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  Praise for The Wrong Callahan

  ‘For romance lovers, this is the dreamy can’t-put-down read for you!’ –Australian Women’s Weekly

  ‘I loved this book … The Wrong Callahan is a well-paced tale of love, betrayal, family, PTSD and small town communities. Another five-star read from me!’ –Beauty and Lace

  ‘I enjoyed this book immensely … I don’t have words to describe exactly how excited I am to read the second book in this trilogy next year. I loved being on Stringybark Creek with the Callahan family and just want to dive back into it.’ –Noveltea Corner

  ‘Just in time for Christmas, Karly Lane returns with another winning read … Although The Wrong Callahan is here to entertain rural romance readers, Karly Lane would love the audience to take away a small sense of appreciation of the work our agricultural workers commit to, day in day out. It truly is tremendous and worthy of our attention in this current challenging environment for our Aussie farmers.’ –Mrs B’s Book Reviews

  Praise for Mr Right Now

  ‘To say that I’ve been waiting for the sequel to The Wrong Callahan might be understating just how excited I’ve been to read this book! Karly Lane has a wonderful way of creating a sense of place; and the characters leap off the page. These are books I know I can fall into time and time again and still be transported.’ –Noveltea Corner

  ‘Mr Right Now is another delightful read from one of my favourite authors, Karly Lane … Lane’s stories have depth and explore many themes that are relevant to relationships in all forms, exploring father/son relationships and the old-ways versus the new-ways, farming accidents, diversity on the land, droughts, storms, community support, family and friendships … I simply can’t wait for book 3.’ –Beauty and Lace

  Karly Lane lives on the mid north coast of New South Wales. Proud mum to four children and wife of one very patient mechanic, she is lucky enough to spend her day doing the two things she loves most—being a mum and writing stories set in beautiful rural Australia.

  Also by Karly Lane

  North Star

  Morgan’s Law

  Bridie’s Choice

  Poppy’s Dilemma

  Gemma’s Bluff

  Tallowood Bound

  Second Chance Town

  Third Time Lucky

  If Wishes Were Horses

  Six Ways to Sunday

  Someone Like You

  The Wrong Callahan

  Mr Right Now

  First published in 2019

  Copyright © Karly Lane 2019

  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 prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email:[email protected]

  Web:www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 923 9

  eISBN 978 1 76087 298 4

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover Design: Romina Panetta Edwards

  Cover Photographs: Getty Images and iStock

  To my children, Jessica, Kaitlin, Rourke and Milly

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  One

  Hadley felt the weariness of the long hours in the car fade away and a sense of homecoming fill her. Stringybark Station. It was good to be back. She pulled up in the driveway and climbed out of the car, stretching her cramped legs and aching shoulders. There was nothing like the smell of wide-open spaces—and nothing as peaceful as the stillness and quiet of simply stopping and allowing yourself to listen to … nothing. She closed her eyes and tipped back her head, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face and letting herself enjoy the instant serenity that always came with being home.

  Her phone began to ring inside the car, breaking the moment, and with a reluctant sigh Hadley opened her eyes and got back in. She glanced at the name on the screen and then turned off the phone. Another reporter wanting a quote … or, better yet, a story. Hadley gave a harsh snort at that—there was a special kind of irony in the fact that she made a living roaming the world in search of a good story, and now she was the source of mindless entertainment for local tabloids and cheap gossip magazines.

  Maybe as a lowly war correspondent, she’d have been able to fly under the radar, but unfortunately when a lowly overseas correspondent marries a national media celebrity, it was always going to be impossible to keep their divorce out of the spotlight.

  She pulled back out onto the dirt driveway, the tranquillity shattered. She’d been dreading this part for months.

  Hadley might be a grown woman with a successful career in breaking news from all around the world, but when it came to telling her parents that the marriage she’d been leading them to believe was fine was actually over … well, she might as well be thirteen years old again and about to tell them the principal would be calling with unpleasant news.

  The house loomed ahead and Hadley smiled despite the anxiety she was feeling. She knew her parents wouldn’t disown her over this, but she hated disappointing them. She hated being a failure, and that’s what she felt like—a big fat failure. How hard was it to stay married, for goodness sake? She hadn’t even been able to do that. Worse still—her family had always had doubts about Mitch, but she’d been so determined to prove everyone wrong that she’d ignored all the warning signs that she was making a huge mistake.

  She’d stupidly believed she had to be more like her perfect older sister, Harmony. She’d grown up in her sister’s shadow at school, the teachers perplexed that two children from the same family could be so different. Harmony had never been more aptly named. She was the perfect student. The perfect daughter, the perfect wife. She left school and married into a perfectly respectable family from Griffith, then went on to have two perfect children—one boy and one girl. She had a beautiful house and an expensive car. She was on all the important committees and volunteered in her spare time. The woman was a walking advertisement for the perfect life. Hadley gave a small, bitter snort. Until she wasn’t.

  Her perfect sister was now divorced, but even that didn’t seem to have dimmed the light of her halo. She was now the perfect single mother … another failing Hadley felt keenly after she’d had a miscarriage only a handful of months earlier. But she wasn’t going there. Focus on the anger, she reminded herself. That’s what had got her through the past few months. It was far more empowering to be angry. Hadley still couldn’t quite believe it. Harmony had been having an affair with her husband.

  Hadley blinked away a sting in
her eyes but she’d managed to plaster a bright smile on her face by the time her mother appeared on the verandah upstairs and give a surprised yelp of delight at seeing her daughter.

  ‘Robert!’ Lavinia Callahan yelled. ‘Robert, come and see who just arrived!’

  God, she loved her parents. Married over forty years, they were still as in love as they had been back when they first met. And they were absolutely devoted to each and every one of their four children. They were her anchor.

  Hadley quickly climbed the front stairs of the sprawling, low-set Queenslander she’d grown up in and was immediately wrapped in her mother’s arms. For a split second she could imagine she was six years old again and safe from all the troubles in the world.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you,’ she said, grateful that her father chose that moment to wander outside and see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Well, I’ll be! Look what the cat dragged in,’ her father grinned, opening his arms wide at her approach.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ Hadley breathed in the smell of his freshly washed shirt as he hugged her tight.

  ‘Wanted to surprise us, she says,’ Lavinia admonished from behind them. ‘You and your brother have a lot in common,’ she added. ‘This is something Linc would do.’

  ‘We just like to keep you on your toes.’

  ‘How long are you here for? What are you doing? Where’s Mitch?’ Lavinia shot off the questions in rapid succession, her gaze moving to scan her daughter’s car.

  ‘Give the girl time to breathe, woman,’ Bob chuckled.

  ‘Ah, Mitch is …’ Hadley hesitated as her mother looked back at her expectantly. Tell her, a voice inside pressed. ‘… not here,’ she finished.

  ‘Well, I can see that. Is he coming out later?’

  ‘No. He’s working,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Oh. That’s a shame,’ Lavinia said, patting her daughter’s arm. ‘I guess that means we get you all to ourselves then.’

  Hadley smiled weakly. She had to tell them, but surely there was some kind of protocol with things like this? You couldn’t very well be expected to announce your divorce within the first five minutes. Her parents both stood there beaming at her. No, it would be better if she broached it gently later on.

  Two

  Oliver Dawson grabbed his dog, Diesel, by the scruff of the neck and rubbed him vigorously in their daily greeting ritual. ‘You wanna go for a drive?’ he asked, roughing the animal lightly in a show of affection. ‘Go on then, get in,’ he said and watched as the dog turned in happy circles and then headed over to the farm ute.

  Ollie opened the cabin door and the red-coated heeler leaped gracefully up onto the passenger seat and waited patiently for his owner to start the car.

  The sound of Ollie’s ringtone made him pause and he pulled the phone from his pocket. ‘Hey, loser,’ he greeted his best friend and neighbour, Griffin Callahan, in lieu of a more traditional hello. ‘Ready to get your butt kicked tonight?’

  ‘Whatever, tosser,’ Griff scoffed. ‘That’s what I’m calling about. I can’t make darts tonight.’

  ‘What? You really are scared, aren’t ya?’ Ollie added in a gleeful tone.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘So what’s your excuse?’

  ‘We’ve got a surprise visitor. Hadley’s come home. Mum wants us all at dinner tonight.’

  Ollie felt something kick in his chest briefly at the mention of his mate’s sister, but he cleared his throat and forced his attention back to the conversation. ‘I guess I could let you off this once. I’m gonna tell the guys that you were only using your sister as an excuse ’cause you were scared, though,’ he added.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Griffin drawled. ‘Enjoy your moment. Next week you won’t have anything to gloat about. Hey,’ he added before they hung up, ‘drop by and say g’day to Hads when you get a chance.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. I’ll do that,’ Ollie said before disconnecting the call and staring out through the front window in an attempt to get his disjointed thoughts under control.

  Hadley Callahan had always managed to throw him off guard, even as kids. He and his twin sister, Olivia, had grown up with the Callahan kids, and for a long time they’d been more like cousins than neighbours, until one day they weren’t … or, more to the point, Hadley wasn’t. Seemingly out of the blue, Ollie had started having different feelings towards his best friend’s little sister and everything changed.

  He’d never acted on any of these impulses, though. He wasn’t game. Griffin would probably have killed him if he’d told him he liked his sister as he’d always been protective of her. And then there was Hadley herself—she’d been no stranger to throwing a punch if she had to, and he hadn’t been too keen on being on the end of one if she didn’t feel the same way about him. But that had been when they were in high school. They’d just been kids.

  Diesel gave a soft whine beside him and tilted his head. ‘Yeah, all right,’ Ollie said, reaching over to turn on the engine. ‘I’m goin’.’

  Drop by and say g’day, Griff had said. Ollie clenched his jaw as he drove down the paddock to where he’d left his tractor yesterday afternoon. He wished it was that easy. It should be that easy—only every time Hadley came home it stirred up this restlessness and regret inside him.

  Once he had thought maybe he could take a chance and tell Hadley how he felt, but something had stopped him. What was the point? It couldn’t work. She travelled all over the world and had a career she wasn’t likely to give up in order to live back here. He was a farmer. It was what he knew and, after his dad’s accident, it was his responsibility to keep things running on the farm. It was doubtful his father would ever go back to full-time farming again—his mother wanted him to retire, go travelling—but the new paddock-to-plate venture they’d started as something to give their old man an interest had really taken off, much more than any of them had anticipated. There was no way Ollie could leave the place even if he wanted to.

  And, yet, there were times when he couldn’t shake the feeling that Hadley Callahan was the woman he was meant to be with. Of course, her wedding had been a bit of a setback…

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter as he remembered watching her walk down the aisle towards the moron she’d married. He’d always thought it was a bit of a joke when movies got to the part in a wedding ceremony when anyone in the congregation who had reason to object to the marriage was told to speak now or forever hold their peace, but he’d found he was somewhat disappointed that Hadley’s ceremony hadn’t included it. Okay, so he probably wouldn’t have actually stood up and objected. After all, what would he say? ‘You’re making a mistake, Hadley. You can’t marry a tosser like Mitch Samuals.’

  Ever since she’d announced her engagement, her whole family had tried to delicately point this out. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t have thanked him for an interruption to her picture-perfect bloody wedding. So instead he’d sat there, feeling like his insides had been ripped out and struggling to look like the happy childhood friend from next door. He’d made sure he dulled the pain at the reception by drinking more than he’d drunk in a long time—or since, for that matter—but it hadn’t really helped.

  He’d even convinced himself that he’d moved on from whatever this lingering feeling was. Now that Hadley was married, the sane part of his brain told him, it really was time to forget her. And then, during last harvest, Hadley’s dick of a husband had been caught out, with Hadley’s older sister of all people. Of course, Ollie wasn’t supposed to know anything about it, only he’d found out from his sister, Olivia, who’d been the one to stumble upon the little rendezvous and had confided in him. For a lot of reasons, he wished he hadn’t heard about the betrayal—mostly because it was damn hard not to act on his compulsion to beat the crap out of Mitch for hurting Hadley, but running a close second was the fact that ever since he’d found out, his hopes had been reignited and they were currently raging like an
out-of-control bushfire.

  It hadn’t been hard to keep the secret around Hadley, given she was never here, but it had been tough knowing that Griff, Hadley’s older brother, knew about it but that he still couldn’t talk it over with him. Ollie had given Griff plenty of chances to bring it up, asking if there was something on his mind when he’d clearly been distracted, but Griff was the loyal kind and he’d never mentioned it. He and Griff were a lot alike that way, Ollie thought. But it would have been a hell of a lot easier over these past few months if he could have vented a bit of his frustration alongside his best friend.

  And now Hadley was home.

  Ollie looked up at the troop carrier that came rolling towards the tractor and gave a weary sigh. For a guy who’d been so hard to win over to the idea of this damn business venture, Bill Dawson sure looked like he was enjoying himself. Ollie watched as his father pulled up in the paddock nearby, climbing out of the driver’s seat slowly and standing in front of a small group of students and their teacher.

  Ollie gave a wave as he passed by them on his next run. Although he’d never admit it aloud to anyone, he actually got a bit of a kick out of the excited waves he always got back from the kids. It didn’t matter if they were a kindergarten group or a TAFE class—they all waved. It seemed every age group loved a big tractor.

  He played a minimal role in his family’s paddock-to-plate business. This was his parents’ and sister’s project, and he was happy to let them deal with it, allowing him to concentrate on the farming side. Initially he hadn’t been as optimistic as his sister about the new venture. In fact, he’d never thought she’d get their old man to go for it in the first place. But he’d underestimated his sister’s powers of persuasion. He’d also underestimated how popular this thing would turn out to be. He had to hand it to her, when Olivia got an idea in her head she threw herself into it one hundred per cent. His father had also surprised him by just how motivated he was. He really seemed to enjoy having a bunch of kids traipsing about after him, asking questions all day. Ollie couldn’t remember him ever being that patient with him. Then again, he supposed, his dad wasn’t trying to teach a headstrong son how to do something, while also racing against the clock to get all the farm jobs done. They hadn’t had the luxury of time when he had been growing up—his father had been trying to run the place with the help of Ollie and only a few hired contractors, so things had been tough.