Secret Confessions: Down & Dusty — Skye Read Free

flanks so that his jeans rested loosely over what was no doubt a most spectacularly sculpted behind.
    His lean form told her exactly what he’d been doing since she’d last seen him—working hard, perhaps too hard. She would have to keep an eye on him.
    Rather than focusing on the fireworks of lust, what she needed to do was focus on the quiet satisfaction of friendship—of being there to help out, of knowing that she knew him better than anyone else. Who, besides her, knew that his first pet had been a duck and that he still loved ducks with a passion entirely unbefitting a grown-ass cowboy? Knew how much he’d hated boarding school and that he’d run away at least once, hitchhiking hundreds of kilometres just to be with his horses. Knew that his mum had died when he was six, and that while everyone else saw a ruggedly handsome, hard-working horse breeder, beneath that surface lay a vulnerable and sometimes lonely man. One so terrified of losing a single farm animal that he sometimes woke in the middle of the night and had to go check on the horses—and the ducks—before tucking the kelpie and himself back into bed.
    He thought she didn’t know, but his dad had told her.
    And why else had he always been so interested in the wildlife she’d rescued?
    Because he was soft, soft as ice-cream left on the counter in summer.
    Hell, he made her look almost armour-plated in comparison. She accepted death as part of the natural cycle, part of life, just as she accepted that Bret and she couldn’t be more than friends.
    She could even see the positive side of having an unrequited crush the size of Queensland on her friend. It had protected her. If she’d seriously dated anyone before going to university in Brisbane she might have had her heart broken, or ended up a farmer’s wife with just a high school diploma instead of what she now was—a qualified vet with a five-year degree under her belt.
    And that counted for something, didn’t it?
    It had to.
    Inside the kitchen, a room as warm and wholesome as the man before her, Bret paused to stick his nose in the armpit of his t-shirt. ‘I kind of stink. Do you mind waiting while I take a quick shower?’
    Shower? Now she had to think about him in the shower ? Slick, soapy bubbles sliding across his muscular chest and—in her imagination—stone-hard nipples. Her mouth grew thick with things she couldn’t say. Actually, I’d like to get lost inside your pants and then jump into the shower with you once you found me.
    The wayward thought almost had her covering her mouth like some bystander witnessing a car crash.
    Though her thoughts sometimes resembled a car crash—ugly, messy and out of control. Was it any wonder that some folk called her nuts and Bret called her Mad Dog?
    Get yourself under control, Skye. She pictured all the un-sexiest things she could think of—washing the dishes, the mountain of un-ironed clothes waiting for her at home, cleaning the microwave oven of all those icky, sticky little bits of crap that got encrusted inside it. ‘How about I cook you breakfast while you shower?’ She gave him a big smile full of pure, domestic intentions.
    He heaved a big happy sigh. ‘Sounds great.’
    She stuck her head in the fridge, thinking he’d disappeared, only to almost give herself a concussion when his deep voice from the doorway snuck up on her. ‘I just wanted to say how good it is you’re back. Like, really good.’
    She froze in the middle of taking stock of the contents of his fridge, unable to reply. After all, how good was ‘really good’? As good as winning the lottery or just good as in having a hot shower after a hard day’s work?
    Before she could remove her head from his fridge he’d disappeared.
    She laid out all the possibilities, the different scales and implications of ‘really good’, as she made scrambled eggs and toast with Vegemite, plus two cups of coffee. Black with one sugar for him, a splash of full-cream milk for her.
    But