house was huge. He should move into town but he’d lived in this place all his life. His mother was here.
He’d lost his mother when he was eight years old, and this was all that was left. The garden she’d loved. The fence she’d almost finished. He walked outside sometimes and he could swear he saw her.
‘I’ll never leave you …’
People lied. He’d learned that early. Depend on no one. But here … in his mother’s garden, looking out over the bay she’d loved, this was all that was left of a promise he’d desperately wanted to believe in.
Emotional nonsense? Of course it was, he knew it, but his childhood house was a good place to crash when he wasn’t at sea. He had the money to keep it. If he could get a reasonable tenant for the apartment, then there’d be someone keeping the rooms warm, used.
Go ahead, he’d told Dorothy.
And then he’d met Nikkita. Briefly, the day she’d moved in.
She didn’t look like an industrial engineer. She looked like someone in one of those glossy magazines Hattie kept leaving on the boat. She was tall, five nine or so, slim and pale-skinned, with huge eyes and professionally applied make-up—yes, he was a bachelor but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pick decent cosmetics a mile off. Her glossy black hair was cut into some sort of sculpted bob, dead straight, all fringe and sharp edges.
And her clothes … The day she’d arrived she’d been wearing a black tunic with a diagonal slash of crimson across the hips. She’d added loopy silver earrings, red tights and glossy black boots that were practically thigh high. Low heels though. It was her moving day. She’d obviously thought low heels were workmanlike.
Tonight she’d been wearing jeans. Skin-tight jeans and a soft pink sweater. She must be roughing it, he thought, and his thoughts were bitter.
His head was thumping. He was trying hard not to think critical thoughts about ditzy air conditioning engineers who bush-bashed through the night with pokers.
And suddenly she was back again—practically running, though if she’d tried to run in those shoes she would have run right out of them. She was panting. Her eyes were still huge and the sculpted hair was … well, a lot less sculpted. She had a twig stuck behind one ear. A big twig.
‘Are you okay?’ she demanded, breathless, as if she’d expected to find him dead.
‘I’m fine,’ he growled and struggled to stand. Enough of lying round feeling sorry for himself. He shook away the hand she proffered, pushed himself to his feet—and the world swayed. Not much, but enough for him to grab her hand to steady himself.
She was stronger than he thought. She grabbed his other hand and held, hard, waiting for him to steady.
‘S … sorry.’ For a moment he thought he might throw up. He concentrated for a bit and decided no, he might keep his dignity.
‘Let me help you to the house.’
‘Dog first,’ he said.
‘You first.’
‘The dog’s standing up to his hocks in the water, howling. I’m not even whinging. I’m prioritizing.’ He made to haul his hands away but she still held.
He stopped pulling and let her hold.
Two reasons. One, he was still unsteady.
Two, it felt … not bad at all.
He worked with women. A good proportion of his fishing crews were female. They mostly smelled of, yeah, well, of fish. After a while, no matter how much washing, you didn’t get the smell out.
Nikkita smelled of something citrussy and tangy and outright heady. It didn’t make the dizziness worse, though. In truth it helped. He stood still, breathing in the scent of her, while the night settled around him.
She didn’t speak. She simply held.
Two minutes. Three. She wasn’t a talker, then. She’d figured he needed time to make the ground solid and she was giving it to him. It was the first decent thing he’d seen of her.
Maybe there were more decent things.
Her hands felt good. They were small hands for a tall woman. Soft …
Yeah, well, of course they’d be soft. For the last ten years any woman he’d ever gone out with was a local, one of the fishing crews, women who worked hard for a living. The only woman he’d ever gone out with who had soft hands …
Yeah. Lisbette. He’d married her.
So much for soft hands.
‘I’m right now,’ he said, finally, as another howl split the night. ‘Dog.’
‘Please let me take you home first.’
‘Are you good with dogs?’
‘Um … no.’
‘Then we both do the dog,’ he said. ‘Sure, I’m unsteady, so you do what I tell you. Exactly what I tell you. After the poker, it’s the least you can do.’
Was she out of her mind?
She was acting under orders.
Gabe was sitting in the shadows, watching, as she approached the dog with her hands full of steak. Upwind, according to Gabe’s directions, so he could smell the meat.
The dog was huge. Soaking wet, its coat was clinging to its skinny frame, so it looked almost like a small black horse.
Talk gently, Gabe had said. Soft, unthreatening.
So … ‘Hey, Horse, it’s okay,’ she told him. ‘Come out of the water and have some steak. Gabe’s gone to a lot of trouble to get it for you. The least you can do is eat it.’
Take one small step after another, Gabe had told her. Stop at the first hint of nervousness. Let the dog figure for himself that you’re not a threat.
‘Come on, boy. Hey, Horse, it’s okay. It’s fine. Come and tell me what your real name is.’
What was she doing, standing in the shallows with her hands full of raw meat? She’d tugged off her shoes but her jeans were soaked. To no avail. The dog was backing away, still twenty feet from her.
His coat was ragged, long and dripping. Fur was matted over his eyes.
He wasn’t coming near.
If Gabe wasn’t in the shadows watching she might have set the meat down on the sand and retreated.
But her landlord was expecting her to do this. He’d do it himself, only, despite what he told her, the thump on the head was making him nauseous. She knew it. He wasn’t letting her call for help but she knew it went against the grain to let her approach the dog. Especially when she was so bad at it.
‘Here, Horse. Here …’
A
