Outback Man Seeks Wife. Margaret Way

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      Happy New Year!

      I hope 2007 is going to be a great New Year for you. It certainly is going to be an exciting year for Harlequin Romance! We’ll be bringing you:

      More of what you love!

      From February, six Harlequin Romances will be hitting the shelves every month. You’ll find stories from your favorite authors, as well as some exciting new names, too!

      A new date for your diary…

      From February, you will find your Harlequin Romance books on sale from the middle of the month. (Instead of the beginning of the month.)

      Most important, Harlequin Romance will continue to offer the kinds of stories you love—and more! From royalty to ranchers, bumps to babies, big cities to exotic desert kingdoms, these are emotional and uplifting stories, from the heart, for the heart!

      So make a date with Harlequin Romance—in the middle of each month—and we promise it will be the most romantic date you’ll make!

      Happy reading!

      Kimberley Young

       Senior Editor

      Dear Reader,

      Welcome to the first story in my OUTBACK MARRIAGES duet. I could never have enough space to tell you how much I love my country, but my loyal readers will know I’ve been writing about it for the past thirty years. My aim at the beginning of my career was the same as now: to open a window on Australia for the pleasure, interest and expanding knowledge of our global readership. The first custodians of this vast land, the Australian Aborigines, have lived here for some sixty thousand years, and their presence has had an enormous bearing on the incredible mystique of the Outback. While the majority of the Australian population—a scant twenty million people, who live in a vastness of some three million square miles—cling to the lush corridor of coastlines, we’re all very much aware of the great beating heart that lies beyond the rugged dividing ranges.

      The focus of our national spirit belongs to the Man of the Outback. The Outback represents the real Australia. So much of my inspiration has been the heroic men and women that people the inland. Our cattle kings, our sheep barons and the men who work for them: heroes who, because of the extreme isolation of their workplace and the resulting lack of opportunities to meet partners, have had to devise some pretty bold strategies to find the right women with whom to share their lives and bear their children—young women ready and able to accept all the challenges that living in the Back O’ Beyond brings.

      My two heroes, Clay and Rory, recognize the indisputable fact that behind every good man stands an even better woman! See how Clay and Rory go about making two feisty heroines their own!

      Good reading and warmest best wishes,

      Margaret Way

      Outback Man Seeks Wife

      Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves haunting galleries and auctions, and is completely given over to French champagne “for every possible joyous occasion.” She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

      Margaret’s anecdotes:

      1. Outback people, like all people on the land, work extremely hard. They play hard, too. One only has to attend a gala Bachelor and Spinster Ball, or the legendary Birdsville Race Day—Birdsville is about as remote as it can get—to know that. Everyone enters wholeheartedly into the spirit of fun. Australians are great horse lovers. Not surprisingly, polo is the great game of the Outback and incredibly well attended. Whenever the opportunity arises to have fun and meet up with other Outback people, it’s seized with both hands.

      2. Outback people know how to have fun. Along with polo, rodeo events are popular, as well. The Alice rodeo in Alice Springs—the town at the very center of Australia—offers big prize money. Then there’s the Camel Festival, and the hilarious Henley-on-Todd Regatta, where teams race in bottomless boats, leg-propelled down the dry, sandy bed of the river!

      OUTBACK MARRIAGES

      These bush bachelors are looking for a bride!

      Welcome to Jimboorie—a friendly Outback town that sits among the striking red rocky landscape in the heart of Australia. This is where two rugged ranchers begin their quest for marriage.

      Meet Clay Cunningham and Rory Compton—they’re each searching for a wife, but will they find the right woman with whom to spend the rest of their lives?

      Find out in this new duet from Margaret Way!

      This month, read all about Clay in

      OUTBACK MAN SEEKS WIFE

      And look out for Rory’s story in March

      CATTLE RANCHER, CONVENIENT WIFE

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘YOU CAN’T MISS HIM,’ said a languid female voice from behind her. ‘He’s with the other guys making their way to the starting line. Dark blue shirt, yellow Number 6 on his back.’

      Carrie McNevin turned her blond head. ‘Your cousin, right?’

      ‘Well second cousin!’

      Carrie felt rather than saw the look of arrogant dismissal on Natasha Cunningham’s face. ‘I’ve barely spoken to him since he arrived.’

      ‘Well you’ve made contact at least,’ Carrie felt very sorry for the young man who had been treated so badly by his family. She couldn’t remember Natasha’s cousin herself. Or she thought she couldn’t. There was some tiny spark of memory there. But she’d been little more than a toddler when he and his parents had disappeared from their part of the world like a puff of smoke.

      ‘It was purely by accident I assure you,’ Natasha retorted, with familiar derision.

      There was a moment’s respite from this edgy conversation while both young women followed the progress of the entries in the Jimboorie Cup, the main event in Jimboorie’s annual two-day bush picnic races. The amateur jockeys, all fine horsemen, expertly brought their mounts under control. The horses, groomed to perfection, looked wonderful Carrie thought, the familiar excitement surging through her veins. She loved these special days when the closely knit but far flung Outback community came together from distances of hundreds of miles to relax and enjoy themselves. Many winged their way aboard their private planes. Others came overland in trucks, buses or their big dusty 4WD’s sporting the ubiquitous bull bars. Outsiders joined in as well. City slickers out for the legendary good time to be had in the bush, inveterate race goers and gamblers who came from all over the country to mostly lose their money and salesmen of all kinds mixing with vast-spread station owners and graziers.

      Picnic race days were a gloriously unique part of Outback Australia. The Jimboorie races weren’t as famous as the Alice Springs or the Birdsville races with the towering blood-red sand-hills of the Simpson Desert sitting just outside of town. Jimboorie lay further to the north-east, more towards the plains country at the centre of the giant state of Queensland with the surrounding