THE BRIDES OF BELLA LUCIA

A family torn apart by secrets, reunited by marriage

When William Valentine returned from the war, as a testament to his love for his beautiful Italian wife, Lucia, he opened the first Bella Lucia restaurant in London. The future looked bright, and William had, he thought, the perfect family.

Now William is nearly ninety, and not long for this world, but he has three top London restaurants with prime spots throughout Knightsbridge and the West End. He has two sons, John and Robert, and grown-up grandchildren on both sides of the Atlantic who are poised to take this small gastronomic success story into the twenty-first century.

But when William dies, and the family fight to control the destiny of the Bella Lucia business, they discover a multitude of long-buried secrets, scandals, the threat of financial ruin and, ultimately, two great loves they hadn’t even dreamed of: the love of a lifelong partner, and the love of a family reunited….

Wanted: Outback Wife by Ally Blake

Wanted: Outback Wife
Ally Blake

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE BRIDES OF BELLA LUCIA

A family torn apart by secrets, reunited by marriage

First there was double the excitement as we met twins Rebecca and Rachel Valentine

Having the Frenchman’s Baby, Rebecca Winters Coming Home to the Cowboy, Patricia Thayer

Then we joined Emma Valentine as she got a royal welcome this September

The Rebel Prince, Raye Morgan

Now, take a trip to the Outback and meet Louise Valentine’s long-lost sister, Jodie

Wanted: Outback Wife, Ally Blake

On cold November nights catch up with newcomer Daniel Valentine

Married Under the Mistletoe, Linda Goodnight

Snuggle up with sexy Jack Valentine over Christmas

Crazy About the Boss, Teresa Southwick

In the New Year join Melissa as she heads off to a desert kingdom

The Nanny and the Sheikh, Barbara McMahon

And don’t miss the thrilling end to the Valentine saga in February

The Valentine Bride, Liz Fielding

To my Sirens–Hulda, Nic, Ola, and Trish–for being the best listeners, huggers, and champions a girl could ever want. Smoochy kisses.

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 ONE

HAPPY hour at The Cave was drawing to a close, but Jodie didn’t mind at all.

She had used up every second of employment her working visa had allowed so now her final weeks in Melbourne were hers to do with as she pleased. And it pleased her to sit on a bar stool twirling a daisy-shaped earring she had made from scratch earlier that day, sharing a bottle of red wine that someone else had paid for, and enjoying every last second that she wasn’t in London.

‘Where’s Mandy?’ her housemate Lisa asked. ‘I have to start work in eight minutes and those customers who haven’t booked a table won’t turn themselves away.’

‘Beach Street is back on in less than three minutes,’ Louise added, her clipped London accent so obvious amongst the neighbouring Aussie strine. ‘No matter how exiting Mandy’s big surprise, after the break Angelo is about to find out that Cait was once married to his brother, so her announcement will be nothing but white noise to me.’

‘She’ll be here,’ Jodie said chirpily. The fact that Louise, the half-sister she had never even known existed until two weeks before, had turned up on her doorstep amidst her own family drama wasn’t lost on Jodie. But she began throwing pretzel chunks at Louise, who was glancing at the overhead television every few seconds, all the same.

‘If you do that one more time, Jodie,’ Louise warned, ‘when the next ad break comes along I will retaliate.’

Jodie grinned, but she stopped throwing pretzels at Louise and threw one into her mouth instead, amazed anew that this tall, cool, sophisticated, blonde product of the infamous restaurant family, the Valentines of London, was related to her—mousy little Jodie Simpson.

It was obvious Louise got the glamour goods from their shared mother, whereas Jodie wasn’t sure what she had acquired from Patricia except a lifelong pain in the neck. But thankfully all that was back in London, far far away from friends and fun on this fine Melbourne evening.

‘I’ve got it!’ Mandy cried out, rushing in as fast as her pencil-thin power skirt and two-inch heels would allow. She waved a piece of paper high above her head.

‘If that’s a doctor’s certificate telling you rotten Jake has finally given you something only penicillin will cure, I don’t want to know about it,’ Lisa called back.

‘Funny,’ Mandy said. ‘Now leave my love life out of this; this magical piece of paper is all about Jodie’s.’

‘My love life?’ Jodie wheezed while coughing up a pretzel crumb that had lodged in her throat.

‘Yep,’ Mandy said. ‘I have found a way for you to stay in Australia.’

That got everyone’s attention. Lisa stopped staring at her watch. Jodie’s mouth went so dry she wouldn’t have had a clue if she had been drinking red wine or juiced sawdust. Louise spun on her seat leaving Beach Street’s Angelo and Cait to sort out their worries on their own.

Jodie felt a pang of guilt lodge between her shoulder blades. Until that moment Louise had had no idea that she was considering not returning to London. In Jodie Louise would have a close friend outside the Valentine family she was feeling so angry toward right now, and a sister to be at her side when she met her real mother for the first time.

And though Jodie so wanted to be that person for Louise, she wanted to be in Melbourne more. She waved a quick hand at Louise, intimating she would explain everything later.

‘How? I’ve tried everything,’ Jodie managed, ‘including writing letters to the Australian Department of Immigration telling them how much I want to be one of you.’

Jodie looked from Mandy to Lisa. She would have given her right ear to be like them—bright, breezy, and free as the wind. And being that way in Melbourne.

‘But I still have to be on a plane back to London on the thirtieth of December,’ Jodie said, letting her hand flop back to the table.

Mandy grinned. ‘I have found a way.’

‘And it has something to do with Jodie’s love life?’ Louise asked, sounding anxious.

Mandy nodded. ‘Dust off your best bridesmaid’s frock; we are going to marry your sister off to an Australian.’

Jodie felt herself blanch and blush all at once. ‘You want to marry me…off?’

Mandy looked down at the computer printout she held through a pair of tiny reading glasses. ‘The marriage would only have to last two years. At first you’ll get a Temporary Spouse Visa and at the end of those two years, once you achieve your Permanent Visa, you can divorce the guy and be free.’

Free. Of all the words Mandy could have chosen to sell the idea that was the one that worked. For a child from a split home it certainly rang in her ears a lot more comfortably than marriage, or divorce…

But surely it couldn’t be that simple.

‘You and Lisa are both natives, yet Lisa has been single since I’ve known her and the closest thing to a long-term boyfriend you have managed to locate is rotten Jake. What makes you think I can do it in two and a half months?’

Lisa looked back down at her watch again, neatly avoiding Jodie’s comment.

‘One and a half,’ Mandy said, also ignoring the point.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You have to fill out an Intention To Marry form one month and one day before marrying. So at the outside, you have six weeks in which to find your man. Considering it has been a month since you starting putting big red crosses on your calendar in a passive-aggressive reminder of the looming Day You Have To Leave, I had my team make it top priority. As of today you have your own website!’

‘Website?’ Jodie repeated.

‘It’s called www.ahusbandinahurry.com,’ Mandy said, puffing up proudly.

Louise, who had been elegantly sipping on a Cosmopolitan, coughed inelegantly into her drink.

Jodie sunk her head onto her hands so as not to see the amplified mortification that would surely be in Louise’s eyes. ‘But what if anyone I know has seen it? What if my mother has seen it?’

‘Unless she is trawling the Internet looking for a cute British bride, then I think you’ll be fine. Besides, we did you proud. We used that photo of you from the Christmas in July barbecue on the home page.’

‘Not the action shot where I was laughing so hard you could see my tonsils as I fell off my chair by way of too much champagne?’ Jodie asked.

‘That’s the one,’ Mandy said, grinning. ‘The men at work voted that one their favourite. They all said you seemed, and I quote: “cute, adorable, and fun”.’

‘So why not just set her up with one of the guys from your work?’ Louise asked. Several faint frown lines marred her forehead. She wasn’t as aloof to the situation as she was making out. But Jodie couldn’t deal with what those frown lines meant. Not yet.

Jodie was beginning to see the possibilities. There was any number of reasons why two people could happily marry for convenience’s sake. And considering this was her last chance at staying in Australia, the place where she had found fabulous friends, a growing number of people who stopped her on the street to ask her where they could buy the unique floral-inspired earrings she herself created, and where she had begun to delight in her youth, maybe, just maybe, she could pull this off.

That was the clincher. After years of being the adult in the family, the one who remembered to pick up milk, the one who kept the house free of dust bunnies, the one who remembered to pay the gas bill, the one who made sure her mum got to work in time—when she managed to hold down a job—Jodie felt hopeful that at last she had a chance to find the youth inside herself.

‘Oh, no,’ Mandy said, ‘once they knew she was looking for a husband, even a two-year one, they backed away like I had pulled a shotgun.’

And there was the rub.

Jodie looked to Lisa, who had been quiet through all of this. ‘What do you think?’

Lisa held up both hands before slipping off the seat and backing away. ‘You don’t want to know what I think. Besides, can’t talk, I’m now on the clock.’

‘She has some old-fashioned view that you should only date, marry, sleep with a guy if you’re in love.’ Mandy shivered as though that would have saved her from a whole lot of fun. ‘But I’m not expecting you to worry about any of that. Leave it all to me.’

Jodie had every intention of leaving it all to Mandy. Though it wasn’t in her make-up to come out and say it, she needed help. For there was no way on God’s green earth she was ever going back to London. To that oppressive apartment. To that half life…

But the real question was: what sort of man would give up two years of his life to marry her, to be her husband, after knowing her for less than a month?

Heath swung back and forth on the love seat on the veranda of his big old home, staring out across the flat red dirt of Jamesons Run.

A blood-red sunset glowed across the plain. A nimble dry wind whipped along the dusty ground so that the golden kangaroo grass seemed to be waving toward the grand old willow dipping its sad leaves into the dam at the centre of his main paddock.

He could do with rain—and not just to damp down the dust storms that were springing up from nowhere more often than not these days. Rain would be a break in routine of stifling hot temperatures that spoke of an oppressive summer to come. Rain would be a change.

‘Knock, knock.’

Heath looked over his shoulder to find his older sister Elena standing in the doorway with a paper plate drooping under the weight of mixed desserts. An outfit of a floral dress and stockings on such a warm day could only mean one thing—a wedding or a funeral. And there had not been a wedding at Jamesons Run in years.

He let his riding-boot-clad feet drag against the wooden floor until the seat stopped swinging so she could sit beside him.

‘I brought this for you before the Crabbe sisters had the chance,’ Elena said. ‘No doubt they are still squabbling over whether you might prefer Carol’s custard tart or Rachel’s mud cake.’

Heath smiled, and he only hoped he had managed to make it reach his eyes. His appetite seemed to have departed him since the moment he had picked up the phone four days earlier to learn that Marissa was gone, but he swallowed a bite of Elena’s home-made pavlova to keep her happy. His mouth was so dry that the sticky passion-fruit topping caught on his palate. Now he would be prying pavlova loose with his heavy tongue all night.

‘How you doing, little brother?’ Elena asked, patting him on the knee. ‘You holding up okay?’

He nodded, though he turned away for a brief moment so she wouldn’t see his frown. Why was she worried about him? Cameron was the one she should have been comforting. Cameron was the one who had lost his wife. He had only lost…what? A friend? His last remaining link to the life he had once thought he might have?

‘Do we have enough ice?’ he asked, tidily avoiding the question. ‘I can run into town to get more.’

‘We have plenty of ice,’ Elena said. Her patting stopped. ‘Though I’m sure it won’t occur to Cameron to thank you, he appreciates you holding Marissa’s wake here. And when you took over for him during the eulogy, oh, that fair broke my heart then and there. You’re a good kid, Heath.’

‘A thirty-six-year-old kid,’ he reminded her. ‘Which makes you—’

‘A lady of indiscriminate age,’ Elena said, cutting him off quick smart. ‘So when are we going to get to use this big old place for more than Christmas parties, local community meetings and funerals? When do we all get to come here to celebrate your wedding?’

‘Ha! I’m surprised you and the Crabbe sisters haven’t lined Cam and me up for a double wedding by now.’

As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. They were cruel and hurtful and born of the fact that he barely believed the words even as he said them. He stood and moved to the edge of the veranda, wrapping his hands around the wooden railing until a bunch of splinters poked deep enough to hurt.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was out of order.’

‘And completely understandable, considering. Does the thought of settling down frighten you that much?’

Settling down? That was what she thought had kept him from the altar all this time? He had settled down a decade ago. What scared him was that if one day he settled down at Jamesons Run with someone else it meant that he would never leave. But now, on this tragic day, it no longer seemed the biggest problem in his life.

‘What if I told you that right this moment I am feeling the very opposite?’ he said. He turned and leant his backside against the railing and folded his arms and stared his big sister down.

‘Well, kid, I would say thank the gods.’ She stood and grabbed him by the arms, giving him a big kiss on the cheek. ‘Is there a particular woman who has brought about this change of heart?’

One woman? Absolutely. But she was gone now. Not just gone from his life, but gone from all life. And it had taken a shock of that magnitude to knock him from the path of his life.

‘None in particular,’ he said. His reasons were his to wrangle alone. ‘So what do you think? Should I go and give the Crabbe sisters the fright of their life by proposing to one of them right now?’

The Crabbe girls were as sensible a choice as any. He knew from past experience of country-dance bottom-pinching, all instigated by one or the other of them, that they would not have been immune to such an idea. But no matter how hard he tried to picture himself in the role of doting husband with a good little country wife by his side, he found he in all good conscience could not. It felt like too much of the same.

And what he craved so deeply was change.

‘No need,’ Elena said, reaching into her purse for a pile of yellowed, creased A4 paper. ‘I’ve already signed you up to some dating websites, just in case.’

‘Websites?’ Heath parroted back. ‘Aren’t they all just fronts for three-hundred-pound, sixty-year-old Russians looking to relocate?’

Elena’s responding sigh was melodramatic. ‘I’ll have you know over half all new relationships forged by people in their thirties come from meeting over the Internet.’

After a pause, Heath said, ‘You just made that up.’

‘I did. But it sounds good, don’t you think? Now I’ve found some girls I like, and some I know you’ll like. All are Melbourne women. Twenty-seven to thirty-five. Single. Looking for love, not just fun.’ She glanced at him through narrowed eyes.

He took the pages, skimming through pictures and vital statistics of a dozen perfectly attractive young women.

One page about halfway through had stuck to another with a glob of baby food. It caught his eye for the fact that it had a big red cross through it. Why, he had no idea, for the woman in the picture looked absolutely worth investigating.

She was laughing so hard he could almost feel the energy radiating from the page. Something about the angle of the photo made him feel kind of dizzy, as if he were about to tip over if he didn’t plant his feet.

Behind the smile was English-rose skin. Huge jade-green cat’s eyes. Long curling eyelashes. A fine chin and a nice straight nose. And she had a seriously sexy stash of strawberry-blonde waves. She barely looked twenty but there was something steely behind her pretty green eyes that had Heath thinking that she was older.

A bulleted list below the photo told him she hated chocolate, her favourite colour was yellow, she cooked a mean plate of fettuccini carbonara, and she lived for mascarpone.

Considering he couldn’t go a day without chocolate, he wasn’t entirely sure he had a favourite colour, he couldn’t eat starch and didn’t even know what a mascarpone was, it seemed that they were likely the least-suited pair on the planet. Maybe that was why Elena had crossed her out.

But there was something in those flinty green eyes that kept him staring at her picture. ‘What’s wrong with this one?’ he asked.

Elena glanced at the page and screwed up her nose. ‘That one wasn’t meant to be there.’ She reached out to take it back, but Heath moved it just out of her way.

‘Why not?’

‘She is the star turn on a website called www.ahusbandinahurry.com. I don’t think that bodes well.’

‘Don’t you think that’s what many of these women are after? At least she’s honest,’ he said. And if he was honest, it was what he wanted too. Now. As soon as possible. A wife. A partner. Someone else with whom to share his space, his time, his life. It was time for him to stop playing it safe. It was time for him to take a risk.

Elena shrugged, obviously not pleased that it hadn’t gone all her way. Likely she had picked out a bunch of women who enjoyed cross-stitch and watching car racing on TV so that if all went well she could have a new friend as well as a sister-in-law.

But that one, as Elena called her, was different. Behind the pretty green eyes Heath knew there was fire. And though all week he had been wishing for rain, suddenly fire held a heck of a lot more possibilities. Change was in the air. Barely there, but there all the same. Enough that he could taste it—sweet and welcome on his tongue.

‘Heath, are you out here?’ a male voice called from inside. His youngest brother, Caleb.

‘Out here, buddy.’

‘Someone knocked over the punch bowl and there’s pineapple pieces swimming all over the dining-room floor.’

He let out a long slow breath and bit back the suggestion that Caleb could have cleaned the thing up himself. But the kid was spoilt. All of his siblings were. And it was his fault.

But inside there were worse things afoot than pineapple on the floor. His brother Cameron was doing his best to keep himself from shattering into a million pieces while trying to help his two little daughters understand why their mummy was not coming home. And big brother Heath was hiding outside.

Well, not any more. ‘I’m coming, Caleb.’

‘To save the day as always, bro,’ Caleb said, slapping Heath on the back, but Heath was sure the kid had no notion of how true that was.

On a balmy Saturday night, two weeks later, Jodie angled her beloved twenty-year-old car, aptly nicknamed Rusty, into an empty car park in a side street off Flinders. She threw a handful of coins into the parking meter as she spied a gap in Saturday-night traffic cruising the length of the grand old train station. She hitched her black sparkly halter an inch higher and tugged her tight jeans an inch lower and ran as fast as her borrowed high heels would carry her.

She was late, as an hour before she could still have been found sitting on the couch with Louise in her pyjama bottoms, Chelsea Football Club T-shirt and slippers, as she hadn’t entirely been planning on turning up that night.

Over the past two weeks, Jodie had met twelve different guys that she and Mandy had chosen from the responses to her website. An actor, a vet, a guy who sold mobile phone contracts door-to-door, and a funeral director whose massive Adam’s apple slid up and down in his throat with such vigour Jodie had found it hard to look anywhere else. And she would have put every cent she owned on the fact that most had come for a good time, not a long time.

What was she doing interviewing prospective husbands? Really? When Jodie reached the safety of the footpath, she closed her eyes and visualised waving goodbye to Mandy and Lisa, getting on the jumbo plane, landing in Heathrow, catching the tube, knocking on the front door of the tiny flat she had shared with her mother for twenty-five years…No, if she was to have any sort of life, she had to stay the course.

Jodie pushed open the heavy carved door nestled into the underbelly of the train station and rushed down the carpeted steps.

Lisa, the maître d’ at the popular restaurant, grimaced as she came into view. ‘Another minute and I would have given away your table.’

‘I probably would have thanked you if you had,’ Jodie muttered. ‘Is he here yet?’

Lisa shook her head. ‘But Mandy is prowling in your corner. Go settle her before she frightens away my customers.’

Jodie gave her a quick pat on the arm before skimming through the tables to the private table for two in the corner. When she saw Mandy sitting in a chair, her stiletto tapping nervously against the floor, Jodie was torn between staying or making a run for it to the ladies’ room, squeezing out the tiny window and dropping atop the Dumpster a floor below.

‘Nice of you to show,’ Mandy said as Jodie slipped quickly into the cool seat across from her.

Jodie took a steadying gulp of Mandy’s red wine before grabbing a bread roll and shoving nibble-sized bites into her nervous mouth. ‘Yeah, well, it didn’t help that just as I was leaving Scott came over to propose to me.’

‘Scott?’ Mandy said, her face paling. ‘Across the hall Scott? Predilection for leather pants and mesh shirts Scott? Not quite sure where his right eye is looking Scott?’

Jodie nodded along with Mandy’s every query. ‘Somehow he had found your clever website. His exact words were: “So how about it? You and me—matrimonial bliss?”’

‘Please tell me you said no.’

Jodie nodded. But in that brief split second, she had actually considered his offer. He lived across the hall, so she wouldn’t have to move far. He had a thing for her, which had been obvious since the day she had moved into the building, so he would do anything to help her out in her plight. But the very fact that he had a thing for her ruled him out even if his goofy oddness did not. It wouldn’t be fair.

If she was going to do this thing, she had to do it right. No romantic connections. No complications from the start. The last thing she wanted was for it all to end in tears and broken promises. She’d lived through enough of that when her father had walked out when she was thirteen, so living it up close and personal was not on her agenda.

She had thanked him for his kind offer, but declined. Though compared to her other dates that week he wasn’t the bottom of the totem-pole.

‘He had settled in to watch Beach Street when I left so I had to leave poor Lou behind. I don’t trust him not to sneak into my room and try to steal a pair of my underpants again.’

‘Right. Good point.’

‘So who’s the lucky contestant tonight?’ Jodie asked on a sigh.

‘First up we have Heath.’ Mandy flipped through her colour-coded sheets clipped in a neat folder. ‘Heath Jameson. The farmer.’

Jodie winced. A farmer, for goodness’ sake! The fact that he didn’t send an email in the form of a dirty limerick or attach a photo of himself in Speedos put him in the maybe pile. But the thought of moving to a farm for two years was uninspiring to say the least. She was a city girl, born and bred. She loved the seasons in Melbourne, the food, the culture, the window shopping, the architecture and the friends she had made there. But most of all she liked herself in Melbourne.

But a farm? In the outback? She pictured a barn with a leaking tin roof. A wood-burning fireplace with old copper pots the likes of which she had seen in old Western movies. A mangy work dog sleeping on the end of the double bed that had lumps and bumps worn into it by past generations. And wouldn’t she have to get one of those hats with corks hanging all around it to ward off flies?

‘Ready?’ Mandy asked.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

‘Excellent. After this one, there’s two more tonight.’

Two more? She let out a long groan. Suddenly, despite the living distance from the city she loved, so long as the guy was a gentleman and said yes, she decided she would marry him then and there. So long as she could stop all this dreadful dating and see a way to a future down under.

Mandy slipped away into the crowd and Jodie was left sending glances towards the bar. Which one would farm boy turn out to be? The guy in all black flicking lint off his double-breasted jacket? Unlikely. The balding blond in the plaid shirt and jeans picking crumbs out of his teeth with his butter knife? Oh, please, no.

Jodie couldn’t help checking her teeth for sesame seeds in the reflection of her bread knife when the front door swished open letting in a flush of warm night air and, with it, a man.

A man with a to-die-for tan, the likes of which Jodie had only ever seen on school friends just back from the Greek Islands, subconsciously pushing his wind-mussed, dark blond hair somewhat into place. A man with the kind of natural highlights other guys would pay a fortune for. A man in an untucked white shirt over dark denim who gave a friendly half-smile as he caught Lisa’s eye at the door.

Jodie knew that second he was hers.

Lisa tossed her long blonde hair as she turned and, with a little finger wave, beckoned the man to follow. And follow he did with a lean, long-legged stride.

‘Not bad,’ Lisa mouthed as she neared.

As he came closer Jodie saw that this man was just the way she imagined Australian guys ought to be—permanent creases at the corners of his eyes from too much smiling or too much sun, a strong jaw covered in sexy stubble as though he had shaved many hours before, and eyes so blue they made her heart ache.

But she wasn’t in this game for heartache. This was to be a purely heart-free and ache-free endeavour.

Jodie scrunched her toes in her high-heeled sandals to force the blood away from her burning cheeks to other parts of her body. The whole ‘blushing English rose’ thing could be pretty on some girls, but with her auburn hair she felt like a big red blotchy tomato. And the more she panicked about it, the more she blushed.

Suddenly the ladies’ room, the tiny window and the Dumpster seemed unreservedly the right choice.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Lisa asked as they reached the table.

‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice a rich, resonant bass. ‘A beer would be great.’

Lisa gave him a beaming smile, turned it into a frown for Jodie, then spun on her heel and left. Jodie managed to drag herself to her feet on wobbly knees that almost gave way.

Her companion leaned over and offered her a large, long-fingered hand to shake. ‘Good evening, Jodie. I’m Heath Jameson. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘NICE to finally meet you too, Heath,’ Jodie said.

A lively smile lit his eyes. They were so stunning they’d give even Paul Newman a run for his money.

She shook hands. His were work-roughened, but warm. She glanced down, mesmerised by how large and brown his hand was wrapped around her skinny pale fingers. And it was then that she noticed he had a hint of dirt beneath his fingernails.

Of course there was dirt. He was a farmer. Not a city guy. Not a straightforward man looking for a wife to accompany him to work dinners, to get his parents off his back, or to marry quickly to get himself lined up for that work partnership, which was what she figured would bring a man around to her plan. So what on earth was she doing still hanging onto the poor guy’s hand?

She let go, and quick, running her hand down the side of her jeans to rub away the tingles. She sat, and her wobbly knees thanked her.

Having broken the ice enough times already that fortnight, she knew how. But while with the others she’d wanted to get down to brass tacks, to lay out the ground rules and find out their motives before even bothering with small talk, with this guy, with this long, lean length of pure and unadulterated gorgeousness, it felt ridiculous forming the question: why do you want to marry me?

Instead she caved and settled on, ‘You found this place okay?’

‘I did. I drove here directly from the farm and found it a lot sooner than I had expected to.’

‘But I just saw you come in the front door.’

A knowing smile in his eyes lit brighter, and she bit her lip. Jodie felt her horrid blush threatening again, so she turned her eyes determinedly to the residual drops of wine in her glass. Red wine, which would only make her feel warmer. She pushed it out of reach behind the tray of bread rolls.

‘I’ve been walking the streets of Melbourne for an hour and a half,’ he explained. ‘I’m not terribly good at sitting on my hands, and the last thing I wanted to do was wait and have you not show. And now I’m here, I’m really glad you did. Show.’

‘I take it I’m not your first blind date,’ Jodie said, the unstoppable blotchy blush heating her face another degree.

‘Well, actually, no,’ he said, a slight hint of pink warming his tanned neck too. She was hard pressed not to sigh. ‘And though in the past they have been mostly disastrous, I figured I would try one more time just to find out what the heck mascarpone is.’

She blinked. ‘Mascarpone?’

‘On your website it said that you lived for it. I knew I couldn’t go any further without knowing.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, it’s a type of Italian cream cheese. In my opinion, a sandwich is simply not a sandwich without mascarpone to hold it all together.’

‘Okay, then.’ He blinked a few times as he let the info settle and then he laid a huge grin on her. ‘I guess I can now go on.’

After the previous candidates, this guy wasn’t just a honey to look at, he was polite and nice and saying all the right things. She would be hard pressed to find better. Maybe he was the one.

She flinched so hard at that thought that her elbow slid off the table. Heath even lifted himself off the chair and reached out a hand to her to make sure she was okay. Thankfully at that moment a waitress came over with Heath’s beer and another glass of red wine for Jodie so she was saved from extended humiliation.

‘So, you’re English,’ he said once the waitress left.

Feeling more than a little off kilter, Jodie wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wineglass. ‘Is that a concern?’

‘No, not at all. It’s just that from the few details on your website I had sort of built up an image of how you would sound, how tall you’d be, that sort of thing.’

Jodie felt herself deflating with every word he spoke. She’d spent years being told by her mother that if only she were taller and not quite so pale she might be pretty. To hear this guy say the same would seal it for sure. ‘So how am I different?’ she asked, being as she was a glutton for punishment.

Heath blinked, his eye crinkles deepening, as though giving himself a moment to tie all of the pieces in his imagination into a new whole.

‘You’re smaller somehow. More delicate. And I can’t get over that plummy accent.’

Jodie bit at her inner lip, wishing, and not for the first time, that she were a blonde glamazon like Lisa. Or a brunette sex kitten like Mandy. Or serenely elegant like her half-sister Louise. Not wan, wispy, little old her.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ he said, resting contentedly against the back of his chair as his eyes remained locked onto hers. ‘You’re lovely.’

Oh, my…Jodie fought the sudden urge to tell him he was lovely right back. But this wasn’t the place, or the time, or the point. She was looking for someone kind, nice, unassuming, and Australian. And added extras along the lines of handsome, charming, and sexy as hell would only complicate things.

‘And so are your earrings,’ Heath said, catching her unawares by reaching out a curled hand towards her cheek, but stopping a foot from her face and letting his hand drop to the table.

Jodie blinked in surprise. The mere thought of those hands brushing against her ear had robbed her of the power of speech.

Her choice of earrings had been her biggest one of the night. Which of the dozen she had created in a mad productive spurt ought she to choose? Vibrant red glo-mesh ones shaped like tulips? Rows of tiny jade-green beads that hung like weeping willow branches to her shoulders? Or a delicate pair made of wires twisted into the shape of tiny roses? How did one pick earrings fancy enough to ensnare a husband?

She had settled on the green beads. The roses were more suited to Louise, and one of Mandy’s workmates would love the red glo-mesh and had offered to pay a hundred dollars cash for anything Jodie could promise was a one-off. Decision made!

‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice sounding as though she’d just smoked a packet of cigarettes. ‘I make them myself. My styles are based on flowers I used to find at the Chelsea Gardens as a little girl.’

Shut-up, Jodie! He said he liked them, not that he wanted to buy a pair. But he liked them? Oh, no, he wasn’t…was he? She’d already met one of those the night before. And that was all well and good, but if this man was permanently unavailable to all women, that would be a nasty cosmic joke.

‘They’re…nice,’ he said, sticking out his bottom lip and nodding.

And in a blinding flash of relief Jodie realised he was being nice. If he’d said her earrings were fabulous she ought to have been worried. But nice? That just meant Heath was a guy paying a girl a compliment.

‘Now tell me about your work,’ she said, wholeheartedly moving on. Jodie was simply not used to talking about herself. She didn’t even really know enough about herself to be sure what she said was the truth. ‘I gather you are some sort of cowboy, throwing hay bales and milking cows all day?’

Cowboy? Where had that come from? Even she heard the note of flirtation in her voice and so it wasn’t such a shock when his blue eyes glittered.

‘So who’s looking after your cows while you’re away?’ she asked, keeping her voice neat and even.

He ran a lean hand beneath his mouth. Then he looked up at her from beneath a sweep of thick chestnut eyelashes, which were superior to hers even with the modern marvel of long-lash mascara at her disposal. ‘I have a station manager, Andy, who runs the place in my absence, as well as numerous seasonal staff who do most of the heavy labour. So apart from throwing hay bales about the place, I am also a qualified civil engineer.’

Oh! So maybe the whole ‘outback farmer’ thing had just been a means to an introduction, a hook, a way to get a girl interested. Maybe he lived in town in a nice big house big enough for her and Louise and for Lisa and Mandy to crash after a girls’ night out…

‘Do you get much of a chance to engineer anything civilly while out on the farm?’

‘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 pushed back his chair and walked towards the front door and the two women all but fell over themselves to look natural.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

‘Is everything all right?’ the blonde asked.

‘It’s fine, apart from the fact that my…date seems to have left me with the bill.’ He gave her enough money to more than cover his one beer and Jodie’s untouched glass of wine.

Then, with a spring in his step that would have been more appropriate for an eighteen-year-old buck on the prowl rather than someone twice that age, he stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and stepped out into a mild spring darkness feeling like a car whose battery had been jump-started after being flat for a decade.

CHAPTER THREE

SUNDAY morning Jodie pushed back the comforter, hitched up her too-loose flannelette pyjama pants, and yawned magnificently as she opened her bedroom door.

Louise, already showered and dressed in what amounted to a casual outfit for her—a lemon twin set and designer jeans—turned on the couch with a hand to her throat. ‘Oh, my. I thought I was the only one here.’

‘Mandy and Lisa have gone out?’ Jodie asked.

Louise nodded. Jodie looked to the clock on the microwave to find it was only nine in the morning. They’d still not been home when Jodie had snuck in at three that morning, so they would have had five hours’ sleep at the most.

Jodie shuffled to the couch on which Louise had slept, though you wouldn’t know it by the neat throw rug over the back of the chair and the perfectly placed scatter cushions. Louise sat, crossing her feet neatly at the ankle, an open bucket of ice cream before her. Jodie sat on her hand to stop herself from mussing up her sister’s perfect hair.

‘What’s with the nine in the morning ice-cream fix?’ Jodie asked.

Louise offered her spoon, but Jodie declined.

‘Mum…Ivy…just called.’ Poor Louise’s face crumpled as she fought to settle on how she ought to think of the woman who had brought her up as her own. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. Tell me about your night. Did you meet anyone brilliant?’

Jodie wasn’t quite sure what to say. While her life felt as if it was on the up and up, Louise’s was falling apart at her feet.

Before searching out Jodie, Louise had discovered that before she was born her father had sired illegitimate twin sons. And they were back, wanting to take their place in the infamous Valentine family. The shock had sent her father into cardiac arrest, and, believing he was dying, he had told her that she was adopted. Shattered to find herself the object of so many lies, she had registered to find her birth mother and, in discovering Patricia was uncontactable, she had found Jodie instead and flown to Australia in an instant. Now Jodie was Louise’s only support—the only person in her life not in any way linked to her complicated adoptive family.

‘It went okay,’ Jodie said, playing down mightily how much better than okay her night with Heath Jameson had been. After escaping The Cave, she and Heath had walked for hours, following their feet up boulevards and down side streets, as they’d enjoyed the balmy spring night.

And they had talked. The subject of Jodie’s disinclination for and Heath’s love of chocolate had kept them going for an hour all on its own. They had never even found the dessert Heath had been hankering for; instead, hours later they had settled for a kebab when a take-away van had loomed in their meandering path.

‘Come on, Lou, what happened with Ivy? Tell me.’

Louise half nodded and half shook her head. ‘It was awkward to say the least. I thought I would be upset, or angry. But I just felt numb.’

‘Did you talk to your dad?’

Louise shook her head. ‘I’m livid enough at her, but I’m nowhere near ready to tackle the mistrust I feel for him. He didn’t just lie to me; he lied to so many of us. If I didn’t have you here, now, and this place…’

Jodie leant over and gave Louise a one-armed squeeze. ‘I’m glad you’re here too,’ Jodie said. ‘Truly. And stay as long as you like. No worries. You might even fall in love with the place as I have.’

Louise smiled at her, her blue-grey eyes so familiar. So much like Patricia’s. For one blinding moment, Jodie missed her mum, and wondered where she was. She hadn’t heard from her in a few weeks since she and her new husband Derek had started travelling, but if they hit trouble surely he would let her know and ask her to come home and…

No. That wasn’t her place now.

‘No worries?’ Louise repeated. ‘There was a definite Australian accent there.’

‘Really?’ Jodie liked that idea very much.

‘Absolutely. And you’ve got the whole relaxed Aussie thing going on as well. I’m wondering if it comes to you all through the sun rays.’

Jodie laughed. ‘I think it must. Back home I was a right Londoner. Cool, grey, and with all the vigour of a wet winter’s day.’

Jodie’s mind shot once again to her night with Heath. He was the perfect embodiment of all the things she loved about Australia—warmth, ease, leisure—the antithesis of bleak, wet, bustling London. Was that why she had been so instantly drawn to him? So ready to know him outside the loaded atmosphere of The Cave, to pretend that it was a real date?

Louise sighed. ‘Listening to you talk with your lovely half-Australian accent, home seems so far away it almost feels unreal.’

Jodie knew just what she meant. She loved the fact that her life here felt unreal. Unreality was bliss. Jodie reached out and took her by the hand. ‘Do you understand now why I have to do whatever I can to stay?’

Louise’s cool blue-grey eyes filled with an even mix of sadness and understanding. She sighed and Jodie knew everything between them was going to be okay. ‘I am actually a little jealous of you, you know. I wish I was in your shoes, with my future a blank canvas before me. Nothing tying me down. Nothing drawing me home.’

‘But you are. You are just like me. Simply choose to stay. For real. Stay for ever.’

A ray of sun seemed to break through the dark cloud hanging over Louise’s head. ‘Ha! Wouldn’t that shock the pants off the whole lot of them? Max, my cousin, would have a conniption fit if he heard that I, the perennial good girl, ran away from home never to return. Well, I guess he’s not really my cousin now, if you come to think about it. But, oh, I would still love to see the look on his face—’

A noise at the front door called their attention. Mandy and Lisa spilled inside carrying their regular Sunday-morning French sticks and Brie.

‘Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,’ Mandy said as she threw the brown paper bags onto the counter. ‘When you didn’t come back out of the bathroom last night, we thought you had fallen in. You took off with the hot farmer, didn’t you?’

‘Well, actually yes, I did,’ Jodie said, glancing at Louise, who had managed to drag herself away from her deep dark thoughts about her non-cousin Max and was now watching her with renewed interest.

‘Now, Jodie, you made no mention of a hot farmer.’ By the smile in her eyes Jodie knew that her understanding out-weighed her sadness. Jodie could have hugged her.

‘I had to tell the others you’d fallen ill,’ Lisa said, not nearly as impressed with Jodie’s antics as Mandy. ‘With megalomania. And since none of them even knew what the word meant we figured you had made the right decision to leave. So, when’s the big day?’

Jodie flapped a hand at her unmoved friend. ‘Don’t be silly. Heath is the last one I would choose.’

Mandy stopped with a hunk of cheese halfway to her mouth and Jodie knew she had laid it on too thick.

‘Okay, maybe not the last one. Scott from across the hall would beat him to that title by a whisker.’

‘Time is marching on. And if hot farm boy is only good for a one-night-on-the-town fling,’ Mandy said, ‘who the heck is going to be the lucky Mr Jodie Simpson?’

Jodie struggled to remember any of the candidates she had met before Heath had walked in the door, but they were mostly a blur.

It didn’t help that she still felt Heath all around her. The scent of his aftershave lingered on her hair as the night before he had used her wrap as a prop when he’d been doing an impersonation of one of his four sisters. She could still taste sweet chilli sauce on her tongue from the kebab they had shared. And every time she closed her eyes, she could see Heath’s crinkly eyes and smiling, tanned face imprinted there.

‘Umm, maybe Barnaby, the visual merchandiser,’ she said, plucking a name from the furthest recesses of her mind. ‘He would be willing to marry me for rent-free accommodation here. Apparently his favourite gay bar is just around the corner.’

‘So why didn’t you run away with him?’ Louise asked, and Jodie no longer felt like hugging her clever sister.

Mandy grinned at Louise. ‘She makes a good point.’

‘I…I’d had enough by the time Heath came along. If I had to ask one more guy to tell me about himself, I was going to drown myself in a whole bottle of red wine.’

‘Oh, balderdash,’ Lisa said. ‘You fell over when I brought Heath to your table, Jodes.’

‘My foot had fallen asleep,’ she argued.

‘Please! No part of a woman’s body could possibly sleep through that. He was gorgeous.’ This time Lisa got the full-stare treatment from all three girls. ‘Well, he was.’

Jodie raked both hands through her hair. ‘Okay. Fine. He was gorgeous. But he comes from a family of seven. After growing up in the middle of London with my crazy mother my only known relative, I’ve only just discovered I have a half-sister.’

Jodie glanced at Louise, who smiled warmly back. Okay, so hugging was back on the family agenda.

‘Besides which,’ Jodie continued, ‘he lives on a farm, and I live here. And I want to stay here. And he wants…’ She wasn’t really sure what he wanted. They had never really discussed it; they had both had too much of a nice time specifically not talking specifics.

‘What does he want?’ Lisa asked.

‘What he deserves is the real deal.’

Mandy shook her head in utter confusion, while Lisa looked at her with too much understanding for Jodie’s comfort.

‘So what next?’ Lisa asked, kindly pinning the attention elsewhere. ‘Do we tell Barnaby the gay visual merchandiser the happy news?’

Somehow Jodie couldn’t rouse any excitement for the idea. ‘Maybe not just yet.’

‘Right. That’s the spirit!’ Mandy ran to the desk in the corner and clicked on the Internet connection. ‘Let’s first see what new men the night has brought us.’

Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, Jodie moved to look over Mandy’s shoulder. And, oh, what choices she had! A lawyer with three teenaged children, a baker looking for a morning person, and a guy who had been on the dole for eight years while he ran a campaign to legalise marijuana in his ‘spare time’.

Time was running out. The calendar above the computer with its bright red crosses showed how little time she did have until The Day She Had To Leave. That decided it for her—she would choose by the end of that day.

Barnaby, Scott, or Heath.

For Heath was still on the maybe list whether she admitted it to the girls or not.

After driving her home the night before, he had walked her to the front door of her apartment building. Shadows and moonlight had slanted across his strong face as they had stood facing one another beneath the ivy-trellised alcove. Her skin still tingled from the feel of his smooth cheek against hers as he had kissed her goodnight.

‘Can I see you again?’ he had asked, his deep voice washing over her.

Jodie’s cheeks flushed pink as she remembered the moment the romantic young girl she had once been before life had beaten her down, the young girl who had spent many a night wishing on the first star, had risen up and answered him with, ‘I would like that.’

The phone rang and, saved by the bell, Jodie leapt for it so fast the phone flew out of her hand. It took some world-class juggling to make sure it didn’t fall.

‘Who-yello!’ she said when she pulled it to her ear.

‘Jodie.’

She knew that voice in an instant. Heath. The deep vibrations tickled through her hand, down her arm and into her stomach.

‘Oh,’ she gasped. ‘Hi. Hang on a sec, will you?’

She shoved a hand over the mouthpiece and climbed over the back of the couch. ‘It’s for me. I’ll take it while I’m having a bath. Two birds with one stone and all that. So save me some Brie. Right? Okay.’

She ran into the bathroom, cringing at the mixed looks of bewilderment and perception on her friends’ faces.

‘Heath. I’m back,’ she said once she had closed the door and heard the girls’ voices start up in conversation.

‘And bathing, I hear.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, feeling her cheeks pink. ‘Not yet. Fully clothed over here.’

‘Pity,’ he said, taking his time to let the word go.

‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again. So soon,’ she added belatedly.

‘Well, I do have to be home again in four hours,’ Heath said, ‘so I thought it best to spend my short time here wisely. Asking you to have morning tea with me feels like the wisest move I’ve made in a long time. A kind of reciprocation for the two-a.m. kebab.’

To block out her conversation, Jodie sat on the edge of the bath and turned on the old taps before pouring in excessive amounts of strawberry bath bubbles. She breathed in deep through her nose as she tried to decide what to do.

On the up side, she and Heath got on well. Ridiculously well. And that was important. What use would it be wasting two years of her life living with someone who drove her around the bend?

But on the down side, Heath Jameson was also charming and way too attractive for comfort. And for that exact reason she ought not to take it any further. She wanted a two-year husband, not a boyfriend. These next two years would be instrumental in her continued self-discovery, and she could not possibly achieve that if her time was spent with someone to whom she felt connected. For Jodie was a woman who had never learnt how to sever connections, no matter how self-destructive they might be.

‘So?’ he finally asked when she had stalled too long. ‘Are you up for it? Has the kebab digested enough that it’s time for a refill?’

Jodie slid her back further down the wall until her knees were level with her nose. Her stomach did feel empty, hollow, and tingling, but that was only half the reason she gave in and said, ‘Yeah, I’m up for it.’

She gave in because she had to let him off the hook face to face. He was worthy of that.

‘Great. I’ll pick you up in fifteen,’ he said.

He was gone before Jodie had the chance to explain to him that she would meet him downstairs. There was no way she was going to let the girls know that she was seeing him again. It was bad enough that she knew that she was fast becoming enchanted by the guy. If they had any inkling, they might just try to talk her out of letting him go.

Fourteen minutes later, bathed and dressed in track pants, a white T-shirt and sneakers, Jodie sidled out into the kitchen.

‘Brunch is ready,’ Louise said, waving a French stick and a round of Brie at her.

‘Not for me.’ She placed the phone casually back on the cradle.

Lisa took one look at her garb and lifted two shocked eyebrows. ‘Going jogging, are we?’

‘A walk, at least. I’m feeling the need to exercise away all those bread rolls and red wine I’ve ingested over the last two weeks.’

‘Bread doesn’t make you fat,’ Mandy insisted, biting down onto a piece of bread smothered in soft cheese. ‘It’s all in your head. Think thin and you’ll be thin. Jogging is for suckers.’

They all turned to glare at naturally stick-thin Mandy who had no idea how good she had it.

‘Well, this sucker will be back in a while.’ With a quick wave over her shoulder, Jodie slipped out the door and ran down the three flights of stairs just as Heath reached the front alcove where they had said their moonlight goodbyes only hours before.

‘Hi! Don’t! I’m here!’ she cried out, so that he wouldn’t reach for the doorbell. The poor guy flinched.

‘So you are,’ he said. ‘And all in a rush to see me.’

Jodie opened her mouth to negate that idea, but then realised it was probably easier to let it lie. ‘Hungry, remember?’ she said.

Tugging a cute pink cardigan over her T-shirt to dress up her outfit just a tad, she took the opportunity to find out if he really was as attractive as she had remembered him. Lo and behold, in the harsh light of day, Heath Jameson—in chinos and blue and cream Hawaiian shirt that set off his eyes, his tan, and his general gorgeousness beautifully—was pure masculine heaven. Ouch!

‘Ready?’ he asked, and then he smiled, his face coming over all warm and encouraging, and Jodie had to abstain from leaning against him just to soak up some of that Australian warmth that Louise had begun to notice in her.

‘So, where are you taking me?’ she asked.

‘To heights of gastronomic pleasure the likes of which you have never seen.’

Heath drove from Jodie’s apartment back towards his beach-side St Kilda hotel, stealing glances at the woman in the passenger seat of his car.

He had spent a good portion of his morning wondering if his great first impression of Jodie had been falsely remembered. In the light of their secret tryst out into the Melbourne night, her side-splitting tales of her time at the hands of her meddling housemates, and with the addition of a truly fantastic kebab to finish off the night, he thought perhaps he had been so hoping for it to be perfect that he had indeed willed it to be the best blind date any guy had ever known.

But as Jodie had leapt through the doorway like a whirl-wind of nervous energy just now, madly pulling her auburn waves into a quick pony-tail, flapping that bright pink cardigan at him like a flag at a bull, her wide green eyes wild with panic as he reached for the doorbell—obviously because she didn’t want her roommates to know what she was up to—he knew his concerns had been unfounded.

She was bright. Complicated. Nervous as an unbroken colt. Utterly lovely. And she smelled so good he had to remind himself to breathe out as well as in.

Last night he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it, some lingering sweetness that played with his senses. But this morning it came to him like the subtle scent of grass after a storm. Strawberries.

As he pulled his car into a park on the St Kilda Esplanade, just near a row of white-sailed market stalls, he shot a look her way.

Something in her demeanour had him thinking she was preparing to give him the brush-off, but he wasn’t having any of it. He was struck by her. Truly struck. And a risk was not a risk if the path to your goal was clear.

And since he didn’t believe a word of her claim that she hated desserts as much as she said she did, he took her to the one place in Melbourne that would tempt her to change her mind.

If anything could.

CHAPTER FOUR

WITHIN minutes, the French pastry shops on Acland Street in St Kilda loomed. Jodie had heard rumours of such a place and had quite purposely never been down this road.

Ten-foot-high windows each showcased a dozen shelves packed with melting moments, glimmering fruit tarts, decadent éclairs and every sweet delight a person could crave. Like someone trapped in the desert for ten years, Jodie was drawn towards the mirage, her tastebuds going into overdrive as long-ago memories tickled at her senses.

The feel of pastry melting on her tongue. Sherbet crackling against her lips. And chocolate. Oh, the heavenly melting sensation that was chocolate.

The truth was, Jodie loved desserts, but her mother was diabetic, and corruptibly so. Patricia was so lacking in will-power Jodie had once found her passed out on the kitchen table with an empty bottle of chocolate syrup beside her. Since that day, Jodie had doggedly trained herself to live without the taste of sugar.

‘Come on, order something sweet,’ Heath offered. ‘Anything you like. It’s on me.’

Jodie perused the glassed-in rows of cakes and was stoic. Even though Patricia was nowhere in sight, it was a testament to her own continuing will-power, her very difference from her imprudent mother, that she do without.

‘Tea, black, no sugar, and a savoury scroll.’

‘Come on! This place is the Mecca for dessert lovers. It’s legendary. You can’t possibly be telling me that there is nothing sweet here that can tempt you.’

Oh, yeah. There sure was. Which was why she was being a good strong girl and ordering something not decadent in the least. ‘Sorry. I am a tea and scroll kind of girl.’

His eyes narrowed and she realised her words had held a tinge of bitterness she had not meant to reveal. She smiled inanely and moved inside to the counter where she placed her order.

‘Add two chocolate croissants and a tall black to the order. Three sugars and a small jug of milk on the side. Ta,’ Heath said from somewhere behind her, his breath washing over the back of her hair. ‘Don’t panic, both croissants are for me. One’s for the road.’

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