Heart Of The Outback, Volume 2

by Margaret Way

  Oh, my … Jodie fought the sudden urge to tell him he was lovely right back. But this wasn’t the place, or the time, or the point. She was looking for someone kind, nice, unassuming, and Australian. And added extras along the lines of handsome, charming, and sexy as hell would only complicate things.

  “And so are your earrings,” Heath said, catching her unawares by reaching out a curled hand towards her cheek, but stopping a foot from her face and letting his hand drop to the table.

  Jodie blinked in surprise. The mere thought of those hands brushing against her ear had robbed her of the power of speech.

  Her choice of earrings had been her biggest one of the night. Which of the dozen she had created in a mad productive spurt ought she to choose? Vibrant red glo-mesh ones shaped like tulips? Rows of tiny jade-green beads that hung like weeping willow branches to her shoulders? Or a delicate pair made of wires twisted into the shape of tiny roses? How did one pick earrings fancy enough to ensnare a husband?

  She had settled on the green beads. The roses were more suited to Louise, and one of Mandy’s workmates would love the red glo-mesh and had offered to pay a hundred dollars cash for anything Jodie could promise was a one-off. Decision made!

  “Thanks,” she said, her voice sounding as though she’d just smoked a packet of cigarettes. “I make them myself. My styles are based on flowers I used to find at the Chelsea Gardens as a little girl.”

  Shut-up, Jodie! He said he liked them, not that he wanted to buy a pair. But he liked them? Oh, no, he wasn’t … was he? She’d already met one of those the night before. And that was all well and good, but if this man was permanently unavailable to all women, that would be a nasty cosmic joke.

  “They’re … nice,” he said, sticking out his bottom lip and nodding.

  And in a blinding flash of relief Jodie realised he was being nice. If he’d said her earrings were fabulous she ought to have been worried. But nice? That just meant Heath was a guy paying a girl a compliment.

  “Now tell me about your work,” she said, wholeheartedly moving on. Jodie was simply not used to talking about herself. She didn’t even really know enough about herself to be sure what she said was the truth. “I gather you are some sort of cowboy, throwing hay bales and milking cows all day?”

  Cowboy? Where had that come from? Even she heard the note of flirtation in her voice and so it wasn’t such a shock when his blue eyes glittered.

  “So who’s looking after your cows while you’re away?” she asked, keeping her voice neat and even.

  He ran a lean hand beneath his mouth. Then he looked up at her from beneath a sweep of thick chestnut eyelashes, which were superior to hers even with the modern marvel of long-lash mascara at her disposal. “I have a station manager, Andy, who runs the place in my absence, as well as numerous seasonal staff who do most of the heavy labour. So apart from throwing hay bales about the place, I am also a qualified civil engineer.”

  Oh! So maybe the whole “outback farmer” thing had just been a means to an introduction, a hook, a way to get a girl interested. Maybe he lived in town in a nice big house big enough for her and Louise and for Lisa and Mandy to crash after a girls” night out …

  “Do you get much of a chance to engineer anything civilly while out on the farm?”

  “Some. A little. I’ve completely redesigned the irrigation system at Jamesons Run and rigged up a lever-and-pulley system to help in the barn, so, yeah, I like to keep my hand in. But wrangling cattle is pretty much a full-time gig nowadays,” Heath said, leaning his chin on his palm as he gazed at her.

  Oh. Well, that answered that one. He talked like a city boy. He walked like a city boy. He even had a city-boy degree. But he was a farmer. With a farm. Damn it!

  Because it was clear he wasn’t running from the idea of being a husband in a hurry. Her husband in a hurry. Though neither of them had mentioned it in so many words, they both knew why they were there. And after having met one another, they were both … still … there …

  “I take it you’ve never wrangled cattle before,” he said.

  “Not lately,” she said, the idea of doing such a thing petrifying her to the soles of her feet.

  “When reading your bio, I figured as much.” He leaned forward, until their faces were so close that she could see perfect midnight-blue rings around his irises. “Yet I still came tonight, and so did you.”

  “I guess that means neither of us are entirely sensible,” she agreed, her voice dropping to accommodate their close proximity. “About what we want.”

  “To us,” he said, tipping his bottle her way before taking another swig. “And to not being sensible.”

  Jodie felt warm and fuzzy, as if she were having some sort of out-of-body experience. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the excess of bread yeast in her system. Maybe it was the company.

  As she found herself fast becoming lost in Heath’s heavenly eyes, something caught Jodie’s attention. Mandy was waving a frantic arm at her, poking a manic finger at her wrist-watch. It seemed her next date was already there.

  But Jodie wasn’t yet ready for this to end.

  “Look,” she said, leaning in, feeling more terrified and more brave and less sensible than she had in a long time, “I’ll be honest with you. There is another prospect waiting for me at the bar, but I’ve been here so many times in the past few nights I feel as though my bottom is changing shape to match this chair. Do you want to get out of here?”

  Heath’s warm blue eyes blinked. Narrowed. And then lit from within as he got her meaning. “I don’t know. I’m in the mood for something lathered in chocolate. Does this place serve good desserts?”

  Jodie shook her head. “I wouldn’t know. I never eat sweets.”

  He was a cowboy; she was a city girl. He wanted chocolate; she hadn’t eaten chocolate in a decade. What the heck was she playing at? By the look in his eyes she wondered if he was thinking exactly the same thing.

  But then something shifted. Before she was able to identify what, he looked at his watch—silver, sturdy, knocked-about—and said, “Well, then, it seems we have to find another place in which to continue this conversation. I don’t have to head back home until tomorrow afternoon, so for the next fifteen hours I’m all yours.”

  All hers. Her heart did a neat little flip inside her chest. And heart flips were bad.

  She tore her confounded gaze away from Heath to find Lisa had joined in the frantic waving. It seemed there were now two guys awaiting her. But if she had to say the words, “So tell me about your job,” one more time …

  Jodie stood, and with shaking hands patted her napkin against her mouth. “Meet me at the street crossing on the city side of the building,” she murmured. “Five minutes.”

  Heath looked up at her with more than mischief in his bright blue eyes. “Shall do, Ms Bond.”

  Jodie turned and, without looking back, headed for the ladies” room where she had a date with a tiny window and a Dumpster.

  Heath turned on his chair and watched Jodie walk away, keeping a close eye on the tidy package within the hipster jeans, the bouncy auburn hair, and the expanse of creamy skin exposed by her glittery contraption of a top that was held together by modern-day engineering and luck.

  He blew out a long slow breath when she finally sauntered from view.

  In her website picture she had been worth a second glance, but in the flesh those intense green eyes of hers were just something else—relentless yet radiating unexpected vulnerability. He’d had to stop himself time and again from reaching out and running a soothing finger over her furrowed brow as every worry that had run through her mind had flashed across her eyes like a freeway warning sign.

  One of those flashing signals had told him what she saw of him she liked, and, even without all the other inducements she offered, that was a pretty potent thing to find in a first date. And a blind date at that.

  So while half of him couldn’t quite believe that he was with a woman whose intention to
marry wasn’t just a niggling presumption in the back of his head, but a blatant prerequisite to his spending time with her, the other half of him found that the most heady inducement of all.

  Added to that there was something about being with a city girl that took him away from his troubles back home. Something about the powders and potions they used to look after themselves. They always smelled so good. He wondered if he would get close enough to Jodie that night to find if she smelled half as good as he imagined she would.

  And Jodie was not only a city girl, but a foreign city girl to boot. A girl with skin so creamy it was never meant to be exposed to the harsh Australian clime, with hair so fine it gleamed, and with an accent so strong that every word she uttered reminded him that there was a big world out there that he had been ignoring for the longest time. Until now.

  Heath looked towards the front door where the blonde who had shown him to his table stood fighting with a rangy brunette. Both were staring at the ladies” room door. Jodie’s last line of defence, perhaps?

  The brunette glanced over at his table and he gave her a small wave. She grabbed the blonde and ducked behind her, leaving the blonde having to wave back. Yep. They both belonged to Jodie for sure. City girls and their mates.

  With a secret smile, he turned back to his beer, his mind whirling through the night so far. But then he groaned as he remembered blurting out, “I am also a qualified civil engineer.”

  How long had it been since he had even said those words out loud? Sure, they were true—he would have been eminently employable in the field if not for the fateful timing that had forced him to return to his outback home to look after his younger brothers and sisters and to run the family farm.

  But why had he needed to let this slip of a girl know such information? Because she had been so obviously trying to reconcile to herself what the heck she was doing sitting across a table from a farmer, that was why! Well, he was more than that, just as he was sure that behind those liquid eyes there was more light and shade to Jodie Simpson than she was letting through her shield as well.

  Thinking of light, he could still remember the radiance in Cameron’s eyes the day he had married Marissa. He remembered the scent of roses from Marissa’s bouquet as he had hugged her after the ceremony. She had thanked him that day, for being a good friend, to her and especially to Cameron.

  The picture dissolved as he remembered the darkness in Cameron’s eyes as he’d sat in the funeral chapel while his young wife’s coffin had lain quiet and sombre to his right. The depth of Cameron’s sorrow rocked Heath to his very soul.

  In his brother Heath had witnessed the extremes of both bliss and despair. But at thirty-six years of age he had never known either firsthand. His life had been lived by the rules and where had that put him? Alone.

  Light and shade. It was way past time his stagnant life was injected with more of both. This was a woman who could take him out of his comfort zone. Jodie was a woman who wanted change so badly she was willing to risk everything by marrying a complete stranger in order to get it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

  He pushed back his chair and walked towards the front door and the two women all but fell over themselves to look natural.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

  “Is everything all right?” the blonde asked.

  “It’s fine, apart from the fact that my … date seems to have left me with the bill.” He gave her enough money to more than cover his one beer and Jodie’s untouched glass of wine.

  Then, with a spring in his step that would have been more appropriate for an eighteen-year-old buck on the prowl rather than someone twice that age, he stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and stepped out into a mild spring darkness feeling like a car whose battery had been jump-started after being flat for a decade.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SUNDAY morning Jodie pushed back the comforter, hitched up her too-loose flannelette pyjama pants, and yawned magnificently as she opened her bedroom door.

  Louise, already showered and dressed in what amounted to a casual outfit for her—a lemon twin set and designer jeans—turned on the couch with a hand to her throat. “Oh, my. I thought I was the only one here.”

  “Mandy and Lisa have gone out?” Jodie asked.

  Louise nodded. Jodie looked to the clock on the microwave to find it was only nine in the morning. They’d still not been home when Jodie had snuck in at three that morning, so they would have had five hours” sleep at the most.

  Jodie shuffled to the couch on which Louise had slept, though you wouldn’t know it by the neat throw rug over the back of the chair and the perfectly placed scatter cushions. Louise sat, crossing her feet neatly at the ankle, an open bucket of ice cream before her. Jodie sat on her hand to stop herself from mussing up her sister’s perfect hair.

  “What’s with the nine in the morning ice-cream fix?” Jodie asked.

  Louise offered her spoon, but Jodie declined.

  “Mum … Ivy … just called.” Poor Louise’s face crumpled as she fought to settle on how she ought to think of the woman who had brought her up as her own. “But that’s neither here nor there. Tell me about your night. Did you meet anyone brilliant?”

  Jodie wasn’t quite sure what to say. While her life felt as if it was on the up and up, Louise’s was falling apart at her feet.

  Before searching out Jodie, Louise had discovered that before she was born her father had sired illegitimate twin sons. And they were back, wanting to take their place in the infamous Valentine family. The shock had sent her father into cardiac arrest, and, believing he was dying, he had told her that she was adopted. Shattered to find herself the object of so many lies, she had registered to find her birth mother and, in discovering Patricia was uncontactable, she had found Jodie instead and flown to Australia in an instant. Now Jodie was Louise’s only support—the only person in her life not in any way linked to her complicated adoptive family.

  “It went okay,” Jodie said, playing down mightily how much better than okay her night with Heath Jameson had been. After escaping The Cave, she and Heath had walked for hours, following their feet up boulevards and down side streets, as they’d enjoyed the balmy spring night.

  And they had talked. The subject of Jodie’s disinclination for and Heath’s love of chocolate had kept them going for an hour all on its own. They had never even found the dessert Heath had been hankering for; instead, hours later they had settled for a kebab when a take-away van had loomed in their meandering path.

  “Come on, Lou, what happened with Ivy? Tell me.”

  Louise half nodded and half shook her head. “It was awkward to say the least. I thought I would be upset, or angry. But I just felt numb.”

  “Did you talk to your dad?”

  Louise shook her head. “I’m livid enough at her, but I’m nowhere near ready to tackle the mistrust I feel for him. He didn’t just lie to me; he lied to so many of us. If I didn’t have you here, now, and this place …”

  Jodie leant over and gave Louise a one-armed squeeze. “I’m glad you’re here too,” Jodie said. “Truly. And stay as long as you like. No worries. You might even fall in love with the place as I have.”

  Louise smiled at her, her blue-grey eyes so familiar. So much like Patricia’s. For one blinding moment, Jodie missed her mum, and wondered where she was. She hadn’t heard from her in a few weeks since she and her new husband Derek had started travelling, but if they hit trouble surely he would let her know and ask her to come home and.

  No. That wasn’t her place now.

  “No worries?” Louise repeated. “There was a definite Australian accent there.”

  “Really?” Jodie liked that idea very much.

  “Absolutely. And you’ve got the whole relaxed Aussie thing going on as well. I’m wondering if it comes to you all through the sun rays.”

  Jodie laughed. “I think it must. Back home I was a right Londoner. Cool, grey, and with all the vigour of a w
et winter’s day.”

  Jodie’s mind shot once again to her night with Heath. He was the perfect embodiment of all the things she loved about Australia—warmth, ease, leisure—the antithesis of bleak, wet, bustling London. Was that why she had been so instantly drawn to him? So ready to know him outside the loaded atmosphere of The Cave, to pretend that it was a real date?

  Louise sighed. “Listening to you talk with your lovely half-Australian accent, home seems so far away it almost feels unreal.”

  Jodie knew just what she meant. She loved the fact that her life here felt unreal. Unreality was bliss. Jodie reached out and took her by the hand. “Do you understand now why I have to do whatever I can to stay?”

  Louise’s cool blue-grey eyes filled with an even mix of sadness and understanding. She sighed and Jodie knew everything between them was going to be okay. “I am actually a little jealous of you, you know. I wish I was in your shoes, with my future a blank canvas before me. Nothing tying me down. Nothing drawing me home.”

  “But you are. You are just like me. Simply choose to stay. For real. Stay for ever.”

  A ray of sun seemed to break through the dark cloud hanging over Louise’s head. “Ha! Wouldn’t that shock the pants off the whole lot of them? Max, my cousin, would have a conniption fit if he heard that I, the perennial good girl, ran away from home never to return. Well, I guess he’s not really my cousin now, if you come to think about it. But, oh, I would still love to see the look on his face—”

  A noise at the front door called their attention. Mandy and Lisa spilled inside carrying their regular Sunday-morning French sticks and Brie.

  “Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” Mandy said as she threw the brown paper bags onto the counter. “When you didn’t come back out of the bathroom last night, we thought you had fallen in. You took off with the hot farmer, didn’t you?”

  “Well, actually yes, I did,” Jodie said, glancing at Louise, who had managed to drag herself away from her deep dark thoughts about her non-cousin Max and was now watching her with renewed interest.