The Cattle Baron's Virgin Wife. Lindsay Armstrong

perched on the northern rim of the city.

      It had cool tiled floors, white walls and all mod cons, but the broad balcony was her favourite spot. It was fitted with sliding insect screens, and had grand views of the city below. She had a table and chairs on it and a bevy of flowering pot-plants as well as an array of herbs—she loved growing things.

      For the rest of her flat, she’d kept her decorating fairly minimalist to suit the climate. There was a sumptuous corn gold settee and two plain cane chairs in the lounge with moulded Perspex side tables. On one of the white walls she’d hung a large, lovely print of a girl walking on a beach at sunrise beside a calm, shining sea that seemed to draw you into its cool, tinted waters.

      A beaten silver urn found in a market in Malaysia stood on her teak television cabinet and on the wall in her small hall a wonderful painting of three elephants, drawn as children might but delicately coloured and captivating all the same, greeted visitors. She’d found it in Thailand.

      She’d found her garnet and sapphire rug on the lounge floor in Turkey.

      Not bad, she often thought, for a girl who’d moved to Brisbane two years ago at a rather traumatic time in her life.

      And now, at twenty-six, she’d had four years of practising as a fully-fledged physiotherapist, and, yes, it was true, she was beginning to make her mark in accident rehabilitation therapy.

      She credited this with a genuine love of her job, plus the fact that she was “fancy-free”, to use an old-fashioned term, so she could give it her all.

      Why she was fancy-free was something she rarely thought about these days. Her life was pleasant, she was able to take overseas holidays and she spent what free time she had doing things she enjoyed. She played golf, she was a movie buff and she belonged to a gourmet cooking club. Her social life wasn’t exactly a whirlwind, but she had a circle of friends she saw regularly.

      That it should all come crashing down, that pleasant life, the same evening Finn McLeod had put his troublesome business proposition to her, seemed to be the height of irony, but that was what happened.

      She juggled her purchases, her bag and the mail she’d retrieved, while she unlocked her door.

      She got inside and dropped the mail. She left it on the floor while she put her stuff away and brewed herself a cup of tea. Only then did she retrieve the mail and flick through it as she sank down onto the settee.

      It was a fine-quality embossed envelope with a Melbourne postmark that caused her heart to sink like a stone. She recognized the handwriting; her sister’s. She knew in her bones that it was a wedding invitation.

      That was exactly what slipped out as she slit the envelope: a silver and white card plus a handwritten note. The card had the names Dakota and James curved around wedding bells.

      The note said:

      Sienna, we’ve finally agreed to do it. For your sake I fought this as hard as I could, please believe me when I say that, but James and I, well, it just wouldn’t go away. I know it’s short notice but I feel as if I’ve been dithering for an eternity—please, please could you be happy for us? And PLEASE could you come to the wedding? Not only for me but Mum and Dad, this is tearing them apart too. Love, your sister Dakota.

      Sienna let the note flutter to the coffee-table and despite her distress, couldn’t help the faint smile that often curved her lips as she thought of their names, Dakota and Sienna. Her parents were self-confessed hippies of days gone by. They’d roamed the world and seen nothing odd about naming their daughters after the places of their conception.

      Now, of course, they were pillars of society and would no doubt be planning a society wedding for their younger daughter, Dakota.

      She picked up the card and checked the wedding date as well as the venues—yes, definitely society. Of course James Haig was not un-society himself. He was now a successful stockbroker in the family firm, an old and respected name in the business.

      But the crux of the matter was that she herself had been all but engaged to James Haig when her sister had come home from a year overseas, and he’d fallen head over heels in love with Dakota.

      Sienna closed her eyes and laid her head back wearily. She had no desire to put herself through all the agony of it again, all the unanswered questions—had he ever loved her, what had he really felt for her? All the bitterness she’d felt towards her sister who couldn’t help being just, well, Dakota and enchanting.

      Her younger sister come to that. Why she should find that galling was an embarrassment to her—what difference did it make to anything? It did, though. On top of being spurned, rejected, on top of the baffling enigma of how close she might have come to marrying a man who didn’t love her—how could he have?—it made her feel old and spinsterish.

      For crying out aloud, she thought, as some tears slid down her cheeks, she’d even given them her blessing and retreated gracefully. Yes, perhaps it was a self-imposed exile that might have hurt Dakota, had certainly hurt her parents, but what more could she have done? And now they expected her to go to the wedding…

      Her mobile phone rang. She checked the number—her mother. I should have expected that, she thought, and was tempted to leave the call unanswered, but in the end she didn’t. There was no point, she was going to have to discuss it with one or the other of them some time.

      ‘Hi, Mum! How’s it going? I’ve just got the wedding invitation.’ She crossed her fingers. ‘I’m really happy for James and Dakota but, look…’ she paused and found her eyes drawn to the date on the invitation rather like a magnet ‘…unfortunately I’ll be away on a cattle station out west with a patient.’

      Ten minutes later she put down the phone and hugged herself distraughtly.

      Her mother had given her to understand that it would break Dakota’s heart if she didn’t attend the wedding, not to mention her parents’ hearts.

      What about my heart? Sienna asked herself. What about the fact that I’d fully expected to be married now and maybe starting a family with a man I—I thought I was head over heels in love with?

      On the other hand, why do I feel so bad about refusing to go to this wedding? About using a trumped-up excuse—I have no intention of burying myself on a cattle station with Finn McLeod, do I?

      Her phone rang again. She snatched it up and was about to turn it off when she saw the number—her boss, the senior partner of the consultancy she worked for, Peter Bannister.

      Well, she wanted to talk to him, didn’t she? ‘Hello, Peter,’ she said rather crisply. ‘What can I do for you?’

      ‘Sienna, how are you? Look—’ he didn’t wait for a reply ‘—I would really take it as a favour if you agreed to go to Waterford with Finn McLeod…’

      Five minutes later Sienna ended the call and stared at the phone with an inclination to scream with frustration.

      Peter Bannister, it turned out, was a friend of the McLeod family. He’d been away on extended leave, otherwise he would have taken on Finn’s rehabilitation himself. By the time he’d returned, he’d reassured himself that Sienna was coping admirably so he’d decided to let things stand. But now, he’d said, he could sense that Finn was really frustrated—it often happened even though the end might be in sight—and he needed a change of scene.

      Peter had then gone on to enumerate the virtues of Waterford. Don’t expect a tin shack, it’s anything but, it even has a nine hole golf course—did you know Finn was a keen golfer before the accident?

      Yes, she did, they’d often talked golf.

      Well, then, Peter had continued, the Augathella Hospital could use her temporary services, he could arrange a locum situation and those outback areas were often crying out for health professionals.

      Then he’d added what he obviously thought was a humorous little bit about how suited she was to do this—no hubby, no kids, no bedridden mums or dads, no pets so far as he knew, only pot-plants