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Gravel crunched under Carter’s feet as shades of orange streaked the sky like someone had tipped a paint can over.

The heat from the day was fading but he wouldn’t call it cool, just more comfortable.

His hair was still wet from his shower and the evening was his to recuperate after the challenge of day two at camp.

Raucous laughter bellowed from the guest rooms behind him.

Even if he was welcome, he had no desire to join his teammates.

His energy for putting on a happy face was depleted after spending the last twenty minutes reassuring his mum he was okay.

Next time Jonathan brought up how worried she was, Carter was going to tell him to look in a mirror and learn how to shut his mouth.

Carter’s mum didn’t need to know every comment directed at him, especially given the tirade that had happened today that had come from his teammates.

Carter sighed and focused on inhaling the clean air as he headed further away from the laughter with no real destination in mind.

In their room, Ethan was FaceTiming his family and Carter had gone wandering to give him some privacy.

Horses were grazing in the paddock to his left and he could hear the bleating of sheep coming from somewhere, but he couldn’t pinpoint it thanks to all the hills.

Noisy yet serene. He could definitely do with more of that back in his life.

A shu?ing accompanied by some groans came from a shed, snatching his attention. The young farmhand with pitch black hair was there, dragging out a bale of very green hay. She was balancing a bucket on top.

He met her in a couple of strides. ‘Can I give you a hand?’

She looked up at him, wide-eyed with surprise. ‘You’re Carter Hendrix.’

He chuckled. ‘Last time I checked.’

‘Wow.’

The bucket toppled and he caught it before the contents could spill out. He peeked in to find a bizarre mix of leaves, twigs, grass, corn, banana and blackberries with a bottle full of thick milk resting up against the side.

‘Good catch.’

He held the bucket out to her. ‘How about you take this, and I’ll take the hay …’

‘I’m Mara.’ She smiled broadly. ‘And it’s alfalfa.’

‘Like the kid from The Little Rascals ?’

Her smiled dropped into confusion and he wanted to laugh. Obviously, the age gap was bigger than he thought. Or his mum’s choice to expose him to the classics was different from other parents’ approach to pop culture.

‘Okay, no idea who that is, but this is also called lucerne hay, if that helps? That’s what Indy said, anyway, so you were pretty close, I guess, and yeah, you can carry it.’ She let the bale drop to the ground and accepted the bucket.

Carter’s arms were still tight but the lucerne was like feathers compared to the big chunks of tree trunk they’d had to carry from the top paddock. Whenever a single piece had touched the ground, the pair carrying it had had to do thirty burpees each.

Mara led the way down from the sheds, a direction he hadn’t travelled yet.

‘We call this road the gully track because it eventually leads to a really pretty spot between a couple of hills where the creek is and there’s these rocks that you can sit on or jump across.

Indy said when there’s lots of rain it turns into a bit of a waterfall, which makes sticking around for another storm kind of tempting.

Over there’s my cabin.’ She pointed to a line of four cabins on the other side of the hill.

‘Theresa and Janet share the one on this end. They work in the kitchen and have been here for almost as long as Nova has. Mine’s next to it.

It has two bedrooms because I’ll have to share it with whoever comes in next as I’m the newest person here.

The smaller two are Emery’s and Indy’s; they practically own theirs and have them set up really cool. ’

Carter was grateful for her chatty commentary as he eyed the two buildings on the far end.

Which one was Indy’s? He could picture her on the verandah of either, overlooking the sheep in the paddock out front.

He imagined it’d be a decent view from over there.

He shook his head. It didn’t matter. ‘Pretty good spot,’ he commented.

‘Better than Nova’s house, which is along from the sheds back there. The netball courts are there—’

He swivelled his head to the other side of the road, where she was pointing.

‘Emery said we get some netball teams coming up here.’

They kept walking and Carter took it all in—the tracks, the older-style wooden buildings and the natural clusters of bush separating the areas. It was so green! The grass made him want to return to childhood and roll down it.

‘Up here,’ Mara gestured, taking the stairs at the end of the verandah of a building similar to the cabins. ‘This is who the alfalfa’s for.’

Holding the bale higher, Carter took the steps two at a time, his hamstrings stretching.

There was a temporary fence across the end of the verandah, separating it into a pen of sorts, and plenty of bedding to make it comfortable.

Nestled into the corner was the most gorgeous pair of big brown eyes set in a tan and caramel face.

‘Oh,’ he crooned as the small deer stood on shaky legs. Bandages were wrapped around three of them and an angry-looking gash had been stitched together on its neck.

Mara let herself into the pen, setting the bucket down and grabbing the bottle. ‘Hey, baby girl, it’s okay, I’ve got the goods.’

The deer tilted her head up to the bottle that Mara held and sucked noisily. It was the cutest sound in the world and Carter was sure bigger men than him had crumbled at it.

‘You’ve got a baby deer?’

‘Otherwise known as a fawn,’ Mara said as her arm shook with the vigorous sucking. ‘You can touch her if you want.’

Carter leant over the side of the pen and gently stroked the deer’s back. It was coarser than he’d been expecting and the white spots made it seem like she was covered in confetti love hearts. ‘What happened to her?’

‘We found her a couple of weeks ago in one of the scrub areas on the property down in the gully. She’d been mauled by wild dogs and Indy thinks her parents thought she was dead because normally they’re really protective of their young and will always come back for them.

But the blood around the wounds was dry.

Indy made us fall back and wait just in case, but they never came. ’

‘So you brought her back here?’

‘Yep, Emery and Indy loaded her in the tray of the ute. Indy sat with her while Emery drove like a mad woman. Nova got the vet out, who stitched up the gash on her neck, gave her a heap of needles and bandaged her legs. She didn’t think they were broken, just chewed.

’ Mara crinkled her nose. ‘But poor thing was so scared. The vet reckons she’s about two months old and she would’ve been bonded with her mum. She had no idea what the bottle was.’

‘She seems to recognise it now.’

‘Thanks to Indy,’ Mara said, moving to stand by the temporary fence. ‘She sat with the fawn all night until eventually she was either too hungry or too tired to fight it and she drank. Now she only needs a couple of bottles a day with lots of herbivore food.’

The fawn was already sni?ng around the bucket and Mara tipped it out into a smaller feed dish. She passed Carter the bucket and motioned for the lucerne hay, which he lifted over the fence.

‘Sounds like Indy’s the right person to have around,’ he said, thinking of his blue-eyed beauty. Then he scowled. She wasn’t his and he had no right thinking of her like that. ‘Let me guess, you named her Bambi?’

‘What is it with you and kids’ movies?’ Mara laughed. ‘But wrong. Bambi’s a boy. We did think of the movie, though. Bambi’s girlfriend is Faline but—’

‘It was vetoed for not being cute enough.’

Carter turned as Indy came up the stairs, dressed in a black singlet and a pair of denim cut-offs. Her hair was pulled into a bun at the top of her head, showing off the blonde ends and leaving her blue eyes fierce, even in the fading light. Carter’s mouth dried up instantly.

‘We called her Blossom instead,’ Indy continued, coming to stand near them. She leant against the railing, a can of Great Northern Super Crisp in her hand, and eyeballed Mara. ‘Did you bring him here? You know guests aren’t allowed in staff areas.’

‘I carried the alfalfa.’ Oh, god. I carried the alfalfa? Again, he wanted a big old hole to open in the ground and swallow him up. Why couldn’t he have remembered to call it lucerne? Indy already looked mighty pissed off that he was here, and he was just proving that he didn’t fit in.

A sudden urge to belong in her orbit came over him. Everything he’d just learnt about the strong, confident and capable woman she was made him want to know more. It was a new feeling for him and he’d like it to hang around. But judging from the annoyed fire in Indy’s eyes, he was the only one.