High-Stakes Bride. Fiona Brand

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СКАЧАТЬ Galbraith finally left the lunch table, Dani began clearing dishes. As she piled plates and cutlery in the sink, the words erupted out of her. “We’re making a big mistake.”

      Susan’s expression turned sharp. “For the first time in years I’m making the right choice. He’s asked me to marry him.”

      Dani froze in the act of turning a tap. “Does he know?”

      “No.” Susan scraped leftover food scraps into the compost bucket under the sink. “And don’t look like that, missy.”

      Dani clamped her jaw and retrieved the empty salad bowl from the table. She stared at the fragile porcelain. It was so fine and translucent she could see the shadow of her fingers through it. “We’re not safe here.”

      That was an understatement. They were sitting ducks. After years of lying low, of Susan working for cash under the table—even forgoing welfare payments because that would pinpoint where they were—of never forming relationships, let alone dating, the abrupt turnaround was stunning. A marriage meant legal paperwork and bank accounts. The paper trail would point a huge neon arrow in their direction.

      Susan snatched the bowl and rinsed it. “Yes. We are.” The bowl hit the draining board with a clatter. Susan’s fingers gripped the edge of the bench, her face abruptly white.

      Dani stared at her mother, heart pounding. Susan was tall and lean and strong. She’d worked all sorts of jobs from legal secretary to shop assistant to picking fruit. They might be poor, but she had always prided herself on having the constitution of an ox. Apart from the occasional sniffle, neither of them was ever sick. “What’s wrong?”

      Susan straightened. “I’m pregnant.”

      Dani stared at her mother. Of all the answers she might have expected, that hadn’t ever been one of them. Suddenly the move and the way her mother was behaving began to make sense. “Does Galbraith know?”

      “His name’s Robert. And no, not yet. I’ve only just realized myself.”

      The expression on her mother’s face made Dani feel even sicker. Dani’s father had left before she’d been born, the only remnant of that brief relationship a name on her birth certificate. The concept that Galbraith would willingly take on not only a wife but two children—one of them not his own—was staggering.

      Her mother retrieved the salad bowl, examined it for cracks and rinsed it. “Don’t worry, we’ll manage—one way or another.”

      “What if he finds out?”

      Susan’s jaw tightened. “I don’t want to hear you mention him again—it’s finished. He hasn’t found us for four years. He won’t find us now.”

      The snort of a horse drew Dani’s attention. She stared at the scene unfolding in the paddock immediately adjacent to the house.

      Carter was outside with Galbraith and two tall bay horses. She watched as Carter swung smoothly into the saddle. Dust plumed from restless hooves as the animals paced out of an open stock gate, hard-packed muscle rippling beneath satiny skin. Two dogs trotted alongside, tongues lolling. Dani blinked, spellbound. The scene was idyllic—like everything on Galbraith—and, like the endless rhythm of the sea dragging the sand from beneath her feet, it was steadily undermining her resolve. She was used to cutting ties, the idea of holding on made her dizzy.

      Dazed, Dani realized that, like Susan, she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay so badly it hurt.

      Susan tugged at her plait. “You just wait, you’ll change your mind about boys one day.”

      For a heartthrob like Carter Rawlings? She’d rather live in a soap opera.

      She might be young, but ever since she was six years old and he had broken into their house for the first time, she had known that men spelled more trouble than she ever wanted to take.

      In her limited experience, if you could lose them you were lucky.

      Chapter 2

      Present day, Jackson’s Ridge, New Zealand

      The sun was high, the air rippling with heat, the breeze hot and dry as it rustled through native manuka trees and flipped a strand of hair loose from Dani Marlow’s plait. As she slid from the seat of her tractor, she noted the direction of the breeze—a southerly—not the drought-breaking northerly she and every other farmer on the East Coast needed. They’d had a dry year, followed by an even drier summer, and the disastrous weather had desiccated the soil, killed most of the grass and undermined Galbraith Station’s already shaky financial position.

      Properties all up and down the coast were selling at rock-bottom prices, and the sharks were queuing—most notably a fancy out-of-town syndicate that, rumor had it, was determined to turn the small farming community of Jackson’s Ridge into an upmarket golf course and beach resort.

      The Barclays, who owned a block just up the coast, were contemplating selling after a fire burnt down their barn and decimated their maize crop. Another neighbour, old Mr. Stoddard, had rung just last night to let her know that instead of the extension on his mortgage he’d requested, the bank had sent him a letter advising him that his interest rate was going up. He was hanging on, but at seventy years of age, he had better things to do than watch his cows die of thirst and fight a bank that no longer had any confidence in his ability to service his loan.

      Dust whirled, peppering Dani’s eyes as she crouched down to check the underside of the tractor. It didn’t take a diesel mechanic to diagnose what was wrong with the ancient Ferguson—affectionately labeled the Dinosaur. The oil sump was leaking.

      Muttering beneath her breath, she straightened and walked to the small trailer coupled to the rear of the tractor and extracted a new bolt with its accompanying nut and washer from the “breakdown” toolbox. Shoving the wisp of hair behind her ear, she grabbed a wrench, a socket and a rag streaked with oil from the last breakdown, crawled beneath the Dinosaur and turned on her back.

      For the third time in a month the same bolt had worked loose, jolted out by the bone-shaking ruts and potholes of Galbraith Station’s fast-disintegrating stock roads. Each time she’d gone into town and bought a slightly larger bolt, the metal of the sump, warped with constant flexing and worn thin by extreme age, had disintegrated enough that the bolt had shaken loose. The sump itself was about to expire, but because the tractor was so old, obtaining another part would be close to impossible. She had two options: get an engineer to manufacture a part, which would cost a small fortune, or buy a new tractor, which would cost more money than she could raise this year—or the next.

      Oil slid down the backs of her hands and her wrists as she pushed the sump back into place and lined up the bolt holes. With a deft movement, she slipped the bolt through and held it in place as she awkwardly reached around the solid-steel chassis to slide the washer and the nut onto the shaft of the bolt, straining until the thread caught and the nut wound smoothly on.

      Clamping the wrench around the nut to hold it still, she began the delicate process of tightening the bolt, a quarter turn at a time with the socket in the confined space, careful not to stress the tired metal by screwing the bolt in too tightly. Long seconds later, arms aching, she loosened off the wrench and the socket, set the tools down in the dust and simply lay in the shadows beneath the tractor, the tautness of her muscles turning to liquid as she let herself go boneless.

      She was hot, sweaty and СКАЧАТЬ