Page 6 of Where the Wattles Bloom

‘Not the way I thought it was going to happen,’ she acknowledged with a grimace before draining the remainder of her water.

‘When do you start?’

‘Tomorrow. I have a couple of orientation days then right into it.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘At The Stockman pub for a month while I wait for some hospital-based accommodation to free up.’

Lachlan nodded. ‘Awesome choice. It’s the best pub in town.’

‘Good to know, thanks.’ A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. ‘I rang before to let them know I was going to be later than I’d expected.’

‘Ruth would have appreciated that—she frets about guests when they don’t show. She runs the pub with her husband, Wal. Clean rooms, good food, cold beer.’

‘A cold beer sounds pretty good about now.’

He cocked an eyebrow. She looked more like a white wine kinda gal. Which went to show, even at forty, a guy could still know sweet fuck-all about women.

‘Nothing like a cold beer at the end of a hot day,’ he agreed.

‘I’m not much of a beer drinker, to be honest. But this hasn’t been an ordinary day.’

Lachlan laughed at the understatement. ‘You definitely deserve a beer.’

After dragging the dead weight of Silvano Morelli out of a car—an impressive feat in itself—then resuscitating him solo, she deserved a bloody medal.

‘I could buy you one when Thommo’s done with us?’

The invitation was out before Lachlan had fully engaged his brain. Bloody hell, where had that come from? Even if it was only a polite, friendly gesture, it wasn’t the time or the place.

A fact supported by her look of surprise.

‘Oh, thanks …’ She broke eye contact to look down at her clothes, lifting first one leg then the other to inspect the damage. ‘I think I’d rather just get cleaned up.’

Lachlan nodded. Of course she’d want to wash away the grime from over half an hour kneeling in the dirt on the side of the highway.

‘No worries. Maybe another time.’

‘So, what about you?’ she asked, deftly changing the subject. ‘I assume you’re not passing through either?’

‘Nope. I live at Blairgowrie. It’s a sheep property about five clicks out of Acacia Junction, which is about fifteen minutes that way.’ He hooked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the direction. ‘You’ll pass the turn-off on your way to town, just after the first wattle trees.’

‘Blairgowrie.’ She rolled the word around her tongue. ‘Cool name for a farm.’

‘It’s the village in the Scottish highlands my great-grandfather hailed from. He emigrated after World War One and bought the property in the early twenties from a guy called Wickham whose health was failing. The place was really rundown and he spent a lot of years getting it shipshape.’

‘So you, what … herd sheep all day?’

An image of him with a Little Bo-Peep crook in his hand made Lachlan laugh. ‘Something like that.’

‘How many sheep do you have?’

‘That depends on the time of year. We currently run about five thousand head. It’s the most we’ve carried for several years. We had to destock during the drought.’

‘Five thousand?’ Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him. ‘Holy sh—eep.’

He laughed. ‘Yes.’