from working Kerry Creek, the Quinn family’s fifty-thousand-acre cattle station. Part of the profits went to their parents, now living in Sydney, where their mother taught school and their father had started a small landscaping business in his retirement.
And Brody, who’d once boasted a rather impressive bank account, was now unemployed, his million-dollar contract gone, many of his investments liquidated and his savings dwindling every day. He could survive another three or four years, if he lived frugally. But after that, he needed to find a decent job. Something that didn’t involve kicking a football between two goalposts.
When Brody had left the station as a teenager, there’d been no other choice. He’d hated station life almost as much as his mother had. And though he’d wanted to stay with his brothers, his mother needed someone to go with her, to watch out for her. It had been a way to realize his dream of a pro-football career and he’d grabbed the chance. If it hadn’t been for the accident, he’d still be living in Fremantle, enjoying his life and breaking every last scoring record for his team.
One stupid mistake and it had ended. He’d torn up his knee and spent the last year in rehab, trying to get back to form. He’d played in three games earlier in the season before the club dropped him. No new contract, no second chance, just a polite fare-thee-well.
“I’m sorry you’re not doing what you want to do,” Callum said, reaching out and putting his hand on Brody’s shoulder. “Sometimes life is just crap. But you pick yourself up and you get on with it. And you stop being such a dickhead.”
Brody gave his brother a shove, then stood up. “Give it a rest. If I needed a mother, I’d move back to Sydney and live with the one I already have.” Brody grabbed his keys from Callum’s hand then jogged down the front steps and out into the dusty street. “I’ll catch you later.”
As he walked down the main street of Bilbarra, his thoughts returned to the woman sitting in Angus’s cell. “Payton,” he whispered. He hadn’t been attracted to any woman since Vanessa had walked out on him a year ago, frustrated by his dark moods and eager to find a bloke with a better future and a bigger bank account.
But Payton Harwell didn’t know him, or football. All she cared about was a place to sleep and her next meal. And he certainly had the means to provide that.
PAYTON SIPPED at the bottle of orange juice that Angus had brought for her breakfast. She’d finished the egg sandwich first, then gobbled down the beans and bacon, enough nutrition to last her the entire day. Sooner or later, Angus would let her out and then she’d be back to scraping by for her meals. It was best to eat while she could.
She glanced over at the adjoining cell. It had been pleasant to have some company for a time, she mused. Actually, more than pleasant when the fellow prisoner was as handsome and fascinating as Brody Quinn. Payton rubbed the spot where their hands had touched, remembering the sensation that had raced through her at the contact.
She’d been in Australia for a month now and this had been the first real conversation she’d allowed herself. She’d told him her name, but not much else. In truth, since her arrival, Payton had spent most of her time trying to figure out exactly who she was, now that she wasn’t what she was supposed to be.
Until a month ago, her life had always been neatly laid out in front of her—the best schools, carefully chosen activities, the right friends, exotic vacations. As she grew older, a top-notch education and a careful search for an appropriate husband. Finally, a wonderful wedding to a successful man that her parents adored. It had been exactly the path her mother had followed, a step-by-step guide to happiness.
Payton had taken on the role of the dutiful daughter, doing all she could to please her parents and never once rebelling against their authority. Even when they’d insisted she stop riding at age seventeen after breaking her arm in a fall, Payton had agreed. She’d loved her horse, and riding had given her a wonderful sense of freedom. But she’d simply assumed that her parents knew best. If she’d had a rebellious streak, it hadn’t shown itself—until a month ago. And then, it had erupted like a dormant volcano.
When it came to the moment to say “I do,” Payton had turned and run. For the first time in her life, she’d made a decision for herself. Though she was twenty-five years old, her perfect life up to that point had never prepared her to deal with self-doubt. Running had been her only option.
She’d met Sam her first day at Columbia. He was the man her mother had always told her about, the man who could give her everything she’d ever want or need. He was handsome and smart, four years older, and from a wealthy East Coast family. Her father, the scion of a banking empire, approved of his finances, and her mother, a third-generation socialite, approved of his bloodlines. And it wasn’t as if there hadn’t been an attraction between them. There had been…in the beginning.
An image flashed in her mind. How easily she’d forgotten Sam. All she wanted to think about now was this stranger who had touched her, this man with the penetrating gaze and the dangerous smile. A tiny thrill raced through her at the memory of his eyes raking the length of her body.
Payton leaned her head back against the concrete wall of the cell. Brody Quinn was incredibly sexy. Any woman would be attracted to a man like that. She allowed herself to speculate. Shirt on, shirt off. Completely naked and—without the bars between them, she wondered just how far she would have gone. A kiss, a quick grope, maybe more?
Payton sighed. Maybe her attraction to Brody wasn’t an early midlife crisis. Maybe she was experiencing some sort of sexual schizophrenia caused by all the stress she’d been under. She’d never thought a whole lot about sex until recently. It had never been that important.
But suddenly, she found herself thinking about passion and desire, about what it truly meant to connect on a physical level with a man. Wasn’t it normal for her to worry if Sam was the last man she’d ever sleep with? Shouldn’t he want to touch her and make her moan with pleasure? Shouldn’t sexual attraction be just as important as love and mutual respect?
There hadn’t been that many men in her life—a grand total of four—so she hadn’t much experience on which to rely. Two boys in high school, one in college after she and Sam had broken up for a time, and then Sam. She knew sex was supposed to be exciting and it had been, up until Sam had started working twelve—to fourteen-hour days. Suddenly, intimacy had become just another job for him, an obligation, like the bouquet of flowers he brought her every Friday evening.
In the weeks before the wedding, her mother had assured her it would all even out over time. There were meant to be highs and lows in a marriage. It kept things interesting. And heaven knows, she’d said, sex wasn’t everything. She and Payton’s father kept separate bedrooms and they got along just fine.
Until that moment, Payton had always assumed the arrangement was because her father snored, but once she realized her parents no longer needed each other in that way, she began to question her assumptions about a happy marriage. She wondered if her own marriage might end up more a convenient arrangement than a lifelong passion.
From that point on, Payton began to look at Sam in a different way. Every touch, every kiss, was more evidence that the passion between them was waning. Worse, she began to doubt herself. Perhaps she was just incapable of keeping a man sexually interested. Maybe it was genetic.
But that crazy attraction hadn’t been missing with Brody Quinn. There had been an excitement between them, a delicious anticipation that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Her heart beat faster at the thought of him, and her breathing suddenly grew shallow. He’d been attracted to her, too, that much was obvious.
She thought back to the night before her wedding, a night spent pacing her room at the resort in Fiji. Every instinct told her to call it all off—or at least delay until she had her head on straight. But she knew what an embarrassment it would be to her parents, how upset they’d be. As an only child, so much had always been expected of her, and she’d done her best to make her parents proud. But wasn’t there a point in life where she had to think about herself first?
It had taken her until the very last minute to decide