Lindsay Armstrong: One-Night Pregnancy

Bridget looked up at him. ‘You really don’t trust women, do you?’ she said quietly.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down at her meditatively. ‘I don’t trust anyone—on face value.’

Then you’re just as likely not to believe this is your baby—the thought ran through Bridget’s mind—and that would be the final insult.

Lindsay Armstrongwas born in South Africa, but now lives in Australia with her New Zealand-born husband and their five children. They have lived in nearly every state of Australia, and have tried their hand at some unusual—for them—occupations, such as farming and horse-training—all grist to the mill for a writer! Lindsay started writing romances when their youngest child began school and she was left feeling at a loose end. She is still doing it and loving it.

Recent titles by the same author:

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THE RICH MAN’S VIRGIN

THE MILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE CLAIM

A BRIDE FOR HIS CONVENIENCE

THE AUSTRALIAN’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

by

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IT WAS a filthy night in the Gold Coast hinterland.

It hadn’t started out as such, but severe summer storms were not unknown in the area and this series had sped across the escarpment, taking even the weather bureau by surprise. Rain was teeming down, and gusts of wind buffeted Bridget Tully-Smith’s car. The ribbon of winding, narrow road between the dark peaks of the Numinbah Valley disappeared regularly as the windscreen wipers squelched back and forth, revealing and concealing.

She’d been staying with a married friend who had a hobby farm and was breeding, of all things, llamas. It had been an enjoyable weekend. Her friend had a young baby, a devoted husband, and their particular patch of the Numinbah Valley was wonderfully rural.

It should have been only an hour’s drive back to the Gold Coast, but as the darkness drew in and the storms hit, somehow or other she got lost. Somehow or other she found herself on a secondary road, little more than a track, just as the rain became torrential—as if the heavens above had opened and were literally hell-bent on deluging the area.

Then she came round a bend to a concrete causewaystyle bridge, or what had probably been one but was now a raging torrent, cutting the road in two. It came upon her so suddenly she had no choice but to brake sharply—and that very nearly proved to be her undoing.

The back of her car fishtailed, and she felt the tug of the creek water on it, more powerful than the brakes or the handbrake. In perhaps the quickest-thinking moment of her life, she leapt out of the car as the back of it was slowly pushed to midstream, and scrabbled with all her might to attain higher ground.

She found a gravelly hillock supporting a young gum tree, and clung to it as she watched in horrified disbelief. Her car straightened, with its nose pointing upstream and its headlights illuminating the scene, then floated backwards downstream until it was obscured from view.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she whispered shakily to herself. She tensed as above the wind and the drumming rain she heard an engine, and realised a vehicle was coming from the opposite direction—and coming fast.

Did they know the road? Did they think speed would get them over the bridge? Did they have a four-wheel drive? All these questions flashed through her mind, but she knew she couldn’t take a risk on any or all of those factors. She must warn them.

She abandoned her tree and ran out into the middle of the road, jumping up and down and waving her arms. She was wearing a red-and-white fine gingham blouse, and she prayed it would stand out—though she knew her loose beige three-quarter-length pedal-pushers would not; they were plastered with mud.

Perhaps nothing, she thought later, would have averted the disaster that then took place. The vehicle was coming too fast. It didn’t even brake. But as it hit the torrent raging over the bridge, just as had happened to her car, the back fishtailed, the stream got it, and it too was swept away at a dangerous angle.

Bridget winced and put a hand to her mouth, because she could see faces at the windows of the vehicle, some of them children, and there were childish cries as windows were wound down, one piercing scream. Then the car disappeared from sight.

She sobbed once and forced herself to examine her options, but they were pitifully few—actually she had none, she conceded, other than to try to reach the car on foot. Her mobile phone was sitting in her car…

But another vehicle suddenly appeared around the bend behind her, and this one managed to stop without skidding, well clear of the torrent.

‘Oh, thank heavens,’ she breathed as she started to run towards it, slipping and slithering up the muddy road.

A man jumped out before she got to it, tall, in jeans and boots and rain jacket.

He got the first words in. ‘What the hell’s going on? What are you doing out in this?’

Bridget tried to catch her breath, but it was a panting, emotional explanation she gave. She finished by saying passionately, ‘There were children in the car! They’d have no hope against a torrent that can wash away cars. Have you got a phone? Mine’s in the car. We need to alert—’

He shook his head.

‘What kind of a person doesn’t have a mobile phone these days?’ Bridget demanded thinly. She was feeling thoroughly overwrought by now.

‘I’ve got a phone. I’ve got no signal, though. The country’s too rugged.’

‘Then—’ she wiped the rain out of her eyes ‘—should I drive your car back to get help while you see what you can do here?’

He shook his head.

She jumped up and down in exasperation. ‘Don’t keep knocking all my suggestions on the head— why not?’

The stranger took a very brief moment to examine her sodden, highly emotional presence. ‘I’m not—’ he began.

‘Yes, you are!’

‘You wouldn’t get through,’ he said precisely. ‘There’s a rock fall, and a washaway over the road a couple of kilometres back. It happened just after I passed.’

He stopped to open the back of the rather elderly Land Rover he was driving. ‘So I’ll go and see what I can do.’ He pulled out a hank of rope, a knife in a leather holder that he clipped to his belt, a small axe and a waterproof torch.

‘Oh, thank heavens—I’ll come.’

‘Nope. You stay here.’

‘Mister!’

He turned to her impatiently. ‘The last thing I need is a hysterical slip of a girl to worry about. I only have one waterproof, that I happen to be wearing—’

‘What does that matter?’ she interrupted. ‘I could hardly get wetter! And—’ Bridget drew herself up to her full height: five feet two ‘—I’m not a hysterical slip of a girl! Let’s go!’

Had it been doomed from the start, their rescue mission? She sometimes wondered. They certainly gave it their all. But climbing their way downstream beside the swollen creek, in pouring rain, with bushes and small trees whipping in the sudden gusts of wind, was not only heartbreakingly slow, it was exhausting.