Dear Reader,

There’s something special about being involved in a continuity like THOROUGHBRED LEGACY—a sense of something bigger, richer. And this one spans the globe.

From the bluegrass of Kentucky to the vineyards of California, from England to the Middle East and now to Australia’s stud-farm capital, the Upper Hunter Valley. Here, a clash of values pits a single-dad cop who just wants to hold on to his family and his home against the wealthy Thoroughbred-racing set, and the heroine in particular.

But no matter where in the world we may be, or who we are, the concept of home is a universal one. And a powerful one.

My characters might start by squaring off hotly over an interrogation table, but when they finally start working as a team, they’ll realize they all want the same thing.

A sense of true family. Love. A home.

I hope you enjoy their journey.

And I’d love you to stop by my Web site—a small window into my own home—

Loreth Anne White

Breaking Free

Loreth Anne White

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LORETH ANNE WHITE

As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe a marine biologist, an archaeologist or a lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But those childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t have to grow up. She could be them all—the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.

She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski-resort town in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.

Readers can find out more about Loreth at her Web site, www.lorethannewhite.com.

To Gillian Murphy,

who breathed life into the Hunter Valley,

and who did it with characteristic Aussie humor and flair.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

Hands tense on the wheel, Detective Sergeant Dylan Hastings drove his squad car along the undulating ribbon of tar that bisected miles of brittle-dry stud farm acreage dotted with stands of tall eucalyptus.

He was going to arrest Louisa Fairchild, the grande dame of the Australian Thoroughbred racing scene, a woman who thought she was above it all, who figured Commonwealth justice was the best money could buy.

Dylan was about to show her different.

This time.

Because he’d seen Louisa buy “justice” before—when he was just eight years old. It had changed his life forever.

It had made him become a cop.

It had made Dylan determined to fight for justice for all—not just the stinking rich.

He turned off the Hunter Valley highway, heading for Fairchild’s nine-hundred-acre estate along the Hunter River. The route passed several miles of vineyards. It was March, and autumn colors quivered, brittle on the vines, metal windmills turning lazily in the hot wind. Here and there horses ran wild over the drought-brown hills, tails held high, frisky in the hot, smoke-tinged breeze.

It was all seemingly calm despite the political tensions simmering in Sydney, yet the ominous ochre haze over the blue hills of Koongorra Tops spoke of a different kind of threat.

The constant whispering reminder of bushfire smoldering in deep gullies just beyond the ridge across the Hunter River didn’t bode well for a valley coming off a long, hard summer of unseasonable drought.

The homicide and arson case at Lochlain Racing, coming on top of these already tinderbox conditions, had left the town of Pepper Flats and the surrounding community wire-tense and baying for blood. The fire at the stud farm had been ugly. Real ugly. And the community wanted someone to pay.

Soon.

Dylan was about to make Louisa Fairchild do just that. Still, like the smoldering hotspots across the Hunter, a small coal of doubt flickered quiet and deep inside Dylan. He knew he didn’t have enough to officially charge her. Yet.

But his superintendent had issued the order to bring her in ASAP.

A gas bomb had detonated in the Sydney central business district less than two hours ago—part of the APEC protests. It had gone off just as the U.S. President was landing at Sydney International for the leaders’ portion of the Summit. The U.S. Secretary of State was already in town, at her hotel, where a second device had been primed to detonate simultaneously.

Techs had managed to defuse that one, but the death toll from nerve gas in the first explosion had already hit thirtytwo and was climbing fast. The New South Wales police force had received threats from one of the radical protest groups that there were more bombs out there. Riots were now erupting, and part of Sydney had been quarantined. According to Superintendent Matt Caruthers—Hunter Valley Land Area Commander—the Australian Prime Minister was about to go on air to declare a state of emergency.

Caruthers had also informed Dylan that the Prime Minister was calling in the military, and that the NSW police commissioner had ordered the majority of the state police force to the capital ASAP—including just about every officer in the Hunter Valley Land Area Command. The homicide team working the Sam Whittleson–Lochlain arson case had also been recalled.

All that remained in the Upper Hunter was a skeleton staff for rotational patrol.

Dylan had been left to twist solo in the dry wind until the APEC dust settled.

This arrest was unorthodox. Everything about it.

And Louisa’s lawyers were going to be all over it.

But Caruthers was worried Louisa Fairchild would use this very opportunity to slip through the cracks. She was already a flight risk, and so far, everything the homicide squad had found to date pointed right at her.

She had the motive, opportunity and means to shoot Sam Whittleson, her sixty-one-year-old neighbor and owner of Whittleson Stud, whose charred remains had been found at Lochlain the night of the fire.

Louisa and Sam had been fighting like dogs over rights to Lake Dingo for the last two years. The lake straddled their estates, but the farm boundaries themselves were in dispute, and Louisa had already shot and injured her neighbor over the water issue ten months ago. She’d shot Sam in her library, with her Smith & Wesson .38. He’d survived, but there were witnesses who’d heard Louisa say she “should have killed the bugger properly the first time.”

That was a death threat in Dylan’s book.

And now Sam Whittleson was properly dead.

The first shooting had never gone to trial, a fact that irked the hell out of local cops, including him. Louisa Fairchild with her overpriced lawyers and swanky PR team had claimed self-defense, wangling a deal with Whittleson’s legal counsel that saw Whittleson dropping charges against Louisa for fear of being prosecuted for trespassing and assault himself.

But the homicide team now had witnesses who’d seen Louisa Fairchild’s dark-gray Holden fleeing Lochlain the night of the blaze and murder. The soil in the tires of her truck confirmed she had been there.

And the fire-damaged murder weapon had finally been recovered from the crime-scene rubble—a Smith & Wesson .38. The gun was currently being processed by forensics techs, and a serial number should be legible before the day was out, which meant the weapon could be traced.

Quite possibly right back to Louisa Fairchild.

Dylan would have been happier to have known for a fact the murder weapon belonged to Louisa.

Instead he’d been sent in prematurely. To squeeze her, bring her in for questioning, rattle her cage, find anything that would allow the NSW police enough to hold her for trial while they built their case.

Right. And who was going to take the fall if the weapon wasn’t hers, if the charges didn’t stick?

Dylan pinched the bridge of his nose.

He could see himself going down as the scapegoat on this one. Once those APEC stories started dying back from national headlines, this was going to be the news.

A small fist of tension curled in his gut as he caught sight of the bronze-and-red Fairchild logo emblazoned on massive stone pillars flanking the entrance to the estate. Dylan’s jaw tightened as he signaled to the guard his intent to enter and swung into a driveway lined for almost a mile with mature jacarandas that knitted branches in a canopy over the hardpacked dirt.

On either side of him white fencing trailed across acres of dry grassland that was being cut to the quick for fear of bushfire, the tractors boiling soft clouds of dust that blew like spindrift. But as he neared the manor house and saw sprinklers shooting long white staccato arcs over lush emeraldgreen lawns and vibrant flower beds, Dylan’s acrimony bit deeper.

Louisa Fairchild defied even the drought.

There were severe irrigation restrictions on the river. She was likely pumping water from Lake Dingo which belonged, allegedly, to a dead man.

A man she might have killed. For this very water. For the stud farm she was still trying to snatch out from under his family.

Dylan reminded himself to bury his personal hatred of Louisa Fairchild. It could cost him down the road if his animosity got in the way of her arrest.

The mobile phone on his belt buzzed as he pulled into the circular gravel driveway.

He reached for it, checked caller ID. Heidi. Probably calling to pester him about that party she was desperate to go to tonight. Or the private art school in Sydney she suddenly so passionately wanted to attend.

Dylan let the call flip to voice mail, feeling the tension in his gut wind tighter as he pulled to a stop.

His kid might be as fickle as the wind, but she’d also had a rough ride lately, nearly losing her own horse in the Lochlain fire. Yet no matter how Dylan tried to help, Heidi was throwing up barriers, acting out, making additional demands. She’d just have to wait until he got home tonight, because right now he had a potential career-breaker on his hands.

And Heidi wasn’t going to have a future if this case ended up taking him down.

He got out of the squad car, adjusted his gun belt, and put on his hat. It was unusually hot for an autumn evening. He squinted into the haze, waiting for backup from the neighboring Scone station to arrive.

He’d asked for a female cop to help him execute the warrant. What he’d gotten was Ron Peebles, a probationary constable on the job for all of three weeks.

Already things were going sideways, Dylan thought as he watched a plume of dust rise behind the squad car approaching in the distance.

Constable Peebles drew up alongside Dylan’s vehicle, got out, his movements taut. It was the young rookie’s first arrest and it showed.

“Ready?” Dylan said.

Dry gum leaves clattered suddenly in a gust of hot wind, and a flock of lorikeets burst from the branches in an explosion of color as they took flight and darted through the sprinklers.

Peebles tensed, cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m ready,” he said, looking everything but.

Boots crunching over the gravel driveway, they made their way to the entrance of the massive stone-and-stucco mansion, built ten years ago. Dylan still remembered the old house. He’d played on this farm as a kid with his brother Liam and their friend Henry. That was many years back, before Liam had been murdered.

He climbed the stairs to the door, chest tightening. He glanced at Peebles standing slightly to the side of the door, feet planted square, hand near his weapon. Peebles nodded.

Dylan rang the bell.

A great booming clang resounded inside the house, and the door swung open, two blue heelers barreling out.

“Officer Hastings?” Louisa’s housekeeper, Geraldine Lipton, regarded them with a frown.

“G’day, Mrs. Lipton,” he said. “Is Miss Fairchild in?”

Her eyes darted to Peebles, then back to Dylan, hand tightening on the brass doorknob as she pulled the door slightly closed. “Miss Fairchild is busy riding,” she said tersely. “And then she’ll be busy packing. She leaves for London tomorrow.”

Dylan flashed Peebles a look—a definite flight risk. “It’s important we speak to her immediately, ma’am,” he said.

The pinkness of irritability reached up Mrs. Lipton’s neck and into her cheeks. “Why don’t you wait in the library, officers?” she said curtly. “I’ll see if Miss Fairchild can meet with you.”

Dylan removed his hat as they followed the stout housekeeper in her starched navy-and-white uniform through a vaulted hallway decorated with broad-leafed plants, sleek sculptures and breezy rattan furniture. The decor had been redone since Dylan had been here last winter. It looked cold to him. But then they didn’t pay him to pick out color swatches and match drapes. That was his ex’s department.

The thought of Sally shot a familiar jolt of annoyance through him that compounded his feeling of ill will toward Louisa, the past suddenly crowding in on him.

Mrs. Lipton threw open a set of solid old jarrah-wood doors, ushering the two men into the library of polished wood, leather furniture, antique tomes, old art and a general aura of established wealth.

Dylan immediately eyed the elaborate, glassed-in gun collection beyond the fireplace. If Louisa’s Smith & Wesson was in that cabinet he was going to have a problem. It would mean the pistol they had in the lab belonged to someone else.

Again, he cursed that he’d been forced to move prematurely. He needed the serial number on that murder weapon.

“Can I send for some tea while you wait?” The housekeeper’s voice remained tight.

“No. Thank you,” Dylan said, striding into the vast room where Sam Whittleson had come damn near to getting himself shot to death the first time.

Late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through French doors open to the patio, the water in the pool outside shimmering as if someone had just dived in. But Dylan made straight for the cabinet, pulse quickening as he noted a vacant spot on the red velvet where Louisa’s .38 had rested last June.

It was missing.

But as he leaned forward for a closer inspection of her collection, the library doors swung open with a crash and Louisa Fairchild’s voice resounded through the room.

“What in hell do you people want now!”

Dylan straightened, turned slowly to face her, projecting a powerful confidence and calm he didn’t quite feel.

Framed by the double doorway and flanked by her stubby housekeeper holding her black velvet riding helmet, Louisa Fairchild cut a tall, sophisticated and formidable figure for her eighty years—spine held stiff, crisp cotton stock-tied blouse high at the neck, tan breeches, dusty leather riding boots and silvery hair pulled back in a sleek chignon. She had handsome features and the very tanned and lined face of an Australian outdoorswoman. Her hands were brown, too. Veined, but elegant. Strong. Working hands, if rich ones.

Louisa was a blend of what defined this country in many ways. A woman of the land, one who’d made her wealth from it. Descended from a family that had risen from common stock brought over on boats to the penal colony to become rich in a warm climate of equal opportunity.

If Louisa had the same respect for equal justice as she had for opportunity, if Dylan didn’t hate her so much for what she’d done to his family, he might even find a grudging respect for this matriarch. He thought of his own frail mother, of this formidable woman’s indirect role in unraveling her.

“G’day, Miss Fairchild—”

“Cut to the chase, Detective Sergeant,” she snapped. “What do you want?”

He noted the strain in her neck muscles, the way she held her riding crop tight against her thigh, and he let silence hang for a few beats, just to rattle her further.

“We’d like to ask you some questions, Miss Fairchild,” he said, walking slowly toward her. “We’d like to know, for example, where your Smith & Wesson revolver is.”

Her eyes flicked to the gun cabinet and back. Her hand clenched the crop tighter. “If you’re here about that Sam Whittleson thing—”

“You mean his homicide?” “I have nothing to say about that. And I must insist you get off my estate.”

“Perhaps you’d like to come down to the Pepper Flats station then, just to answer a few questions?”

“Are you arresting me, Detective Sergeant?” Her chin tilted up in defiance. “Because if not, I have no intention of going anywhere with you, and I’m ordering you off my land. Now. Before I call my lawyers.”

“Then I’m afraid we’ll have to do this the hard way, ma’am,” Dylan said, reaching for the cuffs at his belt.

“Miss Louisa Fairchild,” he said, reaching for her arm, “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Sam Whittleson.”

Megan Stafford stepped out of the pool, wet hair splashing droplets at her feet as she reached for her towel, the evening sun balmy and soft against her bare skin.

She began to towel herself as she studied the purplishyellow haze on the horizon. It looked as though a thunderstorm was brewing, but she knew better. The haze was from the Koongorra fires.

It reminded her of Black Christmas when bushfire had raged across New South Wales for almost three weeks—the longest continuous bushfire emergency in the state’s history. No one in this region took the threat of mega fires for granted after that, especially with drought conditions like this.

Especially after the scare at Lochlain Racing, a neighboring stud farm owned by Tyler Preston.

Megan and her brother Patrick had arrived at Fairchild Acres two days after the murder of Sam Whittleson and the tragic Lochlain blaze. Sam had been shot in the Thorough-bred barn at Lochlain, late at night. One shot in the chest, one in the back. His body had then been dragged into a vacant horse stall, doused in turpentine and set ablaze. The fire had spread quickly through the H-shaped barn buildings, devastating the farm with losses into the millions.

Several prize Thoroughbreds had died; nearly forty others were left injured and incapable of ever racing again.

The barn had been under closed-circuit-camera surveillance, but the CD containing the footage from that night was missing.

Now emotions in the region were as brittle as the rustling dry gum leaves—the whole valley fearing an arsonist and murderer was loose among them.

Megan bent sideways, trying to knock water out of her ear. It had been an awkward time to arrive. She felt strange to be here at all.

She and Patrick had come to Fairchild Acres at the behest of their estranged great-aunt Louisa, who wished to determine if her only living relatives were worthy of her inheritance.

Louisa’s blunt letter had been a slap in the face to Megan.

She knew the woman by reputation only as a cold-hearted and phenomenally wealthy battleaxe with a prized talent for spotting winning horses. She also knew her great-aunt had—for some unspoken reason—banished her own sister Betty from Fairchild Acres many, many years ago, totally severing that branch of her family. Megan’s gran had never spoken about the incident. Neither had Megan’s mother.

And the family secret had died with them.

Megan had adored her Granny Betty, and she had no interest in the fortune of the noxious old dame who had shunned her gran.

If it hadn’t been for some serious argument on the part of her pragmatic brother, who claimed Betty had been denied her rightful share of the Fairchild estate, Megan would not have taken time off work, packed her bags and been standing barefoot at the Fairchild pool right now.

But the Fairchild legacy Megan had really come seeking was not money. She’d come to find an answer to that old family secret. She wanted to know where her gran had really come from, and why she’d been banished. It was a sense of birthright, of belonging, that Megan hungered for.

But her thoughts were suddenly shattered as the unflappable Mrs. Lipton came barreling out of the library. “Megan! Megan! Come quick! It’s Miss Fairchild! They’re arresting her!”

Megan stilled, towel in midair. “Arresting Louisa? What for?”

“Murder!”

Megan dropped her towel, grabbed a pool robe from the deck chair, and yanked it over her arms as she raced up the flagstone steps to the library.

She froze in the doorway.

A large sandy-haired cop was ushering a handcuffed Louisa out of the library as a skinny young policeman moved towards the gun cabinet.

Megan’s heart started to hammer. “Louisa?”

They all spun round.

The tall officer holding her aunt narrowed eyes like hot blue lasers onto Megan. Steady eyes. The most startling cornflower blue she’d ever seen. Eyes that sucked her right in. And held her.

Her stomach balled tight and her heart began to patter.

Part of her job as a legal consultant and art buyer was to evaluate instantly color, form, function. The artist in her appraised the cop just as fast.

He was tanned, well over six feet, features ruggedly handsome. He had the lean, hard lines of an endurance athlete—a sign of mental resilience, the kind that could too easily translate into obstinacy. But it was the overall impression—his electric aura—that shocked her to her toes. The impact was total, complete.

And it made her mouth turn dry.

“Thank God you’re here, Megan,” Louisa said, trying to twist out of the cop’s grasp. “Get my lawyer, Robert D’Angelo, get him on the phone. At once!”

Megan felt herself hesitate. The directness in the cop’s clear gaze was unnerving, commanding her attention in such a way she was barely able to register anything else in the room.

She cleared her throat, her eyes beginning to water with the effort of meeting his penetrating gaze. “I’m Megan Stafford,” she said to the cop. “Louisa is my great-aunt. What’s going on here?”

His eyes dipped quickly over her damp body, her skimpy bikini, bare feet. Megan pulled her robe closed, belting it tightly across her waist.

“Detective Sergeant Hastings,” he said. “And this is Constable Ron Peebles. The constable is here to execute a search warrant on the property. It’s on the desk over there. Your aunt is coming with me. She’s under arrest in connection with the murder of Sam Whittleson.” He began to escort Louisa out.

“Wait!” Megan surged forward, grabbed his arm. “You’ve made a mistake,” she said, locking eyes with his. “My aunt is eighty. She…she didn’t do this.”

His eyes narrowed. “Hindering an officer is an offense under the law—I don’t want to have to take you in as well, Ms. Stafford. Now if you’d please step back.”

She withdrew her hand slowly, adrenaline zinging through her, and with it came the first stirrings of hot anger.

The officer walked Louisa out of the library.

“Megan!” she called over her shoulder as the man led her into the hall. “Just get D’Angelo, will you? His number is on the library desk. Tell him to meet me at the Pepper Flats station at once. And watch that numbskull search,” she demanded. “Don’t let him touch a damn thing! Mrs. Lipton—”

“This way please, Miss Fairchild.”

“Mrs. Lipton, get Patrick,” Louisa shouted, craning her neck round as the cop opened the front door, escorting her out. “Tell him to speak to the managers. Tell them…tell them I’ll be back in a few hours.” Louisa’s voice was strained, her features pinched.

But it was the parting look she shot Megan that unnerved her grand niece the most.

Megan barely knew her estranged aunt, but the woman’s iron reputation preceded her. Louisa Fairchild was un-shakable.

Unsinkable.

Except now. Megan could see in her steel-blue eyes that this macho cop had rattled her aunt. Badly.

He’d shaken something deep and hot in Megan, too.

Adrenaline tightened her stomach. With it came an uncomfortably cold whisper of doubt. The cop had to have something on Louisa to actually arrest her.

Could her aunt be involved in murder?

She exhaled, trying to steady her hands. Right. Call Robert D’Angelo. Then get Patrick. Her brother could help gather the farm managers together.

She scrabbled through the papers on Louisa’s library desk. She’d met D’Angelo at dinner last week. He’d reminded her of a hungry beak-nosed bird of prey. Damn, she couldn’t find his cell number anywhere in this mess. Louisa’s private office was being redecorated, her boxes stacked in one of the outbuildings while most of her immediate paperwork and files had been temporarily relocated to this oak rolltop.

“Do you have the keys for this gun cabinet, ma’am?” Constable Peebles asked.

Her eyes shot to the young, dark-haired cop. “No. I don’t.”

He broke the lock. Tension fluttered through her stomach and perspiration began to prickle over her brow. “Mrs. Lipton! Where’s th—” She found an address book in the drawer. “Oh, I got it!” She flipped it open to D’Angelo, Fischer and Associates, quickly dialed the firm’s number in Sydney. He wasn’t there, but they gave her his mobile number. She dialed again.

Robert D’Angelo answered on the first ring. And the knot of tension tightened in Megan’s stomach as he told her he was miles away, on the outskirts of Sydney, and that APEC security blockades were going up along all major arteries because of the bomb blast. It was unlikely he’d make it through anytime soon.

“You need to get down to the Pepper Flats station yourself, Megan,” Robert instructed in his reassuring baritone. “And tell Louisa not to say one word. Anything she says while in police custody can be used against her in court. Drive that home to her, understand? I cannot stress this enough.”

Megan knew this was going to be a tall order. Asking Louisa to keep her mouth shut and her abrasive opinions to herself was akin to asking the sun not to come up.

“The police have four hours within which to officially charge her and to get her in front of a magistrate,” Robert said. “If they want to hold her longer, they’ll need to apply for another warrant. Watch this. Let them know you know it. And you must be allowed to speak to her in private.”

Megan nodded to herself, thinking ahead. She knew the basics. She’d started studying criminal law at university herself, before dropping it in favor of art and corporate law. The combative nature of the criminal justice system wasn’t a fit for her personality. She’d learned that pretty quickly.

“Keep me updated via mobile,” Robert told her. “I’ll start assembling a criminal team at the town office.”

“You…think it’s that serious?”

“It is if they believe they have enough to take her in. My team will commence background checks on the arresting officer right away. What did you say his name was?”

She glanced up at Peebles, now rifling through cabinet drawers, and she thought of the cop with the steady blue eyes. “Detective Sergeant Hastings.”

“By the time I’m done, Hastings won’t have a job. And you let him know it.”

Megan hung up picturing the tall, swarthy and cerebral Robert D’Angelo squaring off with the physically robust and tanned cop. And a shimmer of electricity rippled through her belly at the thought of having to square off with him herself.

She was no substitute for the formidable lawyer.

And no match against that determined hunk of police officer.

Chapter Two

“Mrs. Lipton, get someone to bring a car round for me!” Megan yelled as she raced up the sweeping marble staircase.

She flung open the cupboard in her guest room, grabbing a sleeveless shift dress, the creation of a young up-and-coming Sydney designer, urban casual.

All Megan’s clothes were the work of emerging artists—fledgling designers she predicted would become household names. She liked to support them at the start of their journeys. It had become her trademark philosophy, and her sartorial style on the Sydney art gallery circuit had begun earning her a familiar spot on the social pages of the city newspapers and glossies. That in turn had garnered attention for her clients.

Attention for her clients was good. It fed her business.

She shimmied into the dress, not wasting time to take her bikini off. Quickly sliding her feet into sandals, she grabbed her purse, and stalled in front of the mirror as she caught sight of her wet hair still plastered to her head. She cursed, grabbed a silk scarf off the dresser, flinging it over her hair as she snagged her large sunglasses, and clattered down the broad staircase, and out the front door.

“Biltong” Laroux, Louisa’s rugged broodmare manager, had brought her aunt’s champagne-colored Aston Martin DB9 convertible round to the front door.

Megan stalled, eyes whipping to his. “You want me to take this?”

“Patrick’s got the sports ute. The other cars are either out or in the shop.”

“It’s…not an automatic,” she said.

Biltong pushed his felt hat farther back on his head, a glint of amusement in his warm brown eyes. “Do you need someone to drive you, Ms. Stafford?”

“Of course not,” she said reaching for the door handle. “Just…hold fort here, please.”

Megan started the ignition and promptly stalled the high-end sports car. She cursed, hotly aware of Biltong watching her from under the brim of his bush hat. She knew how to drive a stick shift. She just hadn’t done it in a while.

She depressed the clutch and turned the key, setting the engine purring again. She shifted into First gear, and jerked sharply forward, almost giving herself whiplash before taking off down the driveway in a blast of dust, Louisa’s blue heelers yipping at the wheels.

Damn.

Louisa rarely went anywhere without her two cattle dogs, and they were going to get hurt if they kept this up all the way down to the estate gates.

Megan hit the brakes, kept the engine running as she reached over to open the passenger door. “C’mon. Get in Scout, Blue!”

The blue heelers scrambled excitedly onto the butter leather, settling next to her in the two-seater.

Megan engaged gears, releasing the clutch as she simultaneously depressed the gas pedal, having to consciously think in order simply to drive. Finding her rhythm, she gathered speed down the mile-long driveway under the jacaranda trees, billowing fine red Australian dust in her wake.

As she neared the gates, a group of horses kept pace at a canter in the adjacent field.

She wheeled the sports car onto the farm road, picking up more speed as she headed for the small town of Pepper Flats. Dusk was settling over the dry valley, and her heart hammered in her chest as she mentally prepared to face the physically disarming cop again. She wondered just how the hell she’d gotten to this point in the space of a week.

Dylan had been born in Pepper Flats. For the past ten years he’d worked the area as a local cop, and not once during that time had he ever heard mention of a Fairchild niece.

And a woman like Megan Stafford wouldn’t go unnoticed in this valley, he thought as he led a stone-faced Louisa into the station charge room, ordering her to sit while he entered her into the system.

A long-lost niece conveniently popping out of the woodwork with her great-aunt tipping the wrong side of eighty seemed a little too contrived for his liking. She was probably after the old dame’s fortune, and the thought turned Dylan’s blood cold.

He knew Megan’s type—all warm surface gloss and seductive appeal on the exterior, but calculating and devoid of compassion on the inside.

He’d learned the hard way just how deceptive a gorgeous-looking woman like her could be. He’d married one. And he had spent the past ten years of his life raising his kid alone as a single dad, when all he’d dreamed of was a real family.

It was a mistake he was not likely to make again.

He handed Louisa two forms outlining her rights and began setting up the recording equipment in the interview room while keeping an eye on his octogenarian charge sitting thunderously silent.

She’d gone ash-pale under her tan and refused his offer of water. A small wedge of worry edged into Dylan’s chest.

It was a custody manager’s priority to watch for signs of ill health that might arise from police detention, and with Peebles executing the search warrant, Dylan was doing double duty as both custody manager and investigating officer in a station that wasn’t even a designated holding facility.

D’Angelo would have his balls over this “transgression” alone. But given the state of emergency and the police shortage, Dylan had no choice but to wing this as best he could, and hope that Crown prosecutors would argue extenuating circumstances on his behalf should D’Angelo try to nail him for it.

“This way please, Miss Fairchild?” he said, taking her arm. “I need to get your fingerprints.”

“You have one hell of a hide doing this, Hastings,” she snapped. “I know your sort. You—”

“You know nothing about me,” he said, leading her smartly to the fingerprinting station along the brick wall.

You destroyed my family and you don’t even remember who I am.

Not that she’d care if she did.

“Hold still, please,” he said, taking her wrist and pressing her thumb into the ink pad, rolling it from one side to the other.

No, he thought as he held her inked thumb apart from her other fingers and moved her hand over to the blank sheet, Louisa knew nothing about him at all.

He rolled her thumb over the white surface until the print was complete. She muttered a colorful oath under her breath and pulled back as he began to thoroughly smear her index finger with ink.

“Would you hold still, please?” He tried to tamp down the irritation spiking sharply through him. But as Dylan began to roll Louisa’s next finger through the ink, a movement outside the window caught his eye.

He glanced up to see an Aston Martin DB9 Volante coming to a bone-jerking halt in front of the station, the high-performance engine stalling. Dylan felt an odd reflexive rush as he recognized Megan Stafford, looking like some Hollywood star in a casually elegant short dress, silk scarf, bare sunbronzed arms and giant shades, Louisa’s two blue heelers on the seat beside her like Lord and Lady Muck.

He saw her mutter what could only be an expletive as she swung open the convertible’s door, extending long athletic legs. And Dylan felt a smile tempt the corners of his mouth.

He tried not to watch those lean legs walking towards the entrance of his station, tried to focus on Louisa’s prints, but at the same time he was compelled to sneak another peek, grudgingly acknowledging that Fairchild’s grand-niece really was hot, even with clothes on.

Heat coursed softly through Dylan as the image of Stafford in that barely there bikini reformed in his consciousness—and his body hardened in instant response. He banked down the unbidden and annoying rush of physical anticipation, reminding himself Stafford had probably come to the station to wheedle herself into Louisa Fairchild’s good graces—if there were such a thing—and right into the octogenarian’s will.

This helped steel his focus.

But as she entered the reception area he felt the chemistry of the smoke-tinged air in the small brick station shift, and his pulse quickened anyway.

“Louisa?” Megan called, leaning her body over the counter. “Are you all right?” Her mouth opened in shock as she saw her aunt being fingerprinted down the hall, and her green eyes flared at Dylan. “I need to talk to her,” she demanded. “In private.”

The cop speared her with those intense blue eyes of his. “It’s her right, Detective Sergeant Hastings. I…I’m a lawyer.”

His brow crooked sharply up, and Megan felt her cheeks grow hot. She swore to herself. She had no idea what had possessed her to say that. The man flat-out unnerved her.

“Would you take the dogs outside, please, Ms. Stafford? And I’ll let you in the back as soon as we’re done with the prints here.”

Megan muttered another curse as she returned Scout and Blue to the car. He was playing power games with her by ordering her out with the dogs like that. It was probably also a ploy to rattle Louisa.

Megan reentered the station, removing her scarf and using it to tie her damp hair back into a ponytail as she did. She wished she’d managed to get out of her wet bikini before coming. It was now uncomfortable.

Detective Sergeant Hastings unlocked a door to the side of the reception counter, admitting her into the working part of the police station.

It was deserted at this hour, and his presence seemed to suck up all the air in the place. Megan suddenly felt nervous. But when she peered beyond his broad shoulders and saw the normally statuesque Louisa looking so frail and vulnerable as she tried to scrub the ink from her hands at a grimy, gray, industrial-sized enamel sink, a fist of anger curled deep in Megan’s belly, squeezing away the nerves.

“I need a moment with her,” she said quietly. “Alone.”

He held out his hand. “Room down on the left.”

“Come, Louisa,” she said, taking her aunt’s arm, feeling the cop’s eyes burning into her back as they went down the corridor to the interview room. He had a way of stripping her naked just by looking. It made her legs feel like jelly and she had trouble concentrating on the simple act of walking.

“Leave the door open so I can see you both,” he called out as they were about to enter the windowless neon-lit room.

She glowered at him.

Dylan checked his watch. The longer he left them, the more chance D’Angelo had of showing up before he could squeeze Louisa. Yet he was legally obligated to give them time alone. He unhooked his phone from his belt, was about to punch in his home number and let Heidi know he wasn’t going to make it for dinner, when his mobile beeped.

He flipped it open. “Hastings.”

“Sergeant, it’s the lab. We’ve managed to lift the serial number of the murder weapon. The Smith & Wesson .38 that killed Sam Whittleson is registered to Louisa Fairchild.”

Bingo!

This was going to make things a hell of a lot easier. He’d now be remiss not to have brought her in.

He flipped open his phone, relief rushing through him as he called his daughter.

Megan placed her hand gently over Louisa’s slender veined one. It felt as fragile as a bird under her own, and beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting her aunt looked much older, drained. It wasn’t surprising. No innocent person deserved to be fingerprinted like that, to be forced into an airless and sterile room with one-way mirrored glass, seated at a table that had been bolted to the floor. Especially not an eightyyear-old woman of Louisa’s stature in the community. “How are you holding up, Louisa?” she asked softly, studying her aunt’s blue eyes.

“Where the blazes is Robert?” she snapped. “I’ll be fine as soon as he gets me out of this hell hole.”

Megan hesitated, not wanting to upset her aunt further by telling her Robert might not make it through the APEC barricades tonight. “He’s…on his way. He instructed you not to say a word, Louisa. Silence cannot be held against you, but anything you do say can be used in court—”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Megan, this is not going to get to court!” But a flicker of fear in her eyes belied her bluster.

Megan glanced at Detective Sergeant Hastings talking on his phone down the hall. “He must have some reason to hold you here, Louisa,” she said in a whisper.

“Impossible!”

“Then why do you think he brought you in?” she said calmly. “I mean, they already questioned you after the Lochlain fire, and cleared you, didn’t they?”

Louisa went silent, her eyes suddenly uncertain, and without the habitual steel they were startlingly reminiscent of grandmother Betty’s eyes. And of Megan’s mother’s eyes. An acute sense of love and loss rustled so sharply through Megan that it put a catch of emotion in her throat.

This irascible grande dame really was her family.

And a sense of family was something Megan yearned for.

“I didn’t kill him, Megan.”

“I know that, Louisa.” “Do you?”

Conflict twisted through Megan. She wanted to say yes. But in all honesty she knew very little about Louisa.

For a moment she couldn’t answer.

“I did not shoot Sam, Megan,” Louisa insisted, eyes narrowing. “I did not set fire to that place. I had nothing to do with the old bugger’s death.” She smoothed back a stray wisp of hair that had escaped her chignon as she spoke, and Megan noticed that her hands were shaking. Louisa’s face also had a strange sheen to it, her skin unusually pale save for two little hot spots forming high along her cheekbones. In spite of her stiff spine and the defiant tilt of her chin, her aunt was unraveling.

Megan needed to get her out of here soon.

“Would you like me to get you some water?”

“Just get me Robert, for mercy’s sake. What are we waiting for?” Her breaths were coming too fast, too shallow. She was perspiring.

“I’m getting you some water,” Megan insisted, standing up.

She marched along the passage to where Detective Sergeant Hastings stood talking on his phone, and her whole body instinctively braced, adrenaline beginning to hum in her chest as she approached him.

But he angled away from her slightly as she neared, lowering his voice as he spoke into his mobile so she wouldn’t hear. “Listen, chook,” he said softly. “I’ll explain when I get home. I’m really busy right now—”

“My aunt needs water,” Megan demanded, standing square in front of him.

He glanced up, a flash of irritation in his eyes that shifted quickly into something quite different as he took in the faint damp patches her wet bikini had formed on her dress. He pointed to the water cooler next to a desk on his right, his eyes dark.

Megan swallowed, cursing the effect his look had on her as she went to get water.

“We’ll talk when we get home, okay, kiddo?” he said almost inaudibly, the gentleness in his voice catching Megan by surprise. She stilled as she bent over to fill a cup at the cooler, unable to stop herself from listening in on his phone conversation.

“There’ll be other parties—no, listen—” He hesitated. “Sweetheart, wait—”

He swore suddenly, and flipped his phone shut, eyes narrowing as he saw Megan watching him.

“Your daughter?” she asked, standing up, cup of water in hand.

He shoved his mobile back into his gun belt, his eyes flat, inscrutable. “Shall we proceed with the interview now?”

But Megan held her ground. “You’re a dad, aren’t you? A family man. Can you not find it within yourself to show my aunt some compassion? She’s eighty, for goodness’ sakes.”

“She’s also rich. Is that why you’re here out of the blue, Ms. Stafford? Because she’s pushing the wrong side of eighty and has amassed a small fortune?”

Her eyes narrowed sharply. “Damn you,” she whispered. “I’m worried about my aunt’s welfare, not her money, and if you don’t charge her immediately, I insist you let her go.”

He held out his hand, showing her the way. “Let’s get this over then.”

But as they entered the room, Louisa stood up shakily, pressing her hand against her sternum as she tried to brace herself against the table. Her face was ashen, her skin damp.

“This…this is ridiculous,” she said, her voice coming out in a rasp. “This cannot be happening. I need…to leave—” She tried to walk, wobbled, and gripped the back of her chair to steady herself.

Megan rushed forward, taking her by the arm. “Louisa, please sit—”

“Where’s Robert?” she said hoarsely, panic straining her features. “I…I won’t go through this. I will not be subjected to this. I…refuse to do this without Robert. He wouldn’t let this happen. He would not let it get this far.”

Hot tension whipped through Megan. She shot a look at Hastings as she helped Louisa back down into the chair. “I’m not sure counsel of her choice is going to make it here in time. Could…could you do this tomorrow? Louisa needs air. This room is too hot.”

“You said you were her lawyer.”

“A lawyer. Not her lawyer. Besides, I’m not a criminal one.”

That sandy brow of his crooked up again.

It fuelled her anger. “I’m a corporate lawyer for an art gallery cooperative in Sydney,” Megan snapped. She was furious she was even explaining herself to this stubborn hunk of a policeman. “And I find your attitude disrespectful. My aunt is an esteemed member of this community. She deserves better treatment than this—”

“She deserves equal treatment, Ms. Stafford.”

Megan wavered slightly at the veiled menace in his tone. “She does have a right to counsel of her choice before you question her. And she’s not well—”

“She has no such right, Ms. Stafford.”

“But you do allow it—”

“We’re running out of time.” He depressed a button to start recording the interview. “Now if you’ll please calm down and take a seat, I’d like to advise Miss Fairchild that she is entitled to refrain from answering my questions, and that anything she does say can be used in a court of law. Miss Fairchild.” His eyes focused on Louisa, a muscle pulsing along his jaw. “Can you explain how your Smith & Wesson .38 came to be found in a melted fertilizer drum near the body of Sam Whittleson?”

“What?” Megan slowly took a seat, staring at the cop. “That’s not possible,” she whispered.

His laser-blue eyes turned on her. “It’s a fact.”

Megan shot an inquiring look at her great-aunt. “Louisa?”

“Someone…must have stolen it,” Louisa said, pressing her hand harder against her upper abdomen, her breathing shallow.

Desperation surged through Megan. Her eyes whipped back to Detective Sergeant Hastings, tension crackling through her body as she jerked to her feet. “This is enough, Sergeant! This is pure harassment. You’re on a fishing expedition, otherwise you’d have charged her already. I insist that you either do so now, or let us go, because my aunt has nothing more to say. And she’s clearly not well.”

Before he could respond, Louisa swayed, clutched hard at her chest, rasped for air, and slumped off her chair.

“Louisa!” Megan dropped to her knees, fumbling to loosen her aunt’s high collar. Louisa’s skin was cold and clammy. She’d stopped breathing. “Oh, God, she’s having a heart attack!” Megan yelled as she tried to ease Louisa onto her back. “Dial triple zero—get an ambulance!”

She felt Detective Sergeant Hastings taking her shoulders, forcing her back from her aunt as he keyed his radio.

“We need an ambulance, Pepper Flats police station,” he barked. “Cardiac arrest. Maybe MI. Eighty-year-old female—” He gave a rapid-fire series of details as he knelt beside Louisa and began ripping back her restrictive blouse, feeling for a pulse at her neck.

“No pulse,” he told dispatch. “She’s non-responsive. Commencing CPR.”

He tilted Louisa’s head back, checking her air passages. Tears filled Megan’s eyes as she looked on in horror. “Get out front!” he yelled at her between CPR breaths and compressions. “Flag the ambos outside—tell them we’re in here. Move it, now!”

Chapter Three

Heidi stood at her bedroom window, staring into the dark night, thinking about stuff.

Her father still wasn’t home and she could hear her gran stirring down the hall as she went to the bathroom. A strange mix of concern and irritation flushed through her.

She hated feeling this way about her family.

It had gotten worse after the night she’d stood at this same window, watching the strobe lights pulse over the night sky, hearing the distant bullhorn—knowing Lochlain Racing was burning.

She’d smelled the bitter smoke on the wind, and she knew Anthem was in there, in the blaze. Her dad, too, fighting the fire with the other villagers, and her heart had been so sick with worry.

She’d wanted to be there. To help. But she’d been ordered to stay with Granny June. Just as she’d been ordered by her father to stay home tonight.

And now Zach had gone to the B&S ball without her. She swiped a stupid tear from her face. Damn, why was she so emotional?

Granny June’s health wasn’t helping. It was draining Heidi. Her gran was forgetting things, getting more confused. Wandering off. Leaving water to boil, running the bath and not shutting off the taps. And Heidi’s freedom was increasingly restricted because of it.

Apart from her riding, she could never do anything after school because her dad was worried something would happen if they left June alone too much now. And Heidi didn’t want to feel like this—resentful about it. But her dad was putting more and more pressure on her to help care for his mother as work commitments pulled him away, and it was starting to wear her down.

She wanted out.

She wanted to go to private school in Sydney to study art. Like her mum, Heidi was gifted artistically. And like her mother, she hoped one day to work in an artistic field, in a big vibrant city.

She heard her gran going back to bed down the hall, and Heidi looked up at the splatter of stars, the thin sliver of moon, wondering how often her mother gazed up at the sky in London—the same sky.

So far away.

She wondered if her mum ever missed her family. Or if her dad ever wished he could see Sally again. Heidi could never tell what he was feeling. Whenever she mentioned her mother to him, he’d just get all bossy and change the subject.

He thought not talking about Sally was somehow shielding her from the fact her mother had walked out on them, from this very house, one night ten years ago.

After that her dad had invited his recently widowed mother to come and live with them, mostly to help care for Heidi, who was only four.

Now she was fourteen, and she was caring for her gran. Another warm tear rolled down her cheek. Her dad didn’t understand.

He never did.

He was always too busy being a cop, catching crims, protecting others. He had no idea how much of a burden Gran was becoming, how fast her illness was progressing. Heidi suspected a part of him didn’t even want to see it.

She wrapped her arms over her stomach, feeling so alone.

She missed Zach.

She missed riding her horse, and prayed Anthem was going to make it. She wanted to be with her mare, and they’d told her she couldn’t be anymore. That she should only come at the vet’s visiting hours, because everyone had their hands full at Lochlain and she was getting in their way.

She sniffed, rubbed the back of her hand across her nose, and went down the hall. Edging open the door to her grandmother’s room, Heidi listened carefully, hearing only the sounds of soft breathing in the dark. “Gran?” she whispered.

No answer.

She hesitated. Her dad would kill her.

But she didn’t care.

She left the house, closing the front door very quietly. Going round to the garage, she got her bike out, and began cycling the twelve miles along the dark farm roads to Lochlain Racing, her bike-light a small halo in the Australian night.

It was almost midnight when Dylan pushed open the door of Elias Memorial’s dimly lit waiting area.

Megan had dozed off in a chair at the far end of the room, the television mounted near the ceiling silently flickering with highlights from the latest country cup race at Muswell-brook.

Someone had given her a blanket and she’d pulled it up to her chin. The scarf that had tied back her hair was gone, and the wet strands had dried into thick soft blond waves that fell both seductively and innocently across her cheek. Louisa’s blue heelers lay sleeping at her feet. One of the dogs cocked open an eye, regarded him warily.

He knew their names now—Scout and Blue. He’d persuaded the clinic staff to allow the animals into the waiting area while Louisa had been wheeled in for emergency angioplasty. It hadn’t been a tough sell. Jenny, one of the emerg nurses, was engaged to Mitch Ogden, an old mate of Dylan’s. Mitch, Henry, Dylan and his older brother Liam used to hang together as young boys.

It was a time when Dylan was still a Smith, not a Hastings.

A time when he still had a brother.

Dylan’s step-dad had officially adopted him much later, long after Liam’s murder. Long after the family moved to Sydney, where his real father had turned into a morose drunk unable to come to terms with his son’s brutal death, and Dylan’s mum had finally remarried.

Dylan hesitated at the waiting-room doors, oddly conflicted by the old memories that really had no relevance to this moment, other than being somehow tied back to Louisa Fairchild. Arresting her had stirred it all back up to the surface. And it wasn’t something he wanted to deal with.

But at the same time, the soft and unexpected compassion blooming in his chest as he studied Megan sleeping in her chair was almost pleasurable.

She didn’t look so slick right now. She looked vulnerable. Dylan was born to care, to protect. To defend. And he felt these instincts rustle in him now.

It had been almost two hours since he’d left her here and gone back to the station to prepare the formal homicide charge.

He’d brought a copy with him.

Megan was going to be furious.

He removed his hat, dragging his hand over his hair before stepping into the room. He felt tired. Responsible for Louisa’s heart attack.

He’d judged Louisa’s stress at the station to be a display of guilt. Had he been too intent on hammering her for personal reasons—for a sense of retribution—to notice the warning signs?

Self-reproach bit at him.

As much as Dylan despised the old dame, he did not want to be the cause of her death. And with guilt came an even deeper sense of unease. This incident was going to provide D’Angelo with a devastating round of ammunition when he finally made it through those APEC barricades and saw firsthand what was going down with his client.

This case really could end up costing Dylan his job.

He’d seen it happen to better cops than himself. The firm of D’Angelo, Fischer and Associates had gone after a couple of Newcastle officers for alleged police brutality last year and won on procedural technicalities. Bloody pack of dingoes.

Dylan couldn’t afford to lose this job. It was his life. He’d returned to Pepper Flats specifically for this posting. It had been his way of trying to hold on to his family ten years ago, after Sally’s affair. And even when Sally had split before the first year was out, it had still proved a good place to raise his child.

And right now Dylan’s discomfort was compounded by the fact he hadn’t been able to make it home to talk to Heidi before she went to bed—because of this case. Because of Louisa.

He needed to get home in time to catch his kid before she left for school in the morning.

Pressure weighing heavy on him, Dylan took a seat near Megan, watching her, wondering if his involvement with Louisa Fairchild’s clan would, again, cost him life as he knew it.

Megan stirred, and something weird tightened in his chest.

Her eyes flickered open sleepily, then flared wide as she sat up sharply, startled to find him looking at her.

“Any word yet?” he asked. Waiting for Louisa to come out of surgery had bred an uneasy, if temporary, truce between them.

“No,” she said, pulling the blanket higher. She looked cold. And about as exhausted as he felt.

With all Louisa’s minions, Dylan wondered why Megan was the only one here tonight. Was the old woman really so alone?

“You the only family Louisa has in town at the moment?” he said.

She pushed a thick wave of hair back from her face and moistened her lips as she weighed up his reasons for asking. Beautiful lips, thought Dylan.

“My brother Patrick was here while you were gone,” she said. “He went back to the estate to look for some of Louisa’s medical papers. The doctors think she might be on a medication that isn’t documented in her clinic files. They want to be sure.”

“So you and Patrick must be the grandchildren of Betty Fairchild?”

Interest flared in her green eyes. She sat straighter. “You know about Betty?”

“I was born here. I grew up in the valley. Old-timers talk.” She studied him, curiosity beginning to hum about her with a kinetic energy that stirred something dark and quick in Dylan. She clearly wanted to ask more about Betty, and he wondered why. Surely she knew about her own grandmother.

“How come we haven’t seen you out in these parts before?” he said.

“You going to accuse me of gold-digging again?”

“Just wondering what brings you here, and where home is for you, Megan.”

She studied him in silence. “Sydney,” she said finally. “Our side of the family was estranged from Louisa for some time. She wanted to get to know us better, so we came to visit at her invitation.”

He nodded. He wanted to believe in her.

Then he thought of Sally, and glanced away. Be damned if they weren’t similar in looks. The kind of looks that really did it for him.

A doctor passed, and they both tensed. More minutes ticked by. Dylan got up and went to the nurses’ station to ask how things were progressing, and they said he should take a seat, that the doc would be out as soon as he had word.

He paced the waiting area like a caged lion, Megan watching him.

Another half hour passed.

He checked his watch, stopped pacing. “You want a coffee? Or tea or something? There’s a machine round the corner.”

Relief visibly rippled through her, and she smiled. “Coffee would be heaven.”

He brought it back to her, and their fingers brushed as she took the cup. Energy crackled so sharp and sudden between them that her eyes flashed up to meet his. Dylan swallowed.

He took one seat down from her, bending to scratch Scout behind the ear with one hand, holding his coffee in the other, discomfited by what was clearly a powerful and very mutual physical attraction between them.

“How old is your daughter?” she said, cradling her cup in both hands, blowing steam.

Dylan slanted his eyes to her. “Fourteen,” he said.

“You’re a single dad, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?”

She lifted her shoulder. “The way you were talking to her on the phone.”

A wry smile tempted his lips. “You’d make a good detective, Stafford.”

“I’d know better than to arrest my aunt for murder if I was one.”

His smile faded. He continued to hold her eyes. “I’d be remiss not to have brought her in, Megan,” he said quietly. “I do have a job to do.”

“Right.” She looked at her coffee. “So what kind of party did your daughter want to go to?”

“You heard that much from the phone call?”

“I was standing right there.”

He sipped his coffee, realizing he’d underestimated this woman. “It was a B&S ball,” he said. “Being held out on one of the farms north of here. They’re—”

“Bachelors and Spinsters. I know what they are. People dress up in fancy gowns and gumboots or whatever, drive for miles to some really isolated rural area, sit in some shed or paddock in mud or dirt and drink a ton of beer from kegs around a big bonfire while decked out in all their finery.”

This time he did smile. “And then they do burnouts in their parents’ sports utes on some poor farmer’s field.”

“Great big drunken orgies,” she said.

His jaw tensed.

“I’m not surprised a father wouldn’t want his teenage daughter to go. I wouldn’t either.” She assessed him quietly for a moment. “Does her mother have a say?”

He raised his brows. Megan was fishing. And very directly so. “Her mother hasn’t been around for the last ten years,” he said carefully.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She walked out one night, never looked back.” He swallowed the last of his coffee. “She’s a big-shot interior designer in London now. Exactly where she wants to be.”

“And you?”

He got up, feeling intensely uncomfortable. “I’m also exactly where I want to be,” he said, scrunching his cup and tossing it forcibly into the rubbish bin.

She watched him, her curiosity clearly piqued, and the fact she was personally interested in him sent a hot frisson through Dylan’s gut. Discomfort, or pleasure, perhaps an odd mix of both—he couldn’t be sure.

“You’ve been with the Pepper Flats station awhile, then?”

“Ten years.”

“That is a long time.”

He knew what she had to be thinking, that someone of his age and tenure should be working higher up in the Land Area Command, or handling one of the big-city beats. Not manning a rural three-man station.

Truth was he’d had it with metropolitan policing. His stint with the Sydney narc and homicide squads had eaten up his life like a cancer, sent his marriage down the tubes, and he’d had his fill of the grit, the death, the drugs, the graveyard shifts and overtime. Marriage problems on those beats were an occupational hazard. His had been no exception. Sally’s affair on top of the usual stress had been the real killer.

Dylan had taken a demotion in order to move his young family back to the Hunter Valley, where he’d hoped to make a last-ditch go of his relationship with Sally. He’d wanted to give his kid a life—a yard, a dog, a swimming pool, access to the bush. Country values.

As unconventional as it sometimes seemed these days, he’d always dreamed of an honest-to-God traditional family.

Perhaps it was because his own family had been decimated in childhood.

Hell alone knew why, but it was what he wanted, and he’d taken the career-killing move to do it.

He’d stayed for all those same reasons, for Heidi, even when Sally couldn’t hack it. He inhaled deeply. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Megan Stafford all that.

“I believe in community policing, Megan,” he said simply. “I believe in this town.” He checked his watch, and got up, suddenly needing space. He’d said too much. It was fine for him to ask questions—that was his job. But her asking questions felt personal. Too personal. And this woman made him want to share. That freaked him. He never shared this stuff.

“It’s got to be tough,” she said. “Being a single parent.”

“Why? You have kids?” he answered much too aggressively.

She snorted softly. “No, I don’t. But I was a fourteen-year-old girl once. So I do know something about that.” She looked up at him and smiled a smile that made Dylan’s heart tumble in spite of himself.

“And I had a father. A real alpha dad who pretty much wouldn’t let me do anything.” She regarded him with a shrewdness that wormed way too close to home. “He’d have liked to have kept his ‘baby’ girl in cotton wool for the rest of his life…” Her voice caught, a poignancy crossing her lovely features, and then she gave a half shrug. “He never got that chance. I lost him when I was about your daughter’s age.”

Dylan immediately wanted to ask what had happened, but just then the ward doors swung open with a crash, and the surgeon came striding out, removing his mask.

Megan surged to her feet, reached her hand out, and for an insane second Dylan thought she was going to grasp his own for support. But she caught herself, wrapping her arms tightly over her stomach instead. He was even more stunned to realize he’d have welcomed her touch, taken hold of her hand in that moment, and comforted.

That knowledge made his heart hammer, soft and steady, as he searched the approaching surgeon’s features for a sign of positive news.

“She’s going to be just fine,” Dr. Jack Burgess said with a warm smile as he neared.

“Oh, thank God!” Megan cupped her hands over her mouth, her eyes shimmering with emotion as they flashed to Dylan’s. But she froze at the look on Dylan’s face.

He knew why.

His cop mask was back, the moment between them lost to the night.

She turned back to the surgeon. “What exactly happened?” she asked.

“She had a myocardial infarction—your basic heart attack,” he said. “We performed an emergency angioplasty, inserting two drug-eluting stents, which are basically little medicated wire baskets that will help keep the arteries open. As long as Louisa rests and takes regular medication, she could be up and about within three or four days. It’s a fairly common procedure, and recovery is generally swift.”

“When can I see her, talk to her?”

The doc smiled at Megan. “You can see her now. The process was done under local anesthetic using a catheter inserted into her left femoral artery. But we did sedate her, so she’ll be a bit woozy.”

“So you expect her to be discharged in about four days, then, Jack?” Dylan asked. He was on first-name terms with the doc, as he was with most people in town.

“We may want to keep her under observation a little longer because there were a few minor complications. Otherwise, yes, about four days. She’s a fighter. But—” He directed a warm grin at Megan again, which for some reason irked Dylan. “That’s going to be part of the problem. Louisa needs to relax, and you’re going to have to be there to make sure she does, Megan.”

“What…kind of complications?” she asked.

“Her white-cell count was a little low, so we’d like to watch that—keep an eye out for infection at the site of insertion. We also want to make sure there are no drug interactions, but we should know more when Patrick gets back. And we want to watch for internal hemorrhaging. The potential for another heart attack still remains with this procedure, which is why she must stay calm.”

Dylan cleared his throat. “And when will she be fit to see me, doc?” he asked, feeling Megan’s eyes boring hotly into him.

The surgeon pursed his lips, his brow furrowing slightly. “You mean…in a professional capacity?”

“She remains in police custody.” Dylan raised the papers in his hand. “I do need to officially charge her as soon as—”

Megan whirled to face him. “You cannot possibly still be thinking of charging her?”

“—as soon as she’s well enough,” he finished his sentence, eyes remaining firmly on Jack.

“I’d wait until tomorrow, Dylan,” said the surgeon. “Check in with me then and I’ll be in a better position to make a judgment. Now—” he smiled again “—if you’ll both excuse me, I do have another patient. Megan, Jenny will show you to Louisa’s room. If you have any questions, ask her. She’ll page me if it’s urgent.”

“Of…of course. Thank you, doctor.” She spun to face Dylan as the surgeon left. “You’re insane.” She glowered at him. “I want to know how on earth you can think Louisa burned that barn full of horses? What makes you so certain she killed a man?”

“The murder weapon is registered to her—”

“Doesn’t mean she pulled the trigger! It’s just not logical to think an eighty-year-old is going to sneak out of her house late at night to go kill her neighbor in someone else’s barn miles away. And there’s no way in hell Louisa—a woman everyone knows loves horses more than people, and who owes her livelihood to the industry—would burn someone else’s Thoroughbreds.” Frustration burned into her eyes, making them crackle deep emerald against her tired complexion, and all Dylan could think about was sex.

“What else do you have on her?” she demanded.

“Megan, we have a witness placing her at Lochlain Racing shortly before the blaze broke out. The description of the slate-gray Holden seen fleeing the arson scene matches her truck. The soil in her Holden’s tires was also a match to Lochlain soil. The courts had been about to rule in Whittleson’s favor on the Lake Dingo ownership issue. Phone records show Louisa called Whittleson’s mobile at Sydney airport just before he was due to board a plane for a safari in Kenya. Then he mysteriously abandoned that flight to head to Lochlain, where he was killed in the barn. With her gun. A weapon she used to shoot him before.”

Her brows drew low. “Oh, and tell me why she might have lured Sam to Lochlain Racing?”

Dylan had no idea. It didn’t make sense. Yet.

However, Whittleson’s phone records showed he’d placed a call to his son Daniel, the head trainer at Lochlain, just prior to receiving Louisa’s call at the airport. The incoming call before that had come from Whittleson’s lawyer, who later confirmed he’d called his client to let him know the lake-ownership issue was likely going to come down in Whittleson’s favor. Whittleson could conceivably have tried to call his son with this good news, and upon getting Daniel’s voice mail, decided to abandon the safari and drive to Lochlain to tell him personally. It was, after all, news that would save Whittleson Stud, which had meant absolutely everything to the debtridden sixty-one-year-old. Life had finally been on the upturn for the Whittlesons the night Sam was murdered.

“You’re not her lawyer, Megan,” Dylan said quietly. “And I really am not at liberty to discuss the investigation further with you.”

“Damn you,” she muttered in exasperation. “For a moment there I…I thought…” She dragged her hand through her hair, and Dylan noticed she was shaking. “I don’t know what I thought. That maybe you were a nice guy, or…something.”

Her words cut deeper than he should allow them. “I’m a cop, Megan. Just doing my job.”

Her jaw tensed with sudden resolve. “Robert D’Angelo will be here within a few hours,” she said, eyes searing into his. “And I’ll tell him how you pressured Louisa in that interrogation room, without the benefit of her legal counsel. It was obvious she wasn’t well. That fact was caught on your own interview tape. You totally disregarded the fact she is eighty years old—elderly—and thus vulnerable. You precipitated her heart attack, Sergeant. You nearly killed her.” Megan’s voice was clear and firm. “And if you continue to pursue this case against my aunt, I can guarantee D’Angelo will take you down for it.”

Something very personal, and very hot flickered through Dylan. “Is that what you want, Megan, to take me down?”

She swallowed, something reciprocal flickering darkly in her eyes. “What I want,” she whispered, “is for you to stay away from my aunt. You heard what Dr. Burgess said. She needs to relax. I don’t want you going in there and giving her another heart attack and actually killing her this time.”

He stepped closer, a combative anger beginning to hum deep in his gut as he bent close to her ear, lowering his voice to make sure he was out of anyone’s earshot except hers. “Seeing as you’ve taken the gloves off, Ms. Stafford, I have to admit I’m asking myself who’d benefit if she did kick the bucket? Or is it a bit too soon for you and your brother? Is that why you want me to drop this case, so you and Patrick have a bit more time to kowtow to the grande dame before she cashes in?”

“Oh, that is low.”

She was so close, he could smell her, kiss her if he dared, and she was making him hot enough to do it. “If you didn’t come for the inheritance, Megan,” he said, his voice thick, low, “then why are you really both here out of the blue?”

She blushed, eyes flickering.

And Dylan knew a liar when he saw one.

He’d stomached his fair share in police interrogation rooms, and her reaction made his heart turn cold, his unbidden lust for her simply hardening his resolve to win this one.

“How much do you really know about your aunt, anyway?” he said, watching her eyes closely, waiting for them to give her away again, trying to ignore the faint scent of sun lotion that lingered on her skin, reminding him of family summers at Bateman’s Bay, of happier times. “Because I suspect I know Louisa a helluva lot better than you do, Megan Stafford. I know just what she is capable of. I’ve seen the Thoroughbred set close ranks around their own. I’ve seen her and D’Angelo’s father buy ‘justice’ before.”

He’d seen it thirty years ago, when he was eight years old, and his brother Liam eleven. It had been the incident that tore his family to shreds, forcing them from their modest home in the Hunter.

It was what had ultimately made Dylan become a cop. And now that he was back, now that it was within his power, he was not about to let her kind get away with murder—again.

“If you want to be a part of the Fairchild team, if you want to take me down personally, then, Megan, you and I are going to be at war.”

He turned and headed for the doors, heart thudding. He needed to focus. He needed to cut Megan from his mind. She’d already proven an emotional distraction he couldn’t afford right now. His priority was to find officers he could rotate on twenty-four-hour guard outside Louisa’s door, and he knew it was going to be an issue. He couldn’t use Peebles. He was a probationary cop. It was against protocol.

His phone rang as he reached the hospital doors. He unhooked it from his belt, snapped it open. “Hastings,” he barked.

It was an officer at the Scone station. He said a Scone patrol officer had picked up Heidi on her bike. She’d had an accident, but she was fine.

Dylan froze on the spot. “Where is she?”

“We took her home.”

Confusion spiraled through his brain. Heidi was supposed to have been at home, asleep. “What happened?”

“She was cycling along a dark section of Burumby Road a couple of hours ago when an oncoming sedan swerved to avoid a wallaby, running her bike into a ditch. The vehicle didn’t hit her, but she’s quite shaken up. The driver called it in, tried to help her. He was worried about a young girl that age being out alone at night on that stretch of road.”

White-cold fear and anger lanced through Dylan.

He shot a look at Megan, who was watching him intently from the nurses’ station. And he felt suddenly, inexplicably, naked. Vulnerable.

Furious.

With himself. With her. With everything.

He hadn’t realized just how much he’d needed to talk, to lean on someone with his family issues. She had made him feel that need.

And suddenly her compassion, her interest, the way she’d drawn him out, felt deceptive. Deceitful. He felt cheated. Lured.

He spun on his boot heels and stormed through the hospital doors into the pale dawn, the threads of his life unraveling at his feet.

Be damned if he was going to let the Fairchild clan take him down again.

He wasn’t going to lose what little control he still had left over his family.

Over himself.

This time his family would not run. He would stand up and fight. And this time there would be only one winner.

Him.

His family.

Chapter Four

Dylan arrived home as Heidi was getting ready for school. She was pale, eyes avoiding his as she ate her cereal at the round oak table in front of sliding glass doors that overlooked their garden and the fields beyond.

He had to forcibly tamp down a surge of anger. She was safe. That was the main thing. He closed the front door quietly behind him, and entered the kitchen area, struck suddenly by how much his daughter’s thick blond hair resembled Megan’s—and Sally’s—drawing another parallel between the two women he didn’t care to see.

He’d made a terrible mistake falling for Sally.

They’d both been too young to start a family, and completely incompatible on any long-term basis.

Sally had been sexy, flirtatious, artsy, full of vibrant laughter and energy, and it had translated into a dynamic experience in bed. But outside the bedroom her craving for the continual excitement of a metropolis, alternative lifestyles, and the flattery of men, had begun to cost them.

Sally had needed to be the centre of attention, and loved going out to parties all the time.

Dylan was more traditional. He liked the outback, bushwalking, the ocean. Winter nights by the fire. He liked things simple. Wholesome. Sally called it boring.

But by then they were married, and things had started going sideways.

And when she’d become pregnant at twenty-four, she’d felt overweight, unhappy and lonely with Dylan doing long, gritty hours of overtime to support them.

When Heidi was born Sally had detested being cooped at home with only other young mothers for company. She’d rebelled and had a raging affair, seeking validation in another man, an artist.

Her infidelity had completely broken Dylan.

He was a one-woman guy. A lifer. When he fell, he fell hard and forever. And falling for Sally had cost him a mighty big chunk of his life.

He’d avoided getting involved with other women while raising Heidi solo. He’d dated, but only superficially. His focus was his family.

“Hey there, kiddo,” Dylan said gently.

Heidi said nothing, just stared at her cereal.

He heaved out a lungful of air, removed his Glock, locked it in the gun safe, and undid his heavy gun belt, setting it on the counter with a soft clunk. He sat down, rubbing his neck, his back stiff.

“Talk to me, Heidi.”

She pulled her mouth into a tight pout, glaring at her cereal bowl, stirring milk with her spoon as she hunkered down behind the super-size cereal box.

Dylan moved the box aside. “Heidi, I’m not going to be mad,” he said, struggling to hold on to his temper. “I just want to know where you were going last night.”

Silence.

Irritation itched at him. Their dog Muttley scratched at the glass door, and Dylan got up to let him out. His mother usually let Muttley out first thing in the morning, but she hadn’t come down for breakfast yet, which was unusual for her. Tension knotted in his shoulders.

He took a seat opposite Heidi. “Were you going to the party?”

Her eyes flashed up at him. “No. I needed to see Anthem.”

He waited a beat just to make sure his voice came out neutral. “Why so late? Why didn’t you wait until this afternoon, after school?”

Her bottom lip started to wobble a little. Dylan’s chest tightened. “Heidi? Talk to me. Please.”

She looked up slowly, and was about to say something when they heard Dylan’s mum coming down the stairs.

Heidi cast her eyes down, then suddenly pushed her chair back from the table, grabbed her schoolbag and started for the door, unfinished cereal left on the table.

“Heidi!”

“I’m going to miss my bus,” she snapped, and the door slammed shut behind her.

Dylan cursed and looked up at the ceiling.

“Morning, Timmy,” said his mother, moving towards the kettle and filling it. “Did you sleep well?”

“It’s Dylan, Mum.”

She looked momentarily confused. “Of course,” she said softly, plugging in the kettle. “I know that.”

Dylan got up to let Muttley back in, his heart sinking. He felt flat. Tired. His mother was worse than he thought. This was the second time in a week she’d called him by his brother’s nickname.

A brother who’d been dead for thirty years.

He needed to take June for another checkup. That would require a trip to the city, impossible right now. He also had to find a way to break through to Heidi. And he had to get back to work. He’d had no sleep, but no one else would be in the station today.

Dylan had also been left with no choice but to place Peebles outside Louisa’s hospital room for the first shift, short of doing it himself. And that wasn’t going to happen—he still had an investigation to conduct, because no matter how he looked at it, things were just not adding up with Louisa the way he’d like them to.

He stood for a moment at the glass door, absently studying the smoky haze in the distance as he rolled the facts over in his mind again.

As much as he hated to admit it, Megan had hit on the key thing troubling him. It was possible Louisa’s gun had been stolen from the cabinet, and that she hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger.

But she could also have hired someone to do the job. That might explain the arson. Because again, he was forced to agree with Megan—he didn’t see Louisa as capable of torching horses.

He needed better evidence against her, or evidence of an accomplice, or they were going to end up having no case.

And there was that other nagging question in his mind. Why Lochlain? Why had the murder and arson happened there? He needed to find that link. The only connection he could see with Lochlain Racing so far was that the homicide victim was the father of Daniel Whittleson, who worked as Lochlain’s head trainer.

Secretly, Dylan was relieved Louisa was in hospital.

It bought him time to dig deeper before having to officially charge her and get her in front of a magistrate.

He rubbed the back of his neck again, trying to ease the stiffness. What he really needed was a full-on homicide team working this, as would ordinarily be the case. But until the APEC stuff eased off, he was it.

And that was the other thing Megan was right about— D’Angelo was going to go for him personally, potentially crucifying him on points of police procedure, like putting the probationary cop outside Louisa’s door.

Damn, but he was in a no-win situation.

Megan sped along the country road, autumn wind in her hair, the vineyards, vibrant with reds, oranges and gold, flashing by in a blur.

She’d spent the morning with D’Angelo and Louisa at Elias Memorial, rehashing the arrest, going over every little detail that had led up to the heart attack. When they’d finished, D’Angelo had pushed his glasses up his Roman nose and told them with his classic trademark equanimity that he would personally make Detective Sergeant Dylan Hastings his target in getting this arrest overturned.

D’Angelo had been particularly pleased to discover the probationary rank of the constable guarding Louisa’s door. He’d noted this was against NSW policing regulations, adding that police staffing problems in the Hunter LAC were going to be their ace in the hole.

So was the fact Louisa had not yet been officially charged.

D’Angelo’s criminal team was now in the process of putting together a case to nullify the arrest, focusing on police ineptitude, Dylan’s in particular.

Megan felt conflicted by this.

That wasn’t justice. Not in her book. That was legal chess.

It went to the heart of why she’d dropped criminal law.

In her mind, the one and only way to exonerate her aunt and put a simple end to this was to find the real killer, and the cop sure as hell wasn’t going to be looking any further—he thought he had his suspect.

Which was why Megan was on the road to Lochlain Racing now. She wanted to see the arson site herself, speak to owner Tyler Preston, find something—anything—that might help solve this case.

But a cold and faint finger of doubt touched her again as she turned onto a dirt road, slowing for some riders, the sun warm on her arms.

What had Dylan meant by saying Louisa had bought justice before? And why had Louisa’s pistol been used as the murder weapon?

Megan drove up the Lochlain driveway, and pulled up under a tall stand of gum trees alongside one of the farm outbuildings.As she got out of the car, the first thing she saw was a young teen in a navy-and-white school uniform on some risers near an empty dressage ring in the distance. She was bent forward, face buried in her hands, crying. Not just crying, but sobbing, her frame physically racked by emotion.

Megan glanced around. There was no one in the immediate vicinity. She hesitated, then walked up to the girl. And as she neared, something in her heart squeezed.

The child reminded her of herself at that age.

Perhaps it was the thick honey-blond hair in two pigtails, the proximity of a dressage ring, the scent of horses in the air—all combining to prod loose a certain memory thread. It was at about the same age as this girl, Megan had lived to ride.

Dressage had been her performance class, a passion passed down from Granny Betty to her mother to her.

She’d lost touch with the sport after her mum and dad’s accident. Life had changed after that. She’d been sent off to boarding school, the horses sold. But right at this moment she felt the old passion stirring oddly, deeply, inside her once again.

“Hey there,” she said, edging onto the wooden bench alongside the girl. “You okay?”

The teen stilled, then sniffing and wiping her face, looked up cautiously. Her cheeks were streaked and blotchy, but she had incredibly beautiful big green eyes. Again an odd sensation gripped Megan. She had a weird feeling of looking back in time, at herself.

“My name is Megan Stafford,” she said softly. “Can I help?”

The girl swiped her eyes, looking embarrassed, then shook her head.

“Did something just happen?”

She glanced away, stared at the empty ring, her gaze shifting slowly towards the fire-damaged barns that had been cordoned off with construction fencing and checkered blue-and-white crime tape. Her eyes brimmed with fresh tears and she moistened her lips. “My horse, Anthem—” she said, eyes fixed on the charred ruins “—was injured in the fire.”

Megan’s heart clutched. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Did… did you lose her?”

The girl bit her quivering lip as tears spilled silently down her cheeks again. “I…might. She’s got smoke inhalation damage. I don’t know if she’s ever going to be okay, and…” She was racked by another deep sob. “I can’t be with her because the vet is in there with the other horses now. Anthem was doing all right, and…and then suddenly there was a whole lot of fluid in her lungs yesterday…” Her voice choked as a wrenching surge of raw emotion took hold of her.

Megan instinctively put her arm around the teen, drawing her close, just holding her, stroking her hair. She recalled how many times in her own youth she’d wished her mother had been around to do just this, hold her—how alone in the world she’d felt after her parents had died.

Megan hadn’t thought about this in a long while.

After a few minutes the girl looked up sheepishly with redrimmed eyes. “Thank you,” she said, wiping her face. “I’m sorry. I…I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.”

“It’s okay, hon. You need to let these things out.” Megan had a sense the child had also desperately needed the tactile comfort of another human. “Are you here all alone?”

She nodded. “I got off the school bus here because I was hoping they’d let me see Anthem. I usually ride her on Tuesdays, but…” She sighed deeply. “They’re so busy with all the other horses and Anthem is not a Thoroughbred. I’m worried they’re not watching her closely enough.” She glanced up. “Anthem’s depressed. I think she needs special attention or…she might just give up.”

“I’m sure they’re treating all the horses the same, sweetie.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. If we had money, I’d take her someplace she could get individual care. I bet if she was an expensive racer they’d have gotten her out of the fire earlier. She wouldn’t have been left until last.”

“I’m sure it didn’t happen like that.”

She looked up with an expression that made Megan’s heart ache. “I’m sure it did.”

“Why is Anthem stabled here?”

The girl sucked in a shaky breath as galahs, pink and white, flitted and chattered in the tree above. “Tyler Preston, the owner, was giving me lessons.”

“Dressage?”

“No, Anthem and I have been working on that ourselves. Tyler teaches a couple of us local kids the basic stuff. He’s really good—he used to have his own TV show. He gave my friend Zach a part-time job as a groom, and his payment is the lessons. Zach uses one of Tyler’s horses when he rides here, but he has his own at Huntington Stud, where his dad works as a trainer. And because my dad has a stupid job and doesn’t make enough money, he can’t afford stabling costs or lessons anywhere, so Tyler offered for free.” Her big green eyes flashed up to Megan. “You see? Anthem is not a priority, and I’m worried the vet is going to neglect her since he’s so busy with the prize horses.”

“I tell you what, I’ll talk to Tyler and get the low-down, how about that? I’m here to talk to him about the fire anyway.”

The teenager stared at Megan in bemused silence as she digested this. “Why would you do that for me?” she asked very quietly.

The question caught Megan off guard. “Why wouldn’t I?” She hesitated a moment, then smiled gently. “Besides, you remind me of someone I used to know, someone who used to love riding with all her heart.”

“What happened to her?”

“She forgot to follow her heart. Come—” She held out her hand. “We’ll go talk to Tyler, and then I’ll give you a ride home. Where do you live?”

“Pepper Flats, near the village,” she said, getting up, dusting off her school uniform. “My name is Heidi. How do you know Tyler, Megan?”

“I don’t. Louisa Fairchild is my great-aunt and I’m visiting, and…well, I’m helping her out with a bit of a problem.”

They walked together over the gravel driveway toward the main house. “So you’re not riding at all at the moment, Heidi?” said Megan.

She shook her head. “You know, Louisa has some really good dressage horses and she might be able to spare one. Would you be interested in riding at Fairchild for a while? Just until Anthem is better, of course.” She grinned. “Besides, I’d enjoy the company. I think I’d like to ride again myself.”

“Why’d you stop?”

Megan sucked in a deep breath redolent with the scents of the fall air—eucalyptus, the tinge of distant smoke, hay, horses. It was a grounding scent, earthy. “I stopped when my parents died,” she said. “They were killed in a car accident, and my brother and I were sent to boarding school. Life sort of changed after that. We didn’t really have a family anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

She put her arm around the teen. “Hey, it’s okay. Brookfield ended up being a great school and—”

Heidi jerked to a stop. “You have got to be kidding me! You went to Brookfield art school?”

“Yes.”

Her hand went to her chest. “Oh, my gosh. That’s where I want to go.”

“It’s a good school. I’m sure you’d like it.”

She pulled a face. “We can’t afford it.”

“There are bursaries. I could always talk to someone.”

She stared, open mouthed. “You really could do that?”

“Well, I might if you show me some of your art and tell me a bit more about yourself,” she said with a warm smile. “You haven’t even told me your surname—”

“Megan!” a powerful male voice called out to them.

They both turned to see a tall dark-haired man in a cattleman’s hat, his left arm in a sling, striding towards them, three border collies at his heels.

“That’s Tyler. I thought you said you didn’t know him?”

“I called ahead. He’s expecting me.” Megan grinned. “And I guess he recognized Louisa’s Aston Martin.” She laughed. “Louisa claims it’s the Thoroughbred of motor cars.”

“That’s our place,” Heidi said, pointing to a rambling brick house behind which a field of tall dry grasses bent softly in the breeze. In the distance kangaroos grazed under eucalyptus trees fringing a ridge.

Megan slowed the convertible, pleased to finally be getting the hang of changing gears. In spite of its flash she liked the way the car’s manual shift connected her with driving—it made her feel more grounded. Everything about this valley seemed to be changing her in subtle ways, reminding her who she really was. What she liked.

Turning into the driveway, Megan caught a glimpse of a swimming pool at the rear of the house. She pulled to a stop in front of the brick garage. A tire swing hung from the branches of a gnarled deciduous tree, dog toys dotted the front lawn, and someone had carefully tended a lavenderfringed bed of iceberg roses that were peaking with a soft blush of pink. Feminine flowers, thought Megan. “Your mother must have a real green thumb,” she said, opening the driver’s-side door.

Heidi shot her an odd look. “My gran planted those.”

“They’re beautiful.” In fact, there was something genuine about the whole scene. It held a warm sense of family so welcoming and simple that it snagged Megan’s chest forcibly, and she had to stop for a second to analyze why.

Perhaps it was because she’d come to the Hunter Valley looking for her own roots and a sense of her own family, hoping to find it by discovering what had happened between Betty and Louisa. Maybe she even harbored a subliminal desire to bond with her great-aunt herself.

But as Megan climbed out of the convertible, the front door of the house flung open, and she froze.

Storming out of the house, bare-chested, damp tousled hair, bleached jeans slung low at his waist, a hairy mutt at his heels, and daggers in his clear blue eyes was…Detective Sergeant Dylan Hastings.

Her jaw dropped.

“Is that your dad!” she whispered to Heidi. Then it hit her—he’d said he had a fourteen-year-old child.

She’d just given the cop’s daughter a ride home.

This warm family house belonged to the detective trying to nail her aunt for murder, the man who’d declared personal war on the entire Fairchild clan.

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