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Her Aussie Holiday
by Stefanie London

Copyright © 2020 by Stefanie London. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Chapter One

Cora Cabot knew three important things about Australia:

1.  The men were hotter Down Under (Chris Hemsworth, Hugh Jackman, the other Hemsworth…)

2.  It was hot. Period.

3.  Pretty much every animal could kill you.

Okay, so maybe not every animal could kill you. But a country that prided itself on having the deadliest snakes in the world was not a country to be trifled with. Add to that spiders—of the hairy and poisonous variety—sharks, stingrays (RIP Steve Irwin), all kinds of creepy crawlies, and Cora knew she would have to be on high alert at all times.

But standing outside a slightly run-down yet utterly charming house surrounded by huge, swaying trees whose leaves rustled in the dry, sea-salted air made Cora instantly understand why Aussies put up with their infamous critters. It was truly beautiful here.

She walked up the unfinished driveway, careful to avoid the dozens of small, podlike things littering the ground. Her suitcase bumped behind her, wheels rattling and lock jangling with each step.

So what was a dyed-in-the-wool city girl—a New Yorker, no less—doing thousands of miles from the nearest Saks?

Healing…escaping.

It sounded a little melodramatic, sure. But Cora wasn’t exactly opposed to a little melodrama. After all, one did not grow up with a mother famous for her daytime television relationship therapy segments without developing a passing interest in the theatrical and over the top. But right now, Cora needed to get as far away from that stuff as possible. A whole hemisphere away, in fact.

Pausing at the front door, she sucked in a breath. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of airports and immigration lines and endless road, she was here. Alone. The sound of nature enveloped her—birds and leaves and wind and the ocean creating a soothing cacophony that melted into her bones.

This was exactly what she needed.

Cora slipped a carefully folded piece of paper out of her bag and flipped it open.

Dear Cora,

I am so excited for our house swap! Seriously, thank you. You’ve saved my butt. I had no idea how I was going to afford to rent a place in Manhattan for a month without going totally broke. Anyway, my little place isn’t anywhere near as fancy or glamorous as yours, but I hope you find it comfortable. A few things:

The bathroom pipes rattle terribly. Give them a second to run and the noise will eventually stop. If they’re too annoying, let me know and I’ll have my brother come by to work on them.

There’s a cockatoo (noisy white bird with a gold crest) who likes to pop in. I call him Joe and keep some bird feed by the back door. He’s very friendly!

Print this email out because reception is terrible, and you’ll need the access code to get the key. There’s a little box under a red pot. The code is: 2513.

Now get to work on your novel! When you become a famous author, I’m going to rent this place out as a tourist attraction and charge people a fortune to visit the creative retreat of the great Cora Cabot, literary genius.

Love, Liv.

Cora cringed. Why had she even told Liv she was working on a novel?

Maybe it was a moment of giddy excitement at typing those fabled words: The End. But clearly she should have curbed her enthusiasm long enough for her literary agent father to cut down any delusions of grandeur. He’d called her book unpublishable, her lead character unsympathetic.

And then he’d declined to represent her.

Of course the feedback wasn’t intended to hurt her feelings—she knew that. Her father had a black belt in tough love, and his criticism was meant to help her grow and improve. To make her a better writer. And she absolutely intended to rise to that challenge.

But right now, she had more pressing concerns…like liberating the front door key from its hiding place.

“Please, please, please don’t be hiding anything more than a key,” she said as she crouched down, reaching for the pot described in Liv’s email.

Cora felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Only instead of lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! it was more like snakes, and bugs, and poisonous, hairy, eight-legged freaks of nature waiting to suck your blood like B-movie vampires.

Too squeamish to pick up the pot, she nudged it over and hoped nothing would scuttle or slither out. Thankfully, the only thing underneath was a plastic box containing the key. The simple gold thing didn’t look secure enough to protect much. Cora’s New York apartment had a twenty-four-seven doorman, a concierge, swipe key, and two physical keys to get inside.

But maybe around these parts, people trusted one another. What a thought.

Cora unlocked the front door and dragged her suitcase inside. The house was in the middle of renovations, as Liv had previously warned. On one side there was a kitchen, gleaming and modern with white subway tiles and a soft-white granite countertop with pretty silver and charcoal veining. The family room, on the other hand, was older-looking and well-loved with a heaving bookshelf and big couch in faded blue.

There was a section of floral wallpaper. It looked vintage, but not in a good way. More like in a “grandma was a pack-a-day smoker” kind of way.

But her friend Liv had thrown her own joie de vivre onto the weary canvas, with a collection of colorful mismatched cushions on the couch, quirky wall hangings and photos of her family dotting several surfaces. This was a house with love embedded in the walls and floors and shining in through the windows.

A real home.

Liv had been worried it might not be up to Cora’s standards, but frankly, luxury furniture and expensive art handpicked by New York’s best interior designer hadn’t made her happy. And it had become painfully obvious that the fancy handbags and red-soled shoes her mother had taught her to covet were a poor substitute for the things that actually mattered in life. Cora would trade it all in for the real deal: a loving husband, a family who supported one another, a career that made her soul sing.

“Oh, bloody hell!”

Cora jumped and whirled around, pressing her palm to her heart. “Who’s there?”

“Bugger off!”

The noise was coming from the kitchen, where a window facing the back of the property was totally open. Gee, they really didn’t worry about security here. A white bird sat on the windowsill, staring at her. Its golden crest fanned out above its head, demanding her attention.

“You must be Joe,” Cora said, narrowing her eyes. So much for friendly. She was pretty sure being told to bugger off wasn’t a nice thing in this country. But she also understood that it was easy to say something you didn’t mean if you were “hangry.” It happened to her all the time. “You want something to eat, little guy?”

The bird squawked, as if offended at being called little. But then he bobbed his head in this strange boppy dance, and Cora couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

It took her a few minutes to locate a sack of bird seed, which had a note taped to it: 1 x small handful. He’ll eat from your hand, or scatter into the backyard.

Cora looked at the bird’s curved, pointed-tipped talons—the damn things looked sharp enough to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. So that was a hard pass on the hand feeding. Joe chattered away, clicking and chirping and making all kinds of funny noises while he waited for his lunch.

“All right, mate! Who’s a pretty boy?”    

In spite of her trepidation and emotional exhaustion, Cora found herself feeling lighter than she had in weeks. Hell, maybe in months.

Don’t fool yourself—it’s been years. You don’t get this messed up without a solid foundation of BS from way back.

Her snarky inner voice was cut off when Joe whistled at her in a way that sounded a whole lot like a catcall. Now who had taught him to do that?

“Sorry, little guy, this vacation does not include a fling. I’ve only got eyes for fictional men right now. Book boyfriends all the way.”

She tossed the seed through the window, and it scattered across the grassy area behind the house. Joe immediately flapped his wings, swooping down to collect the bounty and trying to intimidate a couple of smaller birds looking to join the meal. He puffed his chest out and stomped around, claiming the territory.

“You guys are all the same, only after a free lunch,” she said, shaking her head.

Being wealthy wasn’t uncommon in Manhattan, not by a long stretch. Coming from a famous family wasn’t, either. But that didn’t stop the opportunists and users from piling up.

Warning: Traffic conditions in Cora Cabot’s life are dire. A collision containing one ex-fiancé and one narcissistic mother have created untenable conditions in New York City. Watch out for the ego spill on Fifth Avenue. Get out while you can.

For the next month, Cora would forget all about her fame-hungry mother, her string of failed relationships, and her unfulfilling job. She was going to enjoy being away from the drama and having a beautiful location to work on achieving her dream: producing a novel worthy of publication.

Right now, that was the only thing that mattered.

Cora’s nose wrinkled at the smell of something unappealing and, with horror, figured out it was her. Looked like her grand life reset would have to wait until after a very long, very hot shower.

…

Trent Walters’s ute navigated the winding, overgrown road to his sister’s house. Although calling it a road seemed a little generous. More like a root-infested, teeth-rattling, wild, life-dodging driving “experience.” Why his adorable, social butterfly baby sister had chosen to purchase a home so secluded was beyond him.

But Liv had her own house and he didn’t, so who was he to judge? Being a builder by trade and a general handyman by hobby, Trent wanted the perfect house with the perfect view. Unfortunately, despite securing the ideal block of land upon which to build his dream home some time ago, he’d yet to make a start. Too many other commitments kept getting in the way.

To make matters worse, his best mate had decided to move his girlfriend into their shared house, and the nightly squeaking bedsprings and cries of “yes baby, do it harder” had finally become too much.

All of that was to say, Trent’s living situation was…fluid. For now, he would camp at his sister’s place while she was away. It was the perfect opportunity to get some extra work done on her renovations without her standing over his shoulder. First up: fix the shitty plumbing. The old pipes rattled like that angry, chained-up ghost in The Muppet Christmas Carol. It was like the Ghost of Bad DIYs Past. How Liv put up with the sound, he’d never know.

So he’d taken the plumbing apart earlier that morning in the hopes that he’d get it all fixed up by lunchtime tomorrow. Then he could finally have a shower without the walls moaning and groaning.

Never mind that Liv had told him to pause the work while she was away—that was an advantage. The less she suspected, the more impact the surprise would have. He was already picturing the big smile on her face when he did the “grand reveal” like he was on some home improvement reality show.

Trent eased the ute around the sharp corner to where his sister’s house was nestled among the bushland. Warm, salty air washed over him as he pushed the door open and hopped out onto the ground. He was covered in grime from spending the morning on a construction site for a new home overlooking the Patterson’s Bluff shoreline. It had an amazing view. They could see the smooth, calm waters of Port Phillip Bay and on a good day, the view would stretch endlessly, as if they could see all the way to the edge of the world.

Trent’s heavy steel-capped boots crunched over the path, crushing gum nuts and twigs as he headed toward the house. From the outside, it didn’t look like much, but by the time he was done with the inside…well, it would be an oasis for his little sister.

He kicked off his boots before heading inside. It was hot and stuffy in that typical late-summer way, with the kind of heat that could feel oppressive if you hadn’t grown up with it. Especially if you were inside with no air conditioning. Feeling sticky already, Trent pulled his T-shirt and socks off and dropped them into the hamper by the laundry. A funny feeling settled into his gut as he padded barefoot into the kitchen.

Something was off.

For starters, the kitchen window was closed. That would explain why the house felt so warm. The new air-con unit wasn’t due to arrive until later that week, so leaving the windows open was the only way to keep the place cool. He’d planned to fit the flyscreen after work so he could leave it open overnight without getting eaten alive by mozzies.

Maybe he’d accidentally closed the window without thinking. Shaking his head, he wrapped his hand around the refrigerator door. But something froze him in place. A sound. More specifically, a sound he should not be hearing.

Running water.

“What the…?” Trent abandoned his plans for a cold beer and headed toward the master bedroom.

Liv’s tiny en suite bathroom had the worst pipes Trent had ever seen. Whichever bozo had built this house originally had no idea what he was doing, Trent was sure of it. Not only were many elements not up to current—or former—building codes, the finishings had a DIY feel…and not in a creative, handmade, one-of-a-kind way, either. More in the “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing” kind of way.

“Liv?” Trent poked his head into the bedroom. His sister had flown out yesterday, texting the family’s WhatsApp group earlier to say she’d landed safely at JFK Airport.

Now that he looked closer, he saw a suitcase sitting by the bed. It wasn’t the one his sister used—which had been a hand-me-down from their mother, tied with a ratty red polka dot ribbon at the handle to distinguish it from the thousands of other beat-up black wheeled boxes that graced the airport’s luggage carousel.

This suitcase looked expensive.

But Trent’s concerns about figuring out who was showering in his sister’s house were suddenly overtaken by a much larger concern.

“Oh shit!”

Without giving a moment’s thought to what he might see in the bathroom, he rushed toward the door and yanked it back. Just as he thought, the place was entirely flooded.