by Stella Quinn
‘You are so full of shit.’
Yeah. He probably was. But underneath it all, he did think Vera wasn’t totally immune to him. And he sure as hell was not immune to her.
‘Feel this, would you, Hannah?’
He watched her slide her fingers over the exposed belly of the cat. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’
She grinned. ‘Oh yes. Pregnant, but not ready to pop just yet. You want to go tell Vera she’s having kittens in a month or so while I do the bath and bloods? Who knows … maybe she knows nothing about animals, and she’ll need your advice so badly she’ll overcome her distaste for you and agree to go on a date.’
He eyed his sister over the table. ‘That’s not a bad strategy, Dr Cody. How’d you come up with that idea?’
‘I’d tell you, but it’s part of the girl code. We know what we know.’
CHAPTER
17
The woman who had been occupying his thoughts had still been in the waiting room when he’d returned from his hour-long round trip to Cooma.
He took one look at Vera’s pinched face and wanted—badly—to give her a hug, despite the quiet air of ‘don’t touch me’ she seemed to give off.
He decided he had nothing to lose by giving his sister’s strategy a go, and it turned out that even though his sister hadn’t been on a date for at least eight years, as far as he knew, she wasn’t wrong about girl code.
The serious-faced I’m an animal doctor and I need to talk in a deep and compelling voice to you about your cat in a quiet just-you-and-me environment strategy had totally worked.
The wide esplanade along the shore of Lake Bogong was quiet this late in the evening, and he’d snagged a scarf of Hannah’s from the hooks in the hall and wound it around Vera’s neck. The forest green suited her, made her eyes gleam with as many secrets as the deep lake water they walked beside. He wandered south, in the direction of the hall where he’d be spending his nights for the next week toiling away for Marigold.
‘The cat will be alert soon, so you can see her if you like, but we’ll keep her for the week to get a full course of antibiotics in and make sure she’s not underweight or dehydrated.’
‘So the cat’s going to be fine?’
He grinned. ‘Well, that depends on your understanding of the word fine. And it’s cats, not cat.’
Vera stopped beside him in the glow of a wrought-iron streetlamp. ‘Cats?’
‘Your stray is pregnant.’
‘How on earth—’
‘Well,’ he said, dropping his voice to a purr. ‘A moonlit night, the scent of wildflowers in the air … a rugged man-cat prowling through Paterson Lane catches her eye … I think we all know how these stories end.’
She punched him in the arm, and he grinned. Vera was losing her prickles at last, and it felt good.
‘I should never have put out that saucer of milk.’
‘A home’s not a home without a pet, Vera. Maybe it’s time you gave your stray a name.’
‘Oh, but—’
He waited, but Vera had fallen silent. The easy mood of a moment before had disappeared. He ran a hand down her arm until his fingers linked with her hand. She stiffened a little, but then let his hand stay there.
Baby steps, he thought, and linked his fingers more snugly around hers. ‘You want to talk to me, Vera?’
She sighed. ‘Josh. You’ve been … very kind to me.’
Such faint praise. He gave her fingers the tiniest of pinches. ‘I like you.’
‘You shouldn’t.’
He turned to face her. ‘I’ve been looking for a reason to stop, because you don’t seem to like me too much. But damned if I can see your rationale.’
She looked up at him, then away. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you, Josh.’
Oh, at last. This was progress. ‘What is it then?’
‘I’ve got … commitments.’
‘I’ve got commitments, too. I have a daughter. A vet career that I’m ten years behind on starting. A sister, friends, a ute that needs new engine mounts but I’m low on funds while I finish renovating our building, and I’ve just been roped into ripping out an old ceiling for a friend and replacing it. When I came back home, here to Hanrahan, my commitments were all I was thinking about, but then I saw you, splitting cake slices so carefully as though they were nuclear atoms, and I realised there was room for something more. I think maybe you’re the something more, Vera.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I’m not. I can’t be.’
‘You might be. And wouldn’t it be fun to find out?’
She turned around and started walking back in the direction of town. ‘Please trust me on this, Josh. I’ve got a track record of screwing things up, and I can’t take another failure.’
A track record of screwing what up? He wondered if whatever it was that was haunting her had something to do with her reluctance to discuss legislation. Or her journalism career. And, now he thought about it, she was damned reluctant to talk about anything that predated the opening day of The Billy Button Café.
‘Vera.’
She paused. ‘Yes?’
‘I trust you, Vera. I don’t need to know the nitty-gritty. And you can trust me.’ He held out his arm and watched the thoughts play across her face. Wariness. Reserve. And, at last, a wisp of a sad, sad smile. She tucked her arm into his and they made their way back to the clinic.
CHAPTER
18
She should never have agreed, Vera thought, as she slid back the mirrored door of the teeny wardrobe in her tiny bedroom in her incy wincy rented apartment.
Not to the cat, not to the hand holding at the lake … and especially not to a daytrip, together, into the mountains.
Even as her mouth had been saying the word yes, the realist living inside her brain had been leaning up against the wall of a jail cell, wearing an orange jumpsuit and ankle shackles, shaking its head and saying Vera, I’m tired of explaining it to you. Do I have to remind you what happened when you cosied up with Aaron Finch? Disaster happened. Disaster involving a possible jail term happened. DO NOT GET INVOLVED.
Mostly, it was Graeme’s fault. He’d spent the whole of the week after the cat crisis putting the idea into her head that her life was going well. That she could take good stuff for granted. Poor, deluded man … he didn’t know a black cloud of unhappy endings liked to follow her from one crisis to another.
Take yesterday at the café. He’d started filling her with a false sense of joie de vivre after the Saturday lunchtime rush. ‘We are smashing goals today, boss,’ he’d said.
She’d looked up from her mandolin, where she’d been trying to turn cucumber into tendrils without damaging every knuckle on both hands. ‘How so? Customers have been steady, but we’ve not been run off our feet.’
Graeme ticked his fingers. ‘Catering event for the Women in Business breakfast in Cooma’s town hall next Tuesday. Lunch bookings for Friday booked out for the next three weeks—’
‘Three weeks?’
‘And that’s not the best bit, honey bunny.’
She grinned. ‘It better be so good it needs a full complement of staff, because I’ve got to tell you, Graeme, calling me honey bunny is a sackable offence.’
Could fifty-year-old bald men with immaculately sculpted facial hair pout? Graeme was sure giving it his best shot.
She took pity on him. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. Call me what you like, just tell me. What’s the best bit?’
‘Someone called @gravydave398 just left us a review on social media and it’s going viral. Six thousand likes in less than an hour. You want me to read it to you?’
‘Hell yes. Every word, maybe twice over.’
‘Okay. If you’re travelling west headed for the Snowy Mountains, do yourself a solid and detour via Hanrahan. Order the cake and coffee special at The Billy Button Café. Here’s what happened when I did. The coffee came out first. Crema like silk, over a coffee so dense with flavour my tastebuds started singing Walt
zing Matilda. I joke you not. Nothing can be better than that, right?
‘Wrong! Because that’s when the cake came out. First, let’s talk about wedge size. If you’re a vodka soda kinda guy who only eats carbs on a full moon in a leap year, then maybe you wouldn’t care about wedge size. But everyone else? Think wingspan of a pelican. That’s how much chocolate mocha rum cheesecake was on my plate. No way could I eat that much, right?
‘Wrong! One bite and I thought I’d passed out and travelled into another dimension where trees were made of fairy floss and rivers flowed with Barossa Valley chardonnay. The second bite and all the blood cells in my body stampeded up to my tastebuds, because all those little fellas wanted a taste of the glory.
‘One thousand freaking stars.
‘Oh wait, this site only lets me leave five. Well, it’s an all-caps, all-star fabulous freaking five from me.’
Vera struggled to find words for a moment. ‘You’re making that up. You wrote that. One of your friends from Melbourne. Your partner. Someone.’
Graeme smirked. ‘If you think I’d call myself Gravy Dave on a public forum, you don’t know me very well.’
‘Six thousand likes?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Wow. Maybe the staff will get paid this month after all.’ And maybe Jill’s fees at Connolly House could be paid so far in advance it wouldn’t matter if she was slung into a prison cell to rot.
Business profits! Her head spun into a rainbow-hued daydream where she could put new tyres on her car before the local police noticed the bald ones she’d been driving around on for the last six months. Take some of Jill’s fabric down to the seamstress in Cooma to make cushions for the banquettes in the café. She had plenty of cake in her life now, maybe she could eat some too? Maybe—
No. She was getting ahead of herself. Building an income stream out of this café was her number one priority now. So getting too confident too soon? Nope. Not going to happen.
But still … six thousand likes!
It was the euphoria of that crazy social-media moment that had caused her current problem. She’d been high-fiving Graeme and then laughing as he did a victory dance through the tables in the café when Josh had popped his head in the door. Asked her out hiking on her next day off. Hiking!
And what had she said in that crazy moment of optimism?
She’d said yes.
And now it was crunch time. What did a woman having major second thoughts wear on a hiking date anyway?
Hiking boots? She was a city girl. Not much call for hiking boots in the café strips of Queanbeyan or Canberra. Her sneakers would have to do. Shorts? She shivered at the thought. No, despite the calendar telling her it was the middle of spring, the Snowy Mountains had their own idea about daytime temperature. It was brisk outside. Jeans, definitely.
Fleece. Anorak. Hat. Sunscreen. Water. Tape for a blister event, tourniquet for a landslide event, compression bandages for a snakebite event … you’re losing it, Vera. She inspected the precisely hung and folded garments tucked away in her wardrobe then shook her head. An expedition to Antarctica to study emperor penguins wouldn’t require this much overthinking.
A toot sounded outside and she walked to the window. Josh stood on the footpath, a cat-sized travel crate in his arms.
Oh. Now she remembered why she’d said yes. A handsome, caring, fun man was interested in her. And … he’d just saved her cat for free.
It was a problem. One she’d have to do something about today. She’d go on this damn hike, snakes and landslides and cat obligations and all, but she’d lay it out on the line. She was in no position to be getting involved with anyone, and the big handsome anyone down there by her front door deserved to know the reason why.
For a woman who’d promised herself when she moved to Hanrahan that the café and her aunt were going to be her only priorities in life, complications had sure started to pile up fast. Like the cat. The pregnant cat. How it had schmoozed its way from dumpster diver in her back alley to home-delivery service in a cushy crate from the Cody and Cody Vet Clinic to her front door … bloody hell.
She waved through the glass, then headed downstairs to let him in.
‘You know, Josh, I’ve not looked after a pet since I won a goldfish at the Royal Canberra Show when I was eight.’ And that hadn’t ended well. As an adult, she’d never minded a pet … or looked after a friend’s child … she was so frazzled, she could barely recall watering a pot plant.
She’d never been the nurturing sort, so what madness had made her think she could bring home an invalid, pregnant cat?
‘It’s the same principles as with that long-ago goldfish. Food. Water. Attention.’
She frowned at the aggrieved silence pulsing from the crate. ‘Okay, but when I have trouble flushing the body down the toilet, you’re paying for my plumbing bill.’
Josh chuckled. ‘Relax. You’ll do fine. Which way?’
She sighed. ‘Upstairs. Turn right at the top.’
‘Did you get the kitty litter? The dried food? A water bowl?’
‘Yes, Dr Cody. The cat’s needs have all been catered for.’
He flashed her a grin over his shoulder as he headed up. ‘Now, now. No need for sarcasm, I get enough of that from Hannah. I’ve spare in the truck if you didn’t have time to get prepared. I know how many hours you put in at the café.’
Oh. Well. Now she did feel snarky. She moved past him to the front door of her apartment and held it open. ‘Laundry’s this way.’
‘Great. I’d lock her in there for today; it’ll help her work out it’s her space.’
This was all happening way too quickly. She followed Josh into the laundry then remembered the room was barely large enough for her, let alone her, an upset grey cat, and a six-foot-two muscled male who smelled like leather and sunshine.
And her libido. Let’s not forget that, she thought, because it had just rocketed into the laundry with her and started sucking all the oxygen out of the air.
Her libido needed a distraction. ‘Josh, I don’t think you quite understand. I’m not very good at …’ Caring for people? Getting involved? ‘Looking after things,’ she finished lamely. ‘I’m not like you, Josh. You have a way with people. With animals. You like them and they like you and it’s all easy-peasy. I don’t have that. I … misunderstand social cues. I—’
Shit. She was floundering now. How did she explain that she’d lost her faith in her ability to have relationships since Aaron blindsided her?
He set the crate down on the dryer and turned to face her. ‘That is so not true.’
She blinked. ‘I’m afraid it is, Josh.’
‘You want to know something?’
‘What?’
‘Before you met Poppy, she and I had been going through a rough patch. Not for a week or two, but for months.’
‘Oh. She said a little bit, but I hadn’t gathered it had been a big deal.’
‘The eyebrow piercing? All that goth makeup she wore when she first arrived? That all started when I told her I was thinking about moving back to Hanrahan.’
‘Poppy adores you, Josh. It’s plain to see.’
He grinned. ‘Sometimes. But for a long time, all I was getting from Poppy was the don’t-speak-to-me cold face. You know when that changed?’
She shrugged.
‘The night you offered her a job in your café.’
‘It was just a job. I don’t know how that—’
‘Vera, it was not just a job. It was community you offered her. With you and Graeme, the locals popping in and out, her listening to the gossip, pinning up the garage sale notices on the display board, being part of things … you were the one who made my dream for Poppy begin to come true. I wanted her to understand why Hanrahan was important to me, and you were the one who kickstarted that process.’
Was she?
Josh reached a hand over and squeezed hers. ‘Seriously, Vera, if you can wrangle a stroppy fifteen-year-old into doing six am shifts at
your café, one knocked-up cat is going to be a breeze.’
Josh’s hand on hers was doing fluttery things to her composure, as were his words. It was true, now that she thought about it. Poppy had seemed happier with every passing day. The eyeliner had grown less thick, the clothes less skimpy, and she’d bought a cute little fifties-style dress from the retro store on Dandaloo Drive that had even made her ridiculous black boots look charming.
She eased her hand from Josh’s. She had a lot to think about, and her brain wasn’t at its best with Josh in such close proximity.
‘Er … how’s she doing back in Sydney?’ she said.
‘Good, I think. She’s even talking about coming up for a weekend in the middle of term if she can persuade her mum to let her ditch the Friday swimming carnival.’
‘That’d be so nice,’ she said breathlessly. Man, oh man, she had to get out of this tiny room. ‘I’ll fill the water bowl,’ she said in a rush, squatting so she could reach the fish-shaped dish she’d purchased from the retro store. Big mistake. Now her libido was getting an eyeful of all that well-filled denim.
She stood up as close to the sink as she could get and splashed water in the bowl, wished she could splash a bit of it over her face while she was at it.
Josh opened the door of the crate. ‘Well, old girl? What do you think of your new home?’
Vera looked inside the crate. Two cross-looking eyes scowled out at her. ‘She looked happier in the alley eating three-day-old salmon spines.’
‘Let’s leave her to get settled. Now, about that hike.’ Josh eased a hip against her laundry tub, clearly not finding the confines of the space a problem at all. ‘How okay are you with a last-minute change of plan?’
Oh boy. She edged backwards to the open door. She’d be okay with anything so long as it got her out of the close confines of this laundry. ‘Fine. Whatever. Let’s go.’
CHAPTER
19
‘Horseriding?’
Vera’s voice cracked on the last syllable, and she tried again. ‘Josh, I know I said whatever, but the thing is, I can’t ride a horse.’
