The Australians' Brides: The Runaway and the Cattleman

He whooshed out a sigh, bent down once again to Pippa and gave her a rough pat, his strong hand splayed out in her thick fur. The way he marshaled his emotions was almost palpable. His shoulder muscles moved under his shirt. “I guess I never spelled it out to you,” he said, after a moment. “Too busy giving you a crash course in snake behavior.”

“Which I very much appreciated!” She took a breath. “You’re right, I should have taken water and a jacket. Shouldn’t have needed a crash course in that kind of basic common sense. And I did grab on to the barbed wire, just now, so common sense has definitely deserted me this evening.”

“We’ve both been a bit … yeah … off beam today,” he growled, and she knew he was thinking about last night.

“See, I’ve spiked my hand.” She blurted out, then grabbed the flashlight from him, pointed the beam at her palm and showed him.

“We’ll need to take care of that as soon as we get back to the house. Are you up to date on your tetanus shot?”

“Lord, I have no idea! No, wait a minute.” She remembered that she’d had one when Carly was a baby, as part of a routine health check with her doctor. “Yes, I would be.” Thank goodness, one area in which she could impress him as faintly sensible. “Have I upset Kerry, too?” she added, thinking about her earlier conversation with Callan’s mother.

Liz would never have let something like this happen. Gone off without water, food or clothing? Never!

She had belonged here, body and soul.

And yet Kerry considered this to have been a mixed blessing.

“She was pretty concerned when Pete and Lockie and I got back before you did,” Callan said. “She couldn’t tell me what you’d taken with you.” He was silent for a moment. “Sorry I was angry. We didn’t know where to start looking, didn’t want to worry Carly.”

“Is she worried?”

“Mum’s with her,” he hedged. “Dinner’s on the table.”

“She is worried. Oh, hell!” She began to stride back to the house, and Callan and the dogs went with her.

“Best way for you to learn, I guess,” Callan said.

“You’re right. I’ll know next time.”

“Forget it. Forget that I was angry, please. It didn’t help.”

“We’re both tired.”

And what’s the bet that Carly has a sleepwalking episode tonight? Jac added to herself inwardly.

Carly rushed into her arms back at the homestead, as soon as they saw each other. “Mommy, I thought a snake bit you. I thought you were lost.”

“It was my fault, sweetheart. I was fine, but I should have let Kerry know exactly where I’d be, and I should have turned back sooner. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Gran was worried about you.”

“I know she was.”

Pressed against Carly’s warm little back, Jac’s injured palm throbbed. The decision to contact Andy and Tom felt like less of a positive step than it had seemed a short while ago, and when she asked after dinner if she could use Callan’s computer to send some e-mails, she sat in front of a blank screen for too long before anything would come.

Finally, with her left hand crisscrossed in fresh Band-Aids and still smarting after the run-in with the barbed-wire fence, she typed, Hi, Andy! Guess what? I’m in Australia! Visiting a friend at a place called Arakeela Creek. With Carly, of course. Don’t run to get a map. It won’t be marked. Even though it’s the size of Rhode Island. How are the kids? How’s Dad? You can reach me at this e-mail address until May 13. Let me know how you’re doing. Your sister, Jacinda.

Just in case he’d forgotten her name?

She looked at the words on the screen. She thought about all the other things she could have said. Talked about Kurt? Apologized for not keeping in better contact? At least redrafted it into some slightly more complex and grammatical sentences? With Carly, of course had no verb.

A familiar feeling of panic and dread began to flutter inside her, making Kerry’s fabulous chicken casserole sit uneasily in her stomach, and she knew that for now, these few stilted phrases would have to be enough. She hit Send and Receive, then copied the sent message and pasted it into a new one addressed to Tom, cut the How’s Dad? sentence and replaced it with Any special news?

“And I used to call myself a writer,” she muttered.

When she hit Send and Receive again, she got a system message telling her that the message to Andy had bounced. Checking again after a wait of less than a minute, she was told that Tom’s had bounced, also. In the long interval since she’d last made contact this way, both her brothers’ e-mail addresses had changed.

Coming in to his office to see if she needed any help with his computer and e-mail system, Callan could see her disappointment, she knew, even though she tried to hide it.

“Do you want to try calling them instead?” he asked. He looked to be fresh out of the shower. The ends of his hair were still wet against his neck and his tanned skin looked smooth. He smelled of soap and steam.

She thought about the time difference, and said, “Too early in the morning there.” It was eight in the evening here and Carly was already asleep, which meant six-thirty in the morning on the U.S. east coast. Then she added more honestly, “And anyway, over the phone I don’t think I’d know what to say.”

“That’s too bad.” He looked sincerely disappointed.

In her?

For her?

In her brothers?

Either way, it made her determined not to give up so easily. “But would you have any postcards, or something?” she asked. “I’d like Andy and Tom to at least know where I am, in case … well, they don’t often get in touch, but you never know.”

“I have to head into Leigh Creek later in the week to pick up some supplies. You can get postcards there, and anything else you need. Have a think about it. Your own brand of shampoo, or any food that Carly likes that we don’t have. We’ll bring her with us. It’s a bit of a drive, but we can have some stops along the way.”

“Thanks,” she said. “That’d be great.”

And if Carly was with them, Jac surely wouldn’t spend the whole drive remembering how it felt to kiss him, the way she was doing now ….

They didn’t quite know what to do or say next, how to end the conversation. Callan picked up some unopened letters from a big pile on the corner of the desk and let them drop back down. Was he planning to apologize again for getting angry at her about her poorly planned walk? She didn’t want that. Nor did she want any more awkward references to last night.

It was gone, finished, done with.

She had to keep telling herself that.

“You’ve got quite a pile of mail there,” she said quickly, to deflect the subject onto something … anything … safer.

“Forwarded from the magazine,” he answered, and only then did she realize what the letters were.

From women.

Hoping Callan was “sincerely looking for an Outback Wife.”

Looking closer, she saw that all of them were still sealed. “You haven’t opened them?”

“I’ve opened a ton of ’em. And I’ve replied. I was e-mailing a couple of them for a while, but that’s tailed off. These are just the letters from the past two mail flights, which I … uh … haven’t gotten to, yet.”

“My goodness! You need a secretary!”