A Girl's Guide to the Outback

by Jessica Kate

  “We’re a team.” Her dream come true, in three simple words—even if it was only temporary. Plus the added bonus of Samuel Payton, inches away, eyes wide and earnest and his whole attention focused on her.

  What mere mortal could resist his plea?

  She nodded, taking a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll do it.”

  Sam flashed her a grin. “Good on ya. That’s the Kimberly I know.”

  He led the way inside, waving goodbye to Mick and Butch as he went, and Kimberly followed a pace behind. If God was into bargaining, she’d offer up just about anything for the chance to come here every Christmas. But the Creator of the universe didn’t roll like that.

  So, she just repeated a prayer a thousand more times as they headed through the door.

  * * *

  Someone needed to play bad cop.

  Perched on the worn edge of Jules’s couch, Kimberly picked at the cracking leather and shifted her gaze between Sam, pacing the living room as he gesticulated in full presenter mode, and Jules sat enthroned in her recliner. They were now ten minutes deep into Sam’s presentation.

  From the pinch between Jules’s brows, Kimberly could tell they’d lost her enthusiasm. The fold of her arms hinted at disapproval. And the tapping of her good foot probably meant she wasn’t even listening anymore.

  Kimberly crossed her socked feet at the ankles and scanned Sam, sleeves rolled to his elbows and voice brimming with that trademark Samuel Payton enthusiasm he brought to any presentation—whether he was preaching to three thousand teenagers or telling his sister to buy seventy extra cattle. But was he picking up the same vibes she was?

  Jules held a hand up to Sam and spoke over him. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  He halted. Glanced at Kimberly.

  A gust of wind swept through the window and blew out Jules’s Citrus Explosion candle. Kimberly’s anxiety levels kicked up a notch. That is not a sign. She pushed herself to her feet and stood by Sam. Pep talk outside notwithstanding, she shouldn’t kid herself. Sam had made it clear that he’d support her idea and bring it to Jules, but he wouldn’t talk his sister into anything. And neither would she. But right now Jules wasn’t even considering their idea. The expression on her face was just the adult equivalent of sticking her fingers in her ears and singing la-la-la-la.

  But good cop was worth at least one more shot.

  Jules pushed the footrest of the recliner down and leaned forward to speak. “I wanted efficiencies, alternate feed sources, that sort of thing. I wanted to see if you could find something I hadn’t thought of.”

  Kimberly shook her head and pinned a gentle smile to her lips, even as her heart sped up. “You have this place running as well as it can with these stock numbers. You need more production.”

  “Which means more debt.” Jules said the word debt with the same tone one would use for terrorist.

  She couldn’t let Jules lose this place. Sam believed in her for a reason. Kimberly held up both hands in entreaty. “Take my calculations and get a second opinion. And a third and a fourth.” She steeled herself and lowered both her hands and her voice to drive her point home. “But don’t toss them aside, because the long-term outlook if you maintain the status quo is riskier than taking out this loan.”

  Jules folded her arms. “I’m not taking out a mortgage against my cattle when there’s already one against the land. That’s crazy.”

  Kimberly suppressed a groan. She’d checked all options, and the loan against the cattle was the best way to go. But Jules’s stubbornness was formidable. This wasn’t the first time she’d stood in her own way. Kimberly had pieced together enough of Mick and Jules’s story to know that Mick had offered a compromise ten years ago—a place to live that was both rural for her and within visiting distance of the beach for him. But Jules had envisaged her life one way: on this specific farm. That same stubbornness was rearing its head today.

  She zoned back into what Sam was saying.

  “—up past midnight all the time getting this ready, and she works like a trooper all day long. The least you can do is listen.”

  Sam coming to her defense? Another piece of her heart inflated.

  Jules leaned back in her chair. “I am listening. But I’m not going further into debt.”

  Kimberly bit her lip. She could let this slide, let whatever happened happen. But the Christmases at this house sounded too good to let them be repossessed by the bank. Even if what she had to say to accomplish that got her Christmas invite rescinded.

  Time to screw up her courage and do what only a true friend could do.

  She wiped sweaty palms on her shorts, then leaned toward Sam and murmured, “This is for her own good.”

  Deep breath. Here we go.

  To Jules: “You already know that I’m right.” The words came out with the detached voice she’d used so many times on Sam.

  “Excuse me?”

  As a consultant, this tactic had worked on clients again and again. Kimberly visualized wearing her favorite dove-gray skirt and jacket with the white shirt that flattered her neckline rather than this baggy Stargate shirt and lavender sweat shorts. Confidence, Kim. You’re the expert. She clasped her hands in front of her and raised one eyebrow just a fraction. “You knew you needed a push into something you don’t want to admit is necessary. That’s why you asked my opinion in the first place.”

  Jules’s expression morphed into an amused, slightly incredulous smile. “That so?”

  “You’re a capable woman. Usually you farm this land alone. You solve the problems. You don’t quit. And you only ask an outsider for help when you know there’s something you can’t do.” She plucked the folder containing their proposal from Sam’s hands and dropped it in Jules’s lap. “Your persistence is how you survive out here. But don’t let that turn into stubbornness that bankrupts you.”

  “I know what’s at stake.”

  Kimberly looked her friend dead in the eye. No, she didn’t. Not really.

  Back when she’d worked for Mom, they’d taken meetings with clients about to lose their businesses, homes, credit rating—everything. She’d seen people neck deep in foreclosure insist with all earnestness that their fortunes were about to magically turn around.

  They didn’t. At least not without a change in strategy.

  She sucked in a supply of oxygen, released it. If she had to spell out exactly what could happen, so be it. “My job is to put the plan in front of you. I can’t make you look at it. But remember this conversation when the bank’s coming to padlock the gate and you have to go to the front paddock to dig up your dad’s urn.”

  The temperature in the room plummeted to thirty below zero. Any hint of a smile fled Jules’s expression. She stood without the aid of a crutch. Kimberly held her breath and maintained her neutral expression with agonizing effort. Jules articulated each word with careful precision. “Get. Out.”

  She walked from the room, gait uneven, like she couldn’t stand Kimberly’s presence for another second. The silence lingered with all the comfort of a belt sander to the face.

  Sam shifted behind Kimberly. What was he thinking? She couldn’t make herself turn around and look. She managed to keep her voice even. “It had to be done.”

  And then she sat on the edge of the coffee table and burst into tears.

  Chapter 22

  Jules sat on the burned-out shell of the old Suzuki DS 80 motorbike, tailbone sore from the hours she’d been here, and stared at a moonlit rock with googly eyes and a pipe cleaner smile that rested on the dirt between three dog collars and a turtle cage. She sniffed back the remnants of her tears, salt in her nostrils and mouth. Rubbed at goose bumps as the night breeze wrapped its cold fingers around her arms. Leaving the house in footy shorts and a Brisbane Broncos T-shirt may’ve been shortsighted. But she’d needed to come to the burial ground of all her favorite things—including the urn that contained Dad’s ashes.

  She’d made the pet rock that marked the spot to look like Dad in the
second grade, and it’d sat on Dad’s office windowsill for years. Unconventional tombstone perhaps, but fitting.

  Was there really a chance she’d need to dig him up?

  Curse this boot on her leg. Were she free from it, she’d go borrow Mick’s dirt bike and take out her frustration on the overgrown track Dad had formed with the tractor when they were kids. But no, she was trapped. In more ways than one.

  She smacked a fist against the cold metal frame of the bike she sat on. Ow. Pain radiated up the bones in the side of her hand. That was stupid.

  She punched it again.

  A vehicle rumbled along the track, which was corrugated from the hooves of three hundred cattle. Mick’s ute. She’d know that engine anywhere.

  Light danced across the bush paddock, reflecting back at least three sets of mystery eyes, as he swung the ute around to park behind her. The engine stopped, and the ambiance returned to cane-toad croaks and the occasional moo.

  She didn’t turn around when footsteps crunched toward her. Just kept her eyes on the googly ones that stared back, unblinking.

  Mick appeared in her peripheral vision, squatted by the front of the bike, and rubbed the decal 80 with a fond touch. His T-shirt and board shorts from the cricket game were gone, replaced by jeans trendier than anyone wore in this entire district and a flannel shirt she suspected was his dad’s.

  She cast her eyes downward. Crocs. He had his feet jammed into rainbow-swirl Crocs. His mum had unusually large feet.

  A giggle bubbled up even as hot tears rushed to her eyes yet again. Blinking them away, she swallowed to try to stop the sensation of her throat closing. On the day that she felt more dread than a mouse outrunning a brown snake, he was here. Despite everything that’d happened between them. He still came.

  “So, I talked to Sam.” Mick’s voice came out gravelly, quiet. “You’ve been out here awhile.”

  Probably four hours, give or take. What conversation had Sam and Kim had after she left? That would’ve been an interesting one to see.

  Mick swiped a cobweb from the bike’s clutch. “Wanna go for a drive?”

  “Wanna go for a drive?” Those had been her favorite words at the age of fifteen, when they’d flogged his little ’86 Pintara around the back roads like they were at the Bathurst 1000.

  Still not trusting her vocal cords, she just nodded. Stood up from the bike, let Mick prop it back up against the tree with the collars of Meg I, Bo II, and Nip IV nailed to it, and hopped into the passenger seat of the ute. Mick stowed her crutch in the tray.

  Within ten minutes they were humming along Newell Road, which ran treeless and straight for forty-five kilometers. If it weren’t for the threat of kangaroos on the road, you could set the cruise control and take a nap. They’d passed the first corner before Mick spoke.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  She picked at the top of her moon boot. “Not really.”

  “Wanna go somewhere in particular?”

  “Any direction works for me.”

  He glanced at her. “Trust me?”

  She considered him. “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Then take a nap. The view will be better when you wake up.”

  A mystery tour. Sweet.

  She reclined her seat and closed her eyes. A nap would be good. Sleep had evaded her recently. The classic-rock tunes playing from the radio lulled her into oblivion.

  Much later a radiating ache in her neck and strange sounds pulled her back to consciousness.

  Was that . . . ocean waves?

  She must be hearing things. She shifted in her seat and drifted back off to sleep.

  * * *

  Jules dragged her eyelids open and swung her gaze around. Empty driver’s seat. Big white building on the right, lit by predawn light. And a whole lotta ocean.

  Her jaw dropped. “What are we doing here?” She swung her gaze around. High-rise apartments dotted the landscape behind her. The Gold Coast?

  And where was Mick?

  The clock on the dash read 5:02 a.m. She scanned the sand as she kneaded the crick in her neck. There, at the point where the sand met grass, Mick stretched out on the beach, using his jacket as a pillow.

  Jules grabbed her crutch and hopped over to him, careful to not get sand in her boot. Wow, she’d forgotten how good the sea air smelled in the morning. “Oi. Bozo. What are we doing at the beach?”

  One eye peeked open. “Watching the sunrise.”

  “From behind your eyelids?”

  “It’s my preferred method.”

  She scanned the landscape around them. Yep, this was the Gold Coast. Mick was insane. That was a five-hour car trip. How deeply had she slept?

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mick sat up, and Jules not only looked at but saw their surroundings.

  The skyscrapers of Surfers Paradise rose on their far left, appearing to almost meet the water. A wide bay of white sand curved for kilometers, all the way from the center of the city to where they now stood. The grassy knoll of the headland rose at their immediate right.

  “Look.” Mick pointed to the horizon, where the freshly risen sun threw its rays onto the water.

  Jules had to squint to look at it, but it was worth the effort. “It really does look like gold.” If only she’d brought her good camera.

  “Nothing like it.” He wore the smug look of a cat who’d stolen the cream. Or, in this case, the farm girl.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ll admit it looks awesome, but are you crazy? I need to be at the farm right now.”

  “Maybe some perspective will help you make your decision.”

  “I don’t need perspective, since according to Sam and Kim I have no real choice. I need a strong drink.”

  Mick spread out his jacket under her moon boot, and she plopped down into the sand. He held up three fingers, folding each one down as he spoke. “You always have a choice. We both know you can’t handle a drink stronger than kombucha. And it’s been scientifically proven that the beach helps everything.”

  She rested back on her elbows. Much as she hated to admit it, this was almost as beautiful as Yarra Plains.

  Mick pulled off his crocs and shoved his feet under the sand. “So talk to me. Why does their proposal have you so freaked out?”

  She closed her eyes, a sick twist in her stomach. She couldn’t even go there. “I . . . I don’t want to talk about it yet. I just need to get home and . . .” And do what? Ignore all the research Kimberly and Sam had done? Stick her head in the sand? But she couldn’t go to the bank and take out that kind of money against her cattle. Mum would have a fit—though technically, as the landholder under their share-farming agreement, she had no legal say.

  But lawyers couldn’t stop a mother’s wrath.

  They sat in silence, the sound of breaking waves a soothing balm to Jules’s frayed nerves. Seagulls flapped overhead, a few mad-keen surfers bobbed out in the ocean, and a haze of salt spray filled the air. Jules rolled fine grains of sand between her fingertips and inhaled deeply. As much as she ragged Mick about this place, there was something about the ocean that revived the soul.

  After a few minutes Mick stood up, balanced her crutch, and pulled her to her feet—or foot. She kept her moon boot in the air, well clear of the sand, and gripped Mick’s hand for balance. Heat spread from her palm and swept through her body. How could this tiny amount of skin contact affect someone so much? Her bloodstream must be drowning in hormones.

  She held her hand out for her crutch. He handed it over and stuck close by as they made their way up onto the grass. “Take a break for one weekend. Get some distance, have some fun, and your farm will still be there when you get back.”

  She nibbled her lip as they paused before the wide bike path between the beach and car park. Two perky women jogged past, their makeup immaculate and several body parts artificially plumped. “A whole weekend? In the city?”

  He nudged her with his elbow as they crossed. “This isn’t just a pleasure trip. I’ve got
work for you to do.”

  She looked from her moon-booted leg to him.

  “I’ve got some potential puppy families, but I wanted to check them out personally first.” He grinned. “You won’t regret it.”

  Oh, but she would.

  Yet those sweet blue eyes that had searched for her when she was sad, driven through the night for her, and now reflected the sunrise—they were her kryptonite.

  How could she say no?

  “You’d better buy me some mind-blowing fish ’n’ chips.”

  “Deal.”

  Chapter 23

  This place was a disaster.

  Kimberly propped one foot on a fallen fence post and surveyed the dilapidated remains of the old worker’s cottage on Jules’s farm. Sweat already slicked her skin, though it wasn’t even breakfast time yet. She’d left the truck and four-wheeler for Sam and Butch, who milked this morning, and instead pedaled out here on a rusty bicycle that had been decomposing in Jules’s shed.

  She’d remembered this idea as she tossed and turned at 2:30 a.m., and she’d had to check it out right away. The structure was indeed as terrible as she remembered. And it was perfect.

  The home’s sagging front door opened to reveal an even more depressing interior: the scent of Eau de Dead Mouse, carpet stains from my-gosh-I-shudder-to-even-think-of-it, and paint flaking from the ceiling like dandruff.

  She folded her arms and nodded. They could fix this by the time Jules got home. With Wildfire now closed for the Christmas break and her research for Jules complete, she had hours to spare. And the more comfortable Sam felt about Jules’s financial position, the more likely he’d be to return to Wildfire permanently. But she’d need his help to pull this off.

  She left the house at a fast clip, jumped back on her two-wheeled rust bucket, and rode one-handed as she shooed flies with the other hand.

  Jules would need a pick-me-up when she got home, and what better than to find an existing asset revitalized and ready to save her some cash? Butch had already said he’d happily swap part of his wages to live here, so the savings would be immediate.