Читать книгу Christmas Where She Belongs - Meredith Webber, Meredith Webber - Страница 7

HE SHOULDN’T have brought the dog. This had occurred to him even before he’d approached the front entrance to the ultra-modern block of apartments on Brisbane’s South Bank complex. But young Gracie had needed to get to hospital, and the boy up the road who usually fed the dog when he, Mac, went away, was off on holidays with his family.

In fact, just about the whole town was on holiday—down at the coast, splashing in the sea, trying to put the trauma of last year’s floods behind them as they celebrated the Christmas break with family and friends.

So, he’d had to bring the dog, and it wasn’t actually deliberate that he was encouraging Mike to investigate an interesting new city smell just a couple of yards from the classy-looking entrance to the apartment block.

A couple of yards from the camera he could see winking above the numbers and name plates on a panel beside the door!

Deep breath, press the buzzer, you’re doing this for Hester. You loved Hester and deep down you love Mike, for all his lack of ability to learn even the most basic of dog commands.

‘Heel!’ he said hopefully to Mike, who’d wandered as far as his lead—well, bit of rope, really—would allow.

Mike turned around and smiled goofily at him—smiling was the one thing the dog was good at and anyone who’d seen him smile had to admit it was a smile.

Mac smiled back.

Clancy jumped as the sound of the front-door buzzer blasted through the small apartment.

Well, maybe not blasted, but she’d been sitting on a beanbag—in the beanbag—and gazing blankly at the ceiling, trying to decide if she was bored enough with the long summer break to go down and visit her mother.

‘Come for Christmas,’ her mother kept urging, but, much as Clancy loved her beautiful, warm, zany mother, and was fond of the group of friends who shared her mother’s life in the commune, memories of the nut loaf in the shape of a turkey that had been the centrepiece of last year’s Christmas dinner were still vivid in Clancy’s mind.

That and the lantana flower wine.

So she’d reached the ‘probably not’ stage, and was just considering starting on the ‘to do’ list she’d written at the beginning of the holidays when the noise of the buzzer startled her. It was enough of a shock that getting out of the beanbag became more of a battle than usual—it clutched at her so that tipping it to one side and crawling out became the only option.

The buzzer sounded angry the second time, so she grabbed at the handset, dropped it, picked it up and finally peered at the picture on the small screen.

There was a pirate on her doorstep.

Or maybe he was a buccaneer—she had no idea what constituted the difference between the two. Tousled, over-long dark hair, a couple of days’ beard and dark, deep-set eyes glared into the camera. His lips were moving and she could read the impatient words. ‘Come on, answer the door.’

She responded to the unheard request.

‘Yes?’

Hardly a welcoming ‘yes’, in fact a very cold, detached response, but now she was over the initial shock of having a pirate on the doorstep, her rational brain had put together the tousled hair and beard and told her it was some emissary from her mother—a fellow hippie from over the border, probably carrying a woven reed basket full of inedible cheese, green gooseberries and very hard bread.

‘Miss Clancy? I’m a lawyer and I need to talk to you about an inheritance—’

He didn’t look like any lawyer she’d ever seen. And unless her father had remembered he had a daughter and then died, she couldn’t imagine she’d be getting an inheritance.

Actually, from the little she’d heard of her father, an inheritance was highly unlikely.

Piratical conman?

But why choose her?

Had he buzzed at all the doors and she was the only one who’d answered?

And wouldn’t a conman look presentable, or at the very least clean shaven?

‘Here, I’m holding up my ID from the hospital—I’m a doctor as well as a lawyer and I flew a patient down from Carnock early this morning so needed my ID.’

Clancy barely glanced at the name, seeing first the words ‘Angel Flight’ with the halo over the top of the word ‘Angel’. She’d supported this charity since treating a child from the country, flown down by a volunteer pilot for a follow-up appointment after an operation. The men and women involved in the charity were doing really useful work.

Was it because of the halo that she pressed the button to open the front door—something she never did to strangers without a far more lengthy interrogation?

Or had a certain authority in his voice overcome her usual caution?

It certainly couldn’t have been the voice, for all it had made her think of rich, dark, slowly melting chocolate.

She was still pondering these alternatives—adamantly denying the last—when the front-door buzzer sounded. The man who looked like a pirate had obviously arrived.

Security conscious as she was, Clancy had the door chain in place. She opened the door the mere four inches its reach would allow, and peered through the gap at the man—more piratical than ever close up, although maybe that was the effects of the rather worn red shirt and fraying, cut-off jeans.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

At least his hands were free of woven baskets.

His answer was a grin, so slight yet so cheeky, so—endearing somehow—it took her breath away.

‘I’ve brought you your inheritance,’ he said, ‘but it won’t fit through that small a gap.’

He turned his head and said, ‘Mike!’ in a very stern voice, and to Clancy’s total astonishment a huge dog bounded into view, its long, thin nose poking inquisitively through the crack in the doorway.

Dumbstruck, Clancy stared at the dog—which seemed to be smiling at her.

Then anger built, slowly at first but rising to heat her entire body.

‘If this is my mother’s idea of a joke then it’s not funny,’ she growled, trying to push the dog’s nose back through the door so she could slam it in the man’s face. ‘I live in a one-bedroom apartment that isn’t big enough to swing a cat, let alone accommodate a dog the size of a small horse. I am perfectly happy living alone, I do not need a dog, or a cat, or a bird, not even a goldfish. I like living alone, and it’s about time my daffy mother recognised and accepted that fact.’

The speech was slightly spoiled by the fact that she’d continued to push at the dog’s muzzle, but rather than budging he seemed to be trying to ease more of his considerable length into her apartment, happily licking her hand as he did so.

‘I don’t actually know your mother.’

She shot upright, staring in horror at the dog, although she now realised it was the man, not the dog, who had spoken.

‘May we come in?’

Still regarding the dog with suspicion and shock, Clancy opened the door.

Once inside the apartment, both the man and the dog grew bigger, taking up most of the space in her minimal living room.

‘Good thing you don’t do furniture or we wouldn’t have fitted,’ the man said, smiling cheerfully at her.

‘Who are you?’ Clancy demanded. Nerves jangled throughout her body, no doubt because she’d been stupid enough to let this stranger into her flat.

Although the jangling didn’t feel like fear …

‘I’m called Mac,’ the man was saying, and he was holding out his hand, very politely.

It was an automatic reaction to take a hand that was held out to you, but no sooner had skin touched skin than Clancy knew she’d made a big mistake.

And confirmed the jangling had nothing to do with fear.

‘I’m Clancy,’ she said, snatching her hand back lest it transmit any of the rioting going on in her body. She’d heard of instant attraction, but this was ridiculous!

Mac let his gaze roam around the tiny apartment, mainly because he didn’t want to keep staring at the woman. It wasn’t that she was so outstandingly beautiful, but she had eyes as green as the lucerne in his back paddock—green with a hint of blue—and skin as smooth as a new baby’s, ivory pale but not white, all set off, well, framed really, by a cap of feathery dark hair.

She was small, but definitely curvy, and although dressed for a relaxing Sunday at home, there was no hint of sloppiness—in fact, she was wearing long shorts with a crease that could cut your hand and a spotless, beautifully ironed T-shirt.

Who ironed T-shirts?

‘You wanted something?’

The voice was good as well, soft, slightly husky, deeper than you’d expect from a smallish woman.

‘Mac?’ she added, when he didn’t reply—couldn’t really, he was lost in surprise that this should be Hester’s niece.

He pulled himself together and looked around for Mike, who, wonder of wonders, was sitting by his side, pretending to be a perfect dog.

‘I …’ Mac began, then realised he had no idea how to go on.

‘Is there somewhere we can sit?’ he asked. ‘I realise you must have just moved in, and don’t have furniture, but I noticed coffee shops up the road with pavement tables. We could take Mike there.’

‘Mike?’ the woman echoed, though she obviously caught on because she was looking at the dog.

‘Hester called all her dogs by people names, which is strange when you consider she regarded dogs as far more intelligent than people.’

The woman, Miss Clancy, frowned and shook her head, then put up one hand and ruffled her neatly cut hair.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, but you’re right, let’s go and get a coffee.’

Mac was about to head out the door when she added, rather testily, ‘And not having furniture doesn’t mean I’ve just moved in, I just haven’t found the furniture I want.’

She lifted a handbag off a hook by the door and followed him out, pulling the door shut behind her, but before they reached the elevator, an elderly man emerged from another apartment, obviously heading in the same direction, though he paused to give Mike a disapproving look.

‘Dogs are not allowed in this building. You should know that, Miss Clancy.’

‘He’s just passing through, Mr Bennett,’ Clancy responded politely, though the colour in her cheeks suggested she was embarrassed by the reprimand.

Mac waited until they were outside the complex, walking up the tree-lined street towards the closest pavement café, before bringing up the subject again.

‘So, it’s going to be a problem, you inheriting Mike?’

The only response was a narrow-eyed glare, but even glaring those eyes were special.

They reached the café and Clancy chose a table at the outside edge of the pavement, no doubt assuming it would keep Mike out of other patrons’ way. But she didn’t know Mike.

‘So!’ she said, sitting down with her back to the quiet road. ‘Start at the beginning, who you are, why are you here, who is or was Hester and, probably most important of all, as I can’t keep the dog, what are you going to do with him?’

He smiled at her.

‘Very succinct summation of the main points. No wonder you’ve done so well as a teacher,’ he said.

The smile was Clancy’s undoing. It sneaked through her skin and curdled in her blood, turning it thick and sluggish, but no matter how her body was behaving, she couldn’t let him get away with the jibe.

‘I am a nurse educator, the senior lecturer in surgical nursing and theatre skills at the university,’ she pointed out.

The man’s smile widened.

‘Just as I said—a really good teacher! You must be to have done so well. But tell me, having trained to nurse, what made you go into teaching? Did you not like nursing?’

He was impossible.

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, we’re here to talk about the dog, not me.’

‘Ah, Mike!’ the infuriating man drawled, while the dog sniffed the leg of a leggy blonde three tables away and was rewarded with a bit of buttered and very jammy croissant.

Should she call the dog? Clancy wondered. Would it come if she did?

‘Start with who you are,’ she said to the man, deciding it was easier to ignore the dog.

‘My name is McAlister Warren, and—’

‘McAlister Warren? That sounds more like a firm of lawyers than a name.’

Yes, that had been rude, but she was strung so tightly the words had just slipped out. Anyway, the situation was so bizarre, surely a little rudeness wouldn’t count.

Not that rudeness affected the man. He could give as good as he got.

‘It’s the name my parents gave me,’ he said smoothly, ‘and coming from someone called Willow Cloud Clancy, your criticism of my name is a bit rich.’

Clancy cringed. Few people knew her real name, and those who did would never dare to use it. She’d been Clancy from her first day at school—at real school, that was …

‘Everyone calls me Clancy,’ she said, aware that colour had crept into her face. He was right—she should never have mentioned names.

‘Good choice,’ he said, smiling cheerfully at her across the table and causing the little hairs on her arms to stand on end as if his words had brushed her skin. ‘Now, coffee? Something to eat with it?’

Clancy had been so busy trying to work out why the man was affecting her, she hadn’t noticed the waitress, one she didn’t know, approach the table.

‘Long, black and nothing to eat,’ she managed to reply, hoping coffee—black—might get her brain working again while certain that the way she felt, she’d choke on food.

‘So, you’re Mac,’ she prompted. ‘From Carnock, was it?’

As she said the word, a memory stirred and she knew why she’d opened the door. Once, long ago, she’d searched for a town called Carnock on a map in the school library, wondering just how far away it was and whether she could walk there if she started early enough. She was a good walker, and every morning walked a long way uphill to catch the bus to school …

‘You’ve heard of Carnock?’

Mac’s question was casual enough, but Clancy could feel his attention was focussed fully on her, as if the question had some deeper meaning.

‘One of the towns that had to be totally evacuated during the floods last year?’ she responded, realising she hadn’t connected the town to her childhood memory back then. It had to be the talk of an inheritance that had triggered the memory now.

Although, back when she had set out to walk there, and the search parties had returned her to the hippie commune that had been home, her mother had told her that while her father might have lived there once, it was the last place on earth he’d have gone back to—a place he’d hated.

‘And that’s all you know of it?’ Mac persisted.

Clancy frowned at him.

‘It might have been the town my father came from, but as I never really knew him, and as my mother always said he wouldn’t be seen dead in the place ever again, I doubt you’ve come to tell me he is dead. Although …’ she looked across to where Mike was now being offered bacon and egg at a far table ‘… leaving me a dog would be consistent with his complete lack of presence in my life.’

‘You know nothing of him?’ Mac asked.

‘He went away—that’s all I know. All my mother would ever say. I was two, maybe three—’ She broke off suddenly, shrugged, then added, ‘Actually, having escaped the commune and my mother’s hippie lifestyle as soon as I possibly could, I can’t find it in my heart to blame him.’

Mac turned her words over in his head, but found no bitterness in them. How sad that all she knew of her father was that he’d gone away. How hurtful it must have been for her, growing up with that knowledge.

But he was on a mission and couldn’t afford to be distracted by this woman’s unhappy childhood—if it had been unhappy.

‘The thing is, your father did come from Carnock and, no, he didn’t turn up dead there—in fact, as far as Hester was able to ascertain, he’s still alive—but he is, in her opinion, a total waste of space and you probably didn’t miss much not having him around.’

Clancy didn’t look convinced, but at least she was intrigued enough to ask, ‘And exactly who was Hester?’

‘Hester Clancy was your great-aunt, and an utterly wonderful woman. Every small town has someone like Hester, but Carnock was blessed with the best. Hester was the person young girls went to when they discovered they were pregnant, she was the person battered women eventually talked to, she’d find the money to send the clever kids in town to university when their parents couldn’t afford it, and after the floods she had three families living in her house for nearly a year while their homes were rebuilt.

‘She fought insurance companies and the flood-fund people to get the best deal for all of them, and practically forced tradesmen to work in Carnock when they could all be getting better money in the nearby mines.’

‘Wonder Woman, in fact,’ Clancy muttered, and although there was no meanness in the remark, Mac couldn’t let it slide.

‘Not really. Just caring, and giving, and very, very sensible.’ He paused, then had to add, ‘I imagine you’ve got the same sensible gene. Small apartment close to where you work, waiting until you can afford to buy good furniture rather than spending foolishly on rubbish—’

‘I can buy furniture whenever I like,’ Clancy retorted, the flash of fire in the green eyes suggesting she’d been called sensible before and hated it.

‘I’m sure you can,’ he soothed, but he couldn’t resist smiling, and slowly, reluctantly, she smiled back, her whole face lighting up, the radiance doing something to his lungs so his breath lodged in a lump in his trachea.

‘So, Hester the wonder woman left me a dog?’

Had she, too, felt whatever it was that had zapped between them? After a silence that seemed to stretch for ever, she’d thrown him a question to get the conversation back on track.

‘And the house the dog lives in,’ he told her, glad to be back on track himself.

No smile now, just total bewilderment, although she did recover enough to ask, ‘The house with the three flood families living in it?’

‘No, no, they’ve all moved out,’ he assured her. ‘At the moment I’m your only tenant, although I must admit I don’t pay much rent—none, in fact. Hester took me in after the flood as well, but I’ve stayed on. She wasn’t well, you see, and the house is old and needed a lot of maintenance—’

‘Stop right there!’

Clancy actually held up her hand to halt his explanation, and the waitress bringing the coffee stopped obligingly. By the time they’d sorted that out, and had coffee on the table, Mac had forgotten what he’d been saying, mainly because Clancy had smiled again and although it had been at the waitress, not at him, the smile had still caused problems in his chest.

Now Clancy lifted her coffee cup, pursing her lips to sip from it, and Mac felt a judder in his heart. No way. This wasn’t happening. He didn’t do instant attraction. Both his long-term partnerships had been gradual, cautious involvements—and as both of them had failed, how much more disastrous would a relationship based on nothing more than physical attraction be?

Relationship?

Where was his head?

‘Start again with you, McAlister,’ Clancy was saying. ‘At the door you said you were a lawyer, then you show a hospital ID with “Angel Flight” on it, which I know doesn’t make you a doctor because you could just be a pilot with a plane, but none of this explains why were you sponging off this Hester until she died. Were you hoping to get the house and dog yourself?’

‘Heaven forbid!’ he retorted, pleased the woman’s accusation had cleared his head—if not his chest. ‘The place is falling down. I just didn’t want to leave her on her own. Also, it’s a good house, and has historical value, and it deserves to live. But so much needs doing to it. I could only keep things going, getting a tradesperson in when necessary, although I’ve become a dab hand at changing tap washers and cleaning blocked drains.’

‘That’s not making anything clearer,’ Clancy told him as she battled to make sense of the situation. She didn’t know if it was what he was saying or because of her reaction to him as a man, but for whatever reason every time the man spoke she grew more confused. ‘What are you really? A doctor, a lawyer, a carpenter, odd-job man …?’

The man had the hide to laugh and Mike, apparently hearing the sound, came trotting across, grinning his stupid grin, a little bit of bacon dangling from the beard beneath his chin.

The dog nuzzled his head beneath Mac’s hand and as Mac’s long fingers rubbed the dog’s head Clancy had the weirdest sensation that the fingers were touching her—rubbing her head, and ruffling her hair.

‘A doctor first. The lawyer and odd-job man are part-time jobs, like the farming. It probably won’t surprise you to know that although doctors are desperately needed in country areas across Queensland, the only lawyering the locals need is the odd will or a bit of conveyancing when they buy or sell something.’

‘Farming? Did you sneak farming in there as well?’ Clancy asked. ‘Law and medicine are both long degrees, and then there’s articles for a lawyer and internship for a doctor. So that makes you, what—a hundred and ten years old?’

‘I am thirty-six,’ Mac replied, somewhat stiffly, Clancy felt. ‘And for your information I started studying law, then switched to medicine after four years. After I moved to Carnock I finished my law degree as an external student and did the practical legal training course to get my practicing certificate.’

‘Okay, so you’re the town doctor and the town lawyer and you live in my house, which is falling down. Is that it?’

‘More or less.’ The reply this time was grumpy, to say the least. ‘Although it isn’t your house, it’s Mike’s.’

‘Mike’s?’

The word came out as a yelp, which won an answering yelp from the dog himself, who shifted his allegiance from Mac to her.

Clancy stared at the man who had, in less than an hour, turned her neatly ordered life completely upside down.

‘Can a dog inherit a house? Own a house? Are you sure that’s legal?’

She patted Mike’s head to show she had nothing against him personally, and, apparently liking that, he rested his chin on her leg, liberally smearing her clean white cargo shorts with dog slobber.

‘Life tenancy,’ Mac responded, ‘after which it reverts to you, but—’

Up to this point, the man had been looking at her as he explained things—in fact, he’d been looking at her so intently she’d felt uncomfortable, although that could have been the attraction thing. Now, not only had he left an ominous-sounding ‘but’ dangling at the end of his sentence, but McAlister Whoever was gazing over her left shoulder—towards the road behind them, not looking at her at all …

‘But?’

‘Well …’

The man was hedging.

‘Actually,’ he began again, ‘to get the house, you have to take the dog.’

‘Actually,’ Clancy mimicked, ‘having heard about the house, I doubt very much I’d want it, while as for the dog—’

Unfortunately, perhaps understanding he was the dog in question, Mike looked up at her at that moment … and smiled.

No! No way! You do not disrupt your carefully planned life because a dog smiled at you!

‘Couldn’t the dog be mine in name but continue to live in the house with you?’

The man did look at her now, studying her for what seemed an inordinate length of time before answering—only what he said wasn’t an answer at all.

‘I can understand you haven’t much time for your father, but have you no curiosity at all about him, about his family, your forebears? Wouldn’t you at least like to see the town, look at the house?’

The nut roast had looked more like a dinosaur than a turkey, Clancy remembered, an image of the monstrosity flashing through her brain. While as for the wine …

Now here was the perfect excuse not to go to Nimbin for Christmas. The summer break was three months long—she could visit Carnock for a couple of weeks and still have plenty of time to complete her ‘to do’ list.

And though she was reluctant to admit it, the man was right, she did have a good deal of curiosity about her father. She’d just left it packed away in the cellar of her mind since her abortive attempt to find him back when she’d been a child.

‘I don’t have a car. Is there a bus, or a train?’ she asked, and Mac frowned at her.

‘You don’t have a car?’

She frowned right back at him.

‘You make it sound as if it’s a sin against humanity—have you not heard of minimising your personal carbon footprint? And why would I need a car? A pleasant stroll across the pedestrian bridge over the river takes me to work and the city, I have parklands all around me, I have a bicycle if I want to go further afield. So, no, I don’t have a car.’

‘Well, you could fly back out there with me. I’m going this afternoon and I’m almost sure to be coming back down before too long. Otherwise someone in town could give you a lift.’

He paused, again studying her a little too intently.

‘You’ll come?’ he added.

She thought of her eight-year-old self setting out to walk to the place called Carnock, the page she’d torn from the atlas in the school library folded in her pocket, and suddenly the idea of seeing the town she’d been headed for all those years ago filled her with an excitement she hadn’t felt for a long, long time.

‘I’ll come!’ she said, and she scratched Mike’s head, ruffling the rough hair on it.