A Wish and a Wedding Read Free Page B

to what she had been led to believe, she wasn’t even vaguely sexy. She didn’t inspire lust at all. At least not in Haddo. She had totally misread the look he had given her when she’d come down the staircase. She might remember it for as long as she lived, but to Haddo she was ridiculous.
    Her broken heart she kept secret for the next four years.

CHAPTER ONE
    The present—Mallarinka Station, Channel Country,
South-West Queensland
    S UNSET saw Haddo riding back to the homestead, dog-tired and yearning for an ice-cold beer and a shower, in that order. He couldn’t wait for cooling rivulets of water to stream over his stressed, dehydrated body. He had even contemplated falling fully clothed into a billabong along the way, but hadn’t thought he’d be able to drag himself out. Even his favourite workhorse, Fleetwood, was bone-weary.
    â€œOnly a kilometre to go, boy!” He patted the gelding’s long satiny neck, offering encouragement. Fleetwood responded with a nodding motion of his proud, handsome head. Once Fleetwood had run with the wild horses—until he had been captured. He had broken in Fleetwood himself, though “broken” wasn’t a term he used. A station rule was that none of the horses was to be treated roughly. Only recently he had to let an otherwise good stockman go because of the man’s cruel streak.
    Over the years he had developed a very different technique from the “breaking” favoured even in his father’s day. No spurs, no whips. He didn’t so much “whisper” a wild horse into tameness, though it helped. His method was the rope, while keeping constant eye contact with whatever horse he was working. He’d got that eye contact down to a fine art.
    Fleetwood had thoroughbred blood in him. His dam was a runaway station mare, and the sire was probably Warri, a big rogue brumby stallion with an impressive harem.
    Wild horses were part of the Outback’s unique heritage, though the downside was that they did threaten the delicate ecosystems. But out here man and wild horses lived side by side, with properly schooled brumbies replenishing dwindling station stock. Once most of the cleanskins were in, they would start trapping a mob or two. The mobs were coming in from the hill country, in search of water. There were thousands of wild horses out there—many the progeny of good station blood-stock, but others too small or too scrappy to be put to any use.
    Gently he swung Fleetwood away from the line of billabongs and up onto the vast open plain. It was thickly dotted with spinifex, golden as wheat. It had been a day of stifling heat, always a big problem. The heat made men, horses and cattle sluggish, which meant all three got careless and under-performed, but he had decided the cattle from the outer areas of the station had to be brought in without delay. The heat wasn’t going to get better. No use hoping or praying for a storm—although some of the storm-like displays of late had been pretty spectacular, blazing Technicolor versions of an atomic bomb. But, for all the pyrotechnics, there was no rain. The rain gods just weren’t answering these days, and when they did he was pretty certain drought would give way to flood. That meant the cleanskins that had been enjoying the good life, undisturbed by man, had to be mustered and branded. With vast unfenced stations, and cattle wandering miles into the desert, the duffing of cleanskins went on.
    Pretty much most of the day had been spent trying to muster a big mob of seriously psycho cattle out of Ulahrii, one of the least accessible lignum swamps. At least they’d been compensated by a brief visual delight: Ulahrii had been alight with the most beautiful and fragrant water lilies, great creamy yellow ones that lifted their gorgeous heads clear of the dark greenwater. He had come upon them in all their beauty, and vivid memories had caused him to suck in his