Wanted: Outback Wife

Jodie nodded along with Mandy’s every query. ‘Somehow he had found your clever website. His exact words were: “So how about it? You and me—matrimonial bliss?”’

‘Please tell me you said no.’

Jodie nodded. But in that brief split second, she had actually considered his offer. He lived across the hall, so she wouldn’t have to move far. He had a thing for her, which had been obvious since the day she had moved into the building, so he would do anything to help her out in her plight. But the very fact that he had a thing for her ruled him out even if his goofy oddness did not. It wouldn’t be fair.

If she was going to do this thing, she had to do it right. No romantic connections. No complications from the start. The last thing she wanted was for it all to end in tears and broken promises. She’d lived through enough of that when her father had walked out when she was thirteen, so living it up close and personal was not on her agenda.

She had thanked him for his kind offer, but declined. Though compared to her other dates that week he wasn’t the bottom of the totem-pole.

‘He had settled in to watch Beach Street when I left so I had to leave poor Lou behind. I don’t trust him not to sneak into my room and try to steal a pair of my underpants again.’

‘Right. Good point.’

‘So who’s the lucky contestant tonight?’ Jodie asked on a sigh.

‘First up we have Heath.’ Mandy flipped through her colour-coded sheets clipped in a neat folder. ‘Heath Jameson. The farmer.’

Jodie winced. A farmer, for goodness’ sake! The fact that he didn’t send an email in the form of a dirty limerick or attach a photo of himself in Speedos put him in the maybe pile. But the thought of moving to a farm for two years was uninspiring to say the least. She was a city girl, born and bred. She loved the seasons in Melbourne, the food, the culture, the window shopping, the architecture and the friends she had made there. But most of all she liked herself in Melbourne.

But a farm? In the outback? She pictured a barn with a leaking tin roof. A wood-burning fireplace with old copper pots the likes of which she had seen in old Western movies. A mangy work dog sleeping on the end of the double bed that had lumps and bumps worn into it by past generations. And wouldn’t she have to get one of those hats with corks hanging all around it to ward off flies?

‘Ready?’ Mandy asked.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

‘Excellent. After this one, there’s two more tonight.’

Two more? She let out a long groan. Suddenly, despite the living distance from the city she loved, so long as the guy was a gentleman and said yes, she decided she would marry him then and there. So long as she could stop all this dreadful dating and see a way to a future down under.

Mandy slipped away into the crowd and Jodie was left sending glances towards the bar. Which one would farm boy turn out to be? The guy in all black flicking lint off his double-breasted jacket? Unlikely. The balding blond in the plaid shirt and jeans picking crumbs out of his teeth with his butter knife? Oh, please, no.

Jodie couldn’t help checking her teeth for sesame seeds in the reflection of her bread knife when the front door swished open letting in a flush of warm night air and, with it, a man.

A man with a to-die-for tan, the likes of which Jodie had only ever seen on school friends just back from the Greek Islands, subconsciously pushing his wind-mussed, dark blond hair somewhat into place. A man with the kind of natural highlights other guys would pay a fortune for. A man in an untucked white shirt over dark denim who gave a friendly half-smile as he caught Lisa’s eye at the door.

Jodie knew that second he was hers.

Lisa tossed her long blonde hair as she turned and, with a little finger wave, beckoned the man to follow. And follow he did with a lean, long-legged stride.

‘Not bad,’ Lisa mouthed as she neared.

As he came closer Jodie saw that this man was just the way she imagined Australian guys ought to be—permanent creases at the corners of his eyes from too much smiling or too much sun, a strong jaw covered in sexy stubble as though he had shaved many hours before, and eyes so blue they made her heart ache.

But she wasn’t in this game for heartache. This was to be a purely heart-free and ache-free endeavour.

Jodie scrunched her toes in her high-heeled sandals to force the blood away from her burning cheeks to other parts of her body. The whole ‘blushing English rose’ thing could be pretty on some girls, but with her auburn hair she felt like a big red blotchy tomato. And the more she panicked about it, the more she blushed.

Suddenly the ladies’ room, the tiny window and the Dumpster seemed unreservedly the right choice.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Lisa asked as they reached the table.

‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice a rich, resonant bass. ‘A beer would be great.’

Lisa gave him a beaming smile, turned it into a frown for Jodie, then spun on her heel and left. Jodie managed to drag herself to her feet on wobbly knees that almost gave way.

Her companion leaned over and offered her a large, long-fingered hand to shake. ‘Good evening, Jodie. I’m Heath Jameson. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘NICE to finally meet you too, Heath,’ Jodie said.

A lively smile lit his eyes. They were so stunning they’d give even Paul Newman a run for his money.

She shook hands. His were work-roughened, but warm. She glanced down, mesmerised by how large and brown his hand was wrapped around her skinny pale fingers. And it was then that she noticed he had a hint of dirt beneath his fingernails.

Of course there was dirt. He was a farmer. Not a city guy. Not a straightforward man looking for a wife to accompany him to work dinners, to get his parents off his back, or to marry quickly to get himself lined up for that work partnership, which was what she figured would bring a man around to her plan. So what on earth was she doing still hanging onto the poor guy’s hand?

She let go, and quick, running her hand down the side of her jeans to rub away the tingles. She sat, and her wobbly knees thanked her.

Having broken the ice enough times already that fortnight, she knew how. But while with the others she’d wanted to get down to brass tacks, to lay out the ground rules and find out their motives before even bothering with small talk, with this guy, with this long, lean length of pure and unadulterated gorgeousness, it felt ridiculous forming the question: why do you want to marry me?

Instead she caved and settled on, ‘You found this place okay?’

‘I did. I drove here directly from the farm and found it a lot sooner than I had expected to.’

‘But I just saw you come in the front door.’

A knowing smile in his eyes lit brighter, and she bit her lip. Jodie felt her horrid blush threatening again, so she turned her eyes determinedly to the residual drops of wine in her glass. Red wine, which would only make her feel warmer. She pushed it out of reach behind the tray of bread rolls.

‘I’ve been walking the streets of Melbourne for an hour and a half,’ he explained. ‘I’m not terribly good at sitting on my hands, and the last thing I wanted to do was wait and have you not show. And now I’m here, I’m really glad you did. Show.’

‘I take it I’m not your first blind date,’ Jodie said, the unstoppable blotchy blush heating her face another degree.

‘Well, actually, no,’ he said, a slight hint of pink warming his tanned neck too. She was hard pressed not to sigh. ‘And though in the past they have been mostly disastrous, I figured I would try one more time just to find out what the heck mascarpone is.’

She blinked. ‘Mascarpone?’

‘On your website it said that you lived for it. I knew I couldn’t go any further without knowing.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, it’s a type of Italian cream cheese. In my opinion, a sandwich is simply not a sandwich without mascarpone to hold it all together.’

‘Okay, then.’ He blinked a few times as he let the info settle and then he laid a huge grin on her. ‘I guess I can now go on.’

After the previous candidates, this guy wasn’t just a honey to look at, he was polite and nice and saying all the right things. She would be hard pressed to find better. Maybe he was the one.

She flinched so hard at that thought that her elbow slid off the table. Heath even lifted himself off the chair and reached out a hand to her to make sure she was okay. Thankfully at that moment a waitress came over with Heath’s beer and another glass of red wine for Jodie so she was saved from extended humiliation.

‘So, you’re English,’ he said once the waitress left.

Feeling more than a little off kilter, Jodie wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wineglass. ‘Is that a concern?’

‘No, not at all. It’s just that from the few details on your website I had sort of built up an image of how you would sound, how tall you’d be, that sort of thing.’

Jodie felt herself deflating with every word he spoke. She’d spent years being told by her mother that if only she were taller and not quite so pale she might be pretty. To hear this guy say the same would seal it for sure. ‘So how am I different?’ she asked, being as she was a glutton for punishment.

Heath blinked, his eye crinkles deepening, as though giving himself a moment to tie all of the pieces in his imagination into a new whole.

‘You’re smaller somehow. More delicate. And I can’t get over that plummy accent.’

Jodie bit at her inner lip, wishing, and not for the first time, that she were a blonde glamazon like Lisa. Or a brunette sex kitten like Mandy. Or serenely elegant like her half-sister Louise. Not wan, wispy, little old her.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ he said, resting contentedly against the back of his chair as his eyes remained locked onto hers. ‘You’re lovely.’

Oh, my…Jodie fought the sudden urge to tell him he was lovely right back. But this wasn’t the place, or the time, or the point. She was looking for someone kind, nice, unassuming, and Australian. And added extras along the lines of handsome, charming, and sexy as hell would only complicate things.

‘And so are your earrings,’ Heath said, catching her unawares by reaching out a curled hand towards her cheek, but stopping a foot from her face and letting his hand drop to the table.

Jodie blinked in surprise. The mere thought of those hands brushing against her ear had robbed her of the power of speech.

Her choice of earrings had been her biggest one of the night. Which of the dozen she had created in a mad productive spurt ought she to choose? Vibrant red glo-mesh ones shaped like tulips? Rows of tiny jade-green beads that hung like weeping willow branches to her shoulders? Or a delicate pair made of wires twisted into the shape of tiny roses? How did one pick earrings fancy enough to ensnare a husband?

She had settled on the green beads. The roses were more suited to Louise, and one of Mandy’s workmates would love the red glo-mesh and had offered to pay a hundred dollars cash for anything Jodie could promise was a one-off. Decision made!

‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice sounding as though she’d just smoked a packet of cigarettes. ‘I make them myself. My styles are based on flowers I used to find at the Chelsea Gardens as a little girl.’

Shut-up, Jodie! He said he liked them, not that he wanted to buy a pair. But he liked them? Oh, no, he wasn’t…was he? She’d already met one of those the night before. And that was all well and good, but if this man was permanently unavailable to all women, that would be a nasty cosmic joke.

‘They’re…nice,’ he said, sticking out his bottom lip and nodding.

And in a blinding flash of relief Jodie realised he was being nice. If he’d said her earrings were fabulous she ought to have been worried. But nice? That just meant Heath was a guy paying a girl a compliment.

‘Now tell me about your work,’ she said, wholeheartedly moving on. Jodie was simply not used to talking about herself. She didn’t even really know enough about herself to be sure what she said was the truth. ‘I gather you are some sort of cowboy, throwing hay bales and milking cows all day?’

Cowboy? Where had that come from? Even she heard the note of flirtation in her voice and so it wasn’t such a shock when his blue eyes glittered.

‘So who’s looking after your cows while you’re away?’ she asked, keeping her voice neat and even.

He ran a lean hand beneath his mouth. Then he looked up at her from beneath a sweep of thick chestnut eyelashes, which were superior to hers even with the modern marvel of long-lash mascara at her disposal. ‘I have a station manager, Andy, who runs the place in my absence, as well as numerous seasonal staff who do most of the heavy labour. So apart from throwing hay bales about the place, I am also a qualified civil engineer.’

Oh! So maybe the whole ‘outback farmer’ thing had just been a means to an introduction, a hook, a way to get a girl interested. Maybe he lived in town in a nice big house big enough for her and Louise and for Lisa and Mandy to crash after a girls’ night out…

‘Do you get much of a chance to engineer anything civilly while out on the farm?’

‘Some. A little. I’ve completely redesigned the irrigation system at Jamesons Run and rigged up a lever-and-pulley system to help in the barn, so, yeah, I like to keep my hand in. But wrangling cattle is pretty much a full-time gig nowadays,’ Heath said, leaning his chin on his palm as he gazed at her.

Oh. Well, that answered that one. He talked like a city boy. He walked like a city boy. He even had a city-boy degree. But he was a farmer. With a farm. Damn it!

Because it was clear he wasn’t running from the idea of being a husband in a hurry. Her husband in a hurry. Though neither of them had mentioned it in so many words, they both knew why they were there. And after having met one another, they were both…still…there…

‘I take it you’ve never wrangled cattle before,’ he said.

‘Not lately,’ she said, the idea of doing such a thing petrifying her to the soles of her feet.

‘When reading your bio, I figured as much.’ He leaned forward, until their faces were so close that she could see perfect midnight-blue rings around his irises. ‘Yet I still came tonight, and so did you.’

‘I guess that means neither of us are entirely sensible,’ she agreed, her voice dropping to accommodate their close proximity. ‘About what we want.’

‘To us,’ he said, tipping his bottle her way before taking another swig. ‘And to not being sensible.’

Jodie felt warm and fuzzy, as if she were having some sort of out-of-body experience. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the excess of bread yeast in her system. Maybe it was the company.

As she found herself fast becoming lost in Heath’s heavenly eyes, something caught Jodie’s attention. Mandy was waving a frantic arm at her, poking a manic finger at her wrist-watch. It seemed her next date was already there.

But Jodie wasn’t yet ready for this to end.

‘Look,’ she said, leaning in, feeling more terrified and more brave and less sensible than she had in a long time, ‘I’ll be honest with you. There is another prospect waiting for me at the bar, but I’ve been here so many times in the past few nights I feel as though my bottom is changing shape to match this chair. Do you want to get out of here?’

Heath’s warm blue eyes blinked. Narrowed. And then lit from within as he got her meaning. ‘I don’t know. I’m in the mood for something lathered in chocolate. Does this place serve good desserts?’

Jodie shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never eat sweets.’

He was a cowboy; she was a city girl. He wanted chocolate; she hadn’t eaten chocolate in a decade. What the heck was she playing at? By the look in his eyes she wondered if he was thinking exactly the same thing.

But then something shifted. Before she was able to identify what, he looked at his watch—silver, sturdy, knocked-about—and said, ‘Well, then, it seems we have to find another place in which to continue this conversation. I don’t have to head back home until tomorrow afternoon, so for the next fifteen hours I’m all yours.’

All hers. Her heart did a neat little flip inside her chest. And heart flips were bad.

She tore her confounded gaze away from Heath to find Lisa had joined in the frantic waving. It seemed there were now two guys awaiting her. But if she had to say the words, ‘So tell me about your job,’ one more time…

Jodie stood, and with shaking hands patted her napkin against her mouth. ‘Meet me at the street crossing on the city side of the building,’ she murmured. ‘Five minutes.’

Heath looked up at her with more than mischief in his bright blue eyes. ‘Shall do, Ms Bond.’

Jodie turned and, without looking back, headed for the ladies’ room where she had a date with a tiny window and a Dumpster.

Heath turned on his chair and watched Jodie walk away, keeping a close eye on the tidy package within the hipster jeans, the bouncy auburn hair, and the expanse of creamy skin exposed by her glittery contraption of a top that was held together by modern-day engineering and luck.

He blew out a long slow breath when she finally sauntered from view.

In her website picture she had been worth a second glance, but in the flesh those intense green eyes of hers were just something else—relentless yet radiating unexpected vulnerability. He’d had to stop himself time and again from reaching out and running a soothing finger over her furrowed brow as every worry that had run through her mind had flashed across her eyes like a freeway warning sign.

One of those flashing signals had told him what she saw of him she liked, and, even without all the other inducements she offered, that was a pretty potent thing to find in a first date. And a blind date at that.

So while half of him couldn’t quite believe that he was with a woman whose intention to marry wasn’t just a niggling presumption in the back of his head, but a blatant prerequisite to his spending time with her, the other half of him found that the most heady inducement of all.

Added to that there was something about being with a city girl that took him away from his troubles back home. Something about the powders and potions they used to look after themselves. They always smelled so good. He wondered if he would get close enough to Jodie that night to find if she smelled half as good as he imagined she would.

And Jodie was not only a city girl, but a foreign city girl to boot. A girl with skin so creamy it was never meant to be exposed to the harsh Australian clime, with hair so fine it gleamed, and with an accent so strong that every word she uttered reminded him that there was a big world out there that he had been ignoring for the longest time. Until now.

Heath looked towards the front door where the blonde who had shown him to his table stood fighting with a rangy brunette. Both were staring at the ladies’ room door. Jodie’s last line of defence, perhaps?

The brunette glanced over at his table and he gave her a small wave. She grabbed the blonde and ducked behind her, leaving the blonde having to wave back. Yep. They both belonged to Jodie for sure. City girls and their mates…

With a secret smile, he turned back to his beer, his mind whirling through the night so far. But then he groaned as he remembered blurting out, ‘I am also a qualified civil engineer.’

How long had it been since he had even said those words out loud? Sure, they were true—he would have been eminently employable in the field if not for the fateful timing that had forced him to return to his outback home to look after his younger brothers and sisters and to run the family farm.

But why had he needed to let this slip of a girl know such information? Because she had been so obviously trying to reconcile to herself what the heck she was doing sitting across a table from a farmer, that was why! Well, he was more than that, just as he was sure that behind those liquid eyes there was more light and shade to Jodie Simpson than she was letting through her shield as well.

Thinking of light, he could still remember the radiance in Cameron’s eyes the day he had married Marissa. He remembered the scent of roses from Marissa’s bouquet as he had hugged her after the ceremony. She had thanked him that day, for being a good friend, to her and especially to Cameron.

The picture dissolved as he remembered the darkness in Cameron’s eyes as he’d sat in the funeral chapel while his young wife’s coffin had lain quiet and sombre to his right. The depth of Cameron’s sorrow rocked Heath to his very soul.

In his brother Heath had witnessed the extremes of both bliss and despair. But at thirty-six years of age he had never known either firsthand. His life had been lived by the rules and where had that put him? Alone.

Light and shade. It was way past time his stagnant life was injected with more of both. This was a woman who could take him out of his comfort zone. Jodie was a woman who wanted change so badly she was willing to risk everything by marrying a complete stranger in order to get it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

He pushed back his chair and walked towards the front door and the two women all but fell over themselves to look natural.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

‘Is everything all right?’ the blonde asked.

‘It’s fine, apart from the fact that my…date seems to have left me with the bill.’ He gave her enough money to more than cover his one beer and Jodie’s untouched glass of wine.

Then, with a spring in his step that would have been more appropriate for an eighteen-year-old buck on the prowl rather than someone twice that age, he stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and stepped out into a mild spring darkness feeling like a car whose battery had been jump-started after being flat for a decade.

CHAPTER THREE

SUNDAY morning Jodie pushed back the comforter, hitched up her too-loose flannelette pyjama pants, and yawned magnificently as she opened her bedroom door.

Louise, already showered and dressed in what amounted to a casual outfit for her—a lemon twin set and designer jeans—turned on the couch with a hand to her throat. ‘Oh, my. I thought I was the only one here.’

‘Mandy and Lisa have gone out?’ Jodie asked.

Louise nodded. Jodie looked to the clock on the microwave to find it was only nine in the morning. They’d still not been home when Jodie had snuck in at three that morning, so they would have had five hours’ sleep at the most.

Jodie shuffled to the couch on which Louise had slept, though you wouldn’t know it by the neat throw rug over the back of the chair and the perfectly placed scatter cushions. Louise sat, crossing her feet neatly at the ankle, an open bucket of ice cream before her. Jodie sat on her hand to stop herself from mussing up her sister’s perfect hair.

‘What’s with the nine in the morning ice-cream fix?’ Jodie asked.

Louise offered her spoon, but Jodie declined.

‘Mum…Ivy…just called.’ Poor Louise’s face crumpled as she fought to settle on how she ought to think of the woman who had brought her up as her own. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. Tell me about your night. Did you meet anyone brilliant?’

Jodie wasn’t quite sure what to say. While her life felt as if it was on the up and up, Louise’s was falling apart at her feet.

Before searching out Jodie, Louise had discovered that before she was born her father had sired illegitimate twin sons. And they were back, wanting to take their place in the infamous Valentine family. The shock had sent her father into cardiac arrest, and, believing he was dying, he had told her that she was adopted. Shattered to find herself the object of so many lies, she had registered to find her birth mother and, in discovering Patricia was uncontactable, she had found Jodie instead and flown to Australia in an instant. Now Jodie was Louise’s only support—the only person in her life not in any way linked to her complicated adoptive family.