Read Online Cattle Baron: Nanny Needed by Margaret Way - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Margaret Way
Tags: Fiction, General, Romance, Contemporary, Love Stories, Fiction - Romance, Ranchers, Romance - Contemporary, Romance: Modern, English Light Romantic Fiction
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than she thought possible. A friend had recently come back from the Alice and had found the trip to the Centre and its great monuments fabulous. “Listen, I’m still stunned.” She looked right at him. “I take it there’ll be no hanky panky?”
“Absolutely not! Unless you want it. Seriously, I was brought up a gentleman, Ms Wyatt. No from a woman and I’m gone! Out of there!”
“I bet there’ve been precious few nos,” she said sharply.
“A gentleman doesn’t tell. If you can be ready, we can leave in the morning.”
She held up a hand. “Whoa, there! I’m still too dumb-founded to give you an answer.”
The coffee had begun to perk. “That’s okay. I don’t want to rush you. Take your time. But I’ll need to know before I leave.”
The pure utter simplicity of the idea!
CHAPTER FIVE
A MBER’S trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard, to the North Queensland rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, marvellous wine country in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, the great cities of the world—nothing had even given her a glimpse into what was the Great Australian Outback. The sheer dimensions were overwhelming. The isolation frightening. It was like looking out at the world at the time of Creation, with no human habitation. Wilderness fanned out to eternity…
She had been concentrating so much on the journey her head felt tight. The Cattle Baron sat beside her at the controls, splendidly serene. Flying his own plane was a piece of cake to him. Equivalent to her taking a cab. She was very grateful to him. He had offered her salvation. For a time, anyway. An unexpected chance to do what she had always wanted to do since she had been caught up as a child into the wonderful realm of books:
Write one herself.
She’d had ideas mulling around in her head for years. She didn’t expect to measure up to her great favourites, but she thought she could turn out something that might rate getting published. In her heart she welcomed and embraced this extraordinary chance. And what a setting! She already had thesense of great separation . This was another world from the lush Eastern seaboard. She would be seeing the Interior through fresh, marvelling eyes. She would be seeing it too through his eyes. This was Cal MacFarlane’s world. He had offered her escape and a chance. Now it was up to her. The shock and unexpectedness of it all had shoved the extremes of being jilted, the public humiliation and the loss of her job right to the back of her mind. Truth be known, she felt downright energised!
They were on the last lap of the journey, flying into the MacFarlanes’ desert fortress, Jingala. It must have been a phenomenal slog to have achieved so much in this place that few people to this day had ever seen. Over the long journey she had witnessed the landscape totally changing its character. Now its most striking feature, apart from the empty immensity, was the dry, vibrating colour. And what colour! It was spectacular. The great vault of the sky was a vigorous cobalt-blue. It contrasted wonderfully with the flaming orange-red of an ancient land that pulsed in oven-baked heat. The rolling red sand dunes surrounding it were a source of fascination. They ran in endless parallel waves with the anti-clockwise rhythm of the wind curling them over at the top, mimicking the waves of the legendary sea of pre-history.
Spinifex, burnt gold and shaped like spherical bales, gave the impression of the greatest crop ever sown on earth. The mirage she had heard so much about lay beneath them like silvery quivering bolts of material that seemed to change form and shape as she watched. Trees grew in the arid terrain, gnarled and twisted into living sculptures. She could easily spot the ghost gums with their blazing white boles. This was Dreamtime country. Venerable.
As they descended, she caught the full dazzle of chain after chain of billabongs, some silver, some palest blue likeaquamarine, others the cool
“Absolutely not! Unless you want it. Seriously, I was brought up a gentleman, Ms Wyatt. No from a woman and I’m gone! Out of there!”
“I bet there’ve been precious few nos,” she said sharply.
“A gentleman doesn’t tell. If you can be ready, we can leave in the morning.”
She held up a hand. “Whoa, there! I’m still too dumb-founded to give you an answer.”
The coffee had begun to perk. “That’s okay. I don’t want to rush you. Take your time. But I’ll need to know before I leave.”
The pure utter simplicity of the idea!
CHAPTER FIVE
A MBER’S trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard, to the North Queensland rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, marvellous wine country in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, the great cities of the world—nothing had even given her a glimpse into what was the Great Australian Outback. The sheer dimensions were overwhelming. The isolation frightening. It was like looking out at the world at the time of Creation, with no human habitation. Wilderness fanned out to eternity…
She had been concentrating so much on the journey her head felt tight. The Cattle Baron sat beside her at the controls, splendidly serene. Flying his own plane was a piece of cake to him. Equivalent to her taking a cab. She was very grateful to him. He had offered her salvation. For a time, anyway. An unexpected chance to do what she had always wanted to do since she had been caught up as a child into the wonderful realm of books:
Write one herself.
She’d had ideas mulling around in her head for years. She didn’t expect to measure up to her great favourites, but she thought she could turn out something that might rate getting published. In her heart she welcomed and embraced this extraordinary chance. And what a setting! She already had thesense of great separation . This was another world from the lush Eastern seaboard. She would be seeing the Interior through fresh, marvelling eyes. She would be seeing it too through his eyes. This was Cal MacFarlane’s world. He had offered her escape and a chance. Now it was up to her. The shock and unexpectedness of it all had shoved the extremes of being jilted, the public humiliation and the loss of her job right to the back of her mind. Truth be known, she felt downright energised!
They were on the last lap of the journey, flying into the MacFarlanes’ desert fortress, Jingala. It must have been a phenomenal slog to have achieved so much in this place that few people to this day had ever seen. Over the long journey she had witnessed the landscape totally changing its character. Now its most striking feature, apart from the empty immensity, was the dry, vibrating colour. And what colour! It was spectacular. The great vault of the sky was a vigorous cobalt-blue. It contrasted wonderfully with the flaming orange-red of an ancient land that pulsed in oven-baked heat. The rolling red sand dunes surrounding it were a source of fascination. They ran in endless parallel waves with the anti-clockwise rhythm of the wind curling them over at the top, mimicking the waves of the legendary sea of pre-history.
Spinifex, burnt gold and shaped like spherical bales, gave the impression of the greatest crop ever sown on earth. The mirage she had heard so much about lay beneath them like silvery quivering bolts of material that seemed to change form and shape as she watched. Trees grew in the arid terrain, gnarled and twisted into living sculptures. She could easily spot the ghost gums with their blazing white boles. This was Dreamtime country. Venerable.
As they descended, she caught the full dazzle of chain after chain of billabongs, some silver, some palest blue likeaquamarine, others the cool
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