CHAPTER TWO

      SARAH SHIFTED uncomfortably on the bus seat. The hem of her skirt had ridden up and her bare thighs were sticking to the vinyl. She’d been traveling for over thirty-six hours and she felt grimy and hot and sweaty. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d brushed her teeth.

      The air-conditioning had broken down hours ago. The second-last passenger got out not long after. The sun was a yellow glare in a frighteningly immense blue-white sky. The flat red earth, sparsely covered with dry grass and dotted with cattle, spread to a distant horizon. With a shudder she pulled her gaze back inside the bus. Outside was too big, too empty, to look at.

      Australians might affectionately call their country Oz, she thought moodily, but out here the yellow brick road was a dusty red track across hundreds of miles of nothing and it led away from Seattle, the Emerald City, not to it.

      Out of the heat haze appeared the silhouettes of houses and stores. Oh, thank heavens, a town. Like the other towns she’d passed through, the shops had false fronts, wide streets and broad wooden awnings that shaded the sidewalk. They looked a little like towns of the Old West except for the occasional palm tree, which destroyed the illusion. The bus passed a tiny wooden church and a big, ornate hotel with a second-story veranda before slowing to a halt beside a boarded-up train station.

      Murrumburrumgurrandah. The town’s moniker rattled along the sign above the platform like an old man’s phlegmy cough.

      Shielding her eyes from the blinding sun, Sarah stepped off the bus onto the hard-packed red dirt beside the road. The heat hit her like a dry sauna, sucking the moisture from her skin and turning her ivory linen skirt and top as soft as dishrags.

      While the driver retrieved her luggage Sarah stood in the shade of the corrugated-iron bus shelter and fanned herself with the magazine she’d bought in Sydney. It kept the flies off but didn’t provide much of a breeze. If she didn’t get to someplace cool right now she was going to expire of heat exhaustion.

      “Someone meeting you?” The driver set her bags at her feet, then wiped the sweat off his forehead, smearing his skin with red dust.

      “Yes, at least I think so. Is there a taxi service into the town center?” Second on her priority list was a long cool drink followed by a double latte with a generous sprinkling of cinnamon.

      The driver tipped back his hat to scratch his head. “This is the center of town.”

      That was what she’d been afraid of.

      “Where is everybody?”

      He shrugged. “Middle of the day, most folks stay out of the sun.”

      “Do you know if there’s a telephone booth?” The batteries on her cell phone were flat from hours of talking to her mother in the airport and on the train trip.

      “You can call from the petrol station up the road.”

      “Thanks.”

      The driver got back in his bus, made a U-turn in the middle of the wide empty street and pulled away in a cloud of red dust. When the pall had cleared Sarah gazed around her for anyone who might be Luke Sampson. There was no one in sight but a lone sheep chewing the stubble beside the road, its fleece as red and dusty as the dirt. Could this deserted place really be the bustling town of her mother’s childhood?

      Panic fluttered in her breast. Spooky music echoed in her brain. She’d entered the twilight zone.

      And not a drive-through coffee stall in sight.

      Stop it, she told herself. Think. Petrol was gasoline. So the petrol station would be that low-slung building up ahead with the pumps. Looking closer, she saw that in the dappled shade of a gum tree, two men sat on a bench, drinking soda from bottles and watching her.

      With the sun crisping the skin on her nose and the sweat dripping down the back of her neck, Sarah hitched up her bags, quashed her misgivings and set forth across the baking tarmac. Her spirits picked up a little when she saw the men wave. At least the locals were friendly. Her hands were full and she couldn’t wave back, so she smiled, instead. The men kept waving languidly. Sarah kept smiling. She smiled and smiled.

      Until a fly buzzed around her nose and she shook her head to send it away. Another fly came and landed on her chin. Half a dozen more lit on her arms and on her hands, still wrapped around the suitcase handles. One landed on her upper lip and tried to fly up her nostril. Eeeuuww. She dropped her bags in the middle of the road and batted at the cloud of flies buzzing around her head.

      The men weren’t being friendly—they were waving away the damn flies!

      A once white Land Cruiser, now red with caked-on dust, motored around the corner and pulled in at the service station. A man in beige pants and a light-brown shirt with the sleeves rolled up got out. He lifted his broad-brimmed hat, revealing wheat-colored hair streaked with gold and ocher. “G’day. Sarah Templestowe?”

      The voice from the telephone. “Luke. Hi.”

      A large sun-browned hand enclosed hers in a callused grip. “Bus must’ve been on time for once.”

      She shrugged and smiled, too hot and weary to make small talk. But not too tired to notice his piercing blue eyes.

      He picked up her bags. “If you don’t need anything in town we’ll save the Cook’s tour for another day and head straight to Burrinbilli.”

      “Fine.” She doubted there was a single thing in this godforsaken town she wanted. As for tourist attractions, the concept made her want to laugh. Which was maybe his intention, though it was hard to tell from that dry-as-dust tone.

      They went past the men on the bench. The younger man, deeply tanned and not more than twenty, wore a large sheathed knife strapped to the belt of his dusty shorts, and an open shirt with the sleeves cut out. Around his neck was a choker of some carnivore’s teeth. He raised a smoothly muscled brown arm to tip back a leather hat with a feather stuck in the band. “Luke. How ya goin’, mate?”

      “Could be worse.” Luke gestured to Sarah. “This is Sarah, from Seattle. She’s the new part owner of Burrinbilli. This is Bazza.” He indicated the young man. “And this is Len,” he added, nodding at the older man. “Len’s the mayor of Murrum and he owns the general store.”

      Len. Sarah eyed him curiously. He looked about Anne’s age, and under his broad-brimmed hat his face was kindly and intelligent. A hearing aid was tucked discreetly behind one ear. He wore a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and navy twill pants. He was studying her, too.

      She smiled at them both. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

      “I’ll be mustering in a week or so,” Luke said to Bazza. “Interested?”

      “Yep. I reckon Gus and Kev’ll be interested, as well.” Bazza pulled out tobacco and rolling papers and leisurely prepared a cigarette.