Heat of the Build Up

She came to the Kimberley to disappear. He has forgotten how to be found.

Hannah Calloway has a broken engagement, a burned-out career and a twelve-month contract at the end of the longest dirt road in Western Australia. No phone signal. No past. Nobody to watch her fall apart.

Declan Hartigan is a widowed cattle station owner running on four hours' sleep. His bank is circling, and his two grieving children have driven off three governesses in eighteen months. He doesn't want another stranger in his house. He definitely doesn't want the one who gets eight-year-old Ruby talking, makes five-year-old Gus laugh, and holds the lantern at three in the morning when a calf is coming wrong.

From the dust of the muster to the heavy heat of the build-up, the sparks between them become a slow, simmering fire. Locked doors. Stolen nights. Hot afternoons at a hidden gorge pool and a hunger neither of them can fight. But she is the governess and he is the boss, a neighbour wants his land, a custody review threatens the family, and a small girl is quietly counting everything she is afraid to lose.
Then the monsoon cuts the roads, and there is nowhere left to hide.