Page 41 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to reassure herself that her plan wasn’t dumb. Did she need to think it through more? Did she need to chicken out and drive off and come back later once she’d consulted the books waiting for her beside her bath?
The engine started itstick tick tickas it cooled, and she tried very hard not to think about the matching metronome of her biological clock.
Crap. Now she had gone and thought it.
She was here, wasn’t she? So she should head inside and hear whatever Tom’s proposal was, and then find some natural and non-awkward way to segue into a perfunctory Q and A session to gauge his willingness to contribute his gene pool to her single-mother-by-choice plan.
Hell, why not apologise to Bruno for causing a kerfuffle in front of him on Saturday while she was at it? She’d be outta here and back in her bathtub, prepping an ovulation chart before the late news came on.
‘Imagine a simple linear graph,’ she said, planning her explanatory speech. ‘On the x-axis, we have biology and on the y-axis we have the city–country imbalance in access to technology. The x-axis tells me I need spermatozoa to create a baby, but the y-axis is telling me that the closest fertility clinics are in Wagga Wagga or Canberra or Wodonga. How do we solve this problem? Easy. You—um … your spermatozoa, to be precise—are here, available 24/7, whereas I’d be having to do multiple long distance trips to access, um … other spermatazoa.’
Maybe he’d want to hear some facts and figures about women parenting alone. Last year’s tax return for the clinic would be proof enough that she could afford a cot, in case he was worried about future claims on the Krauss family fortunes.
Huh. If only she’d thought to keep her copy ofKnock Yourself Upin the car; she could have loaned it to him. Prove the rationality of her process.
‘Mrs LaBrooy,’ she said brightly when the elderly housekeeper answered her knock on the front door. ‘Do you ever get time off? It’s past seven.’
‘Little Hannah Cody. You come inside and let me give you a hug. Now, why haven’t I seen you in my kitchen lately?’
Hannah wrapped her arms around Mrs L. She smelled (and felt) like a delicious clean pillowcase wrapped around a plump feather pillow. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs LaBrooy. Josh has been seeing to the station horses after—’ Shoot, she may as well say it. ‘After I got into a bit of a snit with Tom.’
Mrs LaBrooy patted her cheek. ‘You young ones. Always too blind to see what’s right in front of your nose.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing, my lamb. Now—are you wanting to see Tom?’
‘And Bruno, if it’s not too late.’
‘Oh, love, he’s headed to his room. He’s up with the sun and there’s not too much puff left in him come nightfall. Is it important? I could go and knock on his door for you.’
‘It can keep.’
‘I’ll tell him you popped by. Now, you go sit by the fire in the good room and warm your hands while I find Tom for you. It’s been so cold these last few nights we’ve had a fire lit and you look chilled to the bone.’
‘The heater’s blown in my car.’
‘You get that fixed before winter comes, you hear me? Your parents would have six fits if they could see the condition of that little car of yours.’
Hannah grinned. ‘Lucky they can’t see it, then. Don’t worry, Kylie’s just about talked me into an upgrade.’ A four-wheel drive, perhaps, if her bank manager would agree to the finance. Something with room for a stroller to fit in the boot, and—heck, why not?—perhaps she should keep an eye on the patient list at the clinic for a pup from a golden retriever litter as well.
The fire in the hearth of the formal lounge room had turned to ash when she knelt before it, so she busied herself adding lengths of wood until the room flickered with golden light. Heavy bookcases and plump furniture were old fashioned but gorgeous, as was the deep, patient tick of an antique, heavily embellished cuckoo clock above the sideboard. She’d hidden under there as a child, once, listening to that very same clock, waiting for Josh and Tom to find her in a game of hide and seek. They hadn’t bothered, of course. While she’d been congratulating herself on the cunning of her hiding skills, they’d been high-fiving each other at the cunning of their little sister–ditching skills and run off to play their own game of boys being dickheads in the stables.
Best not to think too much about that. Tom and her and stables were a combination that made her feel weird.
She had the ghost of schoolboy Tom in her head as the door creaked, so when she looked over, she could see that the boy was barely there in his face. The colouring, sure, that hadn’t changed: the hair a wintry blond, the eyes a deepwater blue. But this Tom looked … strong. Like hiding in a game would be a chore and he’d rather be out rock climbing or cross-country skiing. Which was kind of interesting. Tom had been a lawyer in the Navy, but he hadn’t honed that muscled physique sitting behind a desk. Maybe he’d been one of those elite frogmen who swam under ships’ hulls with steel blades clamped between their teeth, or—
She banished the image. Too much alone time watching action movies was her problem. She wasn’t here for a play-by-play on Tom’s past life. She was here to …
Darn it, she was flustered and her carefully thought-through words, which had sounded so totally ordinary and scientific in her head, were gone.
She could cut to the chase:I’m interested in having a baby, and I believe you’d make a suitable donor. How about it?
Too abrupt, maybe.
It crossed her mind that a woman with a baby donor proposal to make should have made an effort to dress in something a little more interesting than jeans and an old green turtleneck with holes in the elbows. Next time. There’d have to be a next time if she chickened out now. A dress might not set the right tone, but a lab coat might.
Tom regarded her from across the room with narrowed eyes.
