CHAPTER ONE

      ‘MUMMY, someone’s coming!’

      Wiping her hands on her apron, Juliet came out of the kitchen and shaded her eyes against the glare as she watched the tell-tale column of red dust that signalled a vehicle speeding towards them along the dusty track.

      ‘Who is it?’ asked Kit, secure in a three-year-old’s belief that his mother would know everything.

      Andrew looked up at that. ‘It’s a car,’ he said scornfully, and returned to the toy digger that he was pushing through the dust at the bottom of the verandah steps. Like his twin, he was a sturdy little boy, with Hugo’s angelic blond hair and her own dark blue eyes, but Juliet knew that the identical looks concealed quite different personalities. Andrew was single-minded, stubborn, happy to play the same game for hours while quicksilver Kit was easily distracted, always asking questions and much more inclined to lead his twin into trouble.

      ‘It is,’ Juliet agreed as Kit opened his mouth to object, ‘but there’s someone in it, so Kit’s right too.’ She watched the dust cloud moving closer, a slight frown between her brows. ‘Perhaps it’s the new manager,’ she said slowly.

      ‘What’s a manager?’ That was Kit again, of course, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

      ‘He’s going to help us run the station.’

      If there was one thing she needed, it was help, but Juliet couldn’t help wondering if she had made the right decision. On the face of it, Cal Jamieson had sounded ideal. ‘Cal?’ the owner of the neighbouring station had said, when she had rung to ask him for a reference. ‘You won’t find anyone who knows more about running a property like yours. He’s a good man.’

      Cal Jamieson might know what he was doing, but whenever Juliet remembered their telephone conversation she was conscious of a faint feeling of disquiet. He had heard that she was looking for a manager, he had said, and he was looking for a job. What was there in that to make her uneasy?

      He had sounded brusque, but Juliet had learned not to expect outback men to ooze charm, and in any case Hugo had made her wary of superficial charisma. No, it was something about the way he had taken charge of the conversation. Of course, she had wanted to know that he was competent, but surely it had been up to her to suggest that he came out for a trial period? And there had been something more than competence in that deep Australian voice. Looking back, Juliet couldn’t pick on any one thing, but she had been left with the uncomfortable feeling that there was a hostile undercurrent to everything he had said.

      It was probably just her imagination, Juliet tried to reassure herself. She had never met the man, so what reason could he possibly have to dislike her?

      Her eyes rested on the two little boys playing in the dust below her, and, as always, she was conscious of a surge of love so intense that it tightened her throat. Her boys. They were worth every aching bone, every day fighting tears of sheer exhaustion, every sleepless night spent worrying about their future. Wilparilla was their inheritance and she would fight to keep it for them. She didn’t care how hostile Cal Jamieson was as long as he helped her to do that.

      Still, there was no point in letting him think he could walk all over her. Juliet had no intention of repeating the mistake she had made with the last manager. She would make sure right from the start that Cal Jamieson knew just who was boss!

      Pulling off her apron as she went, Juliet went back into the homestead to splash cold water on her face and run her fingers through her dark hair. She grimaced at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The stress of the last year and the aching exhaustion in her bones had left her looking much older than her twenty-five years and hardly capable of bossing a three-year-old around, let alone a man as tough and self-assured as Cal Jamieson had sounded on the phone. If it came to a contest of vigour, competence and sheer bravado, the much-squeezed tube of toothpaste sitting on the edge of the basin would probably put up a better show than she could at the moment!

      For an incongruous moment, she allowed herself to remember the girl she had been in London, so pretty, so vivacious, so certain that everything would work out for the best. That had been before she married Hugo, of course. Now here she was, on an isolated cattle station on the other side of the world, and the only thing she was certain of was that she would do whatever it took to keep Wilparilla safe for her boys. Even if it meant dealing with the unknown Cal Jamieson.

      ‘Mummy, Mummy, the manager’s here!’ cried Kit, running into the bathroom and bursting to use the new word that he had learnt.

      ‘Well, we’d better go and say hello, then,’ said Juliet. Now that the moment had come, she felt ridiculously nervous. Wilparilla’s future rested with the man waiting outside, but she mustn’t let him realise how desperately she needed someone to help her.

      Kit rushed self-importantly