Thankfully, the first of the three shifts in maternity she’d taken at the last minute – silly her – had almost finished. Soon, she could go to the family flat and regroup, and contemplate the final chaste kiss of yesterday morning. Jock and Hana, her brother and sister-in-law, were residing there for a few days this week, so Hana would lend a sympathetic ear if they could shake Jock for long enough to have a sisterly chat.

Ava felt the woolliness of fatigue. They’d certainly had an influx of first-time mums. The mums who’d been sitting from thirty-eight weeks in the lay-in accommodation, eager to test them. She’d bet they were just waiting for Ava and the ‘A’ team to come on duty before they brought out their strange and wonderful complications to run the staff through their emergency drills – at least it felt that way.

She checked her watch. The morning staff would be here in thirty minutes and she needed to get her own computer work up to scratch, check up on the baby in the Special Care Nursery and get Kareena and her mum to the ward so they could sleep. Then the night staff could all head home to bed.

On their own.

Sigh.

At least she would be going on holidays soon. Once she’d done three more shifts at the Yulara Medical Centre. A change of scenery back at the family cattle station would take her mind off not seeing Zac. At work or play.

Chapter Four

Stella

Four hundred kilometres away Stella May lifted the dusty top of the miniature homestead mailbox that her mother’s love of fusing metals had left mounted at the gate to Setabilly Station. The apex of the replica tin roof lifted on a side hinge, and since gaining an exotic Italian penfriend, Stella liked to collect the mail from inside the little fabricated house herself. Her stomach dipped as she found two bills, which she tucked into her pocket, and then fluttered upwards in delight as she uncovered the textured envelope, postmarked Italy, from Lorenzo, which she clutched to her chest in a crackling hug.

She glanced up the deserted orange dirt road and back towards the homestead. Nope, there was nobody in sight. She hadn’t told her mum, Mim, or daughter, Ava, that she and Lorenzo had been corresponding. She’d never thought anything would come of their chance meeting at the races in Alice last year. Not with a man who lived in Italy, even if his backpacking son did jackaroo around outback Australia.