Page 31 of Where the Wattles Bloom

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If the aroma hadn’t already confirmed it, Rowena only had to take one morsel of the lamb to know Lachlan had not been exaggerating his grandmother’s cooking prowess. She had to bite her tongue from groaning out loud at the succulent flavour of the melt-on-her-tongue meat.

‘What did I tell you?’

She dragged her eyes away from her plate to find Lachlan watching her. To find them all watching. ‘You were right.’ Rowena smiled as she fixed her gaze on the woman in question. ‘She is a wizard. This lamb is magic in my mouth.’

Reggie chuckled, dismissing the compliment with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s not rocket science, darl.’

‘No,’ Lachlan said with a smile. ‘It’s witchcraft.’

Reggie gave a snorty-cackly laugh, which did nothing to dispel the suggestion, and Rowena smiled as she returned her concentration to her plate. There was no chatter then for quite a few minutes, just the scrape of cutlery against crockery and the occasional murmur of appreciation.

Eventually, though, conversation restarted, Rowena bombarding them all with questions about the farm and lambing and shearing and markets. It was interesting stuff, with the added bonus of avoiding any questions coming her way.

‘Could you pass me the mint sauce, please, Ro?’ Lachlan asked.

Rowena passed the mint sauce, which was also homemade and mind-blowingly divine. Apparently, Reggie had her own herb garden down the far side of the house.

Placing her knife and fork down, Reggie, who’d only had a small serving, pushed her plate aside and reached for her china cup, taking a sip of her tea. ‘I hear Silvano might be home next week,’ she said.

‘Uh huh.’ Rowena had no problems confirming the news. It was hardly a secret. Concetta told everyone who walked into the bakery about her brother-in-law’s ETA.

‘He’s lucky you were there, isn’t he, Albert?’

Albert, who’d turned out to be a man of few words, nodded. ‘Reckon.’

‘Lachy was there, too.’ God … when had she started to call him Lachy? When had she started to think of him as Lachy?

‘No.’ Lachlan shook his head. ‘By the time I came across him, he’d have been dead. You saved his life that day, Ro, not me.’

She went to protest, because it had been a team effort. Reggie, however, interrupted that train of thought.

‘You prefer Ro?’ she asked.

Rowena laughed. ‘My preference doesn’t really seem to matter.’

Reggie grimaced. ‘Sorry, darl, we’re bad for that out here. Shortening names.’ She regarded Rowena through narrowed eyes for a beat or two. ‘It suits you, though, I reckon.’

‘Yup,’ Lachlan agreed as he pushed his empty plate aside.

‘But you’re not a fan,’ Reggie clarified.

Shrugging, Rowena admitted, ‘It’s growing on me.’

Lachlan grinned at her admission and Rowena rolled her eyes. What could she say? It was.

Reggie took another sip of her tea. ‘I heard Glenda Warwick died this afternoon.’

Rowena stilled at the statement. Lachlan had told her in the car that his grandmother knew everything and everyone, but that news had travelled fast. Her gaze dropped as the sadness of Glenda’s collective family grief revisited, before she shuttered her sorrow and lifted her gaze.

Lachlan’s eyes met hers and, in a split second, she knew he knew what had caused her earlier tears.

Pressing on unaware of Rowena’s turmoil, Reggie said, ‘It apparently happened quickly in the end. Such a wonderful woman. And with her daughter expecting her first baby in a few months, too. Cancer is a fucker.’

Rowena suppressed an absurd urge to laugh. Cancer was indeed a fucker, but she hadn’t expected to hear that word coming out of the mouth of an eighty-something.

Underneath a crucifix!