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‘Are you being judgey about the place?’ Craig scowled at Izzy dragging her fancy suitcase from the ute to the back verandah, only to pause at Dustfire’s rolling hills and open countryside that extended beyond the fence rails. The overall view from the house had always shown how pretty this place was.

It’s a pity—up close, the place was overrun with dust, weeds, and junk.

‘Do you really want me to answer that?’ Izzy peered over the rim of her fancy sunglasses, raising an eyebrow at the pile of empty beer boxes. ‘Still drinking the same beer brand, I see?’

‘So what if I do? What do you drink? No, wait, it’s probably some fancy triple-shot latte or something.’ The crutches sucked, every step wearing on his ribs. When the rubber base on one of his crutches wobbled on a stone, he almost fell.

From behind, Izzy grabbed his hips and steadied him. ‘I don’t do coffee. It keeps me up all night and my brain doesn’t need that. I’m weird enough as it is.’ She let him go.

‘I remember.’ Wishing he didn’t. Or that familiar tingling feeling he got from her holding him. ‘And you’re not weird.’

Her brow ruffled in confusion.

Sadly, he couldn’t switch off his protectiveness over her, no matter how hard he tried, especially when she’d call herself weird. She wasn’t.

Izzy had a high-functioning distinctive neurodivergent profile, so said the doctors. With a blend of ADHD, and a whole bunch of other letters that ended with the word disorder . To Craig it was a lot of unkind things to say about Izzy’s uniqueness, until one of them said she was gifted .

Simply put, Izzy’s incredibly high-functioning brain would become so hyper focused on one subject—which was perfect for a criminal case lawyer—that her brain would spin so fast it’d become overstimulated, she’d end up crashing on the couch, burnt out and overwhelmed by everything, unable to even speak in full sentences. Mental fatigue, they called it.

As the smartest woman Craig had ever known, Izzy always made sense. She was just too smart to be the wife of this simple stockman.

‘Don’t worry, I brought some teas and other goodies.’ Izzy sat her suitcase on the verandah and headed back to the ute.

Didn’t that do something to his masculine ego, watching her unload his gear while he struggled to open the back door. ‘I’ve been meaning to fix this door.’ But then again, he only shut it when he was going off mustering for months at a time. He only ever came back to Dustfire in the wet season, to watch the rain fall, drink beer and wallow in misery—which is why he rarely bothered to come back.

This was supposed to be home, yet both of its owners did their best to avoid the place. But it was a trillion times better than the hospital, even if he was being forced into some home detention-like prison sentence at the mercy of his wife, Izzy.

Back at the hospital, she’d relished holding out a hand to his visitors, as if to shake it in a business meeting, complete with an icy smile, saying, ‘Hi, I’m Craig’s wife. And you are? ’

Didn’t that send the ladies scurrying down the corridor, never giving him a chance to explain. All while Izzy laughed, relishing the game of being his gatekeeper.

Although she did flatly refuse to bring home any of the flowers delivered to his room. Some might think the ever-callous Bee Queen was jealous, but he doubted it.

Izzy dumped her shopping bags on the kitchen bench and perched her sunglasses on her head. ‘Does the fridge work?’

‘Of course.’ It had one job and that was to keep his beer cold.

‘Silly question. You’d need it to keep your beer cold.’

It was spooky how, even after all these years, she could still read his mind.

Izzy poked around the fridge, giving him a superb view of that arse of hers.

‘Ew. Are you conducting some sort of science experiment with this?’ She held up a jar of pickles filled with mould.

He couldn’t even remember buying them.

She tossed the jar into the bin, only to drag the entire rubbish bin over to the fridge and completely gut it.

‘Hey, that’s my food.’

‘If you want to die a slow and horrible death from botulism, sure, eat away.’

‘This is a horrible death, this homecoming hell.’ His crutches clanged to the floor as he slowly sank onto his couch. With the kitchen bench blocking his view, he rubbed his ribs that irritated him to no end.

Wait a second? Did this mean Izzy was going to cook and clean the place?

Hmm… Stroking his chin—noting he needed a shave and a shower to get rid of that hospital smell—this arrangement might just work out.

The large living room and kitchen area held little furniture, just the table and chairs that came with the place. It had a bookcase he’d slapped together from some left-over wooden pallets, just so he had a place for his rodeo trophies, ribbons and belt buckles. And he had a couch. But the place could do with a clean, maybe a coat of paint. ‘What do you want to do with the house?’ Not that he was giving in to her request to sell, he was just too tired to argue.

‘Clean the walls and windows. Maybe paint it?’ Izzy dragged inside an empty wooden crate, tipping it over to create a coffee table, putting a glass of water on top.

Hmm, this might work out nicely.

‘You seriously didn’t buy any more furniture?’

‘What you see is what you get, sweetheart.’

Izzy opened the wall of windows that offered magnificent views of two stunning vistas on the property, even if the view was blocked by thick cobwebs and dust. ‘I forget, how many sheds are there?’

‘Three. , if you count the bore shed.’

‘Did you ever get any stockhorses?’

‘Been busy, working away.’ He always wanted to. But having worked on countless cattle stations, it’d have to be a pretty special stockhorse to catch his attention.

‘Ah-huh.’ Izzy paused to look at the photos stuck on his now-empty fridge. There was a snapshot of him and his best mates—Jake, Ryan and Barry—from the last time they were all together at Jake’s party at Danbunnan Station. There were even photos of his favourite redhead, Bree, and her grandfather, Charlie. Damn, he missed that old man.

But what sucked was when Izzy found the photos of her, too. Back then, they wore matching smiles. Today they wore matching scowls.

‘I don’t want you going through my stuff.’

‘What stuff?’ She waved her hand at the near-empty room. ‘Although, it’ll make it easier for me to clean.’ She rolled up her shirt sleeves. ‘I’ll take the spare room.’ Grabbing her suitcase, she rolled it behind her as she headed for the corridor.

‘There’s still only one bed in this place.’

She screwed her face up in horror. ‘Like that’s gonna happen. Not after how many buckle bunnies—’

‘ No other female has EVER set foot in this place! ’ The words bounced off the walls to bite him on the arse. He wasn’t meant to spill that detail, not with her. Worse, he’d stood too fast his ribs were killing him, while he struggled to balance on his good leg. ‘Bree has been here, of course.’ Bree was like his sister.

‘How is Bree coping?’

‘Good, considering…’ Aww, come on, why was the world constantly reminding him about Charlie? The old man’s passing should not have hit him this hard, especially when they all knew it was coming.

‘I’ll sleep on my swag.’ He hugged his ribs as he lowered himself back onto the couch, his leg throbbing something fierce with his ankle swollen.

‘You can’t sleep in your swag.’ Izzy dragged that crate closer and lifted his leg, setting it down on a rolled-up towel. He was helpless to stop her, but it did ease the pain. ‘It’ll hurt to get up and down from the floor with your leg and ribs the way they are. No, you take the bed. I’ll take the couch—after I bomb it for fleas and ticks.’

‘I don’t have a dog.’ They’d planned to get one once they officially moved in, but it never happened.

Having her here was bringing up too much history he didn’t want to remember—but he couldn’t forget. Not now with Isobel Callahan standing in his living room.

‘Do you know someone who can lend me a bed for a few weeks?’

‘I do…’ He shifted in his seat. ‘You can take my bed. I just need a camp bed.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking for my phone.’ He got to his crutches. It was painful to use them, but his leg wasn’t ready to ditch them yet, so he had to suffer with his ribs, biting him with each step he took. ‘Then I’m going to take a long shower.’

‘You can’t get your stitches wet.’

‘Buck me! ’ He hated this.

‘Don’t worry, the hospital gave me some stuff to tape it up.’ At the kitchen counter, the large brown paper bag crinkled as she opened it to produce bandages as part of his get-well gift from the hospital.

‘Are you going to give me a sponge bath, too?’

The glare she gave him was enough to freeze an outback waterhole, even in the summer.

It only made him grin.

Luckily, it was the fridge door that copped the brunt of her temper, as she slammed it shut after putting his medications away, making him grin wider.

‘Make yourself at home.’ Even though he wasn’t sure about selling Dustfire, it could do with a clean-up. ‘You do know what a home is?’ Because Dustfire used to mean something to both of them once.

‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that? Because this place doesn’t look like you’ve done anything to make it feel like home.’

No, it hadn’t. And he’d done his best to avoid the place ever since she left for Sydney just over three years ago.

To be fair, he did tell her to go, though.

And he’d barely survived.

But with her high-powered job on the other side of the country, there was no way she’d stay long. So why bother being nice. ‘I don’t need you here.’

‘I’m here now, so deal with it.’