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He cleared his throat. ‘That’s what I meant.’
Four hours, two hundred metres of pegged-out irrigation pipe and one ham sandwich later, Joey stood at his front door and waved as Amy departed in the back seat of her mother’s hatchback.
Daisy crossed the cattle grid at her usual rally-driver pace, nearly taking out a ute as she swung onto Shannon Gully Road.
Huh. What was Pete doing here? He glanced at his watch; it was nowhere near beer o’clock. Once his friend had parked in the gravel patch by the water tank, Joey headed over. ‘Hey, mate,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
Pete cocked his head in the direction of his ute tray. ‘Had some short lengths of decking left over from a job over in Alstonville. Cheaper to offload them onto you for your railway cottage than take them to the dump.’
Joey narrowed his eyes. Freebie leftovers he was thrilled to get, but if Pete was here to hassle him into another town visit—
‘What?’ said Pete. ‘You too good for timber offcuts?’
‘Not at all. Thanks.’ So long as that was all Pete was here for. Besides, he had the perfect reason to decline every invitation to leave his forty acres this afternoon. ‘Let’s go stash it out back. Then, if you’ve got a spare half-hour, come check out what I found in the old cowshed.’
‘I’ve got some time.’
Joey turned to look at the dog, who was lying on the bottom step gently dismembering a red cushion that he must have pinched from indoors. ‘You cool with Gus riding in your ute? If I don’t let him hang out with me, he’ll find something to destroy.’
Pete eyed the dog. ‘If he chews anything in my new ute—anything—you’re both walking home.’
‘Understood.’
‘Who,’ said Pete, twenty minutes later, in the voice of a man who’d expected a shed full of rusty barbed wire and mice plagues but found a vision splendid instead, ‘isthat?’
Joey was a step behind Pete as they walked past Kirsty’s red ute and approached the open doorway. He turned the corner and copped an eyeful of what his mate was seeing, and the jolt of attraction was no less sharp than it had been when he’d seen her wrangling his chicken.
And yesterday.
And the time before that when he’d stood where his friend was standing now and felt like he’d been run out for six.
His new rouseabout was still in the scarred boots and snug jeans she’d worn earlier, but she’d switched out her no-nonsense navy work shirt for a long-sleeved tee of faded pink, and her hair was no longer in a ponytail but in some complicated braid thing that made him wonder, for some idiot reason, how it would feel tounbraid it.
He elbowed his way past his slack-jawed mate. ‘Kirsty, hi.’
A head torch on a strap dangled from one of her hands and she had an oversized scrapbook in the other that Gus was sniffing with keen interest. ‘Hi, Joe. I finished up at the cottage; it came up well. I think it’s ready for paint.’
‘You did an amazing job.’
Pete’s voice was in his ear. ‘You said you found something. You didn’t say it was ahotsomething. No wonder you’ve been avoiding town. I’d be a recluse, too, if I had a bird like that in my shed.’
He shrugged off the accusation. ‘Kirsty, this is my friend, Pete.’
It was Pete’s turn to elbow his way forward. He held out his hand for her to shake. ‘Are you new in town? I haven’t seen you around.’
‘Just passing through,’ she said.
‘Pity,’ said Pete, like the schmoozer he’d been since his testosterone kicked into gear at thirteen. ‘You’ll have to come have a meal at the pub while you’re here. Meet the locals that old mate here’s been avoiding. You can get my number on one of my billboards in town: O’Connor Construction & Projects.’
‘Er … well, thanks,’ she said.
Joey needed to bring Pete’s flirty boasting to an end. ‘Kirsty’s family used to own this farm. This plane was her great-grandfather’s.’
‘It is quite something,’ said Pete, not taking his eyes off Kirsty.
‘It’s a war relic,’ Joey prodded. ‘A fighter plane. Check out the machine guns.’
Pete was so obviously checking out other stuff, Kirsty’s eyes cut to Joey’s and she grinned.
