came as an enormous surprise, set down as it was in the middle of a seemingly infinite desert. She had already learned the station’s longest boundary stretched for more than a hundred miles. Even walking from the airstrip to the homestead would be unthinkable.

      During the flight her attention had been captured by the chains of billabongs, lagoons and water channels that crisscrossed the station like life giving veins. Impossible to believe those same sluggish waterways could rise tens of feet overnight spreading as much as fifty miles wide. This was drought country. No way of telling when the rains would come. The biggest hope lay in the overflow from the floodwaters in the monsoonal North carried down by the great western river system. Sometimes, if only rarely, the floodwaters reached Lake Eyre usually covered by a salt crust some fifteen feet deep.

      The whole region was amazing. Vaulted blue skies, furnace-red earth, and in high contrast, the ghost gums—some said the most beautiful gums of all—their trunks a dazzling white against the fiery soil. It was a lonely, dramatic landscape, seemingly without borders. The authentic Australia, she supposed, its mystique celebrated in folk songs and poetry. It was amazingly easy to give herself over to it. This was a great adventure, as well as a job. She could hardly believe she had taken a few giant steps into the future.

      They were standing in the driveway facing Wungalla homestead. Holt was giving instructions to a well-weathered individual who was dressed like a gardener, although a single gardener wouldn’t be able to handle the workload involved in looking after extensive grounds as big as the botanical gardens, Marissa thought.

      ‘Gosh, are we going to live here?’ Riley’s face was a study in amazement bordering on awe. ‘It must be a castle!’ he gasped.

      ‘It’s certainly very grand.’ Marissa lightly shook his trusting little hand.

      Wungalla homestead, begun in the 1860s and added to over the years, gave an immediate impression of colonial splendour. Lord knows how much it would cost to build today, Marissa thought. Her early childhood home, architect designed had been among the best of contemporary homes, Uncle Bryan’s not quite so impressive, but this was Riley’s closest encounter with grandness.

      Wungalla’s two-storey central section, the original homestead, was Georgian in style, flanked by long equally balanced one-storey wings, added at a later date. A broad verandah surrounded the house on three sides. Four pairs of shuttered French doors were ranged along the verandah to either side of the front door which lay wide-open. Incredibly a deep border of flourishing yellow roses ran to either side of the short flight of stone steps, not wilting but glowing in the shimmering heat.

      Marissa like Riley stood transfixed, full of wonder and disbelief.

      ‘Gee, I hope they like us!’ Riley whispered.

      ‘What’s not to like?’ Marissa joked, in reality just as nervous as Riley. Holt McMaster had already warned her this wasn’t going to be easy.

      ‘Right, we’ll go in.’ Moving briskly, he joined them. ‘Hal will bring your things in and deliver them to your rooms. Though I have to say it doesn’t look like you intend to stay more than a day or two.’

      Marissa flushed. ‘I couldn’t bring too much in the ute,’ she said. ‘If I was lucky enough to land a job I fully intended having the rest of our things sent out.’

      Those black eyes mocked her gently. ‘My dear Ms Devlin, not only could that prove to be interminable, it could blow your nest egg. Some time next week I’ll fly you in to Coorabri. It’s much bigger than Ransom, and it does have a surprisingly good clothing store. Western clothing, that is.’

      ‘And what do I do for money?’ Marissa quipped, intending it only as a rhetorical question.

      ‘Charge it up to the station,’ he said promptly. ‘It so happens we have a pretty good clothing store here but it doesn’t cater to little boys and slips of girls.’

      She wasn’t a slip of a girl. She was a professional woman. ‘Are we expected?’ She lifted serious eyes.

      ‘You mustn’t worry about that!’

      ‘Then we’re not expected?’

      ‘Don’t take it to heart, Ms Devlin. I wanted you to be a big surprise.’ He glanced down at Riley, directly addressing him ‘Go forth and conquer, Riley!’

      Riley who had been smiling, suddenly looked shaken. ‘That’s what Daddy used to say.’ His voice wobbled. How terrible it was to think his daddy was no longer there for him.

      ‘And it was good advice! Where is Daddy?’ Holt asked, placing his hand on Riley’s shoulder.

      Marissa intervened. ‘I told you. Talking about it only makes Riley very upset.’

      Holt shook his head. ‘He’s too young to handle it all on his own. Haven’t you ever heard the truth will set you free?’

      ‘I’ve told you the truth.’ Colour came to her cheeks, fire to her eyes.

      ‘Don’t flash those blue eyes at me, Ms Devlin,’ he lightly warned, ‘though I dare say it’s relieving your feelings. Anyway, come on up. Olly is bound to be out in a minute.’

      Marissa halted, to ask. ‘What do we call you, Mr McMaster?’

      His laugh was short. ‘If you look at me like that, every man in the world might want to be Mr McMaster.’ He tried it out on his tongue. ‘It sounds very proper! Anyway, it’ll do for a start.’ He mussed Riley’s hair. ‘We don’t

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