Page 123 of Where the Wattles Bloom

‘Me too.’ He dropped a kiss on her mouth and her lungs got a little bigger. ‘Are you sure you can live out here without the trappings of the city?’

Rowena slipped her arms around his neck and stood on her tiptoes so they were eye to eye. ‘I love it out here,’ she assured. ‘Acacia Junction. Blairgowrie. And I only want to be wherever you are.’

‘Good answer,’ he said with a smile.

She returned his smile. ‘I’ve got an even better one,’ she murmured, urging him down for a kiss that wasn’t entirely appropriate for a graveyard.

He groaned against her mouth. ‘You’re right, that’s much better.’ Pulling away, he tugged on her hand. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’

‘No.’ She shook her head and held her ground. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘Hell yes.’ He grinned so big it filled Rowena’s heart to bursting. ‘I like the sound of that.’

He tugged again and she let herself be tugged this time and they walked hand in hand back to the homestead and into a future of pet lambs and bagpipe lessons and orange bears called Colin.

And tiny baby daughters.

An Epilogue … or Three

Twelve weeks later, bang on the due date

‘Stop! Pull over!’

Lachlan shook his head, his pulse hammering like a train. ‘We’re ten minutes away.’

From the hospital. Who knew they were on their way. And where there were doctors and nurses and a fucking bed!

This was all happening too fast.

Rowena’s first contraction had been ninety minutes ago. Her water had broken as they’d hurried out the door, Lachlan asking Albert to call ahead and alert the hospital to their imminent arrival in advanced labour.

‘Lachy!’ Rowena bellowed. ‘This baby is here now, and unless you want to give our daughter a head injury as she catapults into the footwell, you need to pull over!’

Lachlan’s heart rate hit the stratosphere as he glanced at her in alarm. Her face was red and sweaty and strands of her hair stuck to her forehead. Screwing her eyes shut, she grunted through a contraction, one hand braced flat against the ceiling, the other holding tight to the towel she had crammed between her legs.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered as he jerked the wheel and pulled the car off the road. ‘We’ve got to stop with these roadside emergencies.’

For a man who’d assisted hundreds of lambs into the world, Lachlan was very much out of his depth. Stabbing at the release button on his seatbelt, he said, ‘I don’t know how to deliver a baby.’

‘Trust me,’ she panted, her eyes opening, ‘you’re just going to need to catch this one.’

Rowena was right. By the time Lachlan got around to her side of the car and she’d managed to turn and recline enough to give him access, the head was already out. A slippery body followed and then he was holding his daughter, her lusty indignant cries probably loud enough to be heard in town.

Lachlan stared at her, shell shocked at the rapid-fire sequence of events, his pulse still erratic, but already smitten. ‘She’s here,’ he said, voice wondrous as he took in his bawling daughter. ‘I’m a girl dad.’

‘Oh … Lachy,’ Rowena murmured as she sat, tears streaming from her eyes.

He moved in, placing her in Rowena’s waiting arms, staying close as she cradled the baby between them.

‘I’m a mother,’ she whispered as the crying dwindled and their daughter blinked up at them blearily.

‘Welcome to the world, Regina,’ Lachlan crooned and, with their foreheads pressed together, they stared down at their perfect little girl.

*

The next morning

At almost the same time they’d left in a state of flight the day before, Rowena stepped into the kitchen at Blairgowrie, more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life—thanks to one very hungry little miss—but so elated she felt like she could exist in this state of euphoric tiredness forever. She’d given up on ever having this in her life, and now she did.