The Cattleman's Special Delivery

Praise for RITA® Award-winning author Barbara Hannay

“Barbara Hannay’s name on the cover is a sure-fire guarantee of a good read.”

—www.cataromance.com

“Stories rich with emotion and chemistry, very layered and lifelike characters.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Barbara Hannay will take you on an unforgettable journey.”

—www.cataromance.com

He’d never held a baby before—not even when he’d been a godfather, attending his nephew’s fancy christening in a Sydney cathedral. Now—tonight—he’d assisted in a total stranger’s birth. The little creature had slipped from her mother into the world.

Into his hands.

He’d looked down into her little face, all red and wrinkled. He’d watched her open her slate-grey eyes for the very first time, and he’d seen the tiny quivering tremble of her lip a heartbeat before she opened her mouth to give her first cry.

And he’d lost his heart.

Completely.

Now, as he stood at the veranda railing, trying to get a grip on his galloping emotions, he told himself to man up. He felt as if his life had changed in some significant way, but the reality was it hadn’t changed at all.

About the Author

Reading and writing have always been a big part of BARBARA HANNAY’s life. She wrote her first short story at the age of eight for the Brownies’ writer’s badge. It was about a girl who was devastated when her family had to move from the city to the Australian Outback.

Since then, a love of both city and country lifestyles has been a continuing theme in Barbara’s books and in her life. Although she has mostly lived in cities, now that her family has grown up and she’s a full-time writer she’s enjoying a country lifestyle.

Barbara and her husband live on a misty hillside in Far North Queensland’s Atherton Tableland. When she’s not lost in the world of her stories, she’s enjoying farmers’ markets, gardening clubs and writing groups, or preparing for visits from family and friends.

Barbara records her country life in her blog, Barbwired, and her website is www.barbarahannay.com.

The Cattleman’s Special Delivery

Barbara Hannay

CHAPTER ONE

JESS squirmed in the passenger seat as the car sped along the lonely outback road, windscreen wipers thrashing madly. At thirty-seven weeks pregnant, she would have found this journey tedious under any circumstances.

Tonight, in the inky, rain-filled darkness, with the wrong music playing and the monotonously annoying swish, swish of the wipers, the journey was definitely too late and too long and far too uncomfortable.

Beside Jess, her husband contentedly chewed gum and tapped the steering wheel, matching his rhythm to the latest hit from his favourite band. Alan was pleased with himself. Today he’d landed a new job managing an outback pub—a chance, at last, to earn regular wages. Jess had to admit she was pleased about this fresh start, away from the city temptations that had caused them so much trouble.

This morning, they’d travelled out to Gidgee Springs to view the pub and to settle the agreement, and in a few months, when their baby was old enough, Jess would probably work in the kitchen, so they’d both be earning again. Fabulous.

Admittedly, life in a tiny outback town wasn’t quite what Jess had envisaged when she’d made her wedding vows, but she’d been pretty naïve the day she’d married Alan Cassidy on a romantic tropical beach at sunset. Now, three years older and wiser, she saw this new job as a much-needed chance to start over, to get things right. Finally.

As the car sped on Jess peered ahead, worried that the headlights seemed too feeble to fight with the rain. They barely picked up the white dividing lines on the narrow road and she was grateful that the traffic in the lonely outback was so sparse.

She closed her eyes, hoping she might nod off, found herself, instead, remembering the terrible day she’d almost walked out on Alan after he lost the last of their money on yet another hopeless business scheme. Jess had made the tough decision even though she’d known firsthand that single-motherhood was a truly difficult option.

She’d never known her own father, instead had grown up with her mother and serial ‘uncles’, and it wasn’t the life she wanted. But she’d realised she had to leave Alan even though it would mean the death of her dreams of a proper, two-parent family. Those dreams had already crumbled to dust on the day Alan lost their entire savings.

Single, she would at least regain control over her income, and she would have found a way to keep a roof over her baby’s head. Then, at the last minute, Alan had seen an ad for this job as manager of a pub. It was another chance. And Jess had stayed.

Years ago, her mother had warned that marriage was a gamble, that very, very few lucky souls could ever hope for a happy ending. Now Jess was taking one last gamble, praying that after today things would be different.

Surely they should be different.

Oh, please, let him be different.

They would finish this interminable drive back to Cairns. Their baby would be born in a few weeks’ time and then the three of them would start their new life in Gidgee Springs.

She would give her marriage one last chance.

Reece Weston almost missed seeing the car in the ditch. He was about to turn into his cattle property when the headlights picked up the rounded hump of a dead kangaroo lying in the rain at the edge of the bitumen, and then skid marks veering off the road. Driving closer, he caught the gleam of white metal.

Dread settled uncomfortably in his gut as he pulled over. A small sedan had plunged nose-down into a rocky gully.

He knew the vehicle hadn’t been there an hour or two earlier, and chances were he was the first person to come across it. Grim-faced, he grabbed a torch from the glovebox and slipped his satellite phone into his coat pocket.

The night was moonless and black and wind threw rain into his face as he negotiated the slippery bank. The car’s front passenger door hung open, the seat empty. Flashing the torch over the sides and bottom of the gully, Reece hoped he wasn’t about to find a body flung from the crash. He couldn’t see anyone outside the car, but when he edged closer to the wreckage he found the figure of a man slumped over the steering wheel.

Scrambling around the vehicle, he dragged the driver’s door open, released the seat belt and felt for a pulse in the man’s neck.

No luck.

He tried the wrist. Still no sign of life.

Sickened, he wrenched open the back passenger door, shoved a suitcase from the back seat into the rain, leaned in and lowered the driver’s seat backwards into a reclining position. It would be hours before help could arrive, so saving this guy was up to him. Struggling to get beside the body in the cramped space, he began to apply CPR.

Come on, mate, let’s get this heart of yours firing.

Reece had only done this on dummies before, so he was by no means experienced, but he was glad the training came back to him now as he repeated the cycle over and over—fifteen compressions and two slow breaths.

He wasn’t sure how long he worked before he heard the woman’s cry coming from some distance away. The thin sound floated faintly through the rain, and for a split second he thought that perhaps he’d imagined the sound, a trick of the wind. But then he heard it again. Louder.

‘Help, someone, please!’

Definitely a woman. She had to be the passenger, surely.

He grabbed his sat phone and punched in numbers for the district’s one and only cop, praying there’d be an answer. To his relief the response was instant and he’d never been more pleased to hear the sergeant’s gravel-rough voice.

‘Mick, Reece Weston here. There’s been an accident out near the turn off to my place—Warringa. A small sedan’s hit a kangaroo and gone off the road. I’ve been trying CPR on the driver, but I’m not having much luck, I’m afraid. No signs of life. And now there’s someone else calling for help. I’m going to check it out.’

‘OK, Reece. I’ll alert the ambulance at Dirranbilla, and come straight out. But you know it’ll take me a couple of hours. And the ambos could be even longer. Actually, with all this rain, they might have trouble getting through. The creeks are rising.’

Reece let out a soft curse as he disconnected. Times like this, he had to ask why his forebears had settled in one of the remotest parts of Australia. He flashed his torch up and down the gully again, then scrambled onto the road and cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Where are you?’ he called.

‘On a track off the road. Please … help!’

The only track around here led into his homestead. The woman must have scrambled from the car in a bid to reach help for the driver. She sounded both scared and in pain.

Rain needled his face as he started to run, the beam of his torch bouncing ahead down the track, lighting muddy puddles and drenched grass and the slim trunks of gum trees. Rounding a bend, he found the woman huddled in the rain, sagged against a timber fencepost.

He flashed the torch over her and caught her pale, frightened face in its beam. Her hair was long and hanging in wet strings to her shoulders. Her arms were slender and as pale as her face, and she was holding something …

A step or two closer, he realised she was supporting the huge bulge of her heavily pregnant belly.

He was shocked to a standstill.

The man arrived just as the pain came again, huge and cruel, gripping Jess with a vice-like force. She tried to breathe with it, the way she’d been taught at antenatal classes, but no amount of breathing could bring her relief. She was too horrified and too scared. She wasn’t supposed to be in labour now. Not three weeks early, not on the edge of a bush track in the rain and in the middle of nowhere. Not with Alan scarily unconscious and unable to help her.

The man stepped closer. She couldn’t see him very well, but he seemed to be tall and dark-haired. Not old.

‘Are you hurt?’

She shook her head, but had to wait till the contraction eased before she could answer. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said at last. ‘But I’m afraid my labour’s started.’

He made a despairing sound. No doubt he wondered what the hell she was doing out here in an advanced state of pregnancy. She felt obliged to justify her predicament. ‘My husband needs help. I was trying to find a homestead.’

By now his hand was at her elbow supporting her. Despite the rain, his skin was warm and she could feel the roughness of his work-toughened palm. She sensed she could trust him. She had no choice really.

‘Alan’s unconscious,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t revive him, and then the pains started when I had to climb up the rocks to the road.’ She gave a dazed shake of her head. ‘I couldn’t use my mobile. There’s no network. But he needs an ambulance.’

‘I saw him,’ her rescuer said gently. He had brown eyes, as dark as black coffee, and he was watching her now with a worried frown. ‘I’ve rung the local police and help is on the way. But, for the moment, I think you need to look after yourself and your little one.’

Jess’s response was swallowed by a gasp as another contraction gripped her, then consumed her, driving every other thought from her head.

‘Here, lean on me.’ The stranger slipped his arm around her shoulders, steadying her against his solid chest.

Just having him there seemed to help.

‘Thanks,’ she said shyly when the pain was over.

‘Look, you can’t stay here.’ Her good Samaritan slipped off his canvas coat and put it around her shoulders. ‘This will at least keep the rain off you until I get you into the truck.’ His voice was deep and kind. ‘Can you wait here while I fetch it? I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She remembered to add, ‘Thank you.’

He was gone then, but he was as good as his word, and in no time the truck’s headlights lit up the track. The door creaked a little as he opened it and swung down, his long legs seeming to stretch for ever. Before Jess knew quite what was happening, he’d scooped her up into his arms.

At first she was too overawed by his strength to protest, but she quickly came to her senses. ‘For heaven’s sake. I’m the size of a whale. I’ll break your back.’

‘Don’t fuss. I’m not letting you climb up into this truck. There you go.’ With a grunt he deposited her carefully on the front seat. ‘We won’t worry about the seat belt. I’ll be careful and it’s not far.’

‘But we’re not leaving, are we? What about Alan?’

‘The ambulance and the police are on their way.’ His voice was quiet, but commanding.

Jess gaped at him. Was he suggesting she should just abandon her husband? ‘We can’t leave him,’ she protested. ‘The poor man’s unconscious. He’s all alone.’

She began to tremble as she remembered how still and pale Alan had looked.

Watching her, Reece drew a sharp breath. Her eyes filled with tears and he had to turn away as he wrestled with this new dilemma. It would be too cruel to tell her bluntly that her husband was beyond help. Somehow, he had to keep her focused on her own needs.

‘Seems you’re about to have a baby,’ he said as gently as he could. ‘I’m guessing you wouldn’t want to have it in a dirty truck’s cabin.’

‘Well … no.’

‘I can give you a bed at the homestead. It’s not much of a choice, I know, but, under the circumstances, I’m sure it’s what your husband would want for you.’

Jess felt too confused and uncomfortable to argue. Now, sitting upright in the truck, she could feel her baby’s head pushing down.

She felt terrible about leaving Alan, but she guessed she didn’t really have a choice. Her priority now was their baby’s safety, and almost as soon as the truck started up another contraction began. She dragged in a deep breath as the pain cut harder, deeper, lower, and she began to pant, staring out into the dark, rainy night, trying frantically not to moan and to concentrate instead on her breathing and the skinny trunks of gum trees flashing past.

No one had warned her that the pain would get this bad.

When it finally eased, her rescuer asked, ‘Is this your first baby?’

Jess nodded. ‘’Fraid so. What about you? Has your wife been through this?’

‘I don’t have a wife,’ he said quietly.

‘Is there a woman at the homestead?’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

Somehow, she managed to suppress a groan of disappointment. She’d been hoping to find a woman who’d been through this. Someone who could, at the very least, reassure her.

‘By the way, my name’s Reece.’ He flashed a shy smile and for a moment his rather stern face looked incredibly appealing. ‘Reece Weston.’

‘Jess Cassidy. And I should have said—I’m so grateful to you.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m glad I found you.’

‘So am I, believe me.’ She wondered if she ever would have made it, stumbling down this long, rough track in the rain on her own.

‘Do you know if the baby’s a boy or a girl?’

She supposed Reece was trying to take her mind off Alan.

‘No,’ she confessed. ‘I didn’t ask. I told the doctors I didn’t want to know. I wanted a surprise.’

The sad truth was, she hadn’t wanted Alan to know. He would have been so cocky and possessive if the baby was a boy, and at the time she’d still been undecided about whether she should stay with him.

And now … Oh, God, she felt another stab of guilt as she remembered how terribly pale and still Alan had been.

Was there a chance she’d panicked and overreacted? Maybe he was going to be OK. She was feeling so dazed, so sideswiped by the sudden onset of pain coming right on top of the accident.

Ahead of her now, through the rain, she could see a homestead at last. It was a typically North Queensland, timber dwelling, and ever so welcoming tonight with the golden glow of lights on the veranda. As they drew up at the front steps she saw two striped canvas squatter’s chairs and a row of pegs holding battered Akubras and coats.

A stooped, elderly man appeared, squinting out at them like a short-sighted, bow-legged gnome.

In a blink, Reece was out of the truck and at Jess’s door.

‘I’m OK, thanks. Really, you don’t have to lift me down.’

Once again he ignored her. ‘Don’t want you falling. I’ve got you.’ He lifted her easily, and set her down lightly.

‘Who you got there, son?’

‘There’s been an accident,’ Reece told the old man. ‘And this young lady needs to lie down. I’m going to put her in my room.’

‘One of your fancy tarts, is she?’

Reece ignored this. ‘Can you bring us some towels, Dad?’ he asked instead.

With a strong arm around Jess, he steered her up a short flight of steps, and across the wooden veranda boards, not to the main front doorway, but to white-framed French doors. The rain hammered on the tin roof as Reece opened the doors and flicked on a light to reveal a large bed with an old-fashioned, blue chenille spread.

‘Lean against the bedpost if you need to,’ he said. ‘I’ll get rid of this bedspread.’

‘You don’t—’ Jess’s words were cut off as yet another contraction arrived.

Surely they weren’t supposed to be so close together? She had no choice but to hang on to the bedpost and cope as best she could.

By the time the pain had eased, Reece had lit bedside lamps and turned the main light off, as well as pulling back the bedcovers. Now he was at her side, ready to help her out of the coat, just as his father arrived in the doorway, bearing towels.

The old man stared at her belly.

‘This is Jess Cassidy, Dad.’

‘Did you get her into trouble?’

Jess admired Reece’s self-restraint as he simply shook his head and said, ‘I told you. There was an accident out on the main road.’

‘Looks like she’s about to drop.’

‘Yes, Jess is in labour,’ Reece said firmly as he took the towels. ‘It would be helpful if you could fetch the Flying Doctors’ medical chest. It’s at the back of the pantry.’

The old man seemed reluctant to leave, but his son made a shooing gesture and, finally, he hobbled away.

Reece turned to Jess. ‘You need to get out of these wet clothes.’

She was wearing a loose top over maternity trousers and, yes, they were wet, but the rest of her clothes were in a suitcase in the back of the car. ‘I don’t have anything else to change into.’

‘You can wear one of my shirts.’ Already he was opening a wardrobe, slipping a pale blue cotton shirt from a hanger. It looked almost big enough to serve as a nightgown.

His dark eyes were warm as he held it out to her. ‘Can you manage?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ She would have to manage. She certainly didn’t want a handsome stranger helping her to undress, thank you very much. She knew very well that it would be a bachelor’s worst nightmare to help a strange woman in an advanced state of pregnancy out of her clothes.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said to make sure he understood. But the words were no sooner out than she felt as if the bottom half of her were being wrenched away from her with massive force. She only just had time to grab to the bedpost before her knees gave way.

‘Oh, God!’ Seized by an overwhelming urge to bear down, she slumped against the post and clung for dear life. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she moaned. ‘I think the baby’s coming!’

And then her waters broke.

CHAPTER TWO

THE baby couldn’t be coming already.

Reece stared at Jess in dismay. If she’d looked scared before, she now looked terrified, and he couldn’t blame her. He was terrified too. This was way outside his experience. Weren’t first babies supposed to take hours and hours to arrive?

He’d been confident that his job was to keep Jess comfortable until the Flying Doctor or the ambulance arrived—assuming that at least one of them could make it in this weather.

The poor girl.

Reece remembered her husband slumped over the steering wheel. If ever Jess Cassidy had needed her husband’s support it was now.

‘How can I stop this?’ she moaned.

You can’t, he wanted to tell her, and he wished he weren’t so clueless. He’d only delivered calves—mostly with a rope tied around the calf’s hoof and his boot planted squarely on the mother’s hindquarter to gain leverage. That sure as hell wasn’t going to work here.

‘Maybe, if you lie down there’ll be less pressure,’ he suggested.

‘That makes sense. I’ll try anything.’

In this light, she looked little more than a girl, with her slender, pale limbs and long, dark hair hanging in limp, damp strands. Her thickly lashed eyes were green or grey—he couldn’t be sure of their exact colour—and her nose was fine and slim, in contrast with the pink roundness of her soft mouth. In her wet, bedraggled clothes, she looked frail and helpless.

A wayside waif. In desperate need of his help.

He’d never felt more inadequate.

‘You’ll have to get out of these wet clothes,’ he suggested.

This time Jess seemed ready to submit to his assistance and Reece held his breath as he helped her out of her shirt. It wasn’t the first time he’d undressed a woman, although most of the women in his experience were very adept at slipping out of their gear.

This time was so very different, and he had to perform the delicate task with the dispassionate detachment of a medical practitioner.

Not so easy when Jess’s skin was moon pale and smooth as sifted flour and when her body was lush and ripe with the fullness of her pregnancy. She was lovely. Earthy. Madonna-like. With an unexpected fragile beauty that could catch a man totally unprepared.

He was aware of her distress, however, and he worked quickly as, between them, they eased her maternity slacks down. He rubbed her back and legs dry with a fresh towel while she took care of her front. Then he squeezed moisture from her hair and rubbed at it with the towel.

Her bra was wet too, and he undid it gently, conscious that her full, round breasts might be tender.

When he helped her into his shirt, it came down almost to her knees and he had to roll the sleeves back several times to free her wrists. She kept her eyes downcast, no doubt embarrassed.

‘Let’s get you comfortable,’ he said, helping her onto the bed.

His bed.

According to his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in a decade, he’d been born in this room, although his younger brother, Tony, had been delivered in a hospital in Cairns, many hours’ drive away.

Now, Jess lay on her side, an expression of fixed concentration on her face, her hand gently massaging her tense abdomen.

‘I’m going to ring the Flying Doctor,’ he said.

If they couldn’t land in this rain, they could at least give him medical advice. He’d take all the advice he could get. This was his worst fear—a dependent woman on his isolated property, with no help for miles. His mother had been right. This was no place for women.

‘Can I get you something from the kitchen, Jess? Would you like water?’

She gave a faint nod. ‘Maybe a sip.’

He went quickly to the kitchen where he found his father cursing as he fiddled with the knobs on the radio.