The problem was, she didn’t look any more convinced that she could slow down than he was.

‘We could eat breakfast slowly before we go back upstairs,’ he suggested.

She grinned at him. ‘I dare you.’

Chapter Eight

Hana

In a two-storey flat in Alice Springs, Hana May felt her baby’s feet drumming against her uterus, and a warm surge of maternal love made her eyes mist. Life felt so darn good it frightened her, and she stared at the ceiling of Jock’s mother’s townhouse. She missed the serenity of the station, but they were lucky they had this, a place the family used if they had to come the four hundred kilometres into town for the monthly shop or a doctor’s appointment. Or in her sister-in-law’s case, agency midwifery work.

Hana sent up a little prayer for her wonderful life to stay wonderful. Normally she was not a worrier, but pregnancy had heightened her awareness of risk, and this drought, which was affecting Jock’s family station, made her neck prickle with unease. Especially with her normally easygoing husband’s unreasonable and escalating guilt that the station’s perilous financial position was all his fault. She had her own small online baby-clothes business and was grateful that she could contribute towards their household expenses.

She couldn’t dispute that he talked less and less and seemed to have trouble finding anything to smile about. Which was crazy when they were having a baby. And then he’d made that off-the-wall comment that if anything happened to him, she should ‘find a good man and be happy’. The chill had well and truly run up her arms at that, but he’d waved her concerns away with an ‘accidents happen’ and he was just thinking of their baby.

She pushed the thought away as her baby kicked again.

She loved Jock with all her heart. She’d upped the tempo of including him in all of the baby news to try to make him focus on the future and not the present drought.

She remembered the first time she’d seen Jock. An agricultural studies student from Australia. His broad shoulders and slim waist with his subtle, whipcord strength had been so different from the muscular Maori men she knew. Jock’s blue, blue eyes had smiled at her under the big Akubra hat that shaded his face. He’d looked at her more than the crops at the exchange-student ag farm she worked at.

‘Psst.’ She reached for Jock’s hand even though he was sleeping and dragged his work-roughened fingers scratchily across her belly so he could feel what was happening. Jock shifted and rolled onto his side, and as he woke properly, his hand pressed a little more firmly to sense the vigorous movements of their child. She watched his mouth curve and felt the echo of her own.