Free Red Dirt Heart 3 by N.R. Walker Page B

days’ rest, she’ll be fine.” Then I added, “I’m sure she misses yellin’ at me. If it’ll make her feel better, she can do some yellin’ at me tomorrow.”
    George knew I was just joking, but at least it made him smile.
    Then looking at everyone around the table, I said, “Please say thanks to Nara on your way out. She did a real good job getting dinner out tonight, so do me a favour and show her some gratitude.” The truth was, while dinner wasn’t the best I’d ever had, it was easy to forget that Nara was just a kid and this was her first go at doin’ it by herself.
    All things considered, she did a bloody good job.
    When they’d cleared out, Trav and I helped Nara clean up the kitchen, and by the time it was done, the day had taken its toll on me.
    It really had been the day from hell.
    “Dunno why I’m so tired,” I mumbled, barely able to keep my eyes open. I sat on the edge of our bed while Trav pulled my boots off. I just needed to lay down a while before getting back up to do some office work.
    Trav shook his head and smiled in a you’re-so-oblivious way, before we heard some familiar scratching and snorty-grunting. “Stay here,” he said, planting a kiss on my forehead before walking out, and came back in a minute later with a bundled-up wombat and a bottle of milk. He tucked him in my arm and sat beside me on the bed.
    “You’ve had a pretty big day,” he said softly. “Did you want to talk about anything?”
    “All of it,” I said. “But maybe not right now.”
    Trav rubbed my arm. “You were great today.”
    I snorted, too tired to laugh. “I’m pretty sure I’d have fucked everything royally if you weren’t here.”
    He leaned down and kissed me. “You can hardly keep your eyes open.”
    My blinks were getting longer. I moved onto my side and watched Nugget as he drained his bottle. “Apparently baby wombats don’t care if I’m busy or tired.” I gently scratched his forehead and told him, “You just seem to think it’s all about you, doncha? I hate to break it to ya, little guy, but the position of me, me, me has been filled.”
    Travis laughed and raked his fingers through my hair. “Out of all your jobs here, that is the one you excel at.”
    I took his hand from my head and kissed his palm. I held his hand then, feeling the warmth of his touch on my hand somehow fill my chest. As much as I wanted to watch him, my eyes finally closed and slow-blinkin’ became deep-sleepin’.
    When I woke up to a needed-to-be-fed-again wombat, Travis was shoving Nugget into bed with me in the crook of my arm. He mumbled something about ‘the little shit won’t let me feed him’ and got back into bed.
    For the next feed, I got up, warmed a fresh bottle, grabbed the bloody wombat and took him back to bed with me like I used to do with Travis’s baby kangaroo. Some days I was just too tired to fight it.
    I put Nugget in between us and closed my eyes as he fed, but sleepin’ was useless. Because after his breakfast, it was playtime apparently.
    This was getting ridiculous.
    “You’re a pain in the butt, you know that?” I asked the wombat. The little bugger seemed to smile. He bounced a bit, burrowing under my pillow and out again, rolled and bounced some more. I laughed as quiet as I could. Until he burrowed under me and scratched my ribs. “Ow.”
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Charlie,” Travis mumbled. “Really?”
    I picked Nugget up and put him in front of Travis’s face. “But he wants to play.”
    “It’s too early,” he whined, still half sleepin’. Nugget sniffed his face, and his whiskers must have tickled Trav’s nose, because he pulled back and scrubbed his hand over his face. The glare he gave me told me he was now, much to his distaste, wide awake. “I’m starting to regret bringing him back here. I should have left him out there to die.”
    I gasped and pushed his shoulder. Nugget went back to doing happy-bouncy-circles in between us, making me laugh.