Page 107 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
She was clueless when it came to being in tune with Tom, because she could not work out how to make herself understand why he felt so right to her, but she was nothing to him.
She rubbed a hand over her heart. This love stuff was raw, and messy, and it hurt. It hurt a whole lot more than humiliation.
Despite what she’d believed Tom’s eyes had said, or how she’d interpreted the touch of his hands, the quiver in that quarter grin of his when he turned it in her direction, she should have listened. His actions hadn’t mattered, because the words he’d said had made it clear, time and time again. She wasn’t the future he was looking for. She was nothing but a boy’s long-ago crush that had not lasted.
A noise interrupted her planning. A groan? The fumble of a hand hitting a wall, perhaps? It sounded as though it had come from about a foot behind her head. She sat up, listened. There it was again. She turned and stared at the blank section of wall.
Could Bruno be in trouble? Or was Tom getting up to check the horses? Maybe a stable alarm had gone off.
She got out of bed and padded to the door in the thick socks Mrs LaBrooy had loaned her. A floorboard creaked outside and she opened the door and looked out. Definitely Tom—fully dressed still, walking down the corridor away from her.
She went to call his name, then spied a pile of clothing on the floor outside the room. Her jeans, shirt, jacket and boots, all mud free and crisply dry. Even her underwear, tucked and folded as neatly as … she frowned. Yes, as neatly as though they’d been folded by someone who’d had military training.
Had Tom stayed up late to launder and fold her clothes? Hmm, maybe god really was a woman. And, double plus, now she’d be able to get the hell out of here in the morning without having to make any awkward conversation.
She looked down the length of the dark corridor. Where was he going at this hour of the night? Had something happened to Bruno? If he was having a medical crisis, she might be able to assist. One year pre-med and a veterinarian degree equated to zero knowledge about multiple sclerosis, but still.
Tying the robe more firmly about her waist, she set off down the hall. The kitchen was empty. So was the good room, the bathroom and the laundry. She stood by the front room’s windows and checked the stables. Security lights shone on the stable door, which was firmly shut. The rain had eased, but leaf litter still swirled in the strong wind.
Not outside then. She turned to survey the house she’d run wild through as a kid. Where hadn’t she checked?
The door to the old sleepout, when she found it, was open, with enough dim lamplight spilling out to let her see it had been set up with a desk and a computer. The horse stud’s office, perhaps.
She should leave. She was being nosy, pure and simple. A busybody, a sneak, a stickybeak.
Or she could inch her way in, pop her nose through the gap in the door to see what was so important that Tom had got up from his bed at this godawful time of the morning.
At first, all she saw was some odd sort of foam. A patch of carpet underlay perhaps? No, an exercise mat. And on it, stretched out like a man on some medieval rack, was Tom, his arms crossed over his eyes to drown out the light.
Why would a grown man leave a soft, comfortable, warm bed for a cold, hard floor?
She headed back to her room.
Because he had a cold, hard heart, of course. He was, after all, an emotionless rock.
CHAPTER
40
Tom set his glass of whiskey down on the counter just as the smooth purr of rubber on carpet and the hiss of an oxygen bottle announced the arrival of his father.
‘Son.’
‘Hey, Dad.’
‘If I’d known you were uncapping the good stuff, I’d have joined you.’
Bruno Krauss was becoming a shadow of his former self. His white hair had thinned, his cheeks had sunk into gaunt hollows and his knees poked through his blanket like coat hangers through a too-thin shirt.
‘Sorry, Dad. I was in a bit of a mood and didn’t want to inflict it on anyone.’
‘Something on your mind, son?’
Too much.
But he shook his head. His dad’s determination to see his legacy carry on after his death was all he talked about. Some days it felt like that was all that was keeping him alive: the stockhorses; the breeding and training program; the campdraft scheduled for the offseason when the snow had receded.
The last thing his dad needed to know was that his heir might not be able to do any of that.
