“Curtis will be buying the hospital.”
Brad let out a breath. “Curtis?”
“Didn’t see that coming,” Lisa said.
Every head in the room turned to face him.
Curtis shifted in his seat. “I thought it was the best solution. We get to keep our jobs this way, and nothing needs to change.”
Brad smiled. The others soon followed suit, as I knew they would. I chuckled to myself when I realised Curtis still had his thinking face on.
“I couldn’t be happier with this outcome,” I said, drawing the attention away from Curtis. “I believe the hospital will be in good hands.”
Nods all around. Curtis had proven himself to them in one way or another over the past few months.
“And there’s no better time for him to start taking the reins than right now,” I continued. “I’m taking a long weekend.”
That earned a louder reaction.
“You? Take time off during breeding season?” Lisa asked, disbelief in her voice.
I shrugged. “Time to try something new.”
“Getting ready for retirement, are you?” Brad asked.
I nodded. Retirement and winning the heart of the woman I loved.
Curtis stared at me. I hoped this would show him that I had full confidence in him. I hoped this would give him confidence in himself.
“That’s it. You can go to work now.”
Now I had a different job—asking Lorraine to join me. I broke out in a sweat. Sixty-five years old and I felt like a schoolboy asking a girl out for the first time. Bloody hell.
I’d been waiting for this moment since I was fifteen years old. And maybe if I hadn’t been so shit scared of stuffing up, I’d have asked her back when we were teens, before we started on the path to our separate lives.
I’d asked her many times after our respective divorces. She’d denied me every time, until last week, when she said I could take her to Isabelle’s birthday party. We’d had two more dates since then—nothing fancy, just dinner at our respective houses.
I wanted more. I had no idea what that would look like at our age.
But I was sure of one thing—I wanted to find out.
CHAPTER 2
Lorraine
I staredat the open suitcase on the bed, wishing it was full already. It was four bloody days. Four days. That was all. But I’d already changed my mind three times about what to pack.
It was winter, and Perisher meant cold and snow. Just the fact that the resort was in the Australian Snowy Mountains said it all. Surely that would make it easier to pack. It wasn’t like I didn’t know what to expect. I needed warm clothes and probably thermals. I grabbed them off the discard pile and put them in the bag. Then I added my winter pyjamas.
Were they sexy? No, but I wasn’t out to be sexy. I wanted to be warm. Anyway, who thought about being sexy at our age?
Dan and I had been friends for just about forever. And we’d been on three dates. But going away for the weekend together meant four whole days of being with each other. Could I do that? Could we do that?
Taylor appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, wearing that half-smirk she’d perfected when she was twelve. “You’re overthinking, Mum. It’s a weekend, not an Arctic expedition.”
Isabelle moved past her mother and planted herself on my bed. She was the spitting image of Taylor at fifteen—long brown hair and brown eyes that were so alive you got caught in them.
“Have you seen the forecast?” I held up a thermal shirt. “It’s snowing. And I don’t want to freeze.”
