Read DumbAtHeart.epub for Free Online Page A

these two women even
    though they were strangers who knew nothing about her life but what she told them. It
    was like starting afresh. “It’s kinda messy.”
    “Yeah, love can screw with your mind,” agreed Jo.
    “Not just your body,” added Flo.
    Cass shook her head. “God no, it’s not love. It’s sex.” Sex did not necessarily
    have to lead to anything. Besides she’d thought she had been in love with Wade. That
    had been a complete mess and waste of time. How do I even know what love is? “Sex
    and love are not mutually exclusive.”
    “It’s fun when they are.”
    “I’m not in love with Evan.” Hot, sticky thighs and hard thrusts did not make a
    forever romance. But damn, it made forever memories.
    Flo nodded. “No, of course you’re not. That’d be crazy.”
    “Why?” She rubbed the hickey on her neck. Cass had never been marked by
    passion before. She’d liked it.
    “Why do you care is the question.”
    Good point. Why do I ? It was just sex of the mind blowing kind. “I don’t.” Cass
    looked from Flo to Jo and back again. “Aw crap, I can’t fall in love with someone
    after having sex once.”
    “Why not?”
    “Needy bunny boiler types do that.” Cass knew she was neither. She shook her
    head as if to rearrange her brain cells. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this again.”
    “Ah yes, avoidance tactics are always good,” added Jo, with a smile. “I’m so glad
    we hired you. You’re a pip.”
    “But let’s just keep this I’m-not-in-love-sex between us. It’s the last thing Adele
    needs to know,” Flo added in. “We don’t need any dramatic Sicilian vendettas. Mind
    you, I think she’ll be too busy with the annual Throcker Thrashing anyway.”
    Cass looked surprised. “The what?” She should have been making up for lost
    work time but the two women fascinated her.
    Jo was happy to tell the story. “Well, in the mid 1800’s a young bloke called Jack
    Throcker had owned a property about twenty kilometres from town. He turned up in
    Mundabucka with the story that he had jumped on a ship in Liverpool, England, and
    made his way to Australia. Local theory was he was a convict transported out for theft
    and he ran away from the prison farm he was placed on just outside of Sydney.”
    “No one blamed him, of course,” Flo interjected. “It was a harsh world back then.
    People got transported for the smallest things. Britain back then was an overcrowded
    mess of slums and poverty. Those who made a new life in Australia did quite well—
    like Jack.”
    Cass had learned about convicts at school. She knew that only the strongest
    survived and prospered in the harsh new world they had been thrown into. Australia
    back then was a hard, barren land that broke the sprits and backs of many. “So, how
    did he get all the way up to Queensland and more importantly, how did he come to
    own a property?” Way back then, convicts had no money or welfare benefits. They
    had to survive on what they could scrounge or sheer, rat cunning.
    “Word is Jack was a bushranger who had a habit of finding useful stuff he could
    sell on for a profit. Today they would call him an entrepreneur.”
    “He was an alleged bushranger who happened to know a lot of other ‘alleged’
    bushrangers. Nothing was ever proven that he was one,” Flo explained. “Reading
    through the old Queensland Police Gazettes, Jack Throcker was an interesting man
    who wasn’t adverse to the odd bit of mischief.”
    Cass was fascinated. “Like what?”
    “Things had a way of disappearing when Jack was around but he always, without
    fail, had an alibi when neighboring livestock went missing. And if stray cattle turned
    up on his farm then it wasn’t his fault. It they got ‘accidently’ branded with his mark
    then it wasn’t his fault that they legally became his.”
    “Quite a rogue he was,” Flo continued on a gleam in her eyes. “There’s a tale that
    a large haul of gold is buried on the property. It