When I made no move towards the chair, Josh glared angrily at me. I glared right back.
He drew in a breath as though reining in something that was about to get away from him. ‘Lily, you’ve just been in an accident, you could keel over from shock at any minute. So will youJust–Sit–Down.’
I’m not sure if it was the realisation that I was being deliberately difficult or the muscle that was twitching beside Josh’s eye that made me move to the chair and lower myself on to it.
‘Well, seeing as you asked so nicely,’ I said, my voice deceptively sweet.
He sighed heavily, as though a battle had just begun, and he had no idea if he’d won or lost the first foray.
Fletcher, who was still beside Josh, butted his knee for attention and Josh reached down and stroked his head. I watched the interaction in fascination for several seconds. They say dogs are excellent judges of character, but I wasn’t prepared to believe my pet knew better than me.
‘You’ve got a good dog,’ Josh observed, scratching that spot between Fletcher’s ears that was guaranteed to make him adore you for life. Of all the things he’d said to me so far, that one sounded more like a natural ‘Old Josh’ comment than anything else.
‘I’ve got agreatdog,’ I corrected, and then paused for a moment before adding, ‘I don’t know how I’d have got through this last year without him.’
Josh had stood his torch upright on the table, creating a room full of shadows, and suddenly I could feel Adam’s presence among them.
I cleared my throat uncomfortably and looked for a change of subject. ‘So, how long does it normally take before the electricity comes back on?’
Josh shrugged with a nonchalance I was far from feeling. ‘It won’t be today, that’s for sure. The longest we’ve ever been off-grid was five days.’
I gulped audibly. ‘Is there someone we can call to find out?’
Josh leant back against the countertop, waiting for me to work out exactly what was wrong with that question.
‘Ahh ... Shit. There’s no phone signal either, is there? Or internet? Bugger it.’ A couple of hours in Josh’s company and my vocabulary was already earthier than usual. If I had to spend five days with him, I’d be swearing like a marine at the end of it.
Five days.The thought was sobering and frankly terrifying.
‘You don’t have a back-up means of communication? A CB radio ... or a carrier pigeon?’
‘’Fraid not. We’re just going to have to wait it out.’
The prospect of spending so much time in his company would once have been my idea of Heaven, but now it felt like a stay in a considerably hotter location.
‘Does anyone know you were coming here?’ Josh asked.
I shook my head in the gloomily lit kitchen.
‘So, there’s no one waiting for you to contact them? No one who’ll worry about you when you don’t?’
I lifted my head and met his gaze. ‘You do realise those sound like serial killer questions.’
Josh laughed and then looked almost surprised at the sound, as though he hadn’t heard it for quite a while. I felt my own lips twitch in response.
‘What about your parents?’
‘They’re away visiting my dad’s sister.’
‘The one in Brisbane?’
‘How on earth did you remember that?’
He turned his face away, but not before I’d seen something unfathomable scud across his features. ‘Sometimes stupid stuff sticks in your head ... whether you want it to or not.’
Fifteen minutes later I was cradling a cup of hot, sweet tea in a kitchen that was now glowing in the light of two storm lanterns. If you had to be stranded somewhere, it helped to discover the man you were with could probably give Bear Grylls a run for his money. Josh had disappeared to his workshop and returned with the lanterns, and a huge enamel kettle that he’d placed on top of the wood burner.
‘It’s a good back-up for whenever we lose power,’he’d told me as he spooned way more sugar than I took into my mug.‘It’s for the shock,’he’d added when he saw my raised eyebrows.
