Wanted: Outback Wife. Ally Blake

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СКАЧАТЬ of his life to marry her, to be her husband, after knowing her for less than a month?

      Heath swung back and forth on the love seat on the veranda of his big old home, staring out across the flat red dirt of Jamesons Run.

      A blood-red sunset glowed across the plain. A nimble dry wind whipped along the dusty ground so that the golden kangaroo grass seemed to be waving toward the grand old willow dipping its sad leaves into the dam at the centre of his main paddock.

      He could do with rain—and not just to damp down the dust storms that were springing up from nowhere more often than not these days. Rain would be a break in routine of stifling hot temperatures that spoke of an oppressive summer to come. Rain would be a change.

      ‘Knock, knock.’

      Heath looked over his shoulder to find his older sister Elena standing in the doorway with a paper plate drooping under the weight of mixed desserts. An outfit of a floral dress and stockings on such a warm day could only mean one thing—a wedding or a funeral. And there had not been a wedding at Jamesons Run in years.

      He let his riding-boot-clad feet drag against the wooden floor until the seat stopped swinging so she could sit beside him.

      ‘I brought this for you before the Crabbe sisters had the chance,’ Elena said. ‘No doubt they are still squabbling over whether you might prefer Carol’s custard tart or Rachel’s mud cake.’

      Heath smiled, and he only hoped he had managed to make it reach his eyes. His appetite seemed to have departed him since the moment he had picked up the phone four days earlier to learn that Marissa was gone, but he swallowed a bite of Elena’s home-made pavlova to keep her happy. His mouth was so dry that the sticky passion-fruit topping caught on his palate. Now he would be prying pavlova loose with his heavy tongue all night.

      ‘How you doing, little brother?’ Elena asked, patting him on the knee. ‘You holding up okay?’

      He nodded, though he turned away for a brief moment so she wouldn’t see his frown. Why was she worried about him? Cameron was the one she should have been comforting. Cameron was the one who had lost his wife. He had only lost…what? A friend? His last remaining link to the life he had once thought he might have?

      ‘Do we have enough ice?’ he asked, tidily avoiding the question. ‘I can run into town to get more.’

      ‘We have plenty of ice,’ Elena said. Her patting stopped. ‘Though I’m sure it won’t occur to Cameron to thank you, he appreciates you holding Marissa’s wake here. And when you took over for him during the eulogy, oh, that fair broke my heart then and there. You’re a good kid, Heath.’

      ‘A thirty-six-year-old kid,’ he reminded her. ‘Which makes you—’

      ‘A lady of indiscriminate age,’ Elena said, cutting him off quick smart. ‘So when are we going to get to use this big old place for more than Christmas parties, local community meetings and funerals? When do we all get to come here to celebrate your wedding?’

      ‘Ha! I’m surprised you and the Crabbe sisters haven’t lined Cam and me up for a double wedding by now.’

      As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. They were cruel and hurtful and born of the fact that he barely believed the words even as he said them. He stood and moved to the edge of the veranda, wrapping his hands around the wooden railing until a bunch of splinters poked deep enough to hurt.

      ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was out of order.’

      ‘And completely understandable, considering. Does the thought of settling down frighten you that much?’

      Settling down? That was what she thought had kept him from the altar all this time? He had settled down a decade ago. What scared him was that if one day he settled down at Jamesons Run with someone else it meant that he would never leave. But now, on this tragic day, it no longer seemed the biggest problem in his life.

      ‘What if I told you that right this moment I am feeling the very opposite?’ he said. He turned and leant his backside against the railing and folded his arms and stared his big sister down.

      ‘Well, kid, I would say thank the gods.’ She stood and grabbed him by the arms, giving him a big kiss on the cheek. ‘Is there a particular woman who has brought about this change of heart?’

      One woman? Absolutely. But she was gone now. Not just gone from his life, but gone from all life. And it had taken a shock of that magnitude to knock him from the path of his life.

      ‘None in particular,’ he said. His reasons were his to wrangle alone. ‘So what do you think? Should I go and give the Crabbe sisters the fright of their life by proposing to one of them right now?’

      The Crabbe girls were as sensible a choice as any. He knew from past experience of country-dance bottom-pinching, all instigated by one or the other of them, that they would not have been immune to such an idea. But no matter how hard he tried to picture himself in the role of doting husband with a good little country wife by his side, he found he in all good conscience could not. It felt like too much of the same.

      And what he craved so deeply was change.

      ‘No need,’ Elena said, reaching into her purse for a pile of yellowed, creased A4 paper. ‘I’ve already signed you up to some dating websites, just in case.’

      ‘Websites?’ Heath parroted back. ‘Aren’t they all just fronts for three-hundred-pound, sixty-year-old Russians looking to relocate?’

      Elena’s responding sigh was melodramatic. ‘I’ll have you know over half all new relationships forged by people in their thirties come from meeting over the Internet.’

      After a pause, Heath said, ‘You just made that up.’

      ‘I did. But it sounds good, don’t you think? Now I’ve found some girls I like, and some I know you’ll like. All are Melbourne women. Twenty-seven to thirty-five. Single. Looking for love, not just fun.’ She glanced at him through narrowed eyes.

      He took the pages, skimming through pictures and vital statistics of a dozen perfectly attractive young women.

      One page about halfway through had stuck to another with a glob of baby food. It caught his eye for the fact that it had a big red cross through it. Why, he had no idea, for the woman in the picture looked absolutely worth investigating.

      She was laughing so hard he could almost feel the energy radiating from the page. Something about the angle of the photo made him feel kind of dizzy, as if he were about to tip over if he didn’t plant his feet.

      Behind the smile was English-rose skin. Huge jade-green cat’s eyes. Long curling eyelashes. A fine chin and a nice straight nose. And she had a seriously sexy stash of strawberry-blonde waves. She barely looked twenty but there was something steely behind her pretty green eyes that had Heath thinking that she was older.

      A bulleted list below the photo told him she hated chocolate, her favourite colour was yellow, she cooked a mean plate of fettuccini carbonara, and she lived for mascarpone.

      Considering he couldn’t go a day without chocolate, he wasn’t entirely sure he had a favourite colour, he couldn’t eat starch and didn’t even know what a mascarpone was, it seemed that they were likely the least-suited pair on the planet. Maybe that was why Elena had СКАЧАТЬ