“You gave her my number.”
“I get mammograms.”
“You don’t want to know if you’re a carrier?”
Nev shook her head.
“It’s your call.” Ronnie let it go. For now.
40
TEASE
Hot nights during fire season were dangerous. In October, the Cape Cleveland bushfires tore through the Townsville area burning rainforest, farms, RV parks, and houses.
Nev listened to radio coverage of the bushfires while baling hay on the largest Kubota tractor, pulling the hay wagon behind her with Ric-Rac and Kazi in it. “Yeah, nah, mate,” the man whose house had burned told a reporter on the radio. “Me and my wife, we beat it out of there, went to me brother’s house. Couldn’t enjoy the game, understand? Ruined it for me.”
Nev had been drinking water, but spat it out. The laugh caught her by surprise.
Queenslanders cared more about rugby than life itself. Ron would get a kick out of that.
The next morning, skid marks in the grass near the Upsend Downs sign made her frown.
Three pickup trucks sat in front of the machine shop. Barney, Ric-Rac and Ron blasted punk rock inside and may or may not have been doing anything useful. Nev tossed her keys on the shop bench. “Oi. Who skidded into the ditch after the sign?”
“What sign?” Barney asked. He was still here, on what Ron called probation.
She looked at Ron. “Please tell me you haven’t been whipper-snippering with your tits out again.”
Ron grinned. Guilty. Unrepentant.
“When I said take a course on marketing that was not what I meant.”
“You’re the one who taught me about topless tanning.”
Barney and Ric-Rac laughed. Nev frowned as blood rushed into her face.Relax.Too early in the day for this shit.
“How are third quarter sales?” Ron asked innocently. Cheeky. She knew sales at the plant nursery had doubled. They had been inundated by soccer mums of late. Nev hadn’t known why. Now she suspected it had to do with Ron landscaping the verge every morning with her top off.
She sighed.
The lads snickered. Ron lifted her shirt and flashed her tits.
“I could fire you for sexual harassment,” Nev said, matter-of-fact, in the same flat tone. They all knew it was an empty threat. None of her farmhands looked concerned. They didn’t take her seriously anymore, not since Ron talked her into letting Barney back. They knew she was wrapped around Ron’s little finger.
Barney and Ric-Rac lifted their shirts, flashed their tits, too. “I am Spartacus!” Barney said.
“I am Spartacus!” Ric-Rac said.
“If you sack her, you have to sack us, too!” Barney said.
“Understood, thank you.” Nev tossed her work gloves on the shop bench next to her keys. She felt strange this morning, tight, impatient. Normally she would laugh it off, ignore them, but she didn’t feel like being the butt of their jokes today. She didn’t feel like being the butt of jokes in general.
“Go on then. Give us another show,” she said.
Ron lifted her shirt obligingly. As an athlete with a weight-lifting habit bordering on obsessive, she should have had not much there. Genetics dictated otherwise. The undersides were perfect half-spheres.
“May I?” Nev asked, flapping her upturned palms. She squeezed the air, giving the oldhonk honk, the way you would toot an old-fashioned horn. She was taking this joke too far, but that was the point.
