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After that, she was transfixed by the scenery beneath them. The vast spread of rust-coloured land, the tiny black spots of cattle, the waterholes across the vista, and the craggy ridge that was lined with old gums.

She reached for the intercom button again. ‘Is this all your land?’

‘All this to the east, yeah,’ he said, and there was no missing the raw pride in his voice.

She kept staring out of her window, noting subtle changes in the landscape as they flew until, finally, dust and dirt gave way to forest and green, and then, eventually, urban landscape. The Pacific coast glittered beneath them, and within three short hours, Tate was bringing them down to land in the airport. Not the main Sydney airport, she surmised, but one that was a decent enough size.

She held her breath as he came over the tarmac, and then as the wheels touched down and the plane slowed to taxiing speed and eventually came to a stop. The engine whirring had become ordinary background noise; she had ceased to notice it, until it stopped altogether and she was met by blessed silence.

There was barely a moment to catch her breath, though, before Tate was stepping out from the cockpit and into the aisle, looking at her as though silently asking a question.

‘That was amazing,’ she said, genuinely. ‘I can’t believe how stunning the Outback is from the air.’

His smile was like the sun, bursting from behind stormy clouds. Heat seemed to radiate through her body.

‘I’ll take you out over the station in the chopper. You can see much more that way.’ Then, before she could respond, ‘Ready?’

Someone was outside the plane, accessing the stairs, and fresh, warm air blew into the plane.

‘Good morning, Mr Carrigan,’ a woman’s clipped voice greeted.

‘Amy,’ Tate responded with a nod. He waited for Sarah to stand and make her way to the door, so she could precede him. But just as before, he offered his hand, and she took it, despite the narrowness of the stairs, because it was somehow steadying to have that contact.

Now that they were in Sydney, butterflies were storming her central nervous system at the prospect of what they were about to do.

She knew she was pregnant. She felt it, and she’d done enough tests to have undeniable confirmation. But this was different. Going to see an obstetrician made it somehow so much more real.

The plane was out on the tarmac, with ground crew waiting to secure it for the day. A quick glance to her left revealed another plane, this one more like a commercial jet, with a large, gold ‘C’ on the tail.

‘Also yours?’ she asked, tilting her face to Tate’s.

‘For longer flights.’

A shiny black four-wheel drive with darkly tinted windows was waiting a short distance from the plane. Tate guided her away from the plane, skirting a route that left plenty of space between them and the still-warm engines, before a man in a suit appeared and opened the rear passenger door.

‘So you fly a plane, but don’t drive the car?’

‘Would you prefer me to drive?’

She shook her head. ‘I was kidding.’

‘When I come to Sydney, it’s usually for work. The time in the car is good preparation for whatever meeting I’m going to. Besides, Sydney traffic is a shit show.’

She slipped into the back seat of the car, and by the time she’d fastened her seat belt, Tate had joined her on the other side. Not in the front passenger seat, as she’d expected, but just to her right, meaning he was close. And big. His body somehow took up far more than its allotted space, and she was so much more aware of him than she wanted to be.

‘Let’s go, Axe.’

The engine throbbed to life and then pulled away from the plane. A moment later, it slipped through a secure airport gate and was on the road.

The butterflies exploded inside Sarah, and she fidgeted with her fingers the whole way across town.

* * *

He hadn’t doubted her for even a moment. What woman in her right mind would throw herself back into his orbit after the way he’d been with her? From the first day they’d met, he’d almost gone out of his way to show Sarah his gruffest side, just as he always did with women. It was easier than running the risk that they might start to want more from him than he was willing to give. He suspected that even with his impressive fortune in the mix, she would have preferred to run a mile than construct an elaborate ruse surrounding a pregnancy.

Yet the moment the doctor pressed the ultrasound wand over her stomach and the sound of a baby’s beating heart filled the state-of-the-art medical suite with views out over Rose Bay, something lodged in the very middle of his chest. He glanced at Sarah’s face and saw the same emotions running through her. Disbelief and joy, and a surge of protectiveness for the baby they’d somehow created.

‘Ohmygod,’ she whispered shakily, staring at the obstetrician—Dr Huang—with parted lips and pink cheeks.