Page 84 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘Then promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘Promise me you’re going to stop messing things up with that girl you’ve been mooning over all these years and tell her you love her.’
Tom’s thumbnail tore a strip of bark from the gum tree’s shredding trunk when he jerked. ‘Hell, Dad,’ he said.
‘My rose garden would make a lovely spot for a wedding. Be a blessing to see it used by my own son. That Hannah of yours … she’s a keeper. Sweetest thing to get born in Hanrahan in my lifetime.’
Hannah was sweet. And sarcastic, and strong, and fun, and gorgeous … Tom didn’t need his dad to list her virtues, he had them all figured out, had done for years.
‘What’s stopping you, Tom?’
The wind was carrying ice chips with it, flurries of cold that couldn’t quite decide if they were rain or snow. ‘Let’s go back inside before we freeze,’ Tom said.
‘All right, don’t listen to me. You never have, so I don’t know why this would be any different.’
Bruno didn’t want to let it go. Truth was, Tom didn’t want to let it go either, but what choice did he have? He hadn’t known he’d been so obvious that even his housebound father was wondering what his intentions were.
Luckily he’d made it clear to Hannah he was a no-go zone.
Although … he thought back to the blush on her cheeks that afternoon when she’d invited him in, the smile in her eyes at the picnic races when she’d laughed at his monologue nonsense.
Oh. Crap.
CHAPTER
30
Everything was perfect.
The Billy Button Café was closed for the night, but you wouldn’t have known it from the crowd there. Kev and Graeme’s partner, Alex, were bickering over whether soup spoons took precedence over dessert spoons as they set the large table in the back room where the craft group did their stitching or flouncing or whatever it was they did in there on Wednesday nights.
Marigold was tucking flowers into vases, Kylie was zhoozhing the cushions on the bench seating by the window, and Graeme, dressed in an eye-watering blue plaid suit, was filling glasses with champagne and chattering like a kookaburra.
Hannah squealed as a hug nearly took out her diaphragm.
‘Auntie Hannah! Hey, is that a new frock?’
‘Poppy! When did you arrive? And the dress is Kylie’s, of course,’ she said. ‘I borrowed it from her a while back and never got around to returning it.’ Or washing it, either, probably. But it had been a month since she’d worn it, and that was like wearing a clean dress, wasn’t it? She gave her niece a return hug then stood back and inspected her. ‘Hmm. You dolooklike the same Poptart I last saw at Christmas.’
‘Why wouldn’t I look the same?’
‘I don’t know. I thought maybe a sixteen-year-old who’d been suspended from school would look different. Like, maybe you’d have an ankle monitor or something.’
‘Don’t be like Dad, Hannah.’
The disapproval was so weary and the eye roll so dramatic Hannah couldn’t help but grin. ‘Come on, spill the beans. He wouldn’t tell me why you were suspended. Not even when I offered him a slice of cold pizza out of my fridge that was only two days old.’
‘That must have taken remarkable restraint.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘But he does have Vera in his life now. I mean, have you seen inside their fridge?’
‘You’re trying to distract me by making my taste buds jealous. It won’t work.’
‘It was all a misunderstanding.’
