The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

30

He’d had women in his life. Too many, his sister would have said, especially back in high school. His affair with Beth had survived a baby and the crash-and-burn of his university scholarship, but then waned over time into friendship; and he’d gone out in Sydney every now and then, but never with any real intent. Never with his heart in a flutter and his thoughts all torn up like confetti, like they were now.

Never with a woman whose inhibitions were so at odds with how she kissed.

Maybe he’d got it wrong that day on the trail. Maybe he’d imagined her response to suit himself, because he needed her to want him as much as he wanted her. But she was looking at him now with need in her eyes and he wanted—he really wanted—to believe it was him that she needed.

He tucked a curl of her hair behind her ear, letting his hand linger on the soft velvet of the skin he found there. Only one way to find out, and here, in the soft light of the fringed lamp, with nothing but the low purr of a sleeping cat to disturb them, was the perfect time.

He slid his hand down to her shoulder and nudged her towards him. ‘Speaking of trouble, you want to kiss me?’

‘I shouldn’t.’

He leaned in until he was a breath away. ‘Because you’re not sure how you feel about me?’

He knew damn well what he was feeling: weak-kneed, starry-eyed … with visions of him and Vera building something real together. Something that looked like a family, with his daughter, and a cavalcade of pets, and lazy Sundays holding hands.

She breathed in, a long shuddering breath that sucked a piece of his soul in with it. ‘I’m feeling plenty. And that’s exactly why I shouldn’t kiss you. My life’s a mess, Josh. The sort of mess that could end up in prison.’

‘When bad stuff happens, we get through it, Vera. Day by day.’

She smiled, a sad little curl of her lips that made him want to gather her into a hug and hold her until all that sadness faded away.

He touched his lips to hers, lingered there until the warmth built. ‘I can hope with you. I can worry with you. I can mind your cat while you make licence plates in Old Wentworth Gaol.’

She eased her head back. ‘Is that what inmates do in prison? Make licence plates?’

‘That and throw bundles of burning toilet paper out of their windows.’

She took a sip of her wine, and his heart eased a little as some of the worry left her face. ‘I see movies have formed the basis of your vast knowledge of the Australian prison system. You do know Wentworth hasn’t homed prisoners since the 1920s?’

‘Come closer.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t deserve this, Josh. I don’t deserve you.’

‘I’m not some stuffed koala that you just won at the fair, Vera. I’m making my own choices, here. And I’m choosing you.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

He kissed her again, on the corner of her mouth, beneath the tiny red stone she had clipped to her ear, in the groove of her throat where her pulse beat.

‘It doesn’t have to be simple, Vera. It just has to be real. Kiss me, and you tell me if what we have feels real to you or not.’

‘God help me,’ he heard her mutter and then her lips were on his, and it took less than a second to work out he hadn’t been imagining anything back at the waterhole. Being kissed by Vera was like being doused in hot sauce and set on the grill.

She moaned and he hauled her in closer so he could wrap his arms around her and let himself feel every inch of her pressed against him.

‘So soft,’ he murmured, feeling the curve of her back, the swell of hip beneath her woollen dress.

Vera was vulnerable. Everything she’d told him—her dying aunt, her dobber boss—warned him to go slow, slower than pitch. But when her breathy little moan reached his ears, he forgot his good intentions.

She moved above him, twisted, her mouth fused to his, sending sparks of lightning into his brain.

‘Vera,’ he said, her name like a prayer.

Her hands slid beneath his shirt and swept up his back and the tide of lust that swept with it nearly blinded him.

He pulled back until her eyes, green and glittering, met his. ‘Is this real for you, Vera? Because if it’s not, if you want me to stop, now’s the time to say so, sweetheart.’

‘Don’t stop, Josh Cody.’

He bit his lip. Heaven here on Vera’s couch, his for the taking, but darn it, he wanted more. He wanted trust, and confetti, and oval-faced sons who aced cooking classes at school.

‘I’m not a one-night stand, Vera. Don’t use me to scratch your itch. If we’re doing this, we’re really doing this. Sex. Coffee dates. Holding hands in public. Listening to gossip about us until our ears bleed and promising each other to see this thing through.’

Those green eyes didn’t waver. ‘I still don’t want you to stop.’

So he didn’t. He dived back in, his heart in his mouth, and the future he’d hoped for finally within his grasp.

If heaven was a moonlit bed with a naked Josh sprawled across it, and her tucked snugly into the furnace of his musclebound chest, then she’d died happy.

Happy and full and soft.

She pressed a hand to her chest, to where the great icy chunk of worry usually lived, and it wasn’t there. All that sunshine and optimism and strength of his had somehow chiselled into her breastbone and released all the angst she’d had stored up like permafrost.

Bits of him had chiselled in elsewhere, too, she thought with a smirk.

Deliciously.

More delicious than anything she could whip up in a month of Sunday baking. How had she been so dense to not let this man into her life sooner? He’d been supportive when she’d told him her great shameful secret, not horrified. He hadn’t tried to distance himself or back out.

He’d embraced her and her shady past.

She burrowed her face into the smooth curve of his shoulder while hot tears of relief leaked from her eyes. She hadn’t known relief could feel so overwhelming. So necessary.

She’d had no-one she felt she could confide in, and bottling up all this stuff had been eating her up from the inside out. Jill’s mind was too faded to understand. Her old colleagues she’d been too ashamed to face, too worried about what nasty whispers Aaron had fed into the newspaper’s back office about her sacking.

There was her lawyer Sue, sure, but Sue sent her invoices after every confession … their relationship was based on dollars, not friendship.

A rumble sounded from within the chest she was snuggled up against.

‘Josh,’ she whispered.

‘Mmm.’ He sounded eight parts asleep.

‘I feel happy.’

‘Happy,’ he mumbled.

Make that nine parts asleep, she thought with a smile. It didn’t matter. She was here, in his arms, and tomorrow she would go and see her aunt and take the quilt project with her to finish the next section. Choose some cheerful fabric: sunshine yellow, broccolini green.

Then she’d smile at customers in the café. She’d dance with Graeme when his favourite song came on the radio. Heck, maybe she’d stun Marigold and Kev and rock up to yoga in the park.

Her future had some black spots in it, sure, but with Josh by her side?

She let her lashes flutter shut against his skin. With happiness running through her veins like liquid gold, she could face anything.

Finally, she could see a future that she could look forward to.