Page 24 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
Hannah Cody buried her nose in the neck of her horse, Skipjack, and breathed in his warm smell. ‘How are you, my sweet?’ This was the perk of stabling her horse at a property that employed her vet services: she could pop in to spoil him between patients.
The horse shifted on his feet and dropped his head over the timber rail to snuffle at her pockets.
‘What makes you think I’ve brought you a present?’ She gave his neck a pat and relented. Skipjack knew her well; of course she’d brought sugar lumps.
‘You bring anything for me?’
The deep voice came from the next stall in the quiet stable, but she didn’t need to look to see who it was. The thrum that had been buzzing behind her breastbone ever since Tom Krauss moved his lean, broody self back to Hanrahan ratcheted up a notch. If only a sugar lump could cure that.
Skipjack butted her in the shoulder, nudging her away from his stall door in the direction of the neighbouring one. She frowned at him. Whose side was he on, anyway? Where Tom Krauss was concerned, she needed more space, not less. At least, she did until she’d managed to quell these funny feelings she was having every time he came within cooee.
She took a reluctant step sideways. ‘Hi.’
Tom stood in the shadows at the back of the stall, looking more like a viking than a horseman. A viking in an Akubra, with a stubbie in one hand. Tall, lean in the face and with a ruthless edge to his manner that made her wonder just what he’d been doing all those years he’d been away from his family’s high country horse stud. In the Navy, apparently. Doing something that had aged him.
The horse whose stall he was brooding in was just starting to swell with her unborn foal. She was a massive mare—a thoroughbred—with a white blaze streaking through her deep roan coat. ‘Isn’t Buttercup usually in the big stable?’
‘She was fretting, so we’re having some one-on-one time.’
That thrumming in Hannah’s chest started up again. Yeah, Tom might have the demeanour of a Nordic warrior who burned down whole villages before breakfast, but there was a heart hiding under that don’t-mess-with-me attitude—at least, there used to be, back when she was a teenager and he was her brother’s best mate at high school. She ran a hand down the front of her no-nonsense navy scrubs, willing the unsettling feeling to go away. Hannah Cody didn’t do feelings. Not for guys. Not since—
She dragged her thoughts away from the abyss. ‘You’re getting clucky, Tom. She’s got a while to go yet.’
‘Want to check her out for me? Since you’re here?’
She tapped her finger on the stall door. ‘It’ll cost you.’
He waggled his empty bottle. ‘Sorry, I’m all out of beer.’
‘Pity.’
‘I can owe you.’
‘Yeah, there’s the quick way to ruin for a small-town vet clinic.’
‘You ever know me to default on my debts, Cody? I seem to recall promising to put a frog in your boots if you didn’t quit pestering me back when you were about eight. Came through with that one, didn’t I?’
She grinned, easier now they’d slipped back into insults. This was more like it. The Tom Krauss who sent a shiver frisking through her unmentionables was a new and unwelcome development, but the Tom who’d pushed her into the lake and cut off one of her pigtails and used her toys for gumnut slingshot practice with Josh? Him, she could deal with.
‘Frogs don’t pay the wages, but Mrs LaBrooy’s apple pie just might. Put in a good word for me with your housekeeper and I’ll check out your horse,’ she said, moving into the stable and running her practised hands over Buttercup’s impressive girth.
Tom leant back against the wall, his face relaxed for once, his grin cocky under the battered old hat he wore.
She frowned at him. ‘Stop looking like that.’
‘Like what, brat?’
Hot. Charming. Flirty.‘Irritating,’ she said, and turned her back on him. ‘Bloody men,’ she muttered and Buttercup looked back at her and whickered. ‘Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, don’t you, girl?’
Tom cleared his throat. ‘If you’re attempting to draw some tenuous analogy between me and the champion racehorse who knocked Buttercup up … yeah, fair call.’
She frowned at the smirk in his voice. Where had bossy Tom gone? Annoying Tom? The Tom who’d liked to argue logic with his big words and his smart brain and if that didn’t work, with a headlock and a tickle to the ribs? This new hot-and-cold, broody-or-flirty version was altogether too … something.
‘The Navy changed you, Tom Krauss. And not for the better.’
The pause was longer this time. ‘Another fair call.’
There was no smirk in his voice now. She peered around the swell of the horse’s belly. ‘Did I say something?’
