‘We’re compatible.’ Reilly brushed her hot cheek to make his point. Her skin leapt at the caress. ‘We get along well enough. We both love Molly. We could make it work.’

He reached up and smoothed Lea’s hair from her damp face, his eyes appealing. ‘Molly could have a proper brother or sister and the baby could have a full-time mother.’

She stared, wide-eyed, trying not to savour the feel of his fingers on her face.

‘Be open to all the possibilities, Lea. Just think about it.’

Her voice was no more than a whisper. ‘You want a family that much?’

‘As much as you did five years ago.’

She slipped her hand to her belly to protect the innocent life within. Her child. The planet’s gravity seemed to shift and cause a delirious weightlessness in her. It was the perfect solution.

And the absolute worst.

‘What about love?’ she whispered.

OUTBACK BABY TALES

Newborns, new arrivals, newlyweds…

In a beautiful but isolated landscape, three sisters follow three very different routes to parenthood against all odds and find love with brooding men…

Discover the soft side of these rugged Outback cattlemen as they win over these feisty women and a handful of adorable babies!

The arrival in April was:

ONE SMALL MIRACLEMelissa James

In May you met:

THE CATTLEMAN, THE BABY AND MEMichelle Douglas

And the pitter-patter of tiny feet continues this month with:

THEIR NEWBORN GIFT

by new Australian talent Nikki Logan

Their Newborn Gift

By

Nikki Logan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Nikki Logan lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

Visit Nikki at her website: www.nikkilogan.com.au

For Cadel

Who fought hard to get to us and who is brilliant, living proof of the value of IVF.

Thanks to Michelle and Melissa, who were such a pleasure to share this series with and who were so generous and welcoming to the new girl.

To Kim Young, for your confidence in my stories.

Lastly, with thanks and admiration for all the people who have worked so hard to save the extraordinary Kimberley region from feral predators, only to have bulldozers flatten it to make factories. Keep fighting the good fight, folks.

Start your Kimberley journey here http://www.kimberleyaustralia.com

CHAPTER ONE

‘OH, YOU are such a cheater…’

Lea Curran swiped at the tears in her eyes, convinced she was going to run off the gravel road any second. Cause of death? Laughter.

Amazing she could still laugh at all, really.

She trained her eyes on her daughter’s face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Since when does Boab start with a T?’

‘T for tree.’ Four-year-old Molly giggled. It set off the usual heart-squeeze in Lea. Her giggles gave way to full tummy-laughs and then to heaving, hacking coughs. Lea’s smile stayed glued to her face through sheer will-power. She watched her daughter in the mirror for any sign that her distress was more than usual. But Molly—amazing Molly—just let the spasms pass, recovered her breath and went right on playing their driving game.

As though every kid in the world coughed when they laughed.

‘Your turn, Mum.’

Lea shifted her eyes back to the road. ‘I spy, with my little eye…’

Their game went on as bush scrub whipped past the car, kilometre after kilometre.

Molly’s body might have been falling apart, but her four-year-old brain was as sharp as ever. She compensated for her extremely limited physical stamina with a relentless intelli-gence that certainly didn’t come from the Curran side of the family. She could play this game for hours. They’d been on the road for three.

Molly finally identified Lea’s ‘W’ word—wing mirror—and looked expectantly at her mother for more.

‘I spy…’ Lea’s chest clenched as she looked ahead ‘…something beginning with M.’

Her sharp little daughter didn’t miss a beat. ‘Mum?’

‘Nope.’

‘Molly?’

God, she loved her! ‘Outside the car.’

‘Oh.’ Mini eyebrows scrunched down over serious brown eyes then shot up. She didn’t notice their vehicle slowing. ‘Monkey?’

‘We’re in the Kimberley, Molly, no monkeys here. Good try, though.’ Lea glanced at the turn-off ahead and swallowed hard. A giant sign marked the turn-off for the Martin property.

‘Min…am…’ Molly read the giant red letters as best she could.

‘Minamurra,’ Lea assisted, turning the wheel and taking the car under the arched sign. Even she could hear the flat lifeless-ness in her voice as she added, ‘You win.’

‘Is that where we’re going?’

‘Nope.’ Lea swallowed hard. ‘It’s where we are.’

Molly must have caught some of her mother’s trepidation, because she would usually have laughed at Lea’s corny joke. She sat higher in her booster seat and peered out of the window, gnawing on her lip—one-hundred percent from her mother, that little habit—then her eyes refocussed and her pale lips split in one of her blindingly heart-stopping smiles.

One-hundred percent her father’s.

‘Horses!’ She pointed to where a dozen working-horses grazed peacefully in a paddock. The eucalypts lining the long drive whizzed by, making the pastoral scene look like an old flicker-film from the thirties.

Molly disappeared back into that place she went to when she was in a particularly happy mood, when she wasn’t too sapped. Right now, she was talking about the horses with the invisible sisters she took with her everywhere. Imaginary Annas and Sapphies of her own.

Lea forced her focus off the mirror and up towards the house emerging through the eucalypts. The homestead seemed to grow towards them like something from a nightmare. Large, expensive and looming.

Her fingers started to tremble on the steering wheel.

A house like that had to have a family in it. It had no wife, as far as she’d found out, but maybe a girlfriend. Parents.

More obstacles. More people to judge her. More strangers for Molly.

She guided her car over a sequence of cattle grids into Minamurra’s lush heart. Beautiful gardens offset the trappings of a working station: heavy equipment, sheds, stables, beat up four-wheel drives. They must have tapped straight into the aquifer to have this kind of green in the middle of a Kimberley dry season. She pulled to a halt in the shade of two towering kurrajongs standing like sentinels at the base of old timber steps that cut up through the turfed knoll leading to the house. She left the engine and air-con running, and crossed to Molly’s door.

As she cut around the front of the car, her eyes slid sideways and followed the long steps upwards just in time to see a tall figure emerging from the house onto the veranda, sliding a hat onto his head and staring curiously in their direction.

Lea held her breath.

Reilly Martin.

The last time she’d seen him he’d been sprawled naked across the motel bed in a deep, exhausted sleep as she’d snuck out into the dawn like a thief. Pretty apt, as it turned out.

She bent down and kissed Molly through the open window and asked her to sit tight for a bit.

Not only was Reilly not expecting anyone, he definitely wasn’t expecting anyone with legs like that. What was she doing—trying to climb in the back seat through the window? It looked like the car was trying to swallow her.

Or was she just trying to make a memorable first impression? She wouldn’t be the first woman to drive all the way out here to try her luck: a waste of their fuel and his time.

He had nothing to offer them. Not these days. They came expecting Reilly Martin the national champion. King of the Suicide Ride. They left cursing him and kicking up dust in their haste to be gone. The in-between had grown too predictable. Too painful.

If this one turned around with suitcases in her hand, he would go back inside and lock the door. Bush code be damned.

She turned.

No suitcases. His spine prickled and he squinted against the afternoon sun, trying to place her as her coltish legs carried her up the steps towards him. There was something about her. The higher she climbed, the more backlit she was by the sun blazing fiery and low in a deep-blue west Australian sky, until she was the best part of a rose-edged silhouette. Quite literally the best part. With her T-shirt tucked into her jeans, she was pure hour-glass, and she moved towards him like one of his best mares.

This was no circuit-chaser.

‘Hey,’ the silhouette said softly.

Only his dirt-crusted boots stopped him from flinching backwards from the hoof to the belly that was her voice. One word, one syllable, from the apparition approaching and he knew in an instant. The soft voice was burned into his memory, like his diamond-M marked the flesh of Minamurra’s horses.

It was her.

It was hard to forget the woman who’d made you feel as cheap as a motel television.

It had started as sex—a typical, sweaty, body-rush circuit encounter—but it hadn’t ended that way. Not for him. There’d been something so raw about her. She’d been almost frantic at first, and he’d had to gentle her like a skittish brumby, using his voice, his body, his strength.

It wasn’t until she’d looked up at him with those old-soul eyes that he’d realised just how lost she was. The look from the bar. Like a fish that knew it was miles from its nearest water, but was determined to stay on dry land even if it killed it.

The look had intrigued the heck out of him.

After that, she’d swung right into the spirit of things. Admirably. It had been a long, memorable nineteen hours holed up in that motel. He’d never in his life been so ensnared by a woman, by her body, by her quiet, empty conversation, by the something that had called to him in the bar. It had been the first and only time he was a no-show for an event. But dropping his place on the ticket had been worth it.

She’d been worth it.

And then he’d woken up to an empty bed and her share of the room rental lying on top of the TV. No phone number, no for-warding address, not even a ‘sorry’ note. No matter how many trophies he had, how many newspaper clippings, how many fans, she’d been a painful reminder of what he was really worth.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. That was hardly about to change now.

His heart hammered against his moleskin shirt as she paused on the top step.

‘Do you know who I am?’ The same nervous quality, underlain with a huskiness that took him straight back five years to that room.

Like he could forget. But he wasn’t giving her that much. He tipped his akubra up and squinted at her, swallowing carefully past a dry tongue. ‘Sure. Lisa, right?’

She stepped forward into the shade of the veranda and he caught the tail end of an angry flush. ‘Lea.’

‘Sorry. It’s been a while. How’ve you been?’ Dropping back into casual circuit-banter came all too easily. He’d learned early how to make conversation with strangers; it was a survival tool in his family: meaningless, empty conversation while your guts twisted in on themselves.

Her breath puffed out of her. ‘Is there somewhere private we can talk?’

Apparently, the lovely Lea wasn’t as gifted in the ‘meaningless chat’ department. He followed her glance back to the tinted glass of her car. A haze of emissions issued from her exhaust. He frowned. Was she so eager to be gone that she’d left her motor running? He finally noticed how sallow she was beneath the residual blush. Almost green, in fact.

That, combined with the getaway car, finally got his attention.

He looked at her seriously. ‘We can talk right here. There’s no one in the house.’

‘I…Your parents?’

‘Don’t live here.’ Why would the beautiful people choose to hang out in the depths of outback Western Australia? Visit, absolutely. Live and die here, nope. That was fine with him.

‘A, um, girlfriend?’

His eyes dropped to her lips briefly. ‘No.’

She glanced around at the stables and yards. ‘Station hands?’

‘What do you want, Lea?’

Her back straightened more than was good for a spine.

Sorry, princess; a few great hours do not entitle you to a thing.

Okay, a night. And part of a day.

She glanced back at that damned car. ‘I…It’s about that weekend.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I need to talk to you about it.’

Despite her obvious nerves, he felt like needling her. It was the least he could do. ‘It’s five years too late for an apology.’

The flush bled away entirely. ‘Apology?’

He leaned on the nearest veranda-post, far more casually than he felt. ‘For running out on me.’

Her colour returned in a rush. ‘We picked each other up in a bar, Reilly. I didn’t realise that entitled either of us to any niceties.’

Oh, yeah, he much preferred her angry. It put a glint in her eye only two degrees from the passionate one he remembered. ‘How did you find me?’

The anger turned wary. ‘You were the talk of the town that weekend. I heard your name somewhere, remembered it. I looked you up in the championship records.’

Her enormous pupils said she was lying. Why? Damn her, that he still gave a toss.

‘Which brings us full circle.’ He straightened so he could glare down at her. ‘What do you want, Lea?’ he asked again.

She blew out a breath through stiff lips and turned to walk a few paces away. ‘There’s something about that night—something you should know.’

Understanding hit him like a hammer blow. ‘You told me you were clean.’

She stumbled to a halt. ‘What?’

‘You told me you were clean and on birth control. It’s why we didn’t use more protection.’

That felt like a critically stupid decision now. But somewhere in the back of his thumping head, a rational voice told him he hadn’t caught anything off this woman. It would have shown up in one of the multitude of tests he’d undertaken since then—pure luck, considering how dumb it was to have had unprotected sex. But his big brain hadn’t been doing the thinking that night.

Her eyes flared. ‘I am clean. I’m not here to tell you I’ve given you something.’

‘Then what the—?’

‘I came away with something that night.’

What? ‘Not from me, lady.’

She hissed. ‘Yes, Reilly. From you.’

‘Are you the man with the horse?’

The little voice threw him. He and Lea spun round at the same time and she dropped instantly to her haunches before a tiny, dark elf standing at the top of the steps. The elf’s brown fringe was cut off square across her forehead, and her hair fell down straight on either side of her too-pale face. She seriously looked like something from a storybook. Not in a good way.

‘Molly, I told you to stay in the car.’ Lea pushed the girl’s fringe back from her forehead and laid a hand against her skin. ‘Did you climb all these stairs?’

It was only then he noticed the kid was wheezing. Badly.

She wriggled free of her mother’s fussing and looked straight at Reilly with enormous, chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Can I see it?’

Somewhere deep in his gut a vortex cracked open. He knew those eyes. His pulse began to hammer but he managed to keep his voice light even as he towered over the tiny girl. ‘See what?’

The kid looked to Lea and then back at him, her dark brows collapsing inwards. ‘Mum said she needed to see a man about a horse.’ She sucked her lip in between her teeth. ‘I wanted to meet the horse.’ A spasm of coughs interrupted her wheezing.

Lea slipped her fingers around to the girl’s pulse, concern etched on her face. She threw him a desperate look.

He stepped closer then put the brakes on. Not his problem. ‘Is she okay? Does she need a drink of water or something?’

‘Please.’

Reilly was only too happy to get away from the surreal scene for a moment. His thumping head now echoed through his whole body. He let the screen door bang shut behind him, knowing he could see out better than she could see in, and he turned to watch the woman and child framed in the doorway.

Lea was older than when he’d last seen her, but it only showed in the worry lines marking her hazel eyes. The rest of her was still as long and lean as when they’d first met. She loosened the little girl’s shirt, pushed sweaty hair back off her face and then lifted her into her arms. Two tiny sticks slid effortlessly around Lea’s neck, and mother and daughter had a low, private conversation punctuated with soft, loving kisses.

It was so foreign. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off them.

I came away with something that night. His blood chilled. Not possible. Just not possible.

Five years ago, a frozen inner voice reminded him. Very possible.

Little Molly tilted her head and rested it on her mother’s shoulder, staring straight down the hallway, where he knew she couldn’t see him through the tinted mesh.

He recognised that face. It was in the one photo he had kept of himself as a child.

Oh, God…

A black hole opened up in his gut, and a million possibilities rushed in right behind it. Possibilities he’d thought lost to him for ever. He kept his heart rate under control by pouring two glasses of ice-cold water in the kitchen, and then he shakily tossed one back himself before steeling himself to return. Mother and daughter whipped around as the screen door opened, and he indicated the comfortable cane-seating further along the veranda. She lowered Molly into a chair. It dwarfed her, her little legs stuck straight out in front.

More sticks.

‘Thank you.’ Lea’s voice was as unsteady as the hands that took the water from him. She gently placed the other one out of reach. ‘Molly can’t be near glass.’

Reilly frowned. Lea tipped her own water up to Molly’s bloodless lips. The girl gulped greedily, then Lea drank from the glass herself, visibly mastering her breathing. Max, his house cat, chose that moment to appear and twist himself amongst Lea’s feet. She leapt six inches off the timber floor.

It was not a discussion to have in front of a child, but he had to know—right now. ‘Is she mine, Lea?’

Lea’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, fearful.

‘Kitty!’ Molly’s delighted squeal broke the silence. Reilly snagged Max up off the ground and dumped him unceremoni-ously in Molly’s chair. The girl fell on him with open arms. Max looked suitably disgusted.

Lea’s mouth opened to protest, but then she snapped it shut.

‘What—she can’t be near cats either?’ Shock was giving way to sarcastic fury.

Lea shot to her feet and spoke to Molly. ‘You play with the kitty, sweetheart.’ She crossed to the far corner of the veranda. Reilly followed.

‘She’s mine, isn’t she?’ He loomed over her intentionally. He wanted the truth from her almost as much as he wanted to smell her. Lea nodded and his chest constricted, bright light ex-ploding behind his eyes. His mind worked furiously.

‘Did you not think I’d care?’ he asked. Lea turned away from him. ‘Did you think I’d tell you to get lost?’

‘I wasn’t looking for a relationship,’ she whispered back over her shoulder. ‘I saw no need for you to know.’

‘No need?’ She winced and he struggled to keep the edge out of his voice. He knew what impact it had on his toughened workmen; Lea was not one of them. ‘I got you pregnant, Lea. I would have stood by you. By Molly.’

No matter what the world expected of him, he would have done that much.

She spun. ‘I got me pregnant, Reilly. There was no need for you to stand by me. I was fine. I made the decision to go ahead with the pregnancy. It didn’t need a team.’

There was something in her tone, like the particular look in a stallion’s eye when he was about to turn. It screamed a warning at him. Suspicion stained his words. ‘I can’t believe it took you five years to find me.’

Her furtive glance told him it hadn’t. Ah. ‘You weren’t going to tell me.’

Her chest heaved. ‘No.’

‘Nice.’ He meant her to hear his mumble.

‘Don’t you judge me, Reilly Martin,’ she snapped furiously. ‘If you cared so much where your DNA ended up, you wouldn’t have distributed it so liberally across the district.’

Slap! Being true didn’t make it any less pleasant to hear. He could have little Mollies scattered across the state.

In theory; he’d loved and left enough women.

Anger boiled up furiously between them. ‘Did you think I was a good catch, Lea?’ He nearly spat the words at her. How stupid had he been to think he had been the reason they’d gone so long and so hard that weekend? To think that she might have felt the same indefinable connection he had, despite running out on him. ‘The heir to a country-western fortune. Had you been tracking the circuit long waiting to bump into me?’

‘I didn’t plan it! I might have made some bad choices five years ago, but that wasn’t one of them.’

‘You didn’t know who I was?’ He let the challenge roll out like giant rolls of straw shoved off the back of a feed truck. Her hesitation gave her away.

Blush-heat raced along her cheekbone. ‘Everyone knew who you were, Reilly. You’d just brought home the rodeo champion’s cup. You were Reilly Martin, king of the Suicide Ride. I practically had to join a queue.’

For what good it had done him. ‘I’m sure the challenge made me all the more attractive.’

Lea’s eyes flamed. ‘You don’t really need much help with that, Reilly. I’m sure you’re not going to tell me I was the first bar-room pick-up you’d ever pulled?’

Self-loathing added its weight to the discussion. ‘Not by a country mile, sweetheart.’

The blush doubled. It intensified the glitter in her eyes, and did unhelpful things to his resolve. He dropped his face from her gaze. ‘I’m not the point of discussion here. You are. Or rather, Molly is.’ He met Lea’s eyes again. ‘You cheated me out of knowing my daughter.’

Damn, that felt weird, coming out of his mouth.

Lea paled and her eyes widened. She struggled against something internal. ‘No one forced you to have sex with me. Fatherhood is a risk you were taking every time you went with any woman.’

‘Particularly a deceitful, immoral one.’

Pain streaked across her face. She sucked it up, took a deep breath. ‘Look, it happens, Reilly. Birth control fails. It’s why they print warnings on the boxes. You could have walked away first that night.’

No. Not if he’d tried.

They glared warily at each other, like a cattle dog and a steer sizing each other up. ‘Why me, Lea—of every man in that pub?’

Her eyes rounded—not the question she was expecting, obviously—but she pushed her shoulders back and answered. ‘You stood out for two reasons. You were—’

‘Male and stupid?’

Her eyes hardened. ‘Attractive but unhappy.’

An ugly laugh cracked through his lips. ‘Unhappy? I’d just won the champion’s cup, I was surrounded by women and was working my way through a keg of celebratory beer. Why would I be sad?’

If she noticed how he’d remembered so much about that night five years ago, she didn’t comment. Lucky; it would be tough to explain.

She barrelled on, ignoring the question. ‘I’d had…I wasn’t feeling the best that night.’ Something in her expression told him there was a heck of a lot more to that story. ‘And there was something in your eyes that I recognised. Some pain that spoke to me.’

He snorted to cover up how close to the mark she suddenly was. No way was he going there. ‘I’m guessing my inheritance probably spoke to you loudest. Is it speaking to you now?’

She gasped. Her nostrils flared and she tossed her thick hair back. ‘Have I asked you for money?’

‘I’m sure you’re getting round to it.’

‘I’m not here for that.’

‘Then why are you here? Why now, Lea, five years into my daughter’s life?’ There was that word again. It was going to take some getting used to.

Deep shadows crossed her eyes. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t be here at all if I had a choice,’ she blazed up at him. ‘We were doing just fine, Molly and me.’

Were? His eyes drifted to the little girl, who had Max in a delighted stranglehold. The cat swished his tail impatiently but knew better than to lash out.

Lea took a deep breath. ‘My daughter’s dying, Reilly.’

Reilly staggered backwards, and his eyes fell on the little piece of innocence tangled around his cat. He’d only discovered her moments ago. Then Lea played a particularly stinking card.

‘Our daughter’s dying,’ she continued, her voice dead and tight. ‘She has aplastic anaemia; it’s a disease of her bone marrow. I’m not a tissue match.’

He turned back to her tortured face, his mind buzzing. ‘You want to know if I’m a match?’

She shook her head. ‘Even if you were, the success of adult-to-child transfer is too low.’

He ran stiff fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t understand. What do you want from me?’

She took a deep breath and locked her hazel eyes onto his. He’d never encountered anything quite as beautiful as the loving determination burning there. For a split second, he wished it burned there for him. When had anyone looked at him like that? Ever?

The silence screamed. And then she spoke.

‘I need you to get me pregnant again so we can save Molly.’

Lea had never seen someone shrink like that right before her eyes. Reilly sagged back against the timber posts enclosing the veranda.

‘Molly’s dying?’

Well, at least he was focussing on the most important part. ‘Gradually.’ Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

He looked at her. ‘Is she in pain?’

Her heart softened. Very definitely the most important part. Finding he was still capable of the compassion and kindness she remembered was a relief. He hadn’t shown much of it until just then. ‘Not always. But she’s exhausted perpetually, and she bleeds very easily.’ And four-year-olds were prone to tumbling over all the time.

He nodded, digesting. ‘And having a second child will help her—how?’

Lea was prepared for this question. ‘Cord blood. And placenta. The baby wouldn’t be touched at all.’ She threw that in hastily, knowing it was what she’d want to know in his position.

‘Stem cells?’

Lea nodded. His eyes swam with uncertainty. His breath came heavily. Then he pinned her with his gaze. ‘How does it work?’

Lea lightened like helium. Was he considering it? She rushed to answer, knowing this stuff back to front. ‘Cord-blood stem cells can become almost any other type of cell in the body, whatever needs repairing—bone, tissue, muscle. Marrow, in Molly’s case. She can grow healthy marrow. She can make healthy blood.’

‘Don’t they have banks for cord blood now?’

Lea clamped down her frustration. Did he not think she’d thought of those things? Her child’s life had been worth an ex-ploration into every medical possibility. And every moral one. But she held her temper, moderated her breath.

‘The genetic mix of people from regional north-west Australia is too specific—part-indigenous, part-Asian islander, part-European. There’s nothing like that gene mix sitting in cord-blood banks around the world.’

‘What about a cousin or something?’

Another deep breath. Sapphie had already offered her new baby’s cord. Anna’s infertility was none of his business. ‘Not closely related enough. This treatment requires the cells to be from a full sibling.’

He tipped anguished eyes up to her. ‘A second baby could have the same condition.’

Lea shook her head. ‘It’s not genetic.’

He considered that. ‘A baby conceived with an agenda?’

Lea laughed, an ugly, angry sound. ‘Believe it or not, this is the best available chance Molly has. Please, Reilly; I know it’s unconventional, and I know I am probably the last person in the world you would want to help, but I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for that little girl.’ They turned to watch Molly leap off the chair and limp after Max along the veranda. ‘Your little girl.’

Reilly swung an angry gaze back to her. ‘Now that it suits you.’

She deserved that. ‘Any little girl, then. Your body produces billions of cures for Molly in a week. I just need one. Just one, Reilly.’ She grabbed at his shirt, willing to beg if that was what it took. Anything for Molly. ‘To save a child’s life.’

She watched the anguish turn to anger. Disgust leached out at her and he pulled away from her. ‘Let me see if I understand this—you tricked me out of one child, and now you’re trying to emotionally blackmail me into fathering another one?’

‘No. This is not blackmail.’

‘Really? “Give me a child or this one dies”—what would you call it?’

She sucked in a wounded breath. ‘The last act of a desperate woman! I didn’t have to tell you, Reilly. I could have just arranged to bump into you somewhere, sweet-talked you into a repeat performance for old time’s sake.’

He snorted. ‘You overestimate your charms, Lea.’

She knew she deserved the pain that lanced through her. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I wanted to be honest this time. I couldn’t do it that way again.’

‘Why not? You applied yourself so diligently to the task last time. Or have you forgotten?’

Never. He’d been so gentle that night, as she had fallen apart from grief in his arms, grief from losing the father she’d never been able to love. Grief enough to make her do something entirely out of character while the rest of her family had been off burying him.

She might have shoved it far down into her subconscious, but no; she’d never forgotten that afternoon. ‘I’ve lived with that decision for five years, knowing it was the wrong thing to do. Knowing I should have told you.’

‘You didn’t exactly rush to rectify it.’

She dropped her eyes and cleared her thick throat. ‘I was ashamed. I thought…’

‘What?’

She looked over at her baby. ‘Maybe Molly is sick because of me. Because of the lie I told, every day I didn’t tell you about her.’

All the anger drained from his handsome face. ‘You don’t seriously believe that?’

‘I believe in a whole bunch of things I never used to.’ She dragged her eyes up to his and hated herself for the tears that started to fill them. ‘But this is my price to pay, not Molly’s. She’s barely started on life.’

Indecision skittered across his face, and something else: a deep sadness. ‘There must be some other way to help her.’

As if she hadn’t exhausted every possible alternative before debasing herself before the man she never thought she’d see again. Before exposing her shame. ‘Do you think I’d be here now if there was any other possible way?’

His bitter laugh physically hurt. ‘I know you wouldn’t.’

But he hadn’t had her escorted from the premises. Maybe there was hope yet. He cast his focus out over his vast property, hid his thoughts. Then his eyes returned, a fork of brown hair falling into his eyes as he shook his head. ‘To make a child just to save a child…’

‘What—seems wrong to you? You’ve been a father for three minutes, Reilly. I’ve lived with that little girl for five years. Carried her, then held her for over four years. Nothing is too great an ask.’

‘But a baby…’

‘I would love this child just as much as Molly. And she’d adore a brother or a sister to grow up with.’ Instead of having to create imaginary ones.

‘It just seems…’ He looked over at Molly.

Lea grabbed his sleeve desperately. ‘They throw them away, Reilly. They toss twenty millilitres of precious, life-saving stem cells into an incinerator once the baby is born and the cord is clamped—the cells that could save Molly. How is that right?’

His brown eyes smouldered like coals as he considered her. It pained her to see disgust in eyes so like her daughter’s.

After an age, he spoke. ‘I’m sorry Lea. I can’t help you.’

She staggered back, speechless. She’d been prepared for a humiliating, difficult battle, but in her wildest imaginings she’d never thought he’d simply say no. Not the man she remembered. The man whose eyes had plagued her dreams for two years until she’d finally banished him.

‘You won’t help?’ His lashes dropped. Lea gripped his shirt-front with both hands. ‘You don’t have to do a thing. You’ll never even see us again. There’s no expense, no obligation, I promise. Just the…’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘conception.’ ‘We’ve done it before. Please, Reilly. Please.’

‘Lea.’ He took her icy hands in his and backed her to the side of the house. ‘You barely know me, so I’ll forgive your assump-tion that I would willingly impregnate you with a spare-parts baby and then walk away from any child of mine. But you aren’t hearing me.’

His jaw was rigid. ‘I can’t help you, Lea. I can’t give you a sibling for Molly.’ He twisted her clenched fingers away from his body. ‘You’ll have to find another way.’

CHAPTER TWO

THERE were no other ways.

The reality of that had sunk in well and truly overnight, after she and Molly had returned home to Yurraji. The poor kid was crashed out in bed, exhausted from the excitement of an all day road-trip, her exertions climbing Reilly’s stairs and then running around after his cat. That was all it took these days. It was now morning and Molly had slept through from sunset the night before. It was the kind of sleep Lea could only dream of.

The sleep of the dead.

Lea’s eyes filled with tears. It seemed impossible that she had any left at all after a night of silent sobbing. Reilly had been her best and her last hope.

And he’d said no.

The sheer injustice burned like battery acid in her gut. That a stranger could decide whether her daughter lived or died, and that he’d done so in a matter of moments. She twisted her entwined fingers until they ached.

She’d already called Dr Koek and broken the bad news, and her specialist had immediately gone into super-supportive, damage-control mode, citing statistics to show that cord blood from an unrelated, unmatched baby could work.

Statistically.

Maybe.

Lea let her head drop to the railing surrounding her house paddock. She would try unrelated cord blood—of course she would, as many times as the specialists would allow—but something deep down inside her told her it wasn’t going to work. This was the price she would pay—Molly would pay—for her past mistake.

Her sisters would pray to God and the universe, respec-tively, but Lea begged karma: please, please do not make my baby pay for something I did. Punish me.

Punish me.

A small mob of grazing kangaroos in the next paddock stood tall and looked east to the highway.

In the same moment, Lea realised there was no greater pun-ishment for a mother than to watch her daughter die. And then live a long, miserable life with that knowledge. Her stomach heaved.

The roos lurched into flight, springing away and covering the large paddock in a few easy bounds. Lea frowned and turned in the direction they’d been looking. She saw the advancing plume of red dust drifting up over the kurrajongs long before she heard the engine.

Moments later, a battered Land Rover picked its way down her rocky drive. She recognised it instantly and her gut lurched. The last thing she’d done before roaring out of Minamurra’s beautiful heart, right past this very vehicle, was to hurl a scrap of paper with her phone number and address at Reilly. She’d had no expectation that he would use it, and certainly not within fourteen hours. Not given the disgusted, pained expression on his face when she’d finally bundled up Molly and left.

Why was he here? She refused to let herself hope. He’d been brutally clear yesterday afternoon. She hardened her heart in anticipation of his next attack.

He parked his vehicle then loped towards her, looking as fresh as if he’d just stepped out of a shower, not driving since before dawn. Her mind whizzed back five years to the memory of him stepping out of the motel bathroom, unashamed and glorious. She forced herself to remember the man he really was.

‘Lea.’

‘Something you forgot to say?’ Some organ you forgot to rip out and pulverise under your boot?

His eyes flicked over her shoulder, looking at the horses grazing in the paddock behind her. Then they slid back to hers. ‘I came to see if you were all right.’ He must have realised how utterly ridiculous that sounded, and he hurried on. ‘And to explain. In case I wasn’t clear.’

She straightened against the cool of the morning; it wouldn’t stay that way for long. It would be forty Celsius by mid-morning. ‘You were perfectly clear. You won’t help Molly. I get it.’

He sighed. ‘Not won’t, Lea. Can’t.’

A sleepless night and complete emotional collapse had left her preciously short of patience. ‘Philosophical objections, I presume?’ she snapped. She’d been prepared for that; stem cells were a touchy subject all round. The only people she’d got absolute acceptance from were her specialist and her sisters.

His jaw flexed. ‘Physiological objections.’

Lea frowned.

‘Saying you took me by surprise yesterday is an understatement,’ he went on. ‘I was completely pole-axed. I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have stopped you when you took off—explained.’

He looked uncomfortable. Critically so. His eyes darkened a shade. ‘I was diagnosed two years ago. It has a long medical name, but the short version is that I sustained a string of groin injuries riding the broncos over the years, and my immune system kicked in to protect itself from the damage. But the antibodies didn’t only battle the infection.’

A cold chill crept through her. Lea knew all about the immune system from studying Molly’s condition.

‘The antibodies attack my sperm as though they’re foreign objects.’ He took an enormous breath. ‘I’m sterile, Lea.’

The dramatic way he paled as the word crossed his lips told Lea it was the first time he’d said it out aloud. Her mind spun. ‘But Molly?’

‘The specialists weren’t able to estimate how long ago it started.’

Not five years ago, evidently.

Sterile. Her first thought should have been for her daughter. Saying no because you couldn’t, or because you wouldn’t, was still a ‘no’. The ‘why’ made little difference to Molly.

But all the difference in the world to Reilly.

She thought about the man with the sexy swagger she’d met in the pub and tried to imagine him sterile. She remembered his potent, muscular body arching, taut, over hers and tried to imagine it barren. She looked at him now, really looked, at the extra lines in his skin, the caution in his manner, the shadow behind his eyes.

Double horror hit her. For Molly and for Reilly. That such a vibrant, virile man should be robbed of the chance to make children, the most fundamental biological right. He’d had tragedy in his life too.

‘I’m sorry, Reilly.’

He pushed past to walk towards the horses. ‘I’m not interested in your pity; I simply wanted you to understand my position.’

As if she could have missed it. Lea closed her eyes. She’d exposed Molly, brought this man back into her life, for nothing. He was powerless to help.

Her voice was as quiet as the morning. ‘I understand.’

‘What will you do?’

She shook her head. ‘We’ll try regular cord blood. Hope. Pray.’ Her voice cracked on that word.

‘That won’t work?’

Lea sighed, tight and small. It hurt her chest. ‘I don’t think so, no. But it’s something.’

Reilly stared hard at her. ‘She’s a great kid.’

It almost killed her to deliver a flat smile. ‘She is. The best.’

She stepped up to the paddock fence as one of her horses walked over. As always, she drew comfort from Goff’s softness and courage from his warmth. She could feel Reilly’s eyes on her through the silence. He stepped closer behind her.

‘Lea, if there was…’ He seemed uncertain; it didn’t suit him. He cleared his throat. ‘If there was a way despite my…’

Lea’s radar began to bleep. But, no, she’d felt like this walking up his stairs, and look how that had worked out. She forced down the little spike of hope, turned to him with a pur-posefully bland expression.

His eyes raked over her, wondering, worrying. ‘I told myself I wanted nothing to do with you. Even for Molly,’ he said. ‘But I lay there last night thinking about this little pixie of a kid and how she looks just like me at her age. And I realised I couldn’t do nothing. She’s my daughter. My blood. I spent most of the night online researching her condition.’

His tanbark eyes burned with intensity and he shook his head with disbelief. ‘I didn’t tell you about my situation so you could feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want. But you need to understand this is not a small thing you’re asking. Quite apart from the philosophical considerations, as you so aptly put it, I just don’t have millions of cells to work with. You’re not asking for something minor.’

That made it sound like…Her heart started to thud.

He broke a long silence. ‘When investigations first began, one of my many medicos recommended freezing a sample for later comparison, assuming we’d have something later to compare with. They used most of it up running a fortune’s worth of tests.’

Lea’s breath evaporated. Most.

He turned and looked at her. ‘But there is a freezer in a lab in Perth and it contains one single remaining sample, about the size of one of Molly’s fingernails.’

Lea’s heart lurched to a halt.

‘If it’s like the others, it won’t have a lot in it, but it may just have enough. Enough to help Molly.’ He stared at her in silence while her mouth opened and shut like a baby barramundi.

Words simply would not come, trapped behind a lump the size of a football in her throat. She had a sudden flash of a teenaged Molly—healthy and happy, her whole life ahead of her—cantering a greying Goff around the paddock. And Reilly, the man with only one shot at fatherhood, who was willing to spend it on a daughter he’d only just discovered. A daughter whose parentage he’d not even asked for hard proof of, so strong was his instinctive recognition that she was his.

Lea pushed up onto her toes and threw her arms around Reilly’s surprised neck. For a moment, the very barest of moments, his arms crept around her and a fluttering sense of rightness ghosted through her. But then his hands slid upwards, gripped her shoulders and pushed her firmly away, his eyes locking onto hers. She felt instantly cold.

‘I’m doing this for Molly. Not for you. I have no interest in helping you beyond what it does for my daughter.’

She ignored the hurt snapping at her heels like a cattle dog, accustomed to forcing down personal pain. Her vision blurred with tears. ‘I understand.’

‘And it’s not without a price. There’s something I want in return.’

‘Anything.’

His dark eyes glittered. ‘Careful, you don’t know what I’m asking yet.’

There wasn’t a single possibility she hadn’t thought about before driving to Minamurra, a compromise she wasn’t willing to make. She’d already given him her body, albeit in a moment of grief-stricken insanity. There was nothing he could ask that she wasn’t ready to grant. For Molly.

She tossed her head back and met his gaze head-on. ‘What do you want?’

‘First, I want to be able to see Molly regularly. I want to be part of her life.’

Lea took a deep breath. Since he was the one saving Molly’s life, that wasn’t unexpected. She would watch him like a hawk until she could determine whether he was a man like her father…or something else.

She nodded slowly. ‘Agreed.’

Reilly looked at her, his dark gaze unfathomable, probing, intense. The hairs on Lea’s neck stood to attention and her skin tingled.

‘And second…’

Here it comes. He was going to ask her for a physical com-mitment. A tiny part of her wasn’t dreading it. She remembered every moment from five years ago and the primal haven that was his embrace.

‘…I want custody of the child we make together.’

Gravity suddenly altered its fundamental principles. Lea would have gone down if not for Reilly’s iron grip on her upper arm.

‘Given the sacrifice I’m making, it seems a reasonable trade,’ he said. ‘You get Molly’s cordblood, I get an heir.’

CHAPTER THREE

LEA’S skin prickled despite the morning heat. To find hope only to have it ripped violently away again…Her hands shook. Her voice was strained.

‘No.’

‘Lea, think about—’

‘No!’ She marched off toward her house, heart thumping painfully. She needed to be close to Molly right now. Badly. How could he think, even for a moment, that she would…could…? Her chest tightened like a slingshot. She spun round, wounded beyond measure that he thought that of her. ‘You cannot ask that. It’s not fair.’

‘How fair was it to rob me of a child? To bring her to me only when you needed something?’

‘I had no choice!’

‘Neither do I, Lea. You’re handing me a miracle. How can I just shrug that off?’ He pursued her across the house-paddock, snagged her arm and spun her back round to him. ‘I remember something you said when we were together, about how discon-nected you felt from the world.’

‘I said way too much that weekend.’ Her determination to keep her distance had lasted all of an hour. After that first sweet time together, she’d opened up to him like he was her confes-sor, believing she’d never see him again.

‘I don’t have to tell you about loneliness, Lea. Surely you can understand why your request might be like a beacon in the darkness? The chance I believed I’d never have?’

Lea’s chest lifted and fell with her tumbling thoughts. Of course she could understand it. Molly had been her own beacon, even the very idea of Molly. It was why it had been so easy for her subconscious to subvert her morals five years ago and keep the pregnancy a secret. Her father had done such a prize job on her trust in men—in anyone—she’d given up any hope of meeting someone to have a child with. To have one simply gifted to her…It had felt very fated. Divine.

Was that how he was feeling? Damn him. ‘Reilly, you’re asking me to give you my child.’

‘And you’re asking me to give you mine.’

Lea blinked furiously, realising for the first time just how much she was asking. Her mind worked frantically to find escape. ‘Do you have any idea how to be a father? How will you possibly raise a child alone?’

‘You managed.’ He rushed on as Lea opened her mouth. ‘And, before you play the “I’m a woman” card, ask yourself whether you’d accept that if you were in my position.’

Lea’s mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth.

He stepped closer. ‘I’m granting you the last of my sperm. What you need to save Molly. I understand the price is high but so are the stakes for me.’

She stared at him through watery eyes. ‘It’s more than high. I can’t do it.’

Reilly stiffened his back. ‘Then I’ll fight you for Molly.’

‘No!’ The fierce yell practically tore its way out of her constricted throat.

Reilly stood his ground and pointed at her heaving chest. ‘There, Lea. Take those feelings you’re only barely managing to suppress and multiply them by one hundred. That’s how you’re going to feel if you walk away from this chance—Molly’s last chance—and she dies.’

It was all too easy to imagine how that day would feel. She thought about it every day. Lea’s whole body shook. Months of suppressed agony, of having to be strong for Molly while fearing the worst, hit her full in the chest. She nearly crumpled.

Nearly. At the last second she swayed back into a surer position. Her voice was thick and strained. ‘There must be some other way.’

His hoarse laugh grated on already tattered nerves. ‘Sure—you could marry me and raise the baby together.’

She smiled tightly at him. ‘I’ll pass, thank you. When I said you were my last choice, I meant it.’

His lips thinned. ‘What happened to you doing whatever it takes to save Molly?’

‘You can’t tell me that’s your preference?’ she gaped.

‘Tie myself to a woman who lied and cheated me out of a child? Who only surfaces when she wants something, and who asks me to be a stud-bull?’ His contempt was palpable. ‘You even need to ask?’

Silence. Goff snorted in his paddock.

Finally Reilly spoke. ‘I’ve told you what I want, the terms under which I’m prepared to help Molly.’

Lea’s snarl was heartfelt. ‘What sort of a man sets terms on saving his daughter’s life?’

Brown eyes blazed. ‘A desperate one.’

Lea clung to the doorframe and watched Molly sleep. Tired as she still was, she slumbered deep and long, her breathing shallow, her skin almost translucent. Surrounded by her toys, she looked for all the world like she was laid out in state.

Macabre but at peace.

Few days were peaceful for Molly, and they were getting fewer. She’d gone far beyond benefiting from treatment; it was now essentially for survival. Without the stem cells, Molly wouldn’t live to go to school.

What Reilly was asking was effectively blackmail. To put such a condition on the life of a child. It was why she’d thrown him and his selfish needs off her property, sent him packing back to Minamurra.

What sort of a man wouldn’t give up even the last of his sperm to save a dying child?

A desperate one, he’d said.

Not so desperate he hadn’t thought the finer details through and laid it all out for Lea as she’d stared, horrified, at him. She would carry the baby to term and doctors could harvest the umbilical stem cells. Then she and Molly would head back to Yurraji, and the baby would be packed off with a nice big tin of formula to the home of a man with no wife who knew nothing about rearing children. He didn’t even have brothers and sisters to have learned from.

It meant nothing that she’d seen a softer side to him five years ago, a side that had potential to grow into the sort of patience and compassion required in a parent. She’d seen not a hint of that today. Or yesterday. The new Reilly Martin was one-hundred percent diamond-ore; cold, hard and unmoveable.

She shook her head. This was the man she’d let into Molly’s life. Molly she could at least buffer, but she couldn’t protect a new child, living alone three hours away with a monster.

Reilly’s minimal interactions with Molly flashed through her mind like a reluctant slideshow—how instinctively gentle he’d been with her. Okay, so he wasn’t likely to be a total monster, but still—what kind of man would make such a request?

What kind of woman would? It was true she was asking him to give up a child.

But in all her planning and visualisation it had never occurred to her he would care about the baby that would result, let alone want it. The paradigm she was working from was five years out of date: Reilly Martin, king of the circuit; lover of women; drinker of beer.

Wanter of heirs, apparently.

She shuddered in a breath. If anything happened to Lea, Molly would go to Reilly. She’d created that reality the moment she’d driven down Minamurra’s long, tree-lined drive. Never mind that her will named Anna and Jared as Molly’s guardians; Reilly would not rest until his daughter was with him. His threat to fight for Molly might only have been a ploy to win an argument, but if Lea wasn’t around to intervene, her daughter would grow up a Martin.

Then again, without this particular Martin, her daughter wouldn’t grow up at all.

The dark, ugly thought crept through and brought her back to Reilly’s request. To give him the baby when it was born; it would virtually be surrogacy. The incubation of a child that wouldn’t be hers, never mind that biologically it was. She’d considered doing it for Anna and Jared, but her sister wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t put someone she loved through the pain of surrendering a child.

What Reilly was proposing would be just the same, except she’d be taking her payment in the form of stem cells, more priceless than any money.

But giving up the baby…

Molly’s eyes began to shift beneath her lashes. The anxious twitching of her fingers meant it was more nightmare than dream. Lea crossed to sink down onto Molly’s bed and placed her hand gently on her daughter’s chest, speaking quietly to her. The twitching ceased immediately. A moment later her damp brown eyes fluttered open wide. She stretched up for a big hug and clung hard to Lea’s neck. Lea kissed her and kept up the reassuring murmurs.

‘Where were you, Mummy?’ Molly’s breathless little voice asked. Even hugging her mother made her puff. Lea held tighter.

‘I was right here, chicken.’

Her little face frowned with confused concentration as she fell back onto her pillow. ‘You were gone. I was alone.’

Lea smoothed Molly’s fringe back from her eyes. ‘Shh. No. I was here. I’m always going to be here, baby. You were dreaming.’

‘It was nice there. But I was alone. Don’t leave me alone, Mummy…’

Lea dug her fingernail into her thumb hard to channel the pain, to focus the grief, not to think about the symbolism of Molly’s dream. It took everything she had not to let the tears well up and spill over in front of her anxious daughter. Time enough for that later.

‘Do you feel like waking up now?’ Lea’s voice was painfully tight. Molly rubbed dark, deep eyes and shook her head.

‘Okay. How ’bout I sit with you here until you go back to sleep and I’ll make sure you don’t go back to the place where you were alone—okay?’

‘’Kay.’ Molly sucked her thumb into her mouth and then rolled onto her side. Lea tucked her in more firmly and gently rubbed her back until she felt her daughter’s breathing regulate. Then it was safe to let the tears creep out. They streamed, un-checked, down her face accompanied by the silent sobs she’d become so adept at.

Minutes passed and Lea’s whole body hurt from keeping the pain inside. She sucked in deep, shuddering breaths then tiptoed out of Molly’s room and headed for her mobile. She punched in Reilly’s mobile-phone number and pecked out a concise text-message with badly shaking fingers.

Just three words: I’ll do it.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE conception of their second child was a far cry from their first. Even Reilly appreciated the irony.

Three weeks of blood tests, injections, headaches and hormones, until Lea’s body artificially ripened to bursting point, followed by scans every three days until her eggs were perfect for harvesting. Then the city specialist who had been flown in accessed Reilly’s tiny, frozen sample and injected the healthi-est thaw survivor directly into one of Lea’s eggs.

Shame had been a near-permanent resident in Reilly’s throat, knowing there’d been barely any sperm left, the rest biologically massacred by his over-zealous immune system.

Now, Lea stared rigidly at the beige ceiling and did her best to ignore him and the six people in the room all fussing around the business end of her body where her legs were braced in stirrups and her hospital gown was tented over her bent knees. As if she needed the privacy from herself.

Reilly’s gut tightened and his temperature raised. He hadn’t realised how humiliating this would be for her when he’d insisted on being present for the implantation. Or that every muscle in her body would tremble uncontrollably. Empathy washed through him.

They’d tried to convince him it was nothing they hadn’t all seen before, but the excited buzz and the number of personnel present seemed to indicate an ICSI implantation was something several of them had very definitely not seen before in their remote hospital posting. He could see the bright lights, the graceless position, the room full of strangers, were all starting to get to her. Even with sedation slowly kicking in.

His lips tightened. Could they make this any more uncomfortable for her?

Molly might not have been conceived in love, but at least it had been natural, the joining of two people who had connected for a preciously short time. In a bed. With sweat. This man-made artifice was so foreign.

But entirely appropriate under the circumstances.

Lea sighed, just when he might have himself. He glanced back at her eyes and saw they were getting more glazed as the sedation continued to take effect.

‘Lift your hips slightly, Lea? Good girl, thank you,’ the specialist requested from down near her feet. She flinched at something being done down there. Three pairs of eyes glanced up at her over blue hospital-masks, then at the clock on the wall. Was she taking too long to relax?

‘Why are all the blue people talking so loudly?’

At least he thought that was what she said. Her speech reminded him of the lost tourist they had found out on the far corners of Minamurra one time, half-frozen after a night in dry, sub-zero Kimberley temperatures.

Lea started to fight the sedation and he took her hands to stop her waving them about. She forced her head towards him, as though he were a life buoy in a tossing sea, and stared at him with vulnerable, anxious eyes. A pang bit deep in his chest. ‘You’re okay, Lea.’

‘Reilly?’ Her frown doubled even as her hand-hold grew tighter.

He turned to the nearest doctor. ‘Should she be in this much distress?’

The doctor rested his hand on her calf kindly. ‘She’s not really responding to the sedation as we would have hoped.’

Lea Curran doing something completely contrary to the norm? No surprises there.

‘We’ve ceased the feed now. It’ll ease off shortly.’ The doctor’s attention went back under the sheet as yet another man in blue bustled in the door and dived under the screening covers at the foot of the bed.

‘Jeez, buy a girl a drink first,’ Lea said, over-loudly, then started to giggle. Not in a good way.

Reilly stood. ‘Okay—essential personnel, stay. Everyone else, out.’ He was counting on everyone in the room assuming he was the loving husband, that he had a right to issue orders on Lea’s behalf. Apparently they did. Half the room left with baleful glares, only the chief doctor and two nursing atten-dants staying. Both of them kept a respectful distance.

At last.

Lea didn’t look at him but he was sure he heard her voice thank him.

The tiny whisper made him inexplicably tight-chested. If he hadn’t bullied his way in here, she would have been doing this completely alone. Where the blazes were her sisters? Had she even told them this was happening? What kind of a crazy family did she come from, anyway? Just when he thought families didn’t come worse than his own.

He shook his head. Neither the Currans or the Martins could be stranger than the family he and Lea were in the midst of making—one child conceived by accident, a second through negotiation, despite him having vowed all his life never to rep-licate the mistakes of his past.

The child they were making today might grow up mother-less, but there were worse things. Like growing up with a mother who created a child for what it could give her, rather than to bring a life into the world for its own sake.

A mother like his own.

Lea mumbled incoherently and Reilly forced his gaze back to her. Motives aside, this woman had brought him the miracle of fatherhood, not once, but twice. Long after he’d given up all hope of ever experiencing it. For that, she deserved his toler-ance, if not his friendship. He might not like her values very much, but Lea Curran had unintentionally given him the biggest gift of his life. Two children.

The doctor caught his eye and nodded. Reilly leaned in close to Lea’s ear and tightened his hand on hers. ‘They’re going to start now. Are you ready?’

Her glazed eyes met his and she nodded, just before her lashes slipped down to rest on her cheeks.

‘Wake up, Lea, you’ll want to see this.’

He risked a gentle stroke on her flushed cheek, just below where her lashes lay like freshly cut grass. She curled her face into his fingers and he gently ran his knuckles across her perfect skin, memory surging back. God help him if she remembered this later. ‘Open your eyes, Lea. Look at our baby.’

The word ‘baby’ brought her focus hurtling back, as though she’d suddenly realised what was happening. That she was being implanted, right now, and that the last man in the world she would want watching was here, holding her hand.

He let his hand drop with the pretence of taking her chin and turning her face towards the large-screen monitor. Every eye in the room was fixed on that screen, and the blurry shapes on it suddenly started to make sense to both of them.

Lea’s eyes widened as far as his. ‘That’s my uterus.’

He couldn’t help the heat that leached up his throat. There was something so intensely personal about looking at a woman’s womb. Fortunately, all eyes were on the screen, where a long, thin curette delivered the sole viable embryo into its thick, warm bosom of flesh.

‘Oh, my God.’ Lea said it. Or maybe he had. Her fingers found their way to his again.

A tiny dark mass trembled on the end of the glass straw for two heartbeats and then broke free, like an astronaut launch-ing weightlessly into space, suspended in the jelly-like delivery medium. Reilly’s eye locked onto that dark mass as the curette withdrew. His throat tightened up.

The specialist straightened. ‘All finished. Well done, Lea.’

From the corner of his eye he saw Lea glance up at him, and watched him staring at the tiny speck on-screen. ‘It’s amazing,’ he mumbled, and then his eyes dropped to hers and rested there a moment. This was as close as he’d been to her for five years. Since he’d warmed her naked body with his own. His heart kicked up a beat or two.

Her hand still held his in a death grip. She opened her mouth to say something.

‘How do you feel, Lea?’ The specialist appeared behind him and peered at her. Reilly slipped his hand free and moved back out of the way, letting the specialist in to question his patient. He saw her try to follow him with her eyes but he moved faster than her groggy head would allow.

Outside Theatre, he sank into the nearest empty seat, as buoyant as if he’d actually seen his child being born. He held a strange new glow close to his heart. This baby would know the sweet touch of its father’s unconditional love, not grow up as an accessory to its sister. He would raise it to love the country as much as he did, and eventually to take over Minamurra.

He blew out a controlled breath and wondered what his parents would say when they discovered their barren son was the father of not one but two children. Why did he feel like not telling them at all? He shook his head against the crazy urge to hand out cigars. Cigars were for celebrations, and this was hardly an event he’d want anyone congratulating him on.

He’d just created a life to save a life.

Built a baby.

It was a fraud.

And he knew all too much about that. In Reilly’s case, his own conception had been a double fraud. His mother had got pregnant back in the last weeks of the crazy seventies when her career as half of the country-western act Martin and Lynnd was looking shaky. The public scandal of her pregnancy had assured her place in the spotlight, and the fact that the father was her long-time singing partner had ensured a fast marriage and secure future.

Adele Lynnd was nothing if not goal-oriented.

Reilly had come along just as the wedding gifts had started to run out of warranty and the publicity had dropped off. A series of family spreads in popular magazines had ensured public attention peaked again. There was only one photograph of him as a child—the only one he still had, from an avenue other than a media photographer. Lucky he had been such a good-looking baby. Then again, as the articles said, how could he not be with such a gloriously handsome mother?

Reilly frowned. For most of his childhood, he had felt the sting of being an inconvenience, an irritation, but on those rare occasions when something he’d done had delighted his mother, he’d been gifted the full brilliance of her attention and her spectacular smile. It had worked on a young Reilly every bit as well as it had worked on the people of Australia.

No wonder he’d grown to be such an over-achiever.

It had been tough enough to explain walking away from the circuit at the top of his game to the reigning monarchs of country music. But telling them their trophy child wouldn’t be making any trophy grandchildren any time soon…

Not pretty.

Their reaction had reinforced his belief that he’d lost the one virtue he could have added to this stinking planet. The one thing that set him apart from every other ringer out there scrabbling for the handful of women prepared to live in the bush. The only thing that had made him a prospect for netting a good outback woman to grow old with: his top-grade, celebrity-issue, prize-winning Martin DNA.

If he’d been a stallion, they would have shot him. On the worst days, he wished they had.

‘Mr Martin?’ A passing nurse dropped her mask and gave him a pretty, sexy smile. He recognised the speculative sparkle of someone who was interested, and he frowned. For all she knew, the love of his life was next door being impregnated while she was out here flirting with him. The disrespect rankled.

Even though it was only Lea.

The smile dropped away as she read his disapproval. ‘Ms Curran is asking for you. She’s nearly ready to go.’

Reilly straightened immediately. Asking for him? He struggled to imagine it. Then again, she’d clung to his hand earlier like it was the only thing keeping her here on Earth. Even through the distraction of what he’d watched happening, he’d been conscious that, the last time she’d gripped his entwined fingers like that, they’d been pressing into a motel mattress.

He tried not to go back there any more, not to cloud what should be a business arrangement, regardless of how he’d held those memories in the past.

Now she was asking for him. He hurried ahead of the nurse back into the room, inexplicably moved by the expectant hope in Lea’s rapidly clearing gaze.

‘Reilly.’ She peered at him bright-eyed as he sank down next to her. ‘How’s Molly?’

Molly. Why had he expected different? He tried not to be jealous of a sick four-year-old child simply because her mother’s world began and ended with her. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? Wasn’t that how love worked in normal families? But it didn’t make him feel any less like he was only valued—once again—for what he could provide, rather than who he was.

Was his life destined to repeat itself for ever?

Lea didn’t need the pregnancy test to tell her Reilly’s embryo had taken, but she’d done it anyway. She couldn’t wait the extra few days before her results come back from the city; it had been hard enough to wait the obligatory two weeks.

She pressed her warm cheek to the cool tile of the bathroom wall and groaned. She’d forgotten this part—the soul-destroy-ing nausea. It had started almost immediately when Molly had been conceived too. It was how she’d finally realised she was harbouring a tiny life. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

She slid her trembling hand around to her warm belly as if the tiny being in there could turn off the sickness at will. At least she got to do this privately, for two more weeks anyway, until Reilly’s first access visit. Lord knew there was precious little about this pregnancy she would experience by herself. Between her sisters’ over-enthusiastic involvement, the doctors’ very clinical interest and Reilly’s presumptions, there were barely any secrets left.

Her satellite phone rang. She glanced at it with suspicion.

Surely Anna wouldn’t ring back so soon, not after Lea had practically hung up on her to go and lose her breakfast? She frowned. Maybe Anna had set Sapphie onto her. It wouldn’t be the first time her two sisters had teamed up like cattle dogs to muster her in one particular direction: theirs. They wanted to know whether there was going to be a new Curran in the family.

Lea sagged against the wall. There wouldn’t be, even if she was pregnant. But she hadn’t told them that. Some small part of her was counting on the fact that she had nine months to think of a solution.

The phone rang on. She ignored it. Even her gorgeous half-sister was beyond her today. Sapphie deliriously in love was twice as exhausting as Sapphie on a regular day. There was only so much sunshine and flowers a girl could take when her body was rejecting its own stomach-lining.

And if it was someone else on the phone? Ha. Who else would it be? Someone from Parker Ridge? She could count on one hand the number of people who’d rung her in nearly six years at Yurraji.

‘Mad horse woman.’ ‘City conservationist.’ ‘Bloody nuisance.’ She’d been called it all. Now they could add ‘single mother of two’ to the list of her apparent social-crimes. She didn’t care what people two hours away said about her. The only thing she cared about was Molly and twenty precious millilitres of stem cells.

She let the phone ring out. It rang again almost immediately.

Oh, for crying out loud! She jagged the phone up with the opposite hand to the one holding the home-test stick and barked a curt greeting. ‘What?’

‘Are we pregnant?’

Reilly was intimidating even without being in the room. Something about the way his voice rumbled across the phone line started a tremor spidering down her back. It had been like that when he’d first spoken to her in that pub. When he’d slid all six-foot-plus of himself into the shabby seat opposite her and refreshed the Chardonnay she’d been nursing all afternoon.

He’d spoken exactly as he looked: sexy as anything.

In her grief it had been easy to talk herself into it. Who would it hurt if she connected with someone just that once? Someone tall. Broad. Solid.

Someone alive.

Life, as it had turned out, was dangerously short. As her father had learned.

She stared at the tiny white stick in her hand. ‘We’ll know in ninety seconds.’

‘Do we just sit here in silence?’ He sounded testy across three hundred kilometres.

Despite her churning stomach, Lea smiled. So, Mr. Smooth was capable of getting ruffled. Good to know. ‘What would you like to talk about?’

‘What if you’re not pregnant?’

‘They’ve held a tiny fraction of your sample over. We try again.’

Reilly’s convoluted contract allowed for that. The legal documents were necessary, and not unexpected, but were still a slap in the face, a reminder that this was pure business to him. But after a second attempt there would be no sample left. No contract. No Molly. Lea straightened. ‘But there’s no reason it won’t take. It was six days old, and quite robust by embryo standards, apparently.’

She fought to keep the hint of pride out of her voice. She had no business feeling proud about this baby. In fact, she’d do better not to think of it as a baby at all, knowing she had to hand it over to Reilly. It was an umbilical cord, that was all.

Its job was to attach to her.

If she grew attached to it she’d never be able to fulfil the terms of Reilly’s agreement.

‘We haven’t yet locked down the timeline for my visits.’

Lea rubbed her temples. No, they hadn’t. She wasn’t sure she wanted him visiting Yurraji every four weeks. But it could have been much worse. ‘Will you come to us each month?’

‘Unless Molly would like to break it up a bit—see Minamurra occasionally?’

‘We’ll see.’ A dull thud started up behind her left eye. She’d grown so used to only worrying about the needs of her daughter and herself. Driving out to Reilly’s property would be doable, except in the final few weeks of her pregnancy.

Assuming she got pregnant at all from the implantation. Her eye went back to the stick. Nothing yet.

‘How is Molly?’

‘Molly’s…’ Not having the best week. She’d spent a lot of time in bed this week, pale and unhappy. It only shored up Lea’s resolve to get this new baby safely born. But there was no need to share her worry. ‘Sleepyhead is still in bed.’

‘Does she know I’m coming next week?’

‘End of next week.’ And not a moment sooner, thank you very much. ‘She does. She asks after you all the time.’ Unpalatable, but true.

Reilly considered that in silence. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘You thought I wouldn’t?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

Because I’m such a liar and a cheat. Lea knew she deserved some of Reilly’s anger, but not all of it. He’d been a willing par-ticipant that day five years ago. She’d been hypnotised by the local celebrity and district hottie with eyes straight out of a cologne advertisement.

What was his excuse?

‘I have no interest in robbing Molly of her father,’ she whispered.

Now. She almost heard him thinking it down the phone. ‘You told her I’m her father?’

‘No. Not while she’s so little. But I told her you were going to be the new baby’s father and you might like to be her daddy too.’ She cringed at how intimate that sounded.

‘A daddy that doesn’t live with you?’

‘Molly and I have been alone for so long, she doesn’t know any different. It’s going to be years yet before other people start making her doubt herself.’

A raven cawed outside Lea’s window. Reilly’s voice dropped a note. ‘Is that experience talking?’

She was not going to discuss her father with him. How she’d wished for most of her life to be free of Bryce Curran and his dodgy values. Fate had handed her the most tangible kind of freedom five years ago and she’d fallen entirely to pieces. She’d staggered to her car amid the suddenly booming silence at Yurraji and started driving in a daze. She hadn’t stopped until she’d found a town filled with strangers and rodeo competitors.

She’d left at dawn, just as bemused. And pregnant, as it had turned out. Her eyes dropped now to the hand clutching the damp stick and she felt the room rush around her like a whirl-pool. She sucked in a deep breath. And another.

‘Lea?’

She glanced across the living room to where Molly’s bedroom door stood ajar so that she could see her exhausted little figure twisted around the two-million stuffed toys that shared her bed. Her eyes fluttered shut.

Thank you.

‘Lea? Are you still there?’ Genuine concern saturated his words.

‘Sorry, I’m here. I’m just…’ She took a deep breath, and looked at the little stick. ‘Pregnant.’

CHAPTER FIVE

GETTING Reilly to wait until his access weekend took a lot of ne-gotiating on Lea’s part. He’d wanted to come immediately on hearing the little stick was showing positive. What was he going to do, come over and stare at her non-existent belly for six hours? Lea’s fast talking had finally persuaded him to achieve as much as he could over the following few days so he could clear his schedule and spend a full day with Molly on his access day.

He’d shuffled his schedule around and left his station hands in charge of running Minamurra. Anyone else might have taken the opportunity to talk up how much work went into breeding and training the district’s finest working and endurance horses and how indispensible he was, but Reilly had simply shrugged and said, ‘I pay them well to make sure I’m expendable.’

Now Lea’s heart squeezed as she looked down her house-paddock to where Reilly and Molly stood discussing the two workhorses, Pan and Goff. The smaller horse lazed his way over to the fence as the humans approached—breakfast, he probably figured—and Reilly reached out and scruffed Goff’s mane high between his ears. The gelding ate it up, tipping his head in for more.

Traitor.

Molly imitated her father, stretching her little leg up to brace one foot on the first rung of the timber fence, resting back on her hip and folding her arms on the timber paling above it. On Molly, it looked adorable. On Reilly…

Lea turned away from the compelling portrait. They were nearly an hour into Reilly’s first visit and no disasters yet. That didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be the longest of days.

‘Mum,’ Molly called from the fence line, her eyes saucer-sized. ‘Reilly’s going to let me ride Goff!’

Lea’s whole body stiffened. Her mouth dried and she sput-tered, furious at Reilly for suggesting such a stupid thing, and angry at herself for not taking him through the rules more thoroughly before he’d even set foot on Yurraji. She’d counted on him exhibiting some common sense.

‘Molly, honey.’ She crouched as her daughter skipped over, uncharacteristically flush with excitement. ‘You can’t ride. It’s not safe. Reilly didn’t know that.’ She glared at him as he saun-tered over, infuriatingly confident.

‘No, Reilly didn’t know that,’ he said calmly. ‘But I’m not talking about galloping through the gorges. A few turns of the round-yard, something light and safe.’

Damn him. Lea pulled him aside from a disappointed Molly and whispered furiously, ‘With Molly there is no such thing as safe. Kids can fall off their own feet. Her blood is so thin it may not clot if she’s injured.’

Reilly turned to look at his daughter’s enormous, disen-chanted eyes. Lea’s gaze followed. There was something painfully sad about the silent way Molly accepted disappointment. So horribly stoic and familiar; her heart compressed like bellows.

Oh, God…

‘What if she rode with me?’ Reilly turned back to Lea, cor-rectly interpreting Molly’s bleak expression. Part of her bristled that he was circumventing her authority, but she saw nothing but compassion in his eyes. Then he spoke more quietly. ‘I don’t want to let her down.’

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