released her back onto two feet and waited a heartbeat longer as she tested her ankle for compliance. It held.
‘I’m sorry, Laney. Guess I don’t have Wilbur’s years of training as a guide.’
Guilt saturated the voice that had been so warm just moments before. And that seemed an ungrateful sort of thanks for his catching her before she sprawled onto the ground at his feet.
‘It wasn’t you. My bottom and hip are peppered with bruises where I hit the dirt. Regularly.’
Talking about body parts suddenly felt like the most personal conversation she’d ever had, and it planted an image firmly between them that seemed uncomfortably provocative.
She released his jacket from between her clenched fingers. ‘Thank you for those basketball-player reflexes.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he breathed, and his smile seemed richer in the silence of evening. ‘Are you okay to get yourself back?’
She whistled for Wilbur, who bounded to her side from out of the night, and then forked two fingers to touch his furry rump in lieu of a harness. ‘Yep. I’m good. I walk these paths every day.’
Not that you’d know it by the wobble in her gait.
Then she set off, turning for the house, and Wilbur kept careful pace next to her, making it easy to keep up her finger contact with his coat. But she wasn’t entirely ready to say goodnight yet, although staying was out of the question. Something in her burned to leave him with a better impression of her than her being sprawled, inelegant and grasping, in his arms.
So she turned and smiled and threw him what she hoped was a witty quip back over her shoulder.
‘Night. Sorry about the possums!’
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WASN’T THE possums that had kept him up half the night, though they’d certainly been having a ball, springing across his chalet’s roof in a full-on game of midnight marsupial chasey. Kiss chasey, judging by some of the sounds he’d heard immediately afterwards.
Because if it had been the possums he would have been able to fall asleep when they’d finally moved on to foraging in the trees surrounding the chalets for the evening, instead of lying there thinking about the gentle brush of Laney’s fingers on his arm, the press of her whole body against his when he’d caught her. The cadence of her laugh.
Her amazing resilience in the face of adversity.
Except that Laney genuinely didn’t see it as adversity. She understood that she experienced the world differently from the rest of her family, her friends, but she was pretty happy with those experiences. The world was just as much her oyster as his.
More so, perhaps, because she was so open to experience.
And right about then his mind had flashed him back to watching her dance, wet and bedraggled and beautiful, down at the cove. Then to an imagined visual of her perfect skin marred by small bruises from falling. And then just her perfect skin, and the all-consuming question of whether that dusting of freckles might continue beyond the hem of her dress.
And any hope of sleep had rattled out of the chalet to join the possums.
Pervert.
As if he’d never seen a pretty woman before. Or held one.
Did it even count as holding if you were the only thing stopping someone from falling unceremoniously on their arse? It was more community service than come-on, right?
Elliott shook off the early-morning tiredness and wiped his loafers on the Morgans’ mat. But he only had one foot done before the door opened and Laney stood there, resplendent in white overalls straight off the set of Ghostbusters.
Except he couldn’t remember Murray or Ackroyd ever looking this good in theirs.
‘I feel underdressed,’ he commented.
Laney’s smile was the perfect accessory. ‘You won’t miss out. I have a pair for you, too.’
‘I take it today’s bees aren’t as friendly?’
‘We’re doing a run to check the migrating hives. I prefer the farmers to see us taking it seriously. Preserve the mystery.’
‘We?’
‘Hey, mate.’
Only a brother would shove past a blind woman in a doorway with quite so little regard. That was what gave him away. That and the fact he was basically a short-haired male version of Laney.
A stupid part of Elliott bristled at seeing Laney treated with such casual indifference, though she barely noticed.
‘You must be Owen.’ Elliott gripped the proffered palm in his, introducing himself and swallowing back the disappointment that today wasn’t going to be all about him and Laney. ‘Many hands make light work?’
‘Owen and I work together on the remote hives,’ she said. ‘We’re checking two off-sites today.’
If there had been any question that the intimate truce of last night was going to continue today, he’d just had his answer. Laney Morgan was all about business this morning.
‘We’re going to take the back gate out of our property so you’ll get to see more of Morgan land. Come on.’
She stepped past him and brought a white stick out from behind her leg. The first time he’d seen her with one. The first time he’d actually thought of her as blind. And instantly he understood why she didn’t use it more often.
‘No Wilbur today?’
She swept the stick ahead of her as though it were a natural part of her body, pausing only to slap the folded overalls and hood she’d been clutching towards him.
‘Captain Furry-Pants has the day off. I think three guides would be excessive.’
Owen was already in the front of the Morgans’ branded utility.
‘So what will we be doing today?’
His question paused her just before she turned and felt her way up onto the tray of the truck, and she waited as he clambered up behind her. Once they were both on board, safely wedged between large, empty hives, she knocked twice on the window of the cab and Owen hit the accelerator. Hard.
They lurched up to speed.
‘Today we’re checking for beetle and propolis. We do these hives once a month.’
‘Propo what?’
‘Bee spit. They produce it to patch up any tiny holes in their hive and keep bacteria out. Humans use it for everything from treating burns to conditioning stringed instruments. Every one of our hives has a single propolis frame in it and the bees will totally cover it a couple of times in a year. We’re exchanging those frames today.’
Bee spit. The potential for new markets was
