Until now.
She would not think about why this Christmas had to be different and she would not think about what that would mean for her as the dreaded date approached. Instead, she’d look out the window and focus on the scenery. Towering eucalyptus trees stretched skywards on either side of the road, their trunks disappearing below the verge on the downhill side where it dropped into the valley, branches twisting across the canopy, in places forming magnificent archways across the road. Around one corner, a glimpse of majestic Pigeon House Mountain with its distinctive cone-shaped top, the memory of its steep sandstone walls still embedded in her calves like the marine fossil she’d found on its summit. Around the next corner, a lyrebird scurrying across the road with its road-runner style gait and vanishing into the bush, its tawny feathers providing immediate camouflage. Her heart skittered, the way it always did when she spent time in the wilds. Driving was nowhere as good as walking when she could be completely immersed in the landscape, but a satisfactory second best. So far she’d only sampled the hiking trails on the southern side of town, many of them still blackened, but this part of the world offered a whole new treasure trove of escapes. The way the fires had scorched some parts of the bush and left other sections unscathed was a total mystery. And now, barely ten months later, the new growth was nothing short of miraculous. Yarrabee had taken a battering and lives had even been lost but both nature and the community were on the way to recovery.
According to the map on the dashboard, the tree farm was just around the next bend. She eased her foot onto the brake, rounded the corner and there was the sign:Welcome to Uncle Willy’s.Below the green type against a brilliant red background, a cheeky cartoonstyle Santa stood beside a pine tree brandishing an axe. Hopefully there’d be an actual worker to do the felling and she wouldn’t have to do the deed herself.
A small parking area sat at the end of the drive, with only one parked car and a sign with instructions by the gate that led to the trees. Even from a distance she could read the first point: Wear your boots. Damn. She’d changed out of her work clothes into knee-length denims and a tank top but hadn’t given any thought to her footwear. She glanced down at her white sandals with a shrug. Surely she wouldn’t be traipsing through virgin bush. The trees were right there, just beyond the sign, an ocean of them, green pinnacles piercing the brilliantly blue afternoon sky. It would be fine. The rest of the instructions were straightforward: take a name tag; find a tree; tag it; report back with the tree location number; have the tree cut and netted. Life was so much easier when everything was explained clearly and logically.
Apart from some particularly annoying flies, she was apparently on her own. Hopefully the pretend Uncle Willy would appear at some point but in the meantime she could go find a tree. Tag and Texta in hand, she walked in the direction the arrow pointed, took a left turn and meandered along the trail. Trees a head smaller than her lined either side of the path, their scent already swamping her senses. If nothing else, having one of them in her living room would make the house smell fresh. These ones seemed a little small. If she was going to do this tree thing, it may as well be a decent size, maybe six foot or a little more. She branched off onto another path into an area where a few trees had already been razed. All that was left were bare stumps, sitting like amputated limbs in between their full-bodied cousins. Her stomach contracted. Tree-felling was hardly ethical. The world needed more of them not less, but this was for a good cause and the farm website said they were a sustainably run operation. So …
And there it was. A perfectly shaped specimen. Branches evenly spaced. The top spike prime real estate for a sparkling silver star, like the one they’d had when she was a kid.Nope. Not going there.Every frond green and healthy, not a brown patch in sight. This was the one. She scribbled her name on the tag and hooked it over the closest branch. Now what?
Ah yes, the tree location. It had been on a flag at the entry to the row. Tracing her way back, she took a photo of the aisle number, returned to the entrance and pressed the buzzer by the sign. Pretty easy so far. Now she just had to get it home.
Voices murmured in the throng of trees at her back and she turned towards the sound. A couple in very sensible footwear emerged, followed by someone carrying a tree that obscured almost his entire body, including his face. The man and woman gave her a cursory smile as they followed the woodchopper to the far end of the car park, where he fed the tree into a giant metal funnel. With the man, woman and net machine in the way, the farmer’s face was hidden but like his customers, he was well booted, wearing long sleeves and a hat. He hoisted the netted tree onto the roof of their car and raised his hand in a farewell gesture. Good, old-fashioned service.
He turned to walk in her direction and lifted his head, eyes invisible behind his sunglasses. And yet that tell-tale tingle in Hannah’s loins started up in a nanosecond.
No. It couldn’t possibly be him.
She blinked. Blinked again, as if the action might make the man ambling towards her, a wry grin parting his lips, disappear in a puff of smoke.
But this man was no mirage.
He was, in fact, Cole Harrison.
Chapter 5
‘What are you doing here?’ The question blurted itself out, made it sound like she was the one who had every right to be standing there in a man-made pine forest in the middle of nowhere while he, dressed in full lumberjack regalia and brandishing a chainsaw, had no business being there at all.
Cole’s smile was crooked, not quite a smirk, more of a are-youreally-asking-me-that question? ‘I work here.’
He worked here? At Uncle Willy’s? Wasn’t he supposed to be a farrier? Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as if there were fireworks popping under her skin, heating her from the inside out. Because there most definitely were not. And either way, she would never date a farrier or a farmer-slash-tree lopper. Not that dating was on the cards.
His eyes shifted from her face to her feet and back again before pointing to the first instruction on the sign.
Shit. Was he going to bundle her into her car and send her packing before the tree even got chopped? She’d always been a rule follower, apart from—or rather, ever since—that night, and getting caught out for breaking them was not in her playbook.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise. No boots in the car so …’ She scrunched up her face and gave an apologetic shrug.
‘That’s a shame, because apart from the snakes that enjoy living here, there’s a whole lot of leeches that like to party after it rains.’ He pointed and her gaze fell to her feet, zeroed in on her left one, where a black, worm-like creature a good four centimetres long had attached itself just below her ankle. As experienced at bush walking as she’d become, leeches were one wild creature she just could not abide.
‘Urgh, no, yuck.’ She danced a jig, stomping her foot in a bid to unlatch the behemoth leech currently feasting on her blood.
By the third stomp, Cole was down on one knee, a small object clasped in his hand. He took hold of her calf. ‘Stay still a minute.’
The firm grip on her bare leg, in any other circumstance, may have been enough to make her swoon but not right now, when her stomach had tied itself into a constrictor knot.
Focusing on her breathing, she followed orders while he slipped the point of his pen knife under the revolting creature and flicked it off with one sharp snap of his wrist. It squirmed for a millisecond until he sliced it in two and a not-insignificant pool of dark liquid spread across the ground. Her blood! Which was also pouring out of the bite site and staining the patent leather of her white sandals.
‘He’s been on there for a while.’ Cole rose to his feet. ‘Take a seat and I’ll grab something for that. Back in a tick.’
Damn it. Why hadn’t she had the good sense to check the website properly before racing off into the wilderness? Normally she’d be fully prepared, but with everything going on, her common sense seemed to be AWOL. She stumbled across to the log wall forming the boundary of the car park and lowered herself down, keeping her chin up. She’d never been good with the sight of blood but at least she’d mastered the art of self-talk.It’s only a leech bite. You’re not going to bleed out. It’s all okay.
And then Cole Harrison reappeared. He was a bear of a man, shoulders as broad as an axe handle, and yet there was an aura of gentleness about him she couldn’t quite pin down. Carrying a bundle of tissues, a bottle of Dettol and a packet of bandaids, he once again knelt in front of her. He really could be a hero in a small-town romance, down on one knee, about to propose to the unsuspecting heroine.
Ridiculous. Pull yourself together, Hannah.
Like a regular Prince Charming, Cole unbuckled her shoe and slipped it off, holding her ankle firmly but delicately as he wiped away the blood crusted across the top of her foot. Whether it was shock or embarrassment—or something else entirely—she was both immobile and dumbstruck.
