Nikki Logan - Their Newborn Gift

‘We’re compatible.’ Reilly brushed her hot cheek to make his point. Her skin leapt at the caress. ‘We get along well enough. We both love Molly. We could make it work.’

He reached up and smoothed Lea’s hair from her damp face, his eyes appealing. ‘Molly could have a proper brother or sister and the baby could have a full-time mother.’

She stared, wide-eyed, trying not to savour the feel of his fingers on her face.

‘Be open to all the possibilities, Lea. Just think about it.’

Her voice was no more than a whisper. ‘You want a family that much?’

‘As much as you did five years ago.’

She slipped her hand to her belly to protect the innocent life within. Her child. The planet’s gravity seemed to shift and cause a delirious weightlessness in her. It was the perfect solution.

And the absolute worst.

‘What about love?’ she whispered.

OUTBACK BABY TALES

Newborns, new arrivals, newlyweds…

In a beautiful but isolated landscape, three sisters follow three very different routes to parenthood against all odds and find love with brooding men…

Discover the soft side of these rugged Outback cattlemen as they win over these feisty women and a handful of adorable babies!

The arrival in April was:

ONE SMALL MIRACLEMelissa James

In May you met:

THE CATTLEMAN, THE BABY AND MEMichelle Douglas

And the pitter-patter of tiny feet continues this month with:

THEIR NEWBORN GIFT

by new Australian talent Nikki Logan

By

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Nikki Loganlives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

Visit Nikki at her website: www.nikkilogan.com.au

For Cadel

Who fought hard to get to us and who is brilliant, living proof of the value of IVF.

Thanks to Michelle and Melissa, who were such a pleasure to share this series with and who were so generous and welcoming to the new girl.

To Kim Young, for your confidence in my stories.

Lastly, with thanks and admiration for all the people who have worked so hard to save the extraordinary Kimberley region from feral predators, only to have bulldozers flatten it to make factories. Keep fighting the good fight, folks.

Start your Kimberley journey here http://www.kimberleyaustralia.com

‘OH, YOU are such a cheater…’

Lea Curran swiped at the tears in her eyes, convinced she was going to run off the gravel road any second. Cause of death? Laughter.

Amazing she could still laugh at all, really.

She trained her eyes on her daughter’s face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Since when does Boab start with a T?’

‘T for tree.’ Four-year-old Molly giggled. It set off the usual heart-squeeze in Lea. Her giggles gave way to full tummy-laughs and then to heaving, hacking coughs. Lea’s smile stayed glued to her face through sheer will-power. She watched her daughter in the mirror for any sign that her distress was more than usual. But Molly—amazing Molly—just let the spasms pass, recovered her breath and went right on playing their driving game.

As though every kid in the world coughed when they laughed.

‘Your turn, Mum.’

Lea shifted her eyes back to the road. ‘I spy, with my little eye…’

Their game went on as bush scrub whipped past the car, kilometre after kilometre.

Molly’s body might have been falling apart, but her four-year-old brain was as sharp as ever. She compensated for her extremely limited physical stamina with a relentless intelli-gence that certainly didn’t come from the Curran side of the family. She could play this game for hours. They’d been on the road for three.

Molly finally identified Lea’s ‘W’ word—wing mirror—and looked expectantly at her mother for more.

‘I spy…’ Lea’s chest clenched as she looked ahead ‘…something beginning with M.’

Her sharp little daughter didn’t miss a beat. ‘Mum?’

‘Nope.’

‘Molly?’

God, she loved her! ‘Outside the car.’

‘Oh.’ Mini eyebrows scrunched down over serious brown eyes then shot up. She didn’t notice their vehicle slowing. ‘Monkey?’

‘We’re in the Kimberley, Molly, no monkeys here. Good try, though.’ Lea glanced at the turn-off ahead and swallowed hard. A giant sign marked the turn-off for the Martin property.

‘Min…am…’ Molly read the giant red letters as best she could.

‘Minamurra,’ Lea assisted, turning the wheel and taking the car under the arched sign. Even she could hear the flat lifeless-ness in her voice as she added, ‘You win.’

‘Is that where we’re going?’

‘Nope.’ Lea swallowed hard. ‘It’s where we are.’

Molly must have caught some of her mother’s trepidation, because she would usually have laughed at Lea’s corny joke. She sat higher in her booster seat and peered out of the window, gnawing on her lip—one-hundred percent from her mother, that little habit—then her eyes refocussed and her pale lips split in one of her blindingly heart-stopping smiles.

One-hundred percent her father’s.

‘Horses!’ She pointed to where a dozen working-horses grazed peacefully in a paddock. The eucalypts lining the long drive whizzed by, making the pastoral scene look like an old flicker-film from the thirties.

Molly disappeared back into that place she went to when she was in a particularly happy mood, when she wasn’t too sapped. Right now, she was talking about the horses with the invisible sisters she took with her everywhere. Imaginary Annas and Sapphies of her own.

Lea forced her focus off the mirror and up towards the house emerging through the eucalypts. The homestead seemed to grow towards them like something from a nightmare. Large, expensive and looming.

Her fingers started to tremble on the steering wheel.

A house like that had to have a family in it. It had no wife, as far as she’d found out, but maybe a girlfriend. Parents.

More obstacles. More people to judge her. More strangers for Molly.

She guided her car over a sequence of cattle grids into Minamurra’s lush heart. Beautiful gardens offset the trappings of a working station: heavy equipment, sheds, stables, beat up four-wheel drives. They must have tapped straight into the aquifer to have this kind of green in the middle of a Kimberley dry season. She pulled to a halt in the shade of two towering kurrajongs standing like sentinels at the base of old timber steps that cut up through the turfed knoll leading to the house. She left the engine and air-con running, and crossed to Molly’s door.

As she cut around the front of the car, her eyes slid sideways and followed the long steps upwards just in time to see a tall figure emerging from the house onto the veranda, sliding a hat onto his head and staring curiously in their direction.