Wanted: Outback Wife. Ally Blake

      ‘Some. A little. I’ve completely redesigned the irrigation system at Jamesons Run and rigged up a lever-and-pulley system to help in the barn, so, yeah, I like to keep my hand in. But wrangling cattle is pretty much a full-time gig nowadays,’ Heath said, leaning his chin on his palm as he gazed at her.

      Oh. Well, that answered that one. He talked like a city boy. He walked like a city boy. He even had a city-boy degree. But he was a farmer. With a farm. Damn it!

      Because it was clear he wasn’t running from the idea of being a husband in a hurry. Her husband in a hurry. Though neither of them had mentioned it in so many words, they both knew why they were there. And after having met one another, they were both…still…there…

      ‘I take it you’ve never wrangled cattle before,’ he said.

      ‘Not lately,’ she said, the idea of doing such a thing petrifying her to the soles of her feet.

      ‘When reading your bio, I figured as much.’ He leaned forward, until their faces were so close that she could see perfect midnight-blue rings around his irises. ‘Yet I still came tonight, and so did you.’

      ‘I guess that means neither of us are entirely sensible,’ she agreed, her voice dropping to accommodate their close proximity. ‘About what we want.’

      ‘To us,’ he said, tipping his bottle her way before taking another swig. ‘And to not being sensible.’

      Jodie felt warm and fuzzy, as if she were having some sort of out-of-body experience. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the excess of bread yeast in her system. Maybe it was the company.

      As she found herself fast becoming lost in Heath’s heavenly eyes, something caught Jodie’s attention. Mandy was waving a frantic arm at her, poking a manic finger at her wrist-watch. It seemed her next date was already there.

      But Jodie wasn’t yet ready for this to end.

      ‘Look,’ she said, leaning in, feeling more terrified and more brave and less sensible than she had in a long time, ‘I’ll be honest with you. There is another prospect waiting for me at the bar, but I’ve been here so many times in the past few nights I feel as though my bottom is changing shape to match this chair. Do you want to get out of here?’

      Heath’s warm blue eyes blinked. Narrowed. And then lit from within as he got her meaning. ‘I don’t know. I’m in the mood for something lathered in chocolate. Does this place serve good desserts?’

      Jodie shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never eat sweets.’

      He was a cowboy; she was a city girl. He wanted chocolate; she hadn’t eaten chocolate in a decade. What the heck was she playing at? By the look in his eyes she wondered if he was thinking exactly the same thing.

      But then something shifted. Before she was able to identify what, he looked at his watch—silver, sturdy, knocked-about—and said, ‘Well, then, it seems we have to find another place in which to continue this conversation. I don’t have to head back home until tomorrow afternoon, so for the next fifteen hours I’m all yours.’

      All hers. Her heart did a neat little flip inside her chest. And heart flips were bad.

      She tore her confounded gaze away from Heath to find Lisa had joined in the frantic waving. It seemed there were now two guys awaiting her. But if she had to say the words, ‘So tell me about your job,’ one more time…

      Jodie stood, and with shaking hands patted her napkin against her mouth. ‘Meet me at the street crossing on the city side of the building,’ she murmured. ‘Five minutes.’

      Heath looked up at her with more than mischief in his bright blue eyes. ‘Shall do, Ms Bond.’

      Jodie turned and, without looking back, headed for the ladies’ room where she had a date with a tiny window and a Dumpster.

      Heath turned on his chair and watched Jodie walk away, keeping a close eye on the tidy package within the hipster jeans, the bouncy auburn hair, and the expanse of creamy skin exposed by her glittery contraption of a top that was held together by modern-day engineering and luck.

      He blew out a long slow breath when she finally sauntered from view.

      In her website picture she had been worth a second glance, but in the flesh those intense green eyes of hers were just something else—relentless yet radiating unexpected vulnerability. He’d had to stop himself time and again from reaching out and running a soothing finger over her furrowed brow as every worry that had run through her mind had flashed across her eyes like a freeway warning sign.

      One of those flashing signals had told him what she saw of him she liked, and, even without all the other inducements she offered, that was a pretty potent thing to find in a first date. And a blind date at that.

      So while half of him couldn’t quite believe that he was with a woman whose intention to marry wasn’t just a niggling presumption in the back of his head, but a blatant prerequisite to his spending time with her, the other half of him found that the most heady inducement of all.

      Added to that there was something about being with a city girl that took him away from his troubles back home. Something about the powders and potions they used to look after themselves. They always smelled so good. He wondered if he would get close enough to Jodie that night to find if she smelled half as good as he imagined she would.

      And Jodie was not only a city girl, but a foreign city girl to boot. A girl with skin so creamy it was never meant to be exposed to the harsh Australian clime, with hair so fine it gleamed, and with an accent so strong that every word she uttered reminded him that there was a big world out there that he had been ignoring for the longest time. Until now.

      Heath looked towards the front door where the blonde who had shown him to his table stood fighting with a rangy brunette. Both were staring at the ladies’ room door. Jodie’s last line of defence, perhaps?

      The brunette glanced over at his table and he gave her a small wave. She grabbed the blonde and ducked behind her, leaving the blonde having to wave back. Yep. They both belonged to Jodie for sure. City girls and their mates…

      With a secret smile, he turned back to his beer, his mind whirling through the night so far. But then he groaned as he remembered blurting out, ‘I am also a qualified civil engineer.’

      How long had it been since he had even said those words out loud? Sure, they were true—he would have been eminently employable in the field if not for the fateful timing that had forced him to return to his outback home to look after his younger brothers and sisters and to run the family farm.

      But why had he needed to let this slip of a girl know such information? Because she had been so obviously trying to reconcile to herself what the heck she was doing sitting across a table from a farmer, that was why! Well, he was more than that, just as he was sure that behind those liquid eyes there was more light and shade to Jodie Simpson than she was letting through her shield as well.

      Thinking of light, he could still remember the radiance in Cameron’s eyes the day he had married Marissa. He remembered the scent of roses from Marissa’s bouquet as he had hugged her after the ceremony. She had thanked him that day, for being a good friend, to her and especially to Cameron.

      The picture dissolved as he remembered the darkness in Cameron’s eyes as he’d sat in the funeral chapel while his young wife’s coffin had lain quiet and sombre to his right. The depth of Cameron’s sorrow rocked Heath to his very soul.

      In his brother Heath had witnessed the extremes of both bliss and despair. But at thirty-six years of age he had never known either firsthand. His life had been lived by the rules and where had that put him? Alone.

      Light and shade. It was way past time his stagnant life was injected with more of both. This was a woman who could take him out of his comfort zone. Jodie was a woman who wanted change so badly she was willing to risk everything by marrying a complete stranger in order to get it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

      He