The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

4

The pups woke him.

Josh stared, bleary-eyed, at his watch and winced. He’d dropped onto his bed at two am after a callout to a calving, and unless he’d strapped his watch on upside down—always a possibility when you were cleaning yourself up in a paddock using the beam from your ute’s headlights to see—the hour hand was on the wrong side of seven.

Way too early to be getting up after a night on call.

The pups must have had a different agenda, because he’d barely shut his eyes again when their fretting sounds moved from mild to miserable. Who knew eight little snouts no bigger than thimbles could generate so much noise? Where were earplugs when he needed them?

‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘I’m coming.’

A brown face with tired brown eyes was peering up at him from the bottom of the stairs when he left his flat.

‘Jane Doe,’ he said, heading down to her. ‘What are you doing out here?’

The old dog thumped her tail against the newel post in reply.

She gave a groan of appreciation as he ran her ears through his fingers, then trotted off in the direction of the sleepover room, turning after a few steps to check he was following.

‘I’m coming,’ he said, his curiosity piqued. ‘Have you got something to show me?’

Jane Doe’s chocolate rump disappeared into the gloom of the room where they housed their overnight guests, and the yipping noises of her pups went up an octave.

Considering their eyes and ears were not yet open, Jane’s young hooligans were adept at knowing when their mum—and the comfort of their next feed—was close.

He peered into the whelping box, smiling at the cluster of anxiously squirming bodies. ‘What are you waiting for, Jane Doe? I’m counting eight little fluff-bundles pretty keen to latch—’

Wait. Not eight, but seven. Where was the jumbo brown one?

‘Bloody hell, Jane, well spotted.’ He went to the door and flicked on the strip of overhead lighting, ignoring the outraged hiss from the recently neutered cat in Cage Six. Where could one plump, barely mobile pup get to in a metre-square box?

Jane had climbed into the whelping box and was pointing her nose into the back corner, where the plywood rim bumped up against the mesh of the large cage. ‘Down there, is he?’ he said, and he dropped to his knees and crawled his way into the box to have a look.

Aha! One missing pup. He dug his fingers into the crevice until they’d surrounded the furry lump and levered it upwards. ‘You okay, buddy?’

A pink tongue lolled out of the pup’s mouth, and it yawned hugely.

‘Getting stuck seems to be your favourite thing to do.’

He plopped the pup down with its brothers and sisters, and Jane rewarded him with a lick to his hand.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll whack a bit of timber beading down that hole so we don’t lose him again.’

He settled on to the shredded paper next to them and Jane rested her head on his ankles and looked up at him lovingly while her puppies fed.

‘You’re doing a good job, old girl,’ he said.

‘Talking to your extended family?’ said a voice from behind him.

He turned to see Hannah standing in the doorway, buried in bright orange polka dot pyjamas that he didn’t think his retinas could deal with before coffee.

‘Lost pup drama. It’s all sorted now.’

‘Good. Because I was counting on at least another hour’s sleep.’

‘You and me both. I was up half the night delivering a calf out past Crackenback.’

Hannah grinned. ‘God, I love having a junior partner.’

‘Remind me to smirk next time you’re on call and have to spend the night in a freezing ditch.’

His sister laughed. ‘It’s a deal. Whose calf was it?’

‘The Lyndon place. Hobby farmers, so they were a little anxious about letting their pet cow go into labour without a vet on hand.’

‘Hobby farmers,’ snorted Hannah.

‘Now now, we didn’t all have the luxury of growing up in gumboots.’

‘Yeah yeah. Maybe I should send them a bill this morning while they’re still feeling like proud hobby parents.’

He grinned, and took his time checking on the pups and refreshing their bedding before leaving them to snooze in the sleepover room and following his sister to the office. He’d take middle-of-the-night calvings over doing the bills any day of the week. By the time he got there, Hannah was rifling through files in a way guaranteed to raise the ire of their receptionist.

‘I’m ducking out for a coffee, Han. You want one?’

‘I’d love one. You want to take those lost dog flyers with you? They’re cluttering up the printer and you know I can’t deal with mess.’

‘Excuse me? You’re the messiest person I know.’

‘True. Okay, I can’t deal with other people’s mess. I have a system; it just looks like chaos to the uninitiated.’

He took the pile of flyers Hannah handed him and the photo of Jane Doe stared up at him. Maybe he should pick her up a bone from the butcher while he was out. Take her for a walk down to the lake later, so she could sniff at tree bark and chase ducks … have herself a well-earned mumma-dog break.

He patted his pocket and the jingle of a pile of coins rewarded him. ‘My budget would stretch to a sausage roll or a lamington. You hungry?’

Hannah groaned. ‘Don’t tempt me with naughty stuff. I’m revving myself up into a health binge.’

No problem. He’d be sure to dust the crumbs from his shirt before he returned.

The old timber door closed behind him and he dragged in a breath of country air. The first day of spring had come and gone, and the promise of warmth hung in the breeze. God he’d missed this place—the perfect peace of early mornings in the shadow of the mountains. Gossip be damned, he’d made the right choice coming home. He just hoped like hell it was the right choice for Poppy too.

‘Joshua Preston Cody, bless my heart, it really is you.’

He looked up, met the inquisitive gaze of a tiny little woman wearing a pink and white flowery dress, and groaned inwardly. Trust him to time his outing to run into Mrs LaBrooy, who was the undisputed Hanrahan gossip queen despite the fact she lived a forty-minute drive out of town. She was also one of his favourite people in all the world.

‘Mrs LaBrooy, you’ve not aged a day.’

She let him kiss her cheek then held him close while she gave him the once-over. ‘Still charming the ladies, Josh. There were hearts aplenty broken when you left Hanrahan.’

He patted her hand. ‘One of them mine, Mrs LaBrooy. I never forgot you.’

She chuckled. ‘Or my apple pie, I’ll be thinking. You come visit when you’re settled, I know Tom’ll be itching to see you. Bring that sister of yours with you. I miss her since she quit visiting the stables.’

He took a step back when Mrs LaBrooy paused, and zeroed in on her face. ‘Hannah used to visit Ironbark Station? I didn’t know she was looking after the stock horses.’ He certainly hadn’t seen their files. Or, now he thought about it, any plump cheques being deposited from the deep coffers of the Krauss family. He cocked his head. ‘Is there something going on I don’t know about?’

‘Oh, pet, just forget I said that, will you? Tell me about yourself. Where’s that precious little babe of yours?’

Fine. He’d grill Hannah later. If she wanted her junior partner to keep doing the daily coffee run for her, she could tell him what was going on between her and the up-country station where Mrs LaBrooy was housekeeper.

He slid his hand under Mrs LaBrooy’s arm and walked with her down Dandaloo and across the pretty park that formed the town’s centre. ‘Poppy’s no little babe anymore. Fifteen now.’

‘Fifteen? Never say it.’

He grinned. ‘I know, right? Her last birthday clocked over and it was like the gates of hell opened. Sass, eyeliner and obnoxious music all arrived in my life at once.’

She chuckled. ‘Josh Cody, brought to his knees by his teenage daughter. Lordy me, how happy am I to see this day. And … um …’

Here it comes, he thought.

‘And Beth?’

‘Poppy’s mother’s doing fine. She’s married to an architect, and they have twin sons that just started school. She’s even back teaching.’

‘Really? Teaching high school students? I would have thought that—’

He stopped her right there. ‘Beth is my very good friend, Mrs LaBrooy. No-one criticises her in my hearing, is that clear?’ He kissed her on her plump, vanilla-scented cheek. ‘Not even dear old friends who’ve promised to bake me apple pie.’

She turned watery eyes on him. ‘Josh, my love. You are so right. Accept the apologies of a foolish old busybody, won’t you?’

He tucked her hand back under his arm. ‘It’s forgotten. I’m just on my way to get coffee. How about you take pity on a lonely thirty-something bachelor and join me?’

She giggled. ‘Like a breakfast date?’

He laughed. ‘Like I even remember what a date is. So, you’re the expert. Where do we go to get the best coffee in town at this time of the day? Last time I was here, I was more of a chocolate milk from the servo kind of guy.’

Mrs LaBrooy gave his arm a squeeze. ‘I know just the place. Remember the old bank building?’

He looked over at the lake end of the park, to the corner of Paterson and Curlew. ‘Sure. Mr Pidgin, wasn’t that the bank manager’s name? Always wore a bow tie.’

‘Fancy you remembering that.’

Josh ambled beside Mrs LaBrooy through the roses growing in their neat beds of mulch, past the pale marble cenotaph. There was Cody history there, too: Preston Wilfred Cody, his grandfather’s uncle, lost to the Great War on the other side of the world when he wasn’t much older than Poppy was now.

‘I never forgot Hanrahan, Mrs L.’

‘You must notice some changes, though.’

He smiled. ‘Well, sure. The tourists, for a start. Who knew the place could be so busy either side of the ski season? There’s always a bus or two parked along the road out to the Alpine Way, and people snapping photos of the ducks down along the Esplanade.’

‘Have you seen the new development down on the southern outskirts of town? Fifty houses, I heard. City people buying them up as weekenders. House prices have skyrocketed too.’

‘I haven’t driven down that way,’ he murmured, his eyes on the distant ranges. This northern arm of Lake Bogong was narrow enough for him to see the grass plains on the far side of the lake, the stands of eucalypt hunched together like old men around a campfire. And above them, stark and rugged, the towering peaks of the Snowy Mountains. Snow still shone white in crevices and crags, and some huge raptor—a wedge-tailed eagle, perhaps—soared serenely from peak to peak. No-one who’d grown up here could have forgotten these mountains. This view.

‘Here we are,’ said Mrs LaBrooy, squeezing his arm. ‘The Billy Button Café. The new owner used to be a big-city journalist. She’s having herself one of those tree changes, I expect.’

Trust Mrs LaBrooy to have all the inside goss; this town didn’t need a community section in its newspaper.

The café stood on the end of a row of terraced Federation-style buildings, with tall windows and deep stone windowsills. Aged red brick that had seen a century of summers gleamed behind the wrought iron of the upper storey’s railings. The terraces looked like the shorter, younger siblings of the Victorian stone buildings on the opposite side of the park where the clinic was. Hanrahan had the gold rush to thank for the money that had been spent on the town’s infrastructure in the late 1800s … and fate to thank for being high enough to escape the flood when the Snowy River was dammed nearly a century later. He should take some photos, perhaps visit the local Historical Society museum; make sure the renovation plans he had for the Cody building were sympathetic to the era.

As they pushed open the heavy timber and glass door, Mrs LaBrooy leaned in to him.

‘You’re going to want to try the sourdough butterscotch donuts,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how the new owner dreamed them up, because they’re not like any donut I ever saw. Like a sugared ball, with a dimple, and that dimple just oozing with sticky sweet goodness. Tom brought some home with him the other day. Are you listening to me, Josh Cody?’

But Josh wasn’t listening. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if his ears still worked. His thoughts had scattered, too, details of architraves and Federation fretwork and gyprock driven out by the vision splendid before him.

‘Mrs LaBrooy, who is that?’

‘Who is who? Oh. That’s the new owner. Vera, she calls herself. Moved up here from Canberra, I think. Took up the lease on this place and had it all kitted out like an olden-day film set in no time at all. She’s a worker, and boy, can she bake.’

Boy, could she catch the eye. His eye, that was for sure. Her face was pale, like an antique cameo, and he rather thought her eyes might be grey. She was lean—almost too thin—like an athlete who’d run herself too hard for a season, and her hair was a deep, chestnut brown.

As she turned, her eyes met his, just briefly, for one long breathless pause of looking, before she returned her attention to her neat, neat rows of cake.

‘Good morning, welcome to The Billy Button Café. Would you like a table?’

Josh dragged his eyes off the woman placing food in the glass-fronted cabinet and settled them on the waiter by their side.

‘Umm,’ he said.

Mrs LaBrooy answered for him. ‘A table for two. This handsome young man’s invited me out on a date.’

The waiter grinned. ‘In that case,’ he said with a flourish of the white napkin in his hand, ‘allow me to place you at our honeymoon table in the window. I’m Graeme. I’m the café manager.’

Whipping two menus from his catering apron as though he was performing a magic trick, he set them down on the starched tablecloth and whisked away a fallen petal from the table’s vase of flowers. He held Mrs Labrooy’s chair for her while she took a seat. ‘I’ll give you a minute to choose what you’d—’

‘We’re having the donuts,’ said Mrs LaBrooy. ‘And a latte for me, young man.’

‘Well, aren’t you a lamb. It’s been a decade or two since anyone called me a young man. You come back again. Something for you, mate?’

Josh craned his head past the waiter, but the dark-haired woman had disappeared through swinging doors into what he presumed was a kitchen.

‘Coffee? Tea? Table water?’

He felt the not-so-subtle point of Mrs LaBrooy’s shoe jabbing him in the ankle and snapped his attention back to the waiter. ‘I’ll have the same.’

‘Lattes and donuts coming up, Dr Cody.’

Josh tilted his head, took the time to look properly at the man serving them. Somewhere between his age and Mrs LaBrooy’s, who had to be pushing seventy if she was a day. Fit, tanned, bald, neat. ‘Do I know you?’ Maybe the bald head was throwing him—he’d been gone for sixteen years, after all; a lot could happen to a guy’s hairline in that time.

‘Graeme Sharpe,’ said the waiter, holding out his hand to shake Josh’s. ‘I’ve lived here in the district about a year. We’ve not met before, I just read your name tag: DR CODY, VETERINARIAN.’

Josh touched the badge buttoned to his work shirt. ‘Call me Josh,’ he said, shaking the manager’s hand. ‘And this is Mrs LaBrooy, housekeeper out at the Ironbark Station. She’s also the town flirt, so guard your heart, Graeme. She’s left a string of broken men from here to the coast.’

Mrs LaBrooy batted his arm, clearly enjoying the attention.

‘You can flirt with me any day, love, I promise. I’ll have those coffees and donuts with you in a tick,’ said Graeme.

Half an hour later, as Josh wandered back into the vet clinic to see his first scheduled appointment for the day, he was still thinking about the dark-haired woman behind the counter. Mrs LaBrooy hadn’t overstated the case about the new café owner’s baking skills—he should have brought a batch of those sugary donuts back to the clinic for later—but it was the woman’s face that had stayed with him. Not grey, but green, he thought. Her eyes had been the quiet green of alpine grass.

Too bad he didn’t have time for romance. He’d have liked those eyes to rest on him a while longer.

He let himself in the door and there was his sister, hands on her hips, looking like a patient had just sprayed a hefty dose of cat pee on her top lip.

‘Well?’

He frowned. ‘Well what?’

‘Where the hell’s my coffee, Joshua Cody?’

Crap. And he’d forgotten to deliver the lost dog notices.