Southern Star: Destiny Romance Read Online Free Page B

he swerved and then had to right the steering, cursing under his breath.
    When he’d got a grip, he gave a long and gusty sigh. ‘No movie crews around here.’
    It was a direct hit, intentional or not, and Blaze’s bravado wobbled. But it held. ‘Exactly,’ she said.
    He muttered something she couldn’t make out, and when she snuck another glance, his jaw was rigid. But he held his silence for the remaining fifteen minutes of the journey to Sweet Springs.
    The land became greener and more fertile the further they drove towards her grandparents’ place. Blaze remembered from what her grandfather had told her decades before that a system of underground springs fed the earth. Small waterholes dotted the landscape, shaded by willows, with a larger one close to the house that Blaze had played in as a child.
    ‘My land,’ she whispered once under her breath as they turned off the road on to the track that led to the homestead.
    Macauley Black just grunted.
    The old place loomed ahead. Blaze closed her eyes. From deep in her memory, she dragged out the gleam of the hardwood floors and sparkling windows, the smell of fresh lemon polish, Gram’s deep, cool larder and the old range that conjured up mountains of mouth-watering food.
    As a little girl, she’d sit on the kitchen bench and watch Gram bake, or wander into Gramps’s study, where she’d stroke a finger down the spines of old books and play with his calculator until he gave up pretending to ignore her and lifted her up on his knee to ask her about her day or tell her about his.
    At night, after hot chocolate in front of the open fire in winter or lemonade on the wide, deep veranda at other times of the year, Gram would take her up to the bedroom under the eaves, with its pink bedspread and the cane chair where Raggedy Ann held court amid a circle of favourite toys, and tuck her into bed.
    In her mind’s eye she could see it all, feel the security of the visits to Sweet Springs like a warm blanket. Then, aware that the car was slowing to a halt, she opened her eyes, and let out a gasp at the ruin that lay before her.
    Macauley Black’s gaze was on her, but she didn’t look at him as she climbed out of the ute and went to stand in front of what was left of Sweet Springs. The front door hung off its hinges, half open. Great jagged wounds in the window glass gave the place a soulless appearance as though the life had leached out of it. The distinctive cream and dark green paintwork had bleached to a sickly yellow, and sections of the decorative fretwork had crumbled to nothing.
    Only vaguely aware of the crunch of boots on small stones behind her, she whirled round when Macauley placed his hat on her head.
    ‘The sun still burns even at this hour,’ he said in that low, raspy voice of his.
    She smelt leather and sweat and horse, though from him or his hat, she wasn’t sure. The gesture was small, but coming just after seeing what Sweet Springs had been reduced to made Blaze want to tip her head forward to his shoulder and let the tears flow. It had been so long since anyone had done anything nice for her, even lending her a sweaty old cowboy hat. But showing any hint of vulnerability to Macauley Black would be akin to petting a shark.
    She pulled the hat off her head and slammed it against his chest, tossing back her hair.
    ‘Do you know how much it costs me to keep my hair looking this good?’
    Mac took his hat and placed it back on his head. Those black eyes bored into hers. ‘I could hazard a guess. But if the point is to remind me you look like a million dollars, don’t waste your time. I don’t give a shit.’
    He looked towards the west where the sun’s rays lit up the land, then back to her with another of those insolent, raking, full-body scans that she’d experienced this morning.
    ‘That wasn’t —’
    ‘As you’re such an expensive piece to keep groomed and clothed, I’ve got a suggestion for a way you could make some easy money,’ he