Page 59 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

So Judah went to the adjacent walk-in cupboard and changed his shirt. ‘Anything else?’

‘Decent boots. Not work boots.’

‘Is this a formal dinner situation?’ Because he’d been expecting something a little more casual. Picnic from the back of her Land Rover somewhere out on the plains while the sun went down.

‘I am sworn to secrecy. But if we don’t get cracking we’re going to be late. Sunset waits for no man.’

It wasn’t until they were walking to the helicopter that Judah spoke again. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Up.’

‘Can you be any more specific?’

‘Nope.’

Reid flew helicopters with the confidence only youth and long hours in the seat could bring. Mustering would see them flying low and darting about, but this time he took them high and smooth and put them on a north-east course towards river bend. Not so far to go, then, and he wondered why Bridie hadn’t simply asked him to drive there. But Reid overshot the mark, so maybe river bend wasn’t their destination at all. Reid then confused him twice over by swinging them around to approach the river again, this time with the sun behind them.

And then he saw it: a word spelled out on the ground with a combination of rocks, dead branches and some kind of white material.

The word was STRENGTH.

‘I’m working from a script here, so let me get it right,’ Reid told him through their headset two-ways. ‘This is what Bridie sees in you. A man of strength. I see it too.’

Before Judah could comment, Reid swung the helicopter around in a show-off move and headed west.

Another word waited for them in the channel country, and it was as if a demented fairy had scoured the land for as many moveable rocks as they could find.

COURAGE was the word.

‘This too,’ said Reid, and circled it twice before taking them north.

‘There’s more?’

‘Better believe it. Which is the point of this whole exercise. That you come to believe what she sees in you. Good thing she ran out of fabric.’

The next word said HONOUR.

‘I like that one for you,’ said Reid. ‘I think it’s my favourite.’

The next word was RESILIENCE, and it had been shaped out of some kind of heavy-duty canvas, pinned down by tent pegs and rocks.

‘That one nearly did her in,’ said tour guide Reid, while Judah sat there awash in words and none of them his. ‘I had to help her with it because she was nowhere near done when I came to pick her up. Too many letters, man, way too many letters and not enough rocks in the world. Try PEP, I said. What about GRIT? I didn’t do badly in my English exams, I had suggestions, but no. It had to be RESILIENCE. There’s not a scrap of tarpaulin left in her shed.’ Reid paused. ‘Or ours.’

The next word was HOPE.

‘She says a man without hope can’t begin to imagine the future the way you do. Or work so hard to make it happen the way you do. Can’t say I disagree with her. She had more words—it was a very long list, but there’s only one more.’

‘Good.’ Because they were doing him in.

The last word was JOY.

‘Joy?’ he asked gruffly. ‘Me? Now I’m sure she needs glasses.’

‘Yeah.’ Reid laughed. ‘I queried that one too, but she swears there’s a lifetime of it in store for you if you’ll take her on. I’m to give you this now.’ Reid handed him a white envelope. ‘To read.’

In the envelope was a sheet of office paperwork, and words printed in a fancy font inviting him to the wedding of Miss Bridie Elizabeth Starr and Lord Judah Leopold Blake.

Date: Today

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