A Girl's Guide to the Outback

by Jessica Kate

  “Kim!”

  “Sorry!”

  She plucked at the knot of the rope cinched around her waist, and it fell away. “Almost there.”

  The bucket wobbled.

  Sam grabbed her legs, but the action threw her upper-body weight over his head, and as he went to step back, his foot caught on something. Kim gave a short squeal as they both tumbled down. Sam landed flat on his back in the ute tray, Kimberly on his chest. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs.

  “Sam!” She scrambled off him, eyes wide and face white, and knelt next to where he lay.

  His lungs wouldn’t cooperate. He fought to breathe in again.

  Don’t panic, you know it’ll wear off soon.

  Raindrops, big and cold, coated his skin. Kimberly’s face hovered near, one hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  He pressed a palm against the wet ute tray beneath him and tried to suck air in. Couldn’t. He focused his eyes on Kimberly’s face, the wet wisps of brunette hair plastered to her skin. Wide eyes searched his. A frown creased the smooth skin of her forehead, and her pink lips pressed into a worried line. He’d always known she was attractive in her classy office outfits. But somehow, now, wearing his shirt and borrowed gum boots, she was . . . beautiful.

  Or maybe that was the knot on the back of his head talking.

  He ran his thumb along the frown line on her forehead, smoothed it out. “Just . . . winded.” He managed to get the words out as oxygen seeped back into his chest. He sucked in a few deep breaths, then pushed himself up and attempted to speak. “Let’s . . . out of . . . wet.”

  She scooted back, giving him room to push himself toward the edge of the tray. Her hand reached for his arm—then pulled back. And again. Was this Kimberly hovering? Despite the ache in his skull, Sam’s lips tugged into a smile.

  She jumped to the ground, then stood in that downpour watching him gingerly clamber down. He had to give it to her, she never left a mate behind.

  They ducked into the shed, the corrugated-iron roof amplifying the sound of the rain. Kimberly flipped a toolbox lid down and sat on it, scooting over to make enough room for him. “You okay?”

  When he sat, his coat sleeve brushed her arm, bare to the elbow where she’d rolled the sleeves back. “I’m fine.” God would forgive the lie. His tailbone ached and his diaphragm still felt like a punching bag. “You cold?” He shrugged out of Dad’s jacket.

  She shook her head. “I’d just get the inside of your coat wet.”

  “In other words, yes.” He moved to nudge her away from the wall. She didn’t budge, face somber.

  He smiled and waggled his eyebrows.

  Her emotionless expression twitched, and laughter burst out like sunbeams from behind a cloud. She leaned forward, and he wrapped the oilskin around her shoulders, rubbing her upper arms with his hands to generate some heat. Her cheeks pinked. Was she warmer or embarrassed?

  He leaned back, now clad in his blue flanny—flannel shirt to her. Adrenaline still flooded his veins, which probably explained why he was acutely aware of every point at which they touched—shoulder, hip, thigh. He ran a hand through his hair, spiking it up. Time for a distraction. “What were you doing up there?”

  “Cleaning the gutters. Jules was worried about the water tanks running low. I was glad when it started raining, but then I noticed the rain spilling over the gutters. They were so blocked, nothing was getting through. So I got up there and cleaned them.”

  Her voice matter-of-fact, she plucked at splinters in her palm as she spoke. He’d been with her when she acquired them yesterday, when an aggressive cow spooked in the stockyards and they’d both climbed the wooden fence in a hurry.

  “Them? As in multiple?”

  She glanced up. “You only found me on the last blockage. There were five.” A raindrop slid from her eyebrow, traced the curve of her cheek, and disappeared down her neck.

  He blew out a breath. “You’re insane.”

  Kimberly shrugged. “The other side of the shed isn’t as high. And I made my rope harness. And Jules was worried.” She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

  Movement caught his gaze. Her hand, resting on her thigh, trembling. He grasped it. “You are cold.”

  She tugged it back, clasped her hands together. “It’s just fright. I don’t love heights.”

  He held out his hand, palm upturned. “Let me.”

  Hesitantly she placed her fingers in his. From the expression on her face and tension in her muscles, she didn’t seem sure if he’d help or harm. He flicked a tiny pair of tweezers from the Swiss Army Knife he kept in his pocket and smiled. “Trust me.”

  Holding her hand as carefully as a newborn chick, he removed a splinter. Hopefully his palm would heat her fingers—her skin was ice. The angle at which he held her wrist brought her face close enough for her breath to caress his cheek. He freed a second splinter. “So you don’t love heights and you were up there anyway?”

  “I didn’t like seeing Jules worried.”

  He smiled, despite the fright she’d given him. The girls had really bonded during Kimberly’s few days here, and only part of it was them swapping embarrassing stories about him.

  Splinters gone, he released her hand. “You are a force to be reckoned with.”

  A smile flickered across her face and she closed her eyes again, body relaxing beside him. She had to be exhausted. After yesterday’s massive workload and then a herd breakout at 11:00 p.m., they’d had less than four hours sleep. “Duh.”

  He watched her rest for a moment. Occasionally, over the past three years, he’d wondered if there was a whole different person behind those determined hazel eyes, just waiting to be found. Most times she’d been a bulldog personified, tugging the other end of a rope he was trying to pull. He couldn’t see anything past the teeth and the snarls. But here, away from Wildfire, he’d caught glimpses of a woman who put her friends before herself. A woman who would give up her vacation to work like a dog and never complain about it. A woman he’d like to have on his side.

  That woman heaved a sigh and pulled herself up off the toolbox. “I need to set up the electric tape in the back paddock before I get the herd in. Mind if I take the truck?”

  He stood, still grappling with the unusual thoughts racing across his mind. “Go for it.”

  She sashayed from the shed out into the rain, unperturbed by the wet, the work, or the tumble they’d just taken. Funny, he’d never noticed the graceful way she walked before.

  He froze as two thoughts hit him at once. One a reminder. The second not worth contemplating. He pushed it aside as he called, “Kim!”

  She swiveled and stepped back in out of the rain. “Yeah?”

  “I, um, forgot to ask. How’s it going with the financials? Jules mentioned just before I left that she was going to ask you for an update.”

  Something in her expression shifted. “Uh—give me a day to confirm some things. Then I’ll let you both know.”

  Was it just him, or had her relaxed vibe vanished? He gave a slow nod, his gaze tracing the microexpressions in her face. Lips ever so slightly pursed, eyes a fraction tighter. She waved goodbye, then jogged from the shed to the ute.

  A sense of foreboding, together with a ferocious blast of wind, shivered across his goose-bumped skin. What had she found? Were things worse than they thought? He veered away from the questions. No sense worrying about that—things couldn’t be too bad. Right? As worried as he got sometimes, in truth this was nothing more than a run of bad luck that they needed a little extra advice to navigate.

  But financial concerns weren’t the only reason his eyes tracked the ute as its engine turned over and it rolled away. A new awareness shouted through his mind till it could not be ignored, though every cell of his being fought to deny it.

  There was just no way he could have a crush on Kimberly Foster.

  * * *

  The dairy wouldn’t start.

  Kimberly hit the big black
button that fired up the engine harder this time. Nothing. In her six days on this farm—which had been so drama packed they seemed far longer than a mere 144 hours—the dairy had always run smoothly. She hadn’t broken it somehow, had she? Out in the dairy pit, Kurt Cobain vented his—and Kimberly’s—frustration via the muck-splattered speakers Jules had duct-taped to a metal post. Water sprayed from somewhere in the dairy.

  Kimberly set her hands on her hips, one finger still tapping to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There had to be a way to fix this without alarming Jules, who was two sheds away, working to fix the four-wheeler. The whole time they’d been rounding up the herd together just before, Jules had been worrying. A new load of hay with poor protein quality had her stressed about milk-production levels. Now, another problem. And that wasn’t even including what Kimberly’s financial analysis had revealed over the past several days. There had to be a way to fix this.

  Her music stopped and a moment later was replaced by Katy Perry’s “Firework.” She frowned. “Sam!”

  Squelching footsteps approached the concrete room that housed both vats and the engine that ran the dairy. “Hey, I held up our deal. It’s not Madonna.” Sam stepped into the room, his brown hair wet and slicked back from his forehead. In fact, his entire body was soaked, right down to the water running from his gum boots.

  She averted her eyes from where his sleeves were painted on his biceps. “What happened to you?”

  “I just had to pull a calf—and was in the afterbirth splash zone. A thousand showers aren’t going to be enough.” He shuddered. “The calf wasn’t breathing, so Jules came over and gave it mouth-to-mouth. I’m glad the calf’s alive, but that’s a high price to pay.”

  Kimberly snorted. Then paused. That was the third time today she’d laughed at something Sam had said. Their near-amicable relationship had lasted five days now. Miracles could happen. She only prayed this fledgling friendship would survive when she did the exact thing he’d asked her not to.

  If she plucked up the courage to do it at all.

  Sam wiped stray drops of water from his chin. “What’s up?” He peered over her shoulder, heat radiating from him.

  “It won’t start.” She backed away to let him look. “Do you know what’s wrong?”

  Sam fiddled around with something, then shrugged. “I’ll get Jules.” He frowned. “I hope it doesn’t hold us up too long. The cricket kids are coming over for the slip and slide tonight.”

  You could take the youth pastor out of the ministry, but you couldn’t take the ministry out of the youth pastor. Tonight’s slip and slide and barbecue was Sam’s way of reaching out to both the kids and their parents. A massive sheet of silage plastic had already been unrolled next to the house, with twenty bottles of detergent ready and waiting.

  Kimberly might not be an expert at either an Australian barbecue or sliding like a penguin, but at the very least she could ensure Sam was there on time. She indicated the door. “I’ll find Jules. And don’t worry about being late, I can finish milking on my own if we get held up too long.”

  Sam appeared to assess her for a moment. “Thank you.” The words were quiet and sincere.

  Flustered, she opted for her attempt at an Aussie accent to break the moment. “No worries. I’ll go find our fearless leader.” Wow, that sounded cheesy. Her cheeks burned as she turned to escape.

  “I’m here. What’s wrong?” Jules swung into the room on her crutch, a garbage bag taped around her moon boot in a vain effort to keep it clean. Kimberly explained the situation, and Jules muttered something under her breath. “Go finish pushing the cows up into the yard. I’ll fix this.”

  Sam ruffled Jules’s hair as he walked past, and she swung her wrench at him. He dodged it, smirked, and sauntered out of the dairy. Kimberly’s heart twisted a little as she watched the siblings and then followed Sam out. And, like the sucker for punishment that she was, she checked her phone again for any communication from Mom.

  Nothing. Well, maybe she should reach out again. She wiped the grit on her fingers against Dad’s old Red Dwarf T-shirt, then tapped the screen till she reached her internet messaging app and scrolled for Mom’s icon.

  Gone.

  Kimberly ran her thumb up the screen till she reached the top of her contact list and scanned each name again. Nada. She clicked the screen off and stared at the nothingness rather than the spot where Mom’s icon should have been. Her mother must’ve deactivated her account. Again. Without so much as a “Hey there, daughter, here’s how to reach me while you’re overseas for the first time and juggling a high-stress career situation.”

  Kimberly swallowed down the lump in her throat, trying to push her hurt down with it. She’d have to try Mom’s work number later and just cop the international call charges. It was the only reliable way to reach the woman.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and, nails digging into her palms, dragged her composure into place by sheer force of will and some tricks from her mindfulness podcast. Focus on the sun on my face, the dust on my fingertips, the crunch of dirt under my boots. Do. Not. Think. About. Crying.

  She opened her eyes again and focused on the scene in front of her: three tractors, meticulously maintained by Paytons past and present, littered the dusty tracks that connected the house, sheds, and dairy. A mural of the back-paddock lagoon covered the brickwork of the dairy’s vat room, courtesy of their father. Beyond, green paddocks that’d been fenced by Sam’s mom herself stretched for a mile before they hit the wall of trees that lined the Burnett River. According to Jules, that river included a flying fox—which she’d learned was a sort of zip line—over the water that’d been the highlight of their summers. And between the river and the dairy, three hundred cattle lumbered in Kimberly’s direction—every single beast known by Jules. The entire property was an outward expression of everything Kimberly had ever wanted: belonging, memories, connection, purpose.

  Ahead of her, Sam walked toward the yard gate, oblivious to the jealousy that oozed through her veins. Between Butch, Jules, and Mrs. Payton—due home in a couple weeks for Christmas—Sam had a real family. A real family with a real home.

  A home now under more threat than they realized.

  In addition to getting her Wildfire work done, Kimberly had spent late-night hours since she’d arrived scouring the six months’ worth of financial documents Jules had given her, looking for a way to free up the cash they needed.

  Not only was there none, but Jules seemed to be on a downward trajectory that, given the frequency of Australia’s natural disasters, would probably lead to foreclosure. But to convince Jules of the need for a change—or even just to confirm her suspicions—she’d need Sam’s help. Sam, who’d expressly told her not to meddle beyond finding a short-term fix for their money woes. Who wanted to believe this was nothing more than a rough patch.

  Who’d bent over her palm and pulled splinters with such care that her hand still tingled when she thought of it.

  How could she keep quiet and watch Sam and Jules lose all they had? Still, Sam’s words to her on her first night here swirled in her brain. “If you want my help talking my sister into some scheme of yours, don’t count on it.”

  But friends had their friends’ backs.

  Palms clammy, she hustled to catch up to Sam. He swung the gate open and held it for her to enter the yards. “What’s wrong?”

  She hesitated. Were her thoughts that obvious? “What do you mean?”

  “You have your ‘Something’s wrong’ face on. Last time I saw it was—” He stopped. She finished the sentence in her head: “When you told me about your plan for Wildfire.” “—when Tariq threw up on the foosball table.”

  She wrinkled her nose as she entered the yards. “If I was pulling any face, it was my ‘I’m trying not to also vomit’ face. I was the one who cleaned that up. You got to bundle him in the car and take him home.”

  His lips twitched upward. “Yeah, thanks for taking that bullet.”

  The momen
t rested between them. A shared memory, and they were actually both smiling.

  Sam relatched the gate, and she summoned the depths of her courage. Just rip it off like a Band-Aid. “Sam, can you help me talk to Jules about letting me dig way deeper into the finances? I’m worried the farm’s in real danger.” She rushed the sentence out.

  The smile playing around his lips froze, then drained away.

  “Hey, you wombats!” Jules hop-ran in their direction with the assistance of her crutch. “I fixed it. The thingy was hooked up wrong—” She slowed as she reached them, assessing their faces. “This looks serious.” She leaned against the gate, where Sam’s hand still rested on the chain that latched it.

  Sam replied, but the gaze that burned Kimberly’s soul never left her face. “We’re just talking about the future.”

  Jules reached over and punched his arm. “Don’t be mad at the girl for trying to woo you back to America.”

  Kimberly shifted on her feet. Uh-oh. This was spiraling out of control. Her stomach tightened as Sam’s brow furrowed.

  He faced her. “What?”

  Jules looked between them. “That’s not what you were talking about?”

  Sam pressed his lips together before he responded. “We were talking about the farm.”

  Jules swung her gaze to Kimberly, eyes wide.

  Kimberly gulped.

  * * *

  Sam spread his feet and folded his arms, his worried sister on his left and a grimacing Kimberly to the right. “Don’t be mad at the girl for trying to woo you back to America.” What was Jules talking about? The six weeks they’d agreed to—or something else?

  But that wasn’t the most pressing issue right now. He swished a fly away and fixed his attention on Kimberly, who looked paler than usual in another one of those old sci-fi nerd shirts she seemed to love, this one too big and sliding off her shoulder to reveal the purple strap of her sports bra. He firmed his jaw. “I think Kimberly has your update for you,” he told his sister. And if Kim had any telepathic skill at all, she’d get the Stop interfering message being broadcast from every atom of his being.