A Girl's Guide to the Outback

by Jessica Kate

  Now that she’d gotten to throw something, Jules had a slight smile on her face. “More like a Spanish Inquisition.” She picked up another can.

  Kimberly ducked behind the workbench as Sam plucked the can from Jules’s hand and tossed it aside. “Let’s try a different approach.” The eyes he turned upon Kimberly looked amused. Almost like he’d been waiting for this to happen. But who could have anticipated that thirty-six innocent questions about how Jules could run this farm more efficiently would annoy the other woman so much?

  “Let’s go for a ride.” Sam led the way to the multicolored truck and opened the door. “How’d you like to drive without having to be sneaky about it, Jules?”

  A smile peeked through Jules’s sourpuss expression. “Mick rat me out?”

  “He didn’t have to.” Sam placed her crutch into the truck bed as she pulled herself into the driver’s seat, then slid in next to her, one leg on either side of the gearstick. “It’ll be a team effort. I’ll do the clutch and gear stick, you get steering and brakes.” He patted the seat next to him. “Come on, Kim.”

  She approached with hesitation—there wasn’t a whole lot of room left on that bench seat. The three of them had crammed in there on her first day in Australia, but that had been before. Now her brain was tuned into the Samuel Payton frequency, and she couldn’t change the dial.

  Sam grinned at her and winked.

  She stopped. No way. This was weird.

  “Oh, come on.” He leaned out the door, grasped her forearm, and pulled her in. With the door shut, the three of them sat shoulder to shoulder . . . thigh to thigh. Kimberly rolled down her window and tried not to think about how, even on a day so hot she felt like a roast duck, the sensation of Sam’s warmth against her side was exquisite.

  Jules fired up the engine, and Sam shifted the vehicle into first. “Okay, Jules, take us on a tour. Pretend we’ve never seen the farm before. Take us to all your favorite spots and tell Kim about them.”

  Delight spilled over Jules’s features, and she steered down the driveway. “Mum and Dad got married at the top of that rise in the front paddock. You can see half the farm from there. Then we’ll hit the turkey’s nest—our irrigation system is pretty nifty.”

  Kimberly shifted her eyes to Sam’s face. Clever boy. Jules would probably volunteer half the information they needed, and a few well-placed questions from Sam would elicit the rest. How did he manage that? She talked to people and they got angry. Sam did it and they had a sudden urge to tell their entire life story. It was like he had a sign on his forehead that said, “It’s okay. You’re safe with me.” Apparently the sign on her own forehead was less reassuring.

  He caught her looking at him and offered a smile. She offered one back and mouthed a thank-you. He squeezed her hand and returned his attention to Jules’s monologue about why the paddock of sorghum on their left was the fastest growing in the shire.

  Two hours later they arrived back at the sheds and Jules left to go check on her chooks—chickens, to the uninitiated. Kimberly leaned against the truck and watched Sam unload a reel of electric tape and temporary fence posts from the truck bed. “Thanks for that. I didn’t even realize she was ready to skin me until the Coke can went flying.”

  He gave her a smile that curled her toes. “That’s what I’m here for. We’re a team.”

  “We’re a team.” A smile broke across her lips at his words.

  Sam picked up an armload of equipment she didn’t recognize. “Maybe that’s how we should divvy up the work for this farm research.” He hefted the gear into the back of the ute. “You can read numbers, I can read people. We need to interview some experts, get some shared knowledge behind this. What if I did that and you got the bank statements?”

  “Sounds good to me.” In fact, what she’d always wanted. “What’s all that for?”

  “A friend. Who happens to know a lot about farming, if you want to come join the chat. He’ll be able to answer some of those more in-depth questions you’ve been asking.”

  “Right now?”

  “Be there or be square.” He tossed a few other random supplies into the truck bed.

  Kimberly jumped into the passenger seat, and they motored down the driveway. The radio filled in a comfortable silence, with some Australian rapper laying down a rhyme about an ex-girlfriend. Kimberly whipped out her phone to Shazam the track. Dead battery. She seized Sam’s phone from the dashboard.

  “Your password still 2–5–1–2?” Irrelevant question. She was already in. She’d first guessed his password—the date of his favorite day of the year in the Aussie dd/mm date format—two years ago, and he’d still never bothered to change it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shazaming this song. I’m addicted to the way the Aussie accent sounds in a rap.”

  His phone buzzed as it recognized the song.

  Sam hit the button to turn down the radio. Weird. Kimberly glanced at him.

  Sam held an empty water bottle like a microphone in one hand and rapped Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” with atrocious lyrical accuracy. Kimberly grinned. He’d rapped once in the middle of a school talk, and the kids had gone wild. She tapped his phone into camera mode. Jules would get a kick out of this.

  Sam was halfway through his second chorus when he noticed the camera. “Hey!” He made a swipe at the phone.

  Laughter bubbled out of Kimberly as she flattened herself against the door. His seat belt pulled tight and jerked him back. She kept filming. “Watch the road, Eminem.”

  They made it into town without crashing, and Sam pulled into a trailer park straight from a Stephen King novel. He stopped on the edge of the park beside a camper that rested next to the skeletal remains of a shed.

  “This is your farming expert?” Nothing but weeds appeared to be propping up the camper’s bottom right corner, which leaned at an unusual angle.

  The camper’s door popped open. A woman with the aura of a hungry cat stumbled down the steps wearing nothing but a blue cotton tank top—she’d heard Sam call his own a bluey yesterday—and shorts. “Is that the sexiest priest this side of Kosciusko?”

  Sam hopped out. “Is that the sweetest baker this side of the Daintree?”

  Kimberly slipped out of the truck as Sam and the woman exchanged a bear hug. She eyed the supplies in the back of the ute and the angle of the camper. If her hunch was correct, Sam wasn’t just here to do reconnaissance. He was here to be a handyman.

  “That your girlfriend?”

  She snapped her attention back to the woman, who laughed with the bark of a lifelong smoker. Heat rushed through her as Sam glanced in her direction. Her mind’s eye flashed back to their comfortable silence as they’d driven together. Her laughter while he rapped. The wrestle for the phone.

  Did a part of her—a teeny-tiny part that also thought it was a good idea to poke forks into power outlets—wish the answer was yes?

  Sam slung his arm around the woman’s shoulder. “Kezza, meet Kimberly.”

  Kimberly gave a small wave and smile.

  “Kim’s a colleague visiting from the States, and we’re here to talk to your dad. I rang him this morning.” He nodded toward the camper. “And I’ll take a look at getting you guys level. Might be able to weld something up.”

  Welding gear. That’s what he’d put in the back of the truck.

  Kezza propped her hands on her hips. “’Preciate it, but Dad’s at the doctor’s and I’m on my way out. He should be back in an hour, though.”

  Sam shrugged. “Gives me time to work on the caravan first.” He nodded at a dilapidated mobile home a stone’s throw away. “Butch in?”

  Kimberly surveyed the home. This was where Butch, the man of mystery, lived? She’d done a few milkings with him, and they’d probably exchanged a total of five words.

  Kezza slid into the driver’s seat of a car that appeared to be more sticky tape than metal and barked a laugh. “Can’t you tell by all the noise?” She threw her car into
reverse and backed out with barely a glance behind. Kimberly jumped to the side and started when a voice spoke from behind her.

  “I’m here.”

  She whipped around. Butch, hands in his pockets and a cigarette dangling from his lips. Where had he materialized from? He jerked his head toward his open door.

  Sam pointed to the welding gear in the truck. “I’m gonna do some work on Kezza’s van first. You head in and grab a drink, Kim. I’ll be a little while.”

  She widened her eyes at him, attempting to telegraph her thoughts. Small talk with Butch? Was he crazy?

  But he just widened his eyes back at her, smiling, and hefted down the welding gear. Butch held his door open for her. She sighed and followed.

  Clothes, dirty dishes, and a surprising number of troll dolls littered the home—with the exception of the tiny kitchen. That was meticulously clean and held a plateful of scones loaded with jam and cream. The scent of fresh-baked goods mingled with the aroma of cigarette smoke and the open can of Bundaberg Rum that sat on the bench. The tension seeped out of Kimberly as she inhaled the scents. Most people wouldn’t find this particular aromatic combination comforting, but it reminded her of home, of Dad. If you replaced the fragrance of fresh baking with microwaved baked beans, it would’ve been a dead ringer.

  She eyed the scones. “You bake?”

  He sipped his rum. “Kez bakes too much for Bonesy to eat.” The longest sentence she’d ever wrangled from him. He nodded for her to take a scone, but she spied a stack of comic books underneath a pile of dirty tea towels. Superman, circa 1970s by the look of the cover. “You’re into comic books?”

  Butch shrugged.

  Kimberly picked the top one off the pile and leafed through it, careful not to damage the pages. “A lot of people love John Byrne, but José Luis García-López was one of my favorite Superman artists.”

  Butch took a long drag of his cigarette. “You draw?”

  “My dad did.”

  “Published?”

  She waved the idea away. “Only amateur. But my eleven-year-old self thought he was good enough to do it for a living.” She reached for her notebook and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “This is one of his.” It’d fallen out of her Bible. She’d found it on the floor this morning and popped it in the notebook for safekeeping.

  Most people would think it odd she still took her twenty-year-old children’s Bible with her when she traveled, but they hadn’t seen the illustrations that Dad had drawn and pasted in it. Mom’s religious parents had agreed not to hassle him about custody if he took her to church. He’d spent the long hours in the pews sketching replacement illustrations for her hokey kid’s Bible. Fat-cheeked cherubs were replaced with angelic warriors, cartoon-y soldiers with epic battle scenes that probably contained far more gore than was appropriate for any six-year-old. But those bedtimes going through that Bible together were hands-down her favorite memories.

  Butch peered at the illustration. This one depicted Joshua standing over the rubble of Jericho, a massive unseen being holding a sledgehammer behind him. A smile broke over his craggy features. “Not bad.” He held it up to the light of the window. “Bit like Lee Bermejo.”

  “That was his favorite DC artist.”

  Three jam-covered scones later, they’d covered the merits of the Silver Age of comics versus the Bronze Age, everything wrong with Marvel’s Trouble comic, and whether The Killing Joke was the best Batman comic of all time. Plus, she’d told Butch all about her dad’s story, from when he gave up a college art scholarship to raise her to his short battle with sarcoma.

  A yelp sounded from outside.

  Kimberly jerked her gaze to the open window in time to catch Sam slapping at his shirt, welding mask still on his face. He stripped the mask and gloves off and approached the window. “Got any ice? Or water?”

  She stood. “You’re burned?”

  “More like a singe.”

  Butch pointed to a tap that jutted from a fence post. Kimberly hustled out of the home, and he followed at a slower pace. At the tap, Sam cupped his hands under the water and poured it over a quarter-sized hole in his shirt, a few inches above his hip.

  Kimberly swept her gaze over his arms and neck. Tiny red marks peppered his skin. “You’re burned all over.”

  He shrugged. “Part of the job. And I’m a rubbish welder.” He grinned. “The new steel support’s ready, though. I’ll let it cool off, and then we just need to jack up the van and get it in place.”

  “Then you deserve a scone.” They settled in camp chairs on the front porch, and three scones later a man who weighed three hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce rolled up to Kezza’s home on a child-sized motorbike.

  Sam wandered over and talked to him for a minute, pointing to the corner of the camper and the new steel support. Then he waved Kimberly over. “Bonesy, tell Kim more about the water efficiency we were talking about this morning.”

  Kimberly shook the man’s meaty paw and had to close her mouth to contain her surprise—and her scone—as Bonesy launched into a monologue with the expertise of a university professor.

  After three hours of detailed technical discussions, she and Sam said their goodbyes and departed with a covered plate of a dozen more scones. Kimberly checked the time as she climbed into the truck. Two fifteen. Time to get the cows for the next milking. She flipped through the twenty pages of notes she’d taken and tucked Dad’s drawing inside the notebook as Sam drove them down the driveway. She’d promised Butch she’d make a copy of the illustration at the Paytons’ and bring it to him next time they visited.

  Sam rattled off Bonesy’s history as they rumbled out of the trailer park. “In the nineties he was the biggest landowner in the district. He went broke during the Millennium drought, then had two heart attacks and a stroke. Kez lived a hard life, and they were estranged, but when he got sick, she moved back in her van and took care of him. He’s called Bonesy because before she moved back in with him he was always skin and bones. They’ve been Butch’s neighbors for about ten years now.”

  Kimberly skimmed her notes. “He’s so knowledgeable.” Which was bittersweet. Bonesy was a good source of information, but he’d only confirmed her suspicions about the farm’s future.

  Sam glanced in her direction. “You and Butch seemed to get along well while I was welding. I heard a little bit through the window.”

  Kimberly snapped her notebook shut. “We both like comic books.”

  “Your dad drew?”

  “Some.” She left it at that. Talking about Dad with Butch was fine—therapeutic, even. Butch didn’t judge the excessive violence depicted in his drawings, didn’t criticize her extensive knowledge of R-rated science-fiction movies—all obtained before she reached double digits. He only laughed when she admitted she’d not tasted broccoli till she was eight but could smell the difference between rum and whiskey at four.

  Dad had not been a perfect parent—she knew that. But he’d loved her. He’d sacrificed his own future for her. And he’d spent more time with her than most of her friends’ dads combined. But most people couldn’t see past the imperfections in her memories through to the beauty of them. She never wanted to see that look of censure in Sam’s expression.

  Or even worse, the line of questioning could veer toward Mom.

  So, she opted for distraction. “Bonesy seemed pretty complimentary of your property.”

  Sam took the bait. “Too right he is. Did you hear him say he tried to buy Mum and Dad out a couple of times? These are some of the best river flats on the Burnett.”

  Kimberly leaned back in her seat and listened to him regurgitate all the best facts about the property. Sam’s memory seemed to be selective. He left out the fact that milk prices had already peaked in their usual five-ish-year cycle and that the impending collapse of one of the major suppliers wasn’t likely to do the market any favors. That, plus a dozen other warning signs, showed that low-level changes like water efficiency weren’t going to make a big e
nough dent in this problem. And she hadn’t even gotten to the risk of a natural disaster.

  But right now he was smiling and looking at her like she wasn’t the devil incarnate, and she didn’t quite have the fortitude to shatter that illusion.

  Yet.

  Chapter 18

  Kimberly was doomed.

  She ducked a branch that whizzed past her face as Sam practically floated ahead of her along the riverbank, walking home from an afternoon of tea and Anzac cookies—biscuits, to the Australians—at the Carrigans’. His cheery whistle filled the air, and she sighed.

  She should have seen this coming when they agreed to divide up the work. Everyone Sam interviewed delivered the same report—the Payton family owned fertile river flats, secure water rights, and a family heritage that had seen over a hundred years of successful dairying. Now Sam was even more puffed up by Mick’s father’s nostalgic memories of Jules’s farm and its production capabilities, only a day after their conversation with Bonesy had had a similar effect.

  But they did not see the balance sheet.

  A long brown something caught her gaze, and she jumped on instinct. A stick. She shuddered at the memory of what had happened to Meg—who was now recovering steadily—and hustled to catch up to Sam. Dried gum leaves and weeds crunched beneath her heavy steps. She should’ve had this conversation earlier. The longer she waited, the higher their expectations built.

  But her mind wandered back to last night, when Jules had closed Kimberly’s laptop lid as she answered her thousandth Wildfire email and dared her and Sam to a bake-off. He with his decadent recipes from the café days, and her with the best her sugar-free repertoire had to offer. After extensive sampling of both offerings—and blatant attempts at bribery from both sides—Jules had declared Sam the winner by a narrow margin. They’d laughed, swapped recipes, and eaten way too much. As she’d fallen asleep last night, she’d replayed the evening in her head, polishing each memory to treasure in the future. For the first time in her life, she had real friends. And she wanted to help save their farm.