The Wedding Wish. Ally Blake

      CHAPTER SIX

      HOLLY waited until in between races to make her way from the big white marquee on the oval in the centre of the track where the Hidden Valley Greyhound Course fundraiser was being held. She stepped carefully, lifting her feet high as she made her way across the muddy dirt track.

      Colonel Charles Lyneham, a long-retired Steward of the Course and her guest of honour, had gone for a walk around an hour before and had not returned, so Holly had set out to find him.

      She ducked through a spot in the fence where the wire had broken away years before and headed up the old wooden steps to the grandstand. She checked in the clerk’s offices, the betting areas and even in the car park. But the colonel was nowhere to be seen. She headed for the public bar, hoping she would not find him there.

      As she rounded the corner the scene hit her like déjà vu. The smell of beer, mud and sweat. She, standing on the outside looking in, searching for someone she had lost. The only difference was years before her view had been from a couple of feet closer to the ground. At least now she was the right height to have a chance at finding a familiar silver-topped head standing tall above the pack.

      She lifted on tiptoe but instead of finding said familiar silver-topped head, she recognised a pair of stunning, laughing hazel eyes looking her way.

      Her heels dropped straight to the ground, her mind turning to the last time she had seen those eyes; midnight in a fog-shrouded street, after an exquisite kiss that had confused her exceedingly.