The Cattleman's Bride

Luke stopped in front of a wire gate across the road and put the truck in neutral. “Only how I might convince you to sell, instead. I was a signature away from owning it all.”

“I’ve brought back your deposit.” She rummaged in her purse for an envelope and held it out to him.

Ignoring it, Luke swiveled on the bench seat to face her, one elbow resting on the seat back, the other on the steering wheel. “I would have thought you’d honor your father’s intent.”

Luke was a big man, Sarah realized, tall, broad shouldered and well muscled. But being tall herself she wasn’t intimidated by size. “I don’t know my father’s intent. Anyway, I owe him nothing.”

Luke pushed a hand through his hair, sweat dampened at the temples from his hat. “How can that be?”

“After he and my mother split up he bought Burrinbilli from her for a pittance. Not long after that he remarried and moved to the east coast,” Sarah added bitterly. As good a father as Dennis had been to her, it still hurt that her real father had cared so little about her.

“I’m surprised your mother didn’t return to Australia after her marriage broke up.”

“Her father died fighting a bushfire not long after she came to America. Her brother had been killed in Vietnam the year before. With no men left to run Burrinbilli, my grandmother passed it on to Mom, thinking she and Warren would come back. Nana went to live on the coast, where she died when I was about ten. So even though Mom owned the station, none of her family lived there anymore. I guess she didn’t feel she had much to come back to.”

Sarah paused to take a breath. The glazed look on Luke’s face suggested he already knew more than he ever wanted to about her family history. But she wanted to get it all over at once. “Also, Mom thought I should be raised near my father. The trouble was, his second wife didn’t want him to have anything to do with us. By the time Mom realized Warren wasn’t going to go against her to see me, she’d met my stepfather, Dennis, who had an established business in Seattle. So, she stayed.”

“I see.” Luke eyed her warily a moment, as if to make sure she’d really stopped. Then he yanked on the hand brake and jumped out of the truck to stride toward the gate.

Sarah sat where she was, her stomach churning as it always did when she thought about her father. Watching Luke walk back to the Land Cruiser, she recalled the old Mills and Boon romances by Lucy Walker, which were set in the outback and which she used to sneak from her mother’s cache of books as a young girl. It was the passenger’s job to open and close the gates.

Luke got back in and drove through the gate. “I’ll shut it,” Sarah said when he stopped on the other side.

She jogged back to the gate through the searing heat. The metal latch burned her fingertips as she pushed it shut. Then she made the mistake of glancing over the top of the gate. The land was so huge, so open. Nothing for her eyes to fasten on except the haze of heat that shimmered over the dusty track. To her surprise, a wave of panic quivered through her. Oh, no…

Her chest tightened until she was literally gasping for breath. Black spots appeared before her eyes and she doubled over, wrapping her arms around her waist. Beads of cold sweat popped out on her forehead. She was going to pass out…

Strong hands gripped her shoulders. “Keep your head down. Breathe deeply.”

She did as he said and after a minute she was breathing easier. “Thanks,” she said shakily, and struggled upright.

Luke’s eyes searched her face. “What happened? You went as white as a ghost gum.”

Sarah smiled feebly. “I felt…a little…faint. It must be the heat.”

He regarded her dubiously but said nothing as he helped her back to the vehicle.

Sarah was quiet the rest of the way. The heat, although a fierce contrast to autumn rains in Seattle, hadn’t caused that panic attack. She knew that was what it was because of Quentin, even though she’d never experienced one before.

Finally they topped a low rise and her worry fled as she got her first close-up view of Burrinbilli. The homestead was a long single-story building bordered by two stocky palm trees. Built of creamy sandstone blocks, it had a sloping roof of sage-green corrugated iron and a wide wraparound veranda. Tall narrow windows flanked by shutters were set into the walls at intervals. The iron pillars supporting the veranda were lush with a tangle of purple bougainvillea that almost obscured the intricate iron filigree trim.

“Vines are overgrown,” Luke said, braking to a halt.

“It’s beautiful,” Sarah declared from the edge of her seat.

A speckled black-and-white dog with pointy ears and stubby legs rose from the veranda, barked once and wagged his nether regions furiously as Luke got out of the truck.

“How ya goin’, mate?” He bent to rub the dog behind the ears, then presented him to Sarah. “Wal, the Wonder Dog.”

“Hello, Wal. Aren’t you gorgeous.” She crouched to let him sniff her hand. “Wonder Dog? Does he do tricks?”

“Nah, he’s a blue heeler, a working cattle dog. I call him Wonder Dog just to make him feel good.”

Sarah rose and gazed around. A hundred yards away to the left of the homestead gardens was a meandering line of huge gum trees. They must mark the path of the creek, she thought excitedly. To the right was a field dotted with horses. A glossy chestnut trotted along the fence toward them, arching its muscular neck and tossing its mane.

Sarah noted the spring in its step and briefly regretted her lie about not knowing how to ride. “Summer camp” had been a series of intensive courses in advanced equitation. The lie had come on impulse, an instinctive denial so she wouldn’t be expected to ride in the open country.

She would have to get over this phobia. That was all there was to it.

She climbed the single shallow step onto the shady veranda, her sandals sounding dull on the wooden flooring as she crossed to the entrance. A fanlight topped the door and on either side were panels of engraved glass. Sarah traced the roughened surface of a Scotch thistle twined with roses and shamrocks. Her mother had an antique silver-and-garnet brooch in the same pattern.

She’d known none of Warren’s family background and precious little of her mother’s. Here at last was her heritage. She hadn’t missed it until this moment, but now the smidgen she glimpsed left her wanting more.

She heard a step behind her and turned to find Luke with her suitcases in hand. “Thanks. Sorry, I should have helped bring those in. I was just so excited at seeing the house. I never thought it would affect me this much. Suddenly I’m reliving all sorts of memories—my mother’s memories, really—stories she’s told me through the years. I feel I know Burrinbilli almost as well as if I’d lived here myself.”

Luke gave her a dry glance and gestured her inside. “Make yourself at home.”

Oops, her pride of ownership was showing. Sarah stepped into the large entrance hall, her gaze rising to the high, ornate plaster ceiling before alighting on an impressive glass-encased display of butterflies.

“Of course, I couldn’t ever live here,” she assured him. “I’m an urban girl through and through. Bright lights, skyscrapers, the sound of traffic in the streets. To tell you the truth, all this quiet makes me nervous. Give me an apartment, a café and a view of the city over Puget Sound and I’m at home. Speaking of water, will you show me the lake?”

Luke hung his hat on a peg beside the door.

“Okay. But like I said, it’s not what you’re expecting.”

CHAPTER THREE

HE LED THE WAY to the other side of the house, through the biggest country kitchen Sarah had ever seen. She just caught sight of a stone fireplace you could stand up in enclosing a modern stainless-steel stove before Luke pushed open the sliding doors to the back veranda.

This section of the veranda was enclosed with fly screen and clearly used as an extension of the living space. At one end stood a child’s school desk and bookshelves, while at the other end wicker chairs padded with cushions were grouped around an outdoor table.

She gazed eagerly through the screen, past the sheds and the clothesline and the tall trees whose spreading boughs shaded the yard to—Huh? Where the lake should have been was nothing but a broad dent in the dry red earth. Tufts of salt grass grew here and there.

“That’s it?” Although he’d warned her, seeing the empty lake bed made her feel like crying. Anticipation of Lake Burrinbilli had sustained her through the long hours of the journey and now…It simply didn’t exist. “When did it last have water in it?”

“Three, maybe four years ago. It’s not really a lake, just a depression that holds water when it floods. It’s been six years since it was deep enough to paddle in.”

Sarah pressed two fingers to her closed eyelids and felt moisture seep beneath her lashes. Fatigue was sending her emotions up and down like a yo-yo. She was dying for a coffee, but even more than that she wanted to be alone with her disappointment. “I think I’ll take a shower and lie down.”

“It’s a different world when the rains come,” Luke said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Green shooting up over the Downs, thousands of wildflowers. Frogs seem to spring right out of the mud. Flocks of birds so large they darken the sky.”

Sarah opened her eyes. He was gazing across the dry lake bed, looking into the past. Or maybe it was the future.

“I wish I could see that,” she said, blinking at the sun-bleached landscape. Faced with reality, she numbly realized that even her mother’s memories failed her.

“Life will flourish here again.” His eyes, locked briefly with hers, seemed to add, For those who stay.

He led her back through the kitchen and down a long hall. “This is my room. Becka’s room.” He gestured to closed doors. “Loungeroom’s out the front. Bathroom’s in there. And this—” he pushed open a door and stood aside “—is your room.”

Sarah stepped past him into a square room with faded floral wallpaper. The matching curtains were clean but frayed around the edges. A white coverlet lay across the iron single bed. On the opposite wall sat a dresser made of distressed pine that her antique-collecting friends in Seattle would pay big money for. In one corner stood a matching old-fashioned wardrobe. Overhead a ceiling fan whirred quietly.

Luke set her bags down beside the bed and returned to the doorway. “I was going to move out of the main bedroom while you’re here, but—”

“I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

“I reckon this was your mother’s room.”

“My mother’s room?” she said, glancing around with new interest. “What makes you think so?”

He nodded toward the dresser and a notebook lying on top. “I found her diary tucked under a loose floorboard beside the bed. Must have been there for years. I told your father about it, but he didn’t mention returning it. Don’t know why, but I kept it instead of throwing it out.”

Sarah moved across the room to pick up the notebook. Scrawled in a loopy, slanted hand on the front of the faded red cover were the words Anne’s Diary. Private. Keep Out. This means you!

Sarah smiled. The handwriting was more rounded and immature than nowadays, but it was definitely Anne’s. “Did you read it?”

Luke looked offended she would even ask. “Says right on the cover that it’s private. Anyway, I don’t have time to read girls’ diaries.”

Sarah flipped through the closely written pages and found herself tempted. Don’t even think it. She returned the diary to the dresser. “I’ll take it to her. She might find it amusing after all these years.”

“Right. Well, I’ll let you get settled.” He backed out of the room and shut the door.

Sarah put her clothes away, then flopped on the bed with her cell phone. She replaced the old batteries with the spares from her suitcase and dialed her mother’s number.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, disappointed when she got the answering machine. “I’m here. My God, what a trip! It’s so hot. How come you never mentioned the flies? And the lake that’s not a lake. But the homestead is beautiful. By the way, Luke found your old diary. Oh, and I’ve already met Len. What’s the deal with him? I’m going to rest now, but I’ll call you later. Love you. Bye.”

LUKE PACED the front veranda, his frowning gaze on the dirt track that cut across the Downs toward Murrum. The wide western sky was bloodred with the setting sun, yet still no cloud of dust heralded Abby and Becka’s arrival.

“Where do you suppose they are, Wal?”

The dog, who was never far from Luke’s side, pressed his cold nose against his master’s palm.

Luke heard a movement behind him and turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway. She’d put on a sleeveless cotton-knit dress, which hugged her curves and showed plenty of leg. Her damp auburn hair fell in long wispy spikes around her bare shoulders. His dormant libido stirred like a bear after a long winter, ravenous and on the prowl.

“Is something wrong?” She came forward, bringing with her the subtle fruity scent of her shampoo.

“It’s almost seven o’clock. Abby hasn’t brought Becka back yet.” Back in your cave, Sampson.

Sarah stooped to pat Wal. “Maybe she’s on her way.”

“Abby won’t drive out here in the dark. It’s too easy to stray from the track and get lost. She said she’d have Becka back in time for tea.”

“Tea? Oh, you mean dinner.” Sarah glanced down the track and stepped behind the screen of bougainvillea, her fingers brushing the glossy dark green leaves. “Maybe her car broke down or she got caught up in something.”

Luke strode back into the house to ring Abby again, realizing belatedly that he’d just walked off without a word. He wasn’t used to informing others of his movements. First Becka, and now Sarah.

“Hello?” Abby sounded pleasant, unconcerned.

“Why aren’t you here?” he demanded. “Is Becka okay?”

Outside the kitchen window, dozens of snowy white corellas screeched as they flapped home to roost in the river gums.

He listened to Abby’s excuses— “Low on petrol, the station’s closed for the night, tried to call you earlier.” She was unapologetic, unrepentant, plausible. He wanted to rant and rave and tell her how worried he’d been, but that would be overreacting.

“Okay. Okay,” he said, reassuring himself rather than her. “I’ll pick Becka up tomorrow.” He wasn’t taking any chances on more excuses.

He found Sarah on the side veranda, watching the corellas perform acrobatics in the branches, swinging upside down and cracking gum nuts between their strong hooked beaks as they squabbled among themselves. Luke’s attention, though, was drawn to the curve of Sarah’s neck, lengthened by her upturned face and repeated in her wide smile as she turned her delighted gaze upon him. “Aren’t they gorgeous!”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Want something to eat?”

“Yes, please.” She followed him back inside. “Did you get hold of Abby?”

Luke smoothed his face into an expressionless mask. “Becka’s staying overnight. I’ll pick her up tomorrow.”

Sarah’s green eyes probed his. “Are you all right with that?”

No, he was not “all right” with that. He’d barely had his daughter with him a week before she was back at Abby’s. What really rankled was that he’d had no choice but to let Becka stay, unless he wanted to make the long trip back into Murrum. Abby must have known he’d be reluctant to do that on Sarah’s first night. He felt bamboozled by Abby and oddly uneasy about leaving Becka.

“She’ll be okay,” he assured Sarah, but the catchall phrase was meaningless in the present context. “Come and have some tucker. Hope you like steak and potatoes.”

“Steak! I haven’t had a steak since 1989.”

“We eat the odd one around here. You a vegetarian?” He was amused that the owner of a cattle station might not like beef.

“No, I just don’t usually eat big chunks of meat.”

“I reckon we can find you a knife.” But first he opened the bottle of cabernet sauvignon he’d been saving for a special occasion. He twisted the cork off, not even wanting to think about what was prompting him to serve his best wine.

“That’s an interesting corkscrew,” Sarah said, examining the implement. The handle was fashioned out of a cow’s horn, with a large nail driven through and twisted into a tight spiral.

“My grandfather made it. He made or grew just about everything he owned and used. He was so self-sufficient he even made his own coffin and dug his own grave.”

She grinned. “And this is something you aspire to?”

“Self-sufficiency, yes, but I’m not turning the sod just yet.” His answering smile felt rusty through disuse. He hadn’t exactly wanted her to come here, but at least she was taking his mind off Abby and Becka.

After dinner they carried their coffee out to the side veranda. Luke settled into a creaking slung canvas squatter’s chair. Before Sarah’s arrival he’d wondered what kind of a person she would be and what arguments he could use to convince her to sell him her half of the station. It had never occurred to him that he might find himself attracted to her. He propped his booted feet high against the pillar and tried not to dwell on it. She wasn’t even that pretty, he told himself. Her nose had a slight bump and her jaw was a touch strong….

Sarah remained standing, her hands wrapped around her cup. “It sure is quiet.”

“You think so? Sounds pretty noisy to me, what with the cicadas down by the creek and the possums crashing around in the gums….”

“Doesn’t it get lonely out here all by yourselves?”

Only at night, going to a solitary bed.

“There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely,” he said. “Anyway, we get plenty of visitors passing through. I catch up with friends at race meetings or dances.”

Luke rubbed a thumb around the rim of his cup. Compared with town, it was isolated. He was used to it, but Becka wasn’t. If only she were an outdoor sort of kid she might be happier at spending time with him out on the cattle run. Abby had turned her into a townie.

He glanced up to see Sarah sip her coffee and grimace. “Coffee okay?”

“Fine.” She smiled brightly. “Just fine.”

Like hell, he thought, but it was the best he had. Suddenly he wished he had something better to offer. But she was a townie; probably nothing would seem good enough. “What do you do back in Seattle?”

“I’m a computer programmer. I design educational software for a large company. Are you on the Internet?”

Luke snorted. “I’d rather cross the Simpson Desert than venture into cyberspace.”

“Really?” Sarah paced down the veranda. “I don’t know how you stand all this emptiness.”

“It’s not empty. It’s full of life if you know where to look. I’d go off my nut cooped up in a city.”

She wandered back and leaned against a pillar, gazing down at him. “What did you do before you came to Burrinbilli?”

“I was a stockman in far north Queensland on a station owned by a large pastoral company.”

“And before that?”

“Did some traveling. Before that I was a jackaroo on my uncle’s station near Hughenden. That’s where I grew up.” In the deep dusk of the gum trees a kookaburra made its laughing call. Another chimed in, and another. You don’t hear that in the city. “I had a friend as a kid, an aboriginal from the local community. He and I would go out in the desert. His grandfather taught him how to track and find water and hunt. And he taught me.”

Her eyes widened. “Did you, like, eat grubs and things?”

“That’s right.” He couldn’t resist teasing her. “Moreton Bay bugs are my favorite. We’ll have them sometime while you’re here.” He smiled, knowing it was too dark for her to see the twinkle in his eyes.

She shuddered. “Ugh. I guess I’d eat bugs if I were starving, but only then.”

He laughed. Then drained his coffee and got to his feet. “Reckon I’ll turn in. Sunrise comes pretty early.” He paused at the doorway. “You planning on staying up awhile?”

“Well…”

“Because if you go for a stroll at night, mind you take a torch. Brown snakes usually go to sleep at sundown, but death adders and mulgas are out and about.”

“Death adders? Mulgas? Those are poisonous, right?”

“Most snakes in Australia are.”

Sarah scrambled to her feet. “Actually, I’m feeling pretty tired after my long trip.”

“Thought you might be.”

As she went past him into the house the overhead light illuminated her bare freckled shoulder and the scent of her warm skin reached his nostrils, reminding him it had been a long time since he’d held a woman in his arms.

It would be a while longer, he thought, sliding the door shut behind him.

And it wouldn’t be this woman, tempting though she was.

Pity.

LATE THE FOLLOWING afternoon Sarah was in her room, going over the list of items she wanted to buy for the house. Now that she was part owner she ought to do her bit to take care of the place—if Luke let her. Real money needed to go toward machinery or a bull, but fresh paint and new fabric could make a big difference for relatively little expense. She’d found an old sewing machine on the floor of the linen closet and although she was no seamstress she could manage curtains and cushion covers.

She heard the sliding door to the kitchen open and checked her watch. Five o’clock. Luke was in from the cattle run to go and get Becka. He’d asked Sarah this morning if she wanted to go with him and look over the property. Maybe tomorrow, she’d answered, not meeting his eye.

Sarah went down the hall and paused in the kitchen doorway. Luke had stripped off his shirt and was bent over the kitchen sink, sluicing hot soapy water over his head and arms. She’d never been one for westerns, and the popular appeal of cowboys escaped her, but the sheer physicality of his broad shoulders, lean muscled back and strong arms left her blinking like a cursor on a blank screen.

He reached blindly for a towel and blotted the water from his face and hair. Opening his eyes, he saw her and for an instant froze, towel clutched against his chest. “G’day.”

“Hi.” She folded and refolded her list. “Are you going to get Becka?”

He nodded and reached for his shirt, bunching it in his fist. “Want to come?”

“No. Thanks.” She noted the odd, intense light in his eyes and wondered if it was obvious she found him attractive. “I thought I’d make dinner if you would show me how to work the woodstove.”

“Nothing wrong with the electric stove.”

“Let’s just say the woodstove inspires me. Mind if I raid the pantry?”

One corner of his mouth lifted as he slicked back his damp sun-streaked hair. “Go for your life.”

LUKE PULLED INTO Abby’s driveway and jumped out of the car. Doors were never locked in Murrum and friends and family didn’t wait for a formal invitation, so he knocked once on the front door and went in. “Abby? Becka?”

No answer.

He wandered through the kitchen and looked out the window into the backyard. Becka and Abby were on their knees in the vegetable patch, staking up tomatoes. Stepping out the back door, he called, “G’day.”

Abby glanced up and pushed a strand of gray hair off her forehead. “Hello, Luke. We’re almost done.”

He glanced eagerly at Becka, ashamed at how much he longed for her to run to him the way she used to. Daddy, Daddy, see what I did.

Now she only glanced up without smiling before going back to the tomatoes. Any encouragement at all and he would have given them a hand. But he might as well not have been there for all the notice they took of him.

“Don’t mind me,” he muttered, and retreated into the house.

He helped himself to a glass of water from the tap and sat at the kitchen table. There was the usual clutter: a stack of paid bills, Becka’s hair ribbons, a half-done crossword puzzle. At the end of the table, above the salt and pepper shakers and the tomato sauce bottle, hung one of Caroline’s watercolors of a desert landscape. A mutual love of the desert had brought them together, but it hadn’t been enough to bind them. Nor had his love.