Chapter 4

If koalas could do fist-pumps, his koala would be doing a fist-pump. Scooooorrrre! We got a date! She wants us, mate! We"re her dream come true!

Tiffany"s expression, at the moment, did not suggest Ollie was her dream come true. It suggested that she realized she"d walked into a setup, and was trying to figure out how she felt about it. Ollie, embarrassed, said, "It doesn"t have to be a date."

Are you nuts?She threw us on the ground! She"s hot! You can"t not take her on a date! Lemme talk to her, you"re useless!

You,Ollie said steadily, are a belligerent little drop bear, and I am not letting you take over wooing our fated mate. Even if you could, I wouldn"t.

"No," Tiffany said slowly, "I think a date sounds nice. Especially if it involves cheesecake. But you"re not distracting me from the project!"

Ollie laughed. "I wasn"t trying to, I promise. What is it, anyway? Your project?" As he asked, a young woman stopped by their table to take their orders, and Ollie, still smiling at Tiffany, said, "Two lemonades, please."

"I"m sorry, what?" The young woman blinked at him, and Ollie"s smile fell away.

"Two lemonades, please?"

"Two… limon oids? Oh! Lemonades. Oh my God. I"m so sorry. Your accent threw me for a second there. Are you Australian?"

"I am." Ollie spoke as politely as he could without encouraging the young woman. He"d only been in the States for a day, and it was already clear that his accent appealed to a large percentage of the population. He only wanted it to appeal to Tiffany. Nobody else mattered as much as she did.

"Oh my God, that"s so cool. How long have you been here? What brought you to Virtue?" The waitress put her hand on his shoulder.

His koala, which honestly didn"t like being touched, yelled, Bite her!

Ollie did not bite her. He did shift his shoulder uncomfortably, and when she didn"t move her hand, said, "I"m sorry, but I don"t care for strangers touching me."

It took several seconds for her to work her way through his accent. In that time, he watched Tiffany"s eyes narrow and her shoulders set. She was just drawing a breath to speak when the waitress, with a yelp of apology, snatched her hand off Ollie"s shoulder. "Oh my gosh, I"m super sorry."

"No worries. Lemonades," he said to Tiffany. "Anything else?"

Tiffany"s eyes were still narrowed as she transferred her gaze to the waitress. "No." After a moment in which it appeared she was trying to remember how to be polite, she added, "Thanks."

She totally woulda taken her,the koala announced. She threw us right on the ground and we"re eighty times bigger than the waitress. Let"s her and them fight!

Ollie said, "No!" as forcefully as he ever said anything, startling both the waitress and Tiffany. Oh, God, look what I"ve done now. Just be quiet, please! "Sorry," he said in his more usual soft tone. "Would you believe I was arguing with myself?"

"Over what?" the waitress asked, wide-eyed, but scurried away from the table to get their lemonades instead of waiting for an answer.

"Over what?" Tiffany echoed when she was gone.

"…whether you could take her in a fight?" It was more or less true, although it was also absurd, because who sat around a cafe wondering if his sort-of date could beat up the waitress?

Me,the koala said gleefully.

Yes, but you"re a?—

Belligerent drop bear, I know.The koala bared its teeth in something like a smile. It had remarkably fierce fangs for such a placid-looking creature.

Tiffany, eyebrows elevated, turned to watch the waitress go. "Probably? She"s younger than I am, but I"m probably meaner than she is."

"You don"t seem mean at all," Ollie said over the sound of his koala going Yessssss! She"s mean! She"s fierce! She"ll kick ARSE!

She"s going to kick your arse if you don"t shut up!

The koala was positively delighted at the prospect, but to Oliver"s relief, it did at least settle down.

Tiffany was shrugging. "I don"t really think I am mean, to be honest. I just don"t take much shit. People waste enough of my time already, and if I put up with any guff, it gets way worse, way fast."

"What are you building out there? Why can"t it wait until Monday?"

"Because I"ve got another job lined up starting twenty days from now," she said with the exaggerated patience of a woman who didn"t think she needed to explain herself.

Oliver, hearing that tone, nodded slowly. "You"re right. You don"t owe me an explanation. And I should have understood without asking that you probably had something else starting shortly after that. Sorry."

"Wow." Tiffany brought her full, bright-eyed attention to him. "Wow, are all Australian guys this cool, or are you a special breed?"

A startled, quiet laugh escaped him. "I don"t know if I"m a special breed?—"

His koala looked at him.

I know, I know,Ollie said desperately. But that"s not what she means.

How do you know? Maybe she knows about shifters. Maybe we should tell her she"s our perfect fated mate and run off into the trees to make passionate luuuuuuurvto her. Maybe?—

"But I try to listen and notice if I"m being kind of an arse," Ollie said hastily, and probably too loudly. "And I was, kind of. You know your business. I don"t."

"Well, thank you." Tiffany looked slightly pole-axed, as if she didn"t know how to process his apology. The waitress came by with a tray that had two glasses of lemon-colored liquid and no cans on it, which Ollie thought was a little odd, although Tiffany didn"t seem bothered by it at all. She took her glass with a nod of thanks, swirled her straw to clink the ice around, and had a sip. Her perfect pink mouth puckered into laughter. "Woo! That"s good! Your friend out there was right!"

"Oh, good." Ollie took a sip of his own lemonade and froze. "Wh…what is this?"

Tiffany, still beaming sort of painfully around her own sips, furled her eyebrows in confusion. "Lemonade?"

"It"s…flat. And…" Ollie didn"t know what to do with his tongue. It was recoiling at a lemon-tart-but-sweet flavor that was really nothing like lemonade as he knew it. "What"s wrong with it?"

"Nothing? It"s amazing?"

"No," Ollie said with sort of earnest frustration, as if he could make her understand how badly things were going wrong in his mouth right now, "no, it"s weird, it"s…it"s not like lemonade at all?"

LEMME FIGHT IT, the koala yelled. I"LL SHOW IT WHAT LEMONADE IS!

For a moment, Ollie was sort of tempted, although he didn"t know exactly how one would fight lemonade. This stuff, though, certainly tasted like it could put up a fight. It was sharp and bright and sweet. And flat, and had bits of pulp in it, and he swore there might even be actual sugar granules collecting at the base of the glass. "It"s not lemonade? Why is it flat?"

"What do you even mean by flat?" Tiffany asked in bewilderment. "It"s not flat at all! It"s great, all sweet-tart! That"s not flat! It"s sharp!"

"But it"s not…there"s sugar at the bottom of the glass!"

"It"s…probably homemade? Not commercial? It"s really good?" Tiffany stared at him in complete confusion as Ollie"s jaw dropped.

"Americans make lemonade by hand?" He guessed it was possible. With lemon syrup and—"But where"s the soda water?"

"Who puts soda water in lemonade?!"

Very slowly, almost terribly, a thought began to trickle through Oliver"s mind. It was an alien thought, one he"d never had any reason to consider before. Slowly, cautiously, he said, "…is American lemonade not a fizzy drink?"

"A fi—what? Like a soda? No! Obviously not! If you want lemon-flavored fizzy drinks you get, like, 7-Up or Sprite, not lemonade, not that they actually taste very much like lemon, but…what?" The horror Ollie felt on his own face now crossed Tiffany"s, etching lines around her mouth. "Are you telling me Australian lemonade is fizzy? Ew!"

"Fizzy and…" Ollie took another tentative, unpleasant sip of the weird American lemonade. "…this is so sweet."

"It"s supposed to be!"

"No, it"s lemon, it"s supposed to be sour!"

"What? No! Oh my God." Tiffany stared at him. "Is all Australian food that messed up? Wait." Her expression went suspicious. "Wait, you"re the Marmite people, aren"t you?"

"Vegemite," Ollie said, offended. "Marmite"s British."

I"LL SHOW HER WHAT VEGEMITE IS! SEE IF SHE MAKES THAT MISTAKE AGAIN!

Oh my God,Ollie whispered to the koala. Please don"t. This was why he never let himself get agitated. Calm, cool and collected. That was Oliver Campbell. Because at the slightest hint of personal outrage, his koala went full Mad Max.

"Is there a difference between Marmite and Vegemite?" Tiffany asked, still suspicious.

"Yes," Ollie said weakly, "but I don"t think it"s a lotta difference.."

It"s an important difference! the koala bellowed. Vegemite"s SALTY! SAVORY! Marmite"s SWEET! And YUCK!

Ollie gently put his head in his hands and squeezed, like he might be able to squish the koala"s combativeness into calm silence. It had never worked yet, but it might today. There was always hope.

At the very least, he could make himself breathe deeply, counting the breaths, letting them go slowly, until his calm floated over the koala and gradually convinced it that a death match wasn"t worth it. Ollie had a lot of practice at this kind of thing, although the topic wasn"t usually Vegemite.

This time, however, Tiffany Wright"s hand crept into his line of vision, and stopped just shy of touching his elbow. His koala actually held its breath, suddenly entirely focused on her small fingers and the even smaller distance between them and contact with Ollie"s arm. She didn"t touch him, though, and with a jolt, Ollie remembered he"d just told the waitress that he didn"t care to be touched by strangers. Tiffany had listened, heard, and applied it.

Ollie lifted his gaze, quite sure that he was heart-eyed. Or he would be, if such a thing was possible. Tiffany"s own gorgeous blue gaze was locked on him, concern obvious in her strong-jawed, beautiful face. "Are you all right? You must be exhausted after that flight."

Flight!? What flight? Koalas don"t fly! Tell her the truth! Tell her we looooooove her! Tell her I"m a hunka hunka burnin" luuuuuuurve! Tell her?—

"I have a bit of a headache," Ollie said, not entirely untruthfully.

"Brain freeze," Tiffany said wisely. "Lemonade straight to the roof of the mouth. It"ll getcha every time. Put your tongue against it."

Ollie had a brief but rather vivid image of a circumstance under which he would dearly love to have Tiffany use the phrase "put your tongue against it." Vivid enough that it silenced the koala, possibly because oral sex wasn"t high on a list of koala"s favorite activities, but more likely because it felt Ollie was finally getting on board with the whole "drag her off to the trees and make passionate love" thing.

What he actually said was "Glrk?"

Fortunately, that was the kind of sound a person might make if he was putting his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and Tiffany smiled approvingly. "Good, there, that should help. Just hold it there a minute."

Ollie"s brain dove straight for the gutter again. He was fairly certain this time he actually whimpered. Tiffany"s eyes widened as if she followed his thought, and the most deliciously wicked smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. To his intense disappointment, she moved her hand back to her side of the table, and said, primly, "I think you"re all right."

"Ta, thanks," he blurted more or less on top of her comment. Her eyebrows—pale blonde and feathery, like her hair—rose, and he said, "You noticed, you paid attention. When I said I didn"t like to be touched by strangers. I don"t mine if you do, though."

That smirk softened into a single-cornered smile. Tiffany reached across the table again to touch his elbow, then withdrew her hand as his koala, unable to come up with something even as coherent as phwoar, hyperventilated in Ollie"s mind.

This was great. If Tiffany could keep the koala completely off balance for, like, ever, Ollie would owe her everything. And since he was already prepared to offer her the rest of his life, that seemed like it would work out well for him.

"I"ll keep that in mind," Tiffany murmured, but before Ollie could turn it into any kind of invitation, his cousin Steve lumbered into the cafe.