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Back The Cottage at Rosella Cove
Chapters (50)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Book
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. Twenty-six
  30. Twenty-seven
  31. Twenty-eight
  32. Twenty-nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-one
  35. Thirty-two
  36. Thirty-three
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. Thirty-six
  40. Thirty-seven
  41. Thirty-eight
  42. Thirty-nine
  43. Acknowledgements
  44. About the Author
  45. Also by Sandie Docker
  46. Book Club Questions
  47. Welcome to the Kookaburra Creek Café
  48. Prologue
  49. One
  50. Sign up to Read More and discover new favourites

‘Ha-ya!’ Alice screamed out, adopting her fiercest ninja pose, rolling pin poised for attack.

‘What the —?’ The grey mess jumped back and grabbed the closest object to its flailing hands – a tin of beetroot.

The hand holding the beetroot tin was very small and there was a slight curve beneath the grey hoodie. Alice’s thief was a girl. A young girl with pieces of half-cooked bread crumbs caught in the folds of her tattered jumper. At least that explained what had happened to her baking.

‘The door was open. I didn’t break in,’ the girl said at once, stepping back and forth looking for a way past her captor.

‘What are you doing here?’ Alice asked, trying to control her breathing. It was just a child. ‘If you put back whatever you’ve taken, I won’t call the police.’

‘Don’t you dare call the cops.’ The girl pushed her greasy black hair behind her ears and raised her eyes to Alice in defiance.

From Alice’s trembling hand the rolling pin crashed to the floor, a resounding thud echoing through the silent café, and she gasped.

Those two piercing blue eyes.

The girl shoved past her and sprinted through the café.

‘Sorry.’ Alice ran after her. ‘Wait. I just …’

But the girl rushed past, out the café and into the trees across the large grass clearing that stretched in front of the café before Alice got to the bottom of the steps.

Alice sat on the deck that wrapped around the café and tried to calm her racing thoughts. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen his eyes gazing back at her from a stranger’s face. It wasn’t the second or third. There was a time when she saw those eyes in every male she met. In the stare of the postie who’d delivered her bills; the mischievous gazes of the boys in the pub who were probably too young to drink; every second customer that came into the café when she first arrived in Kookaburra Creek. No, it wasn’t the first time she’d seen Dean McRae’s eyes in another. But only once before had she seen his eyes in a young girl, and that was so long ago, in a life no longer hers.

It was several minutes before Alice felt calm enough to rise on shaky legs and head back inside. Fractured images from her past fought for attention, but she blocked them out. She had a café to open. She couldn’t dwell on wasted memories.