Read The House On Burra Burra Lane Online
Authors: Jennie Jones
The House On Burra Burra Lane
Jennie Jones
A dilapidated house, a city girl looking for a tree change, and a rugged vet with a past. Just another day in rural Australia ...
Just ten days after her fresh start in the isolated Snowy Mountains, Samantha Walker trips over a three hundred pound pig and lands in the arms of Dr Ethan Granger—and the firing line for gossip. It was hardly a ‘date’ but sparks of the sensual kind are difficult to smother in a community of only eighty seven people. Now there’s a bet running on how long she’ll stay and what she’ll get up to while she’s in town.
Ethan has his own issues—Sammy’s presence in his childhood home brings with it painful recollections of family scandals and a bad boy youth. When the gossip around them heightens, his life is suddenly a deck of cards spread on the table for all to see. Then Sammy’s past catches up with her … and it looks like all bets are off.
B
orn and brought up in Wales, Jennie loved anything with a romantic element from the age of five. At eighteen, she went to drama school in London then spent a number of years performing in British theatres, becoming someone else for two hours, eight shows a week.
Jennie wrote her first romance story at the age of twenty five whilst ‘resting’ (a theatrical term for
out of work
). She wrote a western and sent it off to Mills & Boon in the UK who politely and correctly declined. She put writing to one side after that and took a musical theatre job. Which brings Jennie to her favourite quotation: ‘Fate keeps on happening.’ —Anita Loos.
When Jennie’s life changed and a new country, marriage and motherhood beckoned, she left acting and the UK.
She now lives in a log house in Western Australia, a five minute walk to the beach that she loves to look at but hardly ever visits due to there being too much sand. (Sand is like glitter; once it gets between your toes, you keep finding it in the house for months.)
Jennie returned to writing three years ago. She says it keeps her artistic nature dancing and her imagination bubbling. Like acting, she can’t envisage a day when writing will ever get boring.
T
hank you Escape Publishing and Harlequin for launching me on this journey.
Writing isn’t a job, it’s a creative endeavour a writer willingly grasps in order to give to others, and regardless of the image of writers secluded in their writing-cell and appearing introvert and perhaps eccentric, this is not the case—well, not always. It takes many people to write a book, or rather, the writer needs patience and understanding from those around her in order to write a book. Fortunately, I received both in abundance.
Thank you to all those who encouraged and taught me — your views were insightful and sent this story on its way.
And in the spotlight, my two stars: thank you John and Liz for making dinner so often over the last year while I shut myself in my study, and for being as enthusiastic about the venture your wife and mother has undertaken as much as the writer herself is. Please keep the barbeque meals, the camaraderie and the humour flowing. Wife/mother/author finds it all delicious.
For my nan, Jennie Jones
Also Available from Escape Publishing…
S
amantha Walker didn’t want to add some sensuality issue to her bucket of problems. She’d only been in town ten days and the bucket was practically overflowing. But the flutter in her belly was of the exhilarating variety, and wouldn’t go away.
Dr Granger, the tower of manhood creating this disturbance, lifted Sammy’s burly ginger cat onto the examination table, then cast an enquiring look at Sammy.
That summer-blue gaze was the second thing she noticed about him when she ran into his surgery, hurling the cat box at him when she stumbled over the pig in reception. Stunned by the breadth of him. The man, not the pig—although the pig was pretty big.
‘What’s your cat’s name, Miss Walker?’
‘Duke,’ Sammy said, tightening her stomach muscles.
Desire, at this point in her life, was as unexpected as the man in the moon asking her to dinner. She wasn’t even going to
think
about her drab attire, tangled hair and weariness. If she’d known she was going to meet a rugged, powerful looking vet at ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning, she would have changed her T-shirt. At least.
Dr Granger smelled of tree bark, fresh air, and sawdust.
Please
don’t let her smell like the twenty chickens it had taken so long to catch earlier. She’d lived in New South Wales, Australia, all her life, but not the country parts. Everything was so …
rural
. Entirely different to what she’d envisioned when she left the energetic rush of Sydney.
Swallow’s Fall, the Snowy Mountains. Population eighty six on the sign. Eighty seven with Sammy, but no-one had changed the curvaceous six to a diagonal seven. No point complaining, they were difficult numbers to fudge, even for her—and she was an artist.
She glanced at Dr Granger’s strong, ring-less fingers, then took her gaze off the capable bachelor hands. She was single by the sheer grace of her newly acquired independence and there wasn’t a man on earth who was going to change that.
‘Is everything alright?’ Dr Granger asked.
His voice was a symphony of bass notes which made her want to listen harder and breathe in more. ‘I’m a little stressed,’ she said, looking into his blue eyes. ‘Because of my chickens.’
His brow rose. ‘Did you bring chickens too?’
‘No. They’re at home.’
The immediate creases on his tanned face suggested a smile. He turned to the table, took hold of the scruff of Duke’s neck and checked the feline’s gums.
Sammy took the opportunity for a deeper review of the veterinary situation.
Dr Granger’s navy cotton shirt was wrinkled down the length of his well-developed back and tucked haphazardly into the belted waistband of dark blue jeans. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up showing forearms capable of handling rampant bulls, and a stethoscope around his neck. It hung loosely against the shirt collar. His sandy hair skimmed the back, a little tousled, as though the wind had caught hold of it.
‘Have you noticed any signs of anxiety?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m fine.’ She’d dashed from city to country; hadn’t found her feet yet. The ten acre homestead she owned needed more restoration than suggested by the photos. The pile of tools in her shed were stacked so high she’d need a manual to figure out which did what, but determination sat between her shoulder blades like a backpack of courage.
She would be a cultivator of the land and accept all countrified things that came her way. Snow, drought, isolation, wombats, wingless cockroaches—
‘Duke seems fine too,’ Dr Granger said. ‘What are your concerns?’
About herself? Sammy grimaced. That was a long list.
She gave herself a mental kick. Irrepressible. Reckless. That’s who Sammy was. Goodbye hurt and jaded Samantha, tied to those around her and never pleasing.
‘He wanders from sunrise to sunset,’ she said. ‘He did that in the city too but down here there’s more space to get lost in.’ Duke wasn’t used to the country either. ‘I kept him inside for a week so he’d acclimatise, and now he doesn’t want to come home to me.’
Dr Granger’s mouth curved, ever so slightly. ‘I can’t imagine why,’ he said softly.
Oh that wasn’t fair
. Look at him, just look at him! Warhorse height, body indestructible with strength, and the planes on his face a fascination of intelligence and warmth.
Impossible he was flirting. She was dusty and dirty …
‘I’m worried about him,’ she said. ‘He’s my only friend.’ Without Duke she’d be on her own. ‘My chickens aren’t overly fond of conversation, Dr Granger.’ The men she knew were tailored and immaculate, governing their office worlds with a snazzy smile and slotting into the sophisticated wine bars with sharp, boys-only jokes. The vet surpassed anything she thought of as commonplace.
Dr Granger swept his gaze around her face, his smile not full-blown but getting there. ‘Ethan,’ he told her.
It was hardly more than a quirk of a muscle next to his wide mouth but a girl could linger in the comfort. She plucked at the hem of her T-shirt. It had been clean at 7 am but it had taken over two hours to catch the chickens and tie the broken coop together, so when Duke came home she’d grabbed him and run.
‘I’m sorry about the pig,’ she said, recalling the inquisitive face of its owner. ‘I hope I didn’t hurt him.’
‘That’s Ruby.’ Dr Granger straightened. ‘She’s a three hundred pound Landrace pig. It’s unlikely she even felt you.’
Three hundred pounds?
‘The woman had her on a lead.’ Interesting idea, if you had the right temperament in a pig.
‘Mrs Johnson, Ruby’s owner,’ Dr Granger said, checking Duke’s undercarriage.
‘I haven’t met everyone yet. I just arrived.’
‘Ten days.’
‘Yes! How did you know?’
He paused, gazed at her again. ‘It’s a small town, Miss Walker.’
More like a wilderness. Sammy looked down at her grass-stained track pants. The soil was easy to fork and turn which was good, considering her ten acres were covered in weeds, but what sort of statement did she make? ‘Perhaps I should have changed,’ she murmured.
‘We take our newcomers as we find them.’
Some relief then.
‘Although you’re the first in eighteen years so you might attract some attention.’
Oh, great
. She fought a sudden giddiness. Shouldn’t have skipped breakfast, but those chickens were feisty buggers.
She ran a hand through her hair. Morelly’s hardware store had been her main source of interaction with people so far. She was on,
‘How’s your day going?’
terms with young Mr Morelly, although why he was labelled ‘young’ she had no idea—he had to be sixty. She’d met a few townspeople at the post office counter in the grocer’s where she collected the bigger parcels of her artwork from a Sydney fashion house. She hadn’t completely run away; she still needed an income.
She breathed deeply, and glanced around the room.
There was no surgical impact, apart from scrubbed white bench tops and the examination table. No medicinal or animal smells lingered on the jarrah furniture: the desk, the filing cabinet and the large bookcase overflowing with hardback volumes, paperback publications and stacked magazines.
She looked through the window to the High Country farmland, dotted with snow gum trees, their wide branches spread to the sky, freed from the weight of winter’s heavy snow. Eucalyptus leaves spiralled in the spring breeze.
The landscape blurred suddenly: a kaleidoscopic haze. She caught hold of the table.
Dr Granger picked Duke up, plopped him quickly into the cat box, locked the lid, then cupped his hands beneath Sammy’s elbows. ‘All right. I’ve got you.’
‘Sorry.’ She grabbed his arms, forced smaller breaths until the turbulence washed away. ‘Don’t know what came over me.’
‘Miss Walker, is there a chance you might be pregnant?’
She stuttered a laugh. ‘I sincerely hope not.’ That would keep her chained to Oliver for the rest of her life. ‘Anyway, it’s been too long …’ She closed her mouth. Fast.
