Page 26 of Special Delivery
‘What?’ asked James.
‘You wouldn’t like it. You’re too …’ Too what? Too clean maybe. Too polo-shirty. ‘You don’t fit the mould,’ she muttered.
‘What moulddoI fit?’
Ralph Lauren modelsprang to mind but she sure as hell wasn’t verbalising that.
‘Country music fan,’ she said flatly. It was the first thing that popped into her head and she instantly regretted it. She loved country music and she didn’t want this sacred subject tarnished with his douchey opinions. Still, she hoped he was offended. Patrick would have been offended.
James spun towards her, bright-eyed. ‘I deadset love country music!’
Poppy side-eyed him, her neck muscles tensing as Maeve squealed spontaneously.Seriously?He was choosing this moment to reveal he had a mode other than bored-to-smirky? Country music washerthing. She shouldn’t have opened her stupid mouth. It was infuriating how his AI brain could read her mind just to piss her off.
James scanned their surroundings. ‘What’s your favourite type of, um … tree?’
Poppy levelled him with a scowl. What did he expect her to say?Oh, I’m partial to a paperbark but a river red gum really floats my boat. Good lord.
‘This’—she waved her hands between them to indicate the gaping absence of passable conversation—‘is terrible. This is possibly worse than the silence.’
‘I thought the silence was fine,’ muttered James, shaking his head.
‘Nope. That was terrible, this is terrible. You need to try harder.’
James rolled his eyes. ‘Or what?’
‘Or else,’ Poppy retorted.Damn it. Her sass was always so excellent in her daydreams but here she was sounding like an evil dictator about tomwahahaas she pressed the World Detonate button with a menacing pinky finger.
James raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you can do better than that.’
‘You think too highly of me,’ she snapped.
He gave a low chuckle. ‘I doubt that.’
Poppy glared at him. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Maeve’s hand brushed the tail of the dog and her daughter giggled in delight.
‘We’re reverting to silence,’ Poppy ordered.
James flexed his wrist to tighten his hold on the leash. ‘Whatever you say.’ The smile in his voice was as clear as a bell.
That afternoon, as she sat in her parents’ garden and watched her mum pull weeds out of the garden bed, James’s voice kept interrupting her thoughts like a skipping CD player.I deadset love country music!Maybe everyone here liked country music. In Sydney, she’d been the only one who annoyed DJs by requesting Luke Bryan and took over the aux cord to play old-school Taylor Swift. It was her schtick and now he’d stolen it. God, he was infuriating.
In her hot-pink shirt and tailored floral shorts, her mum looked like a Bible Belt frat boy on spring break. Poppy sat on a chequered rug next to the Chinese elm with Maeve lying next to her, her frog-like arms and legs curled into her torso, one cheek pressed into the rug.
‘I don’t know why you do that,’ said her mum, nodding her head towards Maeve. ‘When you were born, we never had to do that and you turned out fine.’
Her mum was full of wisdom like this: care less, do less, and your child will turn out better.
‘It’s called tummy time, Mum. It’s to build up her core strength. Maybe you should have tried it. Maybe that’s why I’m terrible at sport.’
‘Nonsense,’ said her mother. ‘Besides, Maeve is half Patrick, which means she has fifty per cent more sporting genes than you were blessed with. Have you spoken to Patrick yet?’
Poppy grunted noncommittally. No, she had not spoken to him, and she resented the implication thatsheshould be reaching out tohim. She had a lot on. ‘Garden’s looking great, Mum,’ she said, desperate to change the subject.
Her mother gave a laboured sigh. ‘Oh, it’s a disaster.’
‘What do you mean? It looks fantastic.’
