English Lord On Her Doorstep

‘It could be shock,’ the girl said. ‘And hunger. She’s been missing for three weeks.’

‘Three weeks!’

‘I know.’ She shook her head. Her fingers were running lightly over the dog’s sides, watching for reaction. ‘She’s a stray, dumped here a couple of months back. People do that—toe-rags. They don’t want an animal so they think, I know, we’ll dump it outside a farm. And of course everyone knows Grandma takes strays in. So Flossie was dumped but she must still remember being thrown from the car. So off she went and I’ve looked so hard...’

The emotion he heard in her voice was for a stray dog she’d only known for weeks?

‘That’s your jacket underneath her,’ she said, seeming to notice the soft leather for the first time. ‘Oh, heavens, it’ll be ruined. I’ll get it out for you... I don’t know... Can I give you something towards cleaning?’ She paused and seemed to regroup. ‘Sorry. I’m not thinking clearly.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m Charlie Foster, by the way. Charlotte. You’re... Bryn Morgan, did you say? I’m very pleased to meet you and I’m deeply thankful for your help, but I can manage now. I’ll ring the vet as soon as she’s available. Once Flossie’s cleaned and fed, though, I’m hoping I might not need her. You’ve done...great. Thank you so much.’

She moved to edge the jacket out but he stopped her. ‘Leave it.’

‘You don’t want your jacket?’

Um...not. Carrying a blood-soaked jacket back to the UK...it was a good one but not that good. ‘It’s fine,’ he told her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right here? Your grandmother...’

‘I’m fine.’ She straightened and reached out and took his hand, shaking it with a firmness that told him this was a woman of decision. ‘You’ve been fabulous, Mr Morgan, but there’s nothing more you can do. I won’t keep you any more.’

Great. He could step away, head back to the car. He could even make it to the airport in time.

‘You’re sure you’ll be okay?’

‘I don’t think there’s anything more you can do.’ Which wasn’t quite answering the question, but he agreed with her. The dog’s tail was wagging, feebly but with every indication that warmth and food and medical care to her leg would see her recover. There was nothing more he could do, and he had a plane to catch.

‘I’ll see myself out, then.’

‘Thank you so much.’

The hand clasping his... It was a clasp of friendship and gratitude and it made him feel...

Like he hadn’t felt for a very long time. Not since he’d left home.

Maybe not even then.

He looked down at her, at her tumbled curls, at her face, devoid of make-up, flushed now with the warmth of the fire, her brown eyes direct and clear. She was smiling at him. She was half a head shorter than he was.

She made him feel...

He didn’t have time to feel. He had a plane to catch.

‘Good luck,’ he told her, and on impulse he grabbed a pen lying on the table and wrote his name and email address on a pad that was clearly used for shopping lists. ‘Will you let me know how things go? And if there are any veterinarian bills... I hit her. I’m more than happy to cover them.’

Something flashed over her face that might have been relief but was quickly squashed. ‘It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘But you will let me know.’ He took her hand again. It seemed strangely imperative that he didn’t release it until he had her agreement. To head off and not hear anything seemed the pits.

‘I will let you know,’ she said and tugged her hand away and that was that.

He turned and headed back out into the night.

* * *

Why had it been so hard to tug her hand back?

It was the dark, she told herself. Plus the storm. Plus the fact that she had an injured dog on her hands and she wasn’t as sure of treating her as she’d told the guy... Bryn.

Anyone would want company on such a night, she told herself, but there was a blatant, very female part of her that told her that what she was feeling was more than that.

The guy was gorgeous. More than gorgeous. He was tall, clean-shaven, dark hair, a ripped and tanned body, wearing good chinos and a quality shirt open at the throat. His voice had been lovely, deep, gravelly, English, with just a hint of an accent that might have been...something? Welsh, maybe. That’d fit with his name. Bryn. Nice name.

He’d been carrying her beloved Flossie with tenderness. There was enough in all those things to make her think...hormonal stuff, and he’d looked at her with such concern... He’d smiled, a lopsided smile that said it was sensible to leave but he didn’t like leaving her alone.

The smile behind those dark, deep-set eyes was enough to make a girl’s toes curl.

But men who made Charlie’s toes curl had no place in her life. She’d been down that road, and never again. Besides, a woman had other things to do than stand here and feel her toes curl. Bryn was heading out of her life, and she had an injured dog to attend to.

But life had other plans.

She turned back and stooped over Flossie just as a vast sheet of lightning made the windows flash with almost supernatural light. There was a fearful crash, thunder and lightning hitting almost simultaneously. And then...extending into the night...something more. A splintering crash of timber.

There was a moment’s pause, and then something crashed down, so hard the house shook, and her feet trembled under her. Every light went out. The dogs came flying from wherever they’d been and huddled in a terrified mass around her legs. She knelt and gathered as many of them into her arms as she could.

It must be a tree, she told herself. One of the giant red gums in the driveway must have come down. And then she thought... Bryn. Dear God, Bryn... He was out in that. Almost before the thought hit, she was on her feet, shoving the dogs aside, heading through the darkness to the outside door...

And just as she reached it, it swung open.

‘Charlie?’

Light was flickering through the doorway, lighting his silhouette. A tree on fire? She couldn’t see enough to make out his features, but she could see his form and she could hear.

‘Bryn...’ She backed away, almost in fright, and the dogs gathered again around her legs. She stooped to hug them again, more to give herself time to recover than to comfort them. For what she really wanted was to hug the man in the doorway. For an awful moment she’d had visions of him...

Don’t go there. The vision had been so appalling it still had her shaking.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said and he sounded it. ‘But there’s now a tree across the driveway.’

‘Are you okay?’ Her voice wasn’t working right. ‘You’re not hurt?’

‘Not a scratch.’ He said it surely, strongly, as if he realised how scared she must have been. ‘But I appear to be stuck. Unless there’s another road out? I’m so sorry.’

For heaven’s sake... He’d brought her dog home. He’d almost been killed by one of the trees she’d told her grandmother over and over were too close to the house. And he was apologising?

‘There’s no way out while it’s pouring,’ she told him. ‘I...the paddocks will be flooding. And those trees...red gums...they’re sometimes called widow makers.’

She caught a decent sight of him as the next flash of lightning lit the sky. He was wet, she noticed. He must have been wet before this. She’d been too caught up with Flossie to notice anything except how...

Um...she wasn’t going there.

In fact she was having trouble going anywhere. She was having trouble getting her thoughts to line up in any sort of order.

‘Widow makers?’ he queried, helpfully, and she struggled to pull herself together. She rose and faced him, or she faced the shadow of him. Every light was gone but the lightning was so continuous she could make him out.

‘That’s what they’re called. The trees. River red gums. They’re notorious. They drop branches, often on hot, windless days, when it’s least expected. They look beautiful and shady and people camp under them.’

‘Or park under them?’

‘Yeah, and bang...’

‘It’s not exactly a hot, windless day.’

‘No, but they’re so tall they’re the first thing that lightning strikes and Grandma won’t...wouldn’t...clear the ones near the house. Even the dead ones. She says they made nesting sites for parrots and possums. She says... She said...’

And then she stopped.

‘Said,’ Bryn said at last, very gently, and she flinched.

‘I...yes. A heart attack, three weeks ago. That’s why...that’s why I’m here. These are Grandma’s dogs.’

‘So you are here alone.’

She shouldn’t say it. It was really dark. He was nothing but a shadow in the doorway.

She should tell him she had a bevy of brawny men sleeping off a night at the pub upstairs.

She didn’t.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And I’m not very good with storms.’

‘Neither am I,’ he told her. ‘Do you have a lamp? Torches?’

‘I...yes.’ Of course she did. Or Grandma did. This was a solitary country house, with trees all around. Power outages were common, happening often when Charlie was visiting.

Not as scary as this one though.

She fumbled her way back into the kitchen, to the sideboard, and produced a kerosene lamp. It was older even than Grandma, she thought. Lit, though, it produced a satisfactory light.

Bryn hadn’t followed her into the kitchen. He’d stopped at the door, a darkened, watchful shadow.

Her fingers trembled as she lit the wick and re-laced the glass, and he saw.

‘Charlie, I’m safe as houses,’ he said gently. He thought about that for a moment and then he smiled, finally coming further into the room to inspect her handiwork. His voice gentled still further. ‘I am safe,’ he repeated. ‘In fact, I’m even safer than houses that have red gums all around them. You think anything’s likely to crash down on our heads? You think we should evacuate?’

She adjusted the wick until it stopped smoking, then turned back to the sideboard to find more. Grandma had half a dozen of these beauties, filled and ready to go.

The good thing about that was that she didn’t have to look up. She could play with the lamps on the sideboard. She could speak without looking at him, which seemed...important. ‘It seems...more dangerous to leave,’ she managed. ‘Even if there was a way out. And they say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.’

‘There seem to be a lot of trees,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Do you think same place includes every tree less than twenty feet from the house?’

Oh, for heaven’s sake... She swung around and glared. ‘Mr Morgan, it seems...it seems you’re stuck here for the night. I’m very grateful, and I’m not scared of you. But I am scared of storms. So while I’m happy to give you a bed for the night, supper, a place by the fire, it’s predicated on you manning up and saying things like, “She’ll be right,” and, “What’s a little lightning?” and, I don’t know, “Singing in the rain” kind of stuff. So if you dare tell me there’s a snowball’s chance in a bushfire that another tree will come down and squash me, then you can step right out in the rain and take your chances. So what’s it to be?’ And she put her hands on her hips, jutted her chin and fixed him with such a look...

It was a look that even made him chuckle.

And imperceptibly his mood lightened. His night was messed up. More than his night. All he wanted was to be back at Ballystone, home with his dogs and his cattle, with this disaster behind him. He should be glowering himself.

Instead he found himself grinning at the red-headed firebrand in front of him, and searching for words to make him...what had she demanded? Man up?

‘Don’t take no notice of me, ma’am,’ he drawled, still grinning, searching for a voice that might match the description. ‘Yep, one of those tiddly little trees might fall but if it do, I’ll be out there catching it with one hand and using it as kindling for your stove. You need more kindling? Maybe I could go out and haul in that tiddler that just fell.’

Their eyes locked. Her defiance gave way. A dimple appeared, right by the corner of her mouth, and the laughter he’d tried for was reflected in her eyes.

‘What if I say yes?’ she ventured, a tiny chuckle preceding her words.

‘Your wish is my command,’ he said nobly and then looked out to where he could see the ruins of the vast tree smouldering and sparking across the driveway. ‘I might need a pair of heatproof gloves, though. That tree looks hot.’

And gloriously, she gave a full-on chuckle. It was a good laugh, an excellent laugh, and it produced a flash of insight. Looking at her, at the signs of strain around her eyes, at her pale face, he thought it’d been a while since this woman laughed.

It felt good...no, it felt excellent that he’d been able to make it happen.

‘You want help with Flossie?’ he asked, bringing reality back into the room, but the smile stayed behind her eyes as she answered.

‘Yes, please. I would. Do you know much about dogs?’

‘I’ve had dogs all my life.’ He hesitated, still trying to keep that smile on her face. ‘But is it manly to confess I faint at the sight of blood?’

‘You carried her in. There’s blood on your shirt.’ It was an accusation.

‘So I did,’ he said, sounding astounded. ‘And so there is, and I haven’t fainted at all. Let’s try this new world order out, then, shall we? Let’s get your Flossie bandaged before my manliness fades before my very eyes. Okay, Nurse, I require more light, hot water, soap, um...’

‘Bandages?’

‘Of course, bandages,’ he said and grinned and then looked down at Flossie, waiting patiently before the stove. ‘And do you have a little dog food? A water bowl? I don’t know how long it is since she’s eaten but I’m guessing that may be the first priority.’

It was the first priority. She headed for the fridge to find some meat but her head wasn’t entirely focussed on the first priority.

This man behind her was...beautiful.

CHAPTER TWO

ON CLOSE EXAMINATION Bryn decided Flossie’s leg was probably not broken. She’d lost a lot of fur. An abrasion ran the full length from hip to paw but she was passive as Bryn cleaned, and when he tentatively tested the joint she barely whimpered.

She did, though, react with extraordinary speed when Charlie produced a little chopped chicken. And then a little more. She wolfed it down and lay back, limp again, but with her eyes fixed adoringly on Charlie. Her one true love.

‘That’s hardly fair,’ Bryn objected. ‘I get the messy part and you get the kudos.’ He snipped off the bandage he’d been winding and looked at dog and girl. Charlie’s nose was almost touching Flossie’s. Her curls were tumbling over the dog’s head. Flossie looked as if she hadn’t seen a bath for months but Charlie seemed oblivious. Germs obviously weren’t worthy of a mention.

‘She could do with a wash,’ he said and Charlie looked at him with the scorn he obviously deserved.

‘You’re suggesting we undo that nice white bandage, take her away from the fire and dump her in a tub.’

Flossie was looking at him, too, and the reproach in both their eyes...

Once again he had that urge to chuckle. Which felt good. Bryn Morgan hadn’t chuckled in a long time.

He rubbed Flossie behind the ears. With the thunderstorm receding to a distant rumble, the complete doggy tribe was in the kitchen, nosing around with interest. A couple edged in for an ear-rub as well and suddenly he had a line-up.

‘You can’t pat one without patting all of them,’ Charlie said serenely and once again he heard that chuckle.

It was a gorgeous chuckle. It made him...

Um, not. He had enough complications on his plate without going there. What was in front of him now?

He was sitting on faded kitchen linoleum before an ancient range, vintage kerosene lamps throwing out inefficient light but enough to show the raggle-taggle line-up of misbegotten mutts waiting to have their ears rubbed. While a woman watched on and smiled. While outside...

Um...outside. You could buy a house for the price of the car he’d been driving. How was he going to explain that one?

‘I have a good, thick soup on the stove,’ Charlie said, interrupting thoughts of irate bankruptcy trustees and debt collectors and car salesmen who still hardly believed in his innocence.

He focussed on the dogs instead. Would there be jealousy if he spent say one and a half minutes on Dog One and then two on Dog Two? He decided not to risk it and checked his watch. Charlie noticed and smiled.

‘Do you have overnight gear in the car?’ she asked. ‘I could lend you an umbrella.’

That hauled him back to the practical. Overnight. Of course. He was genuinely stuck here. There were all sorts of problems he should be facing rather than how many seconds he’d been rubbing Dog One.

One of those was where his overnight gear was right now.

‘You have a spare bed?’ he asked, cautiously.

‘I do. I’ll put you at the back of the house to give you a little peace because the dogs sleep with me. Except Possum. She usually sleeps by the back door. She’s my guard dog but if there’s any more lightning she’ll be in with me. And Flossie will definitely be with me.’

‘You’ll sleep with Flossie?’ She really was filthy.

‘I’m sure it’s good, clean dirt,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And I can’t tell you how much I’ve worried about her. If I had half a kingdom I’d hand it to you right now.’

‘Do you have a spare toothbrush instead?’

She blinked. ‘Pardon?’

‘I’m a bit averse to lightning,’ he confessed. ‘I’m happy for my overnight gear to stay where it is.’ Wherever that was. Under one enormous tree.

He should tell her, he thought, but she was pale enough already and the knowledge that he’d been two seconds from climbing into the car and being pancaked was something she didn’t need to hear about tonight.

He didn’t want to think about it tonight.

‘I do have a spare toothbrush,’ she told him. ‘I was at a conference in a gorgeous hotel...some time ago...’ In another life. Moving on... ‘The free toothbrush was so beautifully packaged I stuck it in my toilet bag. If you don’t mind pink sparkle, it’s yours.

‘You’d give up pink sparkle for me?’

‘I said you deserve half my kingdom,’ she said and she was suddenly solemn. ‘I mean it.’

‘Then let’s go with one toothbrush, one bowl of soup and a bed for the night,’ he told her. ‘I’ll ask for nothing more.’

‘Excellent,’ she said and shifted across to help with the ear scratching. ‘Soup and toothbrush and I don’t know about you but I’m thinking bed’s next on the agenda.’

Her arm brushed his and with the touch... Things changed.

The tension was suddenly almost palpable. Were both of them thinking the same?

‘In your dreams,’ she said, sounding breathless.

Of all the stupid... Were the tensions between them so obvious? And she caught it. ‘I didn’t mean...you know I didn’t mean...’ she stammered.

‘I wasn’t thinking,’ he said, blankly, but he was lying.

‘Yes, you were.’

‘If I was, I shouldn’t have.’

‘I know nothing about you,’ she said and then caught herself. ‘But even if I did...’

‘I’m a farmer from the UK,’ he told her, feeling a sudden urge to explain himself. Get things on a solid basis. ‘Thirty-five years old, here on family business. I’m heading back to London tomorrow.’

‘It still doesn’t mean I’m going to bed with you.’

‘Of course it doesn’t.’ He managed a lopsided smile. What was it about the night that was making things so off kilter? ‘Maybe electrical storms act like oysters,’ he tried. ‘But we’re grown-ups now. We can handle it.’

‘Yeah,’ she said but sounded doubtful.

‘So let’s do introductions only,’ he said, trying to sound firm. ‘We’ll get this on a solid basis. Not as a preamble to anything else. Just to clear the air.’ More, he didn’t want to make it complicated. Keep it simple, he told himself, and did. ‘I’ve said I’m a farmer. I live a couple of miles from the Welsh border and I’ve been out here because my uncle’s...’

That brought him up. How to explain Thomas? He couldn’t. Not tonight. Hopefully not ever. He didn’t even want to think of Thomas. ‘My uncle’s been living locally for a while,’ he said at last. ‘He’s moved on, but I needed to deal with things he left behind. But it’s done now. What about you?’

She looked at him doubtfully, as if she wasn’t sure who he was and what on earth was happening. Which was pretty much how he was feeling. Tensions were zinging back and forth that had nothing to do with the lightning outside. Or maybe they did. Electricity did all sorts of weird things.

Like make him want...

Or not.

‘I’m an interior designer,’ she said at last. ‘I had... I have my own business in Melbourne. But right now I’m babysitting seven dogs, two cows and fifteen chooks, trying to find them homes. Waiting for a miracle, which is not going to happen. Meanwhile, Mr Morgan, I have things to do, and not a single one of them involves thinking inappropriate thoughts about anyone, much less you. So you get these ears scratched and I’ll get the soup on and we’ll go from there.’

‘And I’ll be gone in the morning.’

‘Of course you will,’ she said briskly. ‘Just as soon as I...’ And then she faltered. ‘I’m sorry. The tree...it’ll take money to get that cleared.’ But then her face cleared. ‘It’s okay though. As long as your car has decent clearance and the paddocks don’t flood too badly, we can cut through a few strands of fencing and get you out across the paddocks.’

Decent clearance...right.

‘We’ll worry about it in the morning,’ he said and she sighed.

‘That’s my mantra.’ She rose stiffly to her feet and looked down at him in the dim light. ‘That’s what I tell myself every night...worry about it in the morning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I didn’t have to?’

* * *

The first storm front passed. The wind and thunder and lightning eased. Bryn slept solidly, in a decent bed, a hundred times better than the hard-as-nails motel bed he’d stayed in for the last few days. Carlsbrook was a one-pub, one-general-store town and why his uncle had set up base there...

But he knew why. Carlsbrook was a far cry from the resort-style lifestyle his uncle favoured but it was a district of smallholdings, of farmers proud of their cattle. It also had an aging population and sparse and difficult Internet connection, a district often cut off from the outside world.

It was a population ripe for his uncle’s scumbag activities.

But tonight he hardly thought about his uncle. He slept deeply, in an ancient four-poster bed on the second floor, while the wind whirled around the ancient weatherboards and trees creaked and groaned. There was something about this house, this home... The dogs.

This woman...

It felt like home. It was a strange sensation. Home was a long way away, Ballystone Hall, hard on the Welsh border. It was a magnificent place to live, but he never slept well there. But here, in this bed with its tatty furnishings, he fell into a sleep that was almost dreamless.

He woke as the second storm front hit.

It hit with such force he felt the whole house shudder. The thunderclap was so loud, so long, that the shuddering was more than momentary, and the lightning that flashed across the sky made a mockery of the window drapes. It lit the whole house with an eerie light.

The second clap of thunder followed the first, even louder, even stronger.

And two seconds later a dog landed on his bed.

A second after that, five dogs followed.

He’d assumed they were sleeping with Charlie. They’d definitely abandoned ship though, or abandoned their mistress. The first one in, Stretch, was a sort of dachshund with a whiskery beard that said something had happened to impede an ancient pedigree lineage. He launched himself up onto the bed, and before Bryn could stop him he had his nose under the sheets, wriggling under the covers and heading down to Bryn’s toes.