High-Stakes Bride. Fiona Brand

was a sad fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous: tall and muscled with sun-bleached hair, a solid, nicely moulded jaw and those killer blue eyes.

      Deftly, she stepped around him and replaced her tools in their box. “Long time no see.”

      And wasn’t that just typical? The Rawlings family had lived next door to the Galbraiths forever, but Carter had always been too restless to stay in Jackson’s Ridge. Despite being neighbours for eighteen years, the time Dani had actually spent with Carter had been little. When Carter had turned thirteen he had gone away to boarding school. From boarding school, he had gone directly into the army, then the Special Air Service. From that point on he had become even more elusive, only returning home for brief stints to visit his parents when he had leave. And lately, over the past six years, depending on the state of their relationship, to visit her.

      “I’ve been busy.”

      “Evidently.” Almost a whole year busy. But for the first time since they’d started dating six years ago she’d had the luxury of not worrying about exactly what he was doing, and how dangerous it was. As far as Dani was concerned it had been a productive year.

      “I rang.”

      Dani wiped her hands on the rag and tossed it in the back of the trailer. “I got your messages.”

      “You didn’t reply.”

      She cocked her head to one side and took a second look. Whatever Carter had been up to since he’d last climbed out of her bed and walked out the door hadn’t detracted any from his appeal. Despite her detachment, her stomach did a funny little flip-flop. Her jaw tightened. She had been burned by Carter Rawlings a total of three times. As far as she was concerned, that was two times too many. The fact that the masochistic streak that kept her making the same mistake over and over was still in existence didn’t make her happy. She was thirty, supposedly intelligent and independent. As far as she was concerned she had been inoculated three times. Somewhere there had to be a rule about that, and she wasn’t about to break it.

      She snapped the toolbox closed and fastened the lid. “I didn’t see any point. We broke up.”

      He muttered something short and sharp beneath his breath. “Why isn’t Bill fixing the tractor?”

      Dani wedged the oilcan between the toolbox and the side of the trailer so it wouldn’t shift when she negotiated the rutted drive to the house. The last thing she needed was to lose a can of oil. As inexpensive as it was, replacing it would blow her budget for the week, and with the mortgage falling due in a fortnight she was literally counting every cent. In theory she couldn’t afford to eat. “I had to let Bill go two months ago. There’s a recession, or hadn’t you noticed?”

      Maybe not. By the shiny glint of his brand-new four-wheel drive, she deduced that drought, recession and bottomed-out stock prices or not, Carter was doing all right.

      “I’ve noticed.” He jerked his head toward the tractor. “Why didn’t you give Geoff a call?”

      Geoff was the diesel mechanic based in town. He serviced most of the farm equipment locally. “Geoff costs forty dollars an hour. Fifty-five on a call-out.”

      Carter walked around the Dinosaur. Distracted, Dani noted the stiffness of his movements.

      “You’re telling me you’ve been fixing the tractor yourself?”

      And the farm bike and the truck. If she lost the farm, she could probably open up in competition with Geoff’s Diesels and make some real money.

      Dani made a production of looking around. “Can’t see anyone else. Must have been me.”

      Carter’s stare was cold and disorientingly direct. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

      Never again. “What’s the matter? You got issues with women fixing machines?”

      He stared at the tractor, then glanced back at Dani. “Yes.”

      The word was bitten out, clipped and cold, as if he had every right to an opinion. An involuntary shiver worked its way down her spine. She’d been angry at Carter for months—no, cancel that—years, and in all that time, she’d never imagined that he could be angry with her.

      “I heard about Ellen. I’m sorry.”

      She fastened the lid of the toolbox with fingers that were abruptly clumsy. The loss of her adoptive aunt, Ellen Galbraith, still cut deep. Ellen had helped her through one of the toughest times in her life, when Susan and Robert had both been killed in a car accident; it had broken her heart to let her go. “She had a heart condition.”

      One that had manifested almost overnight, but must have been brewing for years. Ellen had had a bad case of the flu and had simply never gotten well. Confused by the symptoms, but suspicious, their local GP had run a series of tests, but by the time Ellen had been diagnosed as suffering from heart failure, massive damage had been done. She’d had a bypass operation, which had briefly improved her condition, but four months after the initial diagnosis, she had caught another bout of flu and slipped away in her sleep just hours later.

      Clamping her jaw against the ache at the back of her throat, Dani gripped the worn steering wheel, and swung up into the Dinosaur’s seat. “I’ve got to go.”

      He stepped toward the tractor, as if he was going to detain her, the motion faintly awkward.

      Dani stared, arrested by the uncharacteristic clumsiness. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

      His gaze jerked to hers, and there was nothing lazy, intimate or even remotely friendly in the contact. For a moment she had the uncomfortable sensation she was looking at a complete stranger. “A gunshot wound.”

      For a blank moment she didn’t know what to say or how to react. Carter was in the Special Air Service. It was hard to miss that fact when his high-risk, high-adrenaline career had destroyed their relationship. But coming face-to-face with the reality of a gunshot wound was shocking.

      She stared at his broad back as he limped to his truck, studying the way he moved, the kinks in his posture that told her Carter was fresh out of rehab and still healing. Ever since Carter had gone into the military she had worried about the danger—whether they were involved or not, Carter’s well-being mattered. “When?”

      “Four months ago.”

      Her stomach tightened. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Two months ago she’d heard, courtesy of Nola McKay—the owner of Nola’s Café—that Carter hadn’t just been away on an extended tour of duty, he had been missing in action. The news, delivered with a latte and the rider that he had been rescued, had shocked her, but still disconnected and numb with the grief of Ellen’s death, it had taken her another week before she’d gotten up the energy to do a search on the Internet. Eventually she had found a report that a soldier was missing in action in Borneo. The wording had been brief and clinical and hadn’t included any details. Like the high-security classification on Carter’s career, the report closed more doors than it opened.

      She wished the fact that Carter had been shot didn’t affect her, but it did. The past year had been hard, and it had changed her. She knew she’d gotten quieter and more withdrawn, but, unlike Carter, she still couldn’t lay claim to being either cold or detached.

      Carter eased into the driver’s seat and she remembered his opening line—the reason he had stopped and spoken to her at all: she was blocking his driveway.

      Letting out a breath, she turned the key. The tractor motor turned over, coughed then caught, the rumble loud enough to preclude conversation.

      Relief loosened off the tension in the pit of her stomach. Gunshot wound or not, Carter was on his own. If he wanted female company, there were plenty of women in town who would be only too pleased to soothe his hurts and massage his sore muscles; women who were younger, prettier and a whole lot more fun than she ever planned on being.

      She released the clutch. “There is a rule,” she just