So, of course, rather than waiting by the front door at one o’clock, she was lost in Lecture Two when the buzzer buzzed.
Shoving her laptop into its case, she slung it over her shoulder, grabbed the small bag with her belongings, and her handbag, and hit the button to allow Mac and Mike entrance to the lobby. ‘I’ll be right down,’ she said into the intercom, and raced down the stairs, knowing it would be faster than taking the elevator.
Flushed from her downward dash, she arrived in the lobby to find Mike in trouble again, this time from a tenant Clancy didn’t know, a woman who’d emerged from the elevator with a Siamese cat on a lead.
‘He likes cats,’ Mac was saying to the woman, who’d grabbed her pet from beneath Mike’s smiling face and was glowering at Mac.
‘Dogs are not allowed in this building,’ the woman said, and she stalked out the door.
Mike let her go, discovering Clancy instead and rushing up to her to greet her with his front paws on her chest, so with the weight of her baggage she’d have gone flying if Mac hadn’t slung his arm around her to steady her.
The area of skin beneath the clothes that touched that arm prickled with awareness, then the arm dropped away, while Clancy battled an urge to run straight back up the stairs.
Control!
‘Does he cause trouble wherever he goes?’ she asked, determined to ignore her reactions to the man, and looking at Mike, who was now sitting in front of her doing a perfect dog act.
‘Everywhere!’ Mac said in a despairing voice, but Clancy heard the smile behind the words and understood that Mac loved the silly animal, just as Great-Aunt Hester must have.
Great-Aunt Hester—just thinking about the woman gave Clancy a weird sensation in her stomach.
She had family! Real family! Or at least she had done …
Of course, she’d always known her mother had family, somewhere down south, maybe in Victoria, but her mother’s insistence that the fellow members of the commune were the only family she wanted or needed had meant Clancy had never known any of them. Which, by and large, had been okay.
Mac had taken her belongings and she was following him out the front door towards an ancient, battered, rusting four-wheel drive while she considered all of this. But as he stowed her bags in the back and opened the rear door for Mike, Clancy realised there was one question she hadn’t asked and probably should have.
With her hand on the doorhandle, she turned to Mac.
‘How did you find me?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said, with a grin that seemed to light up whatever little corner of the world he was currently inhabiting. ‘Hester found you. I have a feeling she had some kind of agent look into it.’
‘An agent? You mean a private detective? She had someone following me?’
The grin turned into a laugh so the dark eyes sparkled with devilment.
‘I very much doubt you were followed,’ he assured her, taking her hand off the doorhandle and opening it for her. ‘As far as I know, most things can be discovered just sitting in an office using a computer. All births are registered, you’d be on a voting register, there’d be school and university records, and a smart agent could probably even find out which dentist you went to.’
Clancy had ducked past him to get into the car, but turned back to face him, horrified by what he was saying yet knowing it was probably true.
‘You think that’s what happened?’
‘Almost sure of it,’ Mac said, then he touched her cheek. ‘We’re all in the same boat, about as anonymous as a pop star. Every time you go for a job, someone is finding out all this stuff about you.’
Clancy wanted to argue, but she knew everything he’d said was true, no matter how uncomfortable it might make her feel. So now she had to wonder just how much this ‘agent’ Mac spoke of had dug up. And was the information floating around the house where Mac now lived alone—apart from Mike?
Did it matter?
Deciding it didn’t, she finally climbed into the car. She was going out to see the house. Yes, she’d probably see Annabelle, but that was okay, they’d been quite good friends through university, and beyond all that a little flutter of excitement threading along her nerves reminded her she was finally going to see the place called Carnock, and maybe, just maybe, find out a little more about her father.
Unfortunately, as Mac got behind the wheel and the flutter along her nerves grew stronger, she had to wonder if it was the thought of seeing Carnock causing it, or this man she didn’t know.
She’d had flutters aplenty with James in the beginning, although flutters seemed to die natural deaths as a relationship progressed, for which she’d been profoundly grateful. She had to hope, if Mac was causing the flutters, that they would also die away when a relationship didn’t exist.
Mac was driving out through the inner suburbs, explaining that he flew in and out of Archerfield, where he kept this vehicle for his convenience when he was in Brisbane.
‘There are any number of old cars like this around an airfield. A lot of pilots are tinkerers, playing with their planes and doing up old cars—the two go together. It’s fortunate for me as there’s an old man out there who loves this vehicle, so although it looks as if it’s coming apart at the seams, he keeps it in good running order for me.’
‘And are you a tinkering pilot?’ Clancy asked.
‘Definitely not. I have no idea what goes on inside any engine, although I had to learn enough about the plane to be able to see anything that was obviously wrong with it. But we’ve a good mechanic in Carnock and I have it serviced down here every year. I just wanted to be able to get about, and in the bush a small plane’s the answer.’
The conversation lagged, and although the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, Clancy felt obliged to break it.
Or it may have been because she liked Mac’s voice, the rich chocolate of it, that she asked, ‘And your involvement with Angel Flight?’
‘Ah,’ Mac said, ‘that’s one great charity. Very few overheads, most of the work done by volunteers, and it’s one thing that is of real benefit to country people all over Australia. You know about it?’
He turned towards her and Clancy smiled, glad she could answer honestly.
‘I’ve supported it as a charity for years and I’m a registered “earth angel”, but only as a hospital visitor. Having a full-time job and not having a car means I can’t do hospital transfers, but when people have to stay down for any length of time, I’m put in touch with them.’
‘So we have something in common apart from Hester,’ Mac said, and when he smiled she knew the flutters were Mac-generated, although the name Carnock still gave her a thrill when she whispered it in her mind.
Thrills—flutters—what was happening to calm, sensible, in-control Willow Cloud Clancy? The girl who’d fled the drifting, laid-back, disorganised life of the commune to build a normal, stable life for herself—planned
