Outback Bride. Jessica Hart

      “You’re asking men to marry you just to solve your housekeeping problems?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

      “You’re asking men to marry you just to solve your housekeeping problems?”

      

      “Why not? You’re perfect,” said Mal.

      

      “And what do I get out of this deal?”

      

      Mal looked at her in surprise. “I would have thought that was obvious. You get the chance to run your business at Birraminda.”

      

      “It’s a big step from administrator to wife,” Copper pointed out, still hardly able to credit that they were actually talking about the crazy idea.

      

      “You don’t have to be madly in love with someone to work successfully with them.”

      

      “No, but it helps when you’re married to them! Can we get this quite clear? You’ll let Copley Travel use Birraminda if I agree to marry you, but if not, the whole project’s off.”

      

      “That’s it,” Mal agreed.

      Jessica Hart had a haphazard career before she began writing to finance a degree in history. Her experience ranged from waitress, theater production assistant and Outback cook to newsdesk secretary, expedition assistant and English teacher, and she has worked in countries as different as France and Indonesia, Australia and Cameroon. She now lives in the north of England, where her hobbies are limited to eating and drinking and traveling when she can, preferably to places where she’ll find good food or desert or tropical rain.

      Outback Bride

      Jessica Hart

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘HELLO?’ The door stood open behind its fly screen. Copper peered through, but could make out only a long, dim corridor lined with boots, coats and an assortment of riding gear. ‘Hello?’ she called again. ‘Is there anyone there?’

      No response. She could hear her voice echoing in the empty house and glanced at her watch. Nearly four o’clock. You’d think there would be someone around. Her father had mentioned a housekeeper. Shouldn’t she be here, keeping house instead of leaving it open for any passing stranger?

      Not that there would be many passing strangers out here. Copper turned and looked out to where her car was parked in the full glare of an outback afternoon. A dusty track had brought her from beyond the horizon to this long, low homestead with its deep verandah and its corrugated iron roof that flashed in the sun, and here it stopped. Talk about the end of the road.

      Still, this was just what their clients would want to see, Copper reassured herself: a gracious colonial homestead at the centre of a vast cattle station, accessible only by plane or fifty miles of dirt track.

      Copper adjusted her sunglasses on her nose and looked around her with a touch of impatience. It was frustrating to have got this far and not be able to get straight down to business.

      She paced up and down the verandah, wondering how long she would have to wait for Matthew Standish and what he would be like. Her father had just said that he was ‘nobody’s fool’ and that she would have to handle him with care. Copper intended to. The future of Copley Travel depended on Matthew Standish agreeing to let them use Birraminda as a base for their new luxury camping tours, and she wasn’t going to go home until she had that agreement signed and dated.

      She looked at her watch again. Where was everybody? Copper hated hanging around waiting for things to happen; she liked to make them happen herself. Crossly, she sat down on the top step, very conscious of the silence settling around her, broken only by the mournful caw of a raven somewhere down by the creek. She would hate to live anywhere this quiet.

      This was Mal’s kind of country. She remembered how he had talked about the outback, about its stillness and its silence and its endless empty horizons. It was easy to imagine him out here, rangy and unhurried, beneath the pitiless blue sky.

      Copper frowned. She wished she could forget about Mal. He belonged to the past, and she was a girl who liked to live in the present and look to the future. She had thought she had done a good job of filing his memory away as something secret and special, to be squirrelled away and taken out only when she was alone or down and wanted to remember that, however unromantic she might be, she too had had her moment of magic, but the long drive through the interior had inevitably reminded her of him. His image was out, like a genie from its lamp, and just as impossible to bottle up and ignore.

      It wasn’t even as if she had ever believed in love at first sight. Copper was the last person who had expected to meet a stranger’s eyes and know that her life had changed for ever, and yet that was how it had been. Almost corny.

      She had been at the centre of the crowd, as usual, and Mal had been on the edge, a solitary man but not a lonely one. He had a quality of quiet assurance that set him apart from everyone else on the beach, and when he had looked up, and their eyes had met, it was as if every love song ever composed had been written especially for her...

      Copper sighed. Three warm Mediterranean nights, that was all they had had. Three nights, on the other side of the world, more than seven years ago. You would think she would have forgotten him by now.

      Only he hadn’t been the kind of man you could ever forget.

      ‘Hello.’

      Jerked out of the past by the unexpected voice behind her, Copper swivelled round from her seat on the steps. She found herself being regarded by a little girl who had come round the corner of the verandah and was staring at her with the frank, unsettling gaze of a child. She had a tangle of dark curls, huge blue eyes and a stubborn, wilful look. A beautiful child, Copper thought, or she would have been if she hadn’t been quite so grubby. Her dungarees were torn and dirty and her small face was smeared with dust.

      ‘You made me jump!’ she said.

      The little girl just carried on staring. ‘What’s your name?’ she demanded.

      ‘Copper,’ said Copper.

      The blue eyes darkened suspiciously. ‘Copper’s not a real name!’

      ‘Well, no,’ she admitted. ‘It’s a nickname—it’s what my friends call me.’ Seeing that the child looked less than convinced, she added hastily, ‘What’s your name?’

      ‘Megan.