The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn
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.