Page 3 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

His brother was somewhere inside, ten years younger and almost a stranger. Reid had been running Jeddah Creek in the four-month gap between their father passing and Judah getting home, and he’d done a good job.

The boy—man—had a strong network of school friends, all freshly graduated and most of them taking a break year before stepping into whatever their families had planned for them. Plenty of Reid’s friends were here tonight and he hoped to hell they could hold their liquor because he wasn’t exactly policing them. Maybe he should have a word with the exorbitantly priced bar staff the event co-ordinators had insisted on hiring. Let them know that monitoring the alcohol intake of his guests, young and old, was their job, not his.

And then Reid stepped into place at his side, his blue eyes bright and searching.

‘She’s not here yet. She promised she’d come,’ said Reid by way of greeting.

‘Who?’

‘Bridie.’

There was only one Bridie in Judah’s universe and he’d been trying to set up a meeting with her for days. So far, she hadn’t even had the courtesy to return his calls. ‘Maybe she had a pressing engagement elsewhere.’

‘Not Bridie. She’s practically a shut-in. Wouldn’t leave Devil’s Kiss station for years after the incident, and even now she has to work her way up to going out.’

‘Then perhaps she’s working her way up to it.’ The thought of Bridie not making the most of her freedom didn’t sit well with him. Stubborn tendrils of anger flickered to life inside him. He’d sacrificed his freedom in service to her. The least she could have done was make the most of her opportunities.

‘I know she was worried about how everyone might gossip about her and you,’ continued Reid. ‘She wasn’t looking forward to that part.’

Boo-hoo.

‘She’s a photographer now,’ Reid said next.

He knew.

‘Landscapes mostly, of around here. I took her up in the mustering helicopter a month or so back. We ended up taking the door off and rigging up a harness so she could lean out and take aerial shots. I haven’t seen them yet, but she said they turned out real good.’

They had.

Resentment curled, a low buzz in the pit of his stomach, and all because his teenage brother was what? Friends with Bridie Starr? Her confidant?

Why hadn’t she returned any of his calls?

Bridie was in between him and his brother in age. Twenty-three now, no clueless girl. Would he even recognise her? Of all the photos sent to him these past seven plus years, not one had been of her.

‘See that your friends don’t drink too much tonight. The last thing we need is an incident.’

‘I know. They know. There won’t be one.’

How could his teenage brother be so very sure?

Reid seemed to read his mind, and smiled, fierce and swift and just that little bit familiar. ‘Your reputation precedes you, man. They’ll behave.’

‘Does it cause you trouble? My reputation?’

Reid shrugged. ‘Not out here.’

‘What about when you were at school?’

Another shrug. ‘Saved me the trouble of being friends with fair-weather people. That’s what Dad used to say.’ He squinted towards the east. ‘This could be them. Dunno why I expected them to come in the long way around when it’s so much quicker to cut across country.’

Judah waited as the thin spiral of dust on the horizon turned into a plume, and a dusty once-white ute came into view. Hard to know what he was feeling, with his emotions locked down so tight, but now was not the time to lose the iron control he’d spent so many years developing.

So what if curiosity was killing him?

So what if the thought of her being a hermit made him seethe?

He could still use that information against her if she didn’t bend to his will and sell him back his land. And why wouldn’t she sell? She’d done nothing with the land she now owned. It was just sitting there waiting to be reclaimed.

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