Her Happy-Ever-After Family: The Cattleman's Ready-Made Family / Miracle in Bellaroo Creek / Patchwork Family in the Outback

With a frown, and a muffled curse that had no direct object, he strode out of the tack room and into the machinery shed to leap on a trail bike and kick it into life. He pointed it in the direction of the northern boundary fence and let loose with the throttle, even though he knew Fraser had trawled along that boundary through the week to check the fences.

He belted along the track for ten minutes when, with another muffled curse, he turned the bike back in the direction of the homestead. Dumping the bike back in the machinery shed, he grabbed several assorted lengths of wood and a roll of chicken wire and threw them, along with his toolbox, into the back of one of the station’s utes and, with a final muffled curse, headed next door to Tess’s.

He might be planning to sever his ties with Bellaroo Creek, but he couldn’t leave a lone woman with two dependent kids to flounder on her own. Not on land he was ultimately responsible for. Not when it was his fault she now had a puppy and a chicken to look after on top of everything else.

Talk to her. That was what Tess had said about his mother.

He swiped a hand through the air. His mother would always have a home with him. She knew that, even if she chose to never accept it.

I think the farm is in trouble.

That was none of his business any more. He fishtailed the ute to a halt in front of Tess’s cottage and the itch between his shoulder blades intensified. He stared out of the windscreen and shook his head. The thought uppermost in his mind, it seemed, wasn’t on building a chicken coop or wondering why his mother refused to come out to Kurrajong, but what Tess might be wearing today—jeans or a skirt?

He rubbed his eyes. When he lowered his hand it was to find Ty and Barney barrelling down the side of the house towards him. ‘Hey, Cam!’

He pushed his door open and found a grin. ‘Hey, Ty, how’s Barney settling in?’

‘I love him best of all dogs in the world!’

It struck him then that Ty looked just like any other seven-yearold boy who’d just got his first puppy—carefree, excited, his face shadow-free.

‘He’s a mighty fine-looking puppy,’ Cam agreed, realising he’d helped to make those shadows retreat. The knowledge awed him, humbled him. He reached behind him to scratch his back.

Then Tess came tripping around the side of the house and all rational thought stopped for more beats of his pulse than he had the wit to count. Shorts. Tess wore a pair of scarletcoloured shorts and a pale cream vest top. Her bare arms, bare legs and shoulders all gleamed in the autumn sunlight. She made him think of fields of ripening wheat, of cream and honey and nutmeg, of spiced apples and camping under the stars. She made him think of his mother’s sultana cake—his favourite food in the world. He curled his fingers against his palms to stop from doing something daft and reaching out to stroke a finger down her arm.

‘Hello, Cameron.’

He swallowed and then simply nodded, unsure if his voice would work.

‘Auntie Tess said Barney did really good for a puppy. We’ve only had one accident.’

Cam winced. ‘I, uh…’

Her eyes danced. ‘Apologise again and I’ll thump you. That puppy has been a source of pure joy.’ She glanced at his ute and then planted her hands on her hips and sent him a mock glare. ‘Where’s my lawnmower?’

He grimaced. ‘My station manager is currently lying beneath it trying to fix a fuel leak.’

‘Ouch.’

‘It should be fixed in the next day or so.’ He didn’t want her using it if it wasn’t a hundred per cent safe.

She gestured with her head and turned. ‘Come and join the party.’

He followed her. He didn’t even try to keep from ogling the length of her legs or taking an inventory of the innate grace with which she moved. She was like some wonderful and exotic creature who’d deigned to live among the mundane and the humdrum. A creature whose beauty took one out of the mundane and humdrum for a few precious moments.

He wondered what she’d done for a living before she’d moved to Bellaroo Creek—maybe she’d been a dancer. He opened his mouth to ask, but they’d rounded the house and Krissie sat on a blanket with that darn chicken on her lap and when she glanced up and saw him she sent him a grin of such epic proportions it cracked his chest wide open.

He had to swallow before he could speak. ‘Did Fluffy have a good night?’

‘She slept in her cage in the laundry, but I think she’d be happier sleeping in my bedroom.’

Tess sent him a bare-teethed grimace that almost made him laugh. One could toilet train a puppy, but a chicken…? ‘Well, honey, I’ve come around to build Fluffy her very own house.’

Krissie’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘Barney slept in Ty’s room.’

He crouched down beside her. ‘The thing is, Krissie, chickens aren’t like puppies or kittens. They like the fresh air and they like to see the stars at night and be able to come and go as much as they please. So, as much as Fluffy loves you, she’ll be happier out here in the yard.’

She stared at him and he held his breath. ‘She’ll get her very own house, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘A nice one?’

‘One that she’ll love,’ he promised.

Her face cleared. ‘I can show you a picture of Fluffy’s dream house!’ She plonked Fluffy down on the grass and raced inside.

‘Oh, good Lord.’ Tess groaned. ‘I have no idea what she has in mind, Cameron.’

He had sudden visions of a hot-pink Barbie house and gulped. And then he glanced around. A collection of plastic planters in assorted shapes and sizes battled for space from the back of the house to the lemon tree. ‘Where on earth did all these seedlings come from?’

Tess planted her hands on her hips. Sweet hips…long, lovely legs…pretty arms. Cam curled his fingers into his palms again. With a silent curse he uncurled them and shoved them into his pockets. Deep into his pockets.

‘Everyone has been so kind. At Saturday’s luncheon Ty, Krissie and I mentioned we’d like to start our own veggie garden and asked for advice on what vegetables we should grow.’

He shook his head, but he couldn’t help grinning. ‘I guess you got your answer.’

She grinned back. ‘I guess we did.’

Her plum-coloured lips gleamed temptingly in the sunlight. His heart thumped. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets. The itch started up again with a vengeance.

Krissie reappeared brandishing a magazine. ‘This one!’ She held it up for them to see.

‘That’s an awful lot of house for one chicken, Krissie,’ Tess said.

Krissie’s bottom lip wobbled. ‘But we’ll get more chickens, remember? Fluffy will need friends for when I’m at school.’

She turned liquid eyes to Cam and they melted him on the spot. He rolled his shoulders, risked removing his hands from his pockets to take the magazine and survey the picture more fully. ‘Oh, I think we can manage something like this.’ He frantically recalculated the amount of wood in his ute with the amount he still had at the homestead.

‘Give me a list of what we need and I’ll go into the stock and station store to get supplies,’ Tess said, as if reading his mind.

It wouldn’t be cheap. He grimaced. He should’ve found a way to talk Krissie into something less grand and—

‘We’re good for it, Cameron. It isn’t a problem,’ Tess said, again as if reading his mind, which unsettled him. He normally maintained a quiet reserve that made him hard to read. It had been one of the things Fiona had complained about. But this woman, it seemed, had only to glance at him to know what he was thinking.

But her plump dusky lips curved up with such promise he found he didn’t mind at all…or, at least, not as much as he suspected he should.

‘Can I help you build it?’ Ty breathed, his eyes alight.