this was someone from the other side. Not Pete. Not a medical emergency. Regardless, she swung her feet out of bed and reached for her robe.
And then she paused.
Maybe this was a visitor for her landlord.
A visitor at midnight?
Who knew? She hardly knew her landlord.
Blake Samford was the only son of the local squattocracy—squattocracies being the slang term for families who’d been granted huge tracts of land when Australia had first been opened to settlers and had steadily increased their fortunes since. The Corella Valley holding was impressive, but deserted. Blake had lived here as a baby but his mother had taken him away when he was six. The district had hardly seen him since.
This, however, was his longest visit for years. He’d arrived three days ago. He was getting over appendicitis, he’d told her, taking the opportunity to get the farm ready for sale. His father had been dead for six months. It was time to sell.
She’d warned him the river was rising. He’d shrugged.
‘If I’m trapped, I might as well be truly trapped.’
If he was having visitors at midnight, they’d be trapped with him.
Maybe it’s a woman, she thought, sinking back into bed as the car stopped and footsteps headed for Blake’s side of the house—the grand entrance. Maybe he’d decided if he was to be trapped he needed company. Was this a woman ready to risk all to reach her lover?
Who knew? Who knew anything about Blake Samford?
Blake was a local yet not a local. She’d seen him sporadically as a kid—making compulsory access visits to his bully of a father, the locals thought—but as far as she knew he hadn’t come near when his father had been ill. Given his father’s reputation, no one blamed him. Finally she’d met him at the funeral.
She’d gone to the funeral because she’d been making daily medical checks on the old man for the last few months of his life. His reputation had been appalling, but he’d loved his dogs so she’d tried to convince herself he hadn’t been all bad. Also, she’d needed to talk to his son about the dogs. And her idea.
She hadn’t even been certain Blake would come but he’d been there—Blake Samford, all grown up. And stunning. The old ladies whispered that he’d inherited his mother’s looks. Maggie had never known his mother, but she was definitely impressed by the guy’s appearance—strong, dark, riveting. But not friendly. He’d stood aloof from the few locals present, expressionless, looking as if he was there simply to get things over with.
She could understand that. With Bob Samford as a father, it had been a wonder he’d been there at all.
But Maggie had an idea that needed his agreement. It had taken courage to approach him when the service had ended, to hand over her references and ask him about the housekeeper’s apartment at the back of the homestead. To offer to keep an eye on the place as well as continuing caring for the dogs his dad had loved. Harold Stubbs, the next-door landowner, had been looking after Bob’s cattle. The cattle still needed to be there to keep the grass down, but Harold was getting too old to take care of two herds plus the house and the dogs. Until Blake sold, would he like a caretaker?
Three days later a rental contract had arrived. She’d moved in but she hadn’t heard from him since.
Until now. He was home to put the place on the market.
She’d expected nothing less. She knew it’d be sold eventually and she was trying to come up with alternative accommodation. She did not want to go home.
But right now her attention was all on the stupidity of his visitors driving over the bridge. Were they out of their minds?
She was tempted to pull back the drapes and look.
She heard heavy footsteps running across the veranda, and the knocker sounded so loudly it reverberated right through the house. The dogs went crazy. She hauled them back from the door, but as she did she heard the footsteps recede back across the veranda, back down the steps.
The car’s motor hadn’t been cut. A car door slammed, the engine was gunned—and it headed off the way it had come.
She held her breath as it rumbled back across the bridge. Reaching the other side. Safe.
Gone.
What on earth …?
Kids, playing the fool?
It was not her business. It was Blake’s business, she told herself. He was home now and she was only caring for her little bit of the house.
Hers. Until Blake sold the house.
It didn’t matter. For now it was hers, and she was soaking up every minute of it.
She snuggled back down under the covers—alone.
If there was one thing Maggie Tilden craved above everything else, it was being alone.
Bliss.
On the other side of the wall, Blake was listening, too. He heard the car roar over the bridge. He heard the thumps on his front door, the running footsteps of someone leaving in a hurry, and the car retreating back over the bridge.
He also thought whoever it was must be crazy.
He and his tenant—Maggie Tilden—had inspected the bridge yesterday. The storm water had been pounding the aged timbers; things were being swept fast downstream—logs, debris, some of it big. It was battering the piles.
‘If you want to get out, you should go now,’ Maggie had said. ‘The authorities are about to close it.’
Did it matter? He’d been ordered to take three weeks off work to recuperate from appendicitis. He needed to sort his father’s possessions, so what difference did it make if he was stranded while he did it?
‘It’s up to you,’ Maggie had said, as if she didn’t mind either way, and she’d headed back to her part of the house with his father’s dogs.
She kept to herself, for which he was profoundly grateful, but now … A knock at midnight. A car going back and forth over the bridge.
Was this some friend of hers, playing the fool? Leaving something for her at the wrong door?
Whoever they were, they’d gone.
On Maggie’s side of the house he’d heard the dogs go crazy. He imagined her settling them. Part of him expected her to come across to check what had just happened.
She didn’t.
Forget it, he told himself. Go back to bed.
Or open the door and make sure nothing had been left?
The knock still resonated. It had been loud, urgent, demanding attention.
Okay, check.
He headed for the front door, stepped outside and came close to falling over a bundle. Pink, soft …
He stooped and tugged back a fold of pink blanket.
A thick thatch of black hair. A tiny, rosebud mouth. Snub nose. Huge dark eyes that stared upwards, struggling to focus.
A tiny baby. Three weeks at most, he thought, stunned.
Lying on his doorstep.
He scooped the infant up without thinking, staring out into the night rather than down at the baby, willing the car to be still there, willing there to be some sort of answer.
The bundle was warm—and moist. And alive.
A baby …
He had nothing to do with babies. Yeah, okay, he’d treated babies during medical training. He’d done the basic paediatric stuff, but he’d been an orthopaedic surgeon for years now, and babies hardly came into his orbit.
A baby was