Holly's Heart

by Fiona McArthur

  Holly’s Heart

  An Outback Brides Romance

  Fiona McArthur

  Holly’s Heart

  Copyright © 2018 Fiona McArthur

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First Publication by Tule Publishing Group 2018

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-949068-54-2

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  Dedication

  Dedicated to our brand new twin grandchildren, Patrick and Yasmin. Welcome little ones.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  The Outback Bride Series

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to the last – for the moment – of the Outback Brides books. I’m lucky enough to follow Kelly Hunter, Victoria Purman and Cathryn Hein in this series. The three fab authors from the previous books are a hard act to follow but I loved the opportunity to play with them in our fictitious Australian gold rush town of Wirralong. We had a lot of fun bouncing ideas for Maggie’s Wirra Station and the town, and the personalities of the smart business ladies and the townspeople. And we have weddings. Lots of weddings. Fabulous weddings.

  For anyone who has read any of my other books, you won’t be surprised that I felt we needed some medical attention. I bring you the handsome, caring, super sexy Dr Ben Briely, and the gorgeous, slightly stressed Dr Holly Peterson who is trying desperately not to fall in lust with her old schoolfriend, Ben.

  Holly has suffered the loss of her sister and moved back with her six-year-old twin nephews and needs to stay focussed on their needs.

  Ben, well, Ben has always loved Holly. He just needs to find a way past her barriers and be there for her because he can see a beautiful future with Holly and her new family and he’s a very determined man.

  I hope you enjoy Ben and Holly’s love story, laugh with the twin boys, wander around Wirralong, and feel the outback vistas and cattle stations that surround our town. Until next story…

  with warmest wishes for happy reading

  xx Fi

  Prologue

  Summer brought wildflowers to the outback town of Wirralong, along with the most beautiful brides. Brides with money and the hankering for the Australian countryside. Brides who visualised their special moment in a restored stone homestead with manicured green lawns and rose gardens hiding quaint surprises. Intimate wedding brides.

  Horse-and-cart brides and fabulous bouquet brides. Inside rustic outbuildings under towering eucalyptus, or intimate gatherings beside an old gum tree down by the creek with an arbour of white roses and jasmine.

  Maggie Walker-O’Connor’s Wirra Station wedding venue promised to provide the perfect setting for romance.

  Wirra Station had risen like a phoenix from a run-down homestead into a stage for the most iconic and picturesque nuptials in Victoria. The success of Maggie’s venue had grown to impact the town and, unlike other rustic gold-rush towns in southern Australia, Wirralong survived instead of scattering like tumbleweed blown into oblivion.

  In fact the town rode on the back of that business savvy to cater for the guests who arrived to spend the weekend in town for their event.

  Wedding parties waltzed around boardwalks, shedding love and laughter and new life into the previously struggling shop owners’ tills. Isabella Martenson, marriage celebrant, at Wedding Belles, Elsa Hargreaves’s Hair Affair salon and Serenity’s Beauty, even Jacinta’s Motor Vehicle Service Centre, had all increased clientele. In the middle of the main street, behind a door with a bell, the Outback Brides Coffee Shop was another business that flourished, especially on weekends.

  There was even a new family doctor surgery opening and the town was abuzz.

  Chapter One

  Ben

  Dr Ben Brierly twirled his wide-brimmed Akubra on one finger as he surveyed the empty consulting rooms. Wirralong Family Doctors Surgery. His!

  Finally.

  It felt fantastic to be home. He’d never thought the town would grow enough to sustain a general practice, but here he stood about to open his own business.

  Today, his temporary and outrageously expensive secretary-cum-office-manager Mrs Burrows, hired from Melbourne with vast experience of opening general practice establishments, had completed his new world. During the organisation she’d been worth her weight in pharmacological shares, even loading the computers with the software for patient files. She’d assembled and installed all the furnishings and additional software a small practice needed, outfitting the reception area with waiting room chairs and a water cooler. She’d even hung his medical degree and his nameplate with surgical precision.

  Her registered nurse helpers had set up his consulting room and the procedure room, plus the smaller nurse’s consult room, created and signed off the emergency drug kit with the pharmacist in the main street, and they’d put the rest of his equipment and paraphernalia in the silent, non-existent, partner’s room.

  Thus, his appointment book would be accessible for the next week before he officially opened his doors for four days a week … keeping Wednesdays free to sort his grandmother’s rundown property with the new farm manager.

  He shouldn’t have stayed away so long.

  Mrs Burrows’s final task would be to interview applicants for her replacement, and the practice nurse, then the whole relocation exercise would have happened without any physical effort on his part. Mostly because he currently had more money than time.

  Which was lucky. He couldn’t believe the mess Brierly Park had been in. Or the guilt that rode him like a snowy mountain brumby for leaving Gran to deal with an incompetent manager on her own after Gramps had died. But he hadn’t known, and—seriously? There were reasons he hadn’t wanted to come back here, and his grandmother was … a
little difficult if he suggested she needed help. Which was why he chose to reside in town and not butt heads over the small stuff.

  She’d wanted him to commute from the Park, but having a flat here in Wirralong made much more sense. Thankfully the premises came with upstairs quarters. Mrs Burrows had found Gran a saint for a housekeeper and that would help everyone.

  Remembering Brierly Park and the sunset-dusted hills little more than an hour ago, when he’d turned his horse for home, made him breathe deep and let his shoulders drop.

  The air had been filled with the scent of gums, the spaces so open, and the excitement of the muster had lifted his spirits higher than they’d been for months. Even bending his back with the fencing contractors on the new cattle yards earlier today had felt good.

  He glanced at the hat in his hand and twirled it again. The cowboy doctor, eh? He blew a breath out between pursed lips and jammed the hat on his head. Home.

  Ben turned out the office light and the door he remembered as clunky, swung silently to lock with a gentle click. Mrs Burrows had hired a handyman for the week and it was ‘the little things’ she professed to be proud of. Darn right she should be proud.

  Ben slapped the rail in approval and vaulted up the stairs three at a time until he reached the landing and unlocked the door to the spacious two-bedroom apartment and tossed his hat, which obligingly landed on the hall stand hook, and surveyed his private domain with pleasure.

  Freshly painted, the room’s age and character melded and his stuff didn’t look out of place, considering he was above street level of a country town, and it felt … homely. Which he wasn’t quite sure his Melbourne flat had ever been.

  When he’d dropped in here on Thursday the entry had been filled with boxes. Now, the dark leather furniture from his inner-city pad lay tastefully arranged, his paintings positioned, and … he strode across to the bedroom and slid open the wardrobe door. Yep, his clothes were hung, and his drawers filled. The woman was a marvel.

  After a quick shower, he stepped out onto his tiny verandah, the one perched over his office entry below, and gazed down the main street of a town he’d worked his way back to since he’d left. Since someone else’s dream had somehow become his dream and she hadn’t returned to fulfil it. Wirralong.

  Shame it had taken a personal tragedy to make him see the time had come to return home.

  He shook his head at the loss of Tobias. One of his group from med school, Tobias had been a senior registrar with a brilliant mind and a determination to be the perfect doctor. That was the problem with perfection. A fatal medication error during a frantic resuscitation had devastated Tobias into shock, even though he hadn’t drawn the drug up. When the miscalculation had been realised too late and the patient died, his friend had tried to self-medicate himself out of his spiralling depression and, to all their horror, a week later he’d overdosed.

  That incident had been the final straw for Ben, spurring him to leave the fast lane of major hospitals and make his life where he really wanted it. Home to be the support when needed for his independent-but-ageing grandmother and home to be the rural GP in a community he planned to be an intricate part of.

  Of course, absolutely, he’d let go of any disappointments about Wirralong.

  Chapter Two

  Holly

  Dr Holly Peterson marvelled at the way the coffee shop’s clientele had continued to expand in the three months since she’d arrived to take over her late sister’s enterprise. Of course, she too could make the excellent coffee that Wirralong, and especially the city guests, now expected. She just hadn’t expected to be solvent while doing it.

  Tonight, at the Smart Ladies’ Supper Club, she’d felt as though she’d come home, as the boisterous handful of business ladies and friends drew her back into their fold, sharing triumphs, challenges and support as they gathered behind the pulled blinds of Elsa Hargreaves’s Hair Affair salon.

  The wine had been flowing more than usual, but that tended to happen on hens’ nights. A lot of it had poured her school friend Jasmine Winter’s way in celebration of her coming wedding, and the shapely mechanic was getting loud.

  ‘Have you heard who’s opening the new doctor surgery?’ Jasmine’s amused stage whisper carried and the sudden silence turned into an avid eavesdrop, wine glasses suspended, every coiffed woman, resplendent in their embroidered red robes like satin-clad divas, turning slowly to look at Holly and Jasmine over at the nail bar.

  ‘It’s Ben Brierly.’ Of course Jasmine had to add, with an arch look at Holly, ‘I saaaaaid you should have opened doors as the town GP.’

  Holly felt her cheeks take on the sunburnt sheen of sheer embarrassment. Yes, she had heard, and, no, she hadn’t decided when she would practise medicine again. That depended on her six-year-old nephews and her ability to combine new adopted parenthood and her role in the frenetic pace of emergency medicine.

  Most times she wanted to hug Jasmine for being the support that had kept her sane, not an easy task since her arrival three months ago with her sister’s twin boys and her heart aching with loss and guilt, but sometimes she wanted to strangle her bestie from school. Especially at moments like these.

  She needed to recover from finding out a new doctor was in town, doing the work she should be doing, before she came face-to-face with him, and she didn’t need to come to terms with it under the Smart Ladies’ scrutiny.

  Ben Brierly was another person she didn’t want to face again. There weren’t many things she regretted, but her treatment of the friendship between her and Ben at school had been one of them.

  Life really sucked sometimes.

  Ben had become her hero the day he came to her aid when she’d been threatened by a homeless itinerant on her way home one afternoon. Normally able to stand up for herself, Holly had been backed up against a tree with dread spiralling within her, as the youth had insinuated what he would do to her.

  After Ben’s sudden arrival, his face more furious than Holly had ever seen, the ensuing fisticuffs had ended with her accoster running off with a bloodied nose, never to be seen in town again, and Ben bearing skinned knuckles and a torn shirt.

  Then he’d unexpectedly tucked her trembling hand into his and said he’d watch out for her. Her first experience of a protective male, a species she’d been previously unaware of in her three-female household. And one she’d been warned by her mother not to rely on.

  When Ben fronted the next day outside the school gate, at precisely the time she usually departed for home, despite her efforts to not depend on him showing, her time with Ben had become her most treasured part of the day.

  She stayed determined not to be an idiot like the other girls who fancied Ben; she had plans, big plans, and she would treat him like the just-a-friend he really was. Better than her mum believed in, but still a friend she could keep at arm’s length. She needed those grades at school to achieve her dream. To not be the girl from the broken home or the loser child of a hard-working single mother. So she could be the big sister who would look after her younger sibling.

  Talking to Ben became too easy, and their conversations roamed far and wide. Covering the loss of Ben’s parents and Holly never knowing her dad, her fantastical dream of opening a medical practice in Wirralong, and saving all her money and buying a real house for her mother and sister to live in. Over time, slowly, unspoken, tendrils of their friendship began to develop into something that clung deeper to Holly’s soul, despite trying to shield herself.

  Inside, hidden from the world, Holly began to float on a gossamer cloud of happiness.

  Her best friend, Jasmine, hadn’t quite caught on to the depth of the situation until it was over. Jasmine, a motorbike fanatic, had her best time at school riding her dirt bike home along bush tracks, and didn’t even know Ben and Holly were growing fond of each other.

  Soon Ben had become too special for Holly to talk about to Jasmine, who would tease her—even if only in fun—that she was actually interested in a boy.
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br />   Until the day Ben’s grandmother, the mayor’s widow, had stopped her in downtown Wirralong, coldly looked her up and down, and declared Holly needed to be careful her studies didn’t suffer when it all blew over—which it would when Ben went to university—because Holly couldn’t afford to end up like her single mother.

  Holly had been angry and just a little crazy with the echo of her own thoughts, which she’d taken out on Ben by erecting a wall so high he couldn’t reach her. Oh, she was pleasant, but took to riding her mother’s push bike to and from school, and their walks were at an end.

  Wirralong High understood that gangly Ben Brierly had wanted Holly Peterson with an unswerving devotion that meant no other girl had a chance. They also understood she didn’t like him back.

  Her friend Jasmine had always found Ben’s quiet attention highly amusing. To her shame, and Ben’s disappointment, after his grandmother’s interference, Holly never let the wall down again.

  To Jasmine, Holly admitted Ben was ‘a nice guy’ but stated loudly and often that her gaze sat firmly on her medical future and not on romance.

  Now, all these years later, as she sat with Jasmine drying her French-manicured nails in the town they’d both returned to, she wondered, again, why fate had decided her mistakes had to keep flying into her face. Because no one else had ever listened to her, befriended her or made her smile like Ben Brierly had, and she’d let him down in a way a true friend should never have.

  Maybe he wouldn’t remember much of Holly. Maybe he’d blocked her out. And if he hadn’t, well, she’d just have to front the man and apologise for overreacting to the slighting hurt she’d been dealt, and be done with it. They were adults now and he’d come home the hero, while she marked time on her career. That sucked a little too.