Misty and the Single Dad

CHAPTER SIX

NICK drove towards the Animal Shelter and beside him Bailey’s face glowed. He held his teddy, but he was looking forward, all eagerness, to what lay ahead.

‘A dog of my own,’ he whispered as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. ‘And living with Miss Lawrence…’

‘Next door to Miss Lawrence.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m getting a dog.’

Dogs had germs. Nick could still hear the echo of his mother’s horrified response when he’d asked for a dog thirty years ago.

Germs. Heartbreak. Loss. This was a risk-but Misty was right. He couldn’t protect his son from everything. He needed to loosen up.

And his son would be safe with Misty. The sensation that caused was wonderful. It was like going into freefall, but knowing the landing was assured. And maybe the landing was more wonderful than the fall itself.

For, dog or not, once he’d agreed to her conditions, he felt as if he was landing. He was finding a home for his son-with Misty.

He was finding a home beside Misty, he reminded himself, but that wasn’t how his body was thinking.

She’d teased him this morning. She’d backed him into a corner and she’d enjoyed doing it.

He’d been angry, frustrated, baffled-but he’d loved her doing it.

He turned the corner and she was already parked outside the Shelter. She was standing in the dappled sunlight under a vast gum tree, in her faded jeans, a sleeveless gingham shirt and old trainers. Her hair was caught back with a red ribbon and the sunlight was making her chestnut curls shine.

‘Isn’t she pretty?’ Bailey whispered and he could only agree.

Beautiful.

‘She has Ketchup,’ his son added, and Bailey was right. She had her dog in her arms. Why did she have him here?

‘We need Ketchup’s approval,’ she explained. ‘If these dogs are to live next door, we can’t have them growling at each other.’

‘I want a running dog,’ Bailey said.

‘Fast is good,’ Misty agreed. She wasn’t looking at Nick. Her attention was totally on Bailey and he was caught by the fact that he was sidelined.

From the time he’d won his first design prize, aged all of nineteen, Nick had moved among some of the wealthiest women in the world. His boat owners had money to burn and the boats he designed meant he had money to match them.

Women reacted to him. Even when he’d been married, women had taken notice of him. But now it was clear he came a poor second to his son and he thought the better of her for it.

More than that, the sensation had him feeling… Feeling…

Now’s hardly the time to think about how you’re feeling, he told himself. Not when you’re about to move next door to her. You’re here to choose a dog for your son.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ he muttered, and Misty looked at him in astonishment.

‘Don’t sound so severe. This isn’t a trip to the dentist.’

‘It might as well be.’

She’d started walking towards the Shelter but his words stopped her. She turned and met his gaze full on. Carefully, she set Ketchup down on the grass and she disengaged her hand from Bailey’s.

‘If you really don’t want a dog, then stop right now,’ she said, her voice suddenly steely. ‘The dogs in the Shelter have had a tough time-they’ve been abandoned already. They don’t want a half-hearted owner. Bailey, if your daddy doesn’t really want a dog, then of course I won’t insist. You can still share my house, and you and I can share Ketchup.’

She was angry?

She was definitely angry.

‘I got it wrong,’ she told him, still in that cold voice. ‘I thought it was just your stupid qualms about germs and risks. But if it’s more…say it now, Nicholas, and we’ll all go home. Bailey, if your father doesn’t really want a dog, honestly, could you be happy with Ketchup?’

Bailey stared up at her, surprised. He looked down at Ketchup, who looked back at him. Kid and dog.

‘Dad says we can have a dog,’ he whispered.

‘He needs to prove it. Why don’t we leave it for a bit so he can make up his mind? Owning your own dog is a big thing. I’m not sure your dad’s ready for it.’

He was a bright kid, was Bailey, and he knew the odds. He looked up at Nick and he tilted his chin. And then, surprisingly, he tucked his hand into Misty’s.

‘It’s okay,’ he told his father. He swallowed manfully. ‘Miss Lawrence and I can share looking after Ketchup.’ He sounded as if he was placating someone the same age as he was-or younger. ‘If you really, really, really don’t want a dog just for us, then it’s okay, Dad.’ He gulped and clutched his teddy.

It only needed this. Nick closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were still looking at him. Misty and Bailey. And Ketchup. Even Teddy.

If you really, really, really don’t want a dog just for us…

Misty’s gaze had lost its cool. Now she looked totally nonjudgmental. She’d backed right off. She’d given him a way out.

Behind them, a woman was emerging from the Shelter. Glancing across at them. Starting to lock up.

Was this Henrietta, finishing early? She was letting him off the hook as well.

He felt about six inches high.

What had he got himself into?

He glanced once more, at his son and his son’s teacher, and suddenly he knew exactly what he was getting into.

‘You want to go home?’ Misty asked and he shook his head.

‘I’m an idiot,’ he told her. And then… ‘Are you Henrietta?’ he called before any more of his stupid scruples could get in the way of what was looking more and more…he didn’t know what, but he surely intended to find out.

‘Yes,’ the woman called back, cautious.

‘Can you wait a moment before you lock up?’ he asked her. ‘If it’s okay with you… My son and I are here to see if we can choose a dog. We both want a dog and we’re hoping we can find one, right now. A dog that’s fast. A dog that’s young and a dog who can belong just to Bailey.’

And in the end it was easy.

Misty and Nick left things to Henrietta and Bailey. ‘Henrietta knows her dogs,’ Misty told Nick. ‘She won’t introduce him to one that’s unsuitable.’

Bailey walked along the pens, looking worried. He looked at each dog in turn. They barked, they whined or they ignored him, and Bailey looked increasingly unsure.

But then he came to a pen near the end, and he stopped.

‘This one’s a whippet,’ Henrietta said. ‘She’s fast. She’s hardly more than a pup and she’s a sweetheart.’

‘She’s hurt her face,’ Bailey whispered.

‘Most dogs in here have scars,’ Henrietta told him and she was talking to him as if he was an equal and not six years old.

Bailey looked back along the lines of pens-then, as if he’d made some sort of decision, he sat beside the pen with the whippet. The whippet was lying prone on the concrete floor, her nose against the bars, misery personified.

Bailey put his nose against the dog’s nose. Testing?

Nick started forward, worried, but Misty put her hand on his arm.

‘Trust Henrietta. If she thinks a dog’s safe with kids, she’ll be right. And did you know kids from farms have twenty per cent fewer allergies than city kids? What’s a nose rub between friends?’

Bailey looked back to them, his little face serious. ‘She’s skinny,’ he said cautiously. ‘Can I pat her?’

‘Sure you can,’ Henrietta said, and Nick and Misty walked forward to see. They reached the cage-and something amazing happened. Ketchup stared down at the whippet from the safety of Misty’s arms. He whined-and then suddenly he was a different dog. He was squirming, barking, desperate to get down.

The whippet was stick-thin, fawn with a soft white face, and she was carrying the scars of mistreatment or neglect. She’d been flattened on the floor of the pen, shivering, but as Misty knelt with Ketchup in her arms she lunged forward and hit the bars-and she went wild.

Both dogs did.

They were practically delirious in their excitement. Two dogs with cold bars between them… That these dogs had a shared history was obvious.

‘Hey, I’d forgotten. You’ve brought her friend back.’ Henrietta grinned and stooped to scratch Ketchup behind his ears, only Ketchup wasn’t noticing. He was too intent on the whippet.

‘These two were found together,’ Henrietta told them. ‘I reckon they were dumped together. We put ’em in pens side by side but they seemed inseparable so they ended up together. Your little guy…’ She motioned to Ketchup. ‘He’s cute and normally we’d have had no problem rehousing him, but no one’s wanted the skinny one. And somehow no one wanted to separate them.’

‘He’s ugly,’ Nicholas said, looking at the whippet, appalled, and the Shelter worker looked at him as if she wasn’t sure where to place him.

‘I like whippets,’ she said neutrally. ‘They’re great dogs, intelligent and gentle and fun. Whippets always look skinny, but you’re right, this one’s ribs practically cross over. She’s a she, by the way. She’ll feed up, given time, but, of course, they ran out of time. They were both in the van when it crashed on Thursday. Dotty Ludeman found this one in her yard last night and brought her in. So here they are, together again.’

She smiled then, the tentative smile of a true animal-lover who thought she scented a happy ending. ‘So Misty’s saved one-and your little boy wants the other?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Nick had visions of something cute. Surely Bailey had visions of something cute.

‘Whippets can run,’ Bailey breathed.

‘How do you know?’

‘There was a book about dogs at the hospital,’ Bailey told him. ‘Whippy the Whippet. Faster’n a speeding bullet.’

‘I know that book,’ Misty said. ‘Ooh, I bet she could run on our beach.’

Our beach. That sounded okay. Nick crouched to get a better view of the…whippet? He knew zip about dogs.

‘She’s really skinny,’ Bailey said.

‘Are you sure she’s safe with kids?’ Misty asked, and Henrietta chuckled and nodded and opened the cage. The skinny dog wriggled out and wormed ecstatically around Ketchup. Misty and Bailey were sitting on the concrete floor now and the whippet wound round them and back, round them and back. Ketchup whimpered but it was a whimper of delight.

‘Uh oh,’ Misty said.

‘Uh oh?’ Nick queried.

‘I need to tell you.’ She smiled and sighed, letting the whippet nose her way into her arms along with Ketchup. ‘What are lists, anyway? If you don’t want this little girl, then I do.’

‘Do you want her to live on your side of the wall?’ Bailey demanded, watching the skinny dog with fascination.

‘If you and your dad don’t want her,’ she said. ‘But if you do…these two are obviously meant to be together.’

‘So could we cut a hole straight away?’

‘I guess we could,’ she said, glancing at Nick. Who was glancing at her. Only he was more than glancing.

She’d take on the world, he thought. She’d taken on Ketchup. She’d take on this skinny runt of a dog as well.

Would she take on…?

No. Or…way too soon.

Or way too stupid.

‘You want her?’ Henrietta was clearly delighted. She checked out Nick, clearly figuring if she could go for more. ‘If Misty wants hers plus the whippet, and your little boy wants another, then we have plenty…’

‘No,’ Misty and Nick said as one, and then they grinned at each other. Grinning felt great, Nick thought. Even if it involved a whippet.

‘Do you think she’ll let me pick her up?’ Bailey asked.

‘Try her out, sweetheart,’ Henrietta said and Bailey scooped her up and the whippet licked his face like Ketchup had licked Misty’s.

‘There’s been kids in these dogs’ background,’ Henrietta said, surveying the scene in satisfaction.

‘And pizza,’ Misty said. ‘I bet this little girl likes pizza.’

‘That means we need to have pizza tonight,’ Bailey said. ‘On the beach again. Or on the veranda. We’re going to live together,’ he told Henrietta. ‘Can we take her, Dad?’

‘I guess…’

‘Then she’s Took.’

‘Took?’ Nick said, bemused.

‘Yes,’ Bailey said in satisfaction, cuddling one scrawny dog and one battered teddy. But then he glanced along the row of dogs and looked momentarily subdued. ‘But… Only one?’

‘Only one.’ That was Misty and Nick together again.

‘Okay,’ Bailey said, with a last regretful look at the rest of the inmates. He hugged his new dog closer, as if somehow loving this one could rub off on the rest. ‘She’s mine. I’m calling her Took ’cos that’s what she is.’ He smiled shyly up at Henrietta. ‘Me and Dad and Ketchup and Took are going to live on both sides of Miss Lawrence’s house and we’re going to cut a hole in the wall.’

‘Why not just open the door?’ Henrietta said, and chuckled, and went to do the paperwork.

They took the two dogs back out to the farm and left them in the laundry while they shifted Nick and Bailey’s gear.

That took less than an hour.

The laundry was shared by both sections of the house. In theory, they could put the dogs there to sleep. During the day Misty could take Ketchup to her side of the house and Bailey could take Took to his side. But it was never going to happen. Bailey was in and out of Misty’s side about six times in the first fifteen minutes.

‘I need to go see Gran,’ Misty decreed at last, so both dogs settled in the sun on the veranda. Together. When Misty came home, both dogs and Nick and Bailey were on the veranda. Together.

Two days ago, this veranda had been all hers. Now…

Now she had emotions running every which way.

But why quibble? If she had to put her dreams on hold, maybe this was the next best thing.

They ate pizza again-‘Just to show Took we can,’ Bailey explained. Then Nick read his son a bedtime story on his side of the house and he came outside again as Misty was thinking she ought to go into her side of the house. But Took had left her now-sleeping owner and come back to join Ketchup. Both dogs were at her feet. Why disturb them?

Rockers on the veranda? Any minute now, Nick would offer to make her cocoa.

‘Can I make you cocoa?’ Nick asked and she choked.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘It needed only that.’

‘It is…cosy,’ he ventured and she grinned and shook her head.

‘Ma and Pa and Kid and Dogs. It’s not the image I want to take to bed with me.’ She rose and picked up her dogs. Her dog, she reminded herself. And Bailey’s dog. In time, they might teach Took to sleep on Bailey’s bed. But she had a very clear idea of exactly what would happen. Ketchup and Took would both be on Bailey’s bed. Two dogs on a child’s bed…

It was the same as cocoa.

She’d settle them in the laundry and go do some schoolwork, she told herself and turned to the door. But Nick was before her, opening the door, and then, as she struggled to keep Took’s long legs under control, he lifted Took from her and followed her.

They’d set up two dog beds. They put a dog in each, side by side. Ketchup whimpered and Took sidled from her basket into Ketchup’s. She sort of sprawled her long legs around Ketchup so Ketchup was wrapped in a cocoon of whippet.

‘These guys are great,’ Nick said, smiling and rising, and Misty smiled and rose, too, only she rose too fast and Nick was just…there.

His face was right by hers. His hands were steadying her.

Back away fast. She couldn’t.

There was something between them she didn’t recognise. There’d been no guy in Banksia Bay who made her feel…like she felt like she was feeling now.

She didn’t want him to let her go.

They were standing in her grandmother’s laundry. How romantic was that? The dogs were snuffling at their feet. That was hardly romantic, either.

She didn’t feel romantic. She didn’t feel…

She felt…

She was tying herself in knots. She had to step away, but his hold on her was tightening. He was looking down at her, his eyes questioning. If she tugged then he’d let her go. She knew it.

How could a girl tug?

She smiled up at him, a silly quavery smile that said she was being a fool. A sensible adult would step away and close the doors between them and treat this as just…as just him steadying her because she’d risen too fast.

But one of his hands had released her shoulder, and now his fingers were under her chin, tilting her face to meet his.

Yes.

No?

Um…yes. Yes, and yes and yes. Her face was definitely tilting and there was no need for his fingers to propel. She was propelling all by herself. Her bare toes were rising so she was on tiptoe, so he could hold her tighter, so she could meet… His mouth.

Her whole world centred on his mouth.

Her lips parted involuntarily, and why wouldn’t they? She was being kissed by a man who’d made her body melt practically the first time she’d seen him. See a man across a crowded room and your world turns to fire… She’d read that somewhere, in a romance novel or a short story or even a poem. She’d thought it was nuts.

Nicholas Holt had walked into her classroom and she’d thought he was Adonis. Only he wasn’t. He was just… Nicholas.

He was pressuring her mouth to open, gently, wondrously, and her lips were responding. She seemed to be melting. Her mouth seemed to be merging with his. His hands were tugging her up to him. Her breasts were moulding to his chest. The world was dissolving into a mist of desire and wonder and white-hot heat.

He tasted of salt, of warmth, of wonder. He tasted of…

Nicholas.

Her body no longer belonged to her. It felt strange, different, as if she were flying.

She let her tongue explore his. Oh, the heat…

Oh, but he felt good.

‘Misty…’

It was his voice, but she scarcely recognised it. He’d put her a little away from him and his voice was husky, with passion and with desire. He wanted her.

It felt powerful to be wanted by a man like this. It felt amazing.

‘Mmm?’ Their mouths were apart, but only just. She let her feet touch the floor again, grounding herself a little with bare toes on bare boards. Cooling off.

‘It’s too soon,’ he whispered into her hair, but he didn’t let her go.

‘To take me to bed, you mean?’ she whispered back and she surprised herself by managing a trace of laughter. ‘Indeed it is. So if you think…’

‘I’m not thinking.’

Only of course he was. They both knew what they were both thinking.

And why not? She was twenty-nine years old, Misty thought with sudden asperity. If they both wanted it…

Um…she’d known the guy for two days. He was right. It was too soon.

‘So back on your side of the door, tenant,’ she managed and he smiled and put her further away, but he was still holding her. They were a whole six inches apart but his hands were on her shoulders and if he tugged…

He wouldn’t tug. They were both too sensible for that.

‘Let’s just see where this goes,’ he said and she nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘But not tonight.’

‘No.’

‘So different doors?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And a small hole in the wall for dogs and Bailey. But not for us.’

‘But rockers on the veranda?’ she said, trying to smile.

‘Not cocoa?’ He was laughing at her.

‘No!’

‘Dangerous thing, cocoa.’

‘It is,’ she said with asperity. ‘Even cocoa has risks.’

Risks. She thought suddenly, inexplicably, of her list. Her scrapbooks.

Her scrapbooks were dreams. Maybe fate had sent her Nicholas instead.