“Can I see?” she asked, bending over the box.
Teague picked the box up, said a silent prayer, then lifted the lid. The sparrow immediately took flight and the girl clapped her hands as it flew into the distance. He felt his cheeks warm. “Maybe it healed itself. It’s only a sparrow, but I kept it alive until it could fly again. I find hurt animals all the time and I know how to make them well again.” He paused. “I like doing that.”
A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “All right, there is one good thing about living on Wallaroo.”
Teague swallowed hard, wondering if she’d just paid him a compliment. Then her words sank in. “You live on Wallaroo?” He hadn’t even considered the possibility. But now that he thought about it, this was the girl his parents had had been talking about. “You’re Hayley Fraser, then.”
She seemed surprised he knew her name. “Maybe,” she replied.
He’d heard the story by way of eavesdropping. Hayley’s parents had been killed in an auto wreck when she was eight years old. She’d been moved from foster home to foster home, until her grandfather had finally agreed to take her. According to Teague’s mum, old man Fraser hadn’t been on speaking terms with his only child since Jake Fraser had run away from home at age eighteen. And now, his poor granddaughter was forced to live with a cold, unfeeling man who’d never wanted her on Wallaroo in the first place.
Teague’s mum had insisted that Wallaroo was no place for a troubled young girl to grow up, without any women on the station at all, and with only rowdy men to serve as an example. Yet there was nothing anyone could do for her. Except him, Teague mused.
“You ride pretty good,” he said. “Who taught you?”
“I taught myself. It doesn’t take much skill. You hop on the horse and hang on.”
“You know your granddad and my father are enemies. They hate each other.”
Hayley blinked as she glanced over at him. “No surprise. Harry hates everyone, including me.”
“You call him Harry?”
She shrugged. “That’s his name.”
Teague felt an odd lurch in his stomach as his eyes met hers. She had the longest eyelashes he’d ever seen. His gaze drifted down to her mouth and suddenly, he found himself wondering what it might be like to kiss such a bold and brave girl.
“It’s because of that land right over there,” Teague said, pointing toward the horizon. “It belongs to Kerry Creek, but Har—your grandfather thinks it belongs to him. Every few years old man Fraser goes to court and tries to take it back, but he always loses.”
“Why does he keep trying?”
“He says that my great-grandfather gave it to his father. It’s part of the Quinn homestead, so I don’t know why any Quinn would ever give it away. I think your grandfather might be a bit batty.”
Hayley turned and looked in the direction that he was pointing, apparently unfazed by his opinion of her grandfather. “Who’d care about that land? There’s nothing on it.”
“Water,” he said, leaning closer and drawing a deep breath. She even smelled good, he mused. He reached up and touched her hair, curious to see if it was as soft as it looked, but Hayley jumped, turning to him with a suspicious expression.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” Teague said. “You had a bug in your hair. I picked it out.”
She sighed softly. “I better get home. He’ll wonder where I am. I have to get supper ready.”
Teague slid off the rock, dropping lightly to his feet. Then he held his hands up and Hayley nimbly jumped down. His hands rested on her waist as Teague took in the details of her face, trying to memorize them all before she disappeared.
Hayley quickly stepped away from him, as if shocked by his touch. “Maybe I’ll see you again,” she murmured, looking uneasy.
“Maybe. I’m here a lot. I guess if you came out tomorrow night after supper, you might see me.”
“Maybe I would.” She glanced up at him through thick lashes and smiled hesitantly. Then she gave him a little wave and ran to her horse. Teague held his breath as she hitched her foot in the stirrup and swung her leg over the saddle. “So what’s your name?” she asked as she wove the reins through her fingers.
“Teague,” he said. “Teague Quinn.”
She set her hat on her head, pushing it down low over her eyes. “Nice to meet you, Teague Quinn.” With that, Hayley wheeled the horse around and a moment later, she was riding back in the direction from which she’d come.
“Shit,” he muttered. Now he knew exactly what his mother had been talking about when she’d insisted that someday he’d meet a girl who would knock him off his feet.
“Hayley Fraser.” He liked saying her name. It sounded new and exciting. Someday, he was going to marry that girl.
1
THE DUST FROM the dirt road billowed out behind Teague’s Range Rover. He glanced at the speedometer, then decided the suspension could take a bit more abuse. Adding pressure to the accelerator, he fixed his gaze down the rutted road.
He’d finished his rounds and had just landed on the Kerry Creek airstrip when the phone call had come in. Doc Daley was in the midst of a tricky C-section on Lanie Pittman’s bulldog at the Bilbarra surgery, and needed him to cover the call. It was only after Teague asked for details that he realized his services might not be welcomed. The request had come from Wallaroo Station.
The Frasers and the Quinns had been at it for as long as he could remember, their feud igniting over a piece of disputed land—land that contained the best water bore on either station.
In the outback, water was as good as gold and it was worth fighting for. Cattle and horses couldn’t survive without it, and without cattle or horses the family station wasn’t worth a zack. Teague wasn’t sure how or why the land was in dispute after all these years, only that the fight never seemed to end. His grandfather had fought the Frasers, as had his father, and now, his older brother, Callum.
But all that would have to be forgotten now that he was venturing into enemy territory. He had come to help an animal in distress. And if old man Fraser refused his help, well, he’d give it anyway.
As Teague navigated the rough road, his thoughts spun back nearly ten years, to the last time he’d visited Wallaroo. He felt a stab of regret at the memory, a vivid image of Hayley Fraser burned into his brain.
It had been the most difficult day of his life. He’d been heading off into a brand-new world—university in Perth, hundreds of miles from the girl he loved. She’d promised to join him the moment she turned eighteen. They’d both get part-time jobs and they’d attend school together. He hadn’t known that it was the last time he’d ever see her.
For weeks afterward, his letters had gone unanswered. Every time he rang her, he ended up in an argument with her grandfather, who refused to call her to the phone. And when he finally returned during his term break, Hayley was gone.
Even now, his memories of her always spun back to the girl she’d been at seventeen and not the woman she’d become. That woman on the telly wasn’t really Hayley, at least not the Hayley he knew.
The runaway teenager with the honey-blond hair and the pale blue eyes had ended up in Sydney. According to the press, she’d been “discovered” working at a T-shirt shop near Bondi Beach. A month later, she’d debuted as a scheming teenage vixen on one of Australia’s newest nighttime soap operas. And seven years later, she was the star of one of the most popular programs