Page 5 of A Country Practice Christmas
The woman’s face changed again, but Will had no trouble reading it: definitely a frown, which wasn’t friendly, but it was better than the sadness he’d seen earlier.
‘Why would Carol need to tell you about her social life?’
Because he worked in hospitality these days, he’d grown skilled at not letting his face show just how freaking rude some customer comments could be. Like now.
He went for a mild disclaimer. ‘Uh … because she’s a friend of mine? Because she has lunch with me in the pub about three times a week? Because we’re both on the Twilight Market committee and we chat over the bickies and tea?’
She blinked. ‘Carol’s on a committee?’
How was that the salient point here? Here he was, on bended knee, wondering if he’d ever walk again. ‘Several, I imagine. Look, we seem to have got off to a rocky start. I’ve already told you my name. I’m the publican here and I promise I didn’t trip you up, nor am I lying to you when I tell you Carol is my friend.’
She sucked in her bottom lip, and then said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry. I do need something from you however.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Will you help me up? I think my hamstring just exploded.’
Chapter 3
For a moment that had seemed both fleeting and yet endless, Jodie was fifteen again.
She’d been in the black bikini that Mum didn’t know about (and would absolutely freak out about when she did) and she’d been at the rock pool. Yes,therock pool, the one just outside of some little place in the hills above Clarence, and she’d grown tired of sunning herself and being ignored by her brother, who’d driven them both here to the rock pool on his newly minted provisional driver’s licence, and who had no interest in anything but his textbooks.
When shehadmanaged to drag him into a conversation, all he could do was mock her for winning the typing prize at the end-of-year assembly. Then she’d said,I’d rather be a prize typist than a prize dickhead, dickhead. And now they hated each other. Maybe forever but probably only for an hour or so, because that’s how long their squabbles usually lasted.
Besides being annoyed with her brother, she was also hyper aware of the group of teenagers lounging around on the great flat rocks on the far side of the rock pool. They reminded her of kangaroos at ease in a paddock, propped up on their elbows, all long limbs and sleek hair, and she was only slightly very much envious of the girls in their midst, who were on such friendly terms with the boys. Boys who were—not that she’d been ogling them from behind her sunnies or anything—much nicer looking and fitter than the zit-riddled idiots she went to school with.
Especially the one with the surfie hair and the boardies. Jodie had tried to listen in to their conversations but the waterfall spilling down into the rock pool was too loud to see if he was hooked up with any of those fabulously lounging girls.
She stood and walked over to the edge of the granite slope where she and Nathan had set up their towels. The rock pool was deep; she knew it was, because the other kids had been horsing around in it. Taking a breath, she leapt up to cannonball in, and then she was splashing down, down, down into water that was way colder than she was expecting. She also wasn’t expecting the water to bemoving. A current? In a rock pool? She spun over—or rather, the water spun her over—and she struck out with her feet and her hands to find rock so she could push her way back to the surface because her lungs wereburning.But the water was deep, and—
The hands gripping her around the waist came out of nowhere, but she didn’t fight—she had no breath left to fight—and then she was at the surface, her legs tangling with those of the boy who’d jumped in to rescue her.
‘There’s an undertow down there,’ he said, flicking his hair out of his eyes. Brown eyes. Warm, trusting, brown eyes, in a face that had a few freckles and a laughing mouth and was just rightthere.The boy with the surfie hair.
That was the summer romance moment. The fall-deliciously-in-love moment.
For her, obviously, not for him, because instead of gazing into her eyes a little longer and looking all adorable and flustered (like she felt), he just said, ‘You okay?’
She shivered, then, because falling in love isintense, right? But he must have thought the shiver meant she wasn’t okay, because he hauled her to shallower water, picked her up (gasp!), and carried her over a shallow rocky ledge like she was precious.
He is heroic, was her first fluttering thought. This falling-in-love business was thrillingly, blushinglyawesome…
Until he said, in that same casual, you-mean-nothing-to-me way, ‘See ya,’ plonked her on her feet and left her near her towel.
That was it: her first heartbreak. The one she’d thought about a little over the years, but a lot about lately, when heartbreak—true, messy, earned heartbreak—crashed into her life.
But here? Now? In the garden of some old pub? The eyes looking into hers were the same as all those years ago. The smile was the same. The bare chest wasn’t a comparison that could currently be made because country publicans didn’t rock up to work with no shirt and wet boardies, but—
This was Hero Boy, in the flesh. And he was currently staring up at her as though he was expecting her to do something other than reminisce about the distant past.
‘Did you say hamstring?’ Jodie said finally, when a corner of her brain reminded her that ordinary people didn’t live their entire lives as a running monologue in their head.
‘Yep. Felt a ping.’
Oh, a ping wasn’t good. But then neither was heartbreak. And yet, did the world care? Had the earth just hiccupped in its orbit around the sun? No. Nobody cared, not about hamstrings or blighted hopes, or even about the fact Jodie’s mother had sent her up here to Clarence on a wild goose chase.
