The Australians' Brides. Lilian Darcy

in answer to Dusty’s question. “A total washout. She had a chip on her shoulder so big I’m surprised she could stand straight. When I told her that being single didn’t bother me all that much, she acted as if I’d personally insulted her. She gave every one of my questions a one-syllable answer and couldn’t come up with a single bit of small talk when it was her turn. Thank the Lord you didn’t get her, Call.”

      “Why me?” Callan asked.

      Brant frowned. “Why you, what?”

      “Why is it good that I didn’t get her? You think I’m particularly incapable of dealing with women with big shoulder chips and no small talk? Why?”

      “Mine was great,” Dusty cut in before Brant could answer, but not before he and Brant had exchanged a strange, uneasy, lightning-fast look. “A genuine, decent woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t mind saying so. There’s a good chance we’ll stay in touch. I’m telling you, it was a heck of a lot better than I expected, the whole thing.” He added quickly and awkwardly, “And, you know, I thought it was a promising idea from the start, so …”

      Hang on a minute.

      Dusty had a look on his face that Callan recognized. It spoke loudly of his awareness that he wasn’t a very good liar, but what was he lying about?

      Callan began slowly, putting the puzzle pieces in place as he spoke, “So you don’t mind that you’re single, Brant, and you’re suddenly pretending you thought this was a promising way for an isolated outback cattleman to meet a future wife, Dusty, even though four seconds ago you pretty much stated the opposite ….” He paused, watched the guilty expressions on his mates’ faces. “Can one of you tell me the real reason we put ourselves through this?”

      He wasn’t stupid.

      He didn’t really need their answer.

      Which was good, because they both stumbled through some garbled piece of bull dust and didn’t actually give him one.

      While the stumbling thing was still happening, he thought about whether he was angry with them—whether he wanted to be angry, whether he even had the energy.

      Brant and Dusty had set him up in the worst way. They’d conspired behind his back. They’d conned him into putting his picture and his life story and his heartfelt feelings in a national women’s magazine. Why? In the hope that he might meet someone? Or … or … start to believe in the possibility of someday meeting someone? Or … or … even just enjoy himself for a night and get a bit of an ego tickle from the bunch of eager women’s letters the magazine had started sending him?

      Angry about it?

      To his own surprise he found himself grinning, after a moment. When all was said and done, they were his best friends. They meant well. They would never let him down. They were idiots, and he liked them.

      “Serves you bloody right if yours was a washout, Branton Smith. Serves you right, Dustin Tanner, if you never hear from yours again. Me, like a prize con victim, thought I was helping you out, going along for the ride. Turns out I wasn’t, and I’m not looking for anything beyond … yeah … keeping my boys happy, but I had a good time last night, talking to Jacinda.”

      He knew it couldn’t go anywhere. He didn’t want it to, and neither did she. That was probably the only reason they’d been able to talk to each other so freely in the first place—because of the safety valve of her imminent departure and the glaring nature of his loss and her divorce.

      She looked nothing like Liz, and that was a big plus, also. Where Liz had been compact and strong, Jacinda was long and willowy. She had big, luminous gray eyes, not twinkling, sensible green ones. She had wild dark hair, in contrast to Liz’s neat, silky waterfall of medium blond, and an even, magnolia-olive skin tone, instead of fairness and freckles. Voices, accents, backgrounds, all of it was different and therefore much safer. Safe enough for him to feel as if Jacinda could be a friend, a new kind of friend, if he ever needed one.

      This was how he saw her this morning—someone he might turn to, sometime in the future, for advice about his boys, or for a city woman’s perspective.

      He even had the address of Jacinda’s friend Lucy in Sydney, and Jacinda’s e-mail address back in America, and she had his, but he wasn’t going to tell Brant and Dusty that. He just gave them another grin—a more teasing and evasive grin this time—and started talking about what they might do today, in each other’s company, before heading out of Sydney and back to land and animals and family tomorrow.

      And he felt better—easier in his heart—than he had in quite a while.

      Jac honestly hadn’t expected to see Callan again, even though they’d exchanged addresses.

      His timing wasn’t great. He showed up at seven in the evening, when she was in the middle of getting her daughter ready for bed. She and Carly had eaten, her friend Lucy was out tonight and now Carly was tired. She was tired enough to make a fuss about getting out of the bath even when her skin had gone wrinkly, so that Jac was wet all down her front when she encountered Callan at the apartment door. A minute or two later, Carly was suddenly not too tired to want to investigate the gift he’d brought for her immediately.

      “It’s just a little thing,” Callan told Jac quietly, as Carly sat on the floor in her pink-stripes-and-teddy-bears pajamas and ripped at the bright paper. For Jac herself, Callan had brought flowers—a huge, gorgeous bunch of Australian things whose names she didn’t know. “A paint-your-own-boomerang kit. Hope it’s not more trouble than it’s worth!”

      “Could be, if she wants to sit down and paint it right now.” She smiled to soften the statement. He had kids. He should understand. She added in a lower tone, “You didn’t have to do this.”

      “I know, but I woke up this morning and—” He stopped and tried again. Came up with just three words. “I wanted to.”

      “You woke up this morning, but it’s seven in the evening, now. Did it take you all day to make up your mind that you wanted to?” she teased. She’d decided last night that he had a sense of humor, but wanted to test this perception in a cooler light.

      “Yep,” he answered. “That’s about right.” His blue eyes glinted with amusement like sunshine on water. “Look, I guess it is getting late, but we could still eat somewhere, if you want.”

      So she had to tell him about Lucy being out, and Carly needing bed, and that she and her daughter had eaten already anyhow.

      He nodded. “I should have called. You’re right. I did leave it too late.”

      She thought about asking if he wanted coffee or a drink, but chickened out. Pick a character motivation. She didn’t want to kiss him and discover she liked it—or discover she didn’t. She didn’t want to learn the hard way that they had nothing left to talk about, after those two easy hours last night. She definitely didn’t want to send the wrong message about how lucky he might get by the end of this evening.

      No!

      “Thank you,” she said instead. “The flowers are beautiful, and the gift for Carly. I really must get her into bed, now, or she’ll be a mess tomorrow. She was up before six.”

      He looked at her wet front and her messy hair. She saw at once from his face that he’d read the situation correctly, and that he wasn’t the kind of man to argue. Instead, he just gave her his courteous hope that she and Carly would have a good flight home, told her that if she ever needed anything—needed him, needed to write or phone—that she shouldn’t hesitate.

      “I mean that.”

      And Jac believed him. Didn’t plan to put her trust in his words to the test, but found that the simple fact of believing him felt good—better, after Kurt, than she would have imagined possible.

      Two days later, Jacinda and Carly’s plane touched down at Los Angeles International Airport and reality kicked into their lives once more.

      Jac