Nikki And The Lone Wolf / Mardie And The City Surgeon

‘Scout’s honour,’ Raff said.

‘We never made Scouts.’ Raff had been one of the town’s bad boys. Like him.

‘That’s what I mean. You need any help?’

‘No. We found the dog. That’s why I’m ringing.’

‘We found the dog? You and Miss Morrissy?’

‘Nikki,’ he said before he could help himself and he heard the interest sharpen.

‘Curiouser and curiouser. So you and Nikki …’

‘The dog’s here,’ he snapped. ‘Fed and watered and asleep by my fire. I’ll bring him down to Fred when I’ve had a sleep.’

‘You’re having a sleep?’

‘Nikki’s orders,’ he said and suddenly he had an urge to smile. Quickly suppressed. ‘She’s bossy.’

‘Well, well.’

‘And you can just put that right out of your head,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t want a dog, and I don’t want a woman even more. Tell Henrietta the dog’s found and we’ll take him to Fred tonight.’

‘We?’

‘Go find some villains to chase,’ he growled. ‘My head hurts. I’m going to sleep.’

‘On Nikki’s orders?’

He told Raff where to put his interest, and he hung up. Stripped to his boxers again. Climbed into bed. Following orders.

His head really did hurt.

She was going to check on him every two hours. The thought was …

Nope. He didn’t know what the thought was.

He didn’t want her checking him every two hours.

‘I’d prefer you to leave your door open so I can make sure you’re not dead …’

He sighed and opened his door. Glanced across at Nikki, who glanced back. Waved. He glowered and dived under the covers.

He didn’t want a woman in his living room.

Nor did he want a dog.

What was he doing, in bed in the middle of the morning?

He put his head on the pillow and the aching eased. Maybe she had a point. A man had to be sensible.

He fell asleep thinking of the dog.

Trying not to think of Nikki.

It was so domestic it was almost claustrophobic. The fire, the dog, Gabe asleep right through the door.

The work she was doing was tidying up plans she’d already drawn—nothing complex, which was just as well the way she was feeling. Her head was all over the place.

Biggest thought? Gabe.

No. Um, no, it wasn’t. Or it shouldn’t be. Her biggest thought had to be—could she keep a dog?

As a kid she’d thought she might like a dog. That was never going to happen, though. Her parents were high-flyers, both lawyers with an international clientele. They loved her to bits in the time they could spare for her, but that time was limited. She was an only child, taken from country to country, from boarding school to international hotel to luxury resort.

And after childhood? University, followed by a top paying job, a gorgeous apartment. Then Jonathan.

Maybe she could get a small white fluff ball, she’d thought occasionally, when she was missing Jon. When he was supposedly working elsewhere. But where would a dog fit into a lifestyle similar to her parents’?

And now …

Her job still took her away.

Her job didn’t have to take her away. Or not for long. She could glean enough information from a site visit to keep her working for months. Most queries could be sorted online—there was never a lot of use stomping round construction sites.

She quite liked stomping round construction sites. It was the part of her job she enjoyed most.

It was the only part …

Salary? Prestige?

Both were less and less satisfying. Her parents thought her career was wonderful. Jonathan thought it was wonderful. But now …

Now was hardly the time to be thinking of a career change. She was good at what she did. She was paid almost embarrassingly well. She could afford to pay others to do the menial stuff.

So maybe a little white fluff ball?

Or Horse.

Horse was hardly a fluff ball. Ten times as big, and a lot more needy.

Maybe she could share parenting with Gabe, she thought. When she was needed on site, he could stay home from sea.

Shared parenting? Of a dog who looked like a mangy horse, with a grumpy landlord fisherman?

With a body to die for. And with the gentlest of hands. And a voice that said he cared.

She glanced across the passage. The deal was she wouldn’t check on him every two hours as long as he kept his door open.

If he dropped dead, she was on the wrong side of the passage.

There wasn’t a lot she could do if he dropped dead.

At least the dog was breathing. She watched his chest rise and fall, rise and fall. He was flopped as close to the fire as he could be without being burned. Gabe had set the screen so no ember could fly out, but she suspected he wouldn’t wake even if it did.

He looked like a dog used to being hurt.

Maybe he’d be vicious when he recovered.

Maybe her landlord wouldn’t let her keep a dog.

Was she really thinking about keeping him?

It was just …

The last few weeks had been desolate. It was all very well saying she wanted a sea change, but there wasn’t enough work to fill the day and the night, and the nights were long and silent. She’d left Sydney in rage and in grief, and at night it came back to haunt her.

She also found the nights, the country noises … creepy.

‘Because of guys like you howling on beaches,’ she said out loud, and Horse raised his head and looked at her. Then sighed and set his head down again, as if it was too heavy to hold up.

How could someone throw him off a boat?

A great wounded mutt.

Her new best friend?

She glanced across the passage again. Gabe was deeply asleep, his bedding barely covering his hips.

He was wounded too, she thought, and with a flash of insight she thought it wasn’t just the hit over the head with the poker. He was living in a house built for a dozen, a mile out of town, on his own. Not even a dog.

‘He needs a dog, too,’ she told Horse.

Shared parenting was an excellent solution.

‘Yes, but that’s complicated.’ She set down her pen and crossed to Gabe’s bedroom door to make sure his chest was rising and falling. It was, but the sight of his chest did things to her own chest …

There went those hormones again. She had to figure a way of reining them in.

Return to dog. Immediately.

She knelt and fondled the big dog’s ears. He stirred and moaned, a long, low doggy moan containing all the pathos in the world.

She put her head down close to his. Almost nose to nose. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve given up on White and Fluffy. And I think I do like dogs. You’re not going to the vet.’

A great shaggy paw came up and touched her shoulder.

Absurdly moved, she found herself hugging him. Her arms were full of dog. His great brown eyes were enormous.

Could she keep him?

‘My parents would have kittens,’ she told him.

Her mother was in Helsinki doing something important.

Her father was in New York.

‘Yes, and I’m here,’ she told Horse, giving in to the weirdly comforting sensation of holding a dog close, feeling the warmth of him. ‘I’m here by the fire with you, and our landlord’s just over the passage. He’s grumpy, but underneath I reckon he’s a pussycat. I reckon he might let you stay.’

The fire was magnificently warm. She hadn’t had enough sleep last night.

She hesitated and then hauled some cushions down from the settee. She settled beside Horse. He sighed, but it was a different sigh. As if things might be looking up.

‘Perfect,’ said Nikkita Morrissy, specialist air conditioning engineer, sea-changer, tenant. She snuggled on the cushions and Horse stirred a bit and heaved himself a couple of inches so she was closer. ‘Let’s settle in for the long haul. You and me—and Gabe if he wants to join us. If my hit on the head hasn’t killed him. Welcome to our new life.’

CHAPTER FOUR

GABE woke and it was still daylight. It took time to figure exactly why he was in bed, why the clock was telling him it was two in the afternoon, and why a woman and a dog were curled up on cushions on his living room floor.

Horse.

Nikki.

Nikki was asleep beside Horse?

The dog didn’t fit with the image of the woman. Actually, nothing fitted. He was having trouble getting his thoughts in order.

He should be a hundred miles offshore. Every day the boat was in harbour cost money.

Um … he had enough money. He needed to forget fishing, at least for a day.

He was incredibly, lazily comfortable. How long since he’d lain in bed and just … lain? Not slept, just stared at the ceiling, thought how great the sheets felt on his naked skin, how great it was that the warm sea breeze wafted straight in through his bedroom window and made him feel that the sea was right here.

Lots of fishermen—lots of his crew—took themselves as far from the sea as possible when they weren’t working. Not Gabe. The sea was a part of him.

He’d always been a loner. As a kid, the beach was an escape from the unhappiness in the house. His parents’ marriage was bitter and often violent. His father was passionately possessive of his much younger wife, sharing her with no one. If Gabe spent time with his mother, his father reacted with a resentment that Gabe soon learned to fear. His survival technique was loneliness.

As he got older, the boat became his escape as well.

And then there was his brief marriage. Yeah, well, that had taught him the sea was his only real constant. People hurt. Solitude was the only way to go.

Even dogs broke your heart.

Sixteen years …

‘Get another one fast.’ Fred, the Banksia Bay vet, had been brusque. ‘The measure of a life well lived is how many good dogs you can fit into it. I’m seventy years old and I’m up to sixteen and counting. It’s torn a hole in my gut every time I’ve lost one, and the only way I can fill it is finding another. And you know what? Every single one of them stays with me. They’re all part of who I am. The gut gets bigger.’ He’d patted his ample stomach. ‘Get another.’

Or not. Did Fred know just how big a hole Jem had left?

Don’t think about it.

Watch Nikki instead.

He lay and watched woman and dog sleeping, just across the passage. Strangers seldom entered his house. Not even friends. And no one slept by his fire but him.

Until now.

She looked … okay.

She’d wake soon, and she’d be gone. This moment would be past, but for now … For now it felt strangely okay that she was here. For now he let the comfort of her presence slide into his bones, easing parts of him he didn’t know were hurting. A dog and a woman asleep before his fire …

He closed his eyes and sleep reclaimed him.

* * *

She woke and it was three o’clock and Horse was squatting on his haunches rather than sprawled on his side. His head was cocked to one side, as if he was trying to figure her out. Sitting up! That had to be good.

She hugged him. She fed him. He ate a little, drank a little. She opened the French windows and asked him if he needed to go outside but he politely declined, by putting his head back on his paws and dozing again.

She thought about going back to work.

The plans on the table were supremely uninteresting. Engineering had sounded cool when she enrolled at university. Doing stuff.

Not sitting drawing endless plans of endless air conditioning systems, no matter how complex.

Gabe’s living room, however, was lined with bookshelves, and the bookshelves were crammed with books.

And photograph albums. Her secret vice.

Other people’s families.

Nikki had been sent to boarding school at seven. If friends invited her home for the holidays her parents were relieved, so she’d spent much of her childhood looking at families from the outside in.

Brothers, sisters, grandmas, uncles and aunts. You didn’t get a lot of those the way she was raised.

Her friends could never understand her love of photograph albums, but she hadn’t grown out of it, and here were half a dozen, right within reach.

A girl had to read something. Or draw plans.

No choice.

The first four albums were those of a child, an adolescent, a young woman. School friends, beach, hiking, normal stuff. Nikki had albums like this herself, photographs taken with her first camera.

The albums must belong to Gabe’s mother, she decided. The girl and then the woman looked a bit like Gabe. She was much smaller, compact, neat. But she looked nice. She had the same dark hair as Gabe, the same thoughtful eyes. She saw freckles and a shy smile in the girl, and then the woman.

After school, her albums differed markedly from Nikki’s. This woman hadn’t spent her adolescence at university. The first post-school pictures were of her beside stone walls, wearing dungarees, heavy boots, thick gloves. The smile became cheeky, a woman gaining confidence.

There were photos of stone walls.

Lots of stone walls.

Nikki glanced outside to the property boundary, where a stone wall ran along the road, partly built, as if it had stopped mid-construction. Wires ran along the unfinished part to make it a serviceable fence.

She turned back to the next album. Saw the beginnings of romance. A man, considerably older than the girl, thickset, a bit like Gabe as well, looking as if he was struggling to find a smile for the camera. Holding the girl possessively.

An album of a wedding. Then a baby.

Gabe.

Really cute, she thought, and glanced across the passage and thought … you really could see the man in the baby.

Gabe before life had weathered him.

The photos were all of Gabe now—Gabe until he was about seven, sturdy, cheeky, laughing.

Then nothing. The final album had five pages of pictures and the rest lay empty.

What had happened? Divorce? Surely a young mum would keep on taking pictures. Surely she’d take these albums with her.

She set the albums back in place, and her attention was caught by a set of books just above. The Art of Stone Walling. The Stone Walls of Yorkshire. More.

She flicked through, fascinated, caught in intricacies of stone walling.

Gabe slept on.

She was learning how to build stone walls. In theory.

She’d kind of like to try.

She reached the end of the first book as Horse struggled to his feet and crossed to the French windows. Pawed.

Bathroom.

But … Escape?

Visions of Horse standing up to his haunches in the shallows sprang to mind. She daren’t risk letting him go. The faded curtains were looped back with tasseled cords, perfect for fashioning a lead.

‘Okay, let’s go but don’t pull,’ she told him. At full strength this dog could tow two of her, but he was wobbly.

She cast a backward glance at Gabe. Still sleeping. Quick check. Chest rising and falling.

She and Horse were free to do as they pleased.

When Gabe woke again the sun was sinking low behind Black Mountain. He’d slept the whole day?

His head felt great. He felt great all over. He was relaxed and warm and filled with a sense of well-being he hadn’t felt since … who knew?

He rolled lazily onto his side and gazed out of the window.

And froze.

For a moment he thought he was dreaming. There was a woman in the garden, her back to him, crouched over a pile of stones. Sorting.

A dog lay by her side, big and shaggy.

Nikki and Horse.

Nikki held up a stone, inspected it, said something to Horse, then shifted so she could place it into the unfinished stretch of stone wall.

He felt as if the oxygen was being sucked from the room.

A memory blasting back …

His mother, crouched over the stones, the wall so close to finished. Thin, drawn, exhausted. Setting down her last stone. Weeping. Hugging him.

‘I can’t …’

‘Mum, what’s wrong?’

‘I’m so tired. Gabe, very soon I’ll need to go to sleep.’ But using a voice that said this wasn’t a normal sleep she was talking about.

Then … desolation.

His father afterwards, kicking stones, kicking everything. His mother’s old dog, yelping, running for the cover Gabe could never find.

‘Dad, could we finish the wall?’ It had taken a month to find the courage to ask.

‘It’s finished.’ A sharp blow across his head. ‘Don’t you understand, boy, it’s finished.’

He understood it now. Nikki had to understand it, too.

People hurt. You didn’t try and interfere. Unless there was trouble you let people be and they let you be. You didn’t try and change things.

He should have put it in the tenancy agreement.

Stone wall building was weirdly satisfying on all sorts of levels.

She’d always loved puzzles, as she’d loved building things. To transform a pile of stones into a wall as magnificent as this …

Wide stones had been set into the earth to form the base, then irregular stones piled higher and higher, two outer levels with small stones between. Wider stones were layed crosswise over both sides every foot or so, binding both sides together. No stone was the same. Each position was carefully assessed, each stone considered from all angles. Tried. Tried again. As she was doing now.

She’d set eight stones in an hour and was feeling as if she’d achieved something amazing.

This could be a whole new hobby, she thought. She could finish the wall.

Horse lay by her side, dozy but watchful, warm in the afternoon sunshine. Every now and then he cast a doubtful glance towards the beach but she’d fashioned a tie from the curtain cords, she had him tethered and she talked to him as she worked.

‘I know. You loved him but he rejected you. You and me both. Jonathan and your scum-bag owner. Broken hearts club, that’s us. We need a plan to get over it. I’m not sure what our plan should be, but while we’re waiting for something to occur this isn’t bad.’ She held up a stone. ‘You think this’ll fit?’

The dog cocked his head; seemed to consider.

The pain that had clenched in her chest for months eased a little. Unknotted in the sharing, and in the work.

She would have liked to be a builder.

She thought suddenly of a long ago careers exhibition. At sixteen she’d been unsure of what she wanted to do. She’d gone to the career exhibition with school and almost the first display was a carpenter, working on a delicate coffee table. While other students moved from one display to the next, she stopped, entranced.

After half an hour he’d invited her to help, and she’d stayed with him until her teachers came to find her.

‘I’ll need to get an apprenticeship to be a carpenter,’ she’d told her father the next time she’d seen him, breathless with certainty that she’d found her calling.

But her father was due to catch the dawn flight to New York. He’d scheduled two hours’ quality time with his daughter and he didn’t intend wasting it on nonsense.

‘Of course society needs builders, but for you, my girl, with your brains, the sky’s the limit. We’ll get you into Law—Oxford? Cambridge?’

Even her chosen engineering degree had met with combined parental disapproval, even though it was specialist engineering leading to a massive salary. But here, now … She remembered that long ago urge to build things, to create.

Air conditioning systems didn’t compare. Endless plans.

Another stone … This was so difficult. It had to be perfect.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

She managed to suppress a yelp, but only just. Gabe was dressed again, in jeans and T-shirt. He’d come up behind her. His face was like thunder, his voice was dripping ice.

He was blocking her sun. Even Horse backed and whimpered.

The sheer power of the man … the anger …

It was as much as she could do not to back and run.

Not her style, she thought grimly. This man had her totally disconcerted but whimpering was never an option. ‘I thought I’d try and do some …’ she faltered.

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t you want it finished? I thought … I’ve been reading the books from your living room.’

‘You’ve been reading my mother’s books?’

Uh-oh. She’d desecrated a shrine?

‘I’m sorry. I …’

‘You had no right.’

‘No.’ She lifted the book she’d been referring to. Caught her breath. Decided she’d hardly committed murder. ‘I’ll put this back,’ she said placatingly. ‘No damage done. I don’t think I’ve done anything appalling.’

But then … he’d scared her. Again.

Shock was turning to indignation.

He was angry?

She met his gaze full on. Tilted her chin.

Horse nosed her ankle. She let her hand drop to his rough coat and the feel of him was absurdly comforting.

What was with this guy? Why did he make her feel—how he made her feel? She couldn’t describe it. She only knew that she was totally confused.

‘I’ve only fitted eight stones,’ she said, forcing her tone down a notch. Even attempting a smile. ‘You want me to take them out again?’

‘Leave it.’ His voice was still rough, but the edges of anger were blunted. He took the book from her. Glanced at it. Glanced away. ‘How’s the dog?’

‘He’s fine.’ She was still indignant. He sounded … cold.

The normal Gabe?

A man she should back away from.

‘We need to make a decision,’ he said.

‘I have,’ she said and tilted her chin still further.

‘Hi!’

The new voice made them both swivel. A woman was at the gate. She was middle-aged and sensibly dressed, in moleskin trousers and a battered fleecy jacket. She swung the gate open and Horse whined and backed away.

Even from twenty yards away Nikki saw the woman flinch.

‘It’s okay,’ the woman said, gentling her voice as she approached. ‘I hate it that I lock these guys up and they react accordingly. I can’t help that I’m associated with their life’s low point.’

Horse whined again. Nikki felt him tug against the cord. She wasn’t all that sure of it holding.

Gabe was suddenly helping. His hand was on the big dog’s neck, helping her hold on to her curtain-fashioned collar. Touching hers. His hand was large and firm—and once more caring?

Where had that thought come from? But she felt Horse relax and she knew the dog felt the same. Even if this guy did get inexplicably angry, there was something at his core …

‘Raff told me you’d found him,’ the woman was saying. ‘Hi, Gabe.’ She came forward, her hand extended to Nikki, a blunt gesture of greeting. ‘We haven’t met. I’m Henrietta. I run the local dog shelter. This guy’s one of mine.’

Horse whimpered and tried to go behind Nikki’s legs. Nikki’s hand tightened on his collar—and so did Gabe’s.

Hands touching. Warmth. Strength. Nikki didn’t pull away, even though Henrietta’s hand was still extended, even though she knew Gabe could hold him.

‘You want me to take him?’ Henrietta asked.

No.

Her decision had already been made but she needed Gabe’s consent. He was, after all, her landlord.

‘I’d like to keep him,’ she said, more loudly than she intended, and there was a moment’s silence.

Henrietta’s grim expression relaxed, then did more than relax. It curved into a wide grin that practically spilt her face. But then she caught herself, her smile was firmly repressed and her expression became businesslike.

‘Are you in a position to offer him a good home?’

‘Am I?’ she asked Gabe. ‘I think I am,’ she said diffidently. ‘But Gabe’s my landlord. I’ll need his permission.’

‘You’re asking me to keep him?’ Gabe’s demand was incredulous.

‘No,’ she said flatly. Some time during this afternoon her world had shifted. She wasn’t exactly sure where it had shifted; she only knew that things were changing and Horse was an important part of that change. ‘I want to keep him myself. Just me.’ Her life was her own, she thought, suddenly resolute. No men need apply.