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“Stormcloud must be over there.” She raised a finger and pointed at a smudge of red hills in the far distance. The lodge rested in the foothills of the Mount Mulligan escarpment, part of a conglomeration of mountains called the Featherbed Ranges.
“Ah. I’ve never been.” Finn shaded his eyes and followed her line of sight. “I hear it’s pretty nice. Maybe I could come for a visit one day.” He stepped closer, and their shoulders touched.
“Maybe,” she replied perfunctorily. She didn’t really want Finn at Stormcloud. His presence out here was distracting enough.
Indy walked toward the towering metal tower, and suddenly her phone pinged. Once. Twice. Three times.
“You got reception?” Finn was at her side in a microsecond. He flicked the button on his shirt pocket and pulled his phone out. She was a little slower to follow suit, suddenly unwilling to see these messages Patrick had supposedly sent her.
Finn quickly became distracted by his phone, head bent over the screen, trying to shade it from the sun and read it at the same time. Indy wandered slowly away, also pulling her phone from her pocket.
She drew in a breath. Better to get this over with. Swiping up her screen, she was greeted by a host of messages and three missed calls from Patrick. What was he doing? She’d told him never to contact her. The day she’d left Mountvey Downs in tearswas the last day she ever hoped to see his face, or hear his voice again.
She quickly scanned through the messages. What the hell…?
She didn’t need to read them all in their entirety to get the gist of his words.
I miss you… Please come back… Sheila left me… I need you back in my life…
That complete asshole. A lump formed in her throat. Memories of the two of them together assaulted her mind. He couldn’t do this to her. Not now. She’d gotten over Patrick and his conniving ways. He’d broken her heart into a million pieces and then stomped on it. She was still surprised at how easily she’d fallen for his shit.
Indy swore and nearly threw her phone down the hill.
“Are you okay?”
She’d almost forgotten Finn was there for a second.
No, she wasn’t okay. She felt like screaming. Or bursting into tears. Or falling into a heap on the ground, never to get up. Or all of the above.
CHAPTER FIVE
FINN LOOKED UP from his phone to see Indy’s pale face, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. His mind switched gears, pulling him out of his phone and back into the real world. He’d been looking at the photos Chloe had sent him of Kayleigh, laughing as she sat on a swing. His heart had nearly burst at the sight. Kayleigh was getting so big now. But then Indy had made a noise, like an animal in great pain. The photos would have to wait until a more suitable time.
“Are you okay?” It looked like she’d just received terrible news. He slipped his phone back in his pocket, his own personal problems forgotten in the path of Indy’s obvious distress.
She looked up, as if only just remembering he was there.
“That bastard. How dare he?” she ground out between clenched teeth. But her harsh words belied the look in her eyes. One of pain and anguish. “He can’t do this to me.” This time her chin wobbled as she spoke and then she leaned over and placed her hands on her knees, dragging in deep breaths. It sounded like she was hyperventilating.
“Come and sit down,” Finn suggested, suddenly worried she might fall over. She let him lead her, as if on autopilot, to a rock formation a little way down the slope, where they could sit in the shade. He sat close, in case she needed him, but not touching. His proximity didn’t seem to worry her, like it had before, and she actually leaned against his shoulder, as if she needed the support.
He set his Akubra in the dirt and did the same for her, carefully removing her hat and placing it beside her. But she didn’t seem to notice, her eyes were focussed into the distance, as if she were seeing something that wasn’t really there.
It hurt Finn to see this strong, amazing woman breaking down in front of him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked softly. He wasn’t the world’s best communicator—Chloe could attest loud and long to that fact—but the least he could do was try to comfort Indy, if that’s what she needed. He was beginning to think of her as a friend, and he hated to see her so wrought up.
“No,” she snapped, still staring into space. One of her dogs, the black-and-tan female, came up and nuzzled Indy’s hand, but she ignored the animal, so she proceeded to curl up beside her mistress. Finn wasn’t surprised at the little dog offering comfort. Kelpies were renowned for their loyalty and intelligence, and Barbie would feel her mistress’s unhappiness.
“Okay.” He was fine with just sitting here until she recovered her equilibrium.
Silence settled over them both. He studied the land spread out below them. It really was quite amazing how much just this small elevation allowed a person to see such a long distance. Red dirt stretched out as far as the eye could see, covered with scattered scrubby bushes, the odd bottle tree, or ironbark. It was strangely, starkly beautiful.
Finn had been born in Ireland, and then his father had moved them all to Sydney when Finn was two years old to take up a position at the Seven Hills Fire Station. Finn had loved growing up in Sydney—he was definitely a city boy—but a part of him had always longed to explore this wide, brown country. When he was fifteen, his mother had sent both him and Garrett off to spend their school holidays on a working farm to give her some peace and quiet; she could no longer cope withtwo boisterous teenage boys, when her own grief at losing her husband still sat so heavily on her. Garrett had hated it and couldn’t wait to get home. But that farm had started Finn’s love affair with the Australian landscape. He kept returning at every possible holiday. When he’d finished school, he’d taken a gap year, and travelled up and down the whole eastern side of Australia, taking odd jobs on farms as a jackaroo, or picking fruit, or as a handyman. It’d been hard, soul-cleansing work. He always knew he was going to come back and join the police force afterwards. But that year had given him some valuable lessons, and, without that experience, he would never have fitted in so well to this undercover mission.
Indy stirred beside him, breaking his introspection.
Her voice was so quiet, he almost missed her words. “I thought I was over him. I thought I was over this whole thing. I never even cried over him. He wasn’t worth it. But now…” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she dashed it away.
