ABOUT LILY MALONE
LILY MALONE might have been a painter, except her year-old son put a golf club through her canvas. So she wrote her first book, His Brand of Beautiful instead. Lily has now written three full length rural romance stories and a novella all published by Harlequin Escape. Her debut trade paperback, The Vineyard In The Hills, was published by Harlequin MIRA in September 2016. Water Under The Bridge is the first in a three-book series, set in the fictional West Australian town of Chalk Hill. When she isn’t writing, Lily likes gardening, walking, wine, and walking in gardens (sometimes with wine). She lives in the Margaret River region of Western Australia with her husband, and two handsome sons who take after their father. Lily is a member of Australian Rural Romance.
She loves to hear from readers and you can find her on Facebook and on Twitter @lily_lilymalone.
To contact Lily, email [email protected] or visit www.lilymalone.wordpress.com
Also by Lily Malone
The Vineyard in the Hills
Available in ebook from Escape Publishing
His Brand of Beautiful
Fairway to Heaven
The Goodbye Ride
Water under the Bridge
Lily Malone
www.harlequinbooks.com.au
To Brian, for believing in me, and giving me dedicated time to spend with all these words.
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER
1
To be fair, Harvey had warned her, Ella Davenport acknowledged as yet another black house spider succumbed to the bristles of her broom.
Been a few years since anyone lived there, Ella.
Place might need a bit of work, Ella.
This spider was bigger than the others, and angrier too. Gingerly, Ella took the broom and its stowaway to the cement path leading up to the house, shook the creature out, kicked off her shoe, whacked the critter about the ears with her thong and felt immediately better.
There were a few wet black squish marks making a personal tally on the cement path. Not that anyone was scoring, but if they were, she was the winner.
‘Can we go home yet, Mum? This is so dumb.’ Sam appeared around the corner of the house, pushing a wheelbarrow laden with broken terracotta pots, timber offcuts, cardboard, a bike helmet and something that might have once been a rollerblade. Otherwise, it was just an old purple-blue boot on one wheel.
‘Have you finished cleaning out the shed, Sam?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Then the answer is “no, you can’t go home yet,” isn’t it?’
‘But we’ve been here hours.’ Sam rolled his eyes in the way only a ten-year-old could.
‘That lot goes in the skip, thanks, Sam,’ Ella said, motioning with her chin towards the red mini-skip on the street verge. ‘Keep going.’
‘This sucks. No other kid’s mum makes him clean out a complete stranger’s shed.’
‘You’re not another mum’s kid. You’re my kid.’
‘Yeah.’ There was one of those pauses after Sam’s yeah, and Ella knew he was debating whether he could get away with adding something like, doesn’t that suck? Or his current favourite, wish I wasn’t your kid.
Her grip on both broom handle and thong tightened as she waited. Sam was fast learning how to master the put-down, and it hurt Ella more every time.
‘Oh, okay then.’ He gave in, rolling the barrow straight over the spider remnants and out to the street where he thumped each item in the skip harder than the last, before turning on his heel and marching back down the side of the house to the shed at the rear.
Ella blew out a breath and dropped her thong to the pavement so she could step into it, then she paused for a moment to look up at the house.
Lot 3, Chalk Hill Bridge Road, Chalk Hill, aka: the Honeychurch house.
‘For sale,’ she began, aiming for the tone of those ads where you got the slicer, the dicer, the juicer and the extra steak knives. ‘Character property zoned town centre on big block with superb views of Chalk Hill Bridge. Four-bedroom, one-bathroom home with a quaint country-style kitchen and high ceilings throughout, plus wide verandahs for all your entertaining. This month only, spiders are free. Only $649,000. Come on. When was quality ever a bargain? Don’t let a few dollar signs stop you! Call me today. Ella Davenport, Begg & Robertson Real Estate, Chalk Hill.’
The silent home stared back, and Ella felt a little silly. She’d always been good at monologues. She’d had so many hours to spend alone making stuff up in her head. Hours up the lane freestyle, eyes on that thick black line. Five or six days a week from pretty much the day she turned twelve, with only Sundays off to do what she liked.
Well, to do what her parents liked her to do, which was pretty much nothing. No parties. No pizzas. No ice-cream. No chocolate.
No fun.
Ella marched up the steps with her broom, and soon had a rhythm going, humming You Should Be Dancing as she swept. Bee Gees music was great to clean to. It was humid under the verandah roof. Whatever breeze existed couldn’t quite puff its way under the eaves, and dust hung thick in the air, sticking to her skin.
Occasionally a vehicle rumbled over Chalk Hill Bridge away to her left, before continuing slowly towards the T-junction with the Muirs Highway. When that happened, Ella felt the weight of eyes watching her sweep. There was nothing like a For Sale sign at the front of a house to make people in a country town take notice, and it wasn’t like this was your regular runof-the-mill home. This was the Honeychurch property. Old Irma Honeychurch had lived here most of her life.
The way Harvey Begg told it, Irma’s sons had gone on to buy up farming properties out of town, but Irma wouldn’t move. She always said the only way she would leave this place was in a box, unless
