Six Ways to Sunday

by Karly Lane

  Karly Lane lives on the mid north coast of New South Wales. Proud mum to four beautiful children and wife of one very patient mechanic, she is lucky enough to spend her day doing the two things she loves most—being a mum and writing stories set in beautiful rural Australia.

  ALSO BY KARLY LANE

  North Star

  Morgan’s Law

  Bridie’s Choice

  Poppy’s Dilemma

  Gemma’s Bluff

  Tallowood Bound

  Second Chance Town

  Third Time Lucky

  If Wishes Were Horses

  First published in 2017

  Copyright © Karly Lane 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Arena Books, an imprint of

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76029 676 6

  eISBN 978 1 76063 379 0

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover photographs: Getty Images, Shutterstock, chris24 and Bill Bachman / © Alamy Stock Photos

  Cover design: Nada Backovic

  For Jan and Noel

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Rilee dropped her head to the steering wheel and swore under her breath. She couldn’t deny her predicament any longer. She was bogged—well and truly stuck.

  With a tired sigh, she opened the door of the bulky Land Rover and took a look at the damage.

  The tyres were half submerged and the mud was almost level with the bottom of the door. This was not good. Dan wasn’t going to be happy…again. As if she’d conjured him with her thoughts, his voice came over the UHF radio attached to the dash, making her jump.

  ‘Rilee, are you on your way with that fuel filter?’

  Maybe she could ignore his call. She looked back down at the mud swallowing the vehicle and reluctantly reached for the handset.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What do you mean, not exactly…exactly,’ he asked and she heard the fatalistic tone in the deep voice she loved so much.

  ‘Well, I was on my way, but I seem to be a little bit stuck.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence and Rilee pictured her husband of barely three weeks wondering how the hell he had ended up with a moron for a wife.

  In all fairness, Dan was an incredibly patient man and had been nothing if not considerate of her citified ways, but today was just the latest in a long line of disasters that had all involved her in one form or another.

  This particular disaster had started early that morning when she’d volunteered to help out around the place. Dan had asked her to water the cattle they’d brought in the previous day and put into the small holding paddock closest to the house. It was so hot, she’d gone back to sit in the ute, to get out of the sun and make a few phone calls, only to realise when she looked up that the trough was overflowing, almost emptying the tank and causing a mini flood in the paddock.

  When she’d gone back to the house to explain to her father-in-law what had happened, she must have forgotten to latch the gate properly and when she’d followed him back up to inspect the damage, they’d found cattle roaming all along the laneway and happily grazing in her mother-in-law’s beautifully manicured garden.

  ‘Dan, Mick here,’ the radio cut in abruptly. ‘I’ve just delivered some papers out to your dad, so I’ll track down your wayward bride if you want, mate.’

  Rilee frowned down at the radio. Mick who? Wayward bride?

  ‘Thanks, Mick. I can’t go anywhere until I get that filter,’ Dan answered. ‘Rilee, whereabouts are you?’

  ‘Umm, let me just check this street sign up ahead,’ she muttered as she glanced around at her surroundings miserably: nothing but miles and miles of open flat land as far as the eye could see.

  Dan’s sigh came across the airways and she could tell he was trying to stay patient. Immediately she felt repentant. He’d been working long hours since they got back from their week-long honeymoon and really didn’t deserve her sarcasm; after all, it was her own inadequacy that had gotten her into each and every mess since arriving at Thumb Creek Station.

  ‘Look for a landmark and tell me what you see.’

  ‘A landmark? All I see is paddocks, cows and more bloody paddocks.’

  ‘Right. Mick, she’s over towards the north paddocks, probably bogged just off the track at the old mailbox corner. That’s where it usually gets boggy after rain.’

  ‘Righto, be there in a few.’

  ‘How the hell did you work that out?’ she demanded.

  ‘Because that’s where the cows are. Don’t leave the four-wheel drive until Mick gets there.’

  Rilee bit back a weary sigh. A few could mean anything from minutes to hours out here.

  With only the low, mournful cry of a crow for company, Rilee wound back the seat and shut her eyes.

  Three weeks.

  She’d been a married woman now for three weeks and so far, other than the first week spent on the Gold Coast, she’d barely had time to adjust to her new husband without his entire family looking on.

  They’d only known each other three months, but it was long enough to fall head over heels in love with the tall, laidback man who’d walked into the bar that night.

  The Spotted Dick was an institution. A small rather dilapidated pub in the backstreets of Paddington, what it lacked in visual appeal it more than made up for in great food and cheap alcohol. It had paid Rilee’s rent and student fees while she’d put herself through uni. Over those years she’d developed a close relationship with her bosses, Janice and Sid Brown, expats from England who had become more like family than employers. Despite the fact that she was now a qualified naturopath with a full-time job in a busy inner-city clinic and no longer needed to work in the pub in order to pay her rent, she enjoyed the atmosphere of the place and ofte
n worked a shift when the Browns were short-staffed. Sad as it was to admit it, working at the Spotted Dick was the extent of her social life.

  That evening there was a bucks night booked as well as the overflow from a busy annual horseracing carnival which saw the main bar packed to capacity each year. Rilee had been handed the bucks party in the function room out the back and serving the rowdy crew kept her busy the entire shift. She was pretty sure she’d never seen so many hats and denim in one place. As she moved through the room, collecting empty glasses and handing around platters of food, she managed to piece together that the groom had grown up in some place out west and studied at an agricultural college before moving to the city. The majority of the guests seemed to be old schoolfriends.

  As she circled the room with a tray of drinks, one of the guests gave a shout out for a bit of quiet and a few hilarious speeches followed. Then the groom stood up to thank everyone for coming. ‘After tomorrow there’ll only be two eligible bachelors left, Jacko and Dan,’ he said and a cheer rose from the men. Rilee glanced around to see who Jacko and Dan were and saw two men being slapped on the back up the front of the room. One was taller than the other and looked a little intimidating, with short hair and stubble on his chin. The other man was obviously enjoying the spotlight, and going by the crude remarks he was making about the kind of woman he was holding out for, it was safe to say he would probably remain single for a long time to come.

  Rilee left the room to get more drinks from the bar and smiled as she passed Janice. Her boss had once been a pin-up girl in London with hopes of making it to the big screen, until she met her husband, an up-and-coming boxer, who’d swept her off her feet. Everything about her was loud, from the provocative clothing she wore to the huge hoop earrings and neck-breaking stilettos, but underneath all that was a heart of gold and Rilee loved the woman to death.

  ‘How’s things going in there?’ Janice asked.

  ‘Running like clockwork.’

  ‘Saw a few of them going in earlier,’ the older woman said, lowering her voice suggestively. ‘Tell ya what, if I was a few years younger, I’d be giving some of those cowboys a ride they wouldn’t soon forget.’

  ‘Janice!’ Rilee said with mock outrage; for all the bottle-blonde’s bravado, she knew she was still very much in love with her husband.

  ‘Get out there and flaunt what you got,’ she told Rilee as she refilled the tray of drinks. ‘Use it before you lose it,’ she added with a pointed stare.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Rilee grumbled under her breath as she walked back into the function room. There was something decidedly sleazy about flirting with patrons while she was working and there was nothing overly attractive about a man who’d been drinking most of the evening.

  Rilee had just collected a full tray of used beer glasses and was about to turn around when she found herself trapped against the table by a stocky man in denim jeans and a cowboy hat. ‘You wanna go someplace when you knock off?’ the blurry-eyed man said as he slid a hand from her arm to her hip suggestively. Oh great, she thought wearily, it was eligible bachelor number one.

  Rilee gritted her teeth but held a professional smile in place. ‘No, thank you. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get these glasses back to the bar.’

  ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ he said and his hand moved from her hip to her backside. ‘I bet you’ve never been with a country fella. We’re not like these poncy suit-wearin’ fellas around here.’

  ‘I’m not interested. Please remove your hand and get out of my way.’

  The man opened his mouth, no doubt to inform her of a few more sterling qualities country boys possessed, but before he could utter a word a large hand fastened onto his shoulder and spun him around.

  ‘Knock it off, Jacko,’ growled a tall man with a very grim expression.

  ‘Fuck off, Kincaid. No one asked you to butt in.’

  Rilee held her breath. There was clearly no love lost between these two men, and she was trapped against the table, unable to escape.

  ‘Watch your mouth in front of the lady.’

  Jacko was sufficiently fortified with false bravado to let off a tirade of foul language just to get his point across to this Kincaid fella. He barely managed to slur out three more profanities before a large fist snapped his head back and Jacko slumped forwards. Kincaid caught him under the arms, sitting him down in a chair and readjusting Jacko’s hat; the man looked for all the world like he’d passed out with his head resting on the tabletop.

  ‘Is he still alive?’ Rilee murmured, placing the tray on the table and putting her fingers to Jacko’s neck where she was relieved to find a steady pulse.

  ‘He’s fine. A head that thick would take more than a tap to put a dent in,’ the taller man muttered in disgust.

  Around them the party continued unabated, everyone else oblivious to what had just happened.

  ‘Are you okay?’ her gruff rescuer asked.

  Now she could see him clearly, Rilee recognised him as the other bachelor from the groom’s speech. Up close, he was rather good-looking, in an RM Williams kind of way. He wasn’t wearing a wide-brimmed hat like Jacko and a few other men in the room wore, but had on a jacket over a striped dress shirt and moleskins that hugged a pair of muscular thighs. She had to admit he was sexy in a rugged, macho sort of way—if she was into that kind of thing, which she wasn’t, she hastily reminded herself.

  ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ she said when she realised he was waiting for an answer. ‘And I’m quite capable of taking care of a man with roaming hands. Was that really necessary?’

  He seemed a little taken back at her anger, but then shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Probably not, but I’ve wanted to knock that little jerk on his arse for a while now. Seemed like the perfect opportunity,’ he said with a crooked grin that made Rilee catch her breath. No way. She did not just act like someone out of a romance novel. No one in real life went weak at the knees at a smile.

  ‘You’re lucky the publican didn’t see it or he’d have you thrown out. We have a strict no-violence rule here.’

  ‘But they don’t mind if their employees get felt up by the patrons?’

  ‘Of course they do. But I had it under control.’

  ‘Not from where I was standing you didn’t. Anyway. You’re welcome,’ he said.

  Rilee gave an annoyed groan under her breath as he turned away. ‘Wait.’ He turned back with a raised eyebrow. She hated that she sounded ungrateful when he had clearly been trying to help. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said lightly before walking away.

  Rilee mentally shook herself when she realised she was following his departure with a little too much interest. The man sure knew how to wear a pair of moleskins. Get a grip, girl. She dated now and again, but usually safe, nonthreatening kind of men. Not men like…him, she thought, giving him another quick glance. He’d picked up a glass of beer from a table nearby and joined the small group of men standing around talking. She watched as he lifted the glass to his mouth to take a long swallow. Rilee followed the length of tanned skin at his neck before looking back up and catching his eye as he lowered the glass. She looked away quickly, embarrassed to have been caught staring at him. This was ridiculous. He was so not her type. He was dangerous and it had nothing to do with knocking out Jacko. He was dangerous to her peace of mind. She liked men who didn’t complicate her life. Nice, friendly men who didn’t make her pulse race.

  Eventually most of the party had decided to move on to another venue and Rilee was free to clear away the tables and start packing up. As she returned from the bar with an empty tray, she scanned the room for those broad shoulders and sexy moleskins, but there were only a few stragglers, none of whom made her knees give out. She told herself she wasn’t disappointed that he’d gone. It wasn’t like she’d expected him to come and say goodbye or anything. Why would he? She reached for another glass and turned, almost crashing into a solid wall of chest.

  Two hands immediately went to
her arms to steady her. She stared up and ignored the frantic drumming of her pulse as her gaze connected with a set of deep blue eyes the colour of denim. ‘I thought you’d left,’ she heard herself babble and silently groaned. Could she sound any more pathetic?

  ‘I had to help put Jacko into a taxi. He never could handle his grog.’ He dropped his hands from her arms and hooked his thumbs into the side pockets of his pants.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like each other?’

  ‘He’s a tosser, but I couldn’t leave the stupid idiot to wander around the city alone in his condition, could I?’ he shrugged.

  Rilee liked that. He was responsible and a decent human being…who had earlier punched the very man he had just helped, she reminded herself to keep from weakening.

  ‘We didn’t get around to introductions,’ he said, breaking the silence which followed. ‘Dan Kincaid,’ he offered.

  ‘Rilee Summers,’ she replied after a brief hesitation.

  ‘It was nice to meet you, Rilee,’ he said, holding out a hand.

  For a moment she stared at it warily, before she moved the tray to her other hand and accepted his handshake. She glanced down at his hand and frowned, before turning it to get a better look. ‘Did you do this tonight?’ she asked, nodding at the graze on his knuckles.

  He gave a brief shrug. ‘Just a scratch.’

  ‘Actually,’ she said, sliding the tray onto the table beside her and taking a closer look, ‘it looks more like a tooth mark.’

  ‘Probably,’ he agreed, seemingly unperturbed.

  Rilee sent him an exasperated glare. ‘This needs to be cleaned up. Do you have any idea how much bacteria the human mouth contains?’

  ‘Nope, but considering it’s Jacko’s mouth, I reckon we could safely double the number.’

  ‘It’s nothing to joke about. You could get a serious infection from this. Follow me,’ she said, picking up her tray and heading for the door to the kitchen.

  At this time of the night it was empty, the kitchen having already packed up, leaving only the bar staff and a few regulars out in the main bar.

  Rilee went to the storeroom and pulled down a large first-aid box and carried it to a nearby benchtop. ‘Sit,’ she ordered over her shoulder.