One Intimate Night

‘I don’t know who was responsible for foisting this delinquent hound on my godmother,’ Piers was saying through gritted teeth, ‘but if I ever find out…’

So he was Mrs Latham’s godson. Sternly reminding herself that she was a trained professional, and that right now her attention ought to be focused on her canine pupils and not on the six-foot hunk of hormone-level-raising male gorgeousness standing in front of her, Georgia dipped her hand into the box of rewards she had put down at her feet, proffering one to Ben.

‘Good boy, Ben. Sit…’ she cajoled him.

‘Don’t—’ Piers began sharply, and then stopped as Ben suddenly turned into the most demure dog imaginable, giving Georgia a liquid-eyed look of love before taking the titbit she was offering him.

‘Come on, everyone,’ Georgia instructed her small group. ‘Let’s go inside and get started.’

Once inside the large, empty room it quickly became obvious to Piers that, whilst the majority of the other dogs there were responding to Georgia’s careful instructions to their owners, when it came to doggy obedience Ben was in a class of his own.

When he had disrupted the class for the fifth time, by grinning wickedly at the slightly nervous collie bitch to one side of him and standing, Piers was quite sure deliberately, on the tail of the dog on the other side, Piers decided he had had enough.

There was no doubt about it: Ben was a master manipulator and most definitely not the dog for a woman as hopelessly incapable of disciplining him as his godmother.

Several yards away Georgia tried to keep her mind on what she was doing. Ben’s waywardness was communicating itself to the rest of the class, and Georgia could see the sardonic look in Piers’s eyes as the dogs grew restless, their concentration broken by Ben’s sabotage.

Ben’s trouble wasn’t that he wasn’t intelligent enough, Georgia reflected; it was more that he was too intelligent. Too intelligent and far too energetic for his current sedate lifestyle. Setters were gun dogs; they needed exercise and lots of it, and equally large amounts of firm handling.

The class came to an end and, as was her custom, Georgia made a point of going up to each dog to pet it before it and its owner left.

Ben she left till the last. Not, she assured herself, for any reason other than that she was curious to know why Mrs Latham had not brought him to the class.

‘My godmother has hurt her ankle,’ Piers informed Georgia curtly after she had introduced herself and asked him where Mrs Latham was.

Close up, Piers was even more excitingly masculine than she had imagined. Stern, cold-eyed men were not normally her style, Georgia admitted; she preferred good humour to good looks any day of the week. But something was quite definitely causing that little quiver of female appreciation she could feel disturbing her normal level-headed calmness.

However, it was plain that Piers was nowhere near as impressed by her as she was by him, Georgia conceded ruefully as she heard him telling her curtly, ‘If today’s evidence of the success of your dog-training classes is anything to go by, I’m not surprised that Ben is proving so obdurate. Have you any professional qualifications for this?’

Immediately Georgia’s hackles rose.

‘I’m a fully trained vet,’ she informed him shortly, ‘and, yes, I have been trained to—’

‘You may be trained, but Ben most certainly isn’t,’ Piers cut across her coldly. ‘He’s too much of a handful for my godmother, and…’

As she listened to him Georgia’s heart began to sink. What he was saying was quite true, of course, but in his short life Ben had already had two homes and, despite his wilful determination to resist instruction, there was no doubt that in his own way he was devoted to Mrs Latham. Heavens knew what would happen to Ben if her godson were to persuade her to part with him.

Crossing her fingers mentally, Georgia told Piers semi-truthfully, ‘Setters can initially be a bit wild, but once they get over that they calm down tremendously.’

‘I’m sure they do,’ Piers agreed, giving Georgia a narrow-eyed look, ‘provided they are living in the right environment, and the right environment for Ben is not, in my opinion, the home of a sedentary woman who’ll not see sixty again.’

‘Ben has already been re-homed once,’ Georgia told Piers protectively. ‘It’s a traumatic experience for a dog to be parted from an owner it’s become attached to.’

‘Indeed. However, I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be an equally traumatic experience for my godmother if, as fortunately did not happen on this occasion, Ben were to pull away from her again and, instead of merely causing her to stumble and hurt her foot, dash out into the road with possible fatal consequences for himself.’

Georgia bit her lip. He did have a point, but she still felt she had to defend Ben.

‘Once Ben can walk properly on the lead that kind of thing won’t happen,’ she informed Piers.

‘Once! Don’t you mean if, or more probably never?’ Piers asked.

He looked down at the dog sternly. Ben smiled back at him, and then tensed as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a cat strolling round the corner of the building. Springing to his feet, he tugged hard on his lead, forgetting that Piers had tightened his collar.

Piers gave an exclamation of irritation as Ben’s leap for freedom caught him off guard and slightly off balance, and, instinctively knowing the dog’s strength, Georgia reached out to grab hold of Piers’s arm to help steady him.

Afterwards, Piers told himself that it was the feel of Georgia’s soft breast pressing against him, the scent of her clean perfume in his nostrils and the softness of her hair brushing against his bare arm that had caused him momentarily to slacken his grip on Ben’s lead. After all, Georgia was a stunningly attractive woman, and the sight of those soft, oh so well rounded breasts jiggling around inside her tee shirt whilst she had been running up and down the room with the dogs had left a lasting impression on his brain—and his body!

As Ben tore after the cat both Georgia and Piers shouted commands to him to stop, but it was Philip who was actually responsible for him coming to an abrupt halt as Ben turned the corner and ran full tilt into him.

Rushing across to take hold of Ben’s lead, Georgia apologised to her boss.

‘How is the mare?’ she asked him anxiously.

‘Fine. Both she and the foal are doing very well, although it was touch-and-go for a while.’ Philip frowned as he turned from Georgia to Piers and asked, ‘Isn’t it Piers Hathersage?’ He explained, when Piers acknowledged his recognition of him, ‘I thought I remembered you from school. What are you doing these days?’

Discreetly Georgia left them to renew old acquaintanceships, at the same time making a mental note to ask Philip to have a word with Piers and hopefully persuade him to see Ben in a much better light than he currently did.

‘He’s not a bad dog,’ she told Helen later, when she was relating to her what had happened.

‘Not bad, no,’ Helen replied, ‘but you’ve got to admit that he is too much for Mrs Latham.’

‘Mmm,’ Georgia agreed. ‘It’s such a shame, though, because she’s devoted to him and Ben thinks the world of her.’

‘Oh, he’s told you that, has he?’ Helen teased her, adding, ‘I think you’re quite smitten with him yourself. Or is it someone else who has aroused your interest?’

Refusing to rise to Helen’s bait, Georgia shook her head and exclaimed, ‘Is that the time? I must go otherwise I shall be late for this afternoon’s clinic.’

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE time he had driven Ben back to his godmother’s, Piers had made up his mind. The dog had to go. However, when he let himself into the house he found Emily Latham in a state of some agitation. Her sister, it transpired, had telephoned her in Piers’s absence asking her if she would like to take the place of her friend who had had to drop out of a three-week cruise of the Mediterranean at the last minute.

‘Everything’s paid for,’ she told Piers. ‘All I would have to do is pack and take the train to Mary’s…’

‘So what’s stopping you?’ Piers asked her with a smile.

Poignantly she looked at Ben.

‘I just can’t leave him,’ she told Piers solemnly.

‘You could put him in kennels,’ Piers suggested.

Immediately his godmother shook her head.

‘Oh, no, he’d hate that,’ she told him, adding simply, ‘Who would give him his chocolate at night and make sure he has everything he wants? No, he wouldn’t be comfortable in kennels. He sleeps upstairs in my room at night and…’

Piers closed his eyes. It was getting worse and worse. No wonder the dog thought he was the boss.

‘It’s no good. I’ll have to ring Mary and tell her I can’t go,’ Emily said dispiritedly.

Piers frowned and came to a quick decision. He had planned to spend only a few days with his godmother, looking at local properties, but, in reality, there was nothing to stop him from staying longer, nor from working from her house whilst he did so, and besides…He looked at the dog lying sprawled out on the rug in front of the fireplace, a whole array of semi-chewed toys spread around him.

With his godmother safely out of the way he could look around for another home for Ben.

‘Yes, you can,’ he told his godmother firmly. ‘I’ll stay here with Ben.’

‘For three weeks? Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ Emily Latham demurred, but Piers could see the gleam of hope in her eyes.

‘You aren’t asking me,’ he told her prosaically, ‘I’m volunteering. And besides, it will give me more time to look around for somewhere to live and work.’

‘Well, if you’re sure…’

‘I’m sure,’ Piers confirmed. ‘You go and ring Mary.’

As his godmother headed for the door she paused and stopped, saying, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot. How did the training class go?’

Piers grimaced. ‘It didn’t. In fact the whole thing was shambolic. The young woman who took it was very easy on the eye and equally easy on the dogs. I always thought red hair was supposed to signify temper in a woman, but she—’

‘Red hair…Oh, it must have been Georgia who took the class. She’s lovely, isn’t she? She’s only been with the practice a few months. In fact it’s really thanks to her that I got Ben…’

Piers tensed. ‘Thanks to her? You mean she was responsible for that…that…?’

He stopped as the telephone started to ring and his godmother went to answer it. He might have known, he fumed. No wonder the wretched woman had been so keen to protect Ben, if she was the one who was responsible for his godmother having the dog in the first place. Of all the irresponsible…

Wrathfully he remembered the chaos of what had purported to be this morning’s dog-training class. Philip must have used his eyes rather than his brain the day he had decided to employ her. She certainly was very eye-catching, with that mass of thick, dark red hair and that delicate face, those lusciously dark-lashed eyes and that body that was so curvy that it was just made for a man’s hands to caress…

Abruptly Piers frowned; this was no way for him to be thinking. His godmother had more than likely committed the same folly of being instantly attracted to her crafty canine, for no one could deny that Ben was an extremely good-looking dog.

He, Piers, attracted to Georgia? Impossible…He liked cool, intellectual brunettes, tall and slim, fully up-to-speed independent women who would have shuddered in distaste at the mere thought of an animal’s hair anywhere near their immaculately presented persons.

A short, curvy redhead with tousled curls who thought nothing of cuddling one of her furry friends was quite definitely not his cup of tea…No way…no way at all…

‘That was Mary on the phone,’ his godmother announced happily as she came back into the room. ‘I’ve told her that I’m going to be able to join her after all.’ Her face clouded slightly. ‘Are you sure you really want to do this, Piers? I know that Ben can be rather a naughty boy at times, but his heart’s in the right place…’ She beamed adoringly at the dog, who had followed her into the room and was looking approvingly up at her.

‘His heart may be, but unfortunately the rest of him does not appear to want to follow suit,’ Piers murmured dryly, giving the dog a quelling look. Ben scratched vigorously behind his ear, causing Emily Latham to give Piers a horrified look of concern.

‘Oh, Piers, you don’t think he’s caught something, do you?’ she exclaimed worriedly.

‘If he has I’m sure his friend at the vet’s will be more than happy to relieve him of it,’ Piers assured her grimly.

‘Oh, dear, I’d better give them a ring, and then I must pack and you’ll need food…and…’

‘I’ll ring them—in the morning. You go and pack by all means, but as for food I can shop for that myself tomorrow. This evening we’ll eat out…my treat.’

‘Oh, no…we can’t do that,’ his godmother protested. ‘Not on my last evening at home. It wouldn’t be fair to Ben.’

‘No, of course not,’ Piers agreed sardonically. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Do forgive me, Ben!’

‘We could have a take-away,’ Emily suggested. ‘There’s a very good pizza place in town that delivers. Ben loves them, don’t you, Benny? He likes the anchovy ones best…’

Defeatedly Piers closed his eyes whilst Ben’s tail thumped enthusiastically on the floor.

‘Thanks for taking this afternoon’s cases,’ Philip told Georgia as she emerged from their second surgery. ‘Oh, and by the way, if I could just have a word with you before you leave…?’

Despite Philip’s smile and his thanks Georgia was conscious of a small frisson of unease. However, the afternoon’s patients had all turned out to be fairly straightforward, and any who had needed minor treatment had all responded well.

‘Ah Georgia.’ Philip smiled as she popped her head round the door to his office a few minutes later. ‘Yes…come on in…

‘Well, the good news is that you can take your missed day off tomorrow, if that suits you.’

‘Yes, thank you, that will be fine,’ Georgia accepted. ‘The good news’, he had said; that meant that there was some bad.

‘Sit down,’ Philip invited her, indicating the chair in front of his desk. ‘I appreciate that you were somewhat thrown in at the deep end, so to speak, today, and I’m sure that, like all of us here, there are some aspects of the work you prefer to others. For instance I’ve always enjoyed operating and large-animal work, whilst Helen, as you know, prefers dealing with the smaller domestic pets…’

Georgia frowned, wondering where exactly Philip’s conversation was leading. In another few seconds she knew.

‘I understand that this morning’s dog-training class wasn’t entirely successful.’

Georgia’s heart started to thump a little uncomfortably. Had someone complained?

‘There were one or two problems,’ she admitted huskily. ‘Ben…’

‘It does require a certain type of very strong personality to control a group of over-excited dogs,’ Philip continued before she could explain. ‘I know. I’ve been having a look at your file and I see that you had an excellent report from the intensive dog-training course we sent you on, but sometimes translating what has been learned in that kind of protected, cocooning environment into real life can be more difficult than we envisage.’

‘Someone’s complained.’ Georgia couldn’t help preempting him flatly. ‘I know that things did get a bit out of hand this morning, but…’

‘A bit!’ Philip’s eyebrows rose. ‘According to Piers, the dogs were totally out of control.’

‘Piers…’ Georgia’s heart thumped even harder. Oh, she might have known that he would be the one.

‘The reason they were out of control,’ she defended herself hotly, ‘was because he had brought Ben.’

‘Ben.’ Philip sighed. ‘Yes, I’m afraid Ben is proving to be rather a problem, and not just at the dog-training classes, according to Piers. I understand that he’s recently been the cause of Mrs Latham hurting her ankle—fortunately not seriously—this time. But so far as Piers is concerned I suspect that Ben is very much on parole.’

Was that Philip’s way of saying that so was she? Georgia wondered a little later as she drove home. Philip was a kind employer, and Georgia had thought she had found if not the idyllic then certainly an ideal job for herself, but Philip’s gentle little homily this afternoon was making her wonder if the partners were as happy with her as she was with them.

Philip’s last words to her had been a hint that maybe she might think it worthwhile doing a further intensive course in dog training. Only by reminding herself that the blame for her carpeting lay not with Philip, nor even with Ben, but with his irascible and unpleasant handler, had she been able to bite back the impulsive retort that had sprung to her lips that the one who needed the intensive course was not so much her but Ben.

He was a friendly and highly intelligent dog, but Mrs Latham spoiled him dreadfully.

With another three months to go before her nine-month probation period was fully up, Georgia now felt uncomfortably aware that her job might not be as secure as she had imagined. There were other veterinary practices, of course, but she liked this one, and besides, how was it going to look on her CV if the practice didn’t give her a full-time contract? Not good—not good at all.

This was all down to Piers Hathersage, she reflected angrily.

The following day Georgia drove to Mrs Latham’s home in the centre of the town.

It was late afternoon, and the early summer sunshine was throwing soft dappled shadows over the warm sandstone in which the local houses were built.

Wrexford was a charming place, a sturdily built and solidly settled market town which took a pride in itself and its history. The River Wrex, from which the town got its name, ran virtually through the town centre; originally the place had been the only spot where local people could ford the breadth of the river, and although modern-day traffic crossed it by bridge the local council had made an attractive park area along the river banks through the town centre for people to enjoy.

Mrs Latham’s Queen Anne town house was one of a pretty terrace built originally by a local landowner and let out to the town’s prosperous burghers.

The street leading to the houses was not open to general traffic; its modern tarmac covering had been stripped back to reveal the original cobblestones and traditional street lighting had been installed, complete with hanging baskets of pastel-coloured trailing plants. In front of the houses themselves the cobbled area opened out into a wider rectangle of ground reaching to the river, with a mature beech tree in its centre.

Residents and their visitors were allowed to park on the cobbles, although all the houses had long gardens and garages to their rear, and it was on these cobbles that Georgia parked her own small estate car, facing the river. Water had always fascinated her, and the River Wrex was a particularly attractive one, especially here in the town, where the very stringent conservation rules of the area meant that the water was blissfully clear and home to a wide variety of wildlife. During Georgia’s first month at the practice someone had brought in an otter with a damaged paw which had been found on the river path. Thankfully a small operation had repaired the damage and the otter had been successfully returned to its home.

Upstream from the town, on the site of what had originally been the area’s corn mill, the original buildings had been turned into a tourist attraction—the millpond cleaned out and its weir restored to its original glory. It was a popular site for picnickers and walkers and Georgia, who loved the countryside, couldn’t help thinking how fortunate she was to live and work in such a beautiful environment.

She felt completely at home here, and had even begun to daydream of the admittedly at the moment remote possibility that she might one day be able to afford to buy into the partnership as a junior partner.

Under Philip’s traditional management the practice had a slightly old-fashioned air to it, so Georgia had been thrilled when the response to her pleas to be allowed to introduce a pet-visiting scheme to a nearby old people’s home had met with overwhelming success.

The pets, carefully chosen and nominated by their vets and accompanied by their enthusiastic owners, visited the home on a regular basis to see their human ‘friends’.

One elderly man, who had always had a dog throughout his adult life before entering the home, had cried emotional tears to see the chocolate-brown Labrador who had visited him.

‘He’s just like my Brownie was,’ he had told the dog’s owner in a choked voice as he’d stroked the obliging dog.

Georgia had several other similar schemes she wanted to introduce as and when the opportunity arose. But with a black mark hovering over her, thanks to Piers, how could she do so?

It was pointless, of course, blaming Ben or Mrs Latham. Even so, she was hoping that the opportunity might arise to suggest tactfully to the older woman that both she and Ben would benefit from Ben undergoing a complete retraining course at the hands of someone with the expertise to teach the dog properly on a one-to-one basis.

Opening her car door, Georgia got out and walked determinedly towards Mrs Latham’s house.

Piers was in the kitchen when Georgia rang the bell—and feeling rather out of temper. He had driven his godmother to the nearest mainline station earlier in the day and then gone on from there to do some essential food shopping. The diet of an old lady who, whilst not totally vegetarian nevertheless seemed to prefer a very light menu, was not one that he, as a six-foot, twelve-and-a-half-stone mature adult man felt happy with. Not that he didn’t believe in healthy eating—he did—but he liked substantially more on his plate than his godmother enjoyed.

He had returned to her house via the estate agent’s, where he had had an in-depth talk with the representative he had seen, outlining his requirements, and had come away with half a dozen promising property details to look over, feeling more than ready for the lunch of locally grown new potatoes accompanied by Scottish salmon, fresh vegetables and a hollandaise sauce he had promised himself.

His first intimation that this was to be a delayed pleasure had occurred when he’d opened the front door and seen the soft drift of feathers floating innocently down the stairs and into the hallway.

Feathers…!

He’d studied them frowningly as the draught of air from the open kitchen door drew them outside.

Feathers?

An unpleasant suspicion had gathered as ominously as the frown corrugating his forehead.

Putting down his shopping, he’d called out sternly, ‘Ben?’

Silence…

Nothing…!

Closing the back door, Piers had hurried upstairs. The door to his godmother’s bedroom was open, and as he’d looked into the room his heart had sunk. There was Ben, lying fast asleep on his godmother’s bed, surrounded by feathers; a torn pillow on the floor had pointed to their origins and Piers had taken a deep breath before saying firmly, ‘Ben!’

In his sleep the dog had breathed deeply, and then wrinkled his nose as a feather landed softly on it.

Grimly Piers had surveyed him. No way could the dog be asleep, and, as though to prove him correct, Ben had suddenly lifted one eyelid just the merest fraction and then closed it again.

Wrathfully Piers had taken action, marching over to the bed and getting hold of Ben’s collar and yanking him firmly onto the floor.

Four hours later, having made do with a sandwich for his lunch, he had finally cleared away the last of the feathers, walked Ben, given him his meal and responded to his godmother’s anxious phone call that, yes, he and Ben were getting on fine, albeit through fiercely gritted teeth.

Now, just as he was about to sit down and study the estate agent’s properties, someone was at the door. No doubt some crony of his godmother’s, who would want to have the full story of where she was and who he was.