PROLOGUE

      THREE weeks past her twelfth birthday, Piper O’Malley spent almost an entire afternoon huddled behind the tractor shed crying. And the stupid thing was she hated crying! Crying was for girls and today she didn’t want to be a girl.

      By the time Gabe Rivers found her she’d reduced her sobs to the occasional sniffle, but she knew her eyes were still red and swollen.

      ‘Hey, cheer up, tree frog,’ he said, crouching beside her and throwing a strong, comforting arm around her skinny shoulders. ‘Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems.’

      She swiped her eyes with her shirt-tail. ‘It is today. This is the worst day of my life.’

      He looked so surprised she made a hasty amendment. After all, Gabe was eighteen—and like all adults he had a way of knowing when you weren’t telling the exact truth. ‘I suppose the very worst day of my life must have been when Mum and Dad died, but I was too little to remember.’

      ‘But this is the second worst day?’ he asked. ‘Sounds bad. What’s the problem?’

      She burrowed her face against his big shoulder. ‘I can’t tell you. It’s too awful.’

      ‘Course you can. I’m unshockable.’

      Peeping up at him she found his green eyes regarding her so tenderly she felt her heart swell. ‘Periods,’ she whispered.

      ‘I see,’ he said after a beat. ‘Well…yeah…that’s tough, I guess.’

      She half expected Gabe to leap away from her, to tell her that now he’d finished helping her grandfather with branding and ear-tagging calves he needed to hurry home to Edenvale. But he stayed right beside her. They sat for ages with their backs against the corrugated iron wall of the tractor shed, chewing fresh, sweet stalks of grass and watching the daylight soften as the afternoon slipped away.

      ‘You’ll get used to the idea after a while,’ he told her.

      ‘I won’t, Gabe. I know I won’t ever. Why do I have to be a girl? I wish I was a boy. I want to be like you.’

      He grinned. ‘And what’s so good about being like me?’

      ‘Everything,’ she cried with the wholehearted sincerity of a true hero-worshipper. ‘You’re bigger and stronger than Grandad, and he never tries to stop you from doing anything. And you can be whatever you want to be. When I grow up I’m going to have to have babies and wash some man’s smelly old socks and underpants.’

      Gabe laughed. ‘Wait till you go to boarding school next term. Your teachers will tell you that girls have the same chance to be anything they want to these days.’

      ‘But I want to be a cattleman. Bet you never heard anyone talk about a cattlewoman, have you?’

      He chuckled playfully and pulled her akubra down over her eyes. When she knocked the broad-brimmed hat back into place she was surprised to see the laughter in his eyes die. Suddenly he was looking sad and serious.

      ‘What’s the matter?’

      He shook his head. ‘Nothing you need worry about, mouse.’

      ‘Come on, Gabe. I told you my horrible secret and I haven’t even told Miriam, my best girlfriend. If you tell me, I won’t tell anyone else.’

      He smiled at her—as if he was seeing right inside her and really liked what he found. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘guys can have their own problems, you know.’

      ‘Like having to shave?’

      He grinned. ‘That’s one of them. But it gets worse.’

      ‘Going bald?’

      ‘I’m not talking about that kind of stuff. I mean