Chapter Six
The lunchtime run was busier than usual and had included a large family up visiting from Sydney, who’d booked out the farmstay cottages up at Wirraway but were keen to try the pub’s lamb shank pie, which they’d seen reviewed online.
‘Feck’n ’eck,’ said Fergus as he shoved the last tray of plates into the commercial dishwasher. ‘We’re running hot today.’
‘That,’ Will said, as he leaned a shoulder against the kitchen wall to take the weight off his leg, ‘was the beginning of the Christmas rush. School broke up last week, which means every holiday place from here to the coast is about to become chock-a-block. December and January are two of our biggest months.’
‘Is it too late to say I can’t do December after all, boss, and I’m heading west?’
‘It’s forty-plus degrees out west right now. More flies on your eyes than on a sheep carcass, and the snakes’ll be tapping on your Kombi door every night, wanting to come in and share the fan.’
‘The heat I can deal with—’
Will doubted it, but Fergus would find that out for himself. Also, no way was the kid leaving. Will had seen the flirty looks Fergus had been exchanging with the Sunday barista.
‘—but the snakes. You know, we don’t have them back home.’
‘Eastern browns. They’ll kill you in thirty minutes.
Death adders, inland taipans, tiger snakes …
you get distracted out there, next minute they’re curled up in your engine or finding a loose zipper on your swag.
’ Between horror snake stories (of which Will had an endless supply) and the cute barista, Will reckoned he was pretty safe.
He needed his best worker here pulling beers and charming the lunchtime crowd. Especially with this bung leg.
Fergus’s attention was snagged mid-shudder by a ding from the push-button bell on the bar counter. ‘God help us if that’s another hungry group,’ he said. ‘I’ve mashed enough spuds today.’
‘Relax. It’s after two, so lunch service is over. And you’re off duty until five, so I’ll handle this.’
Fergus didn’t wait to be asked twice; he pulled the sodden tea towel from the back of his belt, chucked it with the others in the laundry pile and took off.
Will limped his way to the front bar.
Oh. Her. Jodie.
‘Hi,’ said the woman, who had none of the relaxed vibe of his lunchtime patrons. They’d all wandered off into the Northern Rivers sunshine with their bellies full and their wallets a little lighter but with smiles on their faces. No smiles here.
‘Hi.’
He waited, and then, when the wait had drifted into the awkward zone, said, ‘Can I get you something? Kitchen’s closed for meals until six, but we have coffee, tea, booze, softies, peanuts, potato chips …
’ For a hungry-looking regular, he’d fire up the sandwich press and offer a cheese toastie. Or even for a smiling stranger.
‘Um, coffee? A long black?’
Will moved behind the counter and took the portafilter out of the machine, gave the unit a purge, then knocked the used puck into the coffee bin.
‘Cup or mug?’
‘Cup.’
‘Sugar?’
‘No, thanks. I’ve had about as much sugar as I can take for one morning.’
Meaning … what? Someone had been too nice to her? She’d binged her way through fairy floss?
She made no attempt to elucidate, so Will filled a cup with boiling water from the machine’s reservoir. ‘It’s Jodie, right?’
She nodded, but again, nothing. Surely it was her turn to contribute to this conversation.
He gave in to curiosity. ‘And … we have met before, right? When we were kids?’
Was he imagining things or were her cheeks going pink?
‘Not that I recall,’ she said. She wasn’t wearing leggings today, but was instead in a short khaki skirt and a navy T-shirt.
Her hair was tidier, too, brushed so it was wavy rather than curly.
The skirt rode up a little as she climbed onto a stool further along the bar.
Close enough to make conversation, not so close as to be construed as friendly.
Fine with him. Nothing about Jodie could be construed as friendly. She was bound up tighter than a coil of wire, and added to that, she’d just lied to him. Even a has-been psychologist could tell that.
He set the cup on the grate, then rammed the refilled portafilter into its slot. He let the shot work its magic through the ground coffee beans, and trickle into the cup.
The crema was golden and caramel and spread out over the surface like oil over troubled water. Jodie looked like she could do with some oil.
‘Here you go,’ he said, placing the cup in front of her. ‘Cash or card?’
She fished out a card to tap on the eftpos machine and he was planning on leaving her to enjoy her coffee in solitude, when she said, ‘Um, Will.’
‘Yes?’
‘How’s the leg?’ She said it like she was at gunpoint.
‘It’s fine.’
‘Carol tells me I ought to care about the fact that you hurt yourself on my behalf.’
Damn it, Carol . Now the prickly niece’s return visit made sense. Best to nip this lunacy in the bud right now; he knew the games Carol played, and he wasn’t interested in taking on a starring role.
‘I told you, there is nothing to care about.’
‘You have a pronounced limp.’
‘Yeah, well you have a pronounced sad and cranky look on your face,’ he said, ‘but I’m not asking you about it, am I?’
That was when she surprised him. She chuckled.
Not joyously or uproariously or anything like that, but there was a definite look of good humour on her face.
Briefly. It chased away the sad and brought out a dimple and suddenly she looked like the woman who’d caught his eye the other day, and not just a random two o’clock coffee drinker cluttering up his front bar when he’d rather he and his bung leg were having a lie-down on the hammock.
‘I didn’t think you knew how to smile,’ he said.
She looked at him then. Really looked, with none of the loaded silences of before. ‘It’s been a while. I just … well, people don’t normally tell me to my face how, um, sad and cranky I look.’
He should keep his mouth shut. He really should, but—‘So, are you sad? And cranky? Or perhaps you’re afflicted with what my niece calls “resting sad face”, so you always look sad even when you’re happy.’
She pursed her lips. ‘Happy and I parted ways some time ago. Now, let’s just agree that you’ve hurt yourself, and I’m sad, and move on. Will you let me examine your leg? Carol’s likely to refuse to serve me dinner if I don’t go back and report I’ve laid my hands on you.’
He grinned. ‘You know, people don’t normally tell me to my face how much they want to lay their hands on me.’
There was that blush again. It was adorable, it really was.
‘Professional hands,’ she said, holding her hands up, fingers splayed and palms towards him, which just made her appear more vulnerable, somehow.
Her hands were small and her palms held storylines that people like his sister Daisy and his dad Robbo would say told you everything you needed to know about heart, head, life and fate.
‘And I would lay them on you in a professional way,’ Jodie was saying. ‘I’m a physio. Carol informs me that since I am the reason you hurt your leg, it is my duty to check on your injury.’
‘What can you do that ibuprofen can’t?’
She leaned back on her stool. ‘More than you’d think. Come on, I’ve dragged myself in here, so you may as well get it over with. I’ll check your hamstring out, we’ll narrow down what damage you might have done to your muscles or tendons, and I won’t even make you drop your pants.’
This was certainly a change in attitude, and it would have been welcome if he hadn’t been dealing with an aversion to professional hands for the last few years. ‘As tempting as all this sounds, I’m at work.’
She looked around. Every chair, stool and window seat was empty, if you discounted the ginger cat, who’d curled himself up on an upholstered club chair under the No Pets Allowed Inside sign.
‘You do look busy.’
Sarcasm suited her; it chased more of those shadows away. Also, he had a soft spot for people who could deliver sarcasm with such a straight face.
‘A publican’s chores are never done and, I’ll repeat myself, I am fine.
’ And he was fine. Not the leg, obviously; it hurt like a hundred-year-old red cedar tree had fallen on it.
But he was fine. In himself. Even with her talk of damage and tendons.
Even with his worry that his leg might be so bad he’d need to get over his aversion to hospital smells and doctors in scrubs.
‘Now … the bar counter’s a good solid surface, but it’s too tall. Are there any longer tables anywhere? Sturdy ones?’
She was looking at him expectantly, as though this was not at all a serious health-related endeavour, just a conundrum to be solved. A table conundrum, as opposed to a medical conundrum.
He sighed and relented. A look-see here, in the pub, where there was not a stethoscope nor a blood pressure cuff to be found, was preferable to the alternative. ‘There are picnic tables out in the beer garden,’ he said. Grudgingly.
‘Excellent. Lead the way.’
‘Let me just put a sign up,’ he said. Fergus might be upstairs in the staff quarters, but the kid was due a break.
Will locked the front door, hauled down the row of casement windows on the off chance intruders were lurking in the bougainvillea out front, and checked the Beer Garden Is Open sign was visible to anyone who fronted up expecting to get a drink.
Weekday afternoons were not, in general, busy.
It wasn’t until Will stood next to Jodie, staring down at one of the picnic tables and wondering if it would hold his weight, that he noticed she had a tote bag with her. She pulled out one of those trendy things that was sort of a towel and sort of a sarong and spread it over the cracked timber.
‘How loose are those shorts?’ she said, eyeing his crotch without the least degree of self-consciousness.
‘Um,’ he said, fighting the urge to suck in his guts and look manly. Hottie bartender with the biceps , he reminded himself.