Wanted: Outback Wife

She flinched so hard at that thought that her elbow slid off the table. Heath even lifted himself off the chair and reached out a hand to her to make sure she was okay. Thankfully at that moment a waitress came over with Heath’s beer and another glass of red wine for Jodie so she was saved from extended humiliation.

‘So, you’re English,’ he said once the waitress left.

Feeling more than a little off kilter, Jodie wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wineglass. ‘Is that a concern?’

‘No, not at all. It’s just that from the few details on your website I had sort of built up an image of how you would sound, how tall you’d be, that sort of thing.’

Jodie felt herself deflating with every word he spoke. She’d spent years being told by her mother that if only she were taller and not quite so pale she might be pretty. To hear this guy say the same would seal it for sure. ‘So how am I different?’ she asked, being as she was a glutton for punishment.

Heath blinked, his eye crinkles deepening, as though giving himself a moment to tie all of the pieces in his imagination into a new whole.

‘You’re smaller somehow. More delicate. And I can’t get over that plummy accent.’

Jodie bit at her inner lip, wishing, and not for the first time, that she were a blonde glamazon like Lisa. Or a brunette sex kitten like Mandy. Or serenely elegant like her half-sister Louise. Not wan, wispy, little old her.

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ he said, resting contentedly against the back of his chair as his eyes remained locked onto hers. ‘You’re lovely.’

Oh, my…Jodie fought the sudden urge to tell him he was lovely right back. But this wasn’t the place, or the time, or the point. She was looking for someone kind, nice, unassuming, and Australian. And added extras along the lines of handsome, charming, and sexy as hell would only complicate things.

‘And so are your earrings,’ Heath said, catching her unawares by reaching out a curled hand towards her cheek, but stopping a foot from her face and letting his hand drop to the table.

Jodie blinked in surprise. The mere thought of those hands brushing against her ear had robbed her of the power of speech.

Her choice of earrings had been her biggest one of the night. Which of the dozen she had created in a mad productive spurt ought she to choose? Vibrant red glo-mesh ones shaped like tulips? Rows of tiny jade-green beads that hung like weeping willow branches to her shoulders? Or a delicate pair made of wires twisted into the shape of tiny roses? How did one pick earrings fancy enough to ensnare a husband?

She had settled on the green beads. The roses were more suited to Louise, and one of Mandy’s workmates would love the red glo-mesh and had offered to pay a hundred dollars cash for anything Jodie could promise was a one-off. Decision made!

‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice sounding as though she’d just smoked a packet of cigarettes. ‘I make them myself. My styles are based on flowers I used to find at the Chelsea Gardens as a little girl.’

Shut-up, Jodie! He said he liked them, not that he wanted to buy a pair. But he liked them? Oh, no, he wasn’t…was he? She’d already met one of those the night before. And that was all well and good, but if this man was permanently unavailable to all women, that would be a nasty cosmic joke.

‘They’re…nice,’ he said, sticking out his bottom lip and nodding.

And in a blinding flash of relief Jodie realised he was being nice. If he’d said her earrings were fabulous she ought to have been worried. But nice? That just meant Heath was a guy paying a girl a compliment.

‘Now tell me about your work,’ she said, wholeheartedly moving on. Jodie was simply not used to talking about herself. She didn’t even really know enough about herself to be sure what she said was the truth. ‘I gather you are some sort of cowboy, throwing hay bales and milking cows all day?’

Cowboy? Where had that come from? Even she heard the note of flirtation in her voice and so it wasn’t such a shock when his blue eyes glittered.

‘So who’s looking after your cows while you’re away?’ she asked, keeping her voice neat and even.

He ran a lean hand beneath his mouth. Then he looked up at her from beneath a sweep of thick chestnut eyelashes, which were superior to hers even with the modern marvel of long-lash mascara at her disposal. ‘I have a station manager, Andy, who runs the place in my absence, as well as numerous seasonal staff who do most of the heavy labour. So apart from throwing hay bales about the place, I am also a qualified civil engineer.’

Oh! So maybe the whole ‘outback farmer’ thing had just been a means to an introduction, a hook, a way to get a girl interested. Maybe he lived in town in a nice big house big enough for her and Louise and for Lisa and Mandy to crash after a girls’ night out…

‘Do you get much of a chance to engineer anything civilly while out on the farm?’

‘Some. A little. I’ve completely redesigned the irrigation system at Jamesons Run and rigged up a lever-and-pulley system to help in the barn, so, yeah, I like to keep my hand in. But wrangling cattle is pretty much a full-time gig nowadays,’ Heath said, leaning his chin on his palm as he gazed at her.

Oh. Well, that answered that one. He talked like a city boy. He walked like a city boy. He even had a city-boy degree. But he was a farmer. With a farm. Damn it!

Because it was clear he wasn’t running from the idea of being a husband in a hurry. Her husband in a hurry. Though neither of them had mentioned it in so many words, they both knew why they were there. And after having met one another, they were both…still…there…

‘I take it you’ve never wrangled cattle before,’ he said.

‘Not lately,’ she said, the idea of doing such a thing petrifying her to the soles of her feet.

‘When reading your bio, I figured as much.’ He leaned forward, until their faces were so close that she could see perfect midnight-blue rings around his irises. ‘Yet I still came tonight, and so did you.’

‘I guess that means neither of us are entirely sensible,’ she agreed, her voice dropping to accommodate their close proximity. ‘About what we want.’

‘To us,’ he said, tipping his bottle her way before taking another swig. ‘And to not being sensible.’

Jodie felt warm and fuzzy, as if she were having some sort of out-of-body experience. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the excess of bread yeast in her system. Maybe it was the company.

As she found herself fast becoming lost in Heath’s heavenly eyes, something caught Jodie’s attention. Mandy was waving a frantic arm at her, poking a manic finger at her wrist-watch. It seemed her next date was already there.

But Jodie wasn’t yet ready for this to end.

‘Look,’ she said, leaning in, feeling more terrified and more brave and less sensible than she had in a long time, ‘I’ll be honest with you. There is another prospect waiting for me at the bar, but I’ve been here so many times in the past few nights I feel as though my bottom is changing shape to match this chair. Do you want to get out of here?’

Heath’s warm blue eyes blinked. Narrowed. And then lit from within as he got her meaning. ‘I don’t know. I’m in the mood for something lathered in chocolate. Does this place serve good desserts?’

Jodie shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never eat sweets.’

He was a cowboy; she was a city girl. He wanted chocolate; she hadn’t eaten chocolate in a decade. What the heck was she playing at? By the look in his eyes she wondered if he was thinking exactly the same thing.

But then something shifted. Before she was able to identify what, he looked at his watch—silver, sturdy, knocked-about—and said, ‘Well, then, it seems we have to find another place in which to continue this conversation. I don’t have to head back home until tomorrow afternoon, so for the next fifteen hours I’m all yours.’

All hers. Her heart did a neat little flip inside her chest. And heart flips were bad.

She tore her confounded gaze away from Heath to find Lisa had joined in the frantic waving. It seemed there were now two guys awaiting her. But if she had to say the words, ‘So tell me about your job,’ one more time…

Jodie stood, and with shaking hands patted her napkin against her mouth. ‘Meet me at the street crossing on the city side of the building,’ she murmured. ‘Five minutes.’

Heath looked up at her with more than mischief in his bright blue eyes. ‘Shall do, Ms Bond.’

Jodie turned and, without looking back, headed for the ladies’ room where she had a date with a tiny window and a Dumpster.

Heath turned on his chair and watched Jodie walk away, keeping a close eye on the tidy package within the hipster jeans, the bouncy auburn hair, and the expanse of creamy skin exposed by her glittery contraption of a top that was held together by modern-day engineering and luck.

He blew out a long slow breath when she finally sauntered from view.

In her website picture she had been worth a second glance, but in the flesh those intense green eyes of hers were just something else—relentless yet radiating unexpected vulnerability. He’d had to stop himself time and again from reaching out and running a soothing finger over her furrowed brow as every worry that had run through her mind had flashed across her eyes like a freeway warning sign.

One of those flashing signals had told him what she saw of him she liked, and, even without all the other inducements she offered, that was a pretty potent thing to find in a first date. And a blind date at that.