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A Father in the Making
Ally Blake


Nate Lyster and Mia Verbeek are in perfect agreement–letting someone new into your life is much too risky. Mom to four kids, Mia can't let just anyone get close, while wandering cowboy Nate learned young that trusting another means chancing heartbreak.But when a fire turns Mia's life upside down, Nate is the only one who can get through to her traumatized son. Nate fits into Mia's family perfectly, and they soon realize that a loving family is what they both want. Can they put the hurts of their pasts behind them…for a chance at a perfect love?









“Why don’t you put me out of my misery and just tell me what I can do for you?”


He swallowed, shifting his weight until it was evenly distributed on both shiny new riding boots. “Ms. Somervale, my name is Ryan. Ryan Gasper. I am Will Gasper’s brother. I know it is a long time coming, but I have come in response to your letter.”

Laura watched in stunned silence as in seeming slow motion he then pulled a crumpled piece of lavender notepaper from the pocket over his heart and held it toward her.

“I have come to find out if what you wrote in your letter is true. Are you the mother of Will’s child?”

Ryan Gasper, Laura repeated in her mind. Wannabe cowboy, city gent, heaven-in-a-pair-of-blue-jeans is Ryan Gasper!

“Ms. Somervale, I’m not here to cause you or your…family any trouble. I’ve come because…”

Why had he come? To find the child she had written about in her letter to his parents. Absolutely. But after that, he was running on gut instinct alone.


Dear Reader,

If you drive not so very far north of Melbourne, braving congested traffic and suburbia as far as the eye can see, you will eventually find yourself on a long winding road leading you to a whole new world.

Think wombat holes hidden in tall grass, fallen logs that double as homes to families of wild rabbits and yabby-filled dams, which are the haunts of families of gray kangaroos. From abundant hilltop farms, panoramic views reveal the smudge of the city skyline to the south, tracts of clear-cut green pastures to the west, distant eucalypt-scattered hills to the east and sweeping, burnt umber sunsets the likes of which you have never seen….

And though in my many visits to the region I have never met a Laura Somervale—singing her heart out to an audience of magpies as she hangs the washing on her wonky old clothesline—or seen such a magnificent property as Kardinyarr, nor a town quite like quirky Tandarah, the great Australian Outback hovering on the very edge of Melbourne offers inspiration enough to make them seem entirely possible!

Happy reading,

Ally

www.allyblake.com




A Father in the Making

Ally Blake







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Having once been a professional cheerleader, Ally Blake’s motto is “Smile and the world smiles with you.” One way to make Ally smile is by sending her on holidays, especially to locations that inspire her writing. New York and Italy are by far her favorite destinations. Other things that make her smile are the gracious city of Melbourne, where she now lives, the gritty Collingwood football team and her gorgeous husband, Mark.

Reading romance novels was a smile-worthy pursuit from long back, so with such valuable preparation already behind her, she wrote and sold her first book. Her career as a writer also gives her a perfectly reasonable excuse to indulge in her stationery addiction. That alone is enough to keep her grinning every day!

Ally would love for you to visit her at her Web site www.allyblake.com (http://www.allyblake.com)


Books by Ally Blake

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3782—THE WEDDING WISH

3802—MARRIAGE MATERIAL

3830—MARRIAGE MAKE-OVER

3870—THE SHOCK ENGAGEMENT (part of Office Gossip trilogy)


To my friend Mel, for a trillion different reasons, with an extra hug thrown in for the loan of the gorgeous view from the corner of her desk way back at the beginning of all of this.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#ua401e7b0-83a6-5cb3-8352-27a1683d9a47)

CHAPTER TWO (#uc2543033-512e-57de-a72b-555141471d3e)

CHAPTER THREE (#uc3009394-66da-5bcd-a67f-56a737111194)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE


RYAN pulled off the winding country road onto a long gravel driveway and slowed his car to an idle. A weathered wooden sign at the turn read Kardinyarr. He looked to the return address on the letter laid flat on the passenger seat of his car. Youthful handwriting on lavender stationery, dappled with fairies, smudged with tears, scrunched into a ball, and flattened again, told him that this was the place. Kardinyarr was where he hoped against hope to find her. Though she had written the letter several years earlier, Ryan had only stumbled upon it that week, and it was all he had to go on.

He gunned the engine, his tyres skipping and jumping over the uneven dirt track. He slowed again as a family of grey kangaroos bounced at the same pace along the other side of the neat wire fence, before leaping onto the road, hopping in front of his car, and bounding up the rise to his left and disappearing over the other side of the hill.

‘Well, that’s not something you see every day,’ he said.

Ryan ignored the ‘Private Road’ sign at the first gate and drove up the hill. At the fork in the drive he pulled left, coming to stop under a sprawling banksia tree in the front yard of a rambling brick home.

The CD of a keynote speech he had given at a recent economic summit in London, an addendum to a university-level economics textbook he was in the final stages of editing, came to a sharp halt as he switched off the car engine. His mind otherwise engaged, he had barely heard a word of the familiar oration on the two-hour drive from Melbourne, but the deep well of silence that now filled the car was deafening.

So this was Kardinyarr House; the last home his little brother had known. Backlit by the light of the setting sun, proudly situated atop its windy hill, it was just as Will had described it all those years before. A black corrugated roof and matching shutters framed the clinker brick. A neat veranda laced with black wrought-iron trim hugged the house, rendering a pretty finish to the sturdy structure.

Ryan’s recent hasty research told him it had been left vacant in the years since Will’s passing, the foreign owners of the property keeping the acreage as an investment rather than an operating farm. As such, Ryan had expected scattered leaves, debris on the veranda, and obvious decay. However, the place seemed neat and tidy. Maintained. Welcoming.

Will had e-mailed the family when he had first arrived at Kardinyarr.

There is no place like it. The colour, the light. The fresh air gets under your skin.

Ryan opened the car door and took in a deep breath of clean country air. Will had been right. There was nothing quite like the mix of scents bombarding him—sweet pollens, swirling dust, and hazy country heat that seemed to have a scent all of its own. The acrid smell of car fumes that he’d left behind in Melbourne faded to a memory.

‘Okay, Will,’ Ryan said aloud. ‘It’s charming here. I get it. But so charming as to shoulder out all other options in your life?’ Ryan shook his head.

Kardinyarr was meant to have been a brief stop on Will’s winter backpacking trek around the country. But from the chain of information Ryan had uncovered in the last few days he believed that if his brother had not been killed, he might never have left at all. All because of the girl in the crumpled lavender letter.

Ryan grabbed the offending document, folded it carefully, and placed it in the top pocket of his shirt. He hopped out of the car, instinct causing him to lock it. A wry smile tugged at his mouth. He hadn’t seen another living soul for five kilometres, bar the kangaroos and a half-dozen cattle standing under the shade of a wide-branched gum. You can take the boy out of the city…

The pleasant breeze tickling at his hair dropped suddenly, and he heard a noise coming from the other branch of the gravel drive. Opera. It had the sharp scratchy timbre of a record, and in the now still air it carried past him and beyond, echoing in the gullies either side of the hilltop. He swished a buzzing fly from his face and looked to the broken wooden gate that had long since been swallowed by lily pillies, climbing vines, and a lush Japanese maple.

On the other side of that gate he hoped to find the woman who had written that long-ago, tear-smudged letter. Perhaps she could tell him why his infuriating little brother had been offered the world, and refused it.

Laura’s head bounced up and down in time with the music.

She loved days like these: a little cloud cover to take the edge off the summer heat, but not enough to stop the differentiation of light and shadow playing across the Kardinyarr hills. Once she had hung the washing, and finished dinner, she had a slot in her evening for a too hot bubble bath. The very thought had her happy as a kookaburra!

The record player was turned up loud enough to create a hanging-out-the-washing soundtrack. She hummed along with the orchestra and sang aloud in makeshift Italian to the magpies lined up on her roof gutters, tragic operatic hand movements and breast-thumping included. Okay, so she was no Pavarotti, but what did the magpies know?

Enough, it seemed, as soon they skedaddled, flying off in muddled formation to land in a gum tree further along the hill. ‘Come on guys!’ she shouted. ‘You’ll usually put up with a great deal when you know there’s honeyed bread in it for you!’

The song finished, another began, and Laura went back to her chore. She grabbed a heavy white cotton sheet and lobbed it over the clothes-line, thinking she would teach them a lesson. ‘No honey on your bread today. So there!’

Ryan pushed his hands deep into his jeans pockets as he walked up the gravel drive.

Once, Will had e-mailed their sister, Sam.

I have never felt so alive. You guys have to come out here. You have to come and see what I mean. Only then will you understand why I plan to stay.

But they hadn’t come. They had all been too busy. His sister Jen as first violin of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Sam with her young family and her self-funded quilting magazine, with its monthly worldwide readership in hundreds of thousands. And his parents, wildlife documentary film-makers, who spent all their time in faraway jungles.

Within a fortnight of that e-mail having been sent, Will had been buried back in their home town of Melbourne. It had been a drizzly winter’s day, with a hundred people watching over him—or so Ryan had later been told.

Past the broken wooden gate and atop the short rise, a small transformed worker’s cottage came into view. Multi-coloured flowers bordered the full-length portico, trying desperately to cling to life in the dry conditions. A water tank sat rust-free against the near wall. The fence was neat and the grass was short, but in need of rain. And through the white sheets flapping on the old-fashioned circular clothesline, Ryan caught sight of an ambiguous female form. Laura Somervale.

What would she be like, the woman for whom Will had given up an Oxford scholarship? Would she be quiet and bookish? Would she be artistic and soulful? Or would she simply be a girl? A country girl who had caught the eye of a lonely, mixed-up, directionless city boy? Would life have worn her down, or would there still be a glimmer of the girl with the fairy stationery? What sort of woman could make a Gasper turn his back on all that?

Some kind of woman, Ryan thought sardonically, for here she was, doing it again. She had drawn him out of his perfectly civilised world of five-star hotels and nightly political debate over cocktails, and into her world of dirt and heat and flies, with a page of tear-smudged words written many years before.

The circular clothesline turned and Ryan glimpsed a flash of sun-kissed auburn curls.

She’s adorable. And sweet. She makes me laugh. She makes me feel ten feet tall. This is her home, and, as such, it feels like my home too.

A wry smile crossed Ryan’s mouth. Will must have known exactly the response his realist big brother would have given to such poetic musings; which was why he had never let Ryan in on the exact nature of his feelings about the girl he’d met at Kardinyarr. Will had saved the deep and meaningful outpourings for their sister.

‘Adorable’ Ryan didn’t need. Answers. Information. Reason. Those things he could tie off in a neat, contained system, once he’d closed the page on the question still buzzing in the back of his mind after all this time. Why here, Will? Why?

As Ryan neared, he realised that the woman behind the flapping white sheet was singing…almost. Occasionally the notes coming from her and the notes coming from the speakers matched, but due more to random luck than skill. It was unabashed, full-tilt, and indescribably terrible.

He slowed. Perhaps he ought to have called first. Meeting her like this would be like talking to someone with parsley caught in their teeth. Did you mention the fact and embarrass them? Or ignore it and pretend it wasn’t there? As Ryan tussled with his decision, the woman pulled herself around the heavy damp sheet until she was revealed fully to him, and he couldn’t have switched direction if a bushfire had sprung up between them.

Auburn curls twirled long and thick down her back, tied into a low loose ponytail with what looked like a pink shoelace. The setting sun shone straight through the cotton of her simple floral sundress, highlighting a long-limbed, youthful figure hidden beneath.

The wind picked up, whipping from out of the gully at the rear of the property and across the hilltop. It was enough to knock Ryan sideways, but the woman’s feet remained steadfastly planted as she reached up to peg a pillowcase to the line. The wind blew about her knees, the thin fabric of her dress clinging to her. Her curling ponytail flapped in a horizontal line before sinking into a thick wave down her back when the wind settled.

She bent down to gather another sheet, one bare foot kicking out behind her for balance. As she came back upright she returned to full voice, head thrown back, hips swaying as the music reached a blazing crescendo.

‘Now, how do you like that, Maggie?’ she called out, turning on the spot, arms outstretched, her dress spinning high revealing a pair of smooth, tanned legs.

This was Laura Somervale? This vivacious creature was brooding Will’s mystery dream girl? This happy-go-lucky woman had written words of honest, tear-drenched pain and longing to a family she had never met?

It was suddenly too much. What had he been thinking of, jumping in the car with nothing more than an overnight bag and cannon-balling out to the middle of nowhere to find her? He should have used her example and written.

He stepped backwards, but the crunch of his riding boots on the gravelly earth sounded loud in the now still air. Like a hiker who had stumbled upon a scorpion, Ryan stopped still with one foot cocked against the ground.

The woman spun from the hips and stared him down with eyes the colour of the creamy-gold grass at her feet. The afternoon sun shone into her face, casting a glow over her naturally bronzed skin. And, since his breath had long since escaped his lungs, Ryan said nothing as he returned her silent stare.

Laura held up a hand to shield her eyes from the setting sun as she looked over the stranger who had wandered unexpectedly onto her small patch of the world.

All thoughts of Pavarotti and too hot bubble baths slipped from her mind to make way for a pleasing combination of tight, dark curls and eyes as blue as the wide-open sky above. The stranger’s shoulders were broad enough to carry a bale of hay, his long legs were encased in taut new denim, and strong muscled forearms appeared below the rolled-up arms of a new chambray shirt. There was even something faintly familiar about his steady blue gaze but, considering all the other visual enticements on offer, she couldn’t put her finger on it. Either way, the gent was so nicely put together he could have been a poster boy for country living.

But parked under the banksia tree in front of big, beautiful, empty Kardinyarr House next door, was the gent’s car. She had been singing so loud she hadn’t even heard it arrive. The car was black, sporty and expensive, and covered in fresh dust. The dust made her smile. No matter that he wore the local uniform, and wore it extremely well, this guy was no local. Clothes too new. Car too flash. Haircut too neat. He had city boy written all over him. Laura was a born and bred country girl, so it was unlikely this guy had ever meandered through her life before.

So who is he? she wondered. Some lost tourist looking for directions? Or a strip-o-gram organised by Jill, her friend and resident busybody? Ha! If only!

Nah, he’s a salesman, she decided. In that flash car, with those trying-to-look-like-a-cowboy-clothes, he was equipped to charm his way into selling something to somebody. She then noticed the length of the stranger’s shadow. Whatever he was selling, the sooner he was gone the better. The tiny window she had later in her day, time in which to soak in that too hot bubble bath, relax, maybe even read a chapter of the thriller that had been collecting dust on her bedside table, was slipping away the longer she dilly-dallied.

‘Hello, there,’ she singsonged.

He gave her a short nod, tipping his hand to an imaginary hat as he did so. Ooh, too smooth.

‘Am I interrupting you?’ he asked. His voice fitted the rest of him to perfection. Persuasive, elegant, and deep as the gully slipping away behind him.

‘It’s probably best you have,’ she answered. ‘Or I would never have had all this washing on the line before the sun sets.’ Hint, hint. I’m a busy woman with no time for salesmen, devastatingly handsome or otherwise…

‘You weren’t talking to someone?’ he asked, missing her point as he looked past her to find the elusive Maggie.

Her grin turned to a grimace. To be caught singing was one thing. To be caught talking to the birds was quite another. Living atop her beloved hill, she had been without daily adult contact for far too long. ‘Only the magpies,’ she admitted with a shrug, but naturally they had not remained in sight to prove her tale.

His deep blue eyes crinkled at the edges, hinting that a decent smile played thereabouts on occasion, but no smile creased his handsome face just yet. ‘Do they talk back?’

‘Not in so many words,’ she said. ‘But we have an understanding. They listen to me sing and I thank them with food. Honeyed bread is their culinary preference.’

‘Ah, so you buy their affection?’

‘It seems to be the only way I can get any nowadays.’ Oh, Laura, did you seriously just say that? ‘Any audience willing to listen to me sing—Puccini in particular,’ she qualified. ‘Not affection. I get plenty of affection without having to pay for it.’

Just shoot me where I stand, please, she begged anyone listening in to her thoughts. The intent gleam in the stranger’s intense blue eyes had her gabbling. Or maybe it was the fact that most of the guys around those parts were wizened, bow-legged, and married, and this one seemed to be a very nice combination of anything but. Then again, perhaps it was the still distant possibility that the guy was a strip-o-gram that had her in a flap. What the heck? she thought. I have the music going if he has the moves!

Ryan was speechless. An in-demand public speaker, he modified the thinking of powerful people every day: politicians, special-interest groups, people a lot bigger and scarier than this auburn-haired spitfire.

Sweet? This woman was a heck of a lot more interesting than plain old sweet. Her eyes told the tale before she even opened her mouth—she was direct, sassy, and visibly attentive. But, then again, perhaps this wasn’t Laura Somervale. Absurdly, Ryan’s pulse quickened at the theory that perhaps this was a complete stranger, some glorious, undiscovered creature he had chanced upon all on his own.

And then he remembered the inflammatory letter burning a hole in his shirt pocket. Oh, this was she. This creature with her bare feet and tumbling curls was the girl who had spilled her broken heart onto girlish lavender paper. Now who’s being a poet? Come on, smart guy, stop delaying the inevitable and fess up, his conscience implored. Just tell her who you are and what you know.

The woman’s feet caught up with her hips as she turned fully to face him, and he saw that her spare hand gripped a set of little girl’s pink overalls.

The words in the lavender letter, which until that moment had seemed somehow unreal, crystallised in that moment. A little girl. Ryan’s heart thundered so hard his ears rang from the blood-rush. She had a little girl.

‘So, now that you have been witness to me embarrassing myself on several levels,’ the woman said, ‘I’m sure you can find it in yourself to tell me what you’re doing here.’

‘I came by way of Tandarah,’ he said, evading the question, needing the extra time to control his breathing again. ‘The woman who runs the Upper Gum Tree Hotel sent me here.’

Suddenly the strip-o-gram fantasy was not nearly so ridiculous after all. Laura felt her cheeks warm. She even had to clear her throat. ‘Jill Tucker?’ she said. ‘Short silver hair? Mischievous gleam in the eye?’

The man nodded. ‘She sent me up here as I’m looking for Laura Somervale.’

Well, if he was a salesman he was exceedingly customer-specific. Laura dropped the hand shielding her eyes long enough to swish it about, presenting herself to him like a prize on a game show. ‘Well, now you’ve found me what are you going to do with me?’

When he didn’t answer straight away, simply watching her with that relentless, memorable blue gaze, Laura did as she was wont to do when faced with an unsettling silence. She stumbled in with both feet a-tapping.

‘Have I won the Lotto?’ she asked. When he still didn’t flinch, she blundered on. ‘No? Well, I don’t need aluminium siding on the house, I only buy the local weekly newspaper, and I am perfectly happy with my long-distance phone plan—especially since everyone I know lives hereabouts.’

His slow blink proved he was selling none of the above. But a curious smile kicked at the corner of the wannabe-cowboy’s lips. Just as she’d expected, it was an engaging smile, a tempting smile, and a smile that gave her heart-rate an entirely satisfying kick.

Laura changed her mind about the salesman angle and decided her run of bad luck had ended and God was offering her one big, juicy payback in the form of a dashing man. Instruction sheet attached—feed three square meals a day, does have expensive tastes, but likes to give back rubs and draw too hot bubble baths three times per week.

‘Now, this has been a fun way to spend the last few minutes,’ she said, ‘but why don’t you put me out of my misery and just tell me what I can do for you?’

He swallowed, shifting his weight until it was evenly distributed on both shiny new riding boots. ‘Ms Somervale, my name is Ryan. Ryan Gasper. I am Will Gasper’s brother. I know it’s been a long time coming, but I have come in response to your letter.’

Laura watched in stunned silence as in seeming slow motion he pulled a crumpled piece of lavender notepaper from the pocket over his heart and held it towards her.

‘I have come to find out if what you wrote in your letter is true. Are you the mother of Will’s child?’

Ryan Gasper, Laura repeated in her mind. Wannabe cowboy, city gent, heaven-in-a-pair-of-blue-jeans is Ryan Gasper!

Her mind went over all fuzzy, as her memories skipped and tumbled back through the years to the last time that name had been foremost in her mind…

She stood, sheltered, hidden by a weeping willow, a good twenty metres behind the congregation at the edge of the cemetery, feeling like Alice gone through the looking glass.

In her pale pink sundress and her borrowed tweed coat, her pink headband holding back her mass of curls, which had gone wild in the drizzly Melbourne weather, she felt out of her depth, like a kid playing dress-up, hoping the adults wouldn’t notice she didn’t really belong.

The hundred-odd people huddled together against the cold were a who’s who of the Australian social set. Even she, a girl from the bush, recognised the multitude of television personalities and politicians alike. They were all dressed up in glamorous black, in hats, in designer sunglasses. The only hat Laura had ever owned was a twenty-year-old Akubra of her father’s, bumped and bruised by years of wear while working the land.

Standing apart from the throng, she clutched a letter in her cold hand: a letter laboured over, cried over, written longhand, on stationery she had received a couple of years before on her sixteenth birthday. Fairies danced in the top corner of the page and hid behind toadstools along the bottom rim. She hadn’t really paid attention when writing on it; she had only given in to the burning need to get her despairing words onto paper.

She rested a protective arm across her flat belly. It would not be flat for much longer. Talk between the young mothers in Tandarah came back to her. Stretch marks. Bladder problems. Varicose veins. She was eighteen, for goodness’ sake! How had her life turned so completely in the last two months that she had ended up here?

But what choice did she have? What with both her parents gone, these people were the only family her child would know—this overwhelming, well-to-do, influential, formidable group of people standing watching over the casket of heavy wood that contained their son, their brother.

Through gaps between the sea of black coats, Laura watched as the casket slowly sank into the rain-drenched ground. From nowhere, the disturbing strains of a solo violin wafted over the gloomy scene, and her heart grew so heavy with sorrow she could barely breathe.

Will. Dear, sweet Will. He had been so unassuming. So gentle. So uncomplicated. One would never have guessed that he came from such a family. But in the last few days she had found out the truth of it. She had read the small notices of condolence in every newspaper in the country. Devoured them. Clipped them and kept them in a precious shoebox beneath her bed back home. Somehow it had helped her live outside of herself, outside of the poignant realisation that she was pregnant, and that the father of her unborn child had been killed before he even knew.

Laura made an effort to place as many of the mourners as she could—anything to take her mind off the weight in her heart. The violinist had to be one of the sisters—Jen. The younger of the sisters, Samantha, was very pregnant herself, and married to a television actor. Will’s parents, the elegant couple standing either side of the minister, were award-winning film-makers.

But where was the elusive elder brother? The one Will talked about more than the rest. Ryan. The workaholic perennial wanderer, the oft-published, world-renowned economist who travelled the world at the whim of foreign governments in order to advise them on economic policy. Will’s hero.

The family moved forward, each to throw a blood-red rose atop Will’s coffin, but no young man came forward with Will’s sisters and parents. As far as Laura could tell, illustrious big-brother Ryan was not there.

She had come this far, catching a bus, a train and a tram, alone, to get there, to be present when her young friend was lowered into the ground. Ryan Gasper had the means, the money, and the time. How could a man not move heaven and earth to be at his own brother’s funeral? And how could Laura bring her only child into a family such as that? So scattered. So civilised. So impenetrable.

Laura looked to the letter in her hand, now crunched into a tight ball in her shaking palm. She smoothed it out again and slipped it deep into the pocket of her borrowed coat. She would post the letter on the way back to Tandarah, and then it would be up to them to make the next move.

‘Until then,’ she whispered, her words forming a cloud of steam in the chill winter air. ‘I think it’s fair to say it’s just you and me, possum.’

Eighteen years old, and all alone in the world bar the tiny speck of life inside of her, Laura turned and walked away without looking back…

Ryan watched Laura’s warm, open face slowly crumble and turn paper-white. She didn’t move, didn’t blink, and didn’t even seem to notice when the pink overalls left her limp hand and fluttered to the dusty ground.

‘You’re Will’s brother?’ she whispered, her previously chirpy voice now thin and faraway. Wisps of dappled hair had fallen from their restraint and curled across her forehead. Without all the bluster and noise she suddenly looked very frail. Delicate. And terribly young. He took a step her way, for fear she might swoon.

‘Ms Somervale?’

She made no move, as though she had not heard him.

‘Laura? Are you all right?’

When she swallowed, her lips trembled. Then her haunted gaze locked in on the letter in his still outstretched hand. Her hand flew to her mouth and her teeth clamped down on the length of her index finger. Ryan knew not if she was stopping herself from crying out or biting down hard to cover up a deeper pain elsewhere inside of her. And then, just when Ryan was about to reach out and gather her against him—anything to stop the unnerving trembling that he had caused—she did the incredible: she managed to muster up a smile.

‘You’re Will’s brother,’ she repeated, and this time it was a shaky statement, not a question. ‘Ryan. The economist, right? I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you. Will never did carry pictures of any of you. And you weren’t at his funeral.’

Did that mean she had been? He’d had no idea. His family must not have either. Astonishing. She had been in their midst all those years before, and none of them had known. ‘Ms Somervale, I’m not here to cause you or your…family any trouble. I’ve come because…’

Why had he come? To find the child she had written to the Gaspers about in her letter? Absolutely. But after that he was running on gut instinct alone.

He reached down slowly, so as not to startle her, and picked up the pink overalls. ‘I need to know, Ms Somervale.’ He handed them back to her and saw understanding dawn upon her face.

She took a great breath, as though gathering her scattered trains of thought, nodded, and her bottomless golden eyes fluttered back up to meet his. ‘The Upper Gum Tree,’ she said, coming out of some sort of trance. ‘The hotel in town where you met Jill Tucker. Six o’clock tonight.’

Before he even had the chance to ask her what made the Upper Gum Tree at six o’clock so special, a voice called out from deep within the cottage.

‘Mu-u-um!’

‘Coming, possum!’ she called back, her flashing eyes begging that he keep his attention on her and nowhere else. But it was a hopeless demand as suddenly the owner of the pink overalls and the shouting voice came skipping out of the cottage.

The crackling record, the whisper of the breeze, even the vibrant vision of a barefoot Laura Somervale slipped away as every ounce of Ryan’s being focused on the little girl. She had Laura’s oval face, healthy glow, and dishevelled curls. But the Gasper traits were unmistakable. The intelligent blue eyes. The square jaw. Even the way she bit at the inner corner of her mouth was a habit his sisters had never overcome.

There was no longer any doubt in Ryan’s mind. Laura Somervale had given life to his brother’s child.

The little girl was holding a crayon drawing in her hand, and she stopped short when she saw that her mother was not alone. ‘Mum?’ This time her voice was not so resolute.

Laura’s glance flicked towards the little girl, her voice neutral. ‘Go back inside, Chloe.’

Chloe. Ryan spun the name around his mind several times. Chloe Gasper. No, surely not. Chloe Somervale.

‘Get Chimp’s dinner ready. I won’t be long. Okay?’ No matter that she was trying desperately to sound all right, they heard the strain in her voice. Chloe nodded, and looked over at Ryan. He gave her his best effort at a friendly smile, but her face creased into an uncertain frown before she hustled back inside.

‘Please, Mr Gasper,’ Laura said, her own voice firming with each word. ‘Meet me at the Upper Gum Tree Hotel at six tonight. We can talk there.’

And then she turned and walked away, leaving Ryan with little choice but to do as she asked.

Feeling Ryan Gasper’s now staggeringly familiar gaze burning into her back, Laura picked up her washing basket, spun on her numb feet and hurried inside, the smile she had fashioned fast sliding into oblivion.

Will’s brother had come, and he had her letter. No wonder she’d thought she had seen him somewhere before. He didn’t look at all like Will, who had been barely nineteen, lean and lanky, with streaky blond hair when she had known him. But the something that had tugged at her subconscious was the fact that his deep, dark eyes were as vividly blue as her own daughter’s.

In the intervening years since Will’s funeral she had never heard back from his family, reasonably deducing that they either didn’t believe her, wanted nothing to do with her, or simply didn’t care. Truth be told, the more years that went by, the more that suited her just fine. But now here he was. The dashing, determined, older brother Will had yearned to equal, to emulate and, on the flipside, to disoblige as much as humanly possible. The brother who had not even deigned to show up at his funeral.

Laura shook her head to clear the returning fuzz. None of that mattered now. What mattered was that the time had come for Laura to share her darling little girl. He had said he wasn’t there to cause her any trouble. Maybe. Maybe not. If he thought for a second that he could take Chloe away…

Laura’s chest tightened as adrenalin kicked in. No matter how cool and self-assured Ryan Gasper’s voice was, no matter how bewitching his gaze, how tempting his smile, or how Will had worshipped him, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. This was too important. The way she handled this, the way she handled him, would be the most important situation of her life.

‘Mum!’ Chloe called again. She bundled into the room, her strawberry-blonde ringlets pulled back into messy pigtails. ‘Who was that man?’

‘A friend,’ Laura said, taking care how she approached the subject with Chloe. She instinctively chose not to create any sort of preconceived image of him. She had always taught Chloe to make up her own mind about people, not to listen to gossip.

She dumped the basket of wet clothes, with the dusty, dirty overalls splayed across the top, sat on the couch, tugged her daughter onto her lap, and held on tight. Too tight. Thankfully, Chloe didn’t struggle away as she sometimes did when Laura became mushy.

‘Now, what have you got there, possum?’ Laura asked, her voice running on back-up power.

‘I have to draw a picture of my family for school.’ Chloe held out her crayon drawing of a house, a couple of animals, and a trio of people. ‘I have you and me, Chimp and Irmela,’ she said, referring to their pet fox terrier and overweight jersey cow respectively. ‘And Jill is at the front gate. Is that enough?’

It always has been enough until now, Laura thought. ‘I don’t think you’ve missed anybody.’

‘Well, Tammy is putting in all of her cousins. Even the ones who live in Scotland.’ Chloe twisted on her lap to look her in the eye. ‘Do I have any cousins in Scotland?’

Laura opened her mouth to say no, of course she didn’t, but then she thought of the man in the black shiny car. Chloe might very easily have cousins all over the world, for all she knew.

From the moment Laura had posted her letter she had put the shoebox full of old clippings about Will under her bed, and had quite specifically not gone out of her way to hear about the Gasper family. But it seemed the time had come for her to peek at the world outside of her community, to find out about Chloe’s extended family—and she had until six o’clock to figure out how to go about it.

Well, she had until six o’clock to finish the laundry, cook dinner, check Chloe’s homework, finish the pies for the Country Women’s Association meeting that night, and to figure out how she was going to handle the arrival of Ryan Gasper. The too hot bubble bath was so far down the list it dropped and fell away.

Once Chloe was ensconced back at the desk in her bedroom, Laura picked up the phone and dialled the Upper Gum Tree Hotel. When Jill answered the phone she all but blubbed with relief. ‘Jill, it’s Laura. We have a problem. I need you to set aside a table for me, and I need it to be discreet.’




CHAPTER TWO


THE UPPER GUM TREE HOTEL bustled with activity. Barflies lounged at the bar. Families conversed at a smattering of snug round dining tables. Local teenagers played snooker. And Ryan sat all on his lonesome in a secluded high-walled booth at the back of the room.

By the time six o’clock came and went he was onto his second beer and a young boy at the next table had taken a liking to him. The kid continued to stare over the top of the booth, and Ryan had no idea how to get rid of him.

He’d never had much experience dealing with kids. He had been nine years old when Will was born, and in boarding school by the time Will was three. By the time Ryan had left for university and beyond, they had spent little time together; Will, so quiet and shy, and intensely studious, had been practically a stranger to him. And to Jen’s and Sam’s kids he was merely cool Uncle Ryan, who brought presents whenever he came back from overseas.

But now he had another niece—a walking, talking remembrance of his little brother—and for some reason he felt an obligation to get to know this one properly. Half of him was energised by the prospect, and the other half wanted to wring Laura Somervale’s pretty little neck for not trying harder to track his family down.

What reason could she possibly have for telling them about the little girl and then never contacting them again? It would have made more sense if she had never tried to contact them at all. It didn’t add up, and as a guy who worked with checks and balances he planned to stick around at least until it did.

Perhaps she had simply found herself a new father for her daughter in the meantime. A strange sort of uncomfortable heat formed in Ryan’s gut as he realised that she could even be married. Affianced. Living with someone. He hadn’t counted on having to get through another man as well as Ms Somervale. He dearly hoped that he still wouldn’t have to. Either way, if Laura Somervale didn’t show in the next five minutes he was heading back out to the little weatherboard worker’s cottage and he wasn’t leaving until he had his answers.

Ryan gave in and crossed his eyes back at the kid who was still staring him down. He poked his tongue out and even added a humped back for good measure.

‘So, did you find our Laura all right?’ a female voice asked. Ryan uncrossed his eyes to find a short, round lady with boyish grey hair and bright button eyes leaning against the edge of the booth, beaming down at him. Jill Tucker. He had a feeling the woman knew exactly how he had found Laura, and what had transpired word for word.

‘Yes, thanks,’ he assured her with an unadorned smile. ‘She was right where you told me she would be.’

‘Of course she was,’ she said, and her own smile grew larger. ‘She’s lived there since she was born. A dear girl, Laura. Would do anything to help any of us in a pickle, and if anyone ever dared to hurt her, or her little possum, they would have to deal with the rest of our town as well. Can I get you something to eat while you wait?’

Ryan blinked. It seemed Miss Somervale was not the only one who could so adeptly change tack mid-spiel. Perhaps the idiosyncrasy could even be considered part of the local dialect.

‘I’m happy with my beer,’ he said. ‘Thanks, anyway.’

Jill gave him a sympathetic smile before moving on to the next table. Before he even had the chance to take another sip, he was struck by the intoxicating scent of freshly baked apple pie. He had a famously sweet tooth, and the scent was so delicious he actually sniffed the air as a pair of cake boxes slid across his bench. In their wake came Laura Somervale. He was fairly sure it was her…

Gone were the messy curls, pulled back under a red bandana, and the graceful cotton dress had been replaced with an excessively frilly white shirt. She looked over her shoulder at the little boy peering over the next booth. ‘Liam, your dessert is getting cold.’

The little boy disappeared from sight. Just like that. Wow. He would have to remember that trick. As she sat, Ryan opened his mouth to ask why she had gone to such trouble to dress in disguise, but when their eyes met he was rendered speechless yet again by the most startling difference from her earlier appearance. The sexiest dark smudges of eyeliner framed her pale brown eyes, making them glitter like gold. A searing flash of awareness overcame him. Had the flash come from him or from her?

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, her voice as crisp and curt with him as it had been with the little boy, Liam, and he figured any sort of responsiveness had been his alone. ‘I had to get Chloe settled in at a friend’s place first.’

So she hadn’t left Chloe at home. She had sequestered her away somewhere unknown. No matter how promising her words, how valiant her smile, this woman was not as calm and trusting as she made out.

‘So there’s no one else at home who could have looked after her tonight? Your husband, perhaps?’

Laura coughed out a sorry laugh. ‘Hardly,’ she said, flapping a ring-free hand under his chin. ‘Chloe and I are perfectly happy on our own.’

And, just like that, the uncomfortable lump in Ryan’s mid-section faded away.

‘Where are you staying?’ she asked, shifting her weight on the soft leather seat.

‘I have a room upstairs.’

‘Nice?’ she asked, still not looking him in the eye.

‘Not sure. I haven’t seen it yet. I came straight here from your place.’

‘Oh, I just can’t stand this,’ she said suddenly, scrunching her eyes tight and banging her fists on the old wooden table.

Ryan’s hands zoomed out to catch his glass of beer and stop it from overturning.

‘I’m not bred for small talk,’ she said, her voice earnest, her expression pleading. ‘I’ll be honest. Your being here scares the living daylights out of me.’

Ryan tried to disregard the divine scent of apples and sugar, and something else—an unexpectedly exotic perfume wafting from the direction of the woman in the equally exotic costume. ‘You have no reason to fear me, Laura.’

‘I have every reason!’ She snapped her mouth shut, her fists closing tight atop the table. She seemed to collect herself, to temper her anguish. When she looked back at him from beneath her smoky lashes he knew she had found the calm in the eye of the storm.

‘I had no brothers or sisters,’ she continued, her voice now more controlled, though a tiny vibration gave her away. ‘I have no aunts or cousins, distant or otherwise. I understand that there are other people out there who are family to Chloe. You. You are her family. As such, you are the answer to her very dreams. And at least a very tiny, small but noisy part of me is relieved that you have finally come. But, at the same time, you also represent my very greatest fear. Losing her.’

Her anxious words brought about the image of tear stains on lavender paper, and he found it hard not to stare as he reconciled the heartfelt prose on that page with the plucky woman three feet from him now. Her honesty in that letter had amazed him, even while the news shocked him. Several years on, she was just as unwilling or unable to hold back her feelings as she had been then, and just as able to surprise him in person as she had been in print.

‘I need to know your intentions,’ she said. ‘I can take it. I might not like it, but I can take it.’

His intentions? It was such an old-fashioned term but, coming from this wide-eyed country girl, it fitted. Though it made him feel like a rogue, he gave her the only truth he could. ‘I don’t exactly know.’

Her golden eyes glinted back at him in the low light. ‘You’re going to have to give me more than that if you think we can take this matter further.’

‘What more do you want?’

‘Proof that you are as nervous as I am.’ She leaned forward, pinning him with her candid stare. ‘I am an even mix of morbid embarrassment and stiff terror right now. When you wandered up onto my property, in your clean shirt and your new jeans, you must know I didn’t for a second expect you to be…well, you. If you had, in fact, been a male stripper it would have shocked me less.’

‘A male what?’

Laura bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything else she oughtn’t. She filtered back through all the things she had mentally accused him of being, including an aluminium cladding salesman, but, no, the male stripper idea she had managed to keep to herself. Until now. She fluffed a hand over her face to try and divert him from her terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease.

She did want Chloe to meet her uncle. Really she did. For Chloe’s sake how could she not? She was trying to think outside of her own selfish desire to keep her contented little existence intact because the big picture of Chloe’s life meant so much more. Even though none of his superstar family had ever cared enough to write, to call, or to ask if Chloe was okay, she had to give him a chance. But, even so, there was a noisy little voice in her head that told her that he in particular was dangerous. Not cruel. Not insensitive to her fears. But somehow dangerous to her precariously balanced contentment. For a girl who felt as though a wonderful life was never quite within her grasp, she had no idea how to deal with a perpetual winner like the one seated before her.

‘Stick to the subject, Mr Gasper. Why now? Why after all this time have you come?’

‘Your letter brought me here, Ms Somervale.’

Her cheeks warmed as she thought of the words she had written in that letter. The words of a hormone-riddled, deeply sad, terrified, lonely and desperate teenager. But before she had a chance to ask to see the letter, which of course she would shovel into her mouth, chew and swallow so that no one else would ever know it existed, a shadow passed over the table. She looked up to find a man in dark trousers and a grey pullover smiling down at them.

‘Hi, there, Father Grant,’ she said, saving her request for when they were alone again. She glanced over at Ryan and had no idea how to introduce him. Friend? Hardly. Chloe’s uncle? She could barely believe it herself, much less say it aloud. Male stripper in the making? Now, that would probably cause less gossip in town than any of the other options on offer!

‘Dress rehearsal tonight, Laura?’ Father Grant asked.

Laura only then remembered her get-up. Oh, Lord! While Mr Perfect sat there looking so flawless, in his blue button-down shirt that did distracting things to his bluer than blue eyes, she was decked out in a mass of white frills and tight purple pants, with knee-high black boots jiggling skittishly below the table.

‘Pirates of Penzance,’ she blurted, for Ryan’s benefit, flicking at a ruffle. ‘The Country Women’s Association is putting on the musical and I am playing the Pirate King.’

Ryan must have thought she was utterly insane, coming to meet him in such a get-up. And for singing to magpies. And for batting her eyelids at a stranger while all on her own out in an isolated Outback property…If he were intent on finding reasons to take her daughter away, he would surely have the beginnings of a list already.

‘Isn’t that a singing part?’ Ryan asked.

Father Grant nodded. ‘It is.’

Laura saw Father Grant shoot Ryan an ironic smile, and she all but harrumphed in response.

‘The musical was all Laura’s idea,’ Father Grant continued. ‘The local CWA are raising money for drought aid for local farmers who have been hit pretty hard over the last couple of years. Last year they did Chicago, and Laura’s Matron Mama Morton brought down the house!’

‘I’ll bet it did,’ Ryan said.

Laura didn’t need to look at him to know that his face would be the picture of disbelief at Father Grant’s kind words. She kept her head down as she picked at a flake of old paint on the tabletop.

‘Our Laura is involved with numerous community projects,’ Father Grant continued. ‘She is President of the PTA and a volunteer firefighter, as well as infamous for undercharging for catering every event we throw in town. I don’t know what we would do without her. Or little Chloe. They are family to all of us. We’ve just up and adopted them since Laura’s dear father passed—haven’t we, Laura?’

‘Of course, Father Grant. You’re the best.’

‘Now, I’d better be off. Enjoy your meal.’ He shot them a parting smile and Laura let out a shaky breath, thankful she had not had to introduce her companion.

‘He seemed nice,’ Ryan said. ‘He certainly had a lot of good things to say about you.’

Laura brushed the praise away. ‘Mr Gasper, if we keep beating around the bush like this I am likely to explode on the spot. Mr Gasper—’

‘Call me Ryan, please.’

There was something in his voice, something low and intimate, that had her forgetting what she had been talking about in the first place. ‘I just…’ She took a moment to swallow. ‘I know that this moment had to come. I only wonder why, seven years after the fact, that silly little letter of mine has sent you out looking for us.’

‘I only just found your letter, Laura,’ he explained. ‘A couple of days ago. As the fates would have it, your letter never came to our attention at the time in which you sent it.’

Oh, God! Had they truly never known about her? About Chloe? She had never, not even once, thought that might be the reason why they had not come looking for her.

‘I’m back in Australia for an extended stay for the first time in years,’ he continued. ‘At my family’s request I have been cleaning up Will’s effects. Seven years having passed since Will…died, no financial records need be kept any more. I discovered your letter unopened in amongst the great host of condolence letters.’

‘Unopened?’ Laura repeated, still coming to terms with Ryan’s bombshell.

‘At the time, my family received so many condolence letters—from friends, acquaintances, readers of my sister’s magazine, fans of my parents’ documentary films, even many of your neighbours. My family read as many as they could, but after a couple of weeks found they couldn’t keep up. It was too much. Too hard. In the end they posted a half-page thank-you note in the Australian newspaper to all who had Will in their thoughts.’

Laura noticed Ryan’s dulcet voice was unnaturally even. Though he held eye contact with her the whole time, the poor man was struggling just as she was with the situation. Nevertheless, she fought back the desire to take his fisted hand in hers, to unpeel his tightly clenched fingers and rub some warmth back into them.

‘Mum and Dad went back to Brunei to finish the film they were working on,’ he said. ‘Jen was already back on a musical tour of the United States. And Sam had just had her second child and couldn’t cope with the task. All of Will’s correspondence was forwarded to our family accountant, who kept on track with bills and tax correspondence, and simply filed everything else. When cleaning out the files this week I found one folder with several unopened letters. Including yours.’

Laura realised he hadn’t included himself in the list of people available to read the letters and look after the formalities. Where had he been when his family had needed him? she wondered. Why hadn’t he been at the funeral? But she heard the steady thread of regret in his voice that he was trying so hard to mask. So she let it go. ‘And…and your family?’ she asked, when she found her voice again. ‘Your sisters and parents? Do they know about me?’

‘Only Sam. She was with me when I found your letter, and would have come too if not for having three kids under ten herself. As to the others, no. Not yet. We thought it better to find out if you had—’

He stopped, and for the first time was discomfited enough to look away.

‘If I had gone through with the pregnancy?’ she finished for him, biting down the bitter taste the very thought brought. But it wasn’t his fault. He was only being honest. ‘And now that you know that I did?’

He looked back at her, the deep, steady blue gaze creating patches of warmth on her skin wherever it touched.

‘Well, now I think it would be best for Chloe to get used to me first,’ he said, ‘before the whole Gasper gang descends upon her. We can be formidable as a united front.’

A tiny portion of the tension in Laura’s shoulders eased. Surely, if that was his ultimate plan, he would have brought the might of the Gasper clan down on her with a vengeance? It seemed there was a streak of compassion within the self-assured outer shell.

The bell over the door jingled as a group of chattering women in pirate garb jumbled into the restaurant. Their beady, kohl-smudged eyes searched the restaurant.

Ryan felt the chance to get to his own questions slipping away. Somehow, with her smoky eyes and bold honesty, her bare feet and knee-high boots, her glossy curls and red bandana, she had managed again and again to keep the conversation as one-sided as she pleased. She had found out his side of the story and he still knew nothing of hers. He wondered if it was entirely accidental, or whether, despite all her I really want you to meet Chloe promises, she would be happier if that never eventuated at all.

‘That lot are looking for me,’ Laura said. ‘I’m sorry to leave this hanging mid-air, but I do have to go.’

She stood, and he grabbed her hand. ‘So when do I get to meet her?’ he asked.

Laura stared at their entwined fingers for a few moments before her glittery golden eyes swung to face him, her head cocked to one side.

‘Chloe,’ he clarified. ‘When do I get to meet her properly? I hoped that was what this secret meeting was all about.’

‘Half the town is at this restaurant, Mr Gasper,’ she said. ‘This meeting is hardly a secret.’ He knew then that she was wilfully misunderstanding him. Her obstructiveness was no accident. Behind the pretty eyes, this woman’s mind had not stopped ticking all night.

If he could figure a way through her labyrinthine thinking, maybe he would end up on her side rather than three steps behind. At least now he knew what made the Upper Gum Tree Hotel at six o’clock on a Sunday night so special. She’d figured that if he was going to make demands, she would have half the town as witnesses.

‘Well, obviously my presence here is not a secret. Why else would I have had people lining up to give you glowing testimonials?’

She made to protest, then seemed to realise what Father Grant’s speech had been about. So that at least hadn’t been her doing. A soft blush crept across her cheeks—a pretty blush, seriously becoming, distracting enough for him to forget what he was accusing her of in the first place. ‘That had nothing to with me,’ she said, giving his hand a light tug. ‘Though I have some idea who to blame.’

Realising her hand was still in his, he let go, the feel of smooth skin slipping across his palm momentarily unsettling. Enough! he scolded himself. He stood, determined to get them back on an even footing.

‘It’s a meeting secreted away from the one person for whom the meeting is most important,’ he said, his voice stern and implacable. ‘Make a time. Set a date. Now. Or I may decide not to believe all your promises that you do want me to meet Chloe. How about tomorrow morning?’

She blinked, and he saw the moment her ticking mind switched into overdrive. ‘Tomorrow is Monday. She has school.’

‘What about after school?’

‘Pony club. Then violin practice.’

Violin. Just like Jen. She had known he was an economist. Did she know about Jen, too? Could that have prompted the choice of instrument? The thought warmed him more than he thought sensible. ‘And dinner time?’ he asked, determined not to let her sway the conversation again.

‘She has homework. And her bedtime is eight o’clock.’

She was relentless. He bit back a smile.

‘Soon,’ she promised, obviously realising as much herself. ‘But on my terms. She’s a cluey kid, outrageously bright, and even more sensitive for it. We need to tread carefully.’

He nodded. She could have been describing Will at Chloe’s age. ‘So when?’

The twittering sound of pirate-garbed women grew louder behind him, and when Laura all but melted with relief he knew he was too late. ‘Saved by your merry men,’ he said under his breath, and she had the good grace to blush even more.

‘Laura!’ one of the women called out. ‘If you’re not ready to rehearse we could grab a quick shandy?’

‘No, no, no. I’m done here,’ Laura said, moving into the protective haven of the colourful group.

‘Laura is such a darling,’ one of the ladies said out of the blue. ‘I can’t read so well any more, so she always helps me with my lines.’

Ryan had a feeling she had been helped with her current lines as well. ‘Does she, now?’ he asked, unable to stop the smile tugging at his mouth.

‘I was overseas last spring when my daughter fell ill,’ another said, after getting a nudge in the ribs. ‘And, even though spring is the worst time for Chloe and her asthma, she and Laura made the long trip via my daughter’s house every day to get her little ones to school.’

Ryan could tell Laura wanted to slap a hand across each of their mouths, but she just stood back and let them vent. It reminded him of a passage from one of Will’s e-mails to Sam, which she had shared with him when they were going through Will’s papers:

The people here are amazing, Sam. Kind, generous, selfless, opinionated, and meddlesome! You can’t scratch your nose without somebody knowing about it. And you can be sure that within the day everyone in town will know about it too. I thought it might be infuriating, but it’s not. It means that there are people who care about you. So, no matter how far away we all actually live from one another, we know that we are never really alone.

It seemed that Will had been right on the money. The town knew exactly who he was, and had turned up in force to make sure he knew exactly who Laura was too.

‘Our Laura is an angel,’ the ringleader said.

‘Esme, seriously, that’s enough,’ Laura murmured.

‘From what I have heard tonight,’ Ryan butted in, ‘I would say sainthood is not far away.’

The ladies all grinned back at him, knowing they had all successfully played their parts in the night’s hastily organised small play.

‘Will you be coming to see the musical?’ Esme asked.

‘You never know your luck,’ he responded with a wink, and with that the three grey-haired pirates left in a twitter, and he and Laura were again left alone in the room full of people.

‘So,’ he said.

‘So,’ she returned. ‘I’d better go after them. If I’m not there within a minute they’ll be back for shandies. And their husbands will all be onto me first thing in the morning complaining that the play is just a front for the Country Women’s Drinking Association.’

She reached over and grabbed her cooling apple pies, turned and walked away. It seemed their meeting was over.

‘Isn’t the Pirate King a male part as well as a singing part?’ he called out curiously, not yet wanting the encounter to end.

Laura spun on her knee-high black boots but kept walking away from him. ‘Not so many males in the Country Women’s Association,’ she explained.

‘Isn’t that discriminatory?’

‘So join!’ she said, throwing out her hands. ‘Be my guest. You can even take my part.’ She tore off the bandana and a mass of auburn curls spilled onto her shoulders. She fluttered the bandana towards him, and when he didn’t accept the offer she spun about and walked away.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Ryan warned.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ she called, as she waved the bandana over her shoulder and headed out of a side door, slamming it behind her.

Ryan stood staring into space. The image of those tight purple pants would take some time to dissolve from his memory. But all he had was time. For the first time in…for ever he had nothing planned: no jobs lined up, no reports to complete, only the final edits on the textbook with the complementary CD to turn in to his editor.

He slid back into the booth and nursed his now warm beer. Chatter and laughter from the other patrons filtered back into his awareness. And he was left…wanting.

The last sentence of Will’s e-mail to Sam came back to him.

…no matter how far away we all actually live from one another, we know that we are never really alone.

Had his brother really felt so alone in the great hustle and bustle of Melbourne? Had he needed his scattered family around him that much? And had living around these people really made all the difference?

Ryan remembered the last time he and Will had spoken, and tried to see if he had missed the signs of Will’s isolation even then…

Ryan’s hotel room phone rang. He was on his way to a black-tie function in the piazza in front of the Pantheon in Rome. He thought about not answering, but a quick glance at his watch showed he had time.

‘Ryan Gasper,’ he answered.

‘This is a collect call from Tandarah, Australia,’ the operator said in English, with a strong Italian accent.

‘I’ll accept,’ Ryan said, slumping down onto the side of his bed. ‘Will, is that you?’

‘Yeah.’ His little brother breathed out.

‘Excellent. So, are you coming? I’m off to Paris in three days, so I can just meet you there. My PA back in Melbourne is ready to book everything the second you say yes.’

‘Well, actually, bro,’ Will said, his voice so heavy and glum Ryan pretty much knew what was coming before he even spoke, ‘that’s what I was calling about. I’m not coming.’

Ryan rubbed his hand across suddenly tight eyes. ‘You can’t possibly tell me you’ve had a better offer.’

‘Actually, I have.’

For the briefest of moments Ryan’s heart skipped a beat. ‘You’ve taken the scholarship offer at Oxford?’

‘Umm, no. You see, there’s this girl…’

Ryan leapt off the bed and strode back and forth across the room, as far as the telephone cord would allow. ‘Will, do we have to have this conversation again? You don’t know how good you have it, kid. I don’t know how many more times any of us can stick our necks out for you. You can’t keep turning away the opportunities we have created for you.’

‘But, bro, this is an opportunity I have created for myself.’

‘Considering who you are, I would hazard a guess she is the opportunist in this scenario.’

‘That’s way harsh, bro, and so far off the mark it’s funny. Maybe you should give up the Paris thing and come visit me instead. Meet her. See this place. It’s phenomenal.’

‘Be serious.’

Will’s exasperation broke through. ‘God, you just don’t get it, do you? I can never be you! Out here I feel like I don’t have to be, either. I can be somebody new. Somebody I like.’

The red light on Ryan’s phone began to flash. His taxi was waiting downstairs. ‘Look, Will, I have to go. Just tell me you’re still considering Paris, okay?’

A deep heartfelt sigh wafted down the phone line. ‘Sure,’ Will said. ‘Okay.’

‘I’ll talk to you again in a couple of days, and by that time I hope to hear better news. Take care.’

Ryan hung up the phone, his whole body thrumming with frustration. It hurt so much that the kid was letting this time slip through his fingers. The last thing he wanted was for his little brother to look back on his wasted youth with regret. He should have been studying, travelling, networking, embracing the world—not some hick chick in the middle of the Outback.

He picked up his keys, slipped his wallet into the hidden pocket in his tuxedo jacket and left. Next week. Next week when he was in Paris he would call him back and try to talk some more sense into the kid.

Of course by that stage Will would probably be done with the whole farming dream. He would have become bored with the girl and decided to become a fire-stick twirler in Byron Bay.

Tremendous…

Coming back to the present, Ryan caught Jill’s eye at the bar and she came straight over.

‘Another beer?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘But there is something else you can do for me.’

She raised an eyebrow and waited.

‘Who is the local real-estate agent?’

‘That would be Cal Bunton.’

‘Let’s get Cal Bunton on the phone, then, shall we? Let him know I have some business I need to conduct. It has to be tonight, but I will make it worth his while.’




CHAPTER THREE


THE next morning Ryan knew better than to park his car beneath the flowering banksia in front of Kardinyarr House. The day before it had dropped spiky red petals all over the roof of his car, leaving a horrible sticky residue it had taken him a half-hour to clean away.

He parked his car beside the house, got out, and, stretching his arms over his head, walked the last few metres to the edge of the yard, until he could see over the rise to the gully at the rear of the property.

Kardinyarr: two-hundred hilly acres of grazing land that had grabbed his brother so tight he had been willing to give up a very different sort of life for it. And for her.

Clouds brushed large patches of shadow across the huge, dusty green parcel of land. Ghost gums collected in majestic pockets on the hilltops. Hardy lantana and sturdy low-lying scrub wound in a curling thick mass alongside a meandering creek in the gully below. It was so quiet he could hear leaves skittering across the roof of the house, the windows creaking against the buffeting breeze. What he could not hear was traffic, or televisions, or barking dogs.

It was picturesque, just as Will had described in his e-mails to Sam, just as he had tried to tell Ryan on the telephone that night in Rome. But Ryan needed more. He wanted to understand. Needed to understand. Because it seemed that until he could reconcile Will’s decision to stay, he couldn’t let him off the hook, couldn’t let him go.

Ryan headed back to the car and pulled a couple of bags of groceries from the passenger seat just as Laura drove up the driveway in her old grey hatchback. She skidded to a halt at an angle in the middle of a patch of grass, leapt from the car, and stormed towards him. Today’s cotton sundress was white with ripe cherries. Today’s ponytail was tied back with a proper red ribbon. Today she wore flat white sandals that kicked up clouds of dust as she raged over to him.

‘What? No purple pants?’ he asked.

She ignored him, just as he’d expected her to. ‘I just ran into Cal Bunton, dropping his daughter off at Chloe’s school, and he told me what you’ve done.’

And there he’d been, wondering how he would tell Laura the good news, when he should have guessed she would know before the ink had even dried on the contracts. He hitched the grocery bags onto his hip, shut his car door, pressed the remote lock, reminded himself he really didn’t need to do that any more, and then headed towards the house.

‘I have been pleasant,’ Laura raved, stamping along behind him. ‘Heck, I haven’t made nearly as much of a fuss at your landing on my doorstep without any warning as I could have. Now you have gone and bought Kardinyarr and you’re moving in? Just like that?’

‘Well, not quite just like that,’ Ryan said, balancing the groceries precariously as he reached into his jeans pocket for the front door keys. ‘A quick settlement suits both buyer and seller, so Kardinyarr should be mine within the fortnight. Until then I’m leasing the place from the Callaghans.’

‘But how could you?’

‘It seems that I had to. I will have a good chance of actually meeting your daughter this way. Unless, of course, she’ll be at school, or slumber parties, or busy with super-important first grade homework for evermore.’

Laura blithely ignored his sideways barb. ‘Cal Bunton also said you were asking his advice on running livestock. Are you seriously thinking of working this place?’

Nice move, he thought. If you can’t win the argument, change the subject. ‘I seriously am.’

‘But what do you know about running a farm?’

Without looking over his shoulder, he opened the door and headed inside his empty house. ‘I know a lot about agriculture. In fact, the paper I was brought to Australia to present focused on the importance of the cotton industry in South East Queensland to the Australian economy. Nothing like harnessing the best natural resources the world has to offer to keep our economy chugging along nicely.’

Only once he’d reached the kitchen and placed the groceries on the empty bench did he realise she hadn’t followed. He poked his head into the hall to find her fuming out on the grass. He threw his keys onto the bench and walked back to the doorway.

She threw her arms out in frustration. ‘Well, so long as you can learn what you need to know from a chat with a bunch of cronies around a conference table, you’re laughing!’

‘I’m also about halfway through reading Running Livestock for Dummies, and I am finding the cartoons and pie charts most helpful.’




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