PROLOGUE

      CORPORAL JOE MADDEN waited two whole days before he opened the email from his wife.

      Avoidance was not Joe’s usual MO. It went against everything he’d learned in his military training. Strike swiftly was the Australian Commandos’ motto, and yet...here he was in Afghanistan, treating a rare message from Ellie as if it were more dangerous than an improvised explosive device.

      Looming divorce could do that to a guy.

      The fact that Joe had actually offered to divorce Ellie was irrelevant. After too many stormy years of marriage, he’d known that his suggestion was both necessary and fair, but the break-up certainly hadn’t been easy or painless.

      Now, in his tiny hut in Tarin Kot, Joe scanned the two other email messages that had arrived from Australia overnight. The first was his aunt’s unhelpful reminder that she never stopped worrying about him. The other was a note from one of his brothers. This, at least, was glib and slightly crude and elicited a wry chuckle from Joe.

      But he was left staring at Ellie’s as yet unopened email with its gut-churning subject heading: Crunch Time.

      Joe knew exactly what this meant. The final divorce papers had arrived from their solicitor and Ellie was impatient to serve him with them.

      Clearly, she was no longer prepared to wait till the end of his four years in the army, even though his reasons for suggesting the delay had been entirely practical.

      Joe knew no soldier was safe in Afghanistan, and if he was killed while he and Ellie were still married, she would receive an Army widow’s full entitlements. Financially, at least, she would be OK.

      Surely this was important? The worst could so easily happen here. In his frequent deployments, Joe faced daily, if not hourly, danger and he’d already lost two close mates, both of them brilliant, superbly trained soldiers. Death was a real and ever-present danger.

      Joe had felt compelled to offer Ellie a safety net, so he’d been reassured to know that, whatever happened to him, she would be financially secure. But, clearly, getting out of their marriage now was more important to her than the long-term benefits.

      Hell, she probably had another bloke lined up in the wings. Please, let it be anyone but that damn potato farmer her mother had hand-picked for her.

      But, whatever Ellie’s reasons, the evidence of her impatience sat before Joe on the screen.

      Crunch Time.

      There was no point in avoiding this any longer. The coffee Joe had recently downed turned sour as he grimly clicked on the message.

      * * *

      It was a stinking-hot day at Karinya Station in Far North Queensland. The paddocks were parched and the cattle hungry as Ellie Madden delivered molasses to the empty troughs. The anxious beasts pushed and shoved at her, trying to knock the molasses barrel out of her hands, so of course she was as sticky and grimy as a candy bar dropped in dirt by the time she arrived back at the homestead.

      Her top priority was to hit the laundry and scrub up to her elbows. That done, she strode through the kitchen, grabbed a jug of chilled water from the fridge, filled a glass and gulped it down. Taking another glassful with her to the study, she remained standing in her molasses-smeared jeans as she fired up her laptop.

      Tension vibrated and buzzed inside her as the latest messages downloaded. Surely Joe would send his answer today?

      She was so sick with apprehension she closed her eyes and held her breath until she heard the ping of the final message’s arrival. When she forced herself to peek at the screen again, she felt an immediate plunge