Wed in the outback volum.., p.1
Wed In the Outback, Volume 1, page 1
Wed In The Outback: Volume One
Outback Princess
Outback Bride’s Baby Bombshell
Ally Blake
Rachael Stewart
www.millsandboon.com.au
Table of Contents
Outback Princess
By Ally Blake
Outback Bride’s Baby Bombshell
By Rachael Stewart
OUTBACK PRINCESS
Ally Blake
www.millsandboon.com.au
Wed In The Outback
Four sisters, four seasons, four weddings!
When their father dies unexpectedly, the Waverly sisters are set to inherit the beloved outback family estate. The only problem? An arcane stipulation in the will that requires all four of them to be married within a year or they’ll lose the farm for good! But with such little time, how on earth will they each find a husband? Well...
Matilda is secretly already married—to a prince no less! Now she just needs to track him down...
in Outback Princess
by Ally Blake
Eve spends a night of distraction with a tattooed stranger, and the consequences are binding!
in Outback Bride’s Baby Bombshell
by Rachael Stewart
Available now!
Ana turns to her best friend for help. But their marriage of convenience is quickly complicated by inconvenient feelings...
in Surprise Proposal, Outback Inheritance
by Kandy Shepherd
And Rose makes a deal with the devil: the strip of land his family—and the Waverlys’ longtime rivals—has been after for years in exchange for a temporary marriage!
in Marrying Her Outback Enemy
by Michelle Douglas
Coming soon!
Dear Reader,
A little over a year ago, at a Romance Writers of Australia conference, Michelle Douglas casually sank into the chair beside mine and uttered the fateful words: “So, I was thinking, we ought to write a series.”
From that simple suggestion came ideas, fanciful and impossible, wild and unwieldy. Sisters. Marriages of convenience. Outback and beyond. Next came getting our hooks into Kandy Shepherd and Rachael Stewart, and we were not taking no for an answer.
Cue pages of ideas lovingly filled with setting inspiration and deeply unearthed character descriptions covering the full gamut of the Waverly family, owners of the biggest cattle station in Australia. A family that we fast came to adore. A family about to lose it all.
Most pressingly Matilda, Ana, Eve and Rose—four strong, loving, heart-bruised sisters who would soon have to fight with all they had to save not only their famous home, but also the deep sisterly connection at their cores.
I, for one, will be taking a week off to read our four tales, one after the other. And the tears will flow, both happy and poignant. Tears for our brave sisters and for the truly wonderful time we spent channeling their stories.
Love,
Ally xxx
Australian author ALLY BLAKE loves reading and strong coffee, porch swings and dappled sunshine, beautiful notebooks and soft, dark pencils. Her inquisitive, rambunctious, spectacular children are her exquisite delights. And she adores writing love stories so much she’d write them even if nobody else read them. No wonder, then, having sold over four million copies of her romance novels worldwide, Ally is living her bliss. Find out more about Ally’s books at allyblake.com.
This book is not only dedicated to the wondrous Rachael Stewart, Michelle Douglas and Kandy Shepherd—with whom this book and this series were so lovingly crafted—but to the intricate backstories, and the heartbreakingly deleted scenes, and the deeply curated tales of the Waverly sisters and the Waverly women before them that simply could not make it into the One Year to Wed books if we hoped anyone might be able to physically lift the things.
Praise for Ally Blake
“I found Hired by the Mysterious Millionaire by Ally Blake to be a fascinating read... The story of how they get to their HEA is a page-turner. ‘Love conquers all’ and does so in a very entertaining way in this book.”
—Harlequin Junkie
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Garrison Downs,
June
IT WAS THE first day of winter.
Yet that was not the reason behind the unnatural chill that had settled over the Garrison Downs cattle station. The reading of Holt Waverly’s last will and testament was underway.
Matilda Waverly sat curled up on the velvet couch in the centre of her father’s large office. The bright cushion she hugged tight to her chest and the fluffy pink jumper she wore over her denim overalls the only bursts of colour amongst all the dark, custom-built wood and masculine brown leather.
She fussed with the ring on her right hand, distracting herself from the strangers milling round the room. Lawyer, accountants, who knew? She wished they’d all sod off, but Rose, Matilda’s oldest sister, must have allowed it. For while this day was painfully personal, Garrison Downs was a community, an industry, an economy unto itself, and what happened in this room and how that news was shaped would affect more than just their family.
Rose sat stiff-backed in the guest chair closest to their father’s desk. Eyes front, light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, dust motes floating about her head, as she’d come straight in from checking fences over by Devil’s Bend.
Eve, their middle sister, was there in spirit. Or, to be precise, video conferencing from the PR office in which she worked in Central London. Matilda wished she could see her face, but since that first minute before proceedings, Eve had been on the screen on the wall behind her.
Hugging the cushion tighter as George Harrington, the family lawyer, droned on about investments, stocks, equipment, trust funds, and the robustness of the station’s financial standing, Matilda noted how swamped the older man appeared, sitting behind her father’s iconic desk.
Famously featured in most news stories in which her father appeared, the bold antique desk had fit Holt Waverly perfectly. Tough, savvy, immensely respected countrywide, Holt had been a mythical character in modern Australian folklore. An icon.
Dad. Gone. Their new reality coming at them in increments. From the accident that had felled him, the outpouring of sentiment from all over the world. The honour—and weight—associated with a state funeral. Only after which had they been able to bury him in the family plot under the shade of a flame tree atop Prospect Hill. Next to their mother, the love of his life.
Matilda blinked to find Harrington had moved on to the gem at the centre of her father’s estate. Garrison Downs. One and a half million hectares of red dirt, hills, and vales. Verdant river to the east, ancient craggy outcrops and shadowy canyons to the north. There was the Homestead itself—or “the New House” as those within the family called it—a colossal home built by her parents when Matilda was a toddler, the Old House her father had grown up in, and the Settler’s Cottage, a place full of ghosts and snakes and other dangers, which had made it as tempting as it was terrifying when they were kids.
Add a dozen outbuildings, seasonal staff lodgings, machinery, maintenance equipment, feed barns, ghostly gum trees, kookaburras, kangaroos, and sweeping planes of prime cattle grazing land...and it was just home.
Needing something to hug, Matilda clicked her fingers for River, their old lilac border collie—once a working dog, now happier sticking close to home—to come keep her company.
When River didn’t instantly appear, Matilda glanced over her shoulder to find the dog sitting in the back corner of the room by a young, dark-haired woman, who was playing with his ear. The woman sat in the chair by the telescope, the chair with the view down the long front driveway. Her mother’s favourite chair.
She seemed a little young to be one of the lawyers, and not so slick. She was familiar somehow. Matilda’s mouth lifted in a quick smile, her conciliatory nature winning out, even under the circumstances.
The young woman startled as she caught Matilda’s eye, before leaning down and saying something to River that had the old dog padding over to Matilda and jumping up onto the couch beside her, panting happily.
Matilda turned to sink her face into River’s familiar fur, looking up only when the old lawyer cleared his throat.
“Now to the nitty-gritty,” said Harrington, his old voice a mite shaky. “To my daughters, I leave all of the above and all my worldly possessions not listed hereupon, including, but not limited to, the entirety of Garrison Downs.”
There, thought Matilda, breathing out. That’s that then. All as it should be.
Harrington went on, “Let it be known that it is my wish that my eldest daughter, Rose Lavigne Waverly, take full control of the management of Garrison Downs. If that is her wish. If not, I bow to her choice.”
Rose flinched, then briskly retied her ponytail: a classic stress move. The passing of the torch no doubt made it all feel absolutely, terribly, irrevocably r
Not on her own, Matilda upbraided, threading her fingers into River’s soft fur.
For she’d be there, sprinkling enthusiasm, keeping spirits up. Not because farming was her bliss, but because she knew how it felt to not be there when it mattered most. Knew the guilt, the soul-deep bruise it left on a person, and never wanted to feel that way ever again.
“Ah,” said the lawyer, glancing over the top of his reading glasses, his gaze settling on some spot over Matilda’s left shoulder for a beat, then back to the papers on the desk. “At this point, could we please clear the room of everyone bar family.”
A collective wish to stay and not miss a juicy detail pulsed off the walls before the room emptied.
“Now,” said Harrington, taking a moment to gift the sisters with a kindly smile. “That was quite the ask, I know. But necessary to cover all the intricacies of your father’s will with those who will best help you manage the ongoing running and reputation of the station. There is just one more thing—”
Harrington stopped. Then rubbed his hand across his forehead.
Rose leaned forward; always sensitive to changes in atmosphere. Only Matilda felt it too, enough that she pulled River a little closer.
“There is a condition placed over the bequest. One that has been attached to the property since its transfer to your family years ago.” Harrington took off his glasses and set them atop the papers. “As I’m sure you know, the history of Garrison Downs is complicated, what with your great-great-grandmother having won the land from the Garrison family in a poker game in 1904.”
The poker game was legendary in the region. And there was no love lost between the Waverlys and the Garrisons, who still ran another cattle station to the south, though not nearly as big, well-known or prosperous as Garrison Downs.
“Anytime the land has been passed down since, certain conditions had to be met.” His hands shook, just a little, as he put on his glasses and read directly from the will. “Any male Waverly heir, currently living, naturally inherits the estate.”
“Naturally,” Rose murmured.
“But,” said Harrington, lifting a finger, “if the situation arises where there is no direct male heir, any and all female daughters, of marrying age, must be wed, within a year of the reading of the will, in order to inherit as a whole.”
A sound crackled through Matilda’s ears. The past catching up with her? No, Eve was laughing, humourlessly, as if this was somehow no surprise to her.
Some back and forth took place, questions as to what it meant, but Matilda, the history buff of the family, who in her studies had gleefully read about all kinds of mind-boggling hereditary conditions in the lineages of European royal houses, understood all too well.
“The land,” Matilda said, her words cutting through the heavy air, “is entailed to sons. If there is no son, the Waverly women can inherit—you, Eve, and I—but only if all of us are married.”
Protests rose from both of her sisters then, while Matilda’s mind stuttered, married, married, married, like an old record stuck on a groove.
“It is...arcane,” Harrington agreed. “But it has been a part of the lore of this land for several generations. So far as I see it, and so far as your father must have wanted, it stands.”
Rose, now up and pacing, shook her head. “How has this never come up before?”
“Sons,” said Matilda. “Dad was an only child. Pop only had brothers, though one died of measles and the other drowned, meaning the farm passed straight to him. Waverlys have always been most excellent at having at least one strapping farm-loving son. Until us.”
Rose looked to Matilda. Made full eye contact for the first time since the reading had begun. It seemed to shake something loose in her. A flash of real fear, before Rose was back to being Rose. Strong, steady, honourable.
“And what happens if we refuse to...marry?” Rose asked.
As far as Matilda knew, Rose had never had a boyfriend much less a marriage prospect. As for Eve? Who knew what her love life was like—so far away, so busy, so hard to pin down. While Matilda—
Matilda stopped fidgeting with the ring on her right hand and, surreptitiously, sat on the thing.
“If the condition is not met,” said Harrington, “the land goes back to the current head of the Garrison family. Clay Garrison.”
Rose lost it then. For she had plenty to say about old Clay, and even more about his son, Lincoln.
“Don’t waste your time worrying about it, Rose, because that’s not going to happen,” Eve said, sounding sure. “Not now. Not ever.”
Though how any of them could feel sure of anything anymore, Matilda had no clue.
Harrington cleared his throat. “As it stands, unless all four of Holt Waverly’s natural daughters are married within twelve months of the reading of this document—”
“Twelve months?” Rose shot back, clearly only just having picked up on that bit. “But I can’t... I’m not... I mean none of us are even seeing anyone right now. Eve? Tilly?”
Matilda shook her head. Slowly. For she wasn’t currently seeing anyone.
“Wait,” said Matilda, stilling a moment, before her socked feet uncurled from beside her to drop to the floor. “You said four daughters. There are only three of us.”
River jumped to the floor, nudging her knee, whimpering. And the pity in the lawyer’s gaze made her sway.
Then, feeling as if someone had taken her by the chin, Matilda turned and looked over her left shoulder to find the dark-haired young woman from earlier, the one who’d been sitting in her mother’s favourite chair was still in the room.
“Who are you?” Matilda asked, not unkindly.
“Ana,” the stranger said, standing and wringing her hands. Her voice was lilting, as if in question.
Eve, now visible to Matilda on the larger-than-life screen, shifted in her seat. “Who are you talking to, Tilly? I can’t see.”
The chair behind the desk squeaked as Harrington pressed it back and stood. Then he was out from behind the desk, his arm outstretched. “Come forward, girl.”
The stranger came forward. A small, hesitant step.
“Anastasia,” said Harrington, “this is Matilda Waverly. That there is Rose. And up on the screen there is Evelyn. Girls, this is Anastasia Horvath.”
Ana lifted her hand in a small wave and said, “Hi.”
Matilda waved back because...habit. Good breeding. Pathological Pollyanna Syndrome. A deep-seated loathing of all things confrontational. When she glanced back to Rose, it was to find her staring at Ana as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Ana, here,” said Harrington, “is your father’s daughter. Your half-sister. And therefore, according to your father’s will, due an equal share in the estate. And equally beholden to the condition.”
The silence that descended over the room in that moment was suffocating. Because... No. How?
A half-sister meant... Meant their father had had an affair?
The very thought was ridiculous. He’d adored their mother. Famously. Their partnership as legendary as the land they ran.
Then there was the way they had met—a whirlwind, love at first sight, holiday romance between big, gruff, cattle baron Holt and brilliant, elegant, titled socialite Rosamund, after which he swept her home and they’d lived happily ever after. Until Rosamund’s sudden death several years before.
That story was foundational. The keystone to their family.
And he’d had an affair?
“Impossible,” Matilda whispered, only realising she’d said it out loud when Ana flinched.
While her heart shook, rejecting the very thought, Matilda looked harder. Ana appeared younger than her by a smidge. Her hair was dark and straight, compared to the shades of light brown to blond shared by Rose, Eve, and Matilda. But her eyes—that vibrant piercing blue—they were their father’s eyes.
Matilda’s hand, the one that had waved, dropped to her side, feeling as heavy as lead.
