A Place to Remember Page 3

  ‘No. Gross are these clothes I’m wearing. So, K-K-K-Katie, my only plan right now is to go home and get out of them.’

  ‘Need a hand?’ she teased.

  ‘Some things I can manage on my own, but thanks.’

  ‘Of course you can. That’s the great thing about our partnership. We’ll play to our strengths, like all great teams do. Dad said teamwork is how the Candlebark Cowboys won last season. Have a goal and make it happen.’

  John’s plans for Ivy-May might have been big and exciting, but Katie knew he also despaired of renovating history, even though at some point Ivy-May’s rooms would require refurbishing. Such a task took a special kind of person and Katie had an eye for design and colour, whereas John didn’t have a creative bone in his body, unless food was involved. His other love, after his Brahman cattle, was cooking. He was getting good at it too, with local and homegrown ingredients fuelling his passion. With John doing the cooking for the guests, once his parents had retired to a house in town, there’d be no hiring uninspired cooks, like Marjorie Tate had had to do yesterday.

  Every passing year brought Katie’s and John’s plans closer, the concept so real she could taste the fancy dinners he would prepare while she escorted diners to tables in cosy corner nooks, either in the garden on warm nights or by open fires in winter. They’d set tables with gleaming white linen, shiny cutlery, and offer welcoming glasses of the finest sparkling wine. While Katie would manage the accommodation bookings, the admin and advertising, John would be in charge of the jackaroos they’d hire to do all the things they would be too busy for. There’d be no shortage of stock hands looking for work. Then, of course, there’d be the team of women Katie would need to clean the cabins, making sure they had the crispest sheets and freshest flowers, and that each room had crystal-clear windows so guests had the best view of Candlebark Creek.

  How hard could it be?

  For a few more years, until she and John could convince both parents they were old enough to take on the responsibility, and until they could work out where they’d get the money to build the extra accommodation, Katie would have to suffer Marjorie Tate’s idea of a B-and-B, which basically meant advertising three spare bedrooms in the Tates’ homestead. Despite its simplicity, guests seemed to enjoy the rambling old Queenslander with its shady veranda on all four sides. With the Tates’ ancestors having been the first to settle the area, Ivy-May had a wonderfully romantic history, and didn’t Marjorie like to make sure everyone remembered who had achieved what and when! One day, when Katie was Mrs John Tate, a fifth-generation owner of Ivy-May, she would do the same. But there’d be operational changes, like not making it family friendly. Not only did kids scream louder than the pigs, they were constantly pestering the old goat, scaring the horses, and chasing the chooks.

  Katie didn’t dislike children – she and John would one day have their own, and she was certain that would make her naturally more tolerant – but there was no money in a family farmstay. The day her economics teacher had explained how some people have greater levels of disposable income than others, she had written his every word into her exercise book, then transferred it into her business planning notebook, the one with her and John’s names encased in a heart on the cover. The accommodation business she envisaged would attract wealthy couples seeking a romantic hideaway or a secret rendezvous. If a husband decided to have an affair, Katie would make sure he decided to have it at their B-and-B.

  There wasn’t a lot of money to be made in the Tates’ simple homestay business, although the venture did provide an income to reduce the family’s financial burden, especially during drought, when many producers in the area were forced to buy in feed for their cattle. The Tates had been the first in the district to introduce Brahman cattle, while Katie’s family had struggled with the demands of less drought-tolerant breeds. Even though Katie would debate the merits of good breeding passionately with her father, she was a girl and O’Brien girls were supposed to be seen and not heard. Now done with school, and soon to turn eighteen, she’d be old enough to have her ideas taken seriously. Eighteen meant she’d also be old enough for John to love – really, truly, like the sneak-into-each-other’s-room type love some girls had talked about on the school bus.

  John was still plucking grass spikes, twisting them between his fingers, when she leaned in and landed a peck on his cheek.

  ‘Hey!’ He shot her a curious glance. ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Your dimple. You were grinning and it was there, so I kissed it.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’ His hand went to the one facial feature that had caused no end of ribbing from the guys at school. After years of trying to hide it, John had developed a slightly lopsided smile, which, to Katie, was even more adorable.

  ‘Why can’t I kiss you? I’m not a schoolgirl any more. You can kiss me back, like when you kissed me on New Year’s Eve.’ They’d kissed before then, too, and she knew John hadn’t minded when her goodbye peck ended up on his mouth. The way he’d grabbed a cushion from behind his back and covered his lap had told her as much. For a long time after that romantic goodnight he’d been a bit odd and they hadn’t kissed like that again, until last New Year’s Eve.

  ‘I was a bit drunk at the time, Katie, and, well, everyone kisses everyone at midnight.’

  She whacked his arm. ‘You kissed everyone else the same?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Not sure I recall who I kissed. I was, as I said, more than a little pissed. Hey, that’s a rhyme, give me a dime.’

  ‘You’ll get more than a dime talking like that, John Tate. I’m expecting a big birthday pash for my eighteenth.’

  ‘Is that so? Anyone I know? Hey, another rhyme.’ John protected his ribs in anticipation of the next playful punch. He knew her that well.

  Within seconds of landing the blow, Katie was up and running, John in pursuit, calling, ‘You’ll be sorry for that, Katie O’Brien.’

  ‘Ooh, I’m so scared.’ She halted halfway up the hill as John’s mother called from the back veranda.

  ‘John, get that truck back to the shed. Your father wants you.’

  ‘Righty-ho, Mum. See ya, K-K-K-Katie.’

  Watching the obedient son swagger back to the paddock where he’d left the truck loaded with the molasses lick, she smiled and mumbled softly, ‘Practise that pucker, John Tate.’

  Katie headed home cross-paddock, stopping on the small footbridge the Tates had built to span a section of waterway that ran between both properties. John sure did drive her crazy some days. He was a lot like his dad – modest, caring and respectful – but Katie wished he would sometimes be a little bit bad. She tried telling herself the wait was half the fun, as were the furtive glances and her flirting, even though John would tease her by pretending he wasn’t interested in her that way. He was amusing and a challenge, and Katie needed both to make the mundane manageable.

  Last summer she’d teased him with the new bikini she’d sewn together in a couple of hours. So skimpy were the two triangles of pink polka-dot fabric for the bra, and another two that tied together in bows over her hipbones, that he’d blushed when she’d stripped down after their ride. John Tate might be a good boy, but he couldn’t hold out for ever, and Katie was planning another big surprise. The special-occasion halter-neck dress she intended sewing would seal the deal. It was short, low-slung back and front, with an empire line so she could go braless. With the leftover fabric, she would fashion a bow for the clip that would hold back one side of the planned Farrah Fawcett hairstyle.

  Something new to wear to the combined birthday bash had been Marjorie Tate’s idea. With this event an important milestone for them both, she’d reminded Katie that the outfit would feature in photographs she would look back on with her and John’s children and remember when he had popped the question in front of half the town. For several nights last week Katie and Marjorie had locked themselves away in Ivy-May’s office with the Simplicity catalogue, searching for the perfect paper pattern. Between n
ow and then, however, Katie would need time in the sun to reduce the T-shirt tan lines around her neck and upper-arms. Farmer’s arms were not a good look with a halter-neck dress.

  He won’t be able to keep his hands off me.

  Chapter 4

  New Cooks

  ‘So, you’re Ava, the new help.’ Katie didn’t wait for an invitation. She flopped onto the padded vinyl chair in the cook’s cottage and tried to find space to lean an arm on a table crowded with cookbooks.

  ‘Yes.’ The woman stopped what she was doing and smiled from the small kitchenette at the back of the room. ‘You must be Katie from next door. John mentioned at dinner last night you’d be over to say hello today. So… hello! You’ve just finished school and I hear you got good marks.’

  ‘Teachers called me a quiet achiever.’

  ‘Congratulations! My teachers called me trouble.’

  Katie didn’t know what to say but thought it rather odd that a new employee would confess to such a reputation and laugh about it as if she was proud. ‘Been a while since you were at school, I guess.’ Katie’s gaze swept the room. She’d been excited when Mrs Tate had mentioned the new chef from the fancy city hotel was female.

  ‘Quite a while,’ Ava replied. ‘Can I help you with something? I’m still getting myself settled in and I want to practise a batch of scones for afternoon tea.’

  Katie bit her grin into submission, not that the new cook was looking at her. She was back to banging pots and pans and cupboard doors. ‘You’re going to practise?’

  ‘This oven is old, these baking trays too, and not at all what I’m used to working with.’

  City girl, Katie concluded. Any country cook would bash out a batch of scones, no worries. Jeez, she’d watched John bake them in a cast-iron camp oven he’d put in the ground and covered with hot coals. Why had Marjorie Tate hired someone who couldn’t bake basic scones? That was plain weird. Had good looks influenced her choice? It happens. The attractive students at school – the ones who sniggered at others behind their backs – had always been picked first. Not that Katie cared, and not that she wasn’t pretty in her own way. Katie O’Brien had been picked first by the only person who mattered: John Tate. Those sniggering schoolgirls could go drown themselves.

  Ava was striking with fiery red hair and freckles, but in a girly way, her pierced ears and fancy store-bought hair clips giving away her city status. She was also way too precious about pots and pans, and way, way, way too old to be any kind of threat. Katie would try to get on and be nice. She didn’t have to like her to be friendly, but only an idiot would make an enemy of the cook, and Katie loved food.

  ‘I hope your scones turn out as good as John’s, although too good would be foolish.’

  ‘Foolish how?’

  ‘By showing off or showing up the boss’s son, of course. Marjorie wouldn’t be too happy with that.’ Katie liked the way Marjorie’s first name sounded, not that she’d ever use it within the woman’s earshot.

  ‘The way John spoke in the car yesterday, I gathered his mother preferred he didn’t cook.’

  ‘Marjorie can be a bit old-fashioned. She thinks John needs to focus more on the cattle side of the business and maintenance around Ivy-May. Things like cooking and cleaning the accommodation are more women’s work. John is his own man, of course.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’ As Ava turned her back to rinse a baking pan in the sink Katie sensed a snigger. ‘Thanks for dropping by. I’d better get back to work.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I guess I’ll see you around. Happy practising.’

  Katie stepped into the sunshine, feeling anything but soothed and convinced the woman thought her quite silly. She’d wanted to like the new cook. Quentin, for all the things she didn’t like about him, had been waggish, laidback and up on all the Ivy-May gossip. Ava oozed maturity and self-control. She was also everything Katie wanted to be: pretty and poised, with graceful, expressive hands that waved around when she spoke, and a scrawny figure that belied a love of food. Then again, the new cook was everything Katie wasn’t used to having around. Aside from her old-fashioned views, John’s mother was the closest thing she had to a role model. Katie’s own mother, a dutiful and loving wife, had been forty-five when she’d accidentally conceived her second child, while Katie’s sister, older by fifteen years, had fled small-town life without so much as a see-ya-’round. Good riddance, Katie still thought eight years later. As long as she doesn’t come swanning back one day to lay claim to the family farm!

  From the wooden footbridge that crossed Candlebark Creek, Katie discarded the small stones she’d collected on her walk back from the cook’s cottage. She jettisoned them one by one into the still waters until the woo-whip whistle somewhere behind grabbed her attention. She could tell by the way he sat in the saddle, and the straw hat he reckoned was cooler than leather, that it was John astride the Palomino he called Paddy. He was pushing the small mob of cattle along the fence line and into the yards in preparation for tomorrow’s branding. Katie would set the alarm tonight so she could help: a third person to open and close gates and chutes made the job easier and less stressful for man and beast.

  John whistled again. Between them, they had a series of short, sharp riffs and each had a different meaning. The one from John just now had said, Hey, here I am. With two fingers curling her tongue into position Katie opted for her usual wolf-whistle reply, then sprinted to the yards in time to open the wide metal gate on an adjacent paddock.

  ‘Good timing. Thanks,’ John said, dismounting. ‘Were you looking for me?’

  ‘Not everything I do revolves around you.’ She watched as he discarded his hat, swiped a sleeve across his forehead, then peeled the shirt fabric from his body to fan himself as he unbuttoned the front. ‘I was talking to the new cook.’

  ‘Her name’s Ava.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Not sure she’s going to be much good.’

  ‘What makes you say that? Mum’s not easily impressed, but she seems to think Ava’s capable.’

  ‘Well, for a start she has to practise making scones. I told her how good yours were and she looked worried.’

  John laughed as he walked over and tapped the tip of Katie’s nose. ‘I love my food fan club of one.’

  Katie was keen to expand on her opinion of the new cook, but John was already leading his horse away.

  ‘Gotta keep moving, K-K-K-Katie, in a bit of a hurry. Catch you tomorrow.’

  You can try catching me anytime you like, John Tate!

  Chapter 5

  Duelling Scones

  Freshly showered, hair still a wet slick to corral the uncontrollable curls, John tried to slow his approach to the cottage. Just the thought of being in such close proximity to Ava tripped some kind of eagerness switch in him and he didn’t want to end up on the porch panting, like a dog on heat. The new cook was way too classy.

  He tiptoed up the three sandstone steps and stood slightly to one side of the screen door hoping to observe, to prepare, to still the buzz in his stomach that had started the day Ava arrived. Staying undetected wasn’t difficult with all the clattering and banging inside. When the hissed cursing started John made his presence known.

  ‘Er, ahem, hello there, inside.’

  ‘Oh, ah, hello there, outside.’ She stood at the kitchen bench as stiff as a stop sign. ‘Sorry if you heard me. The battle of the baking trays, and they win.’ She surrendered, fell back against the kitchen sink, slipped both hands into the front pockets of tight jeans and smiled, like she was already comfortable in his company. More than likely, John told himself, she was relieved it wasn’t his mother who’d witnessed the 1985 Swearword Olympics front-runner in action. ‘I’d give anything for a tray that isn’t rusted or warped.’ She held up a crusty black pan and John screwed up his nose.

  ‘Anything? Well, allow me to work out my price.’ He stepped outside to pick up the box he’d left on the porch. ‘I was meant to bring some replacement bits and pieces down from the house
after I tidied up. No idea what Quentin did with the baking trays you’ve got there but I suspect drying out cannabis may have been involved.’

  Ava’s smile engaged her whole face, and when she sniffed the trays, her eyes lit up even brighter. ‘You may be right.’

  ‘When I heard you were baking scones I figured I’d better rush these over. Sorry it wasn’t earlier.’ He set the box on the bench and took two trays from the top. ‘These will be much better.’

  ‘You knew I was making scones.’

  He didn’t say yes or no as it hadn’t really sounded like a question. ‘Most everything that happens in a small town needs just the tiniest puff of wind to get around.’

  Ava chuckled. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘I am curious, though,’ he said. ‘Why are you baking down here? The kitchen in Ivy-May has everything you need.’

  ‘Your mother asked me to prepare something with the other shoulder of beef for tonight’s guests, plus I’m slow-roasting trays of Roma tomatoes. That leaves this oven, but as it’s old I needed to test it and scones are perfect. A batch is the first thing I do when I start in a new place and I’m unsure about the oven keeping temperature.’ She eyed him, a smile turning one corner of her mouth up. ‘I’m warned you’re the scone master of Ivy-May.’

  ‘Ooh, wow, that breeze has been busy.’

  Ava grinned. ‘Katie was protecting her man’s honour.’

  ‘Ah, no, I’m not her man. Katie is just being Katie, and as she fancies herself a mini Marjorie, that would be like me dating my mother.’ John faked a shiver, pleased it elicited more of her honeyed laugh. ‘You’ll get used to her – Katie and my mother. Katie and I have been best mates since we were little, even sharing a cot once or twice, but that’s the only bed.’ John made himself at home, straddling one of the two dining chairs backwards to rest his chin on folded arms. ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea. How about a challenge to see which of us takes out the title of Ivy-May Scone Master?’