The Australians' Brides: The Runaway and the Cattleman. Lilian Darcy

her middle name, but I take your point.” The moment of silly humor was nice. Unexpected. “No, I meant—”

      “I know what you meant. What should Carly call Mum? Just Kerry. Or Gran, like the boys do. She won’t mind either way.”

      “Thanks. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this, Callan.”

      For seeming so relaxed about it.

      For making her laugh when she wasn’t expecting to.

      For not being Kurt.

      “Does she have any grandmothers of her own, your Carly?” he asked.

      “No, she doesn’t. Kurt’s mother died just before he and I met. Mine, when I was twelve. My dad lives back east.” She stood up, didn’t want to talk about any of that, right now. “I love those chickens.” She walked toward the wire mesh that separated them from the vegetable garden and called back, “I never realized their feathers would be so beautiful. The black ones are almost iridescent on their breasts.”

      “And they’re good layers, too.” His tone poked fun at her, just a little. Iridescent feathers? These birds weren’t for decoration. They had a job to do!

      “Is egg collecting something Carly and I could handle? She’d love it, I think.”

      “Sure.” He stood up and came over, and they looked at the chickens side by side.

      “Do they … like … bite? I’m good with horses. Kurt and I used to ride on his ranch.”

      If you could call six thousand acres a ranch.

      She had, once.

      But she’d seen Callan’s place, now.

      “But chickens …” She spread her hands. She didn’t know anything about chickens. They hadn’t fit with Kurt’s image.

      “They’ll peck at anything that looks like it could be something to eat,” Callan said. “Shoelaces, rings. But they’ll stop when it doesn’t taste good. And they’re not aggressive. You can pet ’em and feed ’em out of your hand.” He pulled some leafy sprigs of parsley from a garden bed and gave half of them to her, then bent down to hen level and stuck his parsley through the wire. A red-brown bird came peck-peck-pecking at once. “See? Try it.”

      She squatted. “Well, hi there, Little Red Hen.”

      “The boys have names for them. They can introduce you and Carly properly after lunch.”

      “Her ex-husband was stalking her,” Callan told his mother. “Professionally and personally. She needed somewhere safe, and far.”

      “Well, Arakeela should be both,” his mother said.

      They stood on the veranda, watching the two female figures in the chook run—the adult and the little girl. Their clothing was bright in the midafternoon light and their hair glinted where the sun hit, one head dark and the other blond. Lockie and Josh had introduced Carly and her mum to the rooster, Darth Vader, and the hens, Furious, Gollum, Frodo, Shrek, Donkey, Princess and Hen.

      Carly thought those names were great. Callan and Kerry could both hear her little voice saying, “Tell me which one’s Frodo, again, Mommy?”

      “Well, I know it was one of the black ones ….”

      The boys had gone, now, having shown Jacinda and Carly the chooks’ favorite laying places. They were working on the quad-wheeled motorbikes in the shed, changing the oil. Most outback kids of their age got to ride quad bikes around the property when they helped with the cattle, but Callan was pretty strict about it. If Lockie and Josh were going to ride, they had to know how to take care of the bikes and they never rode one unless he was there.

      “How long are they staying?” Kerry asked.

      “Their return flight is a month from now, she said. I don’t know how it’s going to work out, Mum, to be honest, but I couldn’t say no.”

      “Of course you couldn’t! Do you think I’m suggesting it?”

      “You seemed a bit doubtful.”

      “I could tell something was wrong, that’s all. That she wasn’t just a tourist friend wanting an outback stay.”

      “She’s been having panic attacks. That was what happened with Lockie’s book report before lunch. She doesn’t know what she’ll do for an income instead of writing, if the … you know … drive and hunger and inspiration never come back.”

      He knew nothing about writing. Couldn’t imagine. How did you create a plot and action out of thin air? How did you dream up people who seemed so real that they jumped off the page or out of a TV screen like best friends? How did you string the words together, one by one, so that they added up to a story?

      And yet he understood something about how she felt. He knew the same fear that the drive might never come back. He knew the huge sense of loss and failure, now that the hunger was gone. He had the same instinctive belief that without this certain special pool inside you, you were physically incomplete, even though the pool wasn’t something tangible and solid like a limb.

      “She probably just needs to rest her spirit,” Kerry said. “Take the pressure off and forgive herself.”

      “I guess,” he answered, not believing it could be that simple. Not in his own case.

      Take the pressure off? Rest the spirit? Forgive yourself?

      Was that all it took?

      His mother didn’t know.

      Hell, of course she didn’t! And Callan would never tell her.

      He hadn’t breathed a word about the freckled blonde at the Birdsville Races three years ago. When he’d gone down to chat to the Scandinavian backpacker camping at the water hole a few months later, Mum had thought he was only protecting their land. He’d reported that he’d told the young woman about where it was safe to light a campfire and where best to photograph the wildlife that came to drink at the water hole at dusk.

      Mum had no idea that he’d seen a phantom similarity to Liz in both those women, and that the women themselves had picked up on the vibe. As Jacinda had said before lunch, however, when she’d told him about the woman at Carly’s preschool, it was more terrifying to confront the differences when someone bore a passing resemblance to the person you loved.

      They hadn’t been Liz’s freckles, her kind of blond, her skin, her body, her voice.

      Why had he gone looking for something that he could never find?

      No one, but no one—not Brant or Dusty, no one—had known about the Danish girl’s open-eyed seduction attempt, or Callan’s failure. No one ever would.

      “We got eggs!” Carly shrieked out, coming out of the hen run. “Look, guys, we got eggs! Six! Mommy has four and I have two because my hands are too little. I have one brown one with white speckles and one brown one with brown speckles.”

      “Carly? Don’t run so fast, honey,” said her mum, coming up behind her, “because if you trip and fall, they’ll break.”

      “But I want to show ’em to Callan and—” She slowed and looked back at her mother for guidance, asking in a stage whisper, “What’s the lady’s name?”

      Jacinda looked at Callan and shrugged, asking a question with her face. Kerry or Gran? They’d discussed it—that joke about Goldilocks—but Jacinda clearly didn’t know what to say. She had that vulnerable look about her again—the loss of grace, the slight slouch to her shoulders. It made her look thinner. And it made him want to give her promises about how he’d look after her that she would be bound to read the wrong way.

      Before he could answer, Kerry stepped off the veranda.

      “It’s Gran, love,” she said, in her usual plainspoken way. As she spoke, she leaned down to admire the eggs that had made