The woman was giving her time to think about it. She gazed around her, at six months’ chaos of a house being used as an animal hospital.
She should do it herself.
Jake was bossy, she thought. He was autocratic. He also scared her, just a little, the way he understood.
Logic said she should stay right away from Jake Hunter and his grandiose gestures.
It wasn’t going to happen. She sniffed again and thought if she cried one more time today she’d need an IV line to replace fluids.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘I accept with pleasure.’
Would she come?
Jake paced the lodge and thought he should have been more insistent.
Why was it so important she accept?
He didn’t know. He only knew that it was.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE’D done what she could. The cleaners could deal with the rest. Tori sat in her little white van with Rusty close beside her, and thought leaving wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Stupid or not, it was a grief in itself. Moving away from the ridge…
She and Rusty had spent the first dreadful nights after the fire on Barb’s couch. Then, when they’d found Jake’s place and settled that it could be a staging post for injured wildlife, it had seemed sensible that she move in here. Six months later she was still not looking further than her next patient. Until now.
Rusty was staring out the window with longing, along the road that led to her burned-out home.
Home.
She closed her eyes. It didn’t help to be angry-she knew that-but the rage she felt towards Toby was still real and dreadful. That she could have imagined she loved him… He hadn’t come near her since the fire, which was just as well. He was a coward of the worst kind-and she’d thought she’d loved him.
So don’t trust your stupid heart again, she told herself. Move on from the ridge but do not trust.
She was trying to get her tired mind to think.
Maybe accepting Jake’s invitation for accommodation at the lodge was a mistake, she decided. But staying up here tonight in the empty refuge seemed unthinkable, and landing on Barb again was equally impossible. There were relocatable homes set up down in the valley for anyone displaced by the fires. She could move into one of those.
But not tonight, she thought. She’d give herself this night of respite.
A night with Jake?
No.
This was a night at a lovely guesthouse, she told herself fiercely. It had nothing to do with Jake. It was a night of indulgence before moving onto practicalities. To the dreary other side…
She glanced at Rusty, sitting passively beside the cardboard box that held all her worldly possessions, the practical things-changes of clothes, toiletries, things she’d had to find to survive.
She would survive. She and Rusty.
‘And we’ll come back to the ridge,’ she told the little dog as he looked mournfully along the road towards where they used to live. ‘Dad and Micki and Benedict, and Mutsy and Pogo and Bandit-they’re still here. Just a little bit, but they’re still here.’
But for now they had to leave.
‘We’ll come back,’ she said again, and she flicked the engine into life and drove out the gate-and to Rusty’s great sorrow she turned right instead of left, down into the valley instead of where they’d left so much. ‘I promise you, Rusty. We’ll come home.’
She was coming. She rang Rob and it was all Jake could do not to listen in on the extension.
‘You’re really worried about her,’ Rob said when he finished.
‘She’s had a tough time.’
‘So has half this valley.’
‘I don’t know half this valley,’ he growled. ‘I know Tori.’
‘Only since yesterday… Right,’ Rob said thoughtfully. ‘So shall we give her the honeymoon suite?’
‘What?’
‘The best,’ Rob said patiently. ‘The one I tried to put you in. It’s expensive.’
‘Yes, but charge her half-rates.’
‘You don’t want to give it to her free?’
‘If we don’t charge her, then she won’t come.’
‘And you want her to come.’
‘Yes,’ he snapped, and Rob grinned.
‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Shall I ring Barb, then, and tell her the five-minute dating was a success?’
‘Just try it.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Rob said. ‘Okay, not yet. But I’m thinking I might get Mrs. Matheson to pull out all the stops. It’s time we had a great dinner.’
‘Nothing special,’ Jake said.
‘You don’t want to scare her?’
‘Rob…’
‘I know,’ his manager said, placating. ‘But I’m thinking lobster. She can think we have it every night, because we’re not trying to impress her at all.’
‘Manwillinbah Lodge.’
She turned into the driveway and she could scarcely believe she was on the same planet as the place she’d just left. The lodge looked gracious and inviting, long and low and sprawling. Beyond rambling rose gardens were acres of grapevines, just coming into bud. It looked not where she belonged at all.
Why was she panicking?
She shouldn’t be here. She should be somewhere she could be alone to think things through. Though hadn’t she had enough time to think things through, and where had that got her?
But before her muddled thoughts could take her any further, her car door was tugged open, and Jake was looking in.
‘Hey,’ he said softly. ‘I was starting to think I’d need to come up the mountain and fetch you. Welcome, Tori. Welcome, Rusty.’
He was smiling. That smile was enough to make a girl panic all on its own. ‘I was just coming to tell you…to tell Rob I wasn’t coming,’ she muttered. ‘And to thank you for the cleaners.’
He nodded, suppressing his smile. ‘That makes sense. Or not. The cleaners were my pleasure. As for not staying… You want to have dinner while you tell us why not?’
‘I can’t stay here,’ she said wildly, gesturing towards the house.
‘Why ever not?’
‘I don’t fit.’
‘You fit in fine,’ he said. ‘Our only two guests were burned out themselves. They’re here to sleep.’
‘I don’t have any clothes.’
‘Odd,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’d have thought I’d have noticed no clothes.’
‘You know what I mean.’
He did. His gaze met hers and she knew he understood. ‘You look great,’ he said softly. ‘Tori, you look lovely. Jeans and T-shirt are practically uniform here and no one’s going to judge you even if they weren’t. Dinner’s on the
