Christmas at Coorah Creek (Choc Lit)
Read Christmas at Coorah Creek (Choc Lit) Online
Authors: Janet Gover
Christmas at Coorah Creek
Janet Gover
Titles in the Coorah Creek series:
Flight to Coorah Creek
The Wild One
A Coorah Creek novel
Where heroes are like chocolate – irresistible!
Copyright © 2015 Janet Gover
Published 2015 by Choc Lit Limited
Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey, GU15 2AB, UK
The right of Janet Gover to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE
EPUB ISBN 978-1-78189-268-8
MOBI ISBN 978-1-78189-269-5
For John, always
Acknowledgements
I doubt very much that I could do this without the tremendous support I receive from my family and friends. You all know who you are and how much I love you.
For this book, special thanks go to my dear friend and a fabulous writer, Jean Fullerton, for her help with the nursing bits and to the wonderful Rachel Summerson for being a tough, but brilliant, critic and helping me become the best writer I can be.
Joining the Romantic Novelists’ Association was the second best thing I’ve ever done – without the association and the friends I have made there, this would be a lonely journey indeed.
The very best thing I ever did was to fall in love with an Englishman with green eyes. Thanks for everything John.
Thank you also to the members of the Choc Lit Tasting Panel who enjoyed
Christmas at Coorah Creek
: Jennifer S., Cindy T, Lizzy, Linda Sp., Leanne F., Alma H., Helen D., Parama S., Sarah N. and Sharon M.
And last, but by no means least, thanks to the team at Choc Lit for loving my stories and taking such care with them, and to the Chocliteers – for being the best colleagues a girl could ever have.
Contents
More Choc Lit from Janet Gover
Chapter One
In the middle of nowhere, Katie Brooks’ car exploded.
At least that’s how it felt as thick steam burst out from under the bonnet. Suddenly Katie was driving blind at high speed as the steam enveloped the front of her car. She lifted her foot from the accelerator and reached for the windscreen wipers. That only made things worse. The dust on her windscreen turned to mud and was smeared in a messy rust-coloured arc across the glass. Cursing, Katie turned the steering wheel and let the vehicle roll slowly to a stop on the side of the road. She got out and took a step back to look at the car she had owned for a little less than forty-eight hours. She didn’t know much about cars, but she didn’t need to know much to be certain that the blue Holden Commodore wasn’t going anywhere in the near future.
‘That’ll teach me to buy a twenty year old car,’ Katie muttered under her breath. ‘So much for an “Australian classic”. That’s the last time I listen to a used car salesman.’
She took a deep breath and slowly turned in a circle.
She was standing in the middle of the longest stretch of straight flat road she had ever encountered. The thin grey line extended to the horizon in either direction, without so much as a building or another car in sight. In fact, she hadn’t seen another human being for what seemed like hours. The only living thing she’d spotted was a kangaroo hopping across the road about a hundred miles back. So much space and so few people! Would she ever get used to it?
The geyser pouring from underneath her bonnet was beginning to ease. She opened the door and walked to the front of the car, reaching inside to feel for the catch. Very carefully she raised the bonnet, releasing another cloud of steam that quickly dissipated. She stared at her engine for a few seconds, before admitting it was a waste of time. She had no idea what to do. If she was going to get out of here, it wasn’t going to be in the Commodore. She swung her leg to kick the offending vehicle, but at the last minute, pulled the blow. In her open-toed flat sandals, the kick was likely to hurt her foot more than the car.
She walked into the middle of the road and looked back the way she had come. Nothing. She looked in the direction she’d been heading. Somewhere out there was a small town called Coorah Creek. She did remember seeing a sign a while ago, but had no idea how far she still needed to go. And all the road signs were in kilometres, not miles. So even if she knew how many kilometres, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d know how far that really was.
As she stood gazing down the road, bits from her reading leaped into the forefront of her mind. The bits about people dying of thirst when their cars broke down. And the bits about poisonous snakes and spiders. There probably weren’t any man-eating crocodiles here, a million miles … kilometres … from the coast. But weren’t the wild pigs dangerous too? Suddenly a whole less sure of herself, Katie leaned back against the car.
‘Ow!’ She leaped forward as the hot metal burned her thighs through the thin cotton of her skirt.
That was another thing. It was hot here. Really, really hot! Her car’s on-again-off-again air-conditioning had barely been worth the name. And now she was standing in the blazing sun in an area desperately low on trees. She wandered along the road a short distance, looking for a tree big enough to give her a spot of shade. Nothing. She turned her face to the sky – a brilliant arc of totally cloudless blue. She could already feel her pale English skin starting to burn.
‘Well,’ she said to the vast empty spaces, ‘I left cold, grey, miserable London feeling burnt out by my job and that I’d lost my way. Now here I am, lost in the middle of nowhere and about to get really burned.’
The frustration building inside her suddenly exploded into a burst of laughter, but she was aware of the undertone of hysteria.
Returning to the car, she opened the rear door and rummaged around in the bags strewn over the back seat. Somewhere in there was a hat. And some sunscreen. Sweat was dripping from her forehead by the time she found them. She stepped back from the car and began slathering the white cream over her nose and cheeks.
‘So now what do I do?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Do I wait with the car like it said in the books? Or do I start walking?’
The only answer was the distant haunting caw of a crow.
Surely someone would come along soon.
She reached for her handbag, and retrieved her mobile phone. Squinting against the bright sunlight, she looked at it with little hope. She’d already discovered that large parts of Australia did not have mobile coverage. Either that or her phone was rubbish, which was also entirely possible.
Grimacing in disgust, she tossed the phone back onto the front seat.
Just a couple of weeks ago, she’d been wrapped in a heavy wool coat, fighting her way through crowds of shoppers in Oxford Street and admiring the best Christmas lights in London. She had cursed those crowds and their armloads of parcels and bags blocking her way. Right now she would give anything to see a few of them walking towards her. She would even offer to carry those parcels for them.
Once more she looked in both directions along the road. Nothing but the distant heat haze shimmering across the grey tarmac. It looked like water, or …
Water.
She was suddenly dying of thirst.
Katie turned back to her car. She wasn’t a total idiot. She’d bought water at the last petrol station.
Ah-ha!
She held the plastic bottle aloft in triumphant. But her joy was short lived. There was only about an inch of liquid left in the bottom. She removed the lid but hesitated. Should she drink it now or wait. Surely she wouldn’t be here long? Would she?
Defiantly she drank the last of the water. There! It was done. Now someone had to find her.
She looked down at her arms, trying to see if the skin was already turning pink. It felt as if it should be. For the first time, she felt a real twinge of fear. As a nurse, she knew about the effects of sunstroke and dehydration. But what could she do? There wasn’t any shade.
Maybe she could make her own.
She opened her suitcase and eventually found a long, light cotton skirt. She squinted up to judge the angle of the sun then opened both car doors. She tried to spread the skirt over them to form a tent. It didn’t work. The patch of shade created wouldn’t have sheltered a mouse. Even that little bit of effort had raised a sweat, and she could feel her energy being drained away by the relentless heat.
She looked at the skirt in her hands. It had been a gift from her sister, and she was quite fond of it. But she was also quite fond of being alive. If another car didn’t come along for a couple of hours – and that seemed entirely possible – she was in real trouble.
She gripped the skirt firmly and tugged at the side seam. It took a lot of effort, but finally she heard the stitches tear. When she opened the skirt out, she had quite a large piece of fabric to work with. Enough to make some sort of tent. She spread the material between two open car doors, using the windows to hold the edges. After a few minutes work, and a lot more sweat, she had created a small patch of shade between the two doors, under the tented fabric.
Before she sat down, she scrabbled around some more in her suitcase, and emerged with a woolly cardigan – a garment she was unlikely to need in the near future. She put the cardigan down in the small patch of shade. That would give her bum some respite from the rough gravel on the side of the road. Then she lowered herself into her makeshift sun-shelter.
It wasn’t cool. Far from it. The heat radiating from the metal of the car was intense, but at least she wasn’t in the full blazing sun.
She wriggled about a bit. Trying to get comfortable – or at least less uncomfortable. She tried to stay focused, listening for the sound of an approaching engine. But all she could hear was that damn crow. It was starting to get on her nerves.
She glanced at her watch. How long had she already been here?
Her head was starting to spin and her eyelids fluttered.
No! She had to stay awake.
She shook her head, wishing she still had some water left. Wishing she had never hopped on that plane in London. She had really messed up. Again. The wrong career, and now the wrong place to pursue that career.
Her life wasn’t exactly going as she had hoped. If only …
She felt her eyelids starting to close. She took a deep breath and blinked rapidly. It already felt like she’d been stranded for hours. She glanced down at her watch again. Time was moving at a snail’s pace.
She must not fall asleep!
Chapter Two
It had to be the most boring stretch of road in the world – this road that led to Coorah Creek. This road that was taking him back after so many years. It was long and straight and flat with no turnings or side roads. Scott Collins wondered if maybe there was a metaphor in that.