Some Girls Lie

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ethan tossed and turned into the wee small hours of Sunday morning, finally falling asleep just before four. Being woken by his mobile at five-thirty was not his idea of fun, but he was instantly alert in the way only a parent could be. Connie?

  She was at Delia’s tonight.

  He relaxed a little when he recognised the number as one of the police-issue mobiles and not his ex’s. Although no-one from the station would ring him at this hour over a triviality. “What’s up?” he said, not bothering with any preamble.

  It was Carl. “Sorry to wake you, Chief. I’m at the pub. Is JJ with you?”

  A cold hand squeezed his gut. “No. She’s spending the night there. What’s happened?”

  “The lights are blazing, there’s a cash drawer full of money sitting on the bar, the doors are unlocked and … there’s a small amount of something that looks suspiciously like blood next to a full discarded garbage bag in the back alley.”

  Cold dread trickled down Ethan’s spine.

  Shane fucking Gallagher.

  He knew it as sure as he knew the sun was about to rise. He was already out of bed reaching for his clothes, his heart thundering as his head fill with images of JJ’s battered face ten years ago.

  “Check room four,” he barked into the phone. Not that they were going to find her there all snuggled up in bed. JJ wouldn’t have left the pub wide open and money in full view. But Shane could have taken her there.

  Dear God, what if he …

  Ethan shut his eyes. “Break the door down if you have to. In fact check all the rooms. I’ll be there straight away.”

  Fear, icy and jagged, sliced through Ethan’s veins. His hands shook as he threw on his clothes. He tried not to think about the possibilities, about their last conversation, about never seeing her again, as he marched down the hallway and out of the house.

  He thought about Shane Gallagher instead, and what he was going to do with him when he caught up with the bastard. Because, so help him, if Shane had harmed one hair on JJ’s head, he was going to commit conduct very unbecoming of a police officer.

  Twenty minutes later the residents of Jumbuck Springs were waking to the main street being turned into something out of a Hollywood movie. Three police cars parked in a row, uniformed officers scurrying around, and yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the pub. A little crowd of people had already gathered to ask what the hell had happened.

  “Detective Inspector John Maxwell,” Carl said as he handed the phone to Ethan, dragging him back to the present. And the fear gnawing at his gut.

  He knew John well. Along with Coop, they’d all been at the academy together and he’d worked closely with John on several cases over the years.

  “John,” Ethan said, gripping the phone hard, grateful to have the city brass involved so quickly. He’d take every man he could.

  “Tell me.”

  Relief flooded Ethan’s system at his friend’s focus. He needed that as he got John up to speed. He didn’t need commiserations or hand wringing or conjectures. He needed to focus. Letting the fear and the worry take over wasn’t going to help JJ.

  “She was last seen at five past two. Mitch, one of the staff members at the pub said she was just going to take some rubbish out to the bins then lock the door and go up to her room.”

  “You think he got her there?”

  “Yep,” Ethan nodded. He was sure of it. “There’s blood in the alley.”

  “Are you sure.”

  Ethan rubbed his brow. “Yes.” All he could see now was the congealed pool of blood the size of his palm. He shook his head to clear it. “We’re putting up road blocks and interviewing everyone who was at the pub last night. You guys are sending backup too but he’s got a good four hours head start on us and I’m pretty sure he’d be burning rubber.”

  “Have you tried her phone?”

  “Of course. Not answering.”

  “Would she have it on her? You didn’t find it in the alley or her room?”

  “She always has it in her back pocket. Usually on silent when she’s at work.”

  “So we could track the GPS signal.”

  Ethan straightened up. “Yes … if he hasn’t ditched it. Although there’s bugger-all mobile coverage out here for triangulation even if he hasn’t. We’d need to rely on satellite.”

  “Right, I’m on it. Give me the number.” Ethan reeled it off from memory. “Sit tight. I’ll get back to you with hopefully some good news and coordinates.”

  Ethan spent the next frantic hour leaving no investigative stone unturned, burning up the phone lines, giving orders, pacing up and down the street in front of the pub, feeling utterly freaking useless. Knowing every minute that ticked by put JJ one minute more out of reach.

  Going over and over their last conversation, sick to his stomach that it might be their last.

  He needed manpower, damn it! Sure, the cavalry were on their way from the big smoke, but they were still probably another ninety minutes out. Thank God for Jarrod, who’d called in every local volunteer SES worker and was currently huddled over maps trying to organise a search.

  John rang almost exactly an hour later and he dived on the phone. “Please tell me you have a location.”

  “Got a pen and a map?”

  Ethan held the phone to his shoulder. “Jarrod,” he called. “I need the map.”

  “Is it useful?” Ethan asked John, returning his attention to the phone call.

  “Not sure,” he said. “It looks like the middle of nowhere to me.”

  Even though it made sense for Shane to go deep into the bush, Ethan felt another layer of dread pile on top of the others—if he did something to her out there they might never find her. Jarrod, followed by Marcus and Coop, who’d hightailed it to the pub as soon as Ethan had rung them, laid out a massive detailed map of the entire district—all two thousand square kilometres of it—on the hood of Ethan’s police vehicle and they plotted the coordinates as John transcribed them.

  “Crap,” Marcus said as they all stared at the dot in the centre of vast nothingness. “They could be anywhere out there.”

  Ethan’s gaze searched methodically for some clue, some connection, pulling out in ever-widening concentric circles from the dot, the phone still pressed to his ear, refusing to give in to the futility of the empty space, to give the sick frantic feeling inside him any power.

  Then suddenly he saw it. “There.” He stabbed his finger at two tiny words he’d had to squint to make out. “He’s taking her there.”

  Jarrod peered down. “Baffle Caves?”

  Ethan nodded as certainty, pure and rich, filled him with relief. At least they had a focus now. “He visited her a few weeks ago at the pub. Mrs D told me about it. He was going on about their honeymoon. They honeymooned at Baffle Caves.”

  He spoke into the phone. “Thanks John. I owe you one.”

  Ethan hung up and looked at the three guys who meant the most to him in the world. Just having them here and on his side filled him with confidence. And he needed it to beat back the simmer of fear lurking just beneath his skin and the ugly what ifs that kept circling.

  “It’s a three-hour drive and he has a five-hour head start.”

  Coop nodded, reaching for the map and whisking it off the bonnet. “Okay then. What are we waiting for?”

  Coop’s police career had been cut short by an armed robber a few days after Elizabeth Weston had died five years ago. He’d been shot in the head and chest and rushed to hospital in a critical condition. But he’d survived and Ethan was beyond grateful to have him by his side.

  Once a cop, always a cop.

  It wasn’t exactly regulation to take members of the public on a manhunt, but he didn’t care. These guys had his back, they all bought different skill sets, and this was JJ.

  The regulations could go and fuck themselves.

  “Right,” he nodded. “Can you ring Lacey to pick up Connie from Delia’s?” He switched att
ention to his middle brother. “Marcus, I need you to get your medical kit.” Last but not least, Jarrod. “Can you get someone from the SES up to speed and ready for a search if we need them?”

  Everyone nodded. “Meet back here in ten.”

  It took fifteen minutes to get away. A second police vehicle with Carl and another constable, Phil, followed behind for backup. He appointed his deputy, Allan, to take over in Jumbuck Springs, and several other officers were left behind to carry out the other investigative avenues they were following.

  Allan had orders from Ethan to maintain regular sit-reps through their CB radio. They were also carrying a satellite phone—essential in the outback.

  It was tense inside the vehicle, with no-one saying anything for a good half hour. Ethan, used to outback roads and confident in a four-wheel-drive vehicle was driving at a rapid clip. Still, when they hit a particularly nasty pothole and the whole car shook and then skewed sideways in thick bulldust on the edge of the road, Jarrod who was sitting in the front passenger seat grabbed for the stability of the door handle.

  “Steady on there, Fangio. We’re no good to JJ dead.”

  The precarious hold Ethan had been keeping on his equilibrium shattered. Jarrod had just uttered the word he’d been trying to not think about since this nightmare began. “Shut the hell up,” he snapped.

  In his peripheral vision he saw Marcus and Coop exchange a look and that cranked up his ire even more. “We’re going to find her in time,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Jarrod raised his hands in a show of surrender. “I know, man.”

  They rode in silence for a bit longer but Jarrod was obviously feeling chatty. “You wanna talk about why JJ went back to the pub in the wee small hours night before last?”

  Ethan’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “How the hell do you know that?” he demanded.

  “She didn’t exactly leave quietly, Eth.”

  Ethan grimaced. No she hadn’t. The door had banged fit to wake the dead. He was surprised Connie hadn’t stirred.

  “Might help to talk about it,” Marcus said from the back.

  Ethan shook his head. He wasn’t going to take psychological advice from a guy who’d almost had a breakdown rather than confronting his own PTSD issues earlier in the year. He did not want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it.

  He just wanted her safe and, until then, he wasn’t going there—he couldn’t.

  “It’s none of your damn business,” he growled.

  “Hey, JJ’s our friend as well,” Marcus said. “She’s part of the bloody family for crying out loud, and if you’ve screwed it up then I think it is my damn business. What the bloody hell did you do wrong?”

  Now Ethan was steamed. He hadn’t done anything wrong for fuck’s sake. “I told her we should get married. For real.”

  “You told her?” Marcus spluttered. “Dude, even I know that’s not the way you do it.”

  “JJ’s not like that,” Ethan dismissed.

  “Like what?” Jarrod asked incredulously. “Female? Please tell me you at least used the words I love you.”

  Ethan stretched out his neck as the vehicle rattled over the corrugations in the dirt track. “Look, I’m really happy all you guys are loved up and found your soulmates. Whoop-de-fucking-do.” He caught Coop and Marcus’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “But I’ve done the love thing and that was a disaster, so now I’m after something different. I need someone who’s solid and reliable and dependable in my life—just like JJ.”

  Marcus groaned in the back and Coop shook his head and looked out the window. “Oh Jesus,” Jarrod said. “Call off the search now, she’s probably just faked her own disappearance to get away from you.”

  Ethan’s jaw clenched. He didn’t need this lecture right now. “Can we just concentrate on finding her first?” he retorted.

  “Damn right we will,” Marcus said. “And when we do, you have some major sucking up to do, because I swear to God, if you don’t marry that girl, for real real, then Juanita knows about a dozen blokes who’d be gagging to and she’ll introduce JJ to all of them.”

  Ethan’s knuckles went white. Over his dead body.

  JJ was trying to stay calm. But spending hours rattling around in the boot of Shane’s shit-box vehicle, her hands and feet tied, and the last few hours listening to him ramble on and on about how good their life had been—how good it could still be—while he waved a gun in her face, wasn’t conducive to calm.

  Her head throbbed from where he had jumped her in the alley with a thump to the back of her skull, and her nerves were stretched so taut she flinched at every erratic movement he made.

  She was fairly sure Shane wouldn’t use the gun. She didn’t think he meant to kill her; in fact, from his rambling she was sure he really hadn’t thought about this too much at all. But she knew from bitter experience that he could hurt her. And the way he kept talking about when it got dark, about their night together, didn’t fill her with confidence.

  Add to that the fact that he’d spent hours building a massive campfire in front of her and it was fair to say she was pretty freaked out. She was determined to stay calm, to not show him her fear, but she wasn’t sure if he was building a heat source or a funeral pyre, which only added to the freaking.

  Thick ropes bound her to a nearby tree, where she had a ringside seat to watch all his activity, and every time he’d wandered away to find more wood, like now, she’d actively been scraping the rope against the bark, trying to fray it enough to snap it. Her wrists, raw from rope burn, stung and bitched but she pushed through the pain.

  She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she was finally free, but she knew she had to be smart, act on her intelligence and what she knew from being a country girl—not her fear.

  Running without a plan was pointless. The Australian outback was harsh and dangerous. She could die out here if she got lost while trying to escape. And she was damned if she was going to escape from one dangerous situation only to end up in another. At least she knew the surroundings a little. Shane had set them up away from the main area, the same spot they’d camped at on their honeymoon, so at least she knew the way to the road.

  At the moment, judging by the sun, it was somewhere near noon—so she had to keep her wits about her. Shane had started drinking and she hoped that by tonight he’d be too pissed and hopefully sleepy to be any kind of a threat. Then she could snap her ropes, steal the keys and get the hell out of Dodge.

  He’d offered her food and drink and she’d taken both. Apart from the humiliating experience of having to urinate in front of him earlier, she knew that out here, if she had to make a run for it without the aid of a vehicle—which she would if he so much as laid a finger on her—she was going to need to be well hydrated if she hoped to survive.

  She was conscious of her phone in her back pocket as she rubbed the ropes against the bark. She hoped like hell all those cop shows she’d seen on TV were right and they could locate her position that way. She was pleased Shane was either too self-involved or too stupid to have thought to frisk her for it.

  Had they discovered her missing by now?

  Did Ethan know? Had he put two and two together?

  A lump rose in her throat as she thought about him, but she swallowed it down—she would not cry. Tears were no use to her out here. They were just a surer step towards dehydration.

  She’d been so angry and righteous with him after their talk yesterday. And it just seemed so bloody petty now. Right now being his solid, reliable, dependable wife sounded like a bloody dream. She’d give anything to be safe at home with him and Connie. Even in name only.

  If—when—she got out of this, she was going to tell him she’d changed his mind. There were certain things you realised when you were staring down the barrel of a gun. Take your marriage proposals from men you love where you could get them, was one. Ethan had been right—they could make a good life together. And faced with this nightmare??
?it sounded pretty damn good at the moment.

  If it meant it was always going to be one-sided then so be it. She just hoped to God she hadn’t ruined her chances.

  She could hear Shane coming back and she immediately ceased her activity. He leered at her as he approached and threw another armful of kindling on the massive pile.

  “Gotta make sure you’re warm tonight,” he laughed and JJ’s skin crawled. “We’re going to be happy together again,” he said, pausing to take a swig out of a half-empty bottle of rum, his big ugly gun shoved in his front waistband. “Mark my words. Just you and me forever.”

  A wave of bile rose in JJ’s throat and she had to concentrate hard to stop it from fountaining out her mouth. Why had she ever thought him attractive? His low forehead and close-set eyes looked Neanderthal-ish now. He may be erratic and well on his way to inebriation, but he was a mean drunk. Tied to a tree she was an easy target.

  Ethan cut the engine about one kilometre out from the caves. He didn’t want to alert Shane to their arrival—they’d walk the remaining distance and leave Phil behind with the cars. Should urgent transport be required they could radio him and he’d be with them in minutes.

  “You sure he’s here?” Marcus asked as they dragged gear out of the vehicle.

  Ethan, who was looking through binoculars at the empty car park area, shook his head. “No. But it makes sense. And my gut tells me yes.”

  Marcus nodded. “Good enough for me.”

  They set out, keeping off the road in case Shane was watching. In ten minutes they were scrambling over the first stony incline of the mainly subterranean cave system. From a distance it looked like a large cluster of boulders that seemed to rise out of nowhere, a rocky outcrop fringed by heavy scrub.

  They kept close, navigating quietly as they methodically searched the area. Suddenly they heard a gunshot and they all dropped to the ground. Ethan felt physically ill.

  Please, dear God, please let her be okay.

  A loud snorting laugh rent the air next and, with his heart just about beating out his chest, Ethan crawled in the direction of the noise, peering over the top of a boulder to a clearing about ten gently sloping metres below. He was conscious of the others following suit.

  And there he was—Shane Gallagher. Bottle in one hand, gun in the other, weaving unsteadily on his feet. Ethan frantically searched for JJ but the bastard fired another shot, straight into the air, and they all instinctively ducked.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” Jarrod whispered.

  “He’s pissed,” Ethan muttered.

  “Can you see JJ?” Marcus asked.

  After a moment Ethan stuck his head up again, his gaze resuming the search. A massive pile of what he assumed was firewood filled his vision and to the left of it, a flash of colour caught his eye.

  JJ.

  Ethan went hot then cold as relief warred with rage at the sight of her tied to a tree. Dried blood crusted the side of her face and neck, matting her hair and staining her shirt. Her clothes were filthy. Her eyes were shut.

  Was she unconscious?

  She was so freaking still. Her skin was deathly pale in stark contrast to the crusted blood forming garish red rivulets down one side of her face. Ethan looked away, looked down at his feet, breathed out a shaky breath.

  “Tree to the left of the wood pile,” he muttered.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and knew it was Coop.

  Shane’s voice carried easily and Ethan peered over again as he said, “I’ll be back,” to JJ, waving his gun around like it was some freaking toy.

  Then he saw it. JJ moved. She opened her eyes. Relief flooded in, trembling through his limbs. She still looked awful but she was conscious—she was alive. And then something else happened, an enormous weight lifted off his chest and a rush of something else flooded in. Light and airy and so freaking demanding it took his breath away.

  He knew what it was without ever having experienced it before.

  Love.

  A huge overwhelming tidal wave of it, rising up to grab him by the throat and squeeze. So this was how it felt. Because he sure hadn’t felt this all-consuming emotion for Delia. Not even in the beginning.

  It was like he was looking at her for the first time.

  His JJ. His love.

  And in that moment he knew he could never live another second without her. In his life, in his bed, in his heart.

  “Plan?” Marcus asked, interrupting the revelation of the century.

  Ethan knew exactly what he had to do. “Go and get JJ. Kill Shane.”

  Marcus and Jarrod exchanged a look. “Okay,” said Coop. “How about Carl stays here and covers us, you and Marcus get JJ, and Jarrod and I deal with Shane.”

  “No.” Ethan shook his head. “I want him.”

  “Ethan,” Jarrod said.

  “You need to get JJ,” Coop reiterated, standing his ground. “She’s all that matters right now.”

  “Okay, fine.” He unholstered his firearm and handed it to Coop. “Take my gun and shoot him when you see him.”

  Ethan knew he was talking crazy. That he was being irrational. That handing over his weapon and sanctioning murder was so far from the cool, calm, law-abiding cop he was. That it could put him in jail.

  But right now he just didn’t care. JJ’s head and clothes were covered in blood and she was tied to a fucking tree. Rage roared like a bushfire through his veins.

  “No,” Coop said firmly, taking Ethan’s gun and handing it to Carl. “I don’t need a weapon. Neither do you. He can barely stand upright and no-one’s getting dead today. None of us are going to go to jail for that scumbag—especially not you. You’ve got Connie to think about, remember? You’re a father. Do you think JJ’s going to be impressed by you jeopardising that?”

  Ethan hated how rational Coop sounded. How cop-like his friend sounded, when he’d been reduced to some kind of avenging animal.

  “She needs you, man,” Marcus said, his voice low.

  Ethan swallowed hard on the fiery ball of hate lodged in his throat. Marcus was right. He had to concentrate on JJ. “Fine. But,” he eyeballed Carl, “if he should resist arrest, draw his weapon, run away … you have my permission to shoot him. Dead.”

  Carl swallowed as he drew his weapon and holstered Ethan’s. “Yes, Chief.”

  They called in the backup vehicle, then left their position and quietly scrambled down the slope. Coop and Jarrod peeled off in the direction that Shane had headed. Marcus, lugging the medical kit over his shoulder, and Ethan headed straight for JJ who, now Shane had ambled off, was frantically working at her ties.

  “JJ,” Ethan hissed as he hit the flat and ran towards her.

  She looked up from her ministrations with a start, her face a mixture of shock and surprise. “Ethan?” she gasped. “Oh my God, Ethan.”

  Her voice cracked as Ethan skidded to a halt in front of her and threw himself down, enveloping her upper body in his arms, clutching her close, his heart beating so hard, a pain swelling in his chest so big he thought he was going to have a heart attack.

  She was really okay. She was safe. She was his.

  Touching her, holding her, made the pallor and the blood less frightening. She felt like JJ.

  “Oh, God,” he said, holding her against his chest then pulling back to look into her face, framing it in his hands, dropping a kiss on her forehead, her cheek, her nose. “I’m so, so sorry,” he said. “I was such an idiot. I love you so much and I can’t believe it took seeing you like this for me to realise it.”

  JJ blinked at him. “You … do?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, kissing her mouth this time, a deep reassuring kiss. She was okay, she was really okay. “I think I have for a long time now but I was just too put off by the whole Delia thing to realise. But I do. And it’s not because you’re dependable and reliable … although you are … it’s because you’re foxy and irresistible and you’ve totally undone me.”

  JJ stared for a mome
nt and then she smiled and then she laughed, her voice croaky. She leaned in to reach for him but the rope yanked her backwards and she yelped.

  Marcus cleared his throat from behind. “I’ll cut her loose, shall I?” he asked drily, stepping around the back of the trunk and quickly slicing through the ropes.

  She winced as she was freed and Ethan helped her bring her arms to the front. Her rope burns made him want to break things, specifically Shane’s face, but he pushed that away as he gently pulled her forward, his palms cupping her shoulders.

  “I’m pretty sure I don’t look remotely foxy at the moment,” she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

  “You’re safe,” Ethan murmured, not giving a damn about foxy. “That’s all I care about for now.”

  Marcus crouched down beside them, dropping his backpack. “Hey there, JJ. You sure know how to get the Weston men jumping.”

  JJ gave him a half-smile. “Been doing it since I was a kid.”

  “How about you ask your boyfriend here to let you go long enough so I can look you over? You copped a bit of a bump to the head I see.”

  JJ nodded slowly. “It looks worse than it is, I think. Got a hell of a headache though.”

  Marcus looked at Ethan. But now he had her he didn’t want to let her go. “I need to get in there,” Marcus said, unzipping the front pocket of his pack.

  Ethan held her a little closer. “It’s okay,” JJ said to Ethan. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Ethan kissed the top of her head, letting her go reluctantly, getting to his feet, removing himself from her vicinity altogether. She cried out when Marcus inspected her rope burns and it made him mad as hell again.

  The backup police vehicle pulled up a few metres away and Ethan watched as a triumphant Jarrod and Coop rounded a wall of rock with a belligerent, struggling, cursing Shane. It took all of Ethan’s willpower to stay where he was as they handed Shane over to Phil, who cuffed him and pushed him unceremoniously into the back of the car and shut the door.

  Ethan wanted to reef the door open, yank Shane out and smash his fist into the son-of-a-bitch’s face. But Coop was right. Spending time in jail over Shane Gallagher would be insane.

  “Okay, we’re done here,” Marcus announced behind him, and Ethan returned eagerly to JJ’s side. “I definitely think she needs a CT when she gets back to Jumbuck Springs, just to be safe, but I think she’s relatively unscathed.”

  Unlike her last brush with Shane. Marcus didn’t say it but Ethan didn’t doubt for a moment that they were all thinking it.

  Ethan and Marcus helped JJ to her feet and as soon as she was upright, he pulled her close, relief riding him.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Ethan’s heart soared. He looked down at her. Marcus had cleared most of the dried blood away and she was looking more human, more like JJ. He kissed her gently, so very gently, on her mouth, unlike last time when relief had erased any kind of finesse. “I love you too.”

  He folded her in his arms again, knowing that he never wanted to let her go. “Does this mean I don’t have to drink at Joe’s now?”

  She looked up at him and smiled. “This means you never drink anywhere else but The Stockman.”

  He chuckled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Then he pushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “Wherever you are is where I want to be.”

  She sighed. “Good answer.”

  Epilogue

  December 24th 6pm.

  JJ laughed as Connie jumped up to take her Christmas present from Jarrod, who was dressed up as Santa. He was hanging off a fire truck—complete with snowy-white beard and pillow stuffed up his shirt—surrounded by a few hundred kids who had all gathered at the traditional Jumbuck Springs Christmas Eve party at the footy grounds.

  It was a highly anticipated event, organised for the local kids by all the community service groups. Every child got a present, and a bunch of fun activities were arranged. The afternoon culminated in Santa Claus riding in on the fire engine, ringing a bell and ho, ho, ho’ing.

  Selena was down there with a television crew, filming it as part of the regional Christmas wrap-up for Channel Four. Marcus and Coop were picking up the cones on the field from the game of touch footy they’d organised. Lacey had talked Juanita into giving her a hand at the face painting table, so they could talk about wedding dress stuff for her and Marcus’s impending New Year nuptials.

  JJ and Ethan were sitting under a nearby tree watching it all. She was sitting between his legs, her knees drawn up, her back to his stomach. His legs were drawn up too, his denim clad thighs bracketing hers, her hands on his knees. The day had been a scorcher—still was. It was probably too hot to be sitting so close but she didn’t care.

  She was with Ethan. They were together. And she wasn’t ever letting him go.

  “Connie looks happy,” Ethan mused, his lips near her temple, his breath disturbing her hair, his fingers rubbing at the fading marks on her wrists as if he could erase them and the memory of them if he did it often enough.

  His daughter was smiling at her mother as they opened the present together. Things seemed back on track with the two of them, now Delia had dropped the custody claim.

  “Oh, she always wanted one of those,” he murmured as Connie pulled a cowgirl hat out of the wrapper and plonked it on her head.

  JJ nodded. Connie did seem pretty excited about it. “I reckon I’ve got something that she wants more,” she said, smiling to herself as she traced patterns on Ethan’s knees.

  “Oh yes?” He nuzzled lazily down the side of her face to her ear. “You got contacts with One Direction?”

  JJ laughed. “No.” His warm breath scattered goosebumps down her neck, and she shut her eyes and enjoyed it for a beat or two, her pulse picking up at the news she’d been sitting on since this morning.

  She was thrilled. She knew Connie would be thrilled. She only hoped Ethan was too.

  “A baby sister.” His lips stilled and she held her breath. “Or brother, I guess.”

  She turned in his arms slightly so she could see him better, so she could read his face as the news sank in. “You’re pregnant?”

  JJ chewed her lip and nodded. “I did the test this morning. Twice.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment and anxiety joined the excitement that had been bubbling in her all day.

  Then he smiled. Big. “Really?”

  JJ smiled back, feeling a rush of relief dizzying in its intensity. “Really.”

  “Oh my God.” His hand slid onto her belly as he stared at her incredulously. “That’s … wonderful. I … can’t believe it.”

  “Yeah. You know that thing where they tell you no time in your cycle is safe to have unprotected sex?” She grinned. “Turns out they’re right.”

  He chuckled and hugged her hard and JJ melted into him. She’d have never thought her life could have got any better but she’d been wrong.

  “I love you,” he said, dropping a kiss on her temple. “I love you so much.”

  “You’re not … mad?” she asked, pulling back slightly. “This wasn’t exactly planned and well … you’ve been there before.”

  He shook his head. “Are you kidding? Connie’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Being a dad is the best thing I’ve ever done. And now I get to do it all again. With you. And her.” He cupped her face with his hands. “My life is complete.”

  Tears welled in JJ’s eyes as he kissed her long and slow, her crazy-glued heart miraculously whole again.

  “Look what I got—” Connie’s chatter cut off as she realised she’d caught them kissing. “Are you two ever going to stop doing that?”

  They broke apart guiltily, but Connie was beaming down at them, her princess cowgirl hat complete with its own tiara sitting atop her head. She looked pretty damn happy about her father and JJ kissing.

  “Cool hat,” Ethan said as Connie sat beside them. “Santa knows you well.”

  Connie sighed. “Yeah. But it’s not as exciti
ng when you know its Uncle Jarrod under that beard.”

  JJ laughed. Connie had known about Santa for a couple of years now. “No, I guess not.”

  “You want exciting?” Ethan asked. “We’ve got exciting.”

  Ethan glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. JJ knew it was probably wiser to keep the pregnancy a secret until after the first trimester. She was thirty-five, statistically more likely to miscarry or have complications. But damned if she didn’t want to tell the whole world.

  She nodded at Ethan, her excitement skyrocketing again in anticipation.

  Connie’s little face lit up. “You set the wedding date?”

  He shook his head. “Better than that.”

  She frowned. “You’re going to Paris for your honeymoon as well and taking me?”

  He laughed. “Better than that.”

  “Daddy.” Connie rolled her eyes. “Nothing is better than Paris.”

  “Oh yeah? What about a baby sister?”

  Connie’s face was a picture as her jaw dropped and she squealed. She stared at JJ. “You’re having a baby?”

  JJ nodded. “Due in September next year.”

  Connie leapt up and did a little jig and JJ’s heart just about burst out of her chest.

  Connie collapsed beside them again, throwing her arms around both of them. It made everything that much hotter, but JJ just laughed and held on in the middle of her big ’ol Weston sandwich of love.

  “This is the best Christmas ever,” Connie whispered, wonder in her voice, squeezing tight.

  “The best,” JJ agreed.

  The very, very best.

  The End

  The Outback Heat Series

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