Saturday, August 13. 2:47 p.m. Calder family farm, Manawatu, New Zealand.

---

Convinced that Nadia had given her the quad bike from hell to teach her a lesson, Ana gritted her teeth as the engine stuttered and died on top of a windswept hill in the Manawatu. To be fair, Daniel’s father had warned her the engine was a bit dicey, which was why it’d been parked up in the workshop instead of out with a tour group. She’d insisted on not waiting for Daniel to return from fixing fences—she needed to talk to him now.

“It’ll get you there, or else Dan’ll spot you on his way back,” Andrew Calder had said with a smile that displayed a set of dimples that were apparently hereditary.

Now there she was, stuck on a windswept hill with miles of rolling farmland surrounding her and not much else, bar some skittish-looking sheep that huddled together a safe distance away and bleated at her suspiciously.

Ana slid off the bike and kicked the front tire. It had no effect other than hurting her toe, but she felt marginally better. She tugged the safety helmet off her head, the fresh air a welcome relief after its claustrophobic confines. She sat back on the bike seat, staring out at the patchwork shades of green in the valley below. So much for her grand vision of riding confidently to meet Daniel on his own turf.

Once again she was on the back foot and out of her element. In more ways than one.

She’d say what she’d come to say regardless of the outcome. If Daniel said ‘Sorry, babe, it’s too late,’ well, that’d make for an awkward ride down to the farm on the back of his bike, because no way was she walking back through the mud.

“Ana?”

His voice came from behind her and she squeaked, sliding clumsily off the bike and slapping a hand to her chest. “Do you have to move so quietly?” she wheezed. “What are you? Part cat?”

Daniel stood, arms folded across his bare chest, a grubby T-shirt tucked in the pocket of his jeans—they looked like the same ones he’d had on when she first met him. Low slung to begin with, they now hung even lower on his tall frame. He’d lost weight. The planes of his face seemed sharper, his eyes duller. His mouth folded in a tight line and he looked anything but happy to see her.

“I heard the bike stop and thought I’d better check it out. Why are you here?” He made no move to come closer.

Her speech, so carefully prepared on the two and a half hour drive from the city, blew out of her mind like thistledown. Hell, she was a lawyer and words were her bread and butter. Pity the words in her vocabulary had been reduced to those her two-year-old would be familiar with.

“I came to say I miss you. That I…love you.”

He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged his beautifully toned shoulders. “That it?”

“No.”

“No?”

She hesitated, fiddling with the helmet strap. “You cut your hair,” she blurted.

He smoothed a hand over the short spikes covering his head. “Nadia should’ve sent you a text. Could’ve saved you a trip out here.”

“I didn’t come out here to discuss your hairstyle. Didn’t you hear me tell you I loved you?”

“I heard.” He used his T-shirt to wipe his forehead. “But I already knew that, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

He jammed the shirt in his hip pocket and turned to walk away.

“Don’t you walk away from me, Daniel Calder.” She stomped around the bike and strode across the muddy grass. The sheep, who’d boldly wandered closer, scattered again. “I came out here to give you something.”

She tugged on his arm, her throat suddenly dry at the feel of his hair-roughened skin beneath her fingers. Her body ached to touch him, to press herself against his warm skin, to kiss the softness back to his mouth. Taking a deliberate step back but not releasing his arm, she met his gaze.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left and I kept returning to what you said about how there was nothing you could do to earn my trust. You were right. There is nothing you can do to earn my trust, because there’s nothing more you need to do to earn my trust. You’ve more than proven yourself trustworthy.”

Ana felt him pull away from her fractionally, the muscles in his forearm tightening under her hand.

She continued quickly before she lost her nerve. “I realized trust can’t just be earned, it has to be given. I also realized I’m too stubborn not to give this relationship everything I’ve got and to make sure you do, too. That’s why I’ve come, Daniel. To tell you I’ve been a bloody idiot and to give you all of me—all my love and my trust.”

His gaze darkened but never shifted from her face.

“If you’ll have me, that is.” Ana’s voice choked when her heart wedged in her throat.

Behind her drifted the tick of the bike’s engine cooling and the soft munch of sheep cropping grass. Still Daniel remained silent. Her heart slithered from her throat and sank to her borrowed gumboots.

She was too late.

Then she spotted them. Two crescent shaped creases indenting his cheeks. The dimples deepened and a crooked smile appeared.

“Are you laughing at me again?” Ana drew herself up to her full height, which put her nose in the same region as the middle of his chest.

“Not at all. I’m happy you’ve finally come to your senses and I’m wondering if I really have to get down on bended knee to tell you again that I love you, that I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“You know what?” She looked down at the sheep poop squelching beneath their feet, rose on tiptoe, and kissed him soundly. “Since they’re your best jeans and all, why don’t we skip the mud bath and just take it on faith?”