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Lucy remembered again how she’d felt when she’d seen Will at the wedding rehearsal, standing at the front of the church with tiny Mia in his arms. Just thinking about it made her teary. He would be such a fabulous father.
She drove home, but when she was supposed to be preparing dinner, she was still lost in reverie, going over and over the same well-worn thoughts.
She found herself standing at her kitchen sink, thinking about Will again. Still. She caught sight of her reflection in the window and was shocked to see that she was cradling a tea towel as if it were a baby. And her face was wet with tears.
The picture cut her to the core and in that moment, she knew she had no choice. She wanted Will’s baby more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life.
That precious baby’s existence was a hundred times more important than the method of its conception.
Tomorrow, she should tell Will she’d made a decision.
Early next morning, however, there was a telephone call.
‘Is that the young lady vet?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy replied, crossing her fingers. Calls this early on a Monday morning usually meant trouble.
‘This is Darryl May,’ the caller said. ‘I need someone to come and look at my sheep. Four of them have gone lame on me.’
Lucy suppressed a sigh. Lame sheep usually meant foot abscesses, or worse still, footrot, which was highly contagious. There’d been plenty of rain this spring, so the conditions were ripe for an outbreak.Damn it.
‘Could you come straight away?’ the man asked. ‘I don’t want a problem spreading through my whole herd.’
‘Hang on. I’ll have to check my schedule.’ She scanned through the surgery’s diary for the day’s appointments. It was the usual assortment – small animals with sore ears or eyes, or skin conditions; a few vaccinations and general health checks for new puppies and kittens – nothing that her assistant couldn’t handle.
‘I’ll be there in about an hour,’ she told him.
‘Good, lass. You know where I live – about ten kilometres out of town, past the sale yards on the White Sands Road.’
An hour later Lucy knew the worst. The sheep indeed had footrot and it had spread from the neighbouring property via a broken fence.
After paring the hooves of the unlucky sheep and prescribing footbaths, she had to continue her inspection and all too soon, she discovered more evidence that the disease was spreading beyond the May’s property, thanks to another farmer who’d really let his fences go.
Which spelled potential disaster.
Without question, it would mean a full week of hard work for Lucy. Her assistant would have to man the surgery, while shetoured the district, visiting all the farms as she tried to gauge just how far the problem ranged.
Each night she was exhausted, and when she arrived home, she had to face the surgery work that her assistant couldn’t handle. By the time she crawled into bed she was too tired to tackle a complicated phone call to Will.
And because the Carruthers family farm was at the opposite end of the district from the initial footrot outbreak, it was Friday afternoon before she got to Tambaroora.
It was a beautiful property with wide open paddocks running down to the creek and a grand, old sandstone homestead, bang in the centre, surrounded by a green oasis of gardens. Lucy could never think about Tambaroora without seeing the garden filled with summer colour and smelling of roses, jasmine, lavender and rosemary.
By the time she arrived, Will and his father had already completed a thorough inspection of their herd and they reported that their sheep were in good condition, but Lucy still needed to make spot sample checks.
Will hefted the heavy beasts she selected with obvious ease, and he kept them calm while she examined their hooves. She’d been dealing with farmers all week and she knew he made a difficult task look incredibly easy.
‘For someone who doesn’t think of himself as a farmer, you handle sheep well,’ she said.
‘Will’s surprised us,’ his father commented wryly. ‘We didn’t think he had it in him.’
A smile twisted Will’s mouth as his father trudged off to attend to a ewe that had recently delivered twin lambs.
‘I meant it,’ Lucy told him. ‘Not all farmers are good at handling stock. You’re a natural.’
He looked amused. ‘Maybe I was just trying to impress you.’
She rolled her eyes, but that was partly to cover the attack of nerves she felt at the thought of telling him she’d reached a decision about the baby. Her stomach was as jumpy as grasshopper in a jar as he helped her to gather up her gear, then walked beside her to her ute.
