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CHAPTER
8
Heck. Sprung.
And the farmer standing in front of her was not the old bloke in stubbies and boots she’d been imagining. Where was the dad-bod? Where was the sun damage?
Where was the plump, practical wife who ran the local buy-from-the-bush committee? She’d met plenty of them flying into the dirt and grass runways of the outback.
This farmer was a rusty-eyed heartbreaker. There was a fleck of grizzle in his dark hair, and laugh lines around those watchful eyes. And he was tall, and broad, andscrumptious, and … fudgebucket,why was she still holding his hand?
She cleared her throat, ripped her hand from his, and tried to stop staring at his mouth. But she had to look somewhere, didn’t she? That tanned vee of neck, for instance, which—
She blinked. Since when did work shirts come inHawaiian?
It was a relief to see a massive lump of apricot fluff amble in on four apricot legs. Dogs she could cope with when she was onthe run from the family curse. Hot guys, apparently not. ‘You’ve brought a friend.’
The man gave a short whistle and patted his hip, which the dog interpreted as a command to come and snuffle lovingly into his master’s boots.
‘He’d have beaten me inside, but he stopped to pee on your licence plates. You’re a long way from home.’
From back there where the bad stuff was waiting. She sure was. Thank god.
Running away from it had felt so, so good. Besides … the great chunk of metal at her back gave her one very convenient reason to stick around in this new place.
‘I’m here,’ she announced, as much to inform herself as to inform the farmer whose shed she had invaded, ‘to collect my inheritance.’
His eyebrows lifted.
‘The plane,’ she added, in case he didn’t quite get it. ‘My grandmother died recently and left it to me in her will.’
The shed owner—Joe—walked forward and began a slow circuit of theDoreen Anne, and the dog headed over to give her jeans a thorough sniff down. ‘How do you figure that?’ he said, his voice muffled by the two-tonne giant between them.
She frowned. ‘Well. I’m a—’
No. She needed to know more before she started laying claim to a history she’d barely researched. ‘It’s complicated,’ she said after a beat. ‘My father was Trevor Bluett. This place was his family’s farm at one time.’
‘That’s right,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve seen the land records, and the name Bluett does ring a bell. But they haven’t been the owners of this land—of this shed—for years.’
She ignored the ominous part of that sentence. ‘You’ve heard of the Bluetts? Are there … some of them still in the area?’
He came around the tail, and that rusty gaze settled on her. ‘You don’t know?’
She shrugged. ‘No. I did say it was complicated.’
He grinned, and if she hadn’t been braced against thirty kilos of happily panting dog, her knees might have wobbled. Oh yes. Farmer Joe wasfine. ‘Isn’t it always? I’ve been away from the district and just moved back, so there may be some around.’
She could have relatives. Ones who hadn’t died; ones who didn’t know about her. Cousins. Second uncles twice removed, aunties who wore aprons, cousins who stitched quilts.
‘You know,’ he said, hitching a shoulder against the rail of a long-disused animal stall, ‘when I walked over here to check out who was nosing around on my farm, this is not what I was expecting to find.’
‘Me either,’ she said. ‘I was sure the shed would be empty.’
‘Speaking of. How did you get it open? The bank—that’s who I bought this place off—said the door was inoperable.’
She gave a grin that might have come out as a bit of a smirk, but whatever. ‘Tenacity. That, and a hefty dose of WD-40 from my toolkit.’
‘Toolkit,’ he murmured.
