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
