And, suddenly, Cam found himself laughing. ‘Believe me, Tess, the one thing we aren’t short of in Bellaroo Creek is compost.’
She gripped her hands on the table in front of her and leant towards him. ‘Plus I need to get Ty a puppy, but is a puppy and chickens a seriously bad combination?’
‘They don’t have to be.’ He leaned across and covered both of her hands with one of his own. She stiffened and he remembered the way he’d stiffened at her touch yesterday and was about to remove his hand when she relaxed. Her hands felt small and cold and instead of retreating he found his hand urging warmth into hers instead.
‘So you want help building a henhouse and a veggie patch, and in selecting a dog?’
‘It has to be a puppy. Apparently that’s very important.’
Cam understood that. He nodded.
‘And maybe some help choosing chickens?’
She winced as if she were asking too much, but it was all a piece of cake as far as he was concerned. ‘Tess, helping you with that stuff is nothing more than being neighbourly.’
The townsfolk of Bellaroo Creek would have his hide if he didn’t offer her that kind of support. Though—his lips twisted—he expected there’d be quite a few single farmers in the area who wouldn’t mind offering her any kind of help whatsoever.
‘Then…maybe we can agree to being good neighbours. That’s something else I can learn to do.’
He frowned, but before he could say anything she leapt up to glance out of the window again. ‘And until I manage to get one of my own, may I borrow your lawnmower?’
‘Done.’
She swung around and beamed at him. ‘Thank you. Now watch me as I make a fresh pot of tea to make sure I’m doing it right.’
She had the kind of smile—when she really smiled—that could blow a man clean out of his boots. Mentally, he pulled his boots up harder and tighter.
‘Why can’t Cam come to our party?’
Excellent question. Tess glanced briefly in the rear-view mirror to give Krissie an encouraging smile. ‘He said he had lots of work to do.’
‘I bet he had to take time off work to bring Boomer around to play,’ Ty said from the seat beside her. It was his turn in the front. ‘His farm is really big, isn’t it?’
‘Six thousand hectares is what he said.’ And Cameron didn’t strike her as the bragging type. He was definitely the state-plain-facts type. ‘Which I think is really, really big.’
‘So he probably has loads and loads of work to do.’
Was that admiration or wistfulness in Ty’s voice? She couldn’t tell.
A mother would know.
She gulped. ‘Good thinking, Ty, I expect you’re right.’
His chest puffed out at her simple praise. Blinking hard, she concentrated on the road in front of her.
It only took three minutes to drive from their front door to the community hall in Bellaroo Creek’s tiny main street. Across from the hall stood a row of late-Victorian townhouses—tall, straight, eye-catching, but with all their windows boarded up. Whatever businesses had operated from them were long gone. Once upon a time the town had been prosperous. Tess crossed her fingers. Hopefully they could help make the town prosperous again.
Unhooking her seat belt, she turned to the children. ‘Ready?’ They watched her so carefully. She knew they’d take their every cue from her. The realisation made her swallow. She had to get this just right.
Krissie leaned forward. ‘Is this party really just for us?’
‘It sure is, chickadee. Everyone is dying to meet us. They’re so excited we’ve come to live in Bellaroo Creek.’
‘What if they don’t like us?’ she whispered.
Tess feigned shock. ‘Do you really think they won’t like me?’
Krissie giggled. ‘Not you, silly.’
‘They’ll love you,’ Ty announced.
She knew what he was really saying was that he loved her and it made her heart swell and her eyes sting. ‘And I absolutely promise that they’ll love the two of you too.’
They stared at her with their identical brown eyes—eyes the same as Sarah’s. They trusted her so much! She racked her brain to think of a way to make this easier for them.
‘You know,’ she started, ‘it can be a bit awkward making new friends at first, and I bet they’re just as worried that we should like them too.’ She could see that thought hadn’t occurred to either child. ‘Sometimes it helps to have something ready to talk about. So…when you’re talking to someone today you might like to ask them what their favourite thing about living in Bellaroo Creek is, or if they have a dog, or if they keep chickens.’
Both children’s faces cleared immediately.
‘Ooh!’ She clapped her hands. ‘I could send you both on a quest to find out what everyone thinks would be the best vegetables to grow in our backyard.’
Ty squinted up at her. ‘Because that’s important, right?’
‘Vital,’ she assured him.
He grinned. ‘And you could find out how to make Cam’s mum’s cake.’
She pointed a finger at him. ‘Excellent idea!’ She straightened her shirt. ‘And I’m going to remember to smile nicely at everyone and remember to say please and thank you in all the right places. Ready?’
The children nodded. They tumbled out of the car and, holding tight to each other’s hands, they entered the hall together.
Tess blinked. There had to be at least thirty people in here! As well as one seriously long trestle table covered with more sandwiches, pies, quiches, cakes, slices and biscuits than Tess had seen altogether in one place. The sight of all that food, and all those faces, made her head spin. A hush fell over the crowd.
Thirty people, and yet for one craven moment she’d have given anything to swap ten of them for the familiar reassuring bulk of Cameron Manning. Which was crazy because she didn’t know Cameron well enough for him to be either familiar or reassuring. But so far Bellaroo Creek consisted of their farmhouse, their lemon tree and Cameron.
All these people will become your community, your friends, too.
First-day nerves, that was all that this was. Taking a deep breath, Tess beamed about the room. ‘Hi, I’m Tess, and this here is Ty and Krissie. We can’t tell you how happy we are to be in Bellaroo Creek and how much we’re looking forward to meeting everyone.’
A tall, straight woman detached herself from the crowd. ‘I’m Lorraine Pritchard, and we’re all absolutely delighted that you’ve joined our little community.’
And just like that the silence was replaced with a hubbub of voices, and the three of them were swept into the heart of the crowd. An older woman—Stacy Bennet, the schoolteacher—whisked Ty and Krissie off to join a small band of children, stopping by the refreshment table to make sure they armed themselves with a fairy cake each first, and thereby winning herself two friends for life.
‘The children will be fine with Stacy,’ Lorraine told her kindly.
Of course they would. The same way they’d been fine with Boomer this morning. It was just…she hated losing sight of them, even for a moment. Telling herself to stop being so silly, she turned back to Lorraine. The older woman took her arm. ‘Come and meet everyone.’
It’d take her longer than