Page 105 of Down the Track

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They were watching a big clock, Jo realised. Surely it had taken Regina Huxtable—for that’s who Jo assumed the woman was, based on the fact that she had dark red hair like her brother and half the crowd was screaming out, ‘Go, Regina, go’—more than just forty-five seconds to get so much fleece off that massive sheep!

Then she looked over at Regina’s competitor, and saw, with delight, that Hux was up there, wearing about the tightest singlet she’d ever seen. His biceps, too, while not water polo–ball sized, looked very fine, but his sheep looked nowhere near as shorn as his sister’s.

‘Fifty-seven, fifty-eight …’ continued the crowd, but Regina was done. She hauled the sheep to its feet and sent it scampering down a ramp with a slap to its butt, then turned to her brother, a grin on her face and the electric shears held high in her hand.

‘Woo hoo!’ she yelled. ‘Need a hand, little brother?’

He grinned up at his sister and Jo’s heart went thumpity-thump like it contained a herd of thirsty sauropods in a hurry to get to a waterhole. Oh, yes. She’d come to the right place.

She’d come to the right person.

‘Come and help your brother, you legend,’ Hux said, to the delight of the crowd. ‘Let’s put this sheep out of its misery.’

The two of them freed the sheep of the last of its fleece and the crowd surged up to carry Regina off to the bar for the drink she announced she’d ‘bloody well earned’ leaving just a few stragglers hanging about. And her.

And Hux.

‘Hi,’ she said.

He was smiling at her, and that seemed like a good start, so she decided to just rush her fences, as the saying went, and blurt it all out.

‘I just moved to Yindi Creek,’ she said. ‘It’s taken me sixteen hours to drive here and I’ve got, like, forks and dresses and lamps and my house plants packed into my ute. I’m here to stay, Hux.’

He blinked. ‘When you say “stay” …’

‘I mean I was a fool to leave you back then, when I was an idiot and didn’t have enough confidence in myself to trust it was true when someone told me they loved me. I love you. I want to stay. I want you to love me back.’ She rubbed her hands over her shorts.Nervous sweat, her science brain told her.Shut up, she told her science brain.

He wiped a wave of sweat off his face and came closer. Close enough that she could see he didn’t seem alarmed by her words.

The opposite, in fact.

‘I should also mention I’ve got nowhere to stay except Maggie’s shitty little room.’

CHAPTER

42

Hux had blood thumping through his veins from wrestling with the recalcitrant sheep, his singlet was so tight he could barely get a breath in, but he could hardly believe what he was hearing. Or seeing. Or feeling.

Jo was back? And not just back, but making a move on him?

Man. He’d compete against Regina every day of the week if wonders like this were his reward.

Jo seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he just chuckled to himself at the absurdity of it all and gave her one.

‘Just the shitty room, huh? Well, call it serendipity, but the Winton plumber finally sorted out the plumbing on my cottage.’

‘So … I can stay there?’

He grinned. ‘You sure can.’

‘But where will you be, Hux?’

‘With you, of course.’

She was smiling too, now. As declarations of love go, theirs were turning out to be a tad kooky, but he didn’t care. He was a master of subtext—just ask his readers.

‘But,’ she said, ‘don’t you live at the Sunshine Coast part of the year?’