Page 9 of Reckless

I headed back to the shed with a scowl on my face.

What the hell does it matter what he thinks?

Gerty the horse, sensing my foul mood, nipped me gently on the shoulder as I hitched her to the cart. When I didn’t react, she knocked me not-so-gently with her head.

“Alright,” I said, and scratched her nose. “Yeah, alright.”

She huffed warm horse-breath in my face.

The trip into the village cleared my head. I leaned on the brake as Gerty followed the track down the hillside. She knew the drill; she headed straight for Mavis’s shop and stopped right outside. I unloaded the milk churns and took them in for Mavis. She paid me out of the till, complained loudly about the noise of the copper’s dirt bike and Amy Nesmith buying a truck, and sent me on my way with yesterday’s empty churns and the knitting magazine Kat had ordered.

I loaded the empty churns into the back of the cart and flipped through the magazine as I soaked up the sunlight. I could knit, but it all went wrong when I tried to use a pattern. Kat was good at it though.

Gerty tried to eat the magazine over my shoulder, so I put it in the cart and led her down the street towards the harbour.

My stomach fluttered when we reached the harbour wall and turned towards the doc’s place. There was a boat about halfway out to the horizon. My dad had worked on a boat, but I’d never had the option since I was needed on the farm. I didn’t know if I would have liked it or not. I liked working with the cows and the goats—I liked talking to them, scratching their noses, getting knocked around a bit when they came in hard and fast looking for affection. I’d told Sam the wall-eyed goat all my secrets. Couldn’t do that with a fish.

I liked my life, mostly. I liked who I was and what I did. Just sometimes I needed something else. Needed something sharp, something big, that manifested like the overpowering urge to stand in a quiet place and just scream.

Couldn’t explain it to anyone and wouldn’t even try. If I didn’t understand it myself, what was the point?

Gerty huffed on the back of my neck as she walked along behind me. I tried to ignore the twisting in my belly as we drew closer to the doc’s place. Tried to pretend it didn’t mean anything, that I was just dropping in to ask about the eggs. That my heart wasn’t suddenly beating faster just at the thought of seeing him again.

Jesus. I am so full of shit.

Chapter 4

ALASTAIR

There was a large brown horse in my front yard.

I noted the fact absently as I glanced up from my computer and the latest edition of the Australian Journal of Rural Health, and then went back to the paragraph I’d been reading. It took a moment for my brain to catch up with my eyes, and then my head snapped up so that I could get another look.

There was a large brown horse in my front yard, staring at me through the window.

I closed my laptop and left my office, heading through the practice to the front door. I opened it to find Robbie Finch standing there, in jeans and a T-shirt, his hand raised as though he was about to knock.

“Robbie.”

“Hi.” His gaze met mine for a fraction of a second and then he looked away, as though the door jamb was the most interesting thing he’d seen in a long time.

I leaned out and looked past him. The horse, attached to a cart with a couple of milk churns in the back, was still peering through my window. “Ah.”

“You want any eggs?” Robbie asked the door jamb. He rubbed the back of his neck like a guilty schoolboy. “Kat, my sister, delivers eggs. If you want some, she can put you on the list.”

“That sounds good.”

“It’s five dollars a dozen,” he said, his gaze darting to mine again as though he was searching for signs of disapproval. “But that’s free range, and they’re better than any you’d get from the mainland anyway.”

“That’s fine.”

“How many dozen do you want a week?”

I blinked. “Just one dozen. I can’t imagine ever needing more than that.” Even eating eggs each day for breakfast, I’d still struggle to finish that many. And breakfast, if I was honest with myself, was usually a cup of tea and a piece of toast.

“What day do you want them delivered?”

“Any day would be fine.”