The Girl from Pinchinara

By Peter Westerway

Emmanuelle Louise Young, who only answers to Emma or Em, is The Girl from Pinchinara (her family property). She attended one of the best girls schools in Australia, graduated cum laude and at the age of eighteen is about to move to Indonesia to study language and culture.

Emma is watching the mustering of sheep when she clashes with Johnny, a mystery man working as a shearer, but in fact an active officer in Australias elite Special Air Service, or S.A.S. Their strong attraction leads Emma through romance, kidnap and threat until The Girl from Pinchinara eventually finds happiness in his arms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jan 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479766550

Peter Westerway

Peter was born in Australia, but has travelled widely and lived abroad for extended periods. He graduated Bachelor of Economics (Hons) and PhD at the University of Sydney, studied at the London School of Economics and taught at the University of Sydney. A qualified librarian with a long career as academic, television producer, politician, civil servant and statutory officer, he has also advised Aboriginal, Muslim and Indonesian organisations. Peter has extensively written non-fiction; e.g. peer reviewed articles to cabinet submissions, television and documentary scripts and textbooks. However this is only his second encounter with romance fiction. The first, written with his wife, Barbara, used the pen-name Caroline Dobrée and is called Australian Dreaming.

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Copyright © 2013 by Peter Westerway.

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 permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

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Contents

1

2 Perth

3 Pinchinara

4 Salatiga

5 Oodnadatta

6 Vincerò! Vincerò!

1

The man studied the ram and the ram studied him right back. It was a Border Leicester with wool like an angel’s wings and the soul of a devil. Somehow it had managed to get itself into the race facing backwards and now it stood, head lowered and splay legged, resisting all attempts to turn it around. A big animal, standing three feet high on its four, pointy-toed legs, it was not going to move. Not for the rancher shouting above the noise. Not for the yapping dogs. Not for anyone or anything.

The rest of the rams were purebred Merinos. Stupid animals at the best of times. And they were in turmoil. No matter how loudly the men shouted, they refused to walk up the race while the big Border Leicester stood splay legged, head down, its beady black eyes shining menace and mayhem. Instead they milled and tried to back away, baaing their agitation, while the dogs barked snappily at their heels.

With a muttered curse, one young man lunged forward and caught it under the forequarters. Then, bending his knees to take the strain, he heaved until the animal rose from the concrete race onto its hind legs. Painfully and slowly, ever so slowly, he began to inch it around.

‘Go Jimboy!’ his mates shouted.

But on its hind legs the ram was a very large animal. As tall as the man, just as strong and no brighter than before. He had it half-way around, the both of them jammed up against the fence of the narrow race, when it panicked and lashed out with all four legs. Slowly, but inevitably, like an old house falling to the wrecking ball, the pair of them tumbled over the low fence and into a pool of evil smelling mud below.

The man didn’t seem to care too much. He was used to a bit of dirt. But swimming in a pool of mud with an animal as big as yourself is not a pleasant thing to do whichever way you think of it, so his curses were coming faster and louder by the time he heard the laughter. It was not the sort of laughter he’d heard before. Not the belly laughter of his mates. Not the giggling of flighty and flirty girls. More like tinkling bells, he thought as he struggled out after the disgruntled animal.

He was still thinking of bells when he raised his sodden head, dripping dark brown mud. Then he stood as stupidly as the ram and stared at the girl with the heart-shaped face. A quality girl this. No dressage doll in flashy jacket with shiny silver buttons and white riding breeches, but a farm girl with comfortable clothes and calfskin riding boots on a horse that was clearly her friend.

For all her confidence she was quite small. Tiny even. But she had the biggest eyes he had ever seen. Dark blue. Almost violet. Like pansies, he thought. Deep blue pansies. Why was a girl with huge eyes and a heart-shaped face staring down at him in the mud? And giggling her head off? For that matter, what the hell was a girl like that doing here?

‘Emma,’ said the rancher, fighting to keep a straight face. ‘The bedraggled gentleman standing before you is my friend known to all and sundry as Jimboy. Please don’t ask me why. He’s from Perth. Jimboy, with considerable diffidence, may I present my favourite godchild, Miss Emmanuelle Young. It’s a French name meaning ‘God is with us,’ but she only answers to Emma or Em. She’s from Pinchinara.’

Emmanuelle Louise Young had attended Fernleigh, one of the best girls’ schools in Australia, and graduated cum laude, but she was also a girl from the bush, so she was no stranger to shearing. In sheep country you rode out with a couple of good dogs once a year, rounded up thousands of wethers and ewes, lambs and rams into a big mob and then drove them all back into the home paddock. After that it was relatively easy to put the dogs to work chivvying the mob into the stockyards and sorting them out for the shearers.

So Emma had always believed that shearing meant lots of work, but also some fun. Yet in all her eighteen years she’d never before, never ever, seen a man downed by a sheep. Certainly never seen one driven into a pool of mud. So as she joined the group sitting on the fences and Jimboy’s friends began sluicing him off under the big, black, two-inch hose, she snatched a quick photo on her iPod, then stole a long, inquisitive look.

No city slicker this, she could see. His was a muscular body, tanned and tough, the body of a man who worked hard and played hard. And to her surprise he was not at all embarrassed by the recent debacle. Quite the contrary. As she sat watching him comb back his jet-black hair, he suddenly grabbed himself by the throat, staggered around exactly the way he’d struggled with the ram, then fell to the ground to the accompaniment of ripples of laughter and more hoots of ‘Go for it, Jimboy!’ from the rest of the mob.

Emma was so lost in studying this unusual visitor that she blushed to realize he was studying her back. Then, as a flash of white teeth lit up his tanned face, she caught the sparkle of mischief in his green eyes.

She could not help starting to giggle all over again, but the man did not look at all put out. He simply walked over to the fence, looked straight into her eyes and lifted her into his arms. Strong arms these. Arms no girl could easily break away from. And although she struggled a bit for the sake of the audience, she didn’t try very hard. After all, he was making the best of a situation that would have left most men humbled and angry. But she was really surprised when he turned about and walked steadily straight back into the mud.

Vaguely aware of the gales of laughter from all around the stockyard as he went down on his knees into the muck and she smelled its watery menace, she instinctively climbed higher in his arms until they were clinging face to face.

Then he kissed her.

Since Emma Louise Young was usually in a hurry, she normally showered, but baths give you time to think. That night she spent a pleasant half hour surrounded by lighted candles in little, flower-shaped holders and wallowing up to her ears in her hostess’s milk and honey bath foam. Then, after spending a fruitless few minutes wondering how sodium laurel ether sulphate, let alone DMDM hydantoin, could be the key to a more beautiful skin, she let her restless mind turn to the thing that was really bothering her.

Him. Yes, him. That overweening, male chauvinist, muscle-bound pig who had no thought for other people and rode roughshod over anyone who had the temerity to find him anything other than a godlike figure. Him. A real brute of a man. Not so much brought up, as dragged up by cave-dwelling, Neanderthal parents to believe that might is right. A wonder his knuckles didn’t drag on the ground.

The weird thing was that I wasn’t the slightest bit afraid. In fact it was really funny, the way he just plucked me off my perch like some squawking chicken, and then waltzed me over into the mud.