‘You never had to. Have you seen enough?’
‘More than enough. Are these all your possessions?’
‘I live light,’ she said, in a tight voice. ‘I can be gone in half an hour.’
‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘You’re not kicking me out tonight?’ she demanded, alarmed, and he shook his head.
‘I’m not kicking you out at all. I’m asking if you have an alternative—something a bit less appalling than here.’
‘Here’s fine.’
‘Here’s not fine. This place needs an army to make it habitable.’
‘It’s a lovely house.’
‘It could be a lovely house. It’s anything but now. Do you have anywhere you can go?’
‘Of course I do,’ she retorted, but he thought that she was lying.
There were all sorts of emotions twisting inside him right now. He didn’t want to get involved—when had he ever?—but walking away from her…
He’d be as bad as Toby if he left her anchored to this place, to her grief, to her loss.
‘Come down to Manwillinbah Lodge,’ he found himself saying. ‘You know the lodge?’
‘I know it, but…’
‘But what?’
‘I can.’t’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s your place.’
‘It’s a guesthouse and it’s almost empty. So I’m offering, and I believe you’d be sensible to accept.’ He spread his hands. ‘Tori, either you stay here tonight in this bleak and lonely place and, I suspect, cry your eyes out again for a little koala called Manya, or you come down the mountain and let Rob take care of you while you regroup.’ Then, as she hesitated, he added, ‘You know, you’d be doing Rob a favour. He loves the lodge being full and he loves company. Since the fire, all his guests have come and stared out into the night and not wanted to talk.’
‘I don’t think I want to talk.’
‘No, but our housekeeper can cook for you, and Rob can make you smile. Rob’s good with people.’
She looked at him curiously at that. ‘You talk as if you mean you’re not.’
‘I’m not a people person.’
‘Yet you let me soak your shirt.’
‘Sometimes I’m compelled to be a people person.’
‘That sounds like your five-minute date. Like you want to be out of here.’
‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ he said, flinching. Hell, he had to figure out how to sound nice.
But to his relief she was smiling, a faint smile but a smile nonetheless. ‘Yeah, okay, you’re not a people person but you did very well just now,’ she said. ‘I was really grateful for your shirt and you held on manfully. So whether you wanted to bolt or not, the fact is you didn’t and I’m not asking questions.’ She turned and looked down at her camp bed, at the detritus of six months’ camping in this sooty, makeshift home. He could see her indecision.
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