The Australian. Diana Palmer

      Chapter One

      The airport at Brisbane was crowded, just as Priscilla Johnson had expected. She’d left Australia a college girl, but her college days were now over. With graduation had come the slow, sad process of severing friendships in Honolulu and leaving Aunt Margaret’s house, where she’d lived for five years. Now the future held a teaching career in Providence, a small town northwest of Brisbane across the rain forests of Queensland’s Great Dividing Range.

      She looked around excitedly for her father and mother, and smiled when she remembered how happy they’d been about her plans to teach in Australia. It had been touch and go, that decision. If Ronald George hadn’t been coming here to teach himself, if he hadn’t prodded her...

      She shifted from one navy pump-clad foot to the other. Her blonde hair curled in short wisps around her delicate oval face with its wide green eyes and creamy complexion. Those eyes were quiet and confident and just a little mischievous even now as she approached her twenty-fourth birthday. She walked with a fluid, easy grace, a result of the charm school classes her aunt Margaret had paid for. And in her white linen suit and powder blue blouse and navy accessories, she was a far cry from the teenager who’d left Australia so reluctantly five years ago to go away to college in Hawaii.

      Priscilla shivered a little. Here in Australia it was spring in late September, not autumn as it had been in Hawaii. Her seasons, like her senses, were turned upside down. She’d had only two years in Queensland, after all, before college began. Her parents had left their native Alabama after Adam Johnson had applied and been accepted for a teaching position in Providence. He’d liked the idea of working in a small school mainly populated by children from three large cattle and sheep stations in the fairly remote area. Renée, Priscilla’s mother, had been equally enthusiastic about the move. Neither of them had close family anymore: there were no other people to consider. All three of them had an adventurous streak. So they’d packed up and moved to Australia. And so far none of them had regretted it. Except perhaps Priscilla.

      She wondered how it would be to see him again. Inevitably she would. Providence and the surrounding country were sparsely inhabited, and everyone met sooner or later in the small town to buy supplies or go to church or just socialize. Her thin brows drew together in a worried frown. It had been five years. She was a different woman now. Besides, Ronald would be settling in soon, and she’d have someone to keep her mind off Jonathan Sterling.

      John. It was impossible not to remember. Her green eyes grew hard, and she clutched her purse and carry-on bag until her knuckles went white. Her memory hadn’t dulled. Neither had the pain.

      She was tired. It had been a long flight, and despite the fact that most of her luggage had already been shipped over and she was only carrying a small bag, she wished her parents would appear. She wanted to get back to the small cottage where they lived, on the fringe of the mammoth cattle and sheep station known as the Sterling Run.

      Her eyes wandered quickly around the crowded terminal, but before they could sweep past the front entrance, she saw a broad-shouldered man standing a full head above the crowd of travelers. Her heart slammed up against her throat, and she began to tremble. Perhaps she was mistaken! But no, his hair was light brown with bleached blond streaks all through it, thick and slightly shaggy in back, and straight. He was wearing an old tweed jacket with gray slacks and dingo boots, but even so he drew women’s eyes as he strode through the crowd.

      His pale blue eyes swept the travelers, and he scowled. His dimpled chin jutted pugnaciously; his firm mouth was set in a thin line. There were new wrinkles in that strong craggy face. Her eyes searched him like hands, looking for breaks.

      He hadn’t recognized her yet. Of course not, she reminded herself. She’d left here a long-legged gangly teenager with waist-length blonde hair and ill-fitting clothing. Now she was much more poised, a sophisticated woman with confident carriage and designer clothing. No, she thought bitterly, he wouldn’t recognize her.

      She picked up her carryall and went toward him gracefully. He glanced at her with faint appreciation before his eyes took up their search of the crowd again. It wasn’t until she stopped just in front of him that he looked at her once more, and his eyebrows shot together with the shock of recognition that flared in his pale eyes.

      “Priss?” he asked uncertainly, his eyes punctuating his astonishment as they ran up and down her slender body.

      “Yes, it’s me,” she said with a cool smile. “How are you, John?”

      He didn’t reply. If anything, he grew colder as he registered the new poise about her.

      “I’m waiting for my parents,” she continued. “Have you seen them?”

      “I’ve come to fetch you on their behalf,” he said coldly, in the familiar Australian drawl that she remembered so well. He towered over her, big and broad and sexy as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, while his eyes followed the lift of her eyebrows. “They had to attend some sort of luncheon in Providence.”

      She shifted her weight slightly, hoping her parents hadn’t arranged this whole thing out of misguided affection. “Oh.”

      “You don’t have to spell it out,” he said on a cold laugh. “I’m no more anxious for your company than you are for mine, I assure you. But I could hardly refuse when I was asked. And I did have to be in town today.”

      “I can always ride in the trunk, if you like,” she returned with an arctic smile.

      He didn’t even bother to reply. He picked up her carryall and turned, starting toward the front of the terminal and leaving her to follow or not as