Ally Blake - A Father in the Making

He swallowed, shifting his weight until it was evenly distributed on both shiny new riding boots. “Ms. Somervale, my name is Ryan. Ryan Gasper. I am Will Gasper’s brother. I know it is a long time coming, but I have come in response to your letter.”

Laura watched in stunned silence as in seeming slow motion he then pulled a crumpled piece of lavender notepaper from the pocket over his heart and held it toward her.

“I have come to find out if what you wrote in your letter is true. Are you the mother of Will’s child?”

Ryan Gasper, Laura repeated in her mind. Wannabe cowboy, city gent, heaven-in-a-pair-of-blue-jeans is Ryan Gasper!

“Ms. Somervale, I’m not here to cause you or your…family any trouble. I’ve come because…”

Why had he come? To find the child she had written about in her letter to his parents. Absolutely. But after that, he was running on gut instinct alone.

Dear Reader,

If you drive not so very far north of Melbourne, braving congested traffic and suburbia as far as the eye can see, you will eventually find yourself on a long winding road leading you to a whole new world.

Think wombat holes hidden in tall grass, fallen logs that double as homes to families of wild rabbits and yabby-filled dams, which are the haunts of families of gray kangaroos. From abundant hilltop farms, panoramic views reveal the smudge of the city skyline to the south, tracts of clear-cut green pastures to the west, distant eucalypt-scattered hills to the east and sweeping, burnt umber sunsets the likes of which you have never seen….

And though in my many visits to the region I have never met a Laura Somervale—singing her heart out to an audience of magpies as she hangs the washing on her wonky old clothesline—or seen such a magnificent property as Kardinyarr, nor a town quite like quirky Tandarah, the great Australian Outback hovering on the very edge of Melbourne offers inspiration enough to make them seem entirely possible!

Happy reading,

Ally

www.allyblake.com

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Having once been a professional cheerleader, Ally Blake’s motto is “Smile and the world smiles with you.” One way to make Ally smile is by sending her on holidays, especially to locations that inspire her writing. New York and Italy are by far her favorite destinations. Other things that make her smile are the gracious city of Melbourne, where she now lives, the gritty Collingwood football team and her gorgeous husband, Mark.

Reading romance novels was a smile-worthy pursuit from long back, so with such valuable preparation already behind her, she wrote and sold her first book. Her career as a writer also gives her a perfectly reasonable excuse to indulge in her stationery addiction. That alone is enough to keep her grinning every day!

Ally would love for you to visit her at her Web site www.allyblake.com

Books by Ally Blake

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3782—THE WEDDING WISH

3802—MARRIAGE MATERIAL

3830—MARRIAGE MAKE-OVER

3870—THE SHOCK ENGAGEMENT (part of Office Gossip trilogy)

To my friend Mel, for a trillion different reasons, with an extra hug thrown in for the loan of the gorgeous view from the corner of her desk way back at the beginning of all of this.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

RYAN pulled off the winding country road onto a long gravel driveway and slowed his car to an idle. A weathered wooden sign at the turn read Kardinyarr. He looked to the return address on the letter laid flat on the passenger seat of his car. Youthful handwriting on lavender stationery, dappled with fairies, smudged with tears, scrunched into a ball, and flattened again, told him that this was the place. Kardinyarr was where he hoped against hope to find her. Though she had written the letter several years earlier, Ryan had only stumbled upon it that week, and it was all he had to go on.

He gunned the engine, his tyres skipping and jumping over the uneven dirt track. He slowed again as a family of grey kangaroos bounced at the same pace along the other side of the neat wire fence, before leaping onto the road, hopping in front of his car, and bounding up the rise to his left and disappearing over the other side of the hill.

‘Well, that’s not something you see every day,’ he said.

Ryan ignored the ‘Private Road’ sign at the first gate and drove up the hill. At the fork in the drive he pulled left, coming to stop under a sprawling banksia tree in the front yard of a rambling brick home.

The CD of a keynote speech he had given at a recent economic summit in London, an addendum to a university-level economics textbook he was in the final stages of editing, came to a sharp halt as he switched off the car engine. His mind otherwise engaged, he had barely heard a word of the familiar oration on the two-hour drive from Melbourne, but the deep well of silence that now filled the car was deafening.

So this was Kardinyarr House; the last home his little brother had known. Backlit by the light of the setting sun, proudly situated atop its windy hill, it was just as Will had described it all those years before. A black corrugated roof and matching shutters framed the clinker brick. A neat veranda laced with black wrought-iron trim hugged the house, rendering a pretty finish to the sturdy structure.

Ryan’s recent hasty research told him it had been left vacant in the years since Will’s passing, the foreign owners of the property keeping the acreage as an investment rather than an operating farm. As such, Ryan had expected scattered leaves, debris on the veranda, and obvious decay. However, the place seemed neat and tidy. Maintained. Welcoming.

Will had e-mailed the family when he had first arrived at Kardinyarr.

There is no place like it. The colour, the light. The fresh air gets under your skin.

Ryan opened the car door and took in a deep breath of clean country air. Will had been right. There was nothing quite like the mix of scents bombarding him—sweet pollens, swirling dust, and hazy country heat that seemed to have a scent all of its own. The acrid smell of car fumes that he’d left behind in Melbourne faded to a memory.

‘Okay, Will,’ Ryan said aloud. ‘It’s charming here. I get it. But so charming as to shoulder out all other options in your life?’ Ryan shook his head.

Kardinyarr was meant to have been a brief stop on Will’s winter backpacking trek around the country. But from the chain of information Ryan had uncovered in the last few days he believed that if his brother had not been killed, he might never have left at all. All because of the girl in the crumpled lavender letter.

Ryan grabbed the offending document, folded it carefully, and placed it in the top pocket of his shirt. He hopped out of the car, instinct causing him to lock it. A wry smile tugged at his mouth. He hadn’t seen another living soul for five kilometres, bar the kangaroos and a half-dozen cattle standing under the shade of a wide-branched gum. You can take the boy out of the city…