Page 59 of The Vet from Snowy River
She shook her head. ‘No. She’s a stray all right. Just a good-looking one.’
‘Okay. Let’s do this then.’ He looked up at Poppy. ‘You want to make Vera a cup of tea or something? We won’t be long.’
‘Okay. Vera?’
She seemed reluctant to go, so he gave Poppy his favourite do-as-you’re-told dad look and jerked his head to the door. Jokes aside, if you weren’t used to the realities of slicing into living flesh with a scalpel, you had no place in an operating theatre.
‘Come on, Vera,’ Poppy said again. ‘I can show you Maximus on the way. He’s super cute. Even cuter than Dad. Who is totally available, by the way.’
Oh. My. God. He and his daughter were going to be having a serious talk on the drive to the train station.
They’d barely been gone ten seconds when Hannah started in on him. ‘She’s not your usual type, Josh.’
‘Like I have a type.’
‘Oh come on. Lily Sanders? Penelope Kanye? Giggly and pink-cardiganed and addicted to nail salons?’
He arranged instruments in a kidney dish: scalpel, suture kit, swabs. ‘That was in high school. Anyone in a bra who looked in my direction was my type at high school.’
She snorted. ‘Some of them did more than look, as I recall.’
He grinned at her. ‘What can I say? Chicks loved me.’
She made a gagging noise. ‘No, seriously, Josh. Vera seems kind of … I don’t know. Prickly.’
‘Yeah. You’re not wrong there.’
She swabbed the cat, held it firmly while Josh used clippers to trim her belly of fur. ‘So what makes you think she’s interested in you?’
He ran a hand over the animal’s smooth belly. ‘She’s told me she’snotinterested.’
‘I see. Finally, a woman of sense. Maybe she and I will become friends.’
He paused as his fingers ran over a tiny bulge. ‘I think she’s lying.’
‘And what tells you that, hotshot? Your high school history of being ogled by anyone wearing a bra?’
He shrugged. ‘I’d tell you, but it’s part of the blokes’ code. We know what we know.’
‘You are so full of shit.’
Yeah. He probably was. But underneath it all, he did think Vera wasn’t totally immune to him. And he sure as hell was not immune to her.
‘Feel this, would you, Hannah?’
He watched her slide her fingers over the exposed belly of the cat. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’
She grinned. ‘Oh yes. Pregnant, but not ready to pop just yet. You want to go tell Vera she’s having kittens in a month or so while I do the bath and bloods? Who knows … maybe she knows nothing about animals, and she’ll need your advice so badly she’ll overcome her distaste for you and agree to go on a date.’
He eyed his sister over the table. ‘That’s not a bad strategy, Dr Cody. How’d you come up with that idea?’
‘I’d tell you, but it’s part of the girl code. We know what we know.’
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.
