Barbara Hannay - Outback Wife and Mother

Heat stole into her cheeks. He would have been swimming naked. She had no doubt about that.

She whipped her eyes away from his damp lower region as he growled at her, without smiling. ‘I suppose it’s too much to ask for an explanation as to why you’ve suddenly appeared here, and just happen to be riding one of my horses without any invitation?’

‘I was planning to give you a very good explanation.’

‘Planning, Ally? Hell! You practically caused a serious accident.’

His hostility was enough to wither her tiny stock of courage even before she began to defend herself.

‘I said I’m sorry.’ Ally’s grey eyes blazed briefly, then her lashes lowered over them as she mumbled her excuse. ‘Your stockman said I could use this horse—that you were out branding somewhere. I didn’t know—’

‘You came over three thousand kilometres just to take in a little horse riding practice?’

She nearly lost her nerve there and then. Clearly he regarded her as an intruder—uninvited and unwanted. Tears gathered swiftly, burning the backs of her lids.

How could this happen? This was the man she loved! This was her Fletcher! He had come to the city and made exquisite love to her and changed her life forever. But now he had the audacity to glare at her with outright rejection clearly stamped in the firm set of his jaw, the frowning black stripe of his eyebrows and the whiteknuckled clench of his fists.

She took an agonising breath hoping to calm her frantic, self-defeating thoughts. ‘You’re surprised to see me,’ she whispered, and her wide eyes anxiously darted away from his unyielding gaze.

‘Surprise is one word I could choose, I guess,’ Fletcher drawled, his deep voice rumbling with sarcasm. But now he was staring back at her, hard. His eyes travelled—very deliberately—over her slim frame, her jeans and soft, white shirt buttoned low over a pale lavender crop top. They rested for the longest time on her pale face. ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated, his voice less harsh this time, as if he had run out of breath suddenly.

‘I—I’ve—Your cousin and I have brought your little godson—Connor.’ The words tumbled out of control like beads spilling from a broken necklace.

Fletcher scowled. ‘You came with Lucette?’

‘Yes. You’re his guardian now...’

‘I know damn well I’m his guardian, but what I still don’t understand is what you’ve got to do with it?’

‘Well, Lucette was looking for a nanny for Connor so that you...’

‘You’re sidetracking,’ Fletcher snapped. ‘Get to the Point.,

‘Well, the point is,’ resumed Ally, running her tongue nervously over parched lips. ‘I’m his nanny.’

‘What?’

Startled, Ally watched as the colour in Fletcher’s face deepened and then leached away while, with the worst sense of timing, a kookaburra broke into raucous laughter in a gum tree overhanging the track.

‘Hell, Ally! You can’t be!’

‘I’ve had some training as a nanny,’ she offered tentatively, then began to chew the inside of her cheek while her fingers nervously played with the horse’s mane.

‘Damn it to hell! Of all the crazy...!’ He studied her through narrowed eyes. ‘How much?’

‘How much what?’ she repeated lamely.

‘How much training have you done to be a nanny for heaven’s sake?’

‘That’s how I put myself through Art College—working as a nanny for...’

Interrupting her with a fierce curse, Fletcher tossed the reins back over Juno’s neck before striding across the track away from her, shaking his head, clearly unimpressed, quite obviously more angry than ever.

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