How hard was this going to get? She’d been in enough mess before she’d left home, but now she was stuck in this crummy little creek hundreds of kilometres from anywhere—and out of the mobile network. When she needed to phone Scott, she couldn’t!
It was her own fault, of course. She should have tried ringing him again before she’d left Sydney and told him she was coming. Then he would have given her detailed directions. He might have warned her about this creek crossing.
But if she’d rung him, he would have expected to know why she wanted to see him. And she hadn’t liked to explain about the baby over the phone.
After their breakup, she couldn’t have discussed her pregnancy over the phone. There was just too much to talk about and it was all too complicated. She wanted to work out the very best solution for their baby’s future, and to do that she needed to discuss it with him face to face.
And she hadn’t wanted to waste precious money on air fares when she might need it for the baby, so she’d spent five days—nearly a week—driving all this way from Sydney.
Sighing heavily, she looked at her watch and then at the reddening sky. It would be dark soon and, for the first time since she’d left home, she felt genuinely frightened.
Fighting off the urge to panic, she forced herself to consider her options. She couldn’t spend the night sleeping in the car in the middle of an outback creek; and trying to make camp under trees up on the bank had no appeal. No, she’d rather gamble on how far she was from the homestead and try to walk from here.
She reached into the back of her little car and groped for her shoes, but before she could find them the sound of a motor came throbbing towards her.
Her head shot up and she peered through the duststreaked windscreen. Silhouetted against the sun, a utility truck crested the low hill on the other side of the creek, then rattled effortlessly down the dirt- and gravel-strewn slope.
‘Thank you, God.’ Smiling with relief, she dropped her shoe and her spirits soared as she watched the ute rumble towards her over the loose, water-washed rocks in the creek-bed. Perhaps it was Scott driving. ‘Please, let it be Scott.’
There was a male figure at the wheel and a blue heeler cattle dog perched on the seat next to him.
The truck pulled to a halt beside her.
From her little low car, she looked up. The driver’s face was shaded by the brim of his akubra hat, but she saw black stubble on a resolute jaw and dark hair on a strongly muscled forearm.
Not Scott. Oh, dear, no. Not Scott, but the one man she’d hoped to avoid. His brother, Callum.
Stella’s breathing snagged and she lowered her gaze. Callum! This was a moment she’d dreaded, and she hadn’t expected to have to deal with it right at the start.
She wet her lips and looked up at him with her chin at a defiant angle. ‘Hi, Callum.’
He didn’t answer.
‘I—I’m afraid I’m stuck.’
The truck’s door squeaked as he shoved it open. With an excessive lack of haste, his well-worn, brown leather riding boots lowered into the shallow creek. The boots were followed by an endless pair of blue jeans, a faded blue cotton shirt that stretched wide across powerful shoulders and, finally, a dark unsmiling face beneath a broad-brimmed hat.
It was a face she hadn’t seen for twelve months. A face that still haunted her secret dreams. Dreams she never dared think about in the light of day.
For an agonisingly long moment, he didn’t speak. He stood still as a mountain, his thumbs hooked through the loops of his jeans. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
What a beast! No greeting. No, How do you do, Stella? Long time, no see, or, Can I help? Not a trace of polite concern. Not even G’day.
For a heartbeat, she wondered if Callum Roper had forgotten her? That would be convenient but, short of his developing amnesia, she didn’t think it was possible for him to have forgotten that party. Nevertheless, she deserved a warmer greeting than this!
At least when she found Scott and told him about getting bogged, he would be sympathetic.
She remained sitting in her car and held out her hand. It was about time this oaf was forced to remember his manners. ‘How are you, Callum?’
Their eyes met. His expression was so fierce and hard that she knew, even before he spoke, that he hadn’t forgotten her.
‘Stella.’ He nodded and grunted an incomprehensible greeting. After just a trace of hesitation, his big hand closed around hers.
It was the hard, callused hand of an outdoors man and she tried to ignore the goose-bumps that rushed up her arms in response to such simple contact. This was Scott’s brother, her baby’s uncle, and she really would have to learn to relax when he was around.
Easier said than done.
‘You’re asking for trouble if you stop in the middle of a creek,’ he said.
Damn him. ‘I didn’t deliberately get myself bogged, you know. You should have a sign warning people about this creek.’
‘If there was any sign, it would warn trespassers they’d be prosecuted,’ Callum growled as he circled her car slowly, hoping his shock didn’t show.
His heart was racing at a hectic gallop. The last thing he’d expected to find had been this particular woman stranded on his property. What the hell was she doing here?
Silly question. His stomach dropped like a leg-roped steer as he acknowledged there could only be one reason. She’d come to see Scott. Hell! She didn’t know.
His brother hadn’t shared details about his recent trips to the city, and Callum hadn’t asked. He’d never even known for sure if Scott and Stella had still been an item, and she wasn’t family, she wasn’t a close friend, so he hadn’t sent her word of the accident. At least that was the excuse he’d rationalised.
How the blue blazes could he tell her now?
He was uncomfortably aware of her cool grey eyes assessing him as he checked how far her wheels had sunk into the silty creek-bed. Only a class act like Stella Lassiter could look dignified in such a predicament.
Perhaps her dignity came from the way she kept her chin haughtily high as she sat quietly in her car. Or maybe it was an impression created by that broad, full mouth that made her look earthy rather than vulnerable. Maybe it was all that shiny hair, black as a witch’s cat.
‘How does it look? Am I salvageable?’ she called. Her voice was another problem. Smooth and low, it had a syrupy cadence that kicked him at gut level and conjured a host of images he’d tried so hard to forget.
Hell, maybe she was a witch. In a matter of moments, some soft segment of his brain seemed to be slipping under her spell. Just like last time!
He forced his thoughts to practicalities. Her ridiculous little toy car was well and truly bogged, but it would be easy enough to haul her out.
Reaching into the back of his ute, he grabbed the D shackle and snatchem strap. ‘Sit tight,’ he ordered sharply and bent to shackle the long strap to a low bracket on the front of her car. ‘I’ll give you a tow.’
Leaping high into the truck again, he backed it around until it was positioned in front of hers and then, out of the ute once more, he looped the other end of the strap over the ball joint on his tow bar.
She opened her car door and leaned out to watch what he was doing. And Callum found himself staring at her feet as she sat in her car’s open doorway with the skirt of her light cotton dress bunched over her knees and her bare feet propped on the doorway’s rim.
Her feet were exquisitely shaped. Each neat toe was topped by perfectly applied, sky-blue nail polish. A fine