A Girl's Guide to the Outback

by Jessica Kate

  Kimberly took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “The information you gave me on the last six months has left me with a few outstanding questions. I’d like to dig back further to give you a proper assessment.”

  Jules shrugged. “How much further?”

  “Whatever you have.”

  His sister laughed. “We’ve been here a hundred and twenty years, so . . .”

  Kimberly spread her palms. “Old weather data could be handy. I’ll take it.”

  The smile faded from Jules’s face. “That sounds like overkill. You shouldn’t need that much to get us out of a sticky situation.”

  Kimberly licked her lips, shifted her feet, and glanced toward Sam. He raised his eyebrows. Don’t do this. Why couldn’t she help but overcomplicate things? Like Jules had said, their family had been here for 120 years. And they’d remain 120 more—as long as Kim didn’t convince Jules to mortgage them to the hilt and gobble up every property around.

  “We’re not looking for a six-step plan to conquer the world.” Sam spoke slowly, like any piece of gravity he could pack into his voice would change her mind. “Just some fresh ideas for a tough year.”

  Kimberly spread her palms. “That’s just it—it shouldn’t be a tough year. You’re on track for your average yearly rainfall. Milk prices are okay. Your herd’s healthy. And yet this downward trajectory . . .”

  Sam slid his gaze to his sister. With every word Kimberly spoke, Jules’s color deepened. Uh-oh. His sister’s trademark passion cut both ways. She leaned forward on the gate. “What are you saying? That it’s me?”

  Kimberly shifted an inch back. “No, just that—I need to confirm, with your mortgage—”

  “Because I’ve improved things since Mum retired. Our crop yield has increased. I barely lose a calf. Our motorbikes actually have working brakes.” Her voice rose with each declaration.

  Kimberly’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “I didn’t mean anything personal—I’m just trying to solve the problem you gave me. But I’m concerned the situation might be more serious than you think.”

  “More serious? How serious? What do you think—”

  Sam laid a hand on his sister’s forearm. “Ease up, Jules.”

  She shook his fingers off. “I-I need to go check the vat.” She hobbled back toward the dairy.

  Kimberly let out a shaky breath. “Thanks.”

  He turned back to her, jaw set. “I knew you’d make this bigger than it needs to be. This was why I didn’t want you to come. Now she’s more stressed than ever.” He flung a hand in the direction Jules had fled and braced himself for Kimberly’s onslaught of maddening logic. Yep, there was that fire in her eyes. She propped her hands on her hips and opened her mouth. So, he beat her to the punch. “And what’s this about luring me back to the States?”

  She swallowed whatever defense missile she’d been about to launch. “Wildfire wants you back.”

  “I’m not interested. That’s why I moved nine thousand miles.”

  She looked down at her boots, then met his eye. “Needs you back. Your replacements have been useless. The board’s talking about shutting us down if we don’t get you back or find a replacement they love as much as you.”

  She thought she had him—he knew it. Everything from the tilt of her chin to the confidence in her gaze. She thought she’d snap her fingers, drop the “Wildfire might close” bomb, and he’d come running back like a trained dog. His fingers tightened on the top rung of the gate. “I never expected Wildfire to last.”

  His words seemed to hit her like a physical blow—her mouth dropped open and she exhaled sharply. “What?”

  “Its success was a mystery to me from the start. I knew its time was limited. Maybe this is it.” He spread his palms. “Meant to be.”

  She spluttered, ‘‘You can’t—You don’t just—What are you talking about?”

  “I mean that Wildfire’s your problem. And beyond some short-term assistance, the farm’s not your concern. You’re on your own.” He spun on his heel and left her there.

  Alone.

  Chapter 13

  Jules perched on the wooden fence that encircled her house and slammed down her third Coke of the evening. Before her, in that magical light of sunset, twenty preteen boys threw themselves down Sam’s slip and slide like it was a human-sized bowling lane. And with them, one shirtless veterinarian with eyes as blue as the first day of summer and a squeal worthy of any eleven-year-old boy as he careened down the slide and knocked over all ten buckets positioned at the end of the plastic.

  “Strike!” He leapt to his feet and high-fived every boy there as he ran back to the start of the slide.

  How was it that she found that attractive?

  She scratched at the itchy skin peeking from her moon boot and didn’t try to resist the depression that swept over her. Dad would have loved this. He’d have been the king of hospitality—he would’ve cooked the snags on the barbecue, talked to every bloke that showed up, and probably even gone for a slide himself, despite his bad knee. He would’ve found a way to cheer her up about Mick. He would’ve known what to say to decrease her farm stress—and then pitched in to find a solution. He’d been their wise one. Their rock.

  But without him she floundered, adrift in an ocean of doubts and worry. And on top of all that, thanks to the three Cokes, she had to pee.

  Careful of her leg, she slid from the fence to the ground and began the short walk—now a long, crutch-assisted hop—back to the house. By the time she returned to her spot on the fence, Mick had his shirt on, kombucha in hand, and was perched next to where she had been sitting.

  She slumped onto the crutch. There was no energy left in the tank for this tonight. She pivoted to go around him, but he turned. Held out the bottle. “Drink?”

  She summoned the last of her spunk and approached him. “You’re in my spot.”

  “I’m next to your spot. And if you’re not having it, I’ll take the kombucha.”

  She took the bottle from his hand, condensation cooling her palm. “Now go away.” She balanced the bottle on a fence post and pulled herself back up onto the railing.

  Mick pulled a second bottle from his pocket and cracked the lid. “What are you annoyed about today?” He emphasized the today like this was a common occurrence and took a sip.

  “I’m not annoyed every day, you know. Just the ones where I see you.” She dragged her eyes from where Mick’s North Queensland Cowboys T-shirt clung to his wet skin and focused somewhere near the dairy-bucket bowling pins. Meg barked at the sliding kids even as Butch patted her larger-than-usual tummy. Jules took another sip. “By the way, you’re going to be a father.”

  Mick spit out his drink.

  She snickered. “Or at least Killer is.” The poodle lapped at water spraying from the hose onto the slip and slide. He must’ve gotten to Meg long before this week, because you could now feel the pups in Meg’s belly.

  Mick wiped drips of kombucha from his chin. “That so?” She watched him from the corner of her eye. A smile played around his lips. “Kelpie-cross-toy-poodle puppies?”

  She rolled her eyes. The man was downright delighted. “You could at least pretend to be sorry about it. My dog’ll be out of commission for weeks, and it’s not like I can run around the cows myself. According to Sam, I shouldn’t even be driving.”

  Mick threw her an alarmed look. “You shouldn’t be driving.”

  She smiled and sipped her kombucha. She’d kept off public roads, at least. Mostly.

  He heaved a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. “Are you asking me, as a vet, to take care of it?”

  She gasped. He wouldn’t lay a finger on her dog or those puppies. “No!”

  He spread his palms. “I meant I could find people at the Goldie to adopt them.”

  She grunted. Maybe.

  Mick nudged her with his shoulder—still wet from the slip and slide. “This mood seems to be about more than puppies we both know will
be adorable. You in a funk about your leg?”

  Jules peeled the label from her bottle, the real reason resting on the tip of her tongue but refusing to budge. “Depends. You still mad at me?”

  He considered her. “I got over it. But we both know that’s not why you look like someone broke all your That ’70s Show DVDs.”

  She slurped from the bottle, the fizzy sensation tickling her tongue. “Kimberly basically implied that I can’t run my own farm.” The words chafed like sand in the undies.

  Maybe she would’ve been better off taking Mick’s compromise, all those years ago, to move to a rural center within visiting distance of the beach. She could’ve worked for another farmer, maybe even dabbled in some youth work like Sam. Those outdoor youth camps had always looked fun.

  She shook her head. What was she thinking? She’d always dreamed of running this property, carrying on the family legacy, being her own boss. She’d farewelled Mick for the sake of that dream. Lot of good it’d done her.

  The sun slipped behind the horizon, and its golden glow faded to something murkier. Mick rubbed the barely-there stubble on his chin, the scratchy sound putting every one of Jules’s senses on heightened awareness. “That doesn’t sound like the girl I’ve heard about.”

  Interesting, considering Sam was the one who’d told him about why Kimberly was here. Jules shrugged. “She didn’t use those words, but the meaning was the same.”

  Mick flicked his bottle cap into the nearby forty-four-gallon drum they used as a rubbish bin. “Business is her thing, right? Even if you’re doing fine, it might not hurt to let her take a peek. Times are tough out here. You never know when it might come in handy.” He nodded over to where his parents stood talking to Kimberly. “If she’s offering you an advantage, I’d take it. Just look at Dad. He didn’t expect they’d need to sell so soon.”

  That was completely different. No amount of business advice could help a retirement-age farmer with a son who didn’t want his heritage. An edge slipped into her tone. “They wouldn’t have to if you’d stay.”

  Midsip, he slowly lowered his bottle, jaw tight. Whoops. Her stomach knotted. Not the right nerve to poke. She opened her mouth to take it back somehow, but he shook his head and jumped down from the fence. “You know, you broke up with me so that you could live your life here, on this farm. I can’t believe you could do that without batting an eyelid.” Her own bottle cap slipped from her fingers. How could he think that decision hadn’t devastated her? “But when you hit hard times, you can’t look past your own pride to let a friend help.” He pitched his bottle into the garbage and stalked off toward a group of men around the barbecue.

  Jules slapped her palm on the railing. Why did she have to go and say that? Mick didn’t deserve it. After all, she’d chosen her lifestyle over him just as much as he’d chosen his over her. Dad’s words, often spoken but now softer after six years of missing him, returned to Jules’s mind. “The thing you’re mad about often isn’t the thing you’re actually mad about.”

  Her straight posture slumped into a chiropractor’s nightmare. Mick wasn’t the problem. Kim wasn’t the problem. She was.

  She’d prided herself on being the only single-woman farmer in the district. She’d worked the land, battled the elements, the isolation, and the fatigue, and won. Likewise, her mother before her had weathered droughts, fires, floods, isolation, cattle sickness, cyclones, the deaths of two husbands, and anything else nature could throw at her. And yet now, according to Kim, in years of good rain and relative peace, Jules was on the brink of disaster after running the farm alone for just a few years?

  The admission marked catastrophic failure at every level of who she was.

  She sniffed back her emotions and raised her head. No. She hadn’t failed until the eviction notice came. And to stop that from happening, she needed her friend’s help.

  She slid from the fence and went to look for Sam and Kim.

  * * *

  Sam gave a wave to the final car pulling away from the farmhouse with one hand and used the other to slap at a mosquito on his neck. Behind him, empty cans clinked as Kimberly scooped up the rubbish from the party. Silent—apart from the occasional yelp when a cane toad startled her.

  As she’d been all afternoon.

  That milking they’d just done had been the quietest of his life, save that relentless Nirvana she insisted on blasting from the speakers. His extroverted personality meant he usually talked to anyone nearby, even her. But today he didn’t even try. If he could x-ray that girl’s heart, it’d probably just be one big ball of prickles.

  The uneven gait of Jules and her crutch approached from behind. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, bare except for her loose-fitting tank top. Humidity had been a killer today, and the cool change wasn’t due for days yet. “Mick around?” They walked back toward the slip and slide as the insects sang their nightly chorus.

  She shrugged. “I think he went home.” She glanced between him and Kimberly. “How’s Kim?”

  He hesitated as he bent to collect discarded bottles of detergent. “Quiet.” Moonlight glinted off something in the grass. More cans. Sam held his wet shirt out like a pouch and added them to the collection. He really should’ve thought ahead and gotten a rubbish bag.

  “She’s right.”

  Sam snapped his head around to look at his sister. “What?”

  She studied the ground by her toe. “Things aren’t going well.”

  He squeezed her shoulders. “Your leg will be better in five weeks. You’ve had a few years of decent rain. You’ll be fine again soon.”

  She kicked a rock. Actually, on second glance, a dead cane toad. “The interest payments alone are sucking up all my profit. Kim can see that. I keep thinking things will turn around, that it’s just temporary, but . . . maybe I need to make some bigger changes. Find efficiencies.”

  He let the news sink in a moment. Kim had said “downward trajectory.” What if Jules really did lose the farm? Grandad’s stockyards. Dad’s murals. Their childhood cubby houses. Mum’s custom-designed dairy. All those memories. Foreclosed and sold to the highest bidder. Nausea hit him in an unexpected wave.

  “I want you to work with Kim.”

  He almost dropped his increasingly sticky shirt pouch. Had she lost her mind? Swallowing his initial less-than-polite reaction, he paced a few steps away to the drum of rubbish and dumped the bottles and cans. “I beg your pardon?”

  Jules hobbled a few steps after him. “I’ve listened to you talk about her for years. I’ve heard you admit how so many of her ideas have worked. I’m no big fan of risk, so I don’t want her running off with some grand scheme. But I need her help. I think the two of you can balance each other out.”

  Sam let out an incredulous chuckle. “Or become part of a murder story that the local high school kids tell for years to come.”

  But even as the denial left his lips, reality intruded. Did they have any other choice? If he knew Kim, her assessment would’ve been thorough—and now even Jules was admitting the truth in it. His sister—the very person he’d expected to object to this as much as he did. The stiffness drained from his spine. No, no other choice at all.

  Jules nudged him with her crutch. “It wasn’t entirely her fault. Like I said, she was right about a lot of things.”

  Time to accept his fate. He forced a smile. But he couldn’t just let that last comment slide. “Hey.” He gave her shoulder a playful shove. “Do you want my help or not?”

  She grinned. “I already know you’ll give it. You’re sweet that way.”

  Ugh. Done for. And she knew it. Sam rolled his eyes and threw out his final plea. “This is asking a lot. We don’t see eye to eye. And she gets mean.”

  “She’s not mean, she’s blunt. It’s never malicious. Grow a thick skin.”

  He stifled a groan. He’d do it, of course. And he could deal with the groveling. But his real challenge would be keeping Kim’s he
ad out of the clouds and on the ground—a task that had proved impossible time and time before. But this time he couldn’t fail.

  His family’s entire way of life was at risk.

  Chapter 14

  Kimberly hunted for a stray cow along the bank of the Burnett River and plotted her escape. The landscape around her steamed under the late-morning sun, and trickles of sweat ran from her thighs all the way down to her socks poking out from the old elastic-sided riding boots she’d borrowed from Jules. The salty taste of sweat invaded her mouth. She plucked her hat—also borrowed—from her head and fanned herself with it. Why had she ever thought she’d be anything but an outsider on the farm that was clearly in the Payton family’s blood?

  In the night and morning that had passed since her conversation with Jules and Sam at the dairy, Kimberly had successfully avoided both of them. To think that just yesterday morning she’d thought she and Sam could build somewhat of a lasting truce. She might not have Sam’s communication skills or Jules’s zest for life, but she’d offered them the best she had: her brain.

  But Jules didn’t need her, and Sam didn’t want her.

  A tear leaked from her eye. The effort of keeping her impassive mask on since yesterday had drained every ounce of energy she had. Now, defenses depleted, the dam of emotion threatened to break.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and Kimberly sniffed and pulled it out. Incoming video call. Steph. Chasing an update on Sam, if her five emails and three missed calls were any indication.

  She should answer. She needed to answer. But her thumb refused to move faster than a snail’s pace toward the green icon.

  Before she could swipe, the phone went black. Out of battery. God was merciful after all—well, God and her habit of forgetting to plug it in at night. Kimberly shoved the phone back into her pocket. She should just find some local high school kid to take her place in the dairy, go home, and throw herself into saving Wildfire. She’d only known Jules a week—though it felt far longer—but logically the loss of that friendship shouldn’t hurt this much. And Sam . . . If she’d been honest with herself, she would’ve accepted that situation long ago. But this place . . . She laid a hand on the cream trunk of a gum tree and scanned its branches for koalas. The only highlight of her morning had been spotting one of the fuzzy creatures snoozing in a branch an hour ago. But this tree contained nothing—except the rotting evidence of an old tree house.