A Chance of Stormy Weather Read online

  “There was one in our bed this morning.”

  “Only one? I hope you dealt with it severely.” He smiled and she relaxed. With Dan beside her she felt much braver.

  “I don’t mind sharing my bed with you, farm boy, but I draw the line at having to share with your critters as well. And who the heck is Uncle Gerald? You didn’t warn me about him.”

  “Has he been here?”

  “Walked straight into the kitchen without even a hello. I could have been naked.”

  Dan smiled rakishly, pulled her close and kissed her, a long slow kiss that sent shivers over her body.

  “Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “Let’s go inside. I think I’m the only one who should see you naked.”

  “I don’t want to walk. I’ve got bare legs,” she wailed.

  Dan laughed and drove the ute into the shed. He opened her door, bowed low and held out his arms. “Your servant, ma’am.”

  Paula’s giggles turned to laughter punctuated with shrieks of alarm as he carried her back across the yard, sometimes threatening to drop her. The lights shone brightly from the house and in spite of his teasing she felt safe in his arms. She forgot all about mice and concentrated on the joy of having Dan to herself.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “Dan, you’ve got to come home now!” Paula spoke into the two-way handset in an urgent whisper. “They’re everywhere.”

  “I’ll be there in about an hour. You’ll have to manage until then.”

  “But, Dan…”

  The two-way buzzed and went silent. Paula shoved the handset back on the fridge. She crept down the kitchen and checked the door leading to the outside. The seal was still firmly in place.

  In the bay window her worried face was reflected back at her. She shivered and pulled the old curtain across. She told herself it was to keep out the chill but she knew she was also trying to hide the emptiness outside.

  After only a few days in her new home she already loved the daylight view from this window, out across the long gradual slope of the valley. But she had not yet got used to the total blackness of the nights on the farm. It was so different from the constant light of Sydney.

  The two-way crackled and she jumped. Another disembodied male voice gave orders to an unseen partner. This had been the first time she’d used the two-way radio. Dan had shown her how it worked and explained his call sign was ‘Woodie’. Everyone needed a call sign so they knew whether to pay attention or not. He’d said they’d need to think of one for her but Paula didn’t pursue it. She didn’t like the two-way. Give her the privacy of her mobile phone any day. Just a pity it was useless here. She would have to change it to another carrier. Right now there were more important things to deal with.

  She made herself a cup of tea and climbed onto the kitchen table. From this position she watched the room around her. She knew there were mice in here somewhere. So much for mouse-proofing the house. She was under siege.

  She had been sitting in the lounge by the fire when the first clack from behind the wood basket had startled her. A mouse was still twitching, caught with the metal trap across its back. Paula had left it, hoping it would die quickly. She couldn’t bear to touch the trap while the mouse was still moving.

  Then there was a distant clack from the kitchen. She had traps set by the fridge, the stove and the outer door. To her horror they all had mice in them. She’d checked them after she’d prepared the evening meal only an hour ago. There had been no mice in the traps then. She wrapped the little bodies in newspaper, reset the traps and hurried to the bathroom to scrub her hands.

  The flick of the light switch in the passage revealed several mice scattering along the passage floor from under the back door.

  Paula clamped her lips together. She stretched up onto her toes and pressed against the wall, too frightened to move. The mice scurried in all directions and disappeared from sight. Now what would she do?

  The back door didn’t actually lead directly outside. It opened into the enclosed back verandah and the toilet was there. She would have to go out eventually. Cautiously she stepped forward on her toes, ready to run at the first sign of a mouse. There was a rubber seal along the bottom of the inner back door. She leaned down warily. It had little holes along the bottom of it. Chewed holes. And poking out from underneath she could see several little grey tails.

  That’s when she’d made a desperate dash back to the kitchen and called Dan on the two-way. Now she sat on the table awaiting his return. She didn’t know what else to do.

  There had been some difficult customers in her last job but she’d been able to manage them. She’d worked to impossible deadlines and coordinated huge events but this tide of little grey bodies had her beaten. She felt a twinge of panic.

  A bang at the back door startled her and she slopped her tea.

  “Paula!” Rowena called.

  “Damn.”

  Rowena was through the kitchen door before Paula could get off the table.

  “Are you all right?” Rowena watched Paula step gingerly to the floor. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m fine, Rowena.” Embarrassment replaced panic. Why couldn’t it be Dan who had come to her rescue?

  “I heard your call on the two-way. You have to realise Dan can’t dash home for nothing. Tom was eating tea at the house when we heard your call. We thought something must have happened.”

  Paula looked beyond Rowena to see a young man grinning shyly behind her. He had roughly brushed dark curls and large brown eyes that he lowered under Paula’s gaze. Great, someone else to witness her inability to cope.

  “This is Tom March.”

  Tom said “G’day”, then looked back at his feet.

  Paula studied the gangly young man who was the reason for their honeymoon ending so abruptly. He’d injured himself at footy practice or something, Dan had said, and couldn’t drive the tractor. He looked hardly more than a boy despite his height. He’d be taller than Dan. Rowena moved forward and revealed the rest of Tom. He wore a dark windcheater and blue jeans and Paula noticed his right foot was covered only in a footy sock.

  “Should you be walking on that? I thought Dan said it was broken.” She pulled out a chair for him.

  “It’s only a bit mangled…”

  “It’s not broken.” Rowena cut him off and pushed the chair back under the table. “He’ll be back helping Dan tomorrow. Now what was so urgent we’ve left our meal for it?”

  Paula seethed. She hadn’t asked Rowena to leave her meal. She hadn’t asked her to come at all. Rowena had eavesdropped on her conversation with Dan. Silently, Paula made a vow not to use the two-way again, then she looked squarely at her visitor.

  “I can’t keep the mice out.”

  “Really, Paula, is this what the fuss is about? You will have to learn to deal with them. They’re everywhere and this house is old. If it bothers you that much you know you can come and stay with me.” Rowena glared at Paula, who was speechless.

  The clack of another trap from beside the fridge punctuated the chilly air between them. They both turned to look.

  Paula flung up her hands. “You see what I mean.”

  “You’ll have to keep setting the traps.”

  “There’s too many.”

  Another trap clacked.

  “Your outer back door is the problem.” Tom spoke quietly. He was still standing just inside the kitchen door. Both women looked at him. “It’s old timber and the floor is rough cement, too many gaps. There are mice everywhere outside and once they get into that back porch they can get into the rest of the house through open doors or under them or any other little spot they can find. I’ve even seen them use each other to climb over.”

  Paula shuddered and he continued. “We had the same trouble at our place a few years back. My mum was terrified of mice, but the last plague we had made her real mad. My brother and I came home one day and she was in Dad’s overalls and rubber boots with a piece of poly pipe whacking the
m on the head as they came under the back door. There was blood and guts everywhere. We had to replace the door quick smart and fix up the floor or she would have taken the poly pipe to us.” He grinned.

  Paula smiled back at him. He wasn’t a particularly good-looking fellow. His grin revealed crooked teeth and his nose looked like it may also have met with an accident on the footy field sometime but there was something about the gentle way he spoke that made her feel as if he at least understood a little of how she felt.

  “Well we can’t do anything much about it at this hour,” Rowena snapped.

  “I could block off the back door for now,” Tom said. “It would mean you would have to go outside through another door till we can fix this one. If your other doors are all sealed you should be okay.”

  “Could you?” Paula glanced down at the footy sock. “What about your foot?”

  “Don’t need that to hammer in a few nails.”

  “All right, Tom, what do you need?” Rowena suddenly accepted that something needed to be done and they might as well get on with it.

  “There’s some timber and bits up at the shed I can use.”

  “Come on then, I’ll drive you. We don’t want you wearing that foot out before you can get back to work.” Rowena sailed out.

  “Don’t worry, if you can organise a new door and a bag of cement I’ll fix it up for you.” Tom gave a lopsided smile.

  “Thank you, but Dan’s so busy I don’t know when that will be.” Paula thought nervously of her parents’ arrival in just over a week’s time. Her mother was terrified of mice. Paula had always thought it a joke but she was beginning to understand how her mother felt.

  “There’s a big rain on the way. That could hold up seeding for a while.” He smiled shyly again and Paula watched as he hobbled away. She shook her head. There had been no sign of rain when she had been outside before dark. She couldn’t imagine it raining enough to keep Dan off the tractor.

  Back in the kitchen, she emptied the traps again. The two-way crackled and she heard Rowena telling Dan to come in the front door as Tom was boarding up the back door, due to the mice.

  Once again Paula seethed. Surely she could have told her own husband about the house. She smiled grimly to herself as she dropped another little body into the bin. Let Rowena tell him, at least that meant that Paula could avoid using that bloody two-way radio.

  They were back from the shed in no time at all. Rowena waited in the car and Paula shivered inside the back verandah as Tom hammered some wood in place from the outside. It was cold in the unlined room.

  Tom finished the job and called goodnight. Paula listened as he shuffled away and the sound of the vehicle faded into the distance. The house settled into silence. But not for long. A faint scratching sound came from outside.

  She sprinted to the toilet. It was a shabby little room with no inner lining on the walls. She lifted her feet and watched the floor carefully for movement. Then from the distance came a long, low rumbling and the light flickered. What if the power went off? She would be alone in a dark house with who knows how many mice still running free. She made a frantic dash into the house to look for the torch.

  She found one on the shelf in the laundry next to the bathroom. The new washing machine sat on the grey cement floor, a single monument to the twenty-first century. Surrounded by authentically distressed green-painted wooden cupboards and cement wash troughs, it looked out of place. The first time she’d come in to do a load of washing Paula had been relieved to find a working hot-water tap. There was still a space in the corner where Dan said there had been a copper for heating the water in his grandma’s day. Paula flicked the switch on the torch and was relieved to see a strong beam of light. At least it worked.

  A flash lit the dark sky beyond the old bubbled glass of the laundry window. Paula shut the laundry door.

  The phone rang, the shrill sound echoing loudly from the kitchen. Surely it wouldn’t be her mother again so soon.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Paula.”

  “Alison.” Paula was relieved to hear her oldest sister’s voice. Alison always understood how she was feeling without needing to pry. Susan was their middle sister and more like their mother, firing off lots of questions but never really listening to the answers.

  “How are you, baby sister? Have you and Dan left the bedroom yet?” Alison’s teasing was a welcome diversion from the mouse-infested house.

  “He’s a farmer, Alison. Even if I was the sex goddess herself I couldn’t keep him from his tractor for that long.”

  “You’ll have lots of time to tackle the redecorating then. What’s the house like?”

  Paula sat on a chair, tucked her legs up and hugged her arms in. “I love it. Dan has done the bedroom already but the rest will need some work.” She decided not to mention the mice.

  “He is capable of getting some priorities right then.”

  “Stop, Alison, you’ll have me blushing.”

  “You! No way.” There was a wailing sound in the background. “Oh, Oscar is awake again. He’s got a cold, poor baby. Julian’s still at the shop so I’ll have to go.” Alison and her husband, Julian, ran a successful import business, owned a beautiful home on Sydney’s North Shore near their parents and had produced a girl and a boy, Isabelle and Oscar.

  “Thanks for ringing, Alison.” Paula tried not to let the disappointment sound in her voice. It was good to be talking to another human being, even if they were thousands of kilometres away.

  “I’ve sent you an email.”

  Paula sank further into her chair. “My mobile and tablet don’t work out here and Dan doesn’t have a computer.”

  “That explains the message on your mobile when I try to ring. Anyway, doesn’t matter. I wanted to let you know I did try to deter the parents from their trip.” Alison was the mediator of the family, always trying to smooth the way. She knew Paula wanted time to adjust to her new life without her parents interfering. “At least you’ll get your presents soon and Susan and I have included some extras.” Oscar’s cries were louder.

  “Sounds intriguing. I hope Oscar is okay.”

  “He’s had a temp so I’d better go. Just wanted to touch base before the parents arrived. Stand firm, won’t you. I think Dad has some idea you’ll want to come back to Sydney…” Thunder rumbled and the line crackled.

  “What do you mean?” Paula raised her voice to counter the poor line and Oscar’s screaming.

  “Have to go. Love you, bye.”

  Paula wondered what her sister meant. She was married to Dan, for goodness sake. Surely her father wasn’t thinking it was some little fling and she would wake up one day and decide country life wasn’t for her.

  She shivered and looked down at the handset she still clutched tightly in her hand. She wondered how many other calls and emails she was missing. Her carrier had no service here and even Dan’s phone didn’t work well in the house. She’d have to change her phone and they needed some kind of internet connection. Another thing to add to her list, which kept getting longer.

  Paula closed her eyes. Time to test out that nice deep bath. It would be warm and relaxing and she could forget about her parents, the mice and having no mobile phone service.

  The thunder rumbled closer as she set the taps running. She took the torch for security and went to the bedroom where she dug out two sweet-smelling candles she’d brought with her from Sydney.

  The fire was burning low in the lounge so she added more wood then returned to the bathroom where the steam was already filling the room.

  The candles were a deep purple and contained sandalwood, patchouli and ylang-ylang. Paula grinned ironically to herself. The message on the back said the combination of these three aromas was known to enhance passion and sensuality. Not a lot of use to a farming couple during seeding.

  She placed one candle on the side of the washbasin and one at the end of the bath, then lit them. The water pressure was good and the bath was filling quick
ly. She stripped off her clothes, tested the water with her foot then climbed in and slid gratefully into the warmth. Just as she stretched out, there was a bright flash of light from outside and a huge clap of thunder boomed overhead. The bathroom light flickered then went out. From the front of the house, Paula heard a bang.

  She sat up. Once again her heart raced. There was another loud thump. What could it be? Surely Uncle Gerald wouldn’t be cruising around at this late hour.

  “Paula?”

  She let out her breath at Dan’s call and sank back into the water. “I’m in the bathroom.”

  There were more thumps and scuffles as Dan fumbled his way from the front of the house then stuck his head around the door.

  “This looks like the place to be.”

  Paula could see the sparkle in his eyes by the soft glow of the candles.

  “I thought I had the place to myself. I wasn’t expecting you yet.” She watched him remove his clothes. She still had to remind herself that this gorgeous man was all hers.

  “You shouldn’t have worried with all that fuss about mice. If I’d known this was why you wanted me home, I would have been here in a flash.”

  Right on cue, as he said the word, thunder rumbled and lightning once again flashed through the room, illuminating Dan’s naked body.

  In spite of the warm water, goosebumps prickled Paula’s skin. She made room for him in the bath. “I can just imagine the flapping ears if I’d called you over the two-way radio to come home for a bath.”

  “You might have got a few extras.” He grinned and moved in closer, straddling her with his legs.

  Paula sprinkled water on his head. Dan splashed her face then wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. She felt the strength of his embrace, the softness of his skin against hers. The purple candles gave off a sweet aroma in the steamy bathroom and overhead rain crashed down onto the old tin roof.

  Dan released her from his embrace. She opened her eyes, not wanting to lose the feel of him pressed tight against her. A lock of his fair hair had fallen across one eye and his lips were turned up in a cheeky grin giving him a rakish look.