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CHAPTER
7
Joey had been in the orchard with Dobbin, clearing the never-ending weeds choking the old trees, when he’d seen a splash of red stain the road.
A ute, and not one he recognised.
He’d not lived on the farm long, but he knew his fence lines like he knew the sunburn on the back of his hands. He’d watched the ute make its way back to the gully and take the old track up to the flat paddock, but he had half an orchard’s worth of weeds to annihilate and a miniature horse to catch before he could go check it out.
Once he was done, he stripped off his work gloves and headed to the back of the house, where Gus was flaked out under the old door his sister had set up as a table on the back verandah. He gave a whistle and the dog shot to his feet. ‘Fancy a walk, mate?’
The blur of tail wagging from side to side looked like a yes.
He stopped to chuck the hose into the horse trough for Dobbin and spent a moment checking the field behind the orchard whilethe trough filled. He’d had to raze the overgrown grass to stubble height before he could mark out the three squares with fluoro orange spray paint. Tomorrow his farmstay project would be kicking off right here in this field.
He couldn’t wait.
He passed the feed bin and added the wordsBuy more branto the farm spreadsheet he kept in his head.And fencing wire.Shovel out stall in stable.
He clicked his fingers to distract Gus from a fresh pile of dung and climbed the stile out to the big tract of farmland where his almost-mature macadamia trees were slowly having their undergrowth cleared and their irrigation fixed and where—fingers crossed—a couple of weeks from now, the first rows of avocado seedlings would be planted.
There was nothing down on the flat paddock to interest a passerby. Just the derelict shed with a stuck door and his twenty brand-new yearlings.
So why would anyone have driven up that track?
The sum total of his knowledge about the old shed was that the bank valuers had given it a nominal value of one dollar and declared it one hailstorm away from collapse. When he’d paced the exterior, he’d figured it would be a sensational functions venue but had done nothing about it since. Crops and farmstay and getting the bank off his back came first. Functions venue was way down the list. It was fun to daydream about what could be done, though.
Strip away the walls, leave the posts and rafters all rustic and original, hang chandeliers and mirrors in old-fashioned frames, ferns in brass tubs, live music … oh yeah, he had plans all right for the place.
Unless it was being used to stash drugs? The Northern Rivers district of New South Wales was prettier than a postcard, butthat didn’t mean vice deals weren’t being struck in the back alleys of craft markets and funky cafes and insta-worthy watering holes. Macadamias and dairy cows weren’t the only things that grew abundantly in the green, green valleys of home.
He’d better let whoever was nosing around in on the fact that the farm was no longer vacant.
‘We’re landowners now, buddy,’ he said to Gus.
All that apricot curl growing on the dog’s face made it hard to tell if Gus agreed with him. Pity he didn’t have an old wool shed to go explore. Gus could do with a close encounter with a sharp set of shears.
The breeze had enough warmth in it to convince him spring weather couldn’t be far away. Those avo seedlings he’d ordered needed to get in the ground ASAP, which meant a few more long days on the tractor getting the fields ready … which also meant a delay on the renovations.
If only he had more hands.
The steers he’d bought by maxing out his credit card were dotted across the flat paddock when he and the dog reached it, and their rumps swayed as they chomped their way through the overgrown field. A stand of oleander had grown wild where the creek cut along the border between his farm and his neighbour, Tim McGee. Poisonous to cattle according to the blokes who’d trucked in his steers. There was another job for tomorrow.
A ute, red like the one he’d seen earlier, was parked askew in the overgrown grass out front of the derelict shed. Dust covered it, but enough of the licence plate showed for him to read the plates. His farm was a long way from South Australia; who in hell would drive all that way to trespass here?
No local druggie, that was for sure … unless the plates were stolen … and he was about to walk in on a bunch of armed thugs.Wishing he’d brought something more persuasive with him than a foolish overgrown pup, he rounded the side of the shed to where the stuck-fast door should be … and blinked.
For a half-second he wondered if he’d given himself heatstroke. What was that piece of junk? Not aplane? Old, too, with an open-air cockpit barely covered by a flimsy half-roof of glass and metal. A curvy maiden smiled at him from the fuselage, a pink scarf painted jauntily about her throat as though she were a backdrop to a 1950s movie set.
A war movie, all action and danger and desperation, about a reckless pilot and the adventurous woman who lured hi—
His brain stumbled before he could finish the thought.
Rising from the cockpit where the pilot’s seat must bewasa woman … a dark-eyed, long-haired streak of a woman … oh yeah, he had to have stumbled onto a film set.
Those eyes widened as she saw him. ‘Who are you?’
The woman’s voice was low. Smooth, like cream poured over a rhubarb tart. He felt his pulse kick and blamed it on the heat of the day, on the relief to find his shed wasn’t being used by some drug syndicate intent on guarding their weed stash.
