He wrapped his arms around her and spun her in a hug that had her laughing and crying all at the same time.
‘Weeping will not reduce my bill,’ Sue said dryly. ‘Nor will public displays of affection with handsome men.’
Vera wriggled out of Josh’s arms so she could hug her lawyer. ‘You’re the best.’
‘I know. Now, I’ll go work my magic on the judge, and I’ll meet you both inside for the formal apology.’ And with a nicotine-tinged kiss on her forehead, her lawyer was gone.
CHAPTER
45
One sneaky text mid-afternoon to Graeme was all it had taken.
Josh turned off the old highway just as the setting sun was stippling the upper crags of the Snowy Mountains in gold and orange and pink. Vera, thankfully, was in such a tizz of delight she had barely noticed when he pulled into the alley behind the café instead of driving her home.
He walked round to her side of his truck and opened the door for her.
She gave him a half-smile. ‘I don’t have a work shift tonight, you know. We could go back to my place …’
Man oh man. The glimmer of flirt under those words stripped the blood from his head. Perhaps he’d been a little rash sending that message to Graeme, but given the hubbub leaking out from between the brick and timber of the café walls, he was too late to cry off.
But he could have a moment.
And—if he played this right—he could maybe have a lifetime of moments.
Vera cleared her throat. ‘Umm, are you going to say something?’
‘I’m about three seconds away from planting my lips on yours, Vera, I just …’ Woah, this was a heck of a lot harder in reality than when he had been practising it in his head. He blamed it on the skip bin and the food scrap smells lurching out of it. Could he not have used his brain and pulled over by the lake reflecting the sunset? Under the majestic snow gums in the town’s heritage-listed park?
To hell with it. He’d waited long enough and he wasn’t waiting a second longer. Love was love, no matter where he proclaimed it.
‘I love you, Vera.’
‘Oh, Josh.’ Those green eyes had smudged into smoke, and the lips he was about to kiss trembled. ‘You have to know I love you too.’
He couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. ‘Yeah. I figured.’
Her eyebrows snapped together. ‘You figured?’
He hauled her in close and swivelled so she was pressed up against the dusty length of his old ute, and he was pressed up against the prim, grey-suited, jasmine-smelling length of her. ‘I’m kind of irresistible,’ he murmured as he ran his hands up into her hair and held her face there, just inches from his own. ‘Just ask Jane Doe.’
She gave a little giggle that made his heart spin cartwheels in his chest. ‘Okay. You are indeed irresistible.’
He brushed the tiniest of kisses onto her mouth.
‘Oh,’ she moaned.
‘I’d kiss you again,’ he said, ‘but we need to get some things settled first.’
‘Yes to anything. Kiss me quick.’
He hovered a breath away. ‘So that’s a yes to my question?’
Her lashes were dark against her cheeks, and her cheeks were flushed, and her mouth was doing things to the stubble on his chin that ought to be outlawed in a public place like an alley.
‘What’s the question?’ she murmured against his cheek.
‘I want to get married. To you. Say yes and I’ll let you kiss me properly.’