The Australian's Desire. Marion Lennox

      MARION LENNOX is a country girl, born on an Australian dairy farm. She moved on—mostly because the cows just weren’t interested in her stories! “Married to a very special doctor”, Marion wrote for Mills & Boon under a different name for a while—if you’re looking for her past romances, search for author Trisha David as well. She’s now had well over ninety novels accepted for publication.

      In her non-writing life Marion cares for kids, dogs, cats, chickens and goldfish. She travels, she fights her rampant garden (she’s losing) and her house dust (she’s lost!). Having spun in circles for the first part of her life, she’s now stepped back from her “other” career, which was teaching statistics at her local university. Finally she’s reprioritised her life, figured out what’s important and discovered the joys of deep baths, romance and chocolate. Preferably all at the same time.

       PROLOGUE

      THE bus trip took a day—thirteen hours with occasional stops for refuelling. All that time Max sat in the far corner of the bus’s rear seat, trying to make himself invisible. He stroked Scruffy—Scruffy should be in the cargo hold but the driver had relented—and sang a tiny song into the dog’s lopsided ears.

      ‘We’re going to Georgie. We’re going to Georgie.’

      There was another kid on the bus, younger than Max’s seven years. He didn’t seem to speak, not to the lady he was with or to anyone else. Every now and then, as if drawn, the kid would slip away from the lady and come up to Max’s hidey-hole to share in the Scruffy stroking.

      ‘What’s your name?’ Max asked once, but the kid didn’t answer. No matter. It was enough that he was cuddling Scruffy.

      Was the kid going to Crocodile Creek, too? Maybe he and the lady he was with knew Georgie. The lady seemed nice, Max decided. She’d bought Max a sandwich and a drink at the last stop, and an extra sandwich and water for Scruffy. Dad hadn’t left him with any money for food. The more Max thought about it, the more he thought he’d been lucky Dad had paid his bus fare.

      Maybe he’d had to. Dad was on the run and if Max had been left alone on the streets of Mt Isa, Georgie might have got on her Harley and come and murdered Dad. Georgie’s anger was great. She’d never yelled at him, but she’d yelled at Dad. Dad had punched her once and Georgie had punched him right back.

      He was going to Georgie.

      How much longer?

      ‘Soon we’ll be there,’ he told Scruffy and the silent kid. ‘Soon we’ll be with Georgie and she’ll punch anyone who’s mean to us. If Dad comes and gets us, she’ll punch him again.’

      But she’d never been able to stop Dad taking him away every time he’d wanted to.

      ‘Dad won’t want me any more,’ he told his disreputable little dog and his silent friend. ‘We’ll be safe. Georgie can be our mum.’

      The little dog nuzzled into Max’s windcheater, infinitely comforting.

      ‘Yeah, Georgie can be your mum, too,’ he whispered to the little dog. ‘There’ll be you and me, and Georgie can be Mum to both of us. She’s waiting.’

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘GINA,