by Ford, Holly
‘So tell me,’ Mitch said, his low voice moving over her skin like a touch, ‘how do you track a wolf?’
‘Bushcraft,’ Lennie joked. ‘And a radio collar.’
‘I guess the hard part’s convincing them to put it on.’
‘Yeah, I was lucky. Somebody else had already done that part. I did see a bear collared once.’ As she talked, running over the park’s research programme, her months in Abruzzo’s mountains, encounters with eagles and wolves and mediaeval hill towns, Lennie felt herself relax, the ease between her and Mitch when they’d been concentrating on Chase returning.
‘Check your email again,’ she suggested, when the salad was gone. ‘See if the shelter’s come back.’
Mitch brought up the screen beside him. ‘It needs your password.’
‘Here.’ Caught up in her own curiosity, Lennie was already halfway through leaning across him before she’d thought the action through, her breast brushing his bicep, Mitch’s breath on her neck as he slid the laptop towards her. She felt his body tense at the contact. The second half of the movement, skin leaving skin, each of them edging infinitesimally away, seemed to happen in slow motion.
‘Sorry.’ Lennie swept her wayward hair out of Mitch’s face, shifting it to her other shoulder. Sitting back, she typed her password in, her eyes on the keyboard. Only when she’d pushed the laptop back across the bench to him did she risk raising her gaze.
‘There’s something.’ Mitch’s attention was locked onto the screen. He frowned as the message struggled to load. ‘It’s them. They’ve replied.’
‘What do they say?’ Lennie only just remembered not to lean in again. The pause that followed was long enough to clear her mind of everything but Chase.
‘Dear Applicant,’ Mitch read wryly, ‘Please complete the following form and return it to us so that our trained staff may assess your suitability to adopt an Afghan dog. Please be advised that we are a small organisation and assessment of your application may take several weeks. We thank you in advance for your patience.’
Disappointment thudded in the still-small space between them. ‘It’s a start,’ Lennie offered, after a few moments had passed.
‘Yeah,’ Mitch said, his gaze remaining on the screen. Lennie thought about laying a hand on the forearm beside her. Thinking again, she got to her feet and cleared the plates. The action, small as it was, jolted Mitch’s attention back her way. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘sit down. I’ll do that.’
Lennie shook her head, pleased to see the warmth back in his eyes. ‘Fill out your form,’ she told him. ‘This’ll only take a second.’
‘You think I’ll pass?’ he said.
‘I think you just might.’
‘They want to know if I’ve ever had a dog before,’ Mitch said, as she loaded the dishwasher.
Lennie laughed.
‘And whether I have a garden,’ he continued.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Will they think it’s big enough?’
‘They also need a reference,’ he said, looking up from the screen, ‘from a vet.’
‘Now?’ She returned to the bench. ‘I think that can be arranged.’
By the time she’d finished typing one up, Mitch had cleared the kitchen.
‘How’s this?’ she asked.
Rounding the bench, Mitch read over her shoulder, his hands resting on the back of her stool. It took every ounce of willpower Lennie had not to lean back against him. But that echo of tension she’d felt when she brushed against him—every instinct she had—was telling her to let him explore the possibility she’d glimpsed in his face when he’d stood at the door at his own pace.
‘That ought to do it,’ Mitch said.
‘You want me to cut and paste it?’ Lennie summoned the most matter-of-fact tone she could find.
‘Thanks.’
Quietly, she let out her breath as he moved away to lean on the bench beside her.
Having inserted the reference and her contact details, Lennie’s eyes fell on the red dot that had appeared on the tab at the top of the screen. ‘Mitch?’ She slid the laptop across to him. ‘You’ve got another message.’
He clicked on it. ‘It’s the shelter again.’
Lennie waited.
‘A woman in the States this time,’ Mitch said, his gaze moving down the screen. ‘Ex-military, by the sounds of things.’
And…?
‘She says if I can send them the money and a US address to deliver him to, they can get Chase on the next plane.’
Stifling a squeal, Lennie scrambled to her feet. ‘He’s getting out?’
‘He’s getting out.’ Mitch turned to her, that unguarded smile lighting up his face.
As it began to blur a little, Lennie lowered her head, laughing, blinking away her tears along with the impulse to kiss him.
Slowly, second thumping into second alongside the beat of her heart, she saw Mitch’s hand reach towards her, the rock of his hips as he narrowed the gap between them. His fingertips met the bare skin of her neck, rising gently to the point of her jaw.
Closing her eyes as he brought her mouth to his, Lennie gripped the edge of the bench behind her, trying not to yield to the ache, the need shuddering through her to touch him, trying not to do anything that could bring the shutters crashing down and make this moment end.
Mitch’s hand lowered, brushing the side of her breast, falling to the hem of her t-shirt, the rough skin of his fingers catching against her bare stomach as they grazed across it to round the point of her hip.
Lennie almost cried out as his lips left hers, but this time he barely pulled back. When she looked up, his eyes were moving over her body like it was something he was planning to learn. His kiss was torturously soft, his fingertips mounting her spine on the crest of the wave that was flooding her senses. His other hand on the back of her neck, sinking into her hair, kept her face raised, her neck arched to him. Mitch was moving closer, his kiss deep enough to drown in, his fingertips sinking again, her body melting under his hands.
A single, windowpane-rattling bark from outside startled Lennie forward, clinging to him at last as his arms closed protectively around her. Shit. At the sound of her grandfather’s ute in the drive, they both stood away. Lennie smoothed down her clothes, reassuring herself that they were still there, as the front door opened.
‘Mitch.’ Jim walked into the kitchen, his coat still on, Pesh ambling at his heels. ‘Good to see you—again.’
Her grandfather’s stress on the final word had been subtle enough that Lennie hoped Mitch might miss it. The look on his face told her she was out of luck.
‘Jim,’ Mitch said evenly. ‘I was just about to head home.’
‘Well, you’ve got a long trip. I’d better not hold you up.’ Jim sounded genial enough. ‘I’ll walk you out to the car.’
What? No!
Before she had time to recover, Lennie found herself trailing both men to the door. Manoeuvring himself between her and Mitch, her grandfather was as good as his word. As Jim held the Land Cruiser’s door for him, Mitch managed to find her eyes. ‘I’ll talk to you next week,’ he said.
Her hand through Pesh’s collar, Lennie nodded, trying to radiate an apology through the chilly night air. She hadn’t been this embarrassed by Jim since she was fifteen and he’d busted her kissing Greg West outside the rugby club social. She waved feebly as Mitch’s tail-lights disappeared down the drive.
‘Well,’ Jim said, turning back towards the house as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all, ‘I’m done in. I’m going to take myself off to bed. I have to be at the track by nine.’
Fourteen
Lennie woke up the next morning with a headache. It was probably a product of how badly she’d slept, but it felt more like a withdrawal from the high of a night that, now her exhausted brain tried to put the pieces of it together again, seemed increasingly unreal. Had Mitch actually kissed her? As his departure scene replayed on the big screen of her mind, she pulled a p
illow over her face. Jesus. What had she been thinking, letting him go like that? What she should have done was taken him by the hand and led him past her grandfather, up these bloody stairs and…Transferring the pillow to her breasts and hugging it there, Lennie let out a groan of frustration.
Unsure whether she was more furious with herself or Jim, she waited until she heard his truck leave the drive before she made her way downstairs. She was a grown woman, for god’s sake. If her grandfather thought he could still play chaperone, it really was high time she got out of his house and into a place of her own. Any place.
Waiting for the coffee to brew, Lennie leaned on the bench, sinking her head into her hands, trying not to think about what might have happened last night if only she lived alone. What might be happening now, because if this was her house, Mitch would still be in it. Probably, she corrected herself. He’d probably still be here.
Placing him, tousled and shirtless, in the imaginary Scandistyle kitchen of the villa down the road, Lennie found herself with a smile back on her face. Her fantasy renovation was really coming along very well.
Having poured the coffee, she carried her mug upstairs, opened her wardrobe door, and sat down on the edge of the bed to survey the shelves.
She was so not up for going out with Benji today. Could she cancel? Call Mitch and say the ‘thing’ she’d told him she had to do had fallen through? No, Lennie’s better self insisted. It would be even ruder to dump Benji for a better offer now than it would have been when Mitch had offered to take her flying yesterday. The Herrick Races with Benji it was. Lennie checked her watch. She should get on with it, too.
Mitch had been wrong about the weather today. From what she’d read in the paper downstairs, track conditions fifty kilometres west called for gumboots and a puffer jacket. But more than a few of the clinic’s older clients were bound to be there, and out of deference to them and the Members’ Stand, she tried to put together something more formal.
Her black skinnies, she decided, were not, technically, jeans and had no holes in the knees to offend her grandfather and the other life members. With tall boots, her thickest sweater and a big scarf, they ought to do the trick. Leaving them laid out on the bed, Lennie took herself off to the shower.
Benji’s aggressive-looking Commodore station wagon appeared in the drive right on time. In a hurry to get the day over with, Lennie squeezed a coat over her jumper and walked out to meet him, sliding into the passenger seat before Benji had time to get out of the car. On the other side of the garden gate, Pesh, who had stopped barking at the sight of her, gave her a glare of betrayal.
‘That’s quite a dog,’ Benji said, eyeing Pesh with respect as the dog turned her back on them and stalked off to see Alice.
Lennie smiled. Benji was wearing a top-of-the-line version of Kimpton’s conservative-sanctioned weekend uniform—moleskins, checked shirt and a navy crew-neck with brown suede elbow patches. A similar outfit on somebody else might have appeared rugged, but with Benji’s good looks the effect was remarkably preppy, like a Kennedy out for a country stroll in Vermont in the fall.
He grinned back. ‘What?’
‘You’re off duty today,’ she observed.
‘Almost.’ Throwing the Commodore into reverse, Benji turned the wheel. ‘We’re sponsoring the two-fifteen. I’m down to present the cup.’
From the passenger seat, Lennie had more than her usual time to consider the familiar For Sale sign in its ever-deepening drift of oak leaves as they drove the Chalfont Road. She counted the villa’s four chimneys. Did all the fireplaces still work? There’d be one in the master bedroom for sure.
‘It’s a cute old place.’ Benji broke into her thoughts, which had just been adding a Land Cruiser to the carriage driveway. ‘Are you in the market?’
‘Yeah, I guess I am,’ Lennie found herself saying. ‘I mean, I can’t live with Grandpa forever.’
‘Are you looking to rent or to buy?’ There was a note of surprise in his voice.
She shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen anything that’s for rent.’
‘No,’ Benji said thoughtfully. ‘There’s not much of a market in Kimpton.’ He brought the car to a halt at the give-way sign. Turning onto the Kimpton road, they drove over the bridge in silence.
‘Sounds as if you’re planning on being here for the long haul,’ Benji said, as the line of the state highway came into view up ahead.
‘I agreed to six months,’ Lennie reminded him.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but I guess I’ve been thinking…’
‘What?’ She laughed. ‘That you’ll have bought the clinic well before then?’
‘Yes.’ Benji’s eyes sparkled as he hit the straight. ‘To be honest.’
‘VETSouth won’t have a job for me?’ she teased him.
‘I don’t know if we can afford you.’
Hoping he was joking, Lennie wondered uneasily if Paul had shown Benji her employment contract as well as her resume. She was earning a fraction of what she’d got at the Royal, but still, once you factored in the cost of living, in real terms she was better off. In any case, she was willing to bet the salary Jim had offered her was substantially more than VETSouth’s roster of new graduates got paid. Enough to buy her the sort of house, the sort of lifestyle, she could never afford in a million years in Sydney. Not even if she made partner, not even if she founded her own hospital—and where the hell was she ever going to get the capital to do that?
Kimpton is for some people. Her grandfather’s voice in her head, Lennie eyed the ranges looming to the west, careful to keep the man behind them out of this particular train of thought. What was gaining traction in her mind today had nothing to do with last night. She’d loved these mountains long before she met Mitch—or Benji, for that matter.
If she stayed here…If she stayed, she wouldn’t have to choose between buying a house and building a practice. She wouldn’t have to build a practice at all. Central Vets was right here waiting for her. All she had to do was take it. Maybe, maybe she could make it work? Attract more committed clients from further afield, the tricky cases that would keep her on her toes, her brain fully engaged? Negotiate a referral deal with the other clinics around—those few that hadn’t been swallowed up by VETSouth—to offer their clients a specialist service?
Jesus. Lennie caught herself. Was she halfway serious about this?
‘If you’re halfway serious about this,’ Benji said, breaking another silence Lennie had been too busy thinking to notice, ‘I’m pretty sure we could work something out.’
‘I don’t know what I am yet,’ she said, finding a covering smile.
‘Well…’ Benji pulled up, giving way to a campervan as it lumbered over the one-lane bridge across the Hyde. ‘Keep me posted. Okay?’
Lennie glanced at him, trying to read his tone. He sounded surprisingly serious. For Benji, anyway. Through the side window behind him, she could see the river winding out of the hills, the churn where its braids met those of Broken Creek, both running grey as the sky overhead. Raising a hand to the departing campervan, Benji guided the Commodore onto the rattling boards of the bridge.
Nestled in a fold of the dry, rocky hills on the far side, Herrick looked just as Lennie remembered it—non-existent apart from its racetrack. Behind the psychedelic blaze of the poplars ringing its sheep-manicured grounds, the same thickets of rosehip and gooseberry that had ripped her skin as a child still straggled up the steep slopes. Jim’s truck, too, was in the same spot, the veterinary surgeon’s designated park next to the clerk of the course.
Cruising past it, Benji pulled into a Reserved for Race Sponsors spot. A useful perk, since despite the cold wind and leaden sky, the small members’ car park was bulging. Climbing out, Lennie pulled her coat a little tighter. From the sounds of things, a race was just hitting the final straight, the commentator’s call picking up pace above the growing roar of the stands. They certainly had a good crowd in.
The historic Members’ Stand, the key
to the Herrick Races’ survival, appeared to be getting a facelift. Following Benji through the scatter of portacabins in front of the ornate entrance, Lennie made her way into the tunnel and up the familiar, sparrow-infested wooden stairs. At the back of the middle tier, the busy bar was as dark as ever, its not-so-large windows shaded by the roof of the stand, its doors closed against the wind blowing onto the terrace outside. The only change Lennie could see from two decades before was the flat-screen TV glowing silently in the corner.
‘Quick.’ Benji took her elbow, shepherding her through the crowd. ‘There’s a table by the window over there.’
Arriving at it, Lennie peered down at the horses circling the paddock below as she shed her coat—or tried to.
‘You need a hand with that?’ Benji grinned, coming to her aid as she attempted to get the coat off her thickly sweatered shoulders.
‘I think I’m stuck.’ Lennie was starting to laugh.
‘Jesus.’ Taking a firmer grip, Benji pulled harder. ‘I think you are.’
‘Ow…’
‘Hang on, your hair’s caught in the button.’ Laughing too, he reached under her scarf and unwound it. Holding her hair out of the way with one hand, Benji tugged the coat down with the other. ‘Have you ever thought about wearing fewer clothes?’ He let go of her hair, leaving a hand on her arm as they paused for a second, regaining their breath.
‘Thanks.’ Lennie looked back at him, still trying to get her laughter under control as she readjusted her scarf.
‘Hey.’ Benji lifted her hair out of the way again. ‘Anytime you need help getting out of your clothes, I’m your man.’
Sensing eyes on them as she slung her coat over the back of the chair, Lennie looked around for witnesses to her stupidity. It spoke volumes for her ability as a surgeon that she couldn’t even get herself out of a coat. A glance at the bar wiped her smile.