Heart Of The Outback, Volume 2

by Margaret Way

  “I’m giving you your birthday present now, okay?” He looked up, a silver flame in his eyes.

  “I just hope it cost a lot of money,” she tried to joke. “Just fooling, Daniel.”

  “I know. That was one big fat cheque you wrote for the Childhood Leukaemia Foundation.”

  She nodded her satisfaction. “Joel has agreed to match me. I really love him, you know. My grandad didn’t inspire a lot of affection. Your grandad is the kind of man one loves.”

  “He is,” Daniel agreed with obvious affection, then with sudden intensity, “What about me?”

  “I’ve told you I love you a number of times. I won’t be tempted again.”

  “So I’ll send this back then?” he asked, waving a small velvet box about.

  “After I’ve seen what it is.” A swarm of butterflies took flight in her stomach.

  He moved towards her with his characteristic athletic grace, going down on one knee. “I’ve got to do this properly.” He looked up at her with half smiling, but deeply serious eyes. “Alexandra Mary Kingston,” he said with burning formality, “would you do me the great honour of becoming my wife?” He didn’t wait for an answer but put out his arms and gripped her slender body to him. “Darling Sandra, I never had a life before you. You have to marry me.”

  She couldn’t answer at once, literally speechless with joy. “Oh, Daniel, you’re going to make me cry,” she whispered, her two hands cupping his beloved head. “I dare not. I’ll spoil my makeup. Oh, Daniel, I never believed you’d ask me.”

  He rose to his feet, bending to kiss the creamy slope of her shoulder. “How could you not?” he asked gently. “You know how I feel just as I know how you feel. We love each other. We were meant for each other since we were born.” Swiftly he opened the box in his hand. “Here is my gift to you, your engagement ring. It comes with my solemn promise to love, honour and protect you all my life. Give me your hand, sweetheart.”

  Sandra raised it, but overcome by emotion, squeezed her eyes shut. Precious metal slipped down her finger.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Daniel said in a gentle loving voice.

  “Oh, Daniel!” She stared down at her precious ring, a glorious sapphire flanked by baguette diamonds. “I feel like I’m going to bawl my eyes out.”

  “Not now, you can’t,” he reminded her. “You can cry in my arms when the party is over.”

  “Is that a promise? I don’t think I can contain myself so long.”

  “Well we have to. I don’t dare muss you, you look perfect. Tears, lots of cuddles and kisses are allowed later, but though it’s excruciating and a real test of my control, we’re not going to bed together. Not until the first night of our honeymoon which I personally guarantee will be the most wonderful night of our lives. Do you trust me?”

  She smiled radiantly. “Trust in you wraps me like a security blanket. I’ve always trusted you, Daniel. From the moment I laid eyes on you at the airport. Now, having said that, I don’t want to pester you, but when is this honeymoon going to be? It’s a good time to put pressure on you because I don’t mind telling you I’m in an agony of longing.”

  “You think I’m not?” He linked his arms around the waist. “I’m ready to start it immediately, but what I want even more is to see you as my shining bride. The woman I love and honour. That said, what about as soon as possible in the New Year? Would a few months give you enough time to get organised? I don’t think we’re going to get out of a big wedding, do you?”

  “The biggest!” In an ecstasy of joy she started to whirl around the room all the while holding her beautiful engagement ring up to the light.

  “Like it?” He caught her to him, commanding her to a stop.

  “Love it. Love you.”

  “That’s what I want to hear.” He allowed himself several kisses that trailed from behind one small ear, down the column of her throat to her shoulder, all the while inhaling the lovely perfume she wore. “There couldn’t be any question as to the stone,” he said huskily. “A perfect sapphire outmatched by your eyes.”

  “Are you going to kiss me anywhere else?” she whispered.

  His brilliant eyes rested on her mouth. “Don’t tempt me. One kiss and it would all get out of hand as you very well know. We’ll store the kisses up until the early hours of your birthday morning. Meanwhile I’ll kiss those delicate fingers.” He brought her hand to his mouth, running the tip of his tongue over her smooth knuckles.

  “Daniel,” she said weakly, just about ready to dissolve.

  “This is nothing to what I’m going to do to you,” he told her in a low thrilling voice.

  “I know!” She gave an expectant shiver. “I’m going to pieces already.”

  “Me, too!” Ardently he touched a finger to the little pulse that beat in the hollow of her throat. “We’ll have a lifetime together, Sandra.” His voice was full of the wonder of being deeply, truly in love. “Just think of it!”

  An enormous lightness of being seized Sandra. She linked her arm through his as they walked to the door. “From this day forward!”

  “From this day forward,” he repeated, looking down at her with his spirit, exultant, in his eyes. “You and me on life’s journey.”

  For a long lovely moment they were sealed off in a world of their own.

  I’m getting what every woman prays for, Sandra thought, an expression of utter bliss irradiating her face. I’m getting the thing in life that really matters: Having a wonderful man love me as I love him.

  Only with Daniel could this happen.

  * * * * *

  Wanted: Outback Wife

  Ally Blake

  To my Sirens—Hulda, Nic, Ola, and Trish—for being the best listeners, huggers, and champions a girl could ever want. Smoochy kisses.

  CHAPTER ONE

  HAPPY hour at The Cave was drawing to a close, but Jodie didn’t mind at all.

  She had used up every second of employment her working visa had allowed so now her final weeks in Melbourne were hers to do with as she pleased. And it pleased her to sit on a bar stool twirling a daisy-shaped earring she had made from scratch earlier that day, sharing a bottle of red wine that someone else had paid for, and enjoying every last second that she wasn’t in London.

  “Where’s Mandy?” her housemate Lisa asked. “I have to start work in eight minutes and those customers who haven’t booked a table won’t turn themselves away.”

  “Beach Street is back on in less than three minutes,” Louise added, her clipped London accent so obvious amongst the neighbouring Aussie strine. “No matter how exiting Mandy’s big surprise, after the break Angelo is about to find out that Cait was once married to his brother, so her announcement will be nothing but white noise to me.”

  “She’ll be here,” Jodie said chirpily. The fact that Louise, the half-sister she had never even known existed until two weeks before, had turned up on her doorstep amidst her own family drama wasn’t lost on Jodie. But she began throwing pretzel chunks at Louise, who was glancing at the overhead television every few seconds, all the same.

  “If you do that one more time, Jodie,” Louise warned, “when the next ad break comes along I will retaliate.”

  Jodie grinned, but she stopped throwing pretzels at Louise and threw one into her mouth instead, amazed anew that this tall, cool, sophisticated, blonde product of the infamous restaurant family, the Valentines of London, was related to her—mousy little Jodie Simpson.

  It was obvious Louise got the glamour goods from their shared mother, whereas Jodie wasn’t sure what she had acquired from Patricia except a lifelong pain in the neck. But thankfully all that was back in London, far far away from friends and fun on this fine Melbourne evening.

  “I’ve got it!” Mandy cried out, rushing in as fast as her pencil-thin power skirt and two-inch heels would allow. She waved a piece of paper high above her head.

  “If that’s a doctor’s certificate telling you rotten Jake has finally given you something only penici
llin will cure, I don’t want to know about it,” Lisa called back.

  “Funny,” Mandy said. “Now leave my love life out of this; this magical piece of paper is all about Jodie’s.”

  “My love life?” Jodie wheezed while coughing up a pretzel crumb that had lodged in her throat.

  “Yep,” Mandy said. “I have found a way for you to stay in Australia.”

  That got everyone’s attention. Lisa stopped staring at her watch. Jodie’s mouth went so dry she wouldn’t have had a clue if she had been drinking red wine or juiced sawdust. Louise spun on her seat leaving Beach Street’s Angelo and Cait to sort out their worries on their own.

  Jodie felt a pang of guilt lodge between her shoulder blades. Until that moment Louise had had no idea that she was considering not returning to London. In Jodie Louise would have a close friend outside the Valentine family she was feeling so angry toward right now, and a sister to be at her side when she met her real mother for the first time.

  And though Jodie so wanted to be that person for Louise, she wanted to be in Melbourne more. She waved a quick hand at Louise, intimating she would explain everything later.

  “How? I’ve tried everything,” Jodie managed, “including writing letters to the Australian Department of Immigration telling them how much I want to be one of you.”

  Jodie looked from Mandy to Lisa. She would have given her right ear to be like them—bright, breezy, and free as the wind. And being that way in Melbourne.

  “But I still have to be on a plane back to London on the thirtieth of December,” Jodie said, letting her hand flop back to the table.

  Mandy grinned. “I have found a way.”

  “And it has something to do with Jodie’s love life?” Louise asked, sounding anxious.

  Mandy nodded. “Dust off your best bridesmaid’s frock; we are going to marry your sister off to an Australian.”

  Jodie felt herself blanch and blush all at once. “You want to marry me … off?”

  Mandy looked down at the computer printout she held through a pair of tiny reading glasses. “The marriage would only have to last two years. At first you’ll get a Temporary Spouse Visa and at the end of those two years, once you achieve your Permanent Visa, you can divorce the guy and be free.”

  Free. Of all the words Mandy could have chosen to sell the idea that was the one that worked. For a child from a split home it certainly rang in her ears a lot more comfortably than marriage, or divorce …

  But surely it couldn’t be that simple.

  “You and Lisa are both natives, yet Lisa has been single since I’ve known her and the closest thing to a long-term boyfriend you have managed to locate is rotten Jake. What makes you think I can do it in two and a half months?”

  Lisa looked back down at her watch again, neatly avoiding Jodie’s comment.

  “One and a half,” Mandy said, also ignoring the point.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You have to fill out an Intention To Marry form one month and one day before marrying. So at the outside, you have six weeks in which to find your man. Considering it has been a month since you starting putting big red crosses on your calendar in a passive-aggressive reminder of the looming Day You Have To Leave, I had my team make it top priority. As of today you have your own website!”

  “Website?” Jodie repeated.

  “It’s called www.ahusbandinahurry.com,” Mandy said, puffing up proudly.

  Louise, who had been elegantly sipping on a Cosmopolitan, coughed inelegantly into her drink.

  Jodie sunk her head onto her hands so as not to see the amplified mortification that would surely be in Louise’s eyes. “But what if anyone I know has seen it? What if my mother has seen it?”

  “Unless she is trawling the Internet looking for a cute British bride, then I think you’ll be fine. Besides, we did you proud. We used that photo of you from the Christmas in July barbecue on the home page.”

  “Not the action shot where I was laughing so hard you could see my tonsils as I fell off my chair by way of too much champagne?” Jodie asked.

  “That’s the one,” Mandy said, grinning. “The men at work voted that one their favourite. They all said you seemed, and I quote: ‘cute, adorable, and fun’.”

  “So why not just set her up with one of the guys from your work?” Louise asked. Several faint frown lines marred her forehead. She wasn’t as aloof to the situation as she was making out. But Jodie couldn’t deal with what those frown lines meant. Not yet.

  Jodie was beginning to see the possibilities. There was any number of reasons why two people could happily marry for convenience’s sake. And considering this was her last chance at staying in Australia, the place where she had found fabulous friends, a growing number of people who stopped her on the street to ask her where they could buy the unique floral-inspired earrings she herself created, and where she had begun to delight in her youth, maybe, just maybe, she could pull this off.

  That was the clincher. After years of being the adult in the family, the one who remembered to pick up milk, the one who kept the house free of dust bunnies, the one who remembered to pay the gas bill, the one who made sure her mum got to work in time—when she managed to hold down a job—Jodie felt hopeful that at last she had a chance to find the youth inside herself.

  “Oh, no,” Mandy said, “once they knew she was looking for a husband, even a two-year one, they backed away like I had pulled a shotgun.”

  And there was the rub.

  Jodie looked to Lisa, who had been quiet through all of this. “What do you think?”

  Lisa held up both hands before slipping off the seat and backing away. “You don’t want to know what I think. Besides, can’t talk, I’m now on the clock.”

  “She has some old-fashioned view that you should only date, marry, sleep with a guy if you’re in love.” Mandy shivered as though that would have saved her from a whole lot of fun. “But I’m not expecting you to worry about any of that. Leave it all to me.”

  Jodie had every intention of leaving it all to Mandy. Though it wasn’t in her make-up to come out and say it, she needed help. For there was no way on God’s green earth she was ever going back to London. To that oppressive apartment. To that half life.

  But the real question was: what sort of man would give up two years of his life to marry her, to be her husband, after knowing her for less than a month?

  Heath swung back and forth on the love seat on the veranda of his big old home, staring out across the flat red dirt of Jamesons Run.

  A blood-red sunset glowed across the plain. A nimble dry wind whipped along the dusty ground so that the golden kangaroo grass seemed to be waving toward the grand old willow dipping its sad leaves into the dam at the centre of his main paddock.

  He could do with rain—and not just to damp down the dust storms that were springing up from nowhere more often than not these days. Rain would be a break in routine of stifling hot temperatures that spoke of an oppressive summer to come. Rain would be a change.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Heath looked over his shoulder to find his older sister Elena standing in the doorway with a paper plate drooping under the weight of mixed desserts. An outfit of a floral dress and stockings on such a warm day could only mean one thing—a wedding or a funeral. And there had not been a wedding at Jamesons Run in years.

  He let his riding-boot-clad feet drag against the wooden floor until the seat stopped swinging so she could sit beside him.

  “I brought this for you before the Crabbe sisters had the chance,” Elena said. “No doubt they are still squabbling over whether you might prefer Carol’s custard tart or Rachel’s mud cake.”

  Heath smiled, and he only hoped he had managed to make it reach his eyes. His appetite seemed to have departed him since the moment he had picked up the phone four days earlier to learn that Marissa was gone, but he swallowed a bite of Elena’s home-made pavlova to keep her happy. His mouth was so dry that the sticky passion-fruit topping caught o
n his palate. Now he would be prying pavlova loose with his heavy tongue all night.

  “How you doing, little brother?” Elena asked, patting him on the knee. “You holding up okay?”

  He nodded, though he turned away for a brief moment so she wouldn’t see his frown. Why was she worried about him? Cameron was the one she should have been comforting. Cameron was the one who had lost his wife. He had only lost … what? A friend? His last remaining link to the life he had once thought he might have?

  “Do we have enough ice?” he asked, tidily avoiding the question. “I can run into town to get more.”

  “We have plenty of ice,” Elena said. Her patting stopped. “Though I’m sure it won’t occur to Cameron to thank you, he appreciates you holding Marissa’s wake here. And when you took over for him during the eulogy, oh, that fair broke my heart then and there. You’re a good kid, Heath.”

  “A thirty-six-year-old kid,” he reminded her. “Which makes you—”

  “A lady of indiscriminate age,” Elena said, cutting him off quick smart. “So when are we going to get to use this big old place for more than Christmas parties, local community meetings and funerals? When do we all get to come here to celebrate your wedding?”

  “Ha! I’m surprised you and the Crabbe sisters haven’t lined Cam and me up for a double wedding by now.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. They were cruel and hurtful and born of the fact that he barely believed the words even as he said them. He stood and moved to the edge of the veranda, wrapping his hands around the wooden railing until a bunch of splinters poked deep enough to hurt.

  “Sorry,” he said. “That was out of order.”

  “And completely understandable, considering. Does the thought of settling down frighten you that much?”

  Settling down? That was what she thought had kept him from the altar all this time? He had settled down a decade ago. What scared him was that if one day he settled down at Jamesons Run with someone else it meant that he would never leave. But now, on this tragic day, it no longer seemed the biggest problem in his life.