The Australians' Brides: The Runaway and the Cattleman

“Yep.” And though he said it quietly—lazily, almost—she could see the pride and satisfaction it gave him.

Soon they rumbled across a metal grid between two lines of fence, and a couple of hundred yards later, they’d reached the homestead. Callan parked the vehicle at a casual angle out front and switched off the engine. Two dogs raced around from the side of the house and greeted their human as if they hadn’t seen him in a week. One was a black and white border collie and one was probably the red dog featured in Callan’s magazine photo.

“Okay, Pippa,” he said. “Okay, Flick. You like me. I get the message. But Jacinda and Carly don’t need to get told the same thing, you hear? They’re not used to wretches like you.” He issued a couple of sharp commands and the dogs dashed over to sit in the shade of the house, pink tongues panting and lolling, attitudes repentant.

A screen door squeaked on its hinges and flapped back against the jamb, and three people materialized on the shaded veranda. They must have heard the vehicle’s approach.

It wasn’t hard to work out who they were—Callan’s two boys and his mother, Kerry. All three of them had exactly his eyes—a glorious overload of piercing blue. He’d talked about them in his e-mails, and Jac knew that Kerry had been widowed by Callan’s father’s death eleven years ago and lived in a smaller cottage in this same grouping of buildings. That was probably it over there, about a minute’s walk away. It was a smaller version of the main house, with the same faded red roof, the same brick-and-stone walls, and set beneath the same willowy trees.

“I can’t get myself unstrapped, Mommy,” came Carly’s voice from the backseat.

Jacinda found that her own seat-belt catch was stiff, also. Thanks to its frequent exposure to dust, probably. She climbed out and opened the back door to help her daughter, aware that she was being stared at—in a welcoming way, but stared at all the same. Callan opened the four-wheel-drive’s back door.

“Suitcases? I’ll help,” Kerry Woods said, coming down the stone steps that led from the veranda. “You’re Jacinda and Carly, of course, and I’m Kerry.” She patted Jac’s shoulder and ruffled Carly’s fine hair as Carly slid her little body down from the high vehicle to the ground. “Boys, don’t just stand there, come and meet Carly. Someone to play with!”

“Does that mean we’ve finished school?”

“To play with when you’ve finished school, which is at lunchtime, as you well know, Lockie!”

It was now eleven-thirty, Jac saw when she looked at her watch. No, wait a minute, they were on central Australian time now, the pilot had said, which meant it was half an hour earlier here than it would be in Sydney.

“Did you have a good flight?” Kerry asked her.

“Yes, the view from the plane between Sydney and Broken Hill was fascinating. Um, I’m afraid between Broken Hill and here, though, I—”

“She looked pretty green when she landed,” Callan cut in on a drawl.

Kerry made a sympathetic sound, and Carly asked her lizard question. The boys had gotten the dogs all excited again and they almost tripped Callan up as he reached the steps with the two heaviest suitcases. Josh ignored the lizard question and asked a jumbo-jet question of his own. Carly ignored that, but Lockie answered it in the derisive tone of an older brother. Kerry grabbed the third suitcase and mentioned tea and biscuits. The dogs said, Yes, please! Lockie and Josh protested about their schoolwork once more.

Chaos, all of it.

Fabulous, safe, friendly, normal, reassuring family chaos.

“I’d love some tea and biscuits,” Jacinda said. She picked up the bag that Rob-the-pilot had unloaded from the plane along with her luggage. “Should I bring this?”

“Uh, yeah, it’s just the mail,” Callan said.

“Wow! You get a lot of mail out here!”

“Not usually.”

“More letters, Callan?” Kerry asked.

“I’m hoping most of it’s other stuff.”

“I think there are some books in here,” Jacinda said and saw that he looked relieved.

She still felt shaky. The difficult flight, the remnants of jet lag following their trip from California four days ago, the fact that she hadn’t been eating enough lately … Her blood sugar was down and she was stressed and emotionally stretched to the point where she thought she might snap like a perished elastic band.

Kerry must have seen at least a part of all this.

“Come inside,” she said. “Boys, leave our visitors alone for a bit, until we get them settled. Callan, I made up both beds in the back corner room. It looks out on the garden, Jacinda, and there’s a door opening to the back veranda. There’s a bathroom just across the corridor, and I’ve forbidden the boys to use it while you’re here. They can use Callan’s. So if you want to freshen up, or if you want me to bring the tea to your room …”

Chaos.

Then peace.

Carly had already made friends with lizard-loving Lockie, if not yet with Josh, and wanted him to show her the garden. Inside the house, the air was pleasantly dim and cool in contrast to the bright light and heat outside. Along the corridor, Jac saw prize ribbons in different colors from various cattle shows tacked up on the wall. The three suitcases and the overnight bag sat in the middle of her new room, for when she felt ready to unpack. Callan’s mailbag had disappeared somewhere, carried in his firm grip.

The guest room itself was spacious but modestly furnished—twin beds clothed in patchwork quilts, a ceiling fan, a freestanding varnished pine armoire, a matching chest of drawers with a mirror above, and a framed picture of a landscape that seemed to be made out of pieces of twig and leaf and bark.

Jacinda lay down on the bed and looked at the picture and at last felt truly safe. At last. She was far enough from Kurt, from his power and his contacts and his chains of influence and control. He wouldn’t find Carly here, and even if he did, his power did not extend into this Rhode-Island-sized cattle kingdom.

She closed her eyes and her head still whirled, but at least her heart had stopped its skittering rhythm and had steadied to a regular beat. She couldn’t stay here forever. Not more than a few weeks at most. Even in that time, she and Carly couldn’t let themselves be a burden on Callan or his family. But for now, for now …

Twenty minutes later, as soon as she was sitting down with Kerry and Callan over their cookies and tea, she told them, “Please give me something to do. Anything. I mean that. I’d suggest something, only I don’t know what you need. Dishwashing and cooking and vacuuming, obviously, but more than that. Don’t treat me like a guest when I’ve dumped myself and my daughter on you like this.”

She sounded sincere and almost pleading, Callan thought, and he knew it would be easier on all of them if he could find something for her to do. Mustering big, half-wild cattle on a dirty quad motorbike, maybe? Stretching wire on about four thousand meters of new fence? Harnessing herself to the faded red roofs and painting them?

Hmm. There was just a slight chance that in those areas, an ex–Los Angeles screenwriter wouldn’t have the necessary skills.

Mum, help me on this ….

His mother had brought out a set of blocks for Carly to play with and she was happy with them out on the veranda, visible through the screen door. The boys were back at their school desks, Josh working on math problems and Lockie struggling with a book report.

They did their lessons via Internet and mail through the South Australian School of the Air. Callan had done the same thing up until the age of twelve, back when the Internet hadn’t existed and his teacher was just a scratchy, indistinct voice on the high-frequency radio. In general, the boys enjoyed their schooling and it gave them a vital contact with other kids and the outside world, but Lockie wasn’t a keen reader or writer. They’d all been suffering through the book report this week.

“School?” his mother mouthed at Callan.

He was about to shake his head. He knew why she’d suggested it. If she didn’t have to supervise the boys, she’d be free to get more done in the garden. She worked too hard already, though, and had done since Dad’s death. Callan didn’t want to give her a way to work even harder.

But Mum didn’t give him time to nix the idea. “Lockie would love some help with his book report,” she told Jacinda. “Callan said you were a writer ….”

Jacinda gave a tight little nod. She looked as if she’d suddenly felt demon fingers on the back of her neck.

Callan jumped in. “Mum, I don’t think—I think that’s like asking a doctor for free medical advice at a party.”

“No, it’s fine,” Jacinda said. “Really.”

Callan could see it wasn’t fine.

Worse, Jacinda thought that Mum had meant right this minute, and she’d already stood up and gone into the office-cum-schoolroom adjacent to where they were sitting. Or rather, where Josh was huddled over his math book and Lockie was staring morosely at an almost-blank computer screen. “What’s the book, Lockie?”

What’sthebookLockiewhat’sthebookLockiewhat’sthebookLockie …

The words echoed in Jacinda’s head like a dinning bell for several seconds after she spoke them.

I can do this, she thought.