CHAPTER ONE

      SARAH ROSSITER loved Southern Cross.

      She was never happier than when she was riding over rust-red plains on a strong and beautiful horse. She loved to look up to a cobalt-blue sky billowing above her like an enormous mainsail and to hear the thud of thousands of hooves pounding through thick creamy-gold kangaroo grass.

      Most of all she loved to be on a cattle muster with Reid McKinnon, working the mob with him, steering the cattle out of the stands of black-trunked ironbarks and pushing them across the Star Valley towards the holding yards.

      And yet, working with Reid was exactly what she shouldn’t be doing.

      This year she’d actually made a solemn pledge to decline politely if he invited her to join in another muster. Heaven knew she had plenty of good excuses. As the sole teacher in charge of all seven year levels at Mirrabrook’s tiny primary school, she had enough on her plate without giving up precious weekends to help out with cattle.

      But Reid had driven into town late one afternoon, just as she was closing up the classroom. With his thumbs hooked through the loops of his jeans, he’d hitched a lean hip against the railing of the little school’s wooden veranda and he’d flashed that shiver-gorgeous smile of his and had asked ever so casually if she would be free for a muster the following weekend. And she’d said yes.

      Just like that. No hesitation. She’d looked into his silver-grey eyes and her brain had gone straight into meltdown. Again.

      ‘Yes, Reid, sure I can help. I’d love to.’

      Fool.

      Later, she’d tried to justify her weakness. She told herself that she’d only agreed to help Reid because his sister Annie was still away in Italy and his brother Kane had moved over to Lacey Downs with his new English bride, which left Southern Cross shorthanded. But she knew jolly well that Reid could manage without her. He would almost certainly be hiring contract musterers to make up the numbers.

      Reid had suggested that Sarah was invaluable because she knew the country so well; she could comb the bush for stray cattle without getting lost. But that wasn’t why she’d come. Truth was, it didn’t really matter what reasons he offered, she would have agreed to help out under any circumstances. Sarah was weak as water where Reid was concerned. She had been that way for the past ten years.

      Ten years. Ouch! It was so scary to think that she’d wasted a decade of her life, from the age of seventeen to twenty-seven—the years when a young woman was supposed to be at her most beautiful and alluring—waiting for Reid McKinnon to come to his senses and acknowledge that he loved her.

      Although…if she was fair and completely honest, she would admit that those ten years hadn’t been a total waste of time…more like a very long, progressively steep learning curve.

      But the end result was her painful realisation that what had begun as a wonderful friendship