High-Stakes Bride

Chapter 2

Present day, Jackson’s Ridge, New Zealand

The sun was high, the air rippling with heat, the breeze hot and dry as it rustled through native manuka trees and flipped a strand of hair loose from Dani Marlow’s plait. As she slid from the seat of her tractor, she noted the direction of the breeze—a southerly—not the drought-breaking northerly she and every other farmer on the East Coast needed. They’d had a dry year, followed by an even drier summer, and the disastrous weather had desiccated the soil, killed most of the grass and undermined Galbraith Station’s already shaky financial position.

Properties all up and down the coast were selling at rock-bottom prices, and the sharks were queuing—most notably a fancy out-of-town syndicate that, rumor had it, was determined to turn the small farming community of Jackson’s Ridge into an upmarket golf course and beach resort.

The Barclays, who owned a block just up the coast, were contemplating selling after a fire burnt down their barn and decimated their maize crop. Another neighbour, old Mr. Stoddard, had rung just last night to let her know that instead of the extension on his mortgage he’d requested, the bank had sent him a letter advising him that his interest rate was going up. He was hanging on, but at seventy years of age, he had better things to do than watch his cows die of thirst and fight a bank that no longer had any confidence in his ability to service his loan.

Dust whirled, peppering Dani’s eyes as she crouched down to check the underside of the tractor. It didn’t take a diesel mechanic to diagnose what was wrong with the ancient Ferguson—affectionately labeled the Dinosaur. The oil sump was leaking.

Muttering beneath her breath, she straightened and walked to the small trailer coupled to the rear of the tractor and extracted a new bolt with its accompanying nut and washer from the “breakdown” toolbox. Shoving the wisp of hair behind her ear, she grabbed a wrench, a socket and a rag streaked with oil from the last breakdown, crawled beneath the Dinosaur and turned on her back.

For the third time in a month the same bolt had worked loose, jolted out by the bone-shaking ruts and potholes of Galbraith Station’s fast-disintegrating stock roads. Each time she’d gone into town and bought a slightly larger bolt, the metal of the sump, warped with constant flexing and worn thin by extreme age, had disintegrated enough that the bolt had shaken loose. The sump itself was about to expire, but because the tractor was so old, obtaining another part would be close to impossible. She had two options: get an engineer to manufacture a part, which would cost a small fortune, or buy a new tractor, which would cost more money than she could raise this year—or the next.

Oil slid down the backs of her hands and her wrists as she pushed the sump back into place and lined up the bolt holes. With a deft movement, she slipped the bolt through and held it in place as she awkwardly reached around the solid-steel chassis to slide the washer and the nut onto the shaft of the bolt, straining until the thread caught and the nut wound smoothly on.

Clamping the wrench around the nut to hold it still, she began the delicate process of tightening the bolt, a quarter turn at a time with the socket in the confined space, careful not to stress the tired metal by screwing the bolt in too tightly. Long seconds later, arms aching, she loosened off the wrench and the socket, set the tools down in the dust and simply lay in the shadows beneath the tractor, the tautness of her muscles turning to liquid as she let herself go boneless.

She was hot, sweaty and tired, and every part of her ached. The summer had been the driest on record, and she’d been up since before dawn moving stock and checking water troughs. When she’d finished her morning round, she’d showered, changed and opened her physiotherapy practice, which occupied the old shearers’ quarters. Her last appointment had been at three, after which she’d started loading hay onto the trailer and feeding out.

Even moving the cattle every day, rotating them from field to field, and grazing what was known as the “long acre”—the roadside grass—didn’t allow her paddocks time to recover. Without rain, the grass couldn’t grow, and there simply wasn’t enough feed. She was already using her winter supply; when that was gone she would have to either start buying in feed she couldn’t afford, or sell the entire herd, including the breeding cows.

She’d done the figures for selling early, and they weren’t good. The cattle would be underweight, and the market would be low. The worst-case scenario was that she wouldn’t make enough to cover the balloon payment that was due on the mortgage. If that happened, her half-brother, David, would lose the farm and his home.

The drought had already done its damage, and every day it continued the damage increased. Now, regardless of when it rained, they had already sustained a loss; it was only the magnitude of the loss that was in question.

Letting out a breath, she let her lids drift closed. She wouldn’t sleep, but she was tired enough that the iron-hard dirt felt as soft as a feather bed. Slowly, inner tension seeped away, and her breathing evened out.

A small sound disturbed the silence. Liquid trickled down her arm. Her lids flickered.

Oil.

The Dinosaur was still leaking, this time from somewhere else, which meant the sump and the bolt could be side issues.

“Oh yeah, you’re going to die on me soon,” she muttered sleepily. “Just not yet.”

Give me a couple more weeks, then it won’t matter.

“If this rust heap is terminal,” a low male voice murmured, “it better not be in my driveway.”

Dani’s heart jolted in her chest. She hadn’t heard a vehicle, but that wasn’t surprising. The rising wind hitting the tall line of poplar trees along the roadside was loud enough to muffle most sounds and, despite her resolve, she had fallen asleep. If she’d been fully conscious there was no way her closest neighbour, Carter Rawlings, would have sneaked up on her.

Grabbing the tools, she crawled out from beneath the Dinosaur and blinked into the afternoon sun. Of course he would be standing with the sun at his back, putting her at even more of a disadvantage—as if she wasn’t utterly disadvantaged anyway in faded jeans and a T-shirt, leather boots that were crusted with dirt, and her hair scraped back in a plait.

Rising to her feet, Dani studied her neighbour and ex-ex-ex-boyfriend who, evidently, had finally decided to return to Jackson’s Ridge after yet another extended absence.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Commitment, himself.” And if he said, “Hi, honey, I’m home,” she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. “Looking good, Carter.”

It was a sad fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous: tall and muscled with sun-bleached hair, a solid, nicely moulded jaw and those killer blue eyes.

Deftly, she stepped around him and replaced her tools in their box. “Long time no see.”

And wasn’t that just typical? The Rawlings family had lived next door to the Galbraiths forever, but Carter had always been too restless to stay in Jackson’s Ridge. Despite being neighbours for eighteen years, the time Dani had actually spent with Carter had been little. When Carter had turned thirteen he had gone away to boarding school. From boarding school, he had gone directly into the army, then the Special Air Service. From that point on he had become even more elusive, only returning home for brief stints to visit his parents when he had leave. And lately, over the past six years, depending on the state of their relationship, to visit her.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Evidently.” Almost a whole year busy. But for the first time since they’d started dating six years ago she’d had the luxury of not worrying about exactly what he was doing, and how dangerous it was. As far as Dani was concerned it had been a productive year.

“I rang.”

Dani wiped her hands on the rag and tossed it in the back of the trailer. “I got your messages.”

“You didn’t reply.”

She cocked her head to one side and took a second look. Whatever Carter had been up to since he’d last climbed out of her bed and walked out the door hadn’t detracted any from his appeal. Despite her detachment, her stomach did a funny little flip-flop. Her jaw tightened. She had been burned by Carter Rawlings a total of three times. As far as she was concerned, that was two times too many. The fact that the masochistic streak that kept her making the same mistake over and over was still in existence didn’t make her happy. She was thirty, supposedly intelligent and independent. As far as she was concerned she had been inoculated three times. Somewhere there had to be a rule about that, and she wasn’t about to break it.

She snapped the toolbox closed and fastened the lid. “I didn’t see any point. We broke up.”

He muttered something short and sharp beneath his breath. “Why isn’t Bill fixing the tractor?”

Dani wedged the oilcan between the toolbox and the side of the trailer so it wouldn’t shift when she negotiated the rutted drive to the house. The last thing she needed was to lose a can of oil. As inexpensive as it was, replacing it would blow her budget for the week, and with the mortgage falling due in a fortnight she was literally counting every cent. In theory she couldn’t afford to eat. “I had to let Bill go two months ago. There’s a recession, or hadn’t you noticed?”

Maybe not. By the shiny glint of his brand-new four-wheel drive, she deduced that drought, recession and bottomed-out stock prices or not, Carter was doing all right.

“I’ve noticed.” He jerked his head toward the tractor. “Why didn’t you give Geoff a call?”

Geoff was the diesel mechanic based in town. He serviced most of the farm equipment locally. “Geoff costs forty dollars an hour. Fifty-five on a call-out.”

Carter walked around the Dinosaur. Distracted, Dani noted the stiffness of his movements.

“You’re telling me you’ve been fixing the tractor yourself?”

And the farm bike and the truck. If she lost the farm, she could probably open up in competition with Geoff’s Diesels and make some real money.

Dani made a production of looking around. “Can’t see anyone else. Must have been me.”

Carter’s stare was cold and disorientingly direct. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

Never again. “What’s the matter? You got issues with women fixing machines?”

He stared at the tractor, then glanced back at Dani. “Yes.”

The word was bitten out, clipped and cold, as if he had every right to an opinion. An involuntary shiver worked its way down her spine. She’d been angry at Carter for months—no, cancel that—years, and in all that time, she’d never imagined that he could be angry with her.

“I heard about Ellen. I’m sorry.”

She fastened the lid of the toolbox with fingers that were abruptly clumsy. The loss of her adoptive aunt, Ellen Galbraith, still cut deep. Ellen had helped her through one of the toughest times in her life, when Susan and Robert had both been killed in a car accident; it had broken her heart to let her go. “She had a heart condition.”

One that had manifested almost overnight, but must have been brewing for years. Ellen had had a bad case of the flu and had simply never gotten well. Confused by the symptoms, but suspicious, their local GP had run a series of tests, but by the time Ellen had been diagnosed as suffering from heart failure, massive damage had been done. She’d had a bypass operation, which had briefly improved her condition, but four months after the initial diagnosis, she had caught another bout of flu and slipped away in her sleep just hours later.

Clamping her jaw against the ache at the back of her throat, Dani gripped the worn steering wheel, and swung up into the Dinosaur’s seat. “I’ve got to go.”

He stepped toward the tractor, as if he was going to detain her, the motion faintly awkward.

Dani stared, arrested by the uncharacteristic clumsiness. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

His gaze jerked to hers, and there was nothing lazy, intimate or even remotely friendly in the contact. For a moment she had the uncomfortable sensation she was looking at a complete stranger. “A gunshot wound.”

For a blank moment she didn’t know what to say or how to react. Carter was in the Special Air Service. It was hard to miss that fact when his high-risk, high-adrenaline career had destroyed their relationship. But coming face-to-face with the reality of a gunshot wound was shocking.

She stared at his broad back as he limped to his truck, studying the way he moved, the kinks in his posture that told her Carter was fresh out of rehab and still healing. Ever since Carter had gone into the military she had worried about the danger—whether they were involved or not, Carter’s well-being mattered. “When?”

“Four months ago.”

Her stomach tightened. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Two months ago she’d heard, courtesy of Nola McKay—the owner of Nola’s Café—that Carter hadn’t just been away on an extended tour of duty, he had been missing in action. The news, delivered with a latte and the rider that he had been rescued, had shocked her, but still disconnected and numb with the grief of Ellen’s death, it had taken her another week before she’d gotten up the energy to do a search on the Internet. Eventually she had found a report that a soldier was missing in action in Borneo. The wording had been brief and clinical and hadn’t included any details. Like the high-security classification on Carter’s career, the report closed more doors than it opened.

She wished the fact that Carter had been shot didn’t affect her, but it did. The past year had been hard, and it had changed her. She knew she’d gotten quieter and more withdrawn, but, unlike Carter, she still couldn’t lay claim to being either cold or detached.

Carter eased into the driver’s seat and she remembered his opening line—the reason he had stopped and spoken to her at all: she was blocking his driveway.

Letting out a breath, she turned the key. The tractor motor turned over, coughed then caught, the rumble loud enough to preclude conversation.

Relief loosened off the tension in the pit of her stomach. Gunshot wound or not, Carter was on his own. If he wanted female company, there were plenty of women in town who would be only too pleased to soothe his hurts and massage his sore muscles; women who were younger, prettier and a whole lot more fun than she ever planned on being.

She released the clutch. “There is a rule,” she just had to keep reminding herself. “Three strikes, and you’re out.”

Chapter 3

Carter watched the retreating dust cloud, eased his leg into a more comfortable position and slammed his door closed.

The message screen of his cell phone glowed. Two missed calls and a message. The missed calls were both from his mother. Ever since he’d gotten back into the country both of his parents, who had retired to a popular resort town further up the coast a couple of years ago, had kept in daily contact. The fact that he had been taken prisoner had shaken them. The gunshot wound came a close second, but not by much. Despite his assurances, they insisted on keeping in close touch.

The text message was from Gabriel West, a longtime friend, ex–SAS sniper and leader of the private team that had flown into Borneo to rescue him.

Carter read the message and pressed Delete. Lately West had been abnormally solicitous and curious about what he was up to—and with whom. Along with everything else that had gone wrong lately, Carter was beginning to feel like he was being watched over by an overlarge hen.

Turning the key in the ignition, he manoeuvred the truck off the verge and into the entrance of his drive, barely noticing the weed-infested borders, or the fact that one of the smaller farm sheds had lost its roof in the last big storm.

He had to wonder just what he’d let slip when he’d been semi-conscious in the hospital. West was more than curious. Now he wanted to visit.

It was a fact that he did feel different. He still hadn’t figured out exactly what had changed except that for months he’d felt unsettled—in the psychologist’s jargon, “disengaged.” Even when he’d finally been declared fit enough to resume light duties—translate that as pushing paper in an office—he’d felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. The psychologist had diagnosed post-traumatic shock syndrome—maybe even an early mid-life crisis.

Carter frowned as he slowed for a bend. He liked things cut-and-dried, the idea that he was suffering from something as woolly and amorphous as some kind of mental and emotional breakdown ticked him off.

It was a fact that the months spent in captivity hadn’t been a picnic. From beginning to end, what had happened had been a prime example of bad timing and bad luck.

The assignment to escort an Indonesian government official to the small village of Tengai hadn’t been high-risk, or even particularly interesting. Carter had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two rival rebel factions had chosen that particular village to clash. When the shooting started, Carter had kept to task and protected the official, but when they had finally made it out of the building, their transport and backup were gone.

If they’d stayed inside and kept out of sight, in all probability they would have been in the clear, but one of the village children had been cut up by a ricochet and Carter had started to treat him. Two of the rebels who were still holed up in the village had accosted Carter at gunpoint, ignored the government official and demanded Carter leave with them.

They didn’t want to kidnap a bureaucrat. What they needed was a trained medic.

After stripping the official of his suit, his watch and all of his cash, the men had herded Carter into the jungle, his weaponry, communications equipment and medical kit confiscated along with his boots.

Apart from the restricted diet—crazily enough, stolen army rations—and the hours spent kicking his heels under armed guard, nothing horrific had happened. He had been too useful. He’d treated two of the rebels for gunshot wounds, delivered a baby and dealt with a minor outbreak of dysentery. When he’d finally managed to slip away at night, four months after capture, all he’d had were his clothes, a knife he’d managed to steal and the remnants of his medical kit.

Without a compass—and travelling beneath a canopy that blocked both the sun and stars, burying him in either a soupy half light or impenetrable darkness—he had ended up travelling in a circle and had practically walked back into the rebel camp. A sentry had spotted him and fired, but the fact that he’d been hit at all was a miracle, and the sentry himself didn’t register the hit. The rebels as a force were canny and elusive, but they weren’t trained soldiers. They relied on surprise and the threat of their weapons—not accuracy.

A brief search was conducted, then abandoned, and Carter was able to put some distance between himself and the camp. After that, things had gotten a little hazy. He’d injected himself with morphine, lain up for a day, strapped his leg with his shirt then started to walk. The next day he’d found a small settlement and managed to get some food and water. With the help of the village midwife he’d extracted the bullet then had spent the next three days on his back in a small tin shack fighting off a fever.

With his leg heavily bandaged and seeping, Carter had been escorted by one of the villagers to the next village further down the valley, on the verge of the Kalimantan Lowlands. It was there he’d gotten the news that a private team was looking for him—not the army rescue squad he’d expected.

Apparently, after political pressure exerted by the government official who had been left kicking his heels in Tengai, the peacekeeping unit had been forced to withdraw from Borneo. The irony that the official he had been commissioned to protect from the rebels had left him hanging out to dry wasn’t lost on Carter. Lately, with his luck, crossing the road had become dangerous.

Carter brought the truck to a halt in front of the sprawling, one-storied house, perched on a bluff above the bay. The house, which he’d bought from his parents along with the farm, was old and comfortable, hemmed by verandas and large sweeping lawns. A cooling breeze rustled through a clump of oleanders, the scent of the jasmine that grew wild in the garden filled his nostrils and over all was the fresh tang of the ocean. From where he was sitting, he could see the water, a broad sweep of blue stretching to the horizon.

Grabbing his suitcase from the back seat of the truck, he limped toward the porch, slid the key in the lock and pushed the door wide. The late-afternoon sun sent his shadow sliding over the faded hall carpet. The house was silent and deserted.

Stepping inside, he set the suitcase down and limped through to the empty kitchen, checking that the hot water was on. The couple he employed to mow the lawns and clean the house had been in. His gaze swept the clean lines of the kitchen counter and snagged on the blinking light of the answering machine. With resignation, he picked up the receiver and hit the play button.

One hang-up, two messages from an old girlfriend, Mia, wanting to know how he was after his “accident,” and a call from his C.O. wanting to set up an appointment for his next round of assessments.

Carter hit the delete button. Six weeks after being airlifted to a hospital in Darwin, Australia, he’d been put on a routine flight into Auckland and had reported to his C.O.

The debrief hadn’t been pleasant. Naturally, he had failed his medical exam. His psychological report had been even worse. His commander had been impressed by the fact that he would be able to walk without the aid of a stick, eventually, but the prognosis for resuming active service was grim.

The slug had entered at the rear of his upper thigh, ploughing south through the complex interweaving of muscles and ligaments to lodge just above his knee. It hadn’t broken his femur or nicked an artery, but it had damaged practically everything else. He had extensive soft-tissue damage to all the main muscles, which had meant fun and games for the surgeon who’d done the reconstructive surgery, and the patella ligament, which supported his knee, had been damaged.

He had been lucky. If the bullet had travelled another two inches it would have shattered his knee.

Several weeks later, after further surgery to release adhesions and nerves caught in scar tissue, he had been able to straighten his leg, and for the first time since he’d been shot he had been able to walk without the aid of a stick, albeit painfully. From then on, his progress had been rapid. He didn’t just want to walk. If he couldn’t run, he couldn’t pass the service medical exam—which meant he was finished for active duty. The bullet had missed vital organs, but it now looked as though it had taken out his career.