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Blake blinked fast. “Right. Thanks.”
I caught how tight his jaw was, how his whole body was on edge. Blake had bounced around in foster care growing up and didn’t speak to his parents. Now, he had no family home to go to.
“My sister’s shacked up with a fella an hour away from here. Towards the coast in the hills. He sounds okay. They invited me for Christmas, and I’m going to pop in and, you know, make sure she’s all good. That he’s good enough for her.”
Huh. Maybe her home would become a place he could always return to.
“Maybe I’ll see you then or something.”
“It’s a date,” I replied, stifling a grin and reaching for the snags.
“Speaking of dates, what happened at your speed dating night? You never said a thing.”
I paused for a second, then two, and then let each sausage fall into the pan with a loud sizzle. “Nothing,” I replied thickly. “Find some tongs, will you? These snags need to be flipped.”
“Welcome aboard.”The pub owner, John, held out his hand, and I shook it.
Blake had left before I woke at six this morning, leaving a note ‘good luck adulting with the house and shit’.
And now, eleven hours later, the adulting started with my first shift at the bar.
I’d pulled beers and served in a bar when I had turned eighteen and now found myself back at it at twenty-six.
Turned out that Ari’s real sister, Ash, also used to work behind the bar with Ryan and was now working as a line order cook in the kitchen.
Ari. I inhaled a deep breath as my dick stirred at the memory of our night together a week ago.
Think of fencing wire, paint, strainer posts… Money from bar work was essential to afford supplies for the farm and keepup my payments to buy my brother out. I had to start fixing fences to get it ready for half a dozen weaners I’d like to fatten up and sell before summer.
After spending the night with Ari, I’d retrieved my bike from where I’d left it at the pub to find several messages from Blake saying that extra hands were needed for the Turner’s shearing clip. Several texts later, I met Ryan over a cup of tea with his mother, Leonie, and his younger brother Tom, on the veranda of their historic homestead at Ballydoon.
Thankfully, Ryan never asked or said a word about the speed dating night.
After the chat, Tom invited me to show my stuff in the shed. I took up the clippers in a stall and sheared a fine-looking merino ewe, taking her fleece off without a nick. I was offered the job on the spot.
Now, my bank account looked respectable after being paid for my shearing, but having a regular paycheck from the pub would help pay bills and keep food on the table in between scoring local shearing gigs.
In the storeroom behind the bar, I slipped off my leather jacket and missed the coat hook. As it crumpled to the floor, a couple of red and purple cards fell out of my pocket.Debra’s date night cards.I smiled, stuffing them back into my jacket and, out of habit, opened my email app to check for new emails. One new one downloaded.
Congratulations! You’ve been matched!
Ariane Wilde indicated she’d like to be matched with you from the Ballydoon Single-Mingle night, and her contact details are included below. Your contact details have been forwarded to her as per your registration form.
Keep mingling and take a chance on love!
Debra Wilde
I grinned.
Holy shit, Ari.What a night we’d had in her van. She’d been incredible, fucking amazing. And I’d made good on my promise to her and made sure she’d orgasmed many times that night. Calling my name every time she came was the best thing I’d ever heard.
Shit.I adjusted myself.Didn’t need a boner in front of my new boss on my first day.How my dick had any energy was beyond me. Since sleeping with Ari, I was rubbing one out every morning and in the shower at night.
We’d talked, too, long into the night and morning, about all sorts of things. But the next morning, she’d dropped me off at the pub to get my bike and then left. Just a goodbye, good luck and a thank you, and then she drove away in Bessie. No strings attached. No phone numbers swapped. No promises made.
By my calcs, she’d probably be at the Whitsundays, or even Carins, by now, if she hadn’t got distracted with other attractions along the way.
But now I had an email with her mobile number that she wanted me to have. I grinned and pulled out a card from my leather jacket.
