The Australians' Brides. Lilian Darcy

have any self-protective instincts?”

      “Plenty of ’em. I’m just not a very good liar. Does your sister really think Callan’s going to find what he’s looking for this way?”

      Both men looked around the room. It was just after six in the evening, and the air-conditioning in this elegant waterfront venue battled against Sydney’s lingering summer heat. The metropolitan beaches would be crowded with sleek, tanned bodies and sandy children. On the tangled city streets, traffic and exhaust fumes would still be thick, mingled with the blasts of restaurant smells evoking the cuisine of many nations. This was an attractive setting for a cocktail party, however, with its views over Darling Harbour, including a distant glimpse of the Harbour Bridge beyond the restored and remodeled shipping piers.

      It was light-years away from the varied landscapes around Brant’s, Dusty’s and Callan’s homes.

      There had to be around fifty people in the room, Brant decided. They appeared to consist of twenty single outback men and twenty single urban women, as well as some journalists and photographers from the magazine and a handful of catering staff who were gliding around with drink trays and fiddly little morsels of fashionable food that looked way too scary to eat.

      “Not find what he’s looking for, find out what he’s looking for, according to Nuala,” he said to Dusty in clarification.

      “Nuala, who has recently announced her engagement to a man she’s known since she was, what, three?” Dusty pointed out. “Oh, yeah, she’s a real expert on this relationship stuff.”

      “Getting Nuala’s input on all this was your idea, I seem to recall. And she hasn’t been going out with Chris since she was three,” Brant said, in defense of his baby sister’s credentials in the field. “She wouldn’t look at him after she left school. She went to Europe for three years.”

      “She had boyfriends then?”

      “Their names have been permanently blacked out of the Nuala Jane Smith archival records, she says, but, yeah, she had a few.”

      “So she really thinks—?”

      “You want me to quote her?” Brant ticked his sister’s arguments off on his fingers. “This will get Callan to focus on what he wants and what’s missing from his life. It’ll remind him that there are still some decent women in the world even without Liz in it. It’ll show him he’s not the only one whose heart is in—”

      He stopped. Pieces he was going to say, but suddenly, they were no longer alone.

      “Hi! Who do we have here? Dustin, right?” The overenthusiastic American woman discreetly consulted some notes on a clipboard, while a photographic flash went off in a man’s hands, right next to her. Magazine people, both of them.

      The flash made Dusty blink. If Dusty had been one of their own racehorses, Brant thought, the man would have shied and stepped a big hoof on the American’s foot, including her spike heel. He would have broken several of her bones. “Call me Dusty,” he said.

      “Dusty ….” The American beamed artificially. Her eyelids fluttered and she barely looked in his direction. She had sleek hair, a wide mouth and a distracted manner. Nice legs, too, Brant saw as he stepped back out of range. Owning racehorses gave a man a deep appreciation of good female legs. Dusty gave them an interested glance, also. “Now, you’re here to meet Mandy tonight, Dusty, and here she is!” the American said.

      Ta-da!

      Mandy stepped forward. She was around five foot four and her legs were pretty ordinary, but she had dark eyes and an eager smile. She was also totally thrilled with herself for correctly matching Dusty’s personal details to his photograph and winning herself a place at the party tonight.

      Dusty looked a little bewildered at her attitude, but when he answered the question she asked him and she listened with those big eyes fixed so intently on his face … Yeah, Brant thought he would probably have felt the ego stroke, too. It was nice when a woman was genuinely interested. He went in search of a drink, wondering with a faint stir of curiosity which of the as-yet-unpaired women in the room had been earmarked for him.

      Passing Callan, he couldn’t help but notice that his friend, the object of this whole outlandish exercise, was mentally miles away.

      “Why am I here?” Jacinda Beale muttered to herself.

      As always, she had reacted to this dressed-up, extravagant, city cocktail party like an animal caught in a searchlight. She didn’t know a soul. She hadn’t yet been introduced to the man she was supposed to meet.

      The woman who was supposed to do the introducing—and who had introduced herself to Jacinda as Shay-from-the-magazine—flitted around looking almost as stressed out as most of the guests, many of whom were clearly too shy to mingle easily.

      Why are you here, Jac?

      Well, go ahead and pick an option, replied the cynical and panicky running commentary in Jacinda’s brain. You’re a scriptwriter, after all. Choosing between different character motivations is one of the skills of your trade.

      There were several such options to choose from, some of which were more honest than others.

       Because I gave in to an insane impulse and thought this might be fun … or, failing that, good for me.

      Because Today’s Woman magazine is running a series of stories called “Wanted: Outback Wives,” and I happened to a) guess correctly which Outback Wife-hunter’s description of himself matched with which Outback Wife-hunter photo—it wasn’t that hard!—and b) write a sufficiently appealing and correctly spelled letter outlining in three hundred words or less why I should get to meet him.

      Yes, believe it or not, an invitation to this cocktail party was meant to be a kind of prize.

       Because I’m desperate, and I’ll open any door that looks like it has a handle.

       Because I’m a writer, so it’s research.

      That last one scared her, adding to the already powerful panicky feeling. Writers could claim that pretty much anything was research, and in the past for Jacinda, the claim had always been true. In the name of research, she’d tried on expensive jewellery, combed through a stranger’s trash can, taken a ride on a seriously terrifying roller coaster, eaten in two or three of America’s most famous restaurants … The list went on.

      But was she really a writer anymore?

      Heartbreak Hotel’s head scriptwriter, Elaine Hutchison, still thought that she was.

      “You’re blocked, Jac,” she’d said six weeks ago. “You have good reasons to be blocked, and you need a break. Take that gorgeous daughter of yours, cross an ocean, and don’t come home for a month. By then, you’ll be raring to go and I can give you Reece and Naomi’s storyline because you are the only one I trust to make their dialogue remotely believable.”

      “Which ocean?” Jac had asked, because her initiative had also evaporated, along with her TV soap opera dialogue-writing skills.

      “Any ocean, honey. Just make it a big one. Know what I’m saying? Know why I’m saying it?”

      Elaine hadn’t mentioned any names but, yes, Jac had known what she was saying, and why. She should put some distance between herself and Kurt until she was stronger, better equipped to move forward. She should recognize that despite Elaine’s genuine friendship, she had divided loyalties because Kurt had the power to scuttle Elaine’s own career as well as Jacinda’s.

      And the Pacific Ocean was the biggest ocean around—it conveniently washed ashore in California, too—so here she was on the far side of it, in Australia, at the bottom of the world, at the bottom of a glass, at a cocktail party she wasn’t enjoying any better than she’d enjoyed all those dozens and dozens of cocktail parties with Kurt.

      Even when she and Kurt had been in love.