Page 43 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘It’s a weird one, but just roll with it, okay?’
His eyes crinkled. ‘How weird are we talking?’
‘I want you to kiss me.’
He was surprised into a sort of half-laugh, half-choke sound. ‘Excuse me?’
She could feel heat on her cheeks that was not fire related. ‘I have a personal reason for wanting to know if that kiss in the stable was a one-off.’
‘It was definitely a one-off because it’s not happening again.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’ Jeepers, he was making this difficult. He’d gone all stiff and poker-faced and remote. ‘Was it a casual something that might happen between two disinterested parties who happened to find themselves in the same place, or was it …’ she struggled to find the words, and he didn’t race in to help her out, ‘… something else?’
His eyes closed and he muttered under his breath.
‘Tom?’ This donor sperm plan of hers was only going to work if all of that URST rubbish Kylie had been going on about wasn’t true. She didn’t need complications and she didn’t have the skillset to navigate her way through whatever it was Kylie thought she’d imagined.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Um, how about last time I kissed you, you cried? And then barely let me apologise—for I don’t even know what, exactly—and treated me like a serial killer for months. And Hannah, you were there, too. You know what went on same way I do. So what is it? Were we two disinterested parties, or were we … something else?’
Damn, he was really riled up, and now he’d gone and got her all riled up, and she was here to ask him a favour. ‘Totally disinterested!’ she snapped out. ‘Far out, forget I asked. Question answered.’
He rubbed his forehead. ‘Jesus. I need a drink, do you want one?’
‘Sure. Wine, if you’ve got it, but measure it out, would you? A hundred ml because I’m driving and I’m short.’
He eyed her like she was a feral cat who might scratch up the sofa if he left the room, then nodded. ‘Sure. Red or white?’
‘Whatever’s open.’
‘Expensive tastes.’
The joke was an olive branch, and she was relieved to be able to seize it and answer in kind. ‘If some cheese and crackers happen to fall onto a plate while you’re in the kitchen, I wouldn’t complain.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘A waiter with attitude. I like that.’
He disappeared and she stared into the flames. Ten plus years she’d had this crappy, awful thing about herself buried down deep inside, and now she was going to blab about it twice on one day?
She got off the sofa and sank to her knees in front of the fire so she could lift her hands to the warmth. Then the door creaked and Tom was back, a tray balanced in his hands. He set it on a low table and sat back down.
‘Cabernet, smoked cheddar, crackers that are only a bit stale and a pear. Mrs L has retired so I had to make do with what I could find. That woman may seem sweeter than fairy floss, but you mess with her kitchen and she’ll take you down.’
Hannah helped herself to the smaller glass and loaded up a few crackers, then sat on the carpet and rested her back against one of the armchairs. ‘It’s warm by the fire.’
‘I’ll stick with the sofa. I’ve a dicky knee from my glory days playing footy for Hanrahan High.’
Not just Hanrahan High, either, if she was remembering correctly. Tom and her brother had both played in the Schoolboys State Titles. Josh, of course, had leveraged his glory days by dating pretty much every girl at school. But Tom? Now she thought about it, she couldn’t recall who Tom had been sweet on back at high school.
‘Who’d you take to your school formal, Tom?’
He chuckled. ‘That is quite the conversational jump.’
‘You’re the one who brought up high school.’
