‘No, we couldn’t,’ said Hal as he turned to go. ‘If you want to come back to Wirrindago with me, you’re just going to have to wait.’

Charming.

Huffily, Meredith watched him stride off. It wouldn’t have killed him to give her some indication of how long he was going to be, would it?

She turned back to the veranda with a sigh. It looked like being a long wait.

And it was. Meredith couldn’t believe how one man could contrive to spend so much time in Whyman’s Creek. Five minutes had been enough for her, but Hal Granger seemed capable of keeping himself busy there for hours.

It felt like hours anyway.

Anxious in case he forgot about her, Meredith brought out her suitcase and stayed on the pub veranda to keep a vigilant watch on the street. It wasn’t hard to follow him as he moved between the store and the bank and what Bill had told her was the stock agent’s office. Whyman’s Creek wasn’t the kind of town where crowds thronged the streets. In fact, sometimes Hal Granger was the only person in sight and Meredith was sure he was deliberately taking his time to keep her waiting.

Irritably, she waved the flies from her face. It was incredibly hot, even in the shade, and she wanted nothing more than to lie down somewhere cool and go to sleep for a week. In spite of the discomfort, her eyelids kept closing and she had to jerk herself awake. The moment she fell asleep she knew Hal Granger would have driven off to Wirrindago without her, claiming that she ‘wasn’t ready’.

So she took out her laptop and tried to concentrate on some work, but it was hard when Hal’s tall, austere figure kept catching at the corner of her eye as he crossed the street or came out of the store, and his grim features seemed to shimmer between her eyes and the computer screen. Those pale, almost silvery eyes were definitely striking and while Meredith didn’t think that she had noticed the angular planes of his face or the set of his mouth particularly, it was amazing how clearly she could picture them now.