Barbara Hannay - Second Chance with Her Soldier

He turned, looking at her intently. “What do you mean?”

His blue eyes seemed to penetrate all the way to her soul. Her heart began to gallop. She couldn’t back down now that she’d begun.

“What you said before—that I can’t bear the sight of you—it’s not true.” So not true.

“That’s the way it comes across.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

She could feel the sudden stillness in him, almost as if she’d shot him. He was staring at her, his eyes burning. With doubt?

Ellie’s eyes were stinging. She didn’t want to cry, but she could no longer see the paddocks. Her heart was racing.

She almost told Joe that she actually fancied the sight of him. Very much. Too much. That was her problem. That was why she was tense.

But it was too late for personal confessions. Way too late. Years and years too late.

Instead she said, “I know I’ve been stupidly tense … about . . . everything, but it’s certainly not because I can’t stand the sight of you.” Quite the opposite …

Second Chance

with Her Soldier

Barbara Hannay

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

CORPORAL JOE MADDEN waited two whole days before he opened the email from his wife.

Avoidance was not Joe’s usual MO. It went against everything he’d learned in his military training. Strike swiftly was the Australian Commandos’ motto, and yet...here he was in Afghanistan, treating a rare message from Ellie as if it were more dangerous than an improvised explosive device.

Looming divorce could do that to a guy.

The fact that Joe had actually offered to divorce Ellie was irrelevant. After too many stormy years of marriage, he’d known that his suggestion was both necessary and fair, but the break-up certainly hadn’t been easy or painless.

Now, in his tiny hut in Tarin Kot, Joe scanned the two other email messages that had arrived from Australia overnight. The first was his aunt’s unhelpful reminder that she never stopped worrying about him. The other was a note from one of his brothers. This, at least, was glib and slightly crude and elicited a wry chuckle from Joe.

But he was left staring at Ellie’s as yet unopened email with its gut-churning subject heading: Crunch Time.

Joe knew exactly what this meant. The final divorce papers had arrived from their solicitor and Ellie was impatient to serve him with them.

Clearly, she was no longer prepared to wait till the end of his four years in the army, even though his reasons for suggesting the delay had been entirely practical.

Joe knew no soldier was safe in Afghanistan, and if he was killed while he and Ellie were still married, she would receive an Army widow’s full entitlements. Financially, at least, she would be OK.

Surely this was important? The worst could so easily happen here. In his frequent deployments, Joe faced daily, if not hourly, danger and he’d already lost two close mates, both of them brilliant, superbly trained soldiers. Death was a real and ever-present danger.

Joe had felt compelled to offer Ellie a safety net, so he’d been reassured to know that, whatever happened to him, she would be financially secure. But, clearly, getting out of their marriage now was more important to her than the long-term benefits.

Hell, she probably had another bloke lined up in the wings. Please, let it be anyone but that damn potato farmer her mother had hand-picked for her.

But, whatever Ellie’s reasons, the evidence of her impatience sat before Joe on the screen.

Crunch Time.

There was no point in avoiding this any longer. The coffee Joe had recently downed turned sour as he grimly clicked on the message.

* * *

It was a stinking-hot day at Karinya Station in Far North Queensland. The paddocks were parched and the cattle hungry as Ellie Madden delivered molasses to the empty troughs. The anxious beasts pushed and shoved at her, trying to knock the molasses barrel out of her hands, so of course she was as sticky and grimy as a candy bar dropped in dirt by the time she arrived back at the homestead.

Her top priority was to hit the laundry and scrub up to her elbows. That done, she strode through the kitchen, grabbed a jug of chilled water from the fridge, filled a glass and gulped it down. Taking another glassful with her to the study, she remained standing in her molasses-smeared jeans as she fired up her laptop.

Tension vibrated and buzzed inside her as the latest messages downloaded. Surely Joe would send his answer today?

She was so sick with apprehension she closed her eyes and held her breath until she heard the ping of the final message’s arrival. When she forced herself to peek at the screen again, she felt an immediate plunge of disappointment.

Nothing from Joe.

Not a word.

For fraught minutes, she stood staring at the screen, as if somehow she could will another email to appear. She hit ‘send and receive’, just to be sure.

Still nothing.

Why hadn’t he replied? What was the hold-up? Even if he’d been out on a patrol, he was usually back at camp within a day or two.

A ripple of fear trembled through her like chilling wind over water.

Surely he couldn’t have been injured? Not Joe.

The Army would have contacted her.

Don’t think about that.

Ever since her husband had joined the Army, Ellie had schooled herself to stomp on negative thoughts. She knew other Army couples had secret ‘codes’ for when they talked about anything dangerous, but she and Joe had lost that kind of closeness long ago. Now she quickly searched for a more likely explanation.

Joe was probably giving her email careful thought. After all, it would have come as a shock, and no doubt he was weighing up the pros and cons of her surprising proposal.

Wanting to reassure herself, Ellie reread the email she’d sent him, just to make sure that it still sounded reasonable.

She’d tried to put her case concisely and directly, keeping it free of emotion, which was only fitting now they’d agreed to divorce. Even so, as she read, she found herself foolishly trying to imagine how Joe would feel as her message unfolded.

Hi Joe,

I hope all is well with you.

I’m writing on a practical matter. I’ve had another invoice from the fertility clinic, you see, and so I’ve been thinking again about the frozen embryos. (Surprise, surprise.)

Joe, I know we signed that form when we started the programme, agreeing that, in the case of divorce, we would donate any of our remaining embryos to another infertile couple. But I’m sorry—I’m having misgivings about that.