‘Hey, no, wait. Repair was my word,’ Bridie said hurriedly. ‘And definitely the wrong word. Dad, I know the engagement announcement surprised you and you want answers. And I’m not going to insult your intelligence by claiming it wasn’t a bit spur of the moment. It’s probably not going to last, but while we’re on a roll why not explore what we might be able to do conservation-wise if we were to combine Jeddah Creek, Devil’s Kiss and Talulah Sky? Think about it.’

  ‘If he hurts you—

  ‘Dad, I’m not sixteen any more. I’m not so naive I can’t see the make of a person or whether they’re out to harm me. I’m not being taken advantage of. I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do, and Judah’s not out to harm me.’

  Judah and her father locked gazes.

  They both knew what happened to people who chose to harm Bridie.

  ‘Let me know when you want to leave,’ said Tom. ‘I’m ready whenever you are.’

  ‘Half an hour,’ she said.

  ‘Half an hour,’ echoed her father and left, as if he couldn’t stand watching them a moment longer.

  ‘How are you tracking?’ she asked when they were alone again, and the honest answer was not well. He kept waiting for retaliation and instead he got fragile little Bridie doing her best to soothe him, humour him and, heaven help them all, protect him.

  This was not how his world should be.

  ‘Getting there,’ he muttered. What else could he say? Take me back to lockup where I know how the world works?

  He crossed to a painting of wolfhounds racing across a field of green and lifted the painting from its hook to reveal a safe—one of several in the house, but this one housed some of the family’s older, finer jewels. Or, given his father’s gambling habit, maybe it now held the paste equivalent.

  ‘You need a ring. Come and look.’ He gestured her over and opened velvet box after velvet box of jewellery. The diamond and emerald tennis bracelet looked sparkly enough and he opened the clasp. ‘Give me your wrist.’

  Bridie held out her wrist and he fastened it and thought of the zip ties they used on prisoners and hoped to hell she didn’t feel similarly tied down. At least her wrists weren’t bound together. ‘My grandmother had a diamond and emerald ring that should be in here somewhere. The emerald is the centre stone with two diamonds either side and she had slender hands like you.’

  A dozen different rings of various shapes and sizes later, he found the one he was looking for and eased it from its snowy velvet cradle.

  There was something timeless about it. The emerald a rich and vivid green that held its own against the diamonds that flanked it, all of it set in filigree white gold.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ she said. ‘Art deco.’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  She held out her hand. He slid the ring on her finger and it fit as if it had been made for her.

  She watched it sparkle for a time and then nodded. ‘Beautiful. I’ll give it back when we’re done.’

  ‘Keep it. When we finish up you should keep it.’

  She looked startled. ‘I couldn’t. It’s a family ring, isn’t it?’

  Why was she so surprised by his generosity when hers had humbled and shamed him? ‘And now it’s yours.’

  * * *

  Their re-entry into the ballroom brought on a torrent of congratulations and well wishes.

  What would he do next, people with bright smiles wanted to know, and then didn’t know what to do when he said give back to his community, restore his family name and preserve the land in his care.

  Congratulations on your engagement, they said. What a fairy-tale ending for you both.

  Let me know when you want to do business, they said, as if he were a goose fat with golden eggs.

  Bridie too had to weather a swollen river of effusive comments.

  ‘Look at you, all grown up and so beautiful.’ That seemed to be the general verdict and she wore the comment awkwardly.

  ‘I can’t help the way I look,’ she murmured to him after one such comment. ‘It’s not exactly a skill.’

  ‘What a catch you’ve made,’ others said to her in his presence. ‘A lord of the realm, fiercely protective and money to burn. Lucky you.’

  Her hands had begun to shake again.

  Maybe it was his turn to rescue her. ‘Time’s up,’ he told her. ‘Let’s find your father and get you out of here.’

  She didn’t protest. She did lean over and press her lips to the edge of his mouth in farewell, and it would have taken only the tiniest turn of his head to light a fire he’d have no hope of ever putting out.

  ‘Talk soon,’ she said, and he gave the tiniest nod because her scent was in the air and words were beyond him again. ‘I want to know which photos of mine you liked best. Make me a pile and once all your visitors have gone I’ll show you where I took every one of them. A welcome home trip.’

  ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘Of course I will.’ She stood too close. It had been so long since he’d held a woman in his arms, any woman, let alone one who could make his head swim. His control was stretched so very thin. ‘It’s just kindness.’

  * * *

  Judah returned to his guests and followed his original plan for the evening to make himself available. He drank sparingly and listened to business plans and politicking. He took note of relationships and the levers that sustained them. He filed away every last sniff of information he collected and made no promises whatsoever when it came to what he intended to do with his money. He was back in touch with the movers and shakers of this world and he fully intended to carve out his place in it, but it would be on his terms, not theirs. By the end of the evening the smarter ones had figured as much, and the rest...they’d learn.

  When the party wound down and people went back to their luxury planes and had their pilots take them away, or slept in their planes, or stayed on in his guest rooms, Judah took a farm ute and headed north, away from all the people, until he reached a stand of old red river gums with their distinctive bark peeling back to a smooth and ghostly white.

  He spread out his swag in the bed of the ute, with the tailgate down and the vast sky above. Thin mattress, canvas cover, and a pillow so soft he could hardly bear the comparison to the prison lump he was used to. He wondered if his brother would suggest he get therapy if he made this his bed for the foreseeable future.

  No walls. Just stars.

  No other people breathing, snoring or weeping. He’d swapped those sounds for the thrumming of riverbank insects going about their business.

  This place. Photo number sixty-two of the eighty-eight photos Bridie had sent to him over the years—he’d memorised each one before carefully handing them back across the desk to be put with the rest of the belongings he’d been stripped of.

  She had no idea how much her photos had meant to him, those monthly reminders of who he was and where he belonged.

  He’d had no idea how closely they might have documented her steps these past years. From the safety of her back door to the edge of the veranda. From the old Hills Hoist hung with freshly washed clothes to the edge of the house paddock and the windmill and water trough. Such familiar things, each one set just that little bit further from her homestead.

  He wasn’t the only one to have lost years of freedom because of the actions of a thwarted madman—he knew that now.

  In his absence, she’d built him up to be someone he wasn’t, but he’d done exactly the same to her. They needed to move past that if they wanted to be business and land conservation partners. He’d agreed to that, heaven help him. Same way he’d agreed to be her fiancé for the next three months. He who had no business whatsoever being around someone so delicate and beautiful. Someone who could unravel him just by looking in his direction. Someone who could make him forget where he was with the touch of her hand.

  He missed intimacy so much and she was right there...ready to forgive him anything. Thinking of him as some kind of hero—and what a joke that was, even if thinking of himself as a hero had made his incarceration that much easier to bear. Protector of the innocent, no matter the cost. Honourable to the end. A man of his word.

  A good man.

  Until tonight, when he’d ripped that myth apart.

  Forcing an unwanted engagement on Bridie. Lying about it to his brother and her father and everyone else in order to save face and belatedly offer Bridie what protection he could. Pledging to buy Conrad land under false pretences. Wanting to take Bridie’s sweet, parting kiss and turn it into an inferno.

  Not exactly a good man any more, was he?

  ‘Don’t do anything rash. Avoid split-second decisions.’

  ‘Give yourself time to adjust.’

  ‘Give others the benefit of the doubt.’

  He’d done none of that and Bridie had paid the price with an engagement she couldn’t possibly want. He’d allowed Bridie to protect him when he’d fallen apart, and that couldn’t happen again. He needed to undo all the tics he’d learned in prison and figure out who he was and who he wanted to be, and above all keep his desire for Bridie’s touch to himself and not take advantage of her goodwill and sweet nature and sense of obligation.

  Pull yourself together, Judah, don’t be a disgrace.

  Be a better man.

  Rather than be ashamed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?’

  Judah halted at the question his brother threw at him from his position behind the kitchen counter. A large cooktop and a couple of ovens lined the wall behind his brother, with a cool room at one end and a regular fridge at the other. Odd, how such a seemingly innocent question might grate on a man who’d been forced to account for every minute of his day for such a long time. Or maybe not so odd at all.

  ‘Because I made a heap of breakfast for the guys before they left and I saved you some. So what’ll it be?’ his brother continued, oblivious to Judah’s scowl. ‘The works? Bacon, sausages, tomato, scrambled eggs, toast. Or there’s the veggo option of bruschetta. I didn’t make that one. Nico’s training to be a chef.’

  ‘And Nico is...?’

  ‘A friend from school. Trent Nicholson. Good man.’

  He should probably stop thinking of his brother and all his friends as boys. He should also stop being so quick to take offence. Soon would be good. Making some kind of decision about what to eat for breakfast would be good too. Any time now, slowpoke, you can do it. He doubted the prison psych’s advice to take his time when making decisions applied to something as simple as food choice. ‘I’ll take the second one.’

  ‘Coffee too?’

  ‘You’re speaking my language.’

  Reid beamed and set about getting the fancy machine to produce liquid heaven, and Judah finally forgave him that very first ‘where’ve you been?’. ‘You said your friends have already gone?’ The city caterers were still around, he’d seen them on his way in, but they too were scheduled to leave by lunchtime. Solitude again.

  ‘Yeah. Couple of them could have stayed on, but I didn’t know how you’d feel about that. You were pretty clear about wanting everyone gone by this morning.’

  ‘That didn’t include your school friends. This is your home too.’ Clearly, they had some work to do when it came to communicating wants and needs.

  Reid slung food and coffee in front of him and Judah pulled up a stool and tucked in, still silently marvelling at the taste of good food. Not to mention he now had unlimited access to all kinds of kitchen utensils that could so easily be shaped into shivs. Not that he needed to shape anything into a shiv, given that a row of kitchen knives was right there behind his brother, stuck to a magnetic strip on the wall.

  His brother followed Judah’s gaze. ‘You keep looking at them. Why?’

  Probably not a good idea to mention that he was counting them. Again. And that he counted them every time he walked into the room to make sure they were all still there.

  ‘They can go in a drawer if you like.’

  ‘Then I’d have to open the drawer to count them and that’d be worse.’

  Reid had his mouth open and his fork loaded but everything stopped at Judah’s gravelly confession.

  ‘I see,’ he offered quietly, and then slowly filled his mouth with food.

  Judah tried to see any trace of his freckle-faced eleven-year-old brother in the quiet eighteen-year-old stranger sitting across from him and could find none. Reid was whipcord lean, tanned and a recent haircut had gone some way towards taming his thick, wavy brown hair. His blue eyes were still as bright as Judah remembered, except laughter had been replaced by a wariness usually reserved for freshwater crocs.

  ‘I expect it’ll take a while for you to adapt,’ his little brother said carefully. ‘I had some calls from a social worker before you got out. She gave me a bit of a rundown on what to expect.’

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘Are you feeling angry, frustrated and depressed yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good start.’ Reid nodded encouragingly, and for some reason Judah wanted to laugh. ‘Anything changed so much you barely recognise it?’

  ‘Apart from you? No.’

  ‘Do you feel overwhelmed?’

  Last night didn’t count. ‘No.’

  ‘Any negative influences I should know about?’

  ‘I had a run-in with a horsefly yesterday and won. I’ll try not to hang around them too often.’

  ‘Good luck with that out here. Any addictions?’

  ‘Not yet. And I doubt I’m going to become addicted to your breakfast conversation.’

  ‘Har har. I’m checking in with you like they told me to. Guess you pass the test.’ Reid nodded his approval. ‘You want to come flying with me today? I can show you the new access road and set of yards we put in up near Pepper Tree Ridge.’

  ‘You could.’

  ‘We could pick Bridie up on the way. She likes it up there.’

  Why wouldn’t Reid and Bridie get together every now and then and have formed a friendship born of common ground and neighbourliness? Why did he scowl at the thought of it? ‘I’d rather we didn’t include Bridie. Not today.’

  ‘Trouble in engagement land already?’

  ‘No.’ How much should he confess? But the thought of looking like a weakling idiot in front of his brother didn’t sit well with him. He was the older brother, dammit. ‘But it’s not exactly a traditional engagement and I like a bit of distance.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ muttered Reid and narrowed his gaze. ‘Do you blame her?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For getting kidnapped and you having to sully your soul and kill a man in order to get her back?’ Reid had a frown on his face.

  ‘Do I blame Bridie for my sullied soul? No.’ He didn’t have a sullied soul. Not yet, and he aimed to keep it that way.

  For the first five years of his incarceration he’d stuck steadfastly to the idea that it was nothing more than his duty to protect the weakest link in his world. Damn right he could still look at himself in the mirror and know he’d done the right thing.

  His resolve had faltered somewhere around the seven-year mark when his mother died.

  When his father had followed not two months later, passing so swiftly they hadn’t even been able to arrange prison leave for Judah to say goodbye, Judah’s resolve had faltered some more.

  He’d missed so much. Left his parents alone out here, then left Reid to fend for himself. Reid, who for these past six months had been in charge of thirty-odd thousand square kilometres of some of the most dangerous and inhospitable grazing land in Australia. A property Reid didn’t even have a claim to because Judah as firstborn son had inherited the lot. But not one scrap of that was Bridie’s doing or Bridie’s fault. ‘I don’t blame Bridie for any of that. My actions, my responsibility.’

  ‘Hero.’

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘Yep. Big hero.’

  ‘You keep thinking like that and I’ll only disappoint you. I don’t want to disappoint you, Reid. I want to get to know you and for you to know me.’

  A sentiment that silenced his brother completely.

  ‘Bridie mentioned last night about you wanting to build tourist lodges up on the ridges,’ Judah continued carefully. ‘Care to share?’

  His brother nodded, his eyes brightening. ‘I want to build a couple of luxury eco-tourism lodges up above river bend. Fly-in fly-out, a minimum five-day package, with fishing, sunset cookouts, stargazing, sunrise wellness yoga or something, I don’t know, and day trips out to Carper’s Ridge. This is my home and I love it, but it’s lonely, and that won’t change unless we change it, you know?’

  ‘Or you could move to where the people are.’

  Reid held his gaze. ‘Is that what you want me to do? Go? Firstborn takes all when it comes to land, I know that. And I can set down elsewhere if you want me gone. But you asked me what I want, so I’m telling you. I want to stay here. I want to fly interesting people around and find out how this place inspires them. I want a home of my own, one day, on Jeddah Creek land or nearby, and if you buy the Conrad place, maybe I could go there. Eventually or something.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Yes!’ Reid flung his arms in the air and did a lap of the kitchen island, every inch the teenager. ‘Yes! My hero.’ Reid came at him from behind, wrapping his long arms around him and kissing him on the side of the head. Whatever discomfort with physical contact Judah had with people, Reid clearly hadn’t inherited it.

  ‘Don’t make me lunge for the kitchen knives, man,’ Judah protested. ‘Get off me.’

  ‘I love you.’ Hug. ‘My brother the land baron.’ Kiss.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough.’

 

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