A Girl's Guide to the Outback

by Jessica Kate

“Rumblings”? Steph couldn’t have sounded more ominous if she’d spoken the words while wearing a black cape and a vulture on her shoulder.

  Kimberly straightened her spine. “Sam’s not coming back. He’s on the other side of the world. I just need more time to find the right fit—” She halted when Steph shook her head. Defensiveness welled up, but she kept her mouth shut. She’d pored over résumés for weeks trying to find a replacement for Sam—and managed to hire someone who seemed nice in his interview but was so difficult to work with he’d been fired in his first week. Next had come a promising mother in her late thirties with a dynamic stage presence and obvious love for youth—who quit two months in when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. This latest hire had seemed like a good fit for the past three months. But now, a third disaster.

  “Why did this one quit?”

  Steph heaved a sigh. “According to our barely coherent conversation, his wife blindsided him with divorce papers over the weekend.”

  Kimberly gaped. “That’s awful.” For both him and—was she selfish to think this?—her. She needed someone to oversee five youth Bible studies and the drop-in center and preach at four engagements in the next two weeks. Plus, the Baltimore center was ready to go pending someone to oversee it. Another hiring decision. Four résumés sat on her desk, but at this point could she trust her own choosing abilities? “Okay, well, the volunteer Bible study leaders can handle things themselves for a few weeks, and if I tweak the drop-in center roster—”

  Steph peeked through the stage curtain. Kimberly caught a glimpse of the hordes of waiting teens. “That’ll get us through the next month at most. But the board is losing confidence that we can replace Sam with someone appropriate.”

  Dread sucker punched her harder than the Hulk in a bad mood. Don’t say what I think you’re going to say. Don’t close it down. Don’t close it down.

  She maintained her poker face as best she could and braced for Steph’s next words.

  “We want you to win him back.”

  She must’ve heard that wrong. “What?”

  Steph laced her fingers together and held her silence. It’d been a habit of hers during their time working together and allowed her words to hit full potency rather than repeat herself.

  Kimberly gave a slow shake of her head. “He’s in Australia.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s not coming back.”

  “Convince him.” Steph held eye contact, didn’t smile, didn’t shrug.

  The little person inside Kimberly’s brain hovered its hand over the big red button marked PANIC. “I have as much chance of that as Bernie Madoff getting a business loan.”

  Steph winced. “If you don’t, the board will consider whether this ministry has run its course. We don’t want to be an organization for organization’s sake. If we aren’t running effectively, we’ll disband and divert the money to someone who’s doing the kind of good that Sam was. We just haven’t seen that in these replacements.”

  Kimberly stared at Steph, pressure building in her brain. How could she have gone from expanding Wildfire to possibly losing it altogether? “So you just give up? It can take time to find the right person.”

  “It’s November. You’ve had five months.”

  Kimberly lowered the volume of her voice but ratcheted up the intensity. “Five months is not a long-term perspective. And Sam is not the only talented youth pastor in the world.”

  Steph sighed. “I disagreed, for what it’s worth. You’ve hit a perfect storm of circumstances, and that’s not your fault. It’s just that a number of board members are looking to retire soon from their duties. Many of them donate directly to Wildfire. It’s how they got on the board in the first place. If they can’t see a strong future, I think they’d just as easily close down and send their money somewhere else as find replacements.” She touched a hand to Kimberly’s arm, gave a sympathetic squeeze. “Get creative. There’s hope yet.”

  Kimberly watched, frozen, as Steph glided onto the stage and addressed the waiting teenagers. Her throat and jaw ached from the effort of keeping a professional mask in place.

  She hadn’t poured three and a half years into this ministry to watch it fold now. Images of her future played out in her mind’s eye, like a scary movie on fast-forward. No more foosball playoffs against the kids in the drop-in center. No more team meetings with Mrs. Schneider’s out-of-this-world cupcakes. No more evening brainstorming sessions with a whiteboard, a truckload of Chinese food, and Steph and Sam. Well, at least Steph.

  No place to belong.

  She set her jaw. Wildfire wasn’t perfect—Sam’s refusal to play nice was proof of that—but it was the closest thing she’d had to a family since Dad died more than half her lifetime ago. She, more than anyone, knew these kids needed a place to belong and to learn about God’s unconditional love. Because she’d needed it.

  We need Sam. If she couldn’t convince him to return himself, she at least needed guidance from him on the best person to take over. Probably a few weeks for him to work with the replacement, too, and make sure they had the right person. She’d had three attempts and failed spectacularly to find that Sam Payton combination of enthusiasm, love for God, and ability to speak “teen.”

  Okay. All business was basically a negotiation. She just needed to find something he wanted and make her deal sweet enough to appeal.

  How hard could that be?

  Chapter 4

  “Samuel John Payton, stop running away from me.”

  Sam froze halfway through the farmhouse kitchen at the sound of his sister’s voice. He eyed the door that led to his childhood home’s enclosed veranda and, beyond that, freedom. Four more steps. Three if he stretched.

  Tap-tap. Thud. Tap-tap. Thud.

  Graceful on crutches Jules was not.

  The hallway light threw her shadow up against the wall, visible before she was. Good golly, did she have an electrocuted octopus on top of her head, or was her bed hair really that bad?

  Jules hopped out of the hallway sporting her koala pajamas and a glare so toxic it could strip paint. He held up his keys. “Cricket. Do you want me to disappoint twenty eleven-year-old boys?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You finally learned how to lie. Get better at it. You guys never train this late.”

  “It’s a barbie for the parents. I’m bringing the snags.” He held up a tray of sausages to prove the point. Funny, he’d missed good ol’ Aussie slang while in the States. There came a point where a man tired of explaining that barbie referred to a barbecue, not a plastic doll.

  He inched toward the door and away from the crazy woman who shared his genetics.

  “Not till you agree to help me.”

  He folded his arms. “I am helping you. I carried you up those stairs. There’s twelve of them, if you’re wondering. I got your movies and your painkillers. I even lit your favorite scented candle that smells like apple pie and makes me hungry.” His stomach rumbled even as he said it. “Oh yeah—and I moved continents for you.”

  “Call her.”

  “On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t leave you alone. Those painkillers have made you crazy.”

  Tap-tap. Thud.

  He’d hear the sound of those crutches in his nightmares.

  “All you talked about for three years was how this woman was some start-up wizard in LA and how she was torturing you with plans for world domination.”

  He shifted a step back. “That’s not entirely accurate.”

  She followed. “We need some out-of-the-box ideas and world-dominating confidence.”

  He stared her down, grateful that his extra three inches were able to top her five-ten stature. How could a woman look so fierce in koala pajamas? Her green eyes never blinked as she returned his glare.

  But sister or not, a man’s love for his sibling could only go so far. “I am not calling Kimberly Foster to ask if she can help us pay our bills.”

  Tap-tap. Thud. Jules leaned on the crutches, now wit
hin arm’s distance. “We could use her . . . ideas.”

  Hell would freeze over before his sister used the word help. “So talk to some of the other farmers around here.”

  Jules set her jaw.

  He mentally sighed. She’d never admit to their lifelong friends and neighbors that after four generations of farming Yarra Plains they teetered on the edge of disaster.

  But Jules’s pride was Jules’s problem.

  His sister pointed a crutch at him. “You know they’d only give me farming advice. How to grow grass and milk cows is not my problem. My problem is why it’s not generating enough money when we’re not even in drought. Or flood. Or fire. Or anything else that Mum dealt with for decades. This is a business question. And according to all the ranting I’ve heard from you over the years, all this woman thinks about is business and how to grow it. Relentlessly.”

  This is what he got for whinging to his sister.

  Jules scratched at the top of her cast. “Didn’t she double your donor base within her first six months?”

  Tripled it in five months, but close enough. “Yeah, but—”

  “Quadruple your volunteers in a year?”

  “Sort of, but—” He’d never have told Jules all this if he’d known she’d not only remember but use it against him. Maybe he’d talked about Kim more than he’d thought.

  “Sam.” Jules put a hand on his arm. “Please.”

  His armor cracked a smidge. He leaned against the kitchen bench beside him and mustered his final argument. “I’m the last person she’d do a favor for.”

  Jules inched closer, eyes alight. “I think you’re misjudging her. And we could offer to pay her.”

  He rolled his eyes. “One, why do you take her side? And two, with what? The whole problem is a lack of coinage, remember?” He drew out the last word in that annoying brotherish way he’d done when they were kids.

  “You could sell your body.”

  He snorted. “She’s not interested. Believe me.” Apart from the whole icky matter of those words coming from his sister’s mouth.

  Jules set her mouth in a tight line. Then snatched the keys from his hand and dropped them down her shirt.

  Sam blinked. “Hey!”

  “You want your keys, you ring Kimberly Foster.”

  “You’re a sicko.”

  “I’m a sicko with keys.”

  He stared at her. This. Was. Not. Happening.

  Jules poked a lamb sausage. “Bet those kids are getting hungry. Wondering where their coach is.”

  He jammed his hand on his hip.

  She waited.

  He held out a hand for the keys.

  She waited.

  He tried his most intimidating I-really-mean-business-and-I’m-definitely-not-bluffing stare.

  She returned it. “You said you came back here to help. So help.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fine. But if you think I’m carrying you down those stairs tomorrow, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  “The only reason you carried me the first time was because I was too doped up on meds to stop you. Start dialing, buddy.”

  Sam ground his teeth and pulled his phone from his pocket. He flicked up his clock app and checked the time in Charlottesville. “It’s 3:00 a.m. there.”

  “Promise to ring her tomorrow morning, then.”

  Don’t say it. Keep still, tongue. “Fine.”

  Jules handed his keys back with a triumphant smile, but she shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up.

  Because there was no scenario in which this conversation with Kim would end well.

  * * *

  Kimberly stared at Sam’s social media profile on her phone screen, as annoyed at it as she was delighted with her present location. She was seated on the couch in Wildfire’s drop-in center, the sounds of their annual Christmas party floating around her as her dog shifted its mop of white fur against her wool-stockinged leg and red dress. Today was her last day with the foster dog before he became an early Christmas present for one excited ten-year-old girl. So maybe it wasn’t just her lack of progress in finding an appealing deal to offer Sam that caused that constricted feeling in her chest.

  Three days, and she had nothin’. Zero ideas on how to entice Sam back across the Pacific. And the social media stalking had provided no fresh insight. She could offer him money, sure, but Sam’s habit of donating his wage straight back into Wildfire told her he wasn’t motivated much by money. Up until five months ago she would’ve said he was motivated to spread the message of God’s love to as many teens as possible. But then he’d quit over her expansion plan. Did he really hate her that much? Steph had told her a zillion times not to take it personally, but it was kinda hard not to.

  His profile picture stared back at her. An action shot of him she’d snapped a year ago, doing what he did best: preaching to a group of teenagers who seemed to hang on his every word. Six of those kids had handed their lives over to God that night.

  She looked up from the phone and took in the room. November was early for a Christmas party, especially before Thanksgiving. But this had been the only day that all the board members could attend, so they’d turned it into a combo Thanksgiving-Christmas gathering. Teens lounged around in beanbags and sprawled on the floor, stuffed from the feast now reduced to crumbs. The taste of chocolate pudding—a rare, sugary treat—still lingered on her taste buds. A few parents clustered in groups, cradling cups of punch. And on the other end of the couch, little Laura—now with a dark cap of hair growing back after the end of her cancer treatments—sat with her fingers tangled in Warren Buffett’s fur.

  It almost felt like Kimberly was at a family celebration. And just as she’d done every Christmas since she could remember, she closed her eyes and pictured a houseful of relatives on Christmas Day. Imaginary brothers and sisters. At least three dogs. Dad alive again. His mystery half brothers and perhaps even some cousins. Grandparents who actually knew who she was. And some kindhearted stepmother who was the opposite of the woman who’d birthed her in every way.

  The perfect Christmas.

  Unlike her actual Christmases, which involved a Firefly marathon and unending amounts of store-bought pudding in honor of Dad.

  “Miss Kim?”

  Kimberly’s eyes popped open at the sound of Laura’s voice. “Yes—” Sweetheart. The endearment popped to mind every time she spoke with Laura—with many of the children—but it felt ridiculous to say. It was Sam they adored, not her. With Sam, they’d talk about their day and their families and their problems.

  She asked the same questions and got one-word responses.

  “Who are you giving your puppy to?”

  Kimberly smiled down at the freshly groomed Maltese flopped between them, a huge bow attached to its collar. Laura’s parents had said she could be the one to deliver the news. “You.”

  Laura’s gaze snapped to hers. “Me?”

  Kimberly picked up the relaxed dog and placed it in Laura’s lap. She’d planned to adopt him herself until a Wildfire volunteer mentioned Laura’s attachment to him. The house would feel empty, but after a tough year the little girl deserved a win. “I talked to your parents. They said yes. Warren’s going home with you tonight.”

  Laura burst into tears.

  Kimberly froze. Wasn’t Laura happy? Had she made a mistake? She gave the girl an awkward pat on the back. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

  Laura buried her face in the dog, who licked her ear in response. “I love him.” Then she dropped the dog and flung her arms around Kimberly. “Th-th-thank you.”

  And just like that, Kimberly’s heart exploded into a million pieces. The little girl smelled of strawberry shampoo and turkey dinner. She squeezed her tight and fought the sneaky tears that tried to escape and join Laura’s. “You’re welcome, kiddo.”

  Laura pulled back. “Can I name him something else?”

  Kimberly smirked. The kids had never appreciated her reference to investor Warren Buffett. “Sure can.”

 
A moment later Laura ran off to show her mom her new pet, Sprinkles.

  Kimberly sighed and looked back at the man on her phone. No way was she letting Wildfire go. But the key would be preparation. She wouldn’t ring Sam until she could figure out something to offer him—

  Her phone vibrated in her hand, and Sam’s picture popped up even larger. Her breathing hitched.

  Incoming call from Samuel Payton.

  Chapter 5

  Kimberly dropped the phone onto the sticky vinyl couch cushion. No no no no no no no. She wasn’t ready.

  The phone continued to buzz. How could he be calling her right now, as she sat here thinking about him? She hadn’t figured out what she was going to say. Her mind always blanked when she wasn’t prepared.

  The buzzing stopped. She released her breath and inhaled a fresh lungful of cinnamon-scented air.

  It started again.

  Kimberly picked up the phone and held it out like it was going to bite her. She wasn’t ready to talk to him.

  Riiiiiiiing.

  Not that she’d admit it to another living soul, but Sam’s departure from Wildfire had hurt her worse than a wax strip on sunburn. When she’d first joined Wildfire, she’d literally moved across the country for a chance to work with Sam. From the moment she’d seen him preach to a church auditorium of fourteen-year-old punks from the east end of LA—and convert a third of them on the spot—she’d known he was something special. And when she googled his ministry and saw the appalling web copy, difficult-to-use support page, and incorrect email address, she’d known his organization needed someone. Someone who could see an undervalued resource and help it reach its full potential. Someone with vision, patience, and grit.

  What they got was her—and two out of three qualities ain’t bad.

  But over the next several years—especially after she was promoted to be Sam’s equal—Kimberly had learned there was something even worse than the unrequited crush she’d carried for Archie Masterson for six years.

  Unrequited admiration.

  Hopeless love she could deal with. It wasn’t like she expected anyone to fall head over heels for her patented brand of blunt honesty and eternal stubbornness. But she’d hoped beyond hope that Sam could respect her as a teammate, even a partner in crime. Not regard her with a suspicion that sliced her soul.