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PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE Two months later SHE had to tell him. From the corner of a shadowed stall, Laila watched him—her man, if only she could get him to see her, talk to her, to listen for longer than twenty seconds. But those incredible, amber-gold eyes were filled with shadows, even beneath his Akubra hat. He was stalking into the barn, a mug in one hand and a letter in the other. Jake Connors never simply walked anywhere. Nothing he did was simple. He moved around Wallaby Station as if chased by a horde of demons. He wore his intensity like a second skin: a storm cloud flicking tiny bolts of lightning, never allowing it to fully unleash. Even after that night, and his abrupt desertion of her bed before sunrise, making it clear ever since that he wanted to forget what happened between them, something about him called to the woman in her in a way no other man ever had. Would he speak to her this time? Would he finally meet her eyes? My hands are shaking. Excitement, terror, the deep, craving ac
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO Almost three months later THIS was ridiculous, spending hours hiding out in the barn, grooming the horses. She shouldn’t even be at Wallaby. Wasn’t this what she’d been running from since the time she’d graduated high school? From her teen years, she’d fought the loving smothering of Dar and the boys, who saw her as fragile and in need of their constant care, instead of the tough Outback woman she was. She loved her family dearly, but she wished they could see how much they held her down by rescuing her from every one of life’s emotional bumps and falls. If she’d had anywhere else to go, she’d have gone. Bathurst was no longer an option: throwing up day and night hadn’t left much room for final-year studies. And since that stage ended, her constant tiredness and unpredictable emotional state didn’t gel with hours spent on her feet waitressing and dealing with the cheerful or obnoxious drunks that came to the steakhouse next to the university. Faced with inevitability, she’d
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE THE look on his face alerted Laila, just as he leaned in. He wanted to seduce her into accepting his proposal—and she was terrified he’d win. She hated him…at least, she wanted to hate him…but she was horribly afraid she didn’t. Could the fascination still blast her from her feet, and her certainty that marriage to a man who didn’t love them both would ruin her life—and the baby’s? She had to resist the look in his eyes as he leaned toward her, his burning-hot gaze fixed on her mouth. And she would resist, in a moment… Next thing she knew she was lying on the hay, not knowing whether she was escaping his touch or surrendering to it—and she didn’t know if she cared. Jake leaned into her, with a glow of satisfaction in eyes now dark gold. With the tiniest curve of his mouth, not enough to be a smile—more like a look of triumph—that incredible mouth came down on hers. Desperate to fight him, she pushed on his chest to get up, like he was a fence or a wall she could use; but
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR LAILA STAGGERED back under the raw power he unleashed on her—dear God, the man could kiss when he lost control. Glorious insanity, insatiable hunger, a blaze burning all it touched in high, raging winds—it was all that and more. He kissed her as if he wanted to eat her alive, and she was devouring him in return, mouth-to-mouth. It had been like this last time—this uncontrollable, unstoppable, perfect passion. It was everything she’d read about and dreamed of, but had never known with any man until Jake. He couldn’t hide it now, and didn’t try. The kiss was drugging her with its intensity, with the raw male need coming from him, bringing her long-hidden femininity to glorious life. She moaned and arched her ripening body against his, hearing his growl of satisfaction with a rippling thrill. He pulled her even closer, his hands all over her, leaving her alive and aching and filled with blazing heat, wanting more… Muted laughter came from the big, barnlike structure used as a
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE “WHAT do you think you’re doing?” Startled, Laila pulled on Starfire’s reins, turning around to face Jake, who stood at the edge of the exercising paddock, his face taut and challenging. Her brows lifted. “What I do every day, exercising the horses. Wallaby is a working station, you know,” she reminded him with gentle humor. “I’ve done it all my life.” There was no lightening of his grim face. These days his anger and anxiety seemed carved in dark marble. “Not anymore.” He grabbed her hips and lifted her from the saddle with expert knowledge, dislodging her feet from the stirrups without a hiccup in his movement, sliding her down over his body and to the ground. It was a superb movement; it might even have been romantic, but for her fast-rounding belly sliding against him instead of her once slender shape—and the seeming lack of awareness on his part that she’d touched his body at all. “You’re not riding anymore, apart from basics in the paddock close to the house.” Expect
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX THE curious had turned out in force tonight. She’d counted about two hundred in the crush inside the house and spilling out over the verandas and backyard. The kegs of beer out the back were emptying rapidly, and the usual suspects were going for it in the sculling contest. The yard-glass was being passed from one guy to the next, getting a real workout. Half the local boys were unsteady on their feet already. Meanwhile the women were getting their fill—of gossip and speculation. The local girls were unable to hide their glee. The Princess had fallen off her pedestal…and with a common jackaroo, of all people! Let’s see the boys race after her now! Laila pasted on a smile for the fiftieth time in the past hour as another couple came up for conversation, an introduction to Jake, who’d been hovering behind her every time someone asked to meet him—and to find out what news they could. “The baby’s due in late January or early February, Aunt Ellen,” she said a minute later to her
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN LAILA’S mobile phone began bleeping within forty-five minutes. Lying on her back on Jimmy’s jacket, melting a chocolate ball in her mouth and enjoying the rare luxury of silence, she chose not to hear the sound…until Jimmy touched her shoulder. “Looks like the cavalry’s about to ride in,” he whispered, pointing at the indistinct human form coming through the shadowed trees separating the dam from the house. She giggled, then sighed. “Drat.” Jimmy shrugged and grinned. “I got a few days. I don’t have to go anywhere until next weekend…that is, if your dear papa will allow me to hang around.” “Oh, he will,” she replied grimly. “If he wants me to stay here, he will.” “Laila.” She swiveled around, feeling like a puppet pulled by wires she couldn’t find. Jake spoke, and she obeyed. “Yes, Jake?” she answered levelly. “What can I do for you?” He didn’t come any closer. “Your dad’s getting pretty hot under the collar,” he said, his voice quiet, restrained. “It’s your party and peo
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT “SHE looks much happier now,” Andrew remarked to Jimmy as they stood shoulder to shoulder outside the stables a week later, watching Laila ride off on her pretty, lively Starfire, at a sedate pace, but riding. Old Blue loped along with the horse, barking at the stray sheep around the home paddock. Jake rode beside Laila on Red, the big gelding he’d brought with him to Wallaby Station. Jimmy shaded his eyes with a hand against the late-morning sun, looking at her. “Yeah, she does.” He smiled as Laila said something, and Jake nodded before they broke into a light canter, heading for the scrubby hills to the west. “My work here is done,” he intoned in a mock-solemn voice that had the serious, quiet Andrew grinning. “You did do it, you know. You made us all see what we were doing to her.” Jimmy shrugged, watching Jake’s ease and grace in the saddle, compared to his lack of it with humans, especially Laila. “What friends are for…but it still might not work.” In the week since
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE NIGHT had almost fallen by the time they arrived back at the homestead. Laila sat straight in the saddle, but her eyes were heavy, her face pale. Jake wanted to kick himself. He’d taken her too far from home for her first real ride in weeks. He should have followed his instincts and kept it local, a short half-hour ride followed by the picnic and a rest; but his guilt at restricting her for so long had let Laila dictate the pace. Still, she’d slept for almost two hours, and he’d given her the softest spot and the rest of the blanket for the baby. He was itching where some bull ants had bitten him, lying on the tough grass beside her, waiting for her to wake up. It had been the first time he’d laid beside her since the night they’d conceived the baby. It twisted his guts, remembering how good, how peaceful it felt to have Laila in his arms, scooped against his body, sweet and trusting in sleep, all barriers lowered. He jumped from the saddle and flipped on the light when th
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN LAILA felt the familiar comfort of her cushion-top bed envelop her, her comforter cover her; but she couldn’t sigh and roll into sleep. Her mind kept rolling the film of the past sixteen hours, rewinding and replaying it over and over, as she searched for the clue she’d overlooked, the one tiny clue to what happened that she’d dismissed as unimportant. If she couldn’t find it, the mare’s life would be lost for no purpose. Seven years of training had meant little, faced with reality; beneath the pressure of life and death, she’d lost every technique taught to her. With the mare’s death, she’d seen her lifetime’s ambition turned to dust and ashes before her eyes. Her life, her sense of self-worth, for years had been wrapped up in this one investment: that she’d be a good…no, a great vet. She’d wanted to save animals for as long as she could remember. She still remembered the time when she’d brought home the funnel web spider and Dar took her to the hospital, convinced she mus
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN JAKE’S head bowed. He felt stripped bare, years of bitterness and self-hate exposed to her clear-eyed gaze—and worst, the love. This magnificent woman, the woman bearing his child, wouldn’t fight for him. She knew he loved Jen, and accepted it with a dignity he hadn’t found inside himself for too many years. Slowly he nodded…and the acceptance of what he had to do washed over him like cool water over desert-heated skin. It was time. “Go,” she whispered. “Go now.” His eyes burning, he looked at her. White and still, her eyes dark and red-rimmed, her bright hair a mess around her face, she had never looked more beautiful to him. Tears streaked her cheeks, but still she smiled, sweet and tremulous. “Go. We’ll be fine.” “Come with me.” He held out his hand to her. She shook her head, smiling. “It’s not my place. Just go.” Frowning, he muttered, “I want you to come with me.” He wanted her to meet his family, wanted to bring his new life into the old. Wanted to marry her and m
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE “HI, JEN,” Jake said, in a strangled kind of whisper. “Bet you thought I’d never get here.” Finally, after almost a week at Burrabilla, everyone had had their share of seeing him, he’d worked his land and come to some kind of peace with his former in-laws. Now, at last he had time, in the quiet hours before sunset, to come. To her…to them. Jenny and Annabel. He walked quietly past the grave of his father and grandparents to the small, fenced-in graves of his wife and daughter. He’d stopped to pick some of the hardy perennial flowers his mother had recently planted around the veranda, and separated them into two bunches. Not much of an apology, he knew, but what could possibly make up for ignoring his own wife and child for five years? Somehow he’d expected the graves—one adult-size, one so pitifully tiny—to be wild and overgrown: a silent testimony to his neglect. He should have known Sandy better than that. While they hadn’t been seen to for about a week, and the flower
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
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