Featured book this week is Rose River by Margareta Osborn
There’s an excerpt to read too, and a note from Margareta.
Adapted from Margareta Osborn’s bestselling ebook novella A Bush Christmas, Rose River is a gloriously funny romantic comedy set in the beautiful Australian outback.
Take one city girl – and drop her into the back of beyond…
Housesitting in rural Burdekin’s Gap, high up in the East Gippsland mountains, is not an obvious career move for a PR executive like Jaime Hanrahan. But, hey, retrenchment is a kicker.
Plus she’s determined not to spend Christmas in Melbourne with her friends, who still have company cars and six-figure salaries, or with her mother, Blanche, who has remarried too soon after her father’s death.
However, it turns out that Burdekin’s Gap is a little more remote than Jaime had anticipated, the house is in the middle of a cattle station, and the handsome manager, Stirling McEvoy, doesn’t appreciate a new farmhand in Jimmy Choos and Sass & Bide cut-offs.
Soon Jaime is fending off stampeding cows, town ladies wielding clipboards, sheep who think they are goats, nude sportsmen and one very neurotic cat. So why does she feel like she’s falling in love . . . with the life, with the breathtaking landscape, and with one infuriating cowboy …
A note from Margareta:
Back in 2012, I wrote a sweet, little ebook novella called A BUSH CHRISTMAS. It hit No. 1 on iTunes within hours of release, was a finalist in the Romantic Novella of the Year Award 2013 (Romance Writers of Australia) and sold overseas into Germany in a digital first for Random House. I was bombarded with requests via Facebook, my website and in person, by readers demanding ‘the rest of the story!’ And thus, three years later, ROSE RIVER is the expanded outcome. With it’s laugh-out-loud funny scenarios, ROSE RIVER brims with my deep affection and love for rural Australia and its unique communities. It’s a romantic comedy that I hope will be a lovely escape for readers looking for a heart-warming story about the thrills and spills of life on the land.
An excerpt from Rose River by Margareta Osborn
There were three things in life Jaime Josephina Hanrahan couldn’t stand. Her name, public transport and musclebound men riding Harley-Davidsons. She couldn’t do much about the first, unfortunately. And the last two were currently within her field of vision.
The bus that had brought her to Lake Grace was now wheeling around the corner out of town, after its driver had broken every rule in the book on the four-hour drive up here. The Harley was parked in front of the Lake Grace Hotel.
‘What do you mean I can’t get a taxi to Burdekin’s Gap?’ Jaime asked the publican.
He glanced at her across the scarred red-gum countertop and shrugged. ‘We don’t ’ave no taxis here. Nearest one’s gotta come from Narree.’
Jaime shot another look out the door at the man gearing up to get on the Harley. He was grunting as he pulled on his boots. In the early evening light his back looked like it had been chiselled out of black marble. Solid, square, immovable. And dangerous. She shivered.
She pulled out her mobile phone, held it in her hand poised to dial. ‘So what’s the taxi company’s number?’
The publican smiled in a condescending way. He was a red-haired, dirty looking bloke wearing little more than a bluey singlet with holes the size of walnuts decorating his protruding belly. ‘They won’t take you up that mountain, no matter how much you pay ’em.’ He swung around and placed the glass he was polishing up on a high shelf.
Jaime glanced back out towards the street. Marble Man was clipping up his motorbike boots. She could just see a head of dark russet hair, cropped close. A small tattoo appeared to spin a little dance behind his left ear. Gross. Another thing she loathed. Tattoos.
She eyed off the barman again and realised she’d have to use a tad more persuasion. She leant on the bar, squeezed her arms together to create cleavage and cleared her throat.
The barman turned, his eyes immediately drawn to her V-neck top, just like she’d hoped.
‘And why not exactly?’ she asked, her tone a touch away from a simper.
‘What?’ The barman was momentarily transfixed before glancing down at his left hand. A thin silver band sat on his third finger. He gave a slight shake of his head.
‘The taxi? Why no taxi up the mountain?’
‘Too many roos and wombats.’ The man turned away to place another glass on the shelf.
Jaime sighed. So much for persuasion. ‘Well, how does a girl get to Burdekin’s Gap if there’s no taxi, she hasn’t a car and it’s too far to walk?’
‘A horse would do it in about a day and a half,’ said a deep voice near her right ear. ‘Or a pushbike might be quicker. That’s if you can stand the pace.’
Marble Man. Right there in the flesh beside her. Close up he was big, and he must have played rugby some time in his life as his shoulders would have challenged any tailor’s measuring tape. Jaime edged to the left. The man exuded testosterone in truckloads in those black jeans and jacket, not like the suit-clad office jocks she was used to.
‘I’m off, Bluey,’ said Marble Man. ‘Send that parcel I’ve got coming up on the truck, will you? I won’t be back down for another week or so.’
The publican nodded, made a note in a dog-eared exercise book beside a cash register decorated with Santa figurines.
For the first time Jaime realised the Lake Grace Hotel was dripping with bright baubles and tinsel. She’d been too stressed after her terrifying ride in the bus to notice. She cast her eye at the ceiling. The oily-looking, off-white pressed tin was draped in gaudy bands of gold, silver, green and red. The overhead fan was making the tinsel shake and shudder in its breeze. Argh, Christmas. The season of joyful celebration. With three weeks until Christmas Day, the reason she was in this godforsaken place was because she was trying to avoid having anything to do with it. She’d thought remote would mean less chance of being bombarded by jovial festivities.
Not for the first time in the last little while she cursed her former employers, the chic Melbourne public relations firm Wheetles & Brute, where she’d been a marketing executive. Retrenchment was a kicker. Gone was her six-figure salary, and with it her to-die-for South Bank rented flat, her car-that-came-with-the-job, her iPhone and iPad. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was her first Christmas without her father Jack, who’d succumbed to a heart attack last Boxing Day. Her mother Blanche, not one to let the grass grow under her feet, had already remarried. Jaime’s new stepdad was called Dave and he was a redneck bushman, not unlike Marble Man standing beside her.
‘Have you any idea how I’m to get to Burdekin’s Gap?’ she said to Marble Man. ‘And I don’t do horses or bicycles.’
He leant back and quietly assessed her from head to toe. She watched as flinty blue eyes took in her long honey-coloured hair, the clinging sorbet-green top, the cut-off denim shorts gracing her long legs and the cutesy melon-coloured slip-ons on her feet. They’d looked just the thing on St Kilda beach. But she wasn’t in St Kilda and she wasn’t looking at the ocean. She was in a bogan country town that had no damn taxi to get her to her new job on some high-country cattle station out the back of Hicksville.
Rose River is available in eBook and paperback from all good retailers.
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Read more about Margareta and her books on MEET MARGARETA OSBORN
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