A Father in the Making. Ally Blake

dream girl? This happy-go-lucky woman had written words of honest, tear-drenched pain and longing to a family she had never met?

      It was suddenly too much. What had he been thinking of, jumping in the car with nothing more than an overnight bag and cannon-balling out to the middle of nowhere to find her? He should have used her example and written.

      He stepped backwards, but the crunch of his riding boots on the gravelly earth sounded loud in the now still air. Like a hiker who had stumbled upon a scorpion, Ryan stopped still with one foot cocked against the ground.

      The woman spun from the hips and stared him down with eyes the colour of the creamy-gold grass at her feet. The afternoon sun shone into her face, casting a glow over her naturally bronzed skin. And, since his breath had long since escaped his lungs, Ryan said nothing as he returned her silent stare.

      Laura held up a hand to shield her eyes from the setting sun as she looked over the stranger who had wandered unexpectedly onto her small patch of the world.

      All thoughts of Pavarotti and too hot bubble baths slipped from her mind to make way for a pleasing combination of tight, dark curls and eyes as blue as the wide-open sky above. The stranger’s shoulders were broad enough to carry a bale of hay, his long legs were encased in taut new denim, and strong muscled forearms appeared below the rolled-up arms of a new chambray shirt. There was even something faintly familiar about his steady blue gaze but, considering all the other visual enticements on offer, she couldn’t put her finger on it. Either way, the gent was so nicely put together he could have been a poster boy for country living.

      But parked under the banksia tree in front of big, beautiful, empty Kardinyarr House next door, was the gent’s car. She had been singing so loud she hadn’t even heard it arrive. The car was black, sporty and expensive, and covered in fresh dust. The dust made her smile. No matter that he wore the local uniform, and wore it extremely well, this guy was no local. Clothes too new. Car too flash. Haircut too neat. He had city boy written all over him. Laura was a born and bred country girl, so it was unlikely this guy had ever meandered through her life before.

      So who is he? she wondered. Some lost tourist looking for directions? Or a strip-o-gram organised by Jill, her friend and resident busybody? Ha! If only!

      Nah, he’s a salesman, she decided. In that flash car, with those trying-to-look-like-a-cowboy-clothes, he was equipped to charm his way into selling something to somebody. She then noticed the length of the stranger’s shadow. Whatever he was selling, the sooner he was gone the better. The tiny window she had later in her day, time in which to soak in that too hot bubble bath, relax, maybe even read a chapter of the thriller that had been collecting dust on her bedside table, was slipping away the longer she dilly-dallied.

      ‘Hello, there,’ she singsonged.

      He gave her a short nod, tipping his hand to an imaginary hat as he did so. Ooh, too smooth.

      ‘Am I interrupting you?’ he asked. His voice fitted the rest of him to perfection. Persuasive, elegant, and deep as the gully slipping away behind him.

      ‘It’s probably best you have,’ she answered. ‘Or I would never have had all this washing on the line before the sun sets.’ Hint, hint. I’m a busy woman with no time for salesmen, devastatingly handsome or otherwise…

      ‘You weren’t talking to someone?’ he asked, missing her point as he looked past her to find the elusive Maggie.

      Her grin turned to a grimace. To be caught singing was one thing. To be caught talking to the birds was quite another. Living atop her beloved hill, she had been without daily adult contact for far too long. ‘Only the magpies,’ she admitted with a shrug, but naturally they had not remained in sight to prove her tale.

      His deep blue eyes crinkled at the edges, hinting that a decent smile played thereabouts on occasion, but no smile creased his handsome face just yet. ‘Do they talk back?’

      ‘Not in so many words,’ she said. ‘But we have an understanding. They listen to me sing and I thank them with food. Honeyed bread is their culinary preference.’

      ‘Ah, so you buy their affection?’

      ‘It seems to be the only way I can get any nowadays.’ Oh, Laura, did you seriously just say that? ‘Any audience willing to listen to me sing—Puccini in particular,’ she qualified. ‘Not affection. I get plenty of affection without having to pay for it.’

      Just shoot me where I stand, please, she begged anyone listening in to her thoughts. The intent gleam in the stranger’s intense blue eyes had her gabbling. Or maybe it was the fact that most of the guys around those parts were wizened, bow-legged, and married, and this one seemed to be a very nice combination of anything but. Then again, perhaps it was the still distant possibility that the guy was a strip-o-gram that had her in a flap. What the heck? she thought. I have the music going if he has the moves!

      Ryan was speechless. An in-demand public speaker, he modified the thinking of powerful people every day: politicians, special-interest groups, people a lot bigger and scarier than this auburn-haired spitfire.

      Sweet? This woman was a heck of a lot more interesting than plain old sweet. Her eyes told the tale before she even opened her mouth—she was direct, sassy, and visibly attentive. But, then again, perhaps this wasn’t Laura Somervale. Absurdly, Ryan’s pulse quickened at the theory that perhaps this was a complete stranger, some glorious, undiscovered creature he had chanced upon all on his own.

      And then he remembered the inflammatory letter burning a hole in his shirt pocket. Oh, this was she. This creature with her bare feet and tumbling curls was the girl who had spilled her broken heart onto girlish lavender paper. Now who’s being a poet? Come on, smart guy, stop delaying the inevitable and fess up, his conscience implored. Just tell her who you are and what you know.

      The woman’s feet caught up with her hips as she turned fully to face him, and he saw that her spare hand gripped a set of little girl’s pink overalls.

      The words in the lavender letter, which until that moment had seemed somehow unreal, crystallised in that moment. A little girl. Ryan’s heart thundered so hard his ears rang from the blood-rush. She had a little girl.

      ‘So, now that you have been witness to me embarrassing myself on several levels,’ the woman said, ‘I’m sure you can find it in yourself to tell me what you’re doing here.’

      ‘I came by way of Tandarah,’ he said, evading the question, needing the extra time to control his breathing again. ‘The woman who runs the Upper Gum Tree Hotel sent me here.’

      Suddenly the strip-o-gram fantasy was not nearly so ridiculous after all. Laura felt her cheeks warm. She even had to clear her throat. ‘Jill Tucker?’ she said. ‘Short silver hair? Mischievous gleam in the eye?’

      The man nodded. ‘She sent me up here as I’m looking for Laura Somervale.’

      Well, if he was a salesman he was exceedingly customer-specific. Laura dropped the hand shielding her eyes long enough to swish it about, presenting herself to him like a prize on a game show. ‘Well, now you’ve found me what are you going to do with me?’

      When he didn’t answer straight away, simply watching her with that relentless, memorable blue gaze, Laura did as she was wont to do when faced with an unsettling silence. She stumbled in with both feet a-tapping.

      ‘Have I won the Lotto?’ she asked. When he still didn’t flinch, she blundered on. ‘No? Well, I don’t need aluminium siding on the house, I only buy the local weekly newspaper, and I am perfectly happy with my long-distance phone plan—especially since everyone I know lives hereabouts.’

      His slow blink proved he was selling none of the above. But a curious smile kicked at the corner of the wannabe-cowboy’s lips. Just as she’d expected, it was an engaging smile, a tempting smile, and a smile that gave her heart-rate an entirely satisfying kick.

      Laura changed her mind about the salesman angle and decided her run of bad luck had ended and God was offering her one big, juicy payback in the form of a dashing