The Australians' Brides: The Runaway and the Cattleman

“So she really thinks—?”

“You want me to quote her?” Brant ticked his sister’s arguments off on his fingers. “This will get Callan to focus on what he wants and what’s missing from his life. It’ll remind him that there are still some decent women in the world even without Liz in it. It’ll show him he’s not the only one whose heart is in—”

He stopped. Pieces he was going to say, but suddenly, they were no longer alone.

“Hi! Who do we have here? Dustin, right?” The overenthusiastic American woman discreetly consulted some notes on a clipboard, while a photographic flash went off in a man’s hands, right next to her. Magazine people, both of them.

The flash made Dusty blink. If Dusty had been one of their own racehorses, Brant thought, the man would have shied and stepped a big hoof on the American’s foot, including her spike heel. He would have broken several of her bones. “Call me Dusty,” he said.

“Dusty ….” The American beamed artificially. Her eyelids fluttered and she barely looked in his direction. She had sleek hair, a wide mouth and a distracted manner. Nice legs, too, Brant saw as he stepped back out of range. Owning racehorses gave a man a deep appreciation of good female legs. Dusty gave them an interested glance, also. “Now, you’re here to meet Mandy tonight, Dusty, and here she is!” the American said.

Ta-da!

Mandy stepped forward. She was around five foot four and her legs were pretty ordinary, but she had dark eyes and an eager smile. She was also totally thrilled with herself for correctly matching Dusty’s personal details to his photograph and winning herself a place at the party tonight.

Dusty looked a little bewildered at her attitude, but when he answered the question she asked him and she listened with those big eyes fixed so intently on his face … Yeah, Brant thought he would probably have felt the ego stroke, too. It was nice when a woman was genuinely interested. He went in search of a drink, wondering with a faint stir of curiosity which of the as-yet-unpaired women in the room had been earmarked for him.

Passing Callan, he couldn’t help but notice that his friend, the object of this whole outlandish exercise, was mentally miles away.

“Why am I here?” Jacinda Beale muttered to herself.

As always, she had reacted to this dressed-up, extravagant, city cocktail party like an animal caught in a searchlight. She didn’t know a soul. She hadn’t yet been introduced to the man she was supposed to meet.

The woman who was supposed to do the introducing—and who had introduced herself to Jacinda as Shay-from-the-magazine—flitted around looking almost as stressed out as most of the guests, many of whom were clearly too shy to mingle easily.

Why are you here, Jac?

Well, go ahead and pick an option, replied the cynical and panicky running commentary in Jacinda’s brain. You’re a scriptwriter, after all. Choosing between different character motivations is one of the skills of your trade.

There were several such options to choose from, some of which were more honest than others.

Because I gave in to an insane impulse and thought this might be fun … or, failing that, good for me.

Because Today’s Woman magazine is running a series of stories called “Wanted: Outback Wives,” and I happened to a) guess correctly which Outback Wife-hunter’s description of himself matched with which Outback Wife-hunter photo—it wasn’t that hard!—and b) write a sufficiently appealing and correctly spelled letter outlining in three hundred words or less why I should get to meet him.

Yes, believe it or not, an invitation to this cocktail party was meant to be a kind of prize.

Because I’m desperate, and I’ll open any door that looks like it has a handle.

Because I’m a writer, so it’s research.

That last one scared her, adding to the already powerful panicky feeling. Writers could claim that pretty much anything was research, and in the past for Jacinda, the claim had always been true. In the name of research, she’d tried on expensive jewellery, combed through a stranger’s trash can, taken a ride on a seriously terrifying roller coaster, eaten in two or three of America’s most famous restaurants … The list went on.

But was she really a writer anymore?

Heartbreak Hotel’s head scriptwriter, Elaine Hutchison, still thought that she was.

“You’re blocked, Jac,” she’d said six weeks ago. “You have good reasons to be blocked, and you need a break. Take that gorgeous daughter of yours, cross an ocean, and don’t come home for a month. By then, you’ll be raring to go and I can give you Reece and Naomi’s storyline because you are the only one I trust to make their dialogue remotely believable.”

“Which ocean?” Jac had asked, because her initiative had also evaporated, along with her TV soap opera dialogue-writing skills.

“Any ocean, honey. Just make it a big one. Know what I’m saying? Know why I’m saying it?”

Elaine hadn’t mentioned any names but, yes, Jac had known what she was saying, and why. She should put some distance between herself and Kurt until she was stronger, better equipped to move forward. She should recognize that despite Elaine’s genuine friendship, she had divided loyalties because Kurt had the power to scuttle Elaine’s own career as well as Jacinda’s.

And the Pacific Ocean was the biggest ocean around—it conveniently washed ashore in California, too—so here she was on the far side of it, in Australia, at the bottom of the world, at the bottom of a glass, at a cocktail party she wasn’t enjoying any better than she’d enjoyed all those dozens and dozens of cocktail parties with Kurt.

Even when she and Kurt had been in love.

Thud, went her heart.

Yes, she had been naive enough to love him once.

But their marriage had given her Carly, her precious daughter, so the news wasn’t all bad.

“Jacinda?” said a woman’s voice, in an American accent that matched Jac’s own.

She turned to the energetic chestnut-haired magazine editor who’d greeted her on arrival. “Shay, hi ….”

Introduction time.

There was a man hovering at Shay-from-the-magazine’s elbow. Better looking than in his magazine photo, he appeared far less comfortable, however. The photo had shown him in his native element, with one long, jeans-clad leg braced against a rust-red rock and his dusty felt hat silhouetted against a sky the color of tinted contact lenses. He’d had his fingers laced in the fur of a big, tongue-lolling cattle dog—also rust-red—and a smile that narrowed his brim-shaded eyes so much you couldn’t even see them.

Jac could see them now, however, and they were, oh, unbelievable. Blue and deep and smoky with a whole lot of emotions that thirty seconds ago she might have thought would be too complex for a down-to-earth South Australian cattle rancher.

Yes, Today’s Woman hadn’t confused the issue by laying any false clues. The outback sky, the cattle dog and the fierce-looking lizard on the rock, which Jac’s Australian friend Lucy had identified as a bearded dragon, had strongly suggested that the man was Callan Woods, cattle rancher, not Brian Snow, opal miner, or Damian Peterson, oil rigger, or any of the other seventeen Outback Wife-hunters, whose photos and biographical details had appeared in the February issue of the magazine.

There were a lot of lonely outback men in Australia, Today’s Woman claimed. It was a big country, where such men ran free in their far-flung and sometimes lonely occupations, but had trouble finding the right woman.

Jac wasn’t going to be that, she knew.

Not for this man.

But now wasn’t the time to tell him so.

“Callan, meet Jacinda,” Shay-from-the-magazine said brightly.

“Hi. Yeah,” was all he said.

He didn’t look happy to be here … which gave them one thing in common, at least.

“Would you believe how Jacinda matched you with your photo, Callan?” Shay gushed. “She actually identified the species of lizard sitting on the rock! Can you believe that?”

“Yeah? The bearded dragon?” A stirring of interest appeared in those incredible eyes as he belatedly reached out to shake Jac’s hand. He had a firm, dry grip, which he let go of a little too soon, as if he really, seriously, didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

“The lizard was the reason I chose you as the one I wanted to meet,” Jac confessed. “My daughter thought he looked so cute.”

Too late, she realized that it wasn’t a very tactful line. Callan was supposed to be the cute one, not the reptilian wildlife on his land.