Outback Bride

‘I didn’t think you’d put me on a beastly wild horse!’ snapped Copper, almost disappointed to discover that the only injury was to her pride. It would have served him right if she had had to be stretchered back to Adelaide!

Mal only laughed. ‘Wild? Old Duke here is the laziest horse we’ve got. I picked him specially for you.’

‘Sweet of you,’ she said between her teeth. ‘Remind me never to ask you for anything else special!’

‘How did you think you were going to manage with a file under your arm when you’d never ridden before?’ He shook his head. ‘Wish I’d seen it, though! It would have made quite a story to keep us going in the wet!’

‘Perhaps I’ll just take a notebook,’ said Copper coldly. ‘I can put it in my shirt pocket—or is that too bizarre for you?’

‘You want to have another go?’

Copper looked over at the grinning jackaroos. The youngest cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Hey, Copper!’ he shouted. ‘We’re going to enter you for the bucking bronco at the rodeo! Better get in some more practice!’

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I’d hate to deprive you all of such good entertainment!’

‘Good girl.’ Mal smiled at her and turned to send one of the boys for a leading rein. ‘We’ll keep good hold of you this time,’ he said, and gave her a leg up back into the saddle. ‘Look, you hold the reins like this.’ He looked up at her and her heart seemed to stop. She saw his face in sudden and startling detail: the grooves at either side of his mouth, the smile crinkling his eyes, the prickle of stubble along his jaw. ‘Relax!’ he said, giving the strap a final tug to secure it and slapping Duke’s rump affectionately.

Copper smiled weakly and managed to look away. ‘I think I’ve got altitude sickness!’ she said. That would account for the queer feeling in the pit of her stomach, anyway.

Mal rolled his eyes, but his smile burned behind her eyelids as he swung himself easily onto an enormous chestnut horse with a star on its forehead. The jackaroo attached a leading rein to Duke’s bridle and handed the end up to Mal, who moved his horse up beside her. ‘Ready?’

‘Yes.’ Copper cleared her throat. ‘Yes,’ she said again, more firmly this time.

Megan was already on her pony, trotting it around in circles with humiliating ease. The gate was swung open. Mal touched his heels to his horse’s flanks, clicked his tongue behind his teeth to urge Duke forward, and Copper found herself riding.

They took it very slowly at first. Megan trotted ahead on her pony, but the two horses ambled contentedly together. The lack of speed didn’t seem to bother Mal, but then it wouldn’t, Copper thought. He was never hurried, never flustered, never nervous. She was very conscious of him sitting relaxed in the saddle, his eyes creased as he scanned the horizon instinctively and his outline uncannily distinct in the fierce outback light.

Copper felt very safe knowing that he could control her horse as well as his own, and after a while she, too, began to relax and look around her. They were following the line of the creek, picking their way through the spindly gums that spread out from the watercourse. It was very quiet. In the heat of the afternoon the birds were mostly silent, and there was just the creak of the saddles and the rustle of leaves beneath the horses’ hooves as they kicked up a distinctive dry fragrance. Copper breathed it in as it mingled with the smell of leather in her hands.

She was very aware of Mal, overwhelmingly solid beside her. Unlike her, he wore no sunglasses, but the brim of his hat threw a shadow that divided his face in two. Above, his eyes were hidden, but below, his mouth was very clear, cool and firm and peculiarly exciting.

It was just a mouth, just two lips. Copper stared desperately ahead between Duke’s ears, but it tugged irresistibly at the corner of her vision and her eyes kept skittering sideways in spite of herself. Every time they rested on his mouth, the breath would dry in her throat and she would look quickly away.

She was so taken up with keeping her eyes under control that she didn’t notice at first that Mal had brought the horses to a halt in a clearing beside the creek. He swung himself off his horse and looped its reins around the branch of a fallen tree before lifting Megan off her pony. She ran happily down to the water’s edge, where there was a tiny sandy beach, and Mal turned to Copper, who was wondering how she was going to get off. Perhaps she should just try falling off like before?