High Country Hero Read online

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Last McAdam

  Blackpeak Station

  Blackpeak Vines

  Storms Over Blackpeak

  First published in 2018

  Copyright © Holly Ford 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76029 612 4

  eISBN 978 1 76063 555 8

  Set by Midland Typesetters

  Cover design: Nada Backovic

  Cover photographs: Rob Lang, Getty Images and Istockphoto

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  One

  Lennie looked up, following the path of the helicopter as it beat low overhead, heading for the pine-clad hills. For a crazy moment, she thought about waving it down. It’d been over two hours since she’d called the breakdown service, and there was still no sign of a truck. Across the empty highway, two muddy horses watched her hopefully, their strip of paddock grazed low. In the distance, the helicopter and its racket sank into a fold in the hills. As it lowered, she caught a flash of its starboard light against the lengthening shadows.

  Climbing back into the driver’s seat of her grandmother’s Toyota Corolla, Lennie turned the ignition one more time. No joy. Through the rain-spotted windscreen, she studied the bristling slopes up ahead. In the rear-view mirror she could see the wide grey road stretching back to the pass she’d just descended. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She really didn’t need this right now.

  Four hours earlier and a hundred-odd kilometres west, she’d been surrounded by higher, drier, more familiar hills. Surreptitiously taking in the landscapes of her childhood through the lunchroom window of the vet clinic her grandfather had devoted his life to building, Lennie had been trying to hold the thread of what Jim’s business partner was saying when a shape burnt onto the back of her teenage eyelids almost as thoroughly as the Kimpton Ranges had loomed into view in the car park outside.

  Lennie leaned back on the Corolla’s headrest, replaying the meeting that had followed against the still-empty road.

  ‘Oh, he’s here, is he?’ her grandfather had muttered, as the figure approached Central Vets’ front door.

  ‘I told him to pop in if he was passing.’ Jim’s partner, Paul, turned the pen on the table in front of him, a hard-to-read look on his face. ‘I thought it might be good for him to meet Lennie.’ Paul glanced across the table at her. ‘Say hi. You know.’

  The lunchroom door opened. ‘Hey. Am I interrupting?’ In the doorway, Benji Cooper paused, his wide smile warming the room.

  As the sparkle in his blue eyes deposited her straight back in Year Twelve, Lennie felt her heart skip a beat. The captain of Kimpton District High School’s First XV had aged well. Very well. In fact, if anything he looked even better than he had done when she’d last seen him driving away from Stacey Kendrick’s end-of-year party fifteen years ago. Benji had grown into his face, his square jaw now sporting the sort of scruff she’d seen described in a magazine at the hairdressers as a ‘corporate beard’. Lennie could remember the day she’d watched him break the school javelin record, and by the looks of the shoulder muscles stretching his business shirt, he still could.

  ‘Come in,’ Paul told him. ‘We’re all done with the formal stuff.’

  ‘Lennie,’ Jim said evenly, ‘this is Benji Cooper, VETSouth’s business manager.’

  Lennie blinked. Benji was the man trying to buy her grandfather out?

  ‘Benji,’ Jim went on, ‘this is my granddaughter—’

  ‘Magdalena O’Donnell.’ Benji’s eyes sparkled even more. ‘Well. Look at you.’

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ Lennie said, as Benji continued to take his own advice, his gaze moving over the neat little black pantsuit she’d felt she owed it to her grandfather to wear to her formal ‘job interview’. Surely after all these years that suggestive grin of Benji’s couldn’t still make her blush? Yep, apparently it could.

  ‘You have.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘I like the long hair. It suits you.’

  She resisted the impulse to raise her hand to her chignon.

  ‘You two know each other?’ At the head of the table Jim frowned, perplexed.

  Lennie glanced at him. Seriously? Was it possible that her grandfather knew nothing of the passion that had defined her high school years—her hopeless, hopeful, never-quite-requited but never-quite-spurned, all-consuming love for Benji Cooper?

  ‘Benji and I went to school together.’ Lennie strove for a neutral tone, trying to ignore the all-too-familiar tingle down her spine as Benji walked behind her.

  ‘Lennie used to let me sit with her in chemistry.’ Benji took the chair next to her, the breadth of his thigh muscles testing the weave of a narrow pair of navy trousers that looked like they should have a matching jacket somewhere. ‘She taught me everything I know.’

  ‘We’re all looking forward to learning a thing or two now Lennie’s coming on board,’ Paul said.

  Benji’s blond eyebrows rose. ‘They’ve convinced you, then?’

  Lennie shot another look at her grandfather. ‘Yes,’ she said brightly, watching Jim let out his breath, the glow of relief in his eyes. ‘They’ve convinced me.’

  ‘Well.’ Benji’s grin broadened. ‘Let me be the first to say it, then. Welcome back to Kimpton.’

  •

  The sight of a vehicle on the road behind her jolted Lennie out of her reverie. Chugging towards her in no great hurry, an elderly ute crawled to a halt, pulling in behind the Corolla on the damp grass of the verge.

  ‘I was on another job,’ the driver announced. Only the set of well-used overalls he was wearing differentiated him from a random passer-by. ‘I told them on the phone I wouldn’t be able to get here for a couple of hours.’ It was less an apology than an accusation.

  ‘Yes,’ Lennie soothed. ‘They told me.’

  The guy looked her up and down, his scrutiny making her almost as uncomfortable as her pantsuit.

  ‘I can’t be everywhere,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Lennie said. �
��Of course not.’ Hoping to shift his attention, she turned to the car. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. It just stopped.’

  ‘Electrical fault, probably.’ He gave her another withering look. ‘How long since its last service?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ As he sighed, his suspicions confirmed, Lennie resisted the urge to apologise again. ‘It’s not my car. I just borrowed it for the day.’

  Climbing into the driver’s seat, he turned the key. The engine remained lifeless. ‘Could be anything,’ he said.

  ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘Not here.’ Getting out, he narrowed his eyes at the horizon. ‘I’ll have to come back with the trailer, load it up, get it into the workshop.’

  ‘Is that far away?’

  He shook his head. ‘Glenmore. Ten k’s up the road.’

  Lennie let out a quiet breath of relief.

  ‘But—’ he looked at his watch ‘—we just shut for the night.’

  She closed her eyes briefly. ‘So,’ she said, matching her tone to the knowledge that this man was the closest thing she was going to get to help, ‘what do I do?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait till the morning. I’ll come back for it then.’

  As Lennie surveyed the empty road again, the man seemed to take pity on her at last. ‘There’s a hotel by the garage,’ he said. ‘You can stay there.’

  Oh, thank god.

  He nodded at the passenger door. ‘Hop in.’

  This would be okay, Lennie told herself. It would totally be okay. So long as the Corolla was on the road by midday tomorrow, she could still make her flight back to Sydney. All she needed to do was check into this hotel, wherever it was, call her grandmother, and relax for the night. Sliding cautiously into the oily passenger seat of the ute, Lennie tried not to dwell on how many more people she was going to have to call if she didn’t get the car back before midday tomorrow. Rosters at the hospital, Sam, Deliarna, a whole list of clients waiting for test results, not to mention two airlines—

  She forced herself to take a deep breath. Get a nice big lungful of clean country air. Some downtime would do her the world of good. She could order room service, watch a movie, catch up on all that sleep she’d lost lately trying to think of a way to say no to moving back to Kimpton…

  Lennie watched the road ahead snake into the forested hills, following roughly the way the helicopter had headed. She’d made the right decision today. She knew she had. She could learn to live without Sydney. She could learn to live without the hospital. The Royal could find another internal medicine specialist. But she was Jim O’Donnell’s only granddaughter, and for the first time in her life he’d asked her for something. She’d never learn to live with turning him down.

  It wasn’t until she heard the tick of the indicator beside her that it dawned on Lennie where she was being taken. The place the ute was pulling into would have been easy enough to miss, hitting the straight at open-road speed that morning. But she hadn’t missed it. It had registered, briefly, on her consciousness as she’d driven through it on a full tank of gas. The rusting canopy with its painted-out oil company sign and single pump, the sort of place that took the service out of station, and behind it the long, low, sagging pub with the 1980s beer logo peeling from its iron roof. She’d even formed a thought about it before it had disappeared behind her. She’d wondered just how desperate—or crazy—you’d have to be before you stopped there.

  The ute drew to a halt. Slowly, Lennie climbed out onto the forecourt, the clip of her low heels on the concrete hanging heavy in the silence, engine oil thick on the breeze.

  ‘Go see Jazzy over at the pub,’ her saviour ordered, not unkindly. ‘She’ll sort you out.’

  •

  Behind the bar of the Glenmore Hotel, a solidly built woman regarded her stonily, ink rising from the collar of her NRL shirt in a series of discs that reminded Lennie of an auger.

  ‘Bistro closes at seven-thirty if you want food,’ the woman said.

  ‘Do you…?’ Lennie glanced around at the melamine tables occupying what looked like an old dance floor. She paused, thinking better of asking about room service. ‘Do you do takeaways?’

  ‘No.’ Reaching under the bar, the woman handed her a key. ‘Rooms are that way. Across the car park.’

  Negotiating the heavy shingle to the prefab accommodation block, the slithering river stones adding a sway to her step, Lennie tried to focus on the positives of her situation. This was a whole lot better than the back seat of the Corolla. Better than being stranded out there on the road. The unit she was heading towards had a roof, and walls, and a patio door that almost certainly locked, and the rest she could do without for a night. She ought to be able to, anyway. And it didn’t look…so bad. A bit like—like a school camp. The sort that sat empty for large chunks of the year. Anyway. Staying here wasn’t going to kill her.

  On the other side of the wire netting fence, a sheep—somebody’s old pet lamb, she guessed, by the way it was eyeing her pockets—ambled out from behind the block to bleat at her, and Lennie smiled at it in return. See? What was she worried about? There was even a friendly face.

  Sliding open the rickety aluminium door to her unit, she pulled the greying net curtain back into place, set her handbag down on the bed and pulled out her phone. It took her a moment to work out why her grandmother’s number wasn’t ringing. No signal. Shit. Lennie glanced around for a landline. Locating an ancient telephone on the stained pine table below the TV, she punched in the digits.

  ‘The Glenmore pub?’ Lois O’Donnell repeated, as soon as Lennie had finished explaining. ‘You can’t stay there. Not by yourself. I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘Grandma,’ Lennie said patiently, ‘you can’t. I’ve got your car, remember?’

  There was a brief pause. Lennie imagined her grandmother standing at the console table in her shiny new townhouse out on the coast, the shiny new phone to her ear, Lois’s determined mouth pursing. ‘Well, I’ll go and hire another one,’ Lois said.

  ‘The rental car companies will be shut by now,’ Lennie told her. ‘And besides, I don’t want you driving all this way tonight. I’ll be fine here till the morning.’

  Lois made a humphing noise. ‘Why isn’t your grandfather coming to pick you up?’

  ‘I don’t want him driving here either. Anyway, if I go back to Kimpton tonight I’ll never make my flight tomorrow.’

  ‘Len…’ Lois sounded unconvinced.

  ‘I’m alright here, Grandma, really. It’s…’ Lennie glanced around the tiny unit again. ‘It’s nice.’

  There was another pause. ‘So what did you tell him?’

  ‘Who?’ Lennie hedged.

  ‘Your grandfather.’

  ‘About the car breaking down?’

  ‘About the job,’ her grandmother said firmly.

  Through the net curtain, Lennie watched the blurry shape of a ute crawl past the window.

  ‘Oh Len,’ Lois sighed. ‘You said yes, didn’t you?’

  ‘Let’s talk about it when I get there, okay?’ She checked her watch. ‘Look, I’d better go. The restaurant’s closing soon.’

  •

  Two hours later, turning the mound of coleslaw beside her still-partially-frozen chips as she wondered whether offending the chef posed a greater risk to her health than his food, Lennie ventured a look around the bar. The place was turning out to be more popular than she’d expected. It filled and emptied in waves, forestry workers knocking off shift, carloads of kids on the crawl, a touch rugby team heading home from practice. She couldn’t resent all the looks coming her way. If the roles were reversed, she’d be looking herself. Sitting here alone, dressed as she was, she stuck out like a penguin in a henhouse.

  Lennie pushed her hair away from her face. Doing what she could to soften her look before she hit the bar, she’d taken down her tightly twisted lady-means-business chignon, and in the humid hangover of the day’s rain her curls were running riot. She ran a thick black hank aroun
d her finger, pulling it straight, before remembering what a bad habit it was to play with your hair.

  In a corner by the window, somebody else was sitting alone. Lennie watched him, wondering what was making her do so when everything about the guy said he wanted to be ignored. With enviable control, his attention seemed to move only between his beer and the newspaper that surrounded him like a wall. He was wearing the same uniform as pretty much everyone else in the bar, workboots and work shirt, jeans. His hands had the same weathered tan. But there was something about the easy way he was occupying that chair, the way you saw professional athletes occupying the bench, every muscle completely relaxed and at the same time ready for action. Below his dark hair, his face was hidden, leaving Lennie’s imagination to fill in the rest. She smiled at herself. Wishful thinking. The chances of meeting a tall dark handsome stranger in Glenmore tonight were probably slim.

  As she continued to study him, he pushed the plate carrying the remains of his burger a little further away. He didn’t look at her, but Lennie sensed her covert stare had been noted, and disapproved of. Getting up, she headed back to the bar. Jazzy gave her a kinder look as she paid for a second glass of pinot noir.

  The guy remained where he was as the night wore on, his beer barely touched. The crowd had started to thin out, customers getting fewer and louder, jugs sinking faster, but the personal space he’d so clearly pegged out for himself remained unviolated. Struggling to find a reason for his continued presence in the bar, it occurred to Lennie that he might be her one fellow guest in the hotel, the body behind the slam of the door she’d heard at the other end of the accommodation block, the explanation for the flat-deck Land Cruiser that had appeared outside it. Perhaps, like her, he was waiting for the teenage swap-a-crate party that had overtaken the car park to take itself elsewhere before he went back to his thin-walled room.

  ‘Hey.’ A body thudded into the vinyl chair beside her. ‘You want to come to a party?’

  Lennie drew back a little from the beer fumes. ‘Thanks—’ she smiled, sensing a dare ‘—but I’m kind of busy tonight.’ The boy didn’t look much over eighteen.

  A second guy leaned over the opposite chair, adding a good portion of his drink to the upholstery stains. ‘She’s busy tonight,’ he mimicked, in a ridiculous falsetto. ‘She don’t want to come to your party, man.’