In The Heart Of The Outback...
The man standing a few feet from Fiona looked as haunted and desolate as she felt—too shocked to cry, too numb to feel pain.
He was wearing an oilskin coat, dark and shiny from the heavy rain outside, and he stood rock-still in the middle of the busy emergency ward, unaware of the staff ducking around him.
His skin was the suntanned brown of a man of the land, but shock had leached the tan from his cheeks. His eyes were dark and hollow, disbelieving. And although he was strong looking, tall and muscular, his shoulders were stooped, his chest caved in, as if the air had been sucked out of him.
He was clutching a teddy bear spotted with raindrops. Fiona dropped her gaze and saw that the bottoms of his jeans and his riding boots were splattered with mud, and she wondered where he'd been when he was called to the hospital. She pictured him working in muddy stockyards, perhaps, dropping whatever task he was attending to—just as she had abandoned a board meeting in Sydney when the police had contacted her.
The horror in his face told her that his news had been terrible, too. She felt his shock, as deep and unexpected and dread ... read full excerpt from In the Heart of the Outback ebook
