Page 90 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
‘Hannah? What on earth? Is everything okay?’
She swallowed. Now or never. ‘We didn’t finish our conversation. Tell me, if I was out in the stable at three am, would you bring me a cup of tea?’
‘You want a cup of freakingtea? What time is it, anyway?’
‘It’s—look, I can’t conduct this conversation at a shouty-whisper in your hallway. Can I come into your room?’
He stepped back with obvious reluctance.
She waited until the door was shut before continuing, ‘My question is not meant to be taken literally, but symbolically, and I would like an answer.’
He rubbed his hands over his head and turned back to his bed, but he must have thought better of getting back into it, because he pulled the doona up, knocking over the contents of his bedside table in the process, and picked up his watch. ‘Five o’clock. Holy shit.’
‘Well?’
He dropped into a wingback chair with a groan. ‘If it means I can go back to bed, then yes, Hannah, if you were in my stable at three am, I guess I’d make you a cup of tea.’
She smiled. ‘That, Tom, is the correct answer.’
He was looking wary and wide awake now. ‘Have you been on call all night?’
‘Yes, and the second I was done, I headed here. Tom … I want to talk about being a couple.’ With matching pyjamas, but that part could come later.
‘Hannah, we already talked about this.’
‘But all of our previous conversations have had a shadow looming over them because I clued you in on the fact that I want to have a baby. I’ve been thinking, what about if I shelve my baby plan for a time? You and I could—you know—have a crack at the sort of relationship other people have. And you don’t need to be frightened off by thinking I’m expecting babies and weddings and all that fluffy guff, because I’m prepared to put my dream aside.’
For you, she wanted to say. She’d put anything and everything aside for Tom.
He was staring at her, and he’d gone full broody. ‘I’m not frightened of fluffy guff, whatever that means. But I’m not relationship material, Hannah.’
‘What does that evenmean? I know we have something together, Tom. I feel it every time you touch me.’
‘You’re mistaken.’
‘I bloody well am not. URST, Kylie calls it. And you and me, Krauss, have it.’
‘URST?’
‘Unresolved sexual tension.’
‘Jesus,’ he muttered and the adrenalin that had been humming in Hannah’s veins since she drove away from Phil’s farm with a heart full of love spiked. Kylie was right. This URST stuff was unmissable when you knew what to look for. The room practically buzzed with it.
‘So,’ she said breathlessly. ‘What say we resolve some of it? See where it takes us. No commitments or anything scary like that, just you, Tom. And me.’ She took a step closer to him and started undoing the buttons of her borrowed dress with a shaking hand.
CHAPTER
33
Scotch was a bad idea for breakfast, but Tom needed one.
Badly.
Crisis number one: Hannah Cody had arrived at his bedroom door, at dawn, and made a pass at him.
And he’d sent her away. She’d shuffled off down the corridor in her ridiculous socks and her borrowed black dress that had been covered in hay and something that smelled really, really bad, and her shoulders had been drooped so low he’d wanted to throw himself at her feet and have her stomp him into little pieces on the way out.
Hannah Cody wanted him.
