High Country Hero Read online

  ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be doing that?’ Lennie said mildly.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be doing that?’

  ‘You too good to party with us?’ The first guy waved his empty glass in her face. ‘That it?’

  ‘We’re fucken rednecks, man,’ his friend chimed in. ‘She only parties with suits.’

  ‘No.’ Lennie kept her voice measured. ‘I just don’t feel like partying tonight.’

  ‘You know what that tight little arse of yours needs up it is my big redneck—’

  ‘Hey.’ A newspaper and a pint of beer arrived on the table beside her. ‘Sorry I was away so long.’ Casually, the guy she’d been watching settled into a chair. ‘I had to make a call.’ He gave her visitors a long, even stare.

  ‘Yeah, whatever, man,’ the boy beside her muttered, vacating the seat he’d taken. ‘Fuck you.’

  As he and his mate moved off, Lennie got her first good look at her fellow hotel guest—if that’s what he was. He was bigger than he’d appeared from across the room, a weight to him that was about more than that lean mass of muscle. The angles of his face remained shadowed even in this light, as if he’d brought his own personal patch of darkness with him from the corner. Her imagination had short-changed him—it was a better-looking face than she’d given him credit for. A stronger face. He couldn’t be much older than she was, if at all. But something about him seemed ageless as a rock wall. The deep brown eyes following the boys’ retreat reminded her of a Great Dane she’d once known—astute, careful, contained. Old-soul eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, when the boys had drifted back to the rest of their group at the pool table. She paused, taking in that face again while she waited for him to say something in return. ‘I’m Lennie, by the way.’

  ‘You don’t have to talk to me.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said wryly. ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘I didn’t come over to try and pick you up.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I get why you came over.’

  Briefly, the brown eyes met hers. ‘It’d be better if I sit here till your little friends go home.’

  Lennie nodded, oddly fascinated by the line the zygomaticus muscle cut down his cheek as he spoke.

  ‘Hey mate—’ came a voice from behind him.

  The guy looked over his shoulder. The next thing Lennie knew, both he and his chair were on the floor, the back of his head hitting the boards with an ugly smack. The boy who’d first spoken to her stood over him. Lennie jumped up as a steel-capped boot aimed a kick at his head.

  He rolled fast, his right hand moving to his chest, reaching for something that wasn’t there. Then, quick as a cat, he was back on his feet. She watched him breathe out slowly, spreading his hands. His voice, when he spoke, was almost apologetic.

  ‘Okay,’ he said to the boy. ‘You got me. You win.’

  ‘Watch out,’ Lennie warned him.

  As his attention flickered to the group of guys amassing behind him, the boy’s forehead smashed into his. He staggered back a step. Before he could straighten, another boy had him in a choke hold, the base of a pool cue mashed against his throat. Seeing the first kid draw back his fist for a swing, Lennie rammed her chair into him as hard as she could, driving him into the floor, ducking an empty twelve-ounce glass as it flew past her head. Behind her, she heard a yowl of pain.

  Lennie turned. The kid with the pool cue was on the ground, cradling his ribs.

  ‘Break it up!’ Jazzy parted the crowd, a softball bat in her hand. ‘That’s enough. Go on, you boys get out of here.’

  ‘Yeah, fuck you Jazzy.’

  ‘Now.’ She raised a pencilled brow. ‘Before I call your mother.’

  Gradually, they picked up their fallen mates and slunk out, still muttering. After a glance at the clock, Jazzy locked the door behind them. Outside, a couple of engines coughed and roared, disappearing into the night with a final emphatic clatter of gravel.

  In the middle of the scattered, empty tables, the guy whose name Lennie was really starting to feel she should know rubbed the back of his neck. Blood was pouring out of his forehead, the stream of it closing his left eye. Walking over to him, Lennie reached up, angling his head down towards her, assessing the damage.

  ‘Come on,’ she said gently, ‘we need to get that cleaned up. I’ve got a kit in my room.’

  Behind him, Jazzy smirked. Lennie saw her slide a first-aid kit back under the bar. Still trailing the bat from her left hand, Jazzy returned to the door, scanning the car park. ‘You’re all clear.’ She unlocked the door.

  They crossed the shingle to the units without a word, the security lights harsh overhead, the dregs of the kids’ party all around them, the sound of their feet on the stones the only break in the silence.

  ‘Have a seat.’ Motioning him to the bed, Lennie extracted the emergency vet kit from her bag.

  ‘Do you always carry a first-aid kit around in your handbag?’

  She smiled. ‘You’d be surprised how often it comes in useful.’ Placing her hands under his jaw, she tilted his forehead to the unit’s fluorescent light. ‘That’s a nasty cut you’ve got there.’

  His broad shoulders shrugged. ‘I’ve had worse.’

  ‘You get headbutted a lot?’

  ‘What can I tell you.’ His voice was dry. ‘I’m a people person.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lennie angled his head a little more. ‘I’m getting that about you.’ She reached for another prep pad. ‘You know, you still haven’t told me your name.’

  ‘Mitch,’ he said. ‘Mitch Stuart.’

  ‘Mitch,’ she repeated experimentally. ‘Can you lean back for me a little more?’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Perfect.’ The cut was starting to clot. ‘I think you might be the best-behaved patient I’ve ever had.’

  ‘You’re a doctor?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She ripped open a packet of skin closures. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So what brings you here?’

  ‘A job interview,’ Lennie admitted, grateful for a chance to explain what she was wearing. ‘I’m just on my way back.’

  ‘How’d it go?’

  The only way it was ever going to. ‘It was kind of a foregone conclusion.’

  ‘Those are the best kind.’

  ‘They are,’ she said, placing the strips, ‘if you want the job.’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘I don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Really?’

  Lennie sighed. ‘No. That’s just what people tell themselves, isn’t it? I’ve got a choice. I just don’t want to make it. It’s hard.’

  He frowned. She paused, waiting for him to relax his forehead again.

  ‘There’s always a choice, right?’ she said.

  ‘Almost always.’

  She surveyed her handiwork, wondering if the adhesives would hold, debating the ethics of offering to suture it for real. ‘What about you? What brings you here?’

  ‘A forestry job.’

  ‘Permanent?’

  ‘Just a couple of days.’ He flexed his back. ‘I finish up tomorrow.’

  ‘There.’ She peeled off her disposable gloves. ‘All done.’

  He sat up, his hand rising again to his neck.

  ‘Here, let me feel.’ Lennie slid her hands below his ears, checking the cervical vertebrae, her fingertips moving up and over the bones of his skull. ‘You know,’ she said, studying the shape of his pupils, ‘you should get yourself checked out for a concussion tomorrow before you—’

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Quickly, she relaxed her hands, soothing the way she always did when a patient gave her a pain response, her fingers, sunk in his hair, stroking automatically.

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said slowly.

  She was still looking into his eyes. His own moved down, the back of his index finger brushing the cotton just below the tip of her collar. ‘I’ve got blood on your shirt,’ he said.

  His ey
es rose again. For a moment, everything in the valley seemed to stop. Then his mouth was on hers, the rough skin of his hand light below her jaw, in a soft, exploring kiss that travelled down her spine and back again, bringing with it a molten longing Lennie hadn’t felt for a stretch of time long enough to have begun to doubt its existence. His other hand in the small of her back pulled her close.

  At the moment her breasts met the mass of his chest, Lennie felt his body change, the already hard muscles turning rigid. He drew back, his forearms locked, enforcing the small distance remaining between them. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

  She wasn’t entirely sure which one of them had.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’

  ‘That’s not how I say thank you.’ Lennie tried to find his eyes again. ‘I’m pretty much a Hallmark girl. A muffin basket at most.’

  He blinked. ‘I have to go.’

  She was still close enough to feel his breath on her cheek, but she got the distinct impression he was speaking to her from a very long way away. Another dimension. Reality, maybe. She smiled gently. ‘Was it something I said?’

  ‘It’s not you.’ Putting her aside, he got to his feet. ‘It’s…complicated.’

  Complicated? Was there a person on earth who didn’t know what that meant?

  ‘There’s somebody else,’ she said, registering the guilt on his face as he turned away.

  He didn’t look like he was listening. As he slid open the door, she wasn’t sure whether he’d heard her at all.

  There was a rush of cold night air. One hand on the rickety aluminium, he looked back, for a second, at her sitting there on the bed. ‘Yeah,’ he said softly, ‘something like that.’ With a clatter, the door slid shut, and he was gone.

  Two

  ‘Don’t believe a word of it.’ Seated under the departures board in Dunedin Airport, Lois O’Donnell sipped her scalding flat white. ‘Your grandfather might talk about you taking over the clinic—’

  ‘He isn’t saying that.’ Lennie eyed the brief list of flights again. They’d made it from her grandmother’s townhouse to the terminal with barely a minute to spare, only to discover that boarding had been delayed.

  ‘He’s been saying it ever since the first time he put a stethoscope in your ears.’ Her grandmother gave a snort of frustration. ‘But he’s wasting your time. He’s never going to retire.’

  ‘This isn’t about me taking over.’ Lennie blew on her coffee, hoping that what she was telling her grandmother so firmly was true. Surely Jim had abandoned hope of that long ago? ‘It’s about helping him work out the best thing to do. Grandpa just wants me to get a feel for what’s going on, tell him if I think he should take the VETSouth deal.’

  ‘Ha,’ Lois said. ‘Of course he should take it. But he won’t. He talks about selling up, but he can’t let go, that’s the truth. He’s ruined my life, and now he’s going to ruin yours.’

  ‘Grandma.’ Looking at Lois, the happiest woman she’d ever known, Lennie couldn’t help a smile. All this, because her grandfather had refused to go to The Lion King. ‘Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?’

  ‘I’ve left my husband of fifty-one years.’ Lois sniffed. ‘I’m allowed to be dramatic.’

  Giving up, Lennie changed the subject. ‘You have to remember to book your car in for a service, okay?’ she told her grandmother, sternly. ‘We don’t want it breaking down again. It’s three months overdue.’

  Her grandmother refused to look guilty. ‘Jimmy always took care of all that.’

  ‘Yes, well. You’re on your own now, aren’t you?’

  Abruptly, Lois’s sharp green eyes zeroed in on Lennie’s collar. ‘Sweetheart, what have you got on your shirt? Is that blood?’

  ‘Red wine,’ Lennie lied quickly. ‘I spilled some at the pub last night.’

  Lois frowned. ‘You should soak that.’

  ‘I will.’ Lennie put her hand to her shirt, hiding the evidence before her grandmother could consider it more closely. ‘It’s going in the sink as soon as I get home.’ She’d had ample time for a shower at the Glenmore Hotel while she’d waited for the Corolla to be fixed that morning. But since being reunited with her suitcase at Lois’s house half an hour up the coast, she hadn’t had a second to change out of yesterday’s clothes. Lennie glanced down at her wheelie bag. Maybe she could just nip into the toilet now and—

  ‘Oh look,’ Lois said, ‘your flight’s boarding.’

  With an inward sigh, Lennie gathered her case. ‘I’d better go through.’

  ‘Have a safe trip, sweetheart.’ Rising, her grandmother kissed her cheek. ‘Give my love to Pesh. And Sam, too.’

  ‘Will do.’ Lennie took a deep breath, still trying to come to terms with what she was about to say. ‘I’ll see you in six weeks.’

  Lois’s face softened. ‘Oh Len, I promised myself I wasn’t going to say this, but if you’ve really made up your mind…’ She folded her lips briefly. ‘It’s going to be so lovely to have you home.’

  •

  ‘Excuse me. Sorry…Sorry.’ Clambering back into her window seat, Lennie put her hand to her collar again. As the plane followed the long chain of the Southern Alps, she watched the familiar landmarks go by far below, trying to do a better job of soaking Mitch Stuart out of her mind than she had of getting him out of her shirt in the confines of the plane’s toilet.

  It had been what it had been. She needed to let it go.

  Lennie leaned forward, concentrating on the view. They were past Glenmore and its pine forests now, coming up to Kimpton and the valley she’d called home for her last two years of high school. The place, growing up, that had always had both hands on her heart. The place she’d been born, pretty much.

  Fleeing university in Melbourne, Lennie’s no-doubt-terrified twenty-year-old mother had spent the final trimester of her pregnancy in her parents’ house before giving birth to Lennie in the Alnwick District Hospital just across those hills. And it had been Jim and Lois who’d looked after them both that day, that year and all the years that followed.

  As the plane left the gentle river valley behind, Lennie felt a glow of relief. She really had made the right decision. Her grandmother was right. Kimpton was her home.

  The feeling lasted until her connecting flight was circling Sydney, the setting sun catching the sails of the Opera House, the harbour a brilliant subtropical blue, the city laid out in all its glory.

  ‘Great to be home, isn’t it?’ the man beside her said, folding his tray table away with a snap.

  Lennie walked out of the terminal building into a wall of heat. God, just how high had the temperature been today? She hoped Sam had the aircon on.

  By the time she’d fought her way across town, through the central city and over the bridge in the dregs of rush-hour traffic, Sydney had lost a fair slice of its glamour again. Manoeuvring her wheelie bag between tree roots and drifts of fallen jacaranda from the car park she’d nabbed three blocks away, Lennie finally made it to the front door of her rented terrace.

  Pesh and a blast of cold air met her as she turned the key. Behind the dog, Sam stood waiting, a trace of concern on his broad-boned face.

  ‘So how did it go?’

  Lennie raised her cheek from the wall of white fur, meeting Sam’s familiar, steady gaze as best she could.

  ‘Oh god.’ He shook his head. ‘You said yes, didn’t you?’

  Lennie straightened, one hand still stroking Pesh’s ear, the big dog pressed to her suit pants like a second shadow. ‘I had to, you know that. Sydney will always be here. Grandpa won’t.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ Sam stood aside, letting Lennie and her wheelie bag through the front door. ‘Jim’s fit as a buckrat. He’ll outlive us all.’

  ‘He’s been there for me my whole life.’ Parking her bag beside the stairs, she wandered into the tiny living room. Pesh sniffed the suitcase in an accusatory sort of way, clearly holding it responsible for Lennie’s absence. ‘Al
ways. Every time I’ve needed him, whatever it took. The one time he needs something from me, I’m not going to say no.’

  ‘I get that.’ Sam gathered his iPad and phone from the sofa. ‘But Len, this is big. It’s taken you, what? Twelve years to work yourself into the job you’ve got now? And you’ve only been in it eight months.’

  ‘I know.’ Lennie stared down as Pesh settled on her feet. Her quest for a permanent specialist role had occupied two years of Sam’s life, too—the length of time it had taken them, dating, laughing, talking, holidaying, never quite moving in—to work out they were nothing more or less than good friends. ‘I know you pulled strings to get me into the hospital, and I’m sorry—’

  ‘No,’ Sam said. ‘You got the internal medicine post because you deserved it. There were no strings involved.’ He gave her his quick smile. ‘Or attached. If anything, I got brownie points for bringing you in. They’re bloody lucky to have you. I just can’t believe you want to give it all up and move back to Kimpton.’ He blew out his breath. ‘Does Jim really understand what he’s asking you to do?’

  Maybe he didn’t. And Lennie didn’t want him to—help was help. It shouldn’t come with a price tag. ‘I love Kimpton,’ she said.

  ‘Sure you do.’ Sam shook his head. ‘For holidays. But living there…’

  ‘I have lived there,’ Lennie said firmly. ‘And they were two of the happiest years of my life.’ She paused. ‘Now that I come to think about it.’

  ‘What about the work you’ll be doing? Have you thought about that? Really thought about it, I mean?’

  Lennie dismissed the mental image of an infinite sea of dairy cow rumps. ‘Going back to the coal face for a while won’t do me any harm. It’s too easy for us to forget what general practice is like. I mean, I can try and find treatment solutions for patients, sure, but only after somebody else has figured out most of the problem. In Kimpton I’ll get to do both.’

  ‘That’s a really convincing argument.’ Sam pocketed his phone. ‘Is it working for you?’