Read the book: «Wanted: Outback Wife»

CHAPTER ONE

HAPPY hour at The Cave was drawing to a close, but Jodie didn’t mind at all.

She had used up every second of employment her working visa had allowed so now her final weeks in Melbourne were hers to do with as she pleased. And it pleased her to sit on a bar stool twirling a daisy-shaped earring she had made from scratch earlier that day, sharing a bottle of red wine that someone else had paid for, and enjoying every last second that she wasn’t in London.

‘Where’s Mandy?’ her housemate Lisa asked. ‘I have to start work in eight minutes and those customers who haven’t booked a table won’t turn themselves away.’

‘Beach Street is back on in less than three minutes,’ Louise added, her clipped London accent so obvious amongst the neighbouring Aussie strine. ‘No matter how exiting Mandy’s big surprise, after the break Angelo is about to find out that Cait was once married to his brother, so her announcement will be nothing but white noise to me.’

‘She’ll be here,’ Jodie said chirpily. The fact that Louise, the half-sister she had never even known existed until two weeks before, had turned up on her doorstep amidst her own family drama wasn’t lost on Jodie. But she began throwing pretzel chunks at Louise, who was glancing at the overhead television every few seconds, all the same.

‘If you do that one more time, Jodie,’ Louise warned, ‘when the next ad break comes along I will retaliate.’

Jodie grinned, but she stopped throwing pretzels at Louise and threw one into her mouth instead, amazed anew that this tall, cool, sophisticated, blonde product of the infamous restaurant family, the Valentines of London, was related to her—mousy little Jodie Simpson.

It was obvious Louise got the glamour goods from their shared mother, whereas Jodie wasn’t sure what she had acquired from Patricia except a lifelong pain in the neck. But thankfully all that was back in London, far far away from friends and fun on this fine Melbourne evening.

‘I’ve got it!’ Mandy cried out, rushing in as fast as her pencil-thin power skirt and two-inch heels would allow. She waved a piece of paper high above her head.

‘If that’s a doctor’s certificate telling you rotten Jake has finally given you something only penicillin will cure, I don’t want to know about it,’ Lisa called back.

‘Funny,’ Mandy said. ‘Now leave my love life out of this; this magical piece of paper is all about Jodie’s.’

‘My love life?’ Jodie wheezed while coughing up a pretzel crumb that had lodged in her throat.

‘Yep,’ Mandy said. ‘I have found a way for you to stay in Australia.’

That got everyone’s attention. Lisa stopped staring at her watch. Jodie’s mouth went so dry she wouldn’t have had a clue if she had been drinking red wine or juiced sawdust. Louise spun on her seat leaving Beach Street’s Angelo and Cait to sort out their worries on their own.

Jodie felt a pang of guilt lodge between her shoulder blades. Until that moment Louise had had no idea that she was considering not returning to London. In Jodie Louise would have a close friend outside the Valentine family she was feeling so angry toward right now, and a sister to be at her side when she met her real mother for the first time.

And though Jodie so wanted to be that person for Louise, she wanted to be in Melbourne more. She waved a quick hand at Louise, intimating she would explain everything later.

‘How? I’ve tried everything,’ Jodie managed, ‘including writing letters to the Australian Department of Immigration telling them how much I want to be one of you.’

Jodie looked from Mandy to Lisa. She would have given her right ear to be like them—bright, breezy, and free as the wind. And being that way in Melbourne.

‘But I still have to be on a plane back to London on the thirtieth of December,’ Jodie said, letting her hand flop back to the table.

Mandy grinned. ‘I have found a way.’

‘And it has something to do with Jodie’s love life?’ Louise asked, sounding anxious.

Mandy nodded. ‘Dust off your best bridesmaid’s frock; we are going to marry your sister off to an Australian.’

Jodie felt herself blanch and blush all at once. ‘You want to marry me…off?’

Mandy looked down at the computer printout she held through a pair of tiny reading glasses. ‘The marriage would only have to last two years. At first you’ll get a Temporary Spouse Visa and at the end of those two years, once you achieve your Permanent Visa, you can divorce the guy and be free.’

Free. Of all the words Mandy could have chosen to sell the idea that was the one that worked. For a child from a split home it certainly rang in her ears a lot more comfortably than marriage, or divorce…

But surely it couldn’t be that simple.

‘You and Lisa are both natives, yet Lisa has been single since I’ve known her and the closest thing to a long-term boyfriend you have managed to locate is rotten Jake. What makes you think I can do it in two and a half months?’

Lisa looked back down at her watch again, neatly avoiding Jodie’s comment.

‘One and a half,’ Mandy said, also ignoring the point.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You have to fill out an Intention To Marry form one month and one day before marrying. So at the outside, you have six weeks in which to find your man. Considering it has been a month since you starting putting big red crosses on your calendar in a passive-aggressive reminder of the looming Day You Have To Leave, I had my team make it top priority. As of today you have your own website!’

‘Website?’ Jodie repeated.

‘It’s called www.ahusbandinahurry.com,’ Mandy said, puffing up proudly.

Louise, who had been elegantly sipping on a Cosmopolitan, coughed inelegantly into her drink.

Jodie sunk her head onto her hands so as not to see the amplified mortification that would surely be in Louise’s eyes. ‘But what if anyone I know has seen it? What if my mother has seen it?’

‘Unless she is trawling the Internet looking for a cute British bride, then I think you’ll be fine. Besides, we did you proud. We used that photo of you from the Christmas in July barbecue on the home page.’

‘Not the action shot where I was laughing so hard you could see my tonsils as I fell off my chair by way of too much champagne?’ Jodie asked.

‘That’s the one,’ Mandy said, grinning. ‘The men at work voted that one their favourite. They all said you seemed, and I quote: “cute, adorable, and fun”.’

‘So why not just set her up with one of the guys from your work?’ Louise asked. Several faint frown lines marred her forehead. She wasn’t as aloof to the situation as she was making out. But Jodie couldn’t deal with what those frown lines meant. Not yet.

Jodie was beginning to see the possibilities. There was any number of reasons why two people could happily marry for convenience’s sake. And considering this was her last chance at staying in Australia, the place where she had found fabulous friends, a growing number of people who stopped her on the street to ask her where they could buy the unique floral-inspired earrings she herself created, and where she had begun to delight in her youth, maybe, just maybe, she could pull this off.

That was the clincher. After years of being the adult in the family, the one who remembered to pick up milk, the one who kept the house free of dust bunnies, the one who remembered to pay the gas bill, the one who made sure her mum got to work in time—when she managed to hold down a job—Jodie felt hopeful that at last she had a chance to find the youth inside herself.

‘Oh, no,’ Mandy said, ‘once they knew she was looking for a husband, even a two-year one, they backed away like I had pulled a shotgun.’

And there was the rub.

Jodie looked to Lisa, who had been quiet through all of this. ‘What do you think?’

Lisa held up both hands before slipping off the seat and backing away. ‘You don’t want to know what I think. Besides, can’t talk, I’m now on the clock.’

‘She has some old-fashioned view that you should only date, marry, sleep with a guy if you’re in love.’ Mandy shivered as though that would have saved her from a whole lot of fun. ‘But I’m not expecting you to worry about any of that. Leave it all to me.’

Jodie had every intention of leaving it all to Mandy. Though it wasn’t in her make-up to come out and say it, she needed help. For there was no way on God’s green earth she was ever going back to London. To that oppressive apartment. To that half life…

But the real question was: what sort of man would give up two years of his life to marry her, to be her husband, after knowing her for less than a month?

Heath swung back and forth on the love seat on the veranda of his big old home, staring out across the flat red dirt of Jamesons Run.

A blood-red sunset glowed across the plain. A nimble dry wind whipped along the dusty ground so that the golden kangaroo grass seemed to be waving toward the grand old willow dipping its sad leaves into the dam at the centre of his main paddock.

He could do with rain—and not just to damp down the dust storms that were springing up from nowhere more often than not these days. Rain would be a break in routine of stifling hot temperatures that spoke of an oppressive summer to come. Rain would be a change.

‘Knock, knock.’

Heath looked over his shoulder to find his older sister Elena standing in the doorway with a paper plate drooping under the weight of mixed desserts. An outfit of a floral dress and stockings on such a warm day could only mean one thing—a wedding or a funeral. And there had not been a wedding at Jamesons Run in years.

He let his riding-boot-clad feet drag against the wooden floor until the seat stopped swinging so she could sit beside him.

‘I brought this for you before the Crabbe sisters had the chance,’ Elena said. ‘No doubt they are still squabbling over whether you might prefer Carol’s custard tart or Rachel’s mud cake.’

Heath smiled, and he only hoped he had managed to make it reach his eyes. His appetite seemed to have departed him since the moment he had picked up the phone four days earlier to learn that Marissa was gone, but he swallowed a bite of Elena’s home-made pavlova to keep her happy. His mouth was so dry that the sticky passion-fruit topping caught on his palate. Now he would be prying pavlova loose with his heavy tongue all night.

‘How you doing, little brother?’ Elena asked, patting him on the knee. ‘You holding up okay?’

He nodded, though he turned away for a brief moment so she wouldn’t see his frown. Why was she worried about him? Cameron was the one she should have been comforting. Cameron was the one who had lost his wife. He had only lost…what? A friend? His last remaining link to the life he had once thought he might have?

‘Do we have enough ice?’ he asked, tidily avoiding the question. ‘I can run into town to get more.’

‘We have plenty of ice,’ Elena said. Her patting stopped. ‘Though I’m sure it won’t occur to Cameron to thank you, he appreciates you holding Marissa’s wake here. And when you took over for him during the eulogy, oh, that fair broke my heart then and there. You’re a good kid, Heath.’

‘A thirty-six-year-old kid,’ he reminded her. ‘Which makes you—’

‘A lady of indiscriminate age,’ Elena said, cutting him off quick smart. ‘So when are we going to get to use this big old place for more than Christmas parties, local community meetings and funerals? When do we all get to come here to celebrate your wedding?’

‘Ha! I’m surprised you and the Crabbe sisters haven’t lined Cam and me up for a double wedding by now.’

As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. They were cruel and hurtful and born of the fact that he barely believed the words even as he said them. He stood and moved to the edge of the veranda, wrapping his hands around the wooden railing until a bunch of splinters poked deep enough to hurt.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was out of order.’

‘And completely understandable, considering. Does the thought of settling down frighten you that much?’

Settling down? That was what she thought had kept him from the altar all this time? He had settled down a decade ago. What scared him was that if one day he settled down at Jamesons Run with someone else it meant that he would never leave. But now, on this tragic day, it no longer seemed the biggest problem in his life.

‘What if I told you that right this moment I am feeling the very opposite?’ he said. He turned and leant his backside against the railing and folded his arms and stared his big sister down.

‘Well, kid, I would say thank the gods.’ She stood and grabbed him by the arms, giving him a big kiss on the cheek. ‘Is there a particular woman who has brought about this change of heart?’

One woman? Absolutely. But she was gone now. Not just gone from his life, but gone from all life. And it had taken a shock of that magnitude to knock him from the path of his life.

‘None in particular,’ he said. His reasons were his to wrangle alone. ‘So what do you think? Should I go and give the Crabbe sisters the fright of their life by proposing to one of them right now?’

The Crabbe girls were as sensible a choice as any. He knew from past experience of country-dance bottom-pinching, all instigated by one or the other of them, that they would not have been immune to such an idea. But no matter how hard he tried to picture himself in the role of doting husband with a good little country wife by his side, he found he in all good conscience could not. It felt like too much of the same.

And what he craved so deeply was change.

‘No need,’ Elena said, reaching into her purse for a pile of yellowed, creased A4 paper. ‘I’ve already signed you up to some dating websites, just in case.’

‘Websites?’ Heath parroted back. ‘Aren’t they all just fronts for three-hundred-pound, sixty-year-old Russians looking to relocate?’

Elena’s responding sigh was melodramatic. ‘I’ll have you know over half all new relationships forged by people in their thirties come from meeting over the Internet.’

After a pause, Heath said, ‘You just made that up.’

‘I did. But it sounds good, don’t you think? Now I’ve found some girls I like, and some I know you’ll like. All are Melbourne women. Twenty-seven to thirty-five. Single. Looking for love, not just fun.’ She glanced at him through narrowed eyes.

He took the pages, skimming through pictures and vital statistics of a dozen perfectly attractive young women.

One page about halfway through had stuck to another with a glob of baby food. It caught his eye for the fact that it had a big red cross through it. Why, he had no idea, for the woman in the picture looked absolutely worth investigating.

She was laughing so hard he could almost feel the energy radiating from the page. Something about the angle of the photo made him feel kind of dizzy, as if he were about to tip over if he didn’t plant his feet.

Behind the smile was English-rose skin. Huge jade-green cat’s eyes. Long curling eyelashes. A fine chin and a nice straight nose. And she had a seriously sexy stash of strawberry-blonde waves. She barely looked twenty but there was something steely behind her pretty green eyes that had Heath thinking that she was older.

A bulleted list below the photo told him she hated chocolate, her favourite colour was yellow, she cooked a mean plate of fettuccini carbonara, and she lived for mascarpone.

Considering he couldn’t go a day without chocolate, he wasn’t entirely sure he had a favourite colour, he couldn’t eat starch and didn’t even know what a mascarpone was, it seemed that they were likely the least-suited pair on the planet. Maybe that was why Elena had crossed her out.

But there was something in those flinty green eyes that kept him staring at her picture. ‘What’s wrong with this one?’ he asked.

Elena glanced at the page and screwed up her nose. ‘That one wasn’t meant to be there.’ She reached out to take it back, but Heath moved it just out of her way.

‘Why not?’

‘She is the star turn on a website called www.ahusbandinahurry.com. I don’t think that bodes well.’

‘Don’t you think that’s what many of these women are after? At least she’s honest,’ he said. And if he was honest, it was what he wanted too. Now. As soon as possible. A wife. A partner. Someone else with whom to share his space, his time, his life. It was time for him to stop playing it safe. It was time for him to take a risk.

Elena shrugged, obviously not pleased that it hadn’t gone all her way. Likely she had picked out a bunch of women who enjoyed cross-stitch and watching car racing on TV so that if all went well she could have a new friend as well as a sister-in-law.

But that one, as Elena called her, was different. Behind the pretty green eyes Heath knew there was fire. And though all week he had been wishing for rain, suddenly fire held a heck of a lot more possibilities. Change was in the air. Barely there, but there all the same. Enough that he could taste it—sweet and welcome on his tongue.

‘Heath, are you out here?’ a male voice called from inside. His youngest brother, Caleb.

‘Out here, buddy.’

‘Someone knocked over the punch bowl and there’s pineapple pieces swimming all over the dining-room floor.’

He let out a long slow breath and bit back the suggestion that Caleb could have cleaned the thing up himself. But the kid was spoilt. All of his siblings were. And it was his fault.

But inside there were worse things afoot than pineapple on the floor. His brother Cameron was doing his best to keep himself from shattering into a million pieces while trying to help his two little daughters understand why their mummy was not coming home. And big brother Heath was hiding outside.

Well, not any more. ‘I’m coming, Caleb.’

‘To save the day as always, bro,’ Caleb said, slapping Heath on the back, but Heath was sure the kid had no notion of how true that was.

On a balmy Saturday night, two weeks later, Jodie angled her beloved twenty-year-old car, aptly nicknamed Rusty, into an empty car park in a side street off Flinders. She threw a handful of coins into the parking meter as she spied a gap in Saturday-night traffic cruising the length of the grand old train station. She hitched her black sparkly halter an inch higher and tugged her tight jeans an inch lower and ran as fast as her borrowed high heels would carry her.

She was late, as an hour before she could still have been found sitting on the couch with Louise in her pyjama bottoms, Chelsea Football Club T-shirt and slippers, as she hadn’t entirely been planning on turning up that night.

Over the past two weeks, Jodie had met twelve different guys that she and Mandy had chosen from the responses to her website. An actor, a vet, a guy who sold mobile phone contracts door-to-door, and a funeral director whose massive Adam’s apple slid up and down in his throat with such vigour Jodie had found it hard to look anywhere else. And she would have put every cent she owned on the fact that most had come for a good time, not a long time.

What was she doing interviewing prospective husbands? Really? When Jodie reached the safety of the footpath, she closed her eyes and visualised waving goodbye to Mandy and Lisa, getting on the jumbo plane, landing in Heathrow, catching the tube, knocking on the front door of the tiny flat she had shared with her mother for twenty-five years…No, if she was to have any sort of life, she had to stay the course.

Jodie pushed open the heavy carved door nestled into the underbelly of the train station and rushed down the carpeted steps.

Lisa, the maître d’ at the popular restaurant, grimaced as she came into view. ‘Another minute and I would have given away your table.’

‘I probably would have thanked you if you had,’ Jodie muttered. ‘Is he here yet?’

Lisa shook her head. ‘But Mandy is prowling in your corner. Go settle her before she frightens away my customers.’

Jodie gave her a quick pat on the arm before skimming through the tables to the private table for two in the corner. When she saw Mandy sitting in a chair, her stiletto tapping nervously against the floor, Jodie was torn between staying or making a run for it to the ladies’ room, squeezing out the tiny window and dropping atop the Dumpster a floor below.

‘Nice of you to show,’ Mandy said as Jodie slipped quickly into the cool seat across from her.

Jodie took a steadying gulp of Mandy’s red wine before grabbing a bread roll and shoving nibble-sized bites into her nervous mouth. ‘Yeah, well, it didn’t help that just as I was leaving Scott came over to propose to me.’

‘Scott?’ Mandy said, her face paling. ‘Across the hall Scott? Predilection for leather pants and mesh shirts Scott? Not quite sure where his right eye is looking Scott?’

Jodie nodded along with Mandy’s every query. ‘Somehow he had found your clever website. His exact words were: “So how about it? You and me—matrimonial bliss?”’

‘Please tell me you said no.’

Jodie nodded. But in that brief split second, she had actually considered his offer. He lived across the hall, so she wouldn’t have to move far. He had a thing for her, which had been obvious since the day she had moved into the building, so he would do anything to help her out in her plight. But the very fact that he had a thing for her ruled him out even if his goofy oddness did not. It wouldn’t be fair.

If she was going to do this thing, she had to do it right. No romantic connections. No complications from the start. The last thing she wanted was for it all to end in tears and broken promises. She’d lived through enough of that when her father had walked out when she was thirteen, so living it up close and personal was not on her agenda.

She had thanked him for his kind offer, but declined. Though compared to her other dates that week he wasn’t the bottom of the totem-pole.

‘He had settled in to watch Beach Street when I left so I had to leave poor Lou behind. I don’t trust him not to sneak into my room and try to steal a pair of my underpants again.’

‘Right. Good point.’

‘So who’s the lucky contestant tonight?’ Jodie asked on a sigh.

‘First up we have Heath.’ Mandy flipped through her colour-coded sheets clipped in a neat folder. ‘Heath Jameson. The farmer.’

Jodie winced. A farmer, for goodness’ sake! The fact that he didn’t send an email in the form of a dirty limerick or attach a photo of himself in Speedos put him in the maybe pile. But the thought of moving to a farm for two years was uninspiring to say the least. She was a city girl, born and bred. She loved the seasons in Melbourne, the food, the culture, the window shopping, the architecture and the friends she had made there. But most of all she liked herself in Melbourne.

But a farm? In the outback? She pictured a barn with a leaking tin roof. A wood-burning fireplace with old copper pots the likes of which she had seen in old Western movies. A mangy work dog sleeping on the end of the double bed that had lumps and bumps worn into it by past generations. And wouldn’t she have to get one of those hats with corks hanging all around it to ward off flies?

‘Ready?’ Mandy asked.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

‘Excellent. After this one, there’s two more tonight.’

Two more? She let out a long groan. Suddenly, despite the living distance from the city she loved, so long as the guy was a gentleman and said yes, she decided she would marry him then and there. So long as she could stop all this dreadful dating and see a way to a future down under.

Mandy slipped away into the crowd and Jodie was left sending glances towards the bar. Which one would farm boy turn out to be? The guy in all black flicking lint off his double-breasted jacket? Unlikely. The balding blond in the plaid shirt and jeans picking crumbs out of his teeth with his butter knife? Oh, please, no.

Jodie couldn’t help checking her teeth for sesame seeds in the reflection of her bread knife when the front door swished open letting in a flush of warm night air and, with it, a man.

A man with a to-die-for tan, the likes of which Jodie had only ever seen on school friends just back from the Greek Islands, subconsciously pushing his wind-mussed, dark blond hair somewhat into place. A man with the kind of natural highlights other guys would pay a fortune for. A man in an untucked white shirt over dark denim who gave a friendly half-smile as he caught Lisa’s eye at the door.

Jodie knew that second he was hers.

Lisa tossed her long blonde hair as she turned and, with a little finger wave, beckoned the man to follow. And follow he did with a lean, long-legged stride.

‘Not bad,’ Lisa mouthed as she neared.

As he came closer Jodie saw that this man was just the way she imagined Australian guys ought to be—permanent creases at the corners of his eyes from too much smiling or too much sun, a strong jaw covered in sexy stubble as though he had shaved many hours before, and eyes so blue they made her heart ache.

But she wasn’t in this game for heartache. This was to be a purely heart-free and ache-free endeavour.

Jodie scrunched her toes in her high-heeled sandals to force the blood away from her burning cheeks to other parts of her body. The whole ‘blushing English rose’ thing could be pretty on some girls, but with her auburn hair she felt like a big red blotchy tomato. And the more she panicked about it, the more she blushed.

Suddenly the ladies’ room, the tiny window and the Dumpster seemed unreservedly the right choice.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Lisa asked as they reached the table.

‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice a rich, resonant bass. ‘A beer would be great.’

Lisa gave him a beaming smile, turned it into a frown for Jodie, then spun on her heel and left. Jodie managed to drag herself to her feet on wobbly knees that almost gave way.

Her companion leaned over and offered her a large, long-fingered hand to shake. ‘Good evening, Jodie. I’m Heath Jameson. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’