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A flawed human at that if his past twenty years was anything to go by.
‘Thesnake,’ she hissed.
Did she mean— It took him a nanosecond to check he was actually wearing boxers. He’d bolted out of his bed so quick he hadn’t stopped to wonder what he was or was not wearing. He was clothed, so that was a big phew, so what was she—
‘Oh!’ he said, spying the length of speckled olive tail curled lovingly about the base of the toilet. ‘Bruce is back. Is that what this fuss is all about?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘This fuss, as you call it, is about to get a whole lot worse if you don’t get that thing out of here. Like, right this freaking second.’
‘He’s a bush python. He can’t hurt you.’
‘I don’t care if he’s Big Ted fromPlay Schoolwearing fancy dress. He’s got scales, he slithers, and I am about to lose my grip on this windowsill and scream so loud your precious chickens are going to rupture their eardrums.’
Did chickens have eardrums?
A question for another day. He eyed the snake. ‘He is pretty slithery.’
‘Joe! Would you just man up already and manhandle it out of here?’
Her voicedidsound thready. He could man up, sure … and he’d just figured out he could do his manhandling with something a lot warmer and more fun than a python.
‘Just relax,’ he said. ‘I’ll have you safe in a sec.’
She took a breath, and he used the moment to slide an arm under her legs. ‘Hang on,’ he murmured.
‘What are you doing?’ she said as her arms came around his neck.
‘We’re giving Bruce a little privacy.’ He lifted her up, nobly refraining from grunting at her weight, and carried her through the door, down the concrete step and out to the moonlit grass.
‘See?’ he said. ‘You’re all safe now.’
‘Uhuh,’ she said, and that threadiness was still there, that little catch in her breath that possibly … hopefully … wasn’t so much fear-driven now, but something else entirely.
Or he was reading the situation wrong. He’d been doing that a lot, lately.
‘You could, um, put me down,’ she said.
He could. Or he could take a minute to think about nothing at all but the here and now. He could let the warmth and the smell and the thinly ribbed cotton under his fingers fill his headspace and tune out all the crap that had been living in there lately.
‘Joe?’
She wasn’t struggling to get down. Instead, one of her hands had curled up the nape of his neck and tangled itself in his hair.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘my friends call me Joey.’
Inane. That’s what he was, freakinginane. He ought to be asking her where in heck she’d been all evening, making him worry like that. He ought to be asking himself what business was it of his where she went, not suggesting she call him his cutesy childhood name.
‘I’m not feeling like your friend at the moment.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, as though he understood what she meant.
Was it a line? A come-hither flirty line? Or was it more of alet go of me, you moron, it’s late and I’m tired and I don’t fancy you or your never-ending supply of homemade biscuits.
For a supposed analyst, he’d sure grown dumb at analysing. Maybe he should just ask straight out. ‘I missed you when you didn’t come home earlier.’
She eased back in his arm and the sensation of warm skin sliding was too much. ‘Oh! Did you, Joe? I got caught up with Carol, and then she had this mad idea to drive to Wacol, and then we got caught up talking to Young John—he’s the curator there—and—’
‘Wacol, Brisbane? You’ve been toQueensland?’
