“My brother.” Charlie shot me a wry smile. “He’s kind of a force of nature. Hard headed as he is hard working.”
“Ignore everything he said, Macca.” Billy ambled over, putting an arm around my shoulders like we were old friends. “The tribe has spoken and you’re staying. It’ll be real nice having a woman in the bunks for once. You smell a lot nicer than this idiot.” He jerked a finger in Bronson’s direction. “And I doubt you snore as loud as him.”
“She’s not bunking in with you lot.” Charlie came to stand in his way. “Mackenzie, you can stay in the room you woke up in.”
“Char—” Billy started to complain.
“And you two can bring her car around and grab her bags, while Mackenzie fills me in on what happened. How the hell did you end up in Wally’s field?”
Wally was apparently the bull.
“So…” With a wince, I forged in. “I hit a wombat.”
“Uh oh…” Bronson said, the twins hanging back by the door.
“I was barely idling along and I saw some parrots and then…” Letting a rush of breath out, I finished the story. “Somehow I managed to collide with a wombat. I went after him because there was blood and?—”
“Not Nugget.” Charlie went perfectly pale.
“Nugget?” I asked.
“Charlie runs a wildlife rescue from the farm,” Bronson explained. “And Nugget was a wombat she raised from a joey. He lives wild, but thinks the whole farm is his territory.”
“Can you…?” Charlie swallowed hard. “Can you show me where he got hit?”
Holy crap. I’d spent less than twenty-four hours in Australia and managed to hit my boss’ sister’s pet wombat, face down an angry bull, get rescued by a hunky Aussie farmer and pissed him off so much he was going to demand another farm take me on.
So much for my dream holiday.
Squaring my shoulders, I nodded.
“Of course. If you could take me back to my car, I’ll show you exactly where he went.”
Chapter 4
Troy
As if I didn’t have enough to do, now I needed to get rid of a bloody tourist.
A girl who didn’t know her arse from a hole in the ground, I thought as I pulled up out the front of the main admin building of the nearby winery. A foolish girl, a silly girl… So why did my feet slow when I was supposed to be marching up to Phil’s office and asking him if he needed another worker? Why did I look down, my fingers flexing, because I could still feel the imprint her body left there? My skin felt too hot, too tight, like I’d somehow got a splinter stuck there and it had gotten infected. That had me letting out a little growl as I forced myself to stride right up to the glossy facade of the building, then slid the door open before walking in.
“Troy!” Phil walked out and offered me his hand with a smile. The memory of someone else doing just that had me pausing for a split second, but the man was not Mackenzie. A firm handshake and he was ushering me into his office. “Can I tempt you with some wine?”
“You know I don’t drink the stuff,” I replied. Phil opened his hands, indicating that I needed to explain why I was here. “Look, you’d have to need grape pickers at this time of year, right?”
It was hard work, backbreaking, and in my mind I saw Mackenzie walking between the vines, bent over double as she carefully harvested the grapes. That felt like a really bad idea. But it wasn’t as if staying on our farm would be a cakewalk either. That fact had me looking up at Phil.
“We’re coming to the end of the season,” he replied. “The team we’ve got now will be winding things up soon and heading elsewhere.”
“What about a general hand?” I said, then an idea came to me. “Or a cellar door host?”
Phil sat back in his cushy chair, fingers forming a steeple.
“What’s this sudden interest in our staffing? Is Charlene sick of putting up with you a lot and looking for other work?”
Forcing my teeth to unclench, I replied.
“No, but she organised for this… girl to come and work on our farm.” Phil’s eyebrow arched slowly and that had my jaw tightening. “She hadn’t even started with us and she wandered into our bull’s paddock.” His little snort should’ve stopped me, but I forged on. It was like the events of this morning needed to be purged from me before I could move past it. “I need to find somewhere safer for her to go and she has experience working at wineries in the States, so?—”
