Trouble in Nirvana (15 page)

“No, thanks. I had enough to drink last night.”

“Yes,” he said. “You were pretty pissed.”

That was a low blow! And
he
hadn’t been drinking water all night.

“I wasn’t drunk. I wouldn’t have driven if I had been. I knew exactly what I was doing, Tom,” she countered swiftly.

He spun about and impaled her with a steely-eyed gaze. “I wish
I’d
known exactly what you were doing.” He twisted the cap off the stubbie with a vicious snap of the wrist and tossed it into the sink.

“Would it have made any difference?” she asked softly, anger dissipating under the reminder of her harsh words of early this morning.

He stared at her, considering his reply. “Of course it would.” He gave a tiny shake of his head, lips twisted into a wry grimace, and left the kitchen.

Primrose filled a saucepan with water, head bowed, trying in vain to prevent the fat tears which rolled slowly down her cheeks like boulders. She heaved the pan across to the stove top and wiped her face on the sleeve of Tom’s sweatshirt. The fabric smelled of him. Each time she moved he moved with her, reminding her all afternoon of the warmth and strength of his body and the comfort of his arms. Taken for granted until now.

He was the only person in the place who’d treated her well and befriended her apart from Nirupam and more recently Mike, and she’d done what in return? Used and abused him. She’d have to be on best behaviour from now on. Prove to him she wasn’t a bitch, prove she was the sort of woman he originally thought she was, the one he wanted to take to bed. The one he wanted to make love to.

For starters she’d cook him the best sausages and mash he’d ever eaten.

Chapter Seven

Tom went to the living room and switched on the TV for the news. An earnest-faced woman was describing the disastrous effects of storms in Canberra where huge amounts of hail had ripped through the city centre, causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

Nature in all its glory. Powerful and unstoppable. If it wasn’t drought or fires it was hail and flooding. Who’d be a farmer in this country?

He sucked on his beer. Who’d be a farmer’s wife in this country? Certainly not the girl bashing pots and pans around in his kitchen. How was he supposed to spend a night with her in the house but not in his bed? She’d have to lock her door. He grunted in silent, cynical amusement. If he so much as ventured near her he’d be sent packing. She’d made that very clear. A
nice
man. Great.

Yep, a girl who didn’t know what she was doing was as dangerous and mad as a cut snake. Trouble was he had the sneaking suspicion he’d begun to fall for her in a big way. A very big way. Something about her made him want to protect her. The aggression and defiance were a front she put up to compensate for the lost, bewildered little girl struggling to survive by herself in a world which hadn’t done her any favours so far.

Despite the run-ins with Dad, being estranged from his family was unthinkable, as was being separated the way she and Danny were from each other and had been from their parents. To have become a professional anything from her background showed how tough she was. Danny said she had completed a performing degree on flute at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. What had gone wrong? There must be more to this change than the dud fiancé.

The news moved on to the cricket results. Tom concentrated until the bulletin was over and the weather girl announced a day of patchy showers then a return to the heat. The river would go down in no time once the rain stopped. Primrose could go home tomorrow. Just as well. He couldn’t afford to get used to having her in his house.

“Dinner’s ready.” She stood in the doorway, face pink from cooking, the too large clothes making her look like a child playing dress-ups. “I set the table in the kitchen. Is that where you eat?”

Tom rose to his feet. “Yep. Thanks.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she said, her expression solemn. “It’s the least I can do for landing on you this way.” He followed her to the kitchen where she’d laid two places opposite each other, neatly arranged knife and fork, salt and pepper. He found the tomato sauce in the fridge, and sat down.

“You didn’t have much choice.”

“Neither did you, although you could have driven me in to the pub,” she said. “How many sausages?”

“Three for starters.” He hadn’t even considered taking her into town. “Would have been a rough trip over the ridge in this weather.”

“Heavens, yes.” Primrose shuddered in agreement as she placed a heaped plate of grilled sausages, creamy white mashed potato and a dollop of something reddish with tomato and capsicums in it. Smelled delicious. Tasted even better. “What’s this?”

“Ratatouille. Plus some herbs.”

“Very good.”

“It tastes so much better with home grown vegetables and herbs. They’re fantastic. Do you grow everything yourself?”

“Pretty much,” he said with his mouth full of sausage.

“Do you have help?”

He shook his head. “Not any more. I did when I was getting started. I hire people when I need. Fruit pickers, truffle sniffing dogs, for example.”

She smiled. “I’ve seen stuff on TV about truffle growers in France. They use pigs.”

“Yes but dogs don’t eat the truffles. It’s hard to argue with a hungry pig.” He grinned and she laughed.

“So you’re truly self sufficient.” He nodded. He’d told her that already. “Can you handle more land?” Her smile faded. “Do you need it?”

He didn’t rise to her bait, didn’t want to travel that well worn path again. “I want to try truffles on a broad scale. They can make a lot of money. To be viable I need a larger plantation so I can test different host trees. Plus there are other crops I’d like to test. Strawberries using a variety of mulching methods. Olives.” He shoved in another chunk of sausage and potato.

Primrose finished her single sausage in silence. Tom was amazing. He was doing what Danny had dreamed of, tried and so far, failed to achieve. He’d created a self sustaining, flourishing property, a home. Danny came to Kullanurra with little knowledge of the land, she knew for a fact. His dream bore scant relationship to reality.

“Who died and left you that place?” His question startled her.

“Mum’s stepfather.”

“Les Cochrane?”

“Yes. Did you know him?”

“No-body knew him very well. He died about a year after I bought this place. Took a week before anyone found him.”

“How sad!” She gazed at him in dismay. “We never knew him, either. Gran died years before and he never kept in touch with any of us. Danny and I were amazed when they told us he’d left us his land. I suppose we were the only relatives he had and we weren’t even properly related.” Her mouth quivered slightly and she bit her lip. “It’s so sad.”

He nodded. “I’d have a chat occasionally but he didn’t socialise.”

“I don’t want to end up like Les. All alone, no-body knowing or caring whether I’m dead or alive.” A shudder rippled through her body.

He laughed. “Why on earth would you end up like him?”

“Danny’s my only relative. And Nirupam. But they don’t really want me around. At least, Danny doesn’t. And I won’t be able to stay after the baby’s born. Not after telling him to kick everyone out.”

Tom frowned. “You’re his sister. It’s a bit different.”

“Not to Danny. In your family it might be different but we...we don’t agree on much. You saw today.”

“I doubt whether he’ll chuck you out. Nirupam will need help with the baby.”

“For a while, but later. . .”

“Why would he turf you out when he welcomes everybody and his flea bitten dog?” Tom got up and helped himself to more ratatouille and another sausage. Primrose shook her head when he offered her a second helping.

She said with an intense quiet determination, “I won’t let him sell any more of our land, Tom.”

He almost laughed aloud at the craziness of her sudden intense attachment to a block of land she’d never even seen before last week. “Why not? You just said yourself he won’t want you here. Why on earth should you care what he does with it? He’ll give you half the money, I’m sure.”

Her voice rose indignantly, “It’s not the money. Neither of you get it! It’s the land. It’s a place that’s ours. A place we actually own. We never had security as kids. We moved all the time. That’s why Danny came here.”

“Fair enough.” His own family felt exactly the same way about the land in Cowra, handed down from father to son. The line had to start somewhere. Why not with Danny and his child?

Then she said, “I want to stay here too. Maybe build my own house.”

Tom stared at her in astonishment, mid chew. “And do what? You know even less about farming than Danny.”

“I can learn.”

Learn? Who from? Danny the idealist, Kurt the lunatic? “You’re a flute player for heaven’s sake!”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not anymore?”

She pushed mashed potato around on her plate, scraping and scooping little piles and flattening them with her fork. “It’s very stressful. I couldn’t cope. I don’t want to live my life that way—I started having migraines, not sleeping. It was stress.”

“Can’t you teach or something?”

She shrugged. “I suppose I could.” Mojo’s pleased little face flashed through her mind. He’d be disappointed she hadn’t returned to show him her flute and surprisingly, she was disappointed at having let him down. “I taught a bit when I was a student—for the money. I never had time when I freelanced.”

Tom went on, “I imagine you’d find a lot of students in this area. We don’t have much in the way of proper musicians. Can you play anything else?”

“Piano—a bit.”

“See.” He gestured with his fork. “Use the talent you’ve got. You might surprise yourself.”

“But I want a complete change.”

“You’ll find being a farmer pretty stressful. Specially if you don’t know anything about it. Look at Danny.”

He was right. Primrose sagged in her chair. She didn’t have the knowledge to become a farmer, she wouldn’t know where to start. But even so. “I won’t let him sell you any more land.”

Tom met her gaze with equal firmness. “I understand what you’re saying but I think you’ll find you don’t have much choice. Unless you can help Danny enough to make a go of the place, or you’ve enough money to support him and his family.”

Primrose collected the dirty plates and stood up. “How we manage isn’t any of your business.”

“No. Thanks for cooking dinner. It was very nice.” He used the word deliberately but she didn’t get the reference. She wouldn’t. He meant nothing to her and the night they’d spent together had slipped from her mind completely. He wished he could dismiss the memory as easily, but the silky smoothness of her skin was imprinted into his fingers, and the perfume of her body taunted him every time she moved close.

“You’re welcome.” She turned away to the sink. Tom grabbed a tea towel and dried while she washed, making occasional comments about the weather and how his dams and tanks would fill up if the rain held on a little longer. Safe, mundane topics to keep his mind away from the dangerous, impossible one.

“I’ve never thought about the weather much,” Primrose said as she scrubbed the mashed potato pan.

“It’s crucial for us,” said Tom. “Means success or failure. A comfortable living or ruin.”

“Why do you do it?” She paused mid scrub. “If it’s such a lottery?”

“Because I think I can make a difference to the way farmers operate. An improvement. My father worked like a slave on his land and it nearly killed him. Years of drought meant he had to sell off his livestock or watch them die of starvation because he couldn’t afford to buy feed. He switched to crops but the same thing happened. Too much rain or too little too late.”

“Why did he keep at it?”

“Because he didn’t know how to do anything else and he loved the land. It was where he grew up.”

“His home,” said Primrose softly.

“Our home. He couldn’t turn his back on the place his parents had worked so hard for.”

“But why aren’t you working there with him?”

Tom said, after a pause, “My brother Sean is. He’ll take over when Dad retires. If he ever does, the tough old devil. They’re doing all right now apart from the drought. I’ve made a few suggestions and they’ve taken them on board. Seems to be working.”

“He must be proud of you, your Dad.”

Tom sucked in air and let it out through pursed lips. “Dad’s pretty set in his ways. He’s an old school farmer. He’s not convinced radically new methods and science will make a difference. “You smart buggers still can’t make it rain when we need it,” he says.”

“So you have something to prove here, on your place.” Primrose faced him, eyebrows raised. “You need to show your father you know what you’re doing.” She turned back to the sink full of dirty water while he grappled with the sudden insane desire he’d had to kiss her. The way she looked at him with the fervour of her opinion making her eyes glow, lips parted, brow wrinkled with the intensity—her oblique support of his worth—was almost irresistible. Almost. If he hadn’t already given in once and suffered the consequences.

He frowned, considering her remark. “Maybe. I don’t think of it that way.”

“Maybe you don’t but it doesn’t negate the fact that’s what you’re doing. You want to show him you can do better than he can. And that you haven’t been wasting your time.”

Her words prickled like a handful of thistles. “Rubbish! I’m sharing my knowledge with Sean. He’s receptive. I want to help them make a go of the place.”

“And of your own.”

“Of course!” Tom turned away and slung the tea towel over the oven door handle. Primrose’s remarks struck a sore spot all right but he wasn’t going to let her see just how close to the truth she was. His father’s angry face flashed before his eyes, the tanned skin lined and marked by years of heat, dust, and heartbreak. The reproach in his grey eyes saying one more pain had been added to his burden—the fact his eldest son didn’t want to stay and work the family property. Wanted instead to go to the city and do some fancy university degree that was all academic books, and no practical use to man nor beast. Giving up, turning his back on the Fairbrother heritage.