Barbara Hannay - The Cattleman's Special Delivery

Praise for RITA ®Award-winning author Barbara Hannay

“Barbara Hannay’s name on the cover is a sure-fire guarantee of a good read.”

—www.cataromance.com

“Stories rich with emotion and chemistry, very layered and lifelike characters.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Barbara Hannay will take you on an unforgettable journey.”

—www.cataromance.com

He’d never held a baby before—not even when he’d been a godfather, attending his nephew’s fancy christening in a Sydney cathedral. Now—tonight—he’d assisted in a total stranger’s birth. The little creature had slipped from her mother into the world.

Into his hands.

He’d looked down into her little face, all red and wrinkled. He’d watched her open her slate-grey eyes for the very first time, and he’d seen the tiny quivering tremble of her lip a heartbeat before she opened her mouth to give her first cry.

And he’d lost his heart.

Completely.

Now, as he stood at the veranda railing, trying to get a grip on his galloping emotions, he told himself to man up. He felt as if his life had changed in some significant way, but the reality was it hadn’t changed at all.

Reading and writing have always been a big part of BARBARA HANNAY’s life. She wrote her first short story at the age of eight for the Brownies’ writer’s badge. It was about a girl who was devastated when her family had to move from the city to the Australian Outback.

Since then, a love of both city and country lifestyles has been a continuing theme in Barbara’s books and in her life. Although she has mostly lived in cities, now that her family has grown up and she’s a full-time writer she’s enjoying a country lifestyle.

Barbara and her husband live on a misty hillside in Far North Queensland’s Atherton Tableland. When she’s not lost in the world of her stories, she’s enjoying farmers’ markets, gardening clubs and writing groups, or preparing for visits from family and friends.

Barbara records her country life in her blog, Barbwired , and her website is www.barbarahannay.com.

Barbara Hannay

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JESS squirmed in the passenger seat as the car sped along the lonely outback road, windscreen wipers thrashing madly. At thirty-seven weeks pregnant, she would have found this journey tedious under any circumstances.

Tonight, in the inky, rain-filled darkness, with the wrong music playing and the monotonously annoying swish, swish of the wipers, the journey was definitely too late and too long and far too uncomfortable.

Beside Jess, her husband contentedly chewed gum and tapped the steering wheel, matching his rhythm to the latest hit from his favourite band. Alan was pleased with himself. Today he’d landed a new job managing an outback pub—a chance, at last, to earn regular wages. Jess had to admit she was pleased about this fresh start, away from the city temptations that had caused them so much trouble.

This morning, they’d travelled out to Gidgee Springs to view the pub and to settle the agreement, and in a few months, when their baby was old enough, Jess would probably work in the kitchen, so they’d both be earning again. Fabulous.

Admittedly, life in a tiny outback town wasn’t quite what Jess had envisaged when she’d made her wedding vows, but she’d been pretty naïve the day she’d married Alan Cassidy on a romantic tropical beach at sunset. Now, three years older and wiser, she saw this new job as a much-needed chance to start over, to get things right. Finally.

As the car sped on Jess peered ahead, worried that the headlights seemed too feeble to fight with the rain. They barely picked up the white dividing lines on the narrow road and she was grateful that the traffic in the lonely outback was so sparse.

She closed her eyes, hoping she might nod off, found herself, instead, remembering the terrible day she’d almost walked out on Alan after he lost the last of their money on yet another hopeless business scheme. Jess had made the tough decision even though she’d known firsthand that single-motherhood was a truly difficult option.

She’d never known her own father, instead had grown up with her mother and serial ‘uncles’, and it wasn’t the life she wanted. But she’d realised she had to leave Alan even though it would mean the death of her dreams of a proper, two-parent family. Those dreams had already crumbled to dust on the day Alan lost their entire savings.

Single, she would at least regain control over her income, and she would have found a way to keep a roof over her baby’s head. Then, at the last minute, Alan had seen an ad for this job as manager of a pub. It was another chance. And Jess had stayed.

Years ago, her mother had warned that marriage was a gamble, that very, very few lucky souls could ever hope for a happy ending. Now Jess was taking one last gamble, praying that after today things would be different.

Surely they should be different.

Oh, please, let him be different .

They would finish this interminable drive back to Cairns. Their baby would be born in a few weeks’ time and then the three of them would start their new life in Gidgee Springs.

She would give her marriage one last chance.

Reece Weston almost missed seeing the car in the ditch. He was about to turn into his cattle property when the headlights picked up the rounded hump of a dead kangaroo lying in the rain at the edge of the bitumen, and then skid marks veering off the road. Driving closer, he caught the gleam of white metal.

Dread settled uncomfortably in his gut as he pulled over. A small sedan had plunged nose-down into a rocky gully.

He knew the vehicle hadn’t been there an hour or two earlier, and chances were he was the first person to come across it. Grim-faced, he grabbed a torch from the glovebox and slipped his satellite phone into his coat pocket.

The night was moonless and black and wind threw rain into his face as he negotiated the slippery bank. The car’s front passenger door hung open, the seat empty. Flashing the torch over the sides and bottom of the gully, Reece hoped he wasn’t about to find a body flung from the crash. He couldn’t see anyone outside the car, but when he edged closer to the wreckage he found the figure of a man slumped over the steering wheel.

Scrambling around the vehicle, he dragged the driver’s door open, released the seat belt and felt for a pulse in the man’s neck.

No luck.

He tried the wrist. Still no sign of life.

Sickened, he wrenched open the back passenger door, shoved a suitcase from the back seat into the rain, leaned in and lowered the driver’s seat backwards into a reclining position. It would be hours before help could arrive, so saving this guy was up to him. Struggling to get beside the body in the cramped space, he began to apply CPR.

Come on, mate, let’s get this heart of yours firing .

Reece had only done this on dummies before, so he was by no means experienced, but he was glad the training came back to him now as he repeated the cycle over and over—fifteen compressions and two slow breaths.

He wasn’t sure how long he worked before he heard the woman’s cry coming from some distance away. The thin sound floated faintly through the rain, and for a split second he thought that perhaps he’d imagined the sound, a trick of the wind. But then he heard it again. Louder.