jacket back to the UK...it was a good one but not that good. ‘It’s fine,’ he told her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right here? Your grandmother...’
‘I’m fine.’ She straightened and reached out and took his hand, shaking it with a firmness that told him this was a woman of decision. ‘You’ve been fabulous, Mr Morgan, but there’s nothing more you can do. I won’t keep you any more.’
Great. He could step away, head back to the car. He could even make it to the airport in time.
‘You’re sure you’ll be okay?’
‘I don’t think there’s anything more you can do.’ Which wasn’t quite answering the question, but he agreed with her. The dog’s tail was wagging, feebly but with every indication that warmth and food and medical care to her leg would see her recover. There was nothing more he could do, and he had a plane to catch.
‘I’ll see myself out, then.’
‘Thank you so much.’
The hand clasping his... It was a clasp of friendship and gratitude and it made him feel...
Like he hadn’t felt for a very long time. Not since he’d left home.
Maybe not even then.
He looked down at her, at her tumbled curls, at her face, devoid of make-up, flushed now with the warmth of the fire, her brown eyes direct and clear. She was smiling at him. She was half a head shorter than he was.
She made him feel...
He didn’t have time to feel. He had a plane to catch.
‘Good luck,’ he told her, and on impulse he grabbed a pen lying on the table and wrote his name and email address on a pad that was clearly used for shopping lists. ‘Will you let me know how things go? And if there are any veterinarian bills... I hit her. I’m more than happy to cover them.’
Something flashed over her face that might have been relief but was quickly squashed. ‘It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘But you will let me know.’ He took her hand again. It seemed strangely imperative that he didn’t release it until he had her agreement. To head off and not hear anything seemed the pits.
‘I will let you know,’ she said and tugged her hand away and that was that.
He turned and headed back out into the night.
* * *
Why had it been so hard to tug her hand back?
It was the dark, she told herself. Plus the storm. Plus the fact that she had an injured dog on her hands and she wasn’t as sure of treating her as she’d told the guy... Bryn.
Anyone would want company on such a night, she told herself, but there was a blatant, very female part of her that told her that what she was feeling was more than that.
The guy was gorgeous. More than gorgeous. He was tall, clean-shaven, dark hair, a ripped and tanned body, wearing good chinos and a quality shirt open at the throat. His voice had been lovely, deep, gravelly, English, with just a hint of an accent that might have been...something? Welsh, maybe. That’d fit with his name. Bryn. Nice name.
He’d been carrying her beloved Flossie with tenderness. There was enough in all those things to make her think...hormonal stuff, and he’d looked at her with such concern... He’d smiled, a lopsided smile that said it was sensible to leave but he didn’t like leaving her alone.
The smile behind those dark, deep-set eyes was enough to make a girl’s toes curl.
But men who made Charlie’s toes curl had no place in her life. She’d been down that road, and never again. Besides, a woman had other things to do than stand here and feel her toes curl. Bryn was heading out of her life, and she had an injured dog to attend to.
But life had other plans.
She turned back and stooped over Flossie just as a vast sheet of lightning made the windows flash with almost supernatural light. There was a fearful crash, thunder and lightning hitting almost simultaneously. And then...extending into the night...something more. A splintering crash of timber.
There was a moment’s pause, and then something crashed down, so hard the house shook, and her feet trembled under her. Every light went out. The dogs came flying from wherever they’d been and huddled in a terrified mass around her legs. She knelt and gathered as many of them into her arms as she could.
It must be a tree, she told herself. One of the giant red gums in the driveway must have come down. And then she thought... Bryn. Dear God, Bryn... He was out in that. Almost before the thought hit, she was on her feet, shoving the dogs aside, heading through the darkness to the outside door...
And just as she reached it, it swung open.
‘Charlie?’
Light was flickering through the doorway, lighting his silhouette. A tree on fire? She couldn’t see enough to make out his features, but she could see his form and she could hear.
‘Bryn...’ She backed away, almost in fright, and the dogs gathered again around her legs. She stooped to hug them again, more to give herself time to recover than to comfort them. For what she really wanted was to hug the man in the doorway. For an awful moment she’d had visions of him...
Don’t go there. The vision had been so appalling it still had her shaking.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said and he sounded it. ‘But there’s now a tree across the driveway.’
‘Are you okay?’ Her voice wasn’t working right. ‘You’re not hurt?’
‘Not a scratch.’ He said it surely, strongly, as if he realised how scared she must have been. ‘But I appear to be stuck. Unless there’s another road out? I’m so sorry.’
For heaven’s sake... He’d brought her dog home. He’d almost been killed by one of the trees she’d told her grandmother over and over were too close to the house. And he was apologising?
‘There’s no way out while it’s pouring,’ she told him. ‘I...the paddocks will be flooding. And those trees...red gums...they’re sometimes called widow makers.’
She caught a decent sight of him as the next flash of lightning lit the sky. He was wet, she noticed. He must have been wet before this. She’d been too caught up with Flossie to notice anything except how...
Um...she wasn’t going there.
In fact she was having trouble going anywhere. She was having trouble getting her thoughts to line up in any sort of order.
‘Widow makers?’ he queried, helpfully, and she struggled to pull herself together. She rose and faced him, or she faced the shadow of him. Every light was gone but the lightning was so continuous she could make him out.
‘That’s what they’re called. The trees. River red gums. They’re notorious. They drop branches, often on hot, windless days, when it’s least expected. They look beautiful and shady and people camp under them.’
‘Or
