The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

20

There was strength under the softness. Resolve under all that prickly reserve.

The woman who’d snuck her way into his thoughts had layers to her, all right, and Josh had no problem with taking his sweet time unpeeling them.

For now, pouring his way into the kiss she’d blown him away with by initiating was about as sweet as he could imagine sweet could be.

But sweet was just where the kiss started. Before his brain could react, strong fingers slid up his skull like they owned it, and she’d clamped her mouth to his like she’d become part of him. His heart rate flipped from steady to gallop.

He had to see her as well as feel her. He didn’t want to miss a second. He pulled back his head, and she swayed into him, her lashes a sweep of chestnut brown across pale, pale cheeks.

She had freckles, he realised with a rush of delight. A dozen or more—so faint he could only see them now he was inches away—marching across her nose. He brought his hands up to cup her face and threw himself back into the kiss.

She moaned, and the sound roared into his ears and straight to his groin. He grinned, left his feast of her mouth to explore her throat, felt the thready pulse beneath her skin. He felt like a schoolboy who’d just discovered girls: eager for everything, all at once, before need drove him blind.

But he wasn’t a schoolboy. He was a grown man, who’d made his share of spectacular mistakes, and he knew what that moan meant. Vera was in the grip of the moment like he was himself, and he didn’t want her to have regrets.

Regrets were the devil to live with, and who knew that better than him?

He pressed his forehead to hers while he gathered up the scattered shreds of his control. If he was going to have a relationship with a woman, with Vera, then he was going to damn well do it right.

‘Vera.’

He breathed out the word as softly as he could, and her eyes snapped open.

Need. It was there in her eyes, clear as the mountain creek. But hiding under it, not guarded away like it was every other time she’d looked at him, was hurt. Deep, muddy pools of it.

The loose focus of her gaze grew sharp and he could tell the moment when need was replaced by regret. And pain.

He ran his hands down her arms, back up to her shoulders. ‘You want to tell me what’s made you so sad?’

Bulldozing his way into the problem was one way to broach Vera’s reticence. Who knew? Maybe it would work? He’d caved to temptation after that moment in the surgery, and at Hannah’s insistence, to find out a little more about the woman who he couldn’t shift from his thoughts.

Vera De Rossi, he’d googled. Journalist.

A flurry of articles had come up under the search string, but he’d only read one before his conscience gave him a good kick in the nuts and asked him what in blazes he thought he was doing stalking the backstory of the woman he had the hots for.

He’d stopped reading then, because there wasn’t a Cody alive who didn’t understand that bullshit on the internet didn’t equate to truth. But that one article he’d skim-read had been enough to convince him that Vera was the real deal.

Honest, earnest, driven … and wounded by it.

WHO CARES ABOUTTHE ELDERLY was the headline. An opinion piece in some Sunday magazine, pointing out systemic failures in care and the concerns of family members seeking answers to questions.

And maybe she needed to know that he was an ear that was willing to listen.

‘Vera? You want to talk about it? Whatever it is?’

She frowned and shook her head, and a flush of colour surged faintly beneath those freckles.

She cleared her throat. Looked at her watch. Shifted her hips and wriggled away on the rug so she was out of reach. Evasive tactics if ever he’d seen them. She bore an uncanny resemblance to a softhearted pet owner in that moment, trying not to answer a question about how often she fed her furry companion a highly fatty treat.

‘Nothing’s wrong. That …’—she waved a hand in the air, near her mouth, indirectly in the direction of his chest—‘whatever it was, shouldn’t have happened.’

Like hell it shouldn’t have. He took a deep breath in, let it roll out slowly, tamping down the buzz in his head as he exhaled.

‘That “whatever it was” was always going to happen. And it’ll happen again if I have any say in it.’

She was pale now; the colour that the horseride had brought to her face had faded. ‘Yeah.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘Like what you want, or I want, or any of us wants actually matters a damn.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t get it. What do you mean, Vera?’ He got the feeling the topic of this conversation had just leapt about a hundred feet out of his reach. They weren’t talking about him and her and one soul-scorching kiss on a bridle trail anymore. This was about her past, about which he knew exactly zilch.

He eased back a little. If the bulldozer approach wasn’t going to work, maybe patience would. Time, along with the opportunity to get to know each other a little better, because now that he’d seen—felt—her connection with him, he wasn’t stepping away.

He could give her all the time she needed. And what better way to start than here, by the waterhole, under the warm spring sunshine?

‘Okay,’ he said, making his tone as friendly and unloverlike as possible. ‘If kissing’s off the menu for today, what are your thoughts on coffee?’

‘Oh, right.’

He could see the effort it took for her to pack her feelings down into the secret place where she hid them.

‘Coffee. Well, it depends.’

‘Yeah? On what?’

‘The barista. I’ve got Graeme in my life now. He’s turned me into a coffee snob.’

He grinned. ‘Luckily I swung by The Billy Button Café and had Graeme fill my thermos then.’

She looked at the battered grey object he’d pulled out of his pack. ‘I can’t believe Graeme condescended to let that grotty-looking thing within eyesight of his espresso machine.’

He winked at her. ‘I think your barista has a sweet spot for me.’

Her posture eased, finally, and he relaxed. The Cody charm offensive hadn’t grown totally rusty with disuse.

‘Graeme has a sweet spot for everyone. He’s like a marshmallow, only buffer and way more talkative.’

‘And he made me donate a twenty into Marigold’s community hall fundraiser.’ He poured a cup of coffee into the mug-shaped lid of the thermos and handed it to her, then took a swig straight from the neck of the bottle. Coffee bounded down his throat like a stroppy kangaroo. Strong and fierce, just the way he liked it.

‘So,’ he said, keeping his tone light. ‘You want to tell me why kissing’s a no-go zone?’

She froze. ‘No.’

Fine, Vera’s life could be off limits for the moment. He searched for a different tack. ‘Okay then. Abrupt change of topic coming up. Did you know I’m hoping to get council approvals back soon for a renovation project for the Cody building?’

Vera perched her lid of coffee in a crack in the granite. ‘Oh? I thought you were underway already fixing up the apartments.’

‘Hannah’s apartment is done. Mine’s a total mess, but no, we’re going to restore the downstairs shopfront to its original condition. The building is a great example of Federation architecture, except for that dodgy plywood and glass front window. I’ve been researching heritage building methods—the Community Hall is home to the historical society archives—and I think it’s totally doable. We might even be able to source some bluestone from the original quarry that was used in the area. It should be a perfect match for the rest of the building.’

‘That sounds incredible.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, as much as being a vet was always my dream, I didn’t hate working construction. But this will be my first building project working on something for me. For the Codys. That building is our history, so it means the world to us.’

‘You’re lucky to have such a strong family connection,’ she murmured.

‘I know. I took it for granted when I was Poppy’s age, but now? I feel like the luckiest guy to have a second chance in Hanrahan.’

‘I guess kids are never interested in old buildings and heritage.’

‘So true. I told you, I think, that Poppy didn’t want me to move back here.’

‘Yeah. And I kinda figured that after the crying episode by the skip bin.’

He stared out over the mountain ridges in the distance. ‘I should be thanking Kelly Fox for making me lose my temper that day.’ He glanced over to see her raising her eyebrows at him. ‘What?’

She shrugged. ‘You don’t seem the type to lose your temper very often.’

He grinned. ‘Well, I did that day. I’m lucky Braydon’s guinea pig didn’t go into cardiac arrest. But Poppy running off, you offering her a job, me worrying about her all afternoon … it was like a dam wall bursting. Poppy and I talked it out, and I think she finally understood that me choosing to move back here to Hanrahan didn’t mean I was abandoning her.’

Vera’s voice was low. ‘Nobody wants to feel that.’

He pulled on a tuft of grass, ran its length through his fingers so the seeds speckled the ground. ‘Who abandoned you, Vera?’

Her eyes shot to his. ‘We’re not talking about me.’

‘We could. If you wanted to. It’s just me and the horses listening, and we can all be trusted.’

‘Trust.’ She said the word like she’d forgotten what it meant. ‘Listen, Josh—’

No conversation that started with the phrase Listen, Josh ever ended well. He leaned back on his hands, turned his face to the sun.

‘This you-and-me thing. Whatever it is. I’m sorry, I can’t be a part of it.’

He wondered if she knew how defensive she sounded. ‘You don’t like having friends?’

‘Of course I like having friends. I just don’t like having … complications.’

He grinned. ‘Honey, I’m not that complicated.’

‘You know what I mean. Friends don’t kiss each other beside romantic alpine waterholes.’

He reached out a hand and smoothed her ponytail. ‘You think it’s romantic here?’

She blushed again, and flicked her hair out of his hand. He was really getting a kick out of seeing the pink warm her face.

‘I’m not joking, Josh.’

Neither was he. He just hadn’t realised how totally serious he was about pursuing this … complication … until she’d told him he couldn’t. But he wasn’t going to push anymore, not today.

‘Okay. I’m listening, Vera, I am. Even if I don’t agree. You ready to hit the saddle again?’

She tipped the dregs of her coffee into the grass and handed him back the lid. ‘Sure.’

He boosted her on to Calypso’s back and turned his thoughts to befriending Vera. Sharing laughs, sharing problems and ideas and dreams … it would be a start, and luckily he had just thought of a problem of his own he could share.

‘You want to hear something funny?’

‘Funny weird? Or funny ha-ha?’

‘Good question. Definitely weird and I’m only laughing about it to keep it from pissing me off.’

Vera ducked her head as Calypso walked in close to a low-hanging spruce limb and he trotted in beside her to hold the branch out of her way.

‘So tell me.’

‘We’ve been getting these complaints from town council—well, someone is complaining about us to town council, who then send us stroppy letters which we have to reply to or else they’ll suspend our business licence.’

‘That’s outrageous. What sort of complaints?’

‘Oh, one was about farming chickens, which was pretty random. The next one was about exercising dogs in a public area without them having adequate identification on their collars. The councillor we’ve been talking to has quashed them, but it’s got Hannah a bit rattled.’

‘I bet it has.’

He glanced across at her. The prickles were back in her voice, and she looked as spiky as an anxious echidna. ‘Hannah said you mentioned something about legislation being a bugbear of yours.’

‘Oh, well. I guess.’

‘You guess?’

She shrugged. ‘Before I moved here and opened up the café, my job often required digging up facts from public records. Real estate, city by-laws, federal legislation, corporate ownership structures. Boring stuff.’

‘This was when you were a journalist, right?’

She took her time answering him, and when she did, it wasn’t exactly an answer. ‘That’s in the past. I cook now. It’s what I’m good at.’

Fair enough. She could keep her secrets. For now.

‘Vera. You want to give me a lesson?’

Her look was startled. ‘In cooking?’

‘Honey, why would I need to learn how to cook? There’s a perfectly good pizza joint twenty feet from my front door. No, in searching through public legislation.’

‘Oh.’

‘I want to get a copy of any likely laws, council or state or federal, that we need to comply with. And put a protocol in place so if any more of this nonsense comes our way we can prove we’re acting like responsible business owners. We don’t need this bullshit in our lives, so we want to be proactive about it.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t help you.’

The tidy, busy enclave of Ironbark Station opened out on the grassy plain ahead of them, and Vera made a clicking noise to spur Calypso ahead of him down the trail. He watched her go and wondered why the day seemed a little less bright.

‘Can’t? Or won’t?’ he muttered.

His horse gave a soft little whinny, then headed down the path in Vera’s wake.