by Susan Napier
It was all his fault. If he hadn’t primed both women to resent each other with his manipulative behaviour, she and Melissa might even have been friends. But, of course, Drake wouldn’t want that to happen, she brooded—the two opposite sides of his life meeting instead of keeping to his rigid lines of demarcation…
And there was still one good reason to resent Melissa, she reminded herself. She was obviously great at her job. Her position with Drake was highly valued and secure, whereas Kate’s was already shaking on its flimsy foundations. Drake would have no trouble finding another lover, but first-class private editors were extremely thin on the ground.
Knowing that she was letting her fears for the future paralyse her will put Kate even more out of sorts. Procrastination had the effect of concentrating her mind on safely trivial concerns, like the fact that every time she set foot outside her door the three-legged dog would dash out of nowhere, drool a greeting over her toes, and hang about with a lugubrious expression until she fed it a few biscuits or a bowl of yoghurt. Or the elusive rodent whose phantom squeak was bothering her at odd times of the day, as well as spooking her at night. She had found an old mousetrap pushed to the back of the cupboard under the bench in the kitchen, still baited with a rock-hard lump of old cheese, but it looked a bit flimsy for the task. Judging by the volume of the squeak her unwanted house-guest was not your average house-mouse.
It occurred to her that she could ask Drake if he was any good at rat-catching. Perhaps it would be a face-saving way of re-approaching him, with the added bonus of being genuine, so if he rebuffed her with the name of a local exterminator she would still have gained something. And if he did offer to personally crawl under her house with a torch and a rat-trap, well…this time she would make sure she didn’t let her hormones run riot!
Her sudden craving for a nice piece of fish scotched the rat idea by suggesting a more mature approach. They did say the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach and according to her reading the waters around Oyster Beach were famous not only for oysters and a teeming variety of fish, but for particularly plump, juicy scallops.
Drake was a sucker for a scallop.
He had always declared his own cooking skills to be rudimentary, and since there was nothing so glamorous as a restaurant in the small community, and she doubted the take-away joint next to the gas station ran to Coquilles St Jacques, perhaps offering him a feast of his favourite meal made with delicacies fresh off the boat would create the right atmosphere to re-establish communication. If she also had to invite Melissa for the sake of politeness, well…so be it. It might even prove ultimately more informative than just having Drake by himself. After all, it was thanks to Melissa she was now in possession of a few more intriguing facts…about the way Drake worked, about the dyslexia that might very well be inherited by his son or daughter. She was rapidly coming to understand that even if Drake wasn’t emotionally involved in his baby’s birth and upbringing, there were lots of ways in which he would critically influence the child’s life.
Arriving back from the wharf with a bulging plastic bag of scallops, kindly dug from their shells by the grizzled fisherman for no extra charge, Kate swung into her driveway. Halfway back into the garage she remembered she would need mushrooms, too, for the Coquilles. She might have to go as far as the store for those, unless there were some available from roadside stalls on the way. She shifted the car into reverse and put an impatient foot on the accelerator. As she shot back down the driveway in a burst of revs she glimpsed a whisk of mottled grey out of the corner of her eye as it scooted behind the car. She instinctively swerved and jammed on her brakes but there was a jarring thud and high-pitched yelp as the rear wheel ran up onto something and bumped down again.
Kate was out of the car and kneeling beside the back tyre within seconds, scraping her hands on the decorative rocks that lined the drive as she braced herself to peer underneath. Wedging the mud-flap against black rubber tread was the ubiquitous three-legged dog, no longer irritating her with its foolish antics but lying lax, and ominously still. Grateful that the wheel wasn’t actually resting on the dog, Kate scrambled back into the idling car, and with shaking hands slowly drove it forward until she estimated it was well clear of the fallen victim.
This time when she knelt on the driveway beside the dog, she was relieved to see its side shuddering and its head lift briefly before thumping back onto the rough concrete with an accompanying low whine, the stump of the missing leg twitching pathetically, the ridiculous tail limp and streaked with a dark stain she feared could be blood.
‘Oh, God—’ Stricken with guilt, she tentatively touched the trembling coat, wary of causing any more damage to broken ribs. ‘It’s all right,’ she said shakily, daring a few, butterfly-light, pats. ‘You’ll be all right once we get you to the vet…he’ll fix you up…’
She knew there was no way she was going to be able to lift the heavy animal into the car by herself, nor did she have any idea if there was a vet anywhere close. Murmuring foolishly to the dog that she’d be back in a moment, she ran around into Drake’s paved front yard and hammered violently at his door. It seemed to take an age for him to open it and as soon as he did she gabbled wildly:
‘I’ve hit a dog with my car. I think it might be badly hurt, but I’m not sure. It’s just lying there, whimpering, and I don’t know who owns it or what to do. Is there a vet around here, or a doctor I could take it to for help?’ But in her panic she didn’t think to wait for an answer, she was running back, anxious not to leave the dog injured and alone. If it died she didn’t want it to die alone.
By the time she got there Drake was beside her, cursing under his breath when he saw the animal, crouching down and running his large hands over the hairy hide, running explorative fingers through the thick pelt, eliciting a feeble flicker of the tip of the foolish tail.
‘It was my fault—I mustn’t have looked properly,’ Kate agonised. ‘It ran behind the car when I was backing. Thank God it wasn’t a child!’ The thought made her feel ill. ‘I can’t have been going very fast but I think maybe it went under the wheel—’
‘Him,’ said Drake tersely, cutting off her semi-hysterical spate of words.
‘What?’
‘It’s a “him”, not an “it”. He’s obviously a male,’ he said, his face oddly desolate and blank of expression as he gently manipulated each of the three big paws and quieted the broken whines with an indistinct murmur.
‘Oh, I wasn’t sure…with all that hair,’ Kate quavered, grateful to cling to a steadying fact in a sea of wretched uncertainty. ‘He’s been hanging around ever since I got here, but I don’t know where he comes from. Do you think he’ll be OK?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I don’t know. I can’t feel anything broken but we need to get him to a vet as soon as possible in case he’s bleeding internally. There’s a clinic about thirty kilometres away, near Whitianga—it covers a big rural area as well as the town, but they always have more than one vet on call.’
Internal bleeding! Kate’s stomach twisted as Drake continued, ‘The only visible sign of trouble I can see is this graze on his muzzle.’ He withdrew his hand from the dog’s mouth and turned it over to show her the bright red splodge of blood on his palm. Kate’s senses swam and she turned away and was promptly sick on the edge of the grass.
‘Sorry…shock,’ she mumbled, taking the handkerchief he thrust at her and wiping her mouth.
‘You didn’t hit your head?’ he asked sharply, his face pale and set, his mouth grim.
He looked more shaken than she had ever seen him, fighting some inward battle for calm, and she realised he must be worrying about concussion. She put her hand over her belly, freshly aware of the fragility of life, and grateful for her habit of caution.
‘No, I was wearing my seat belt, of course, and anyway, as I said, I wasn’t going that fast—’
He shifted his crouch, leaning forward to slide his arms under the dog’s recumbent form, smoothly strai
ghtening his legs in order to rise to his full height without jolting. As Kate suspected, the big-boned dog was even heavier than he looked and the strain on Drake’s neck and shoulders was clearly visible as he adjusted his unwieldy burden against his chest. Kate winced at the pitiful yelp that the move elicited, and hurried to open the rear door of the car, but Drake was already moving in the opposite direction.
‘Where are you going?’ she cried, almost tripping as she hastened on his heels.
‘He’s obviously not going to fit in your car lying down. I have a four-wheel drive with very good suspension—he’ll be less likely to be cramped or jostled. Go and get my keys from Melissa, and tell her to call the vet—the number’s in the red index on my desk.’
By the time she had breathlessly returned Drake had the dog lying full length on a tartan rug on the wide back seat of his battered grey Land Rover. He grabbed the car keys from her hand and hefted himself up into the front seat.
‘Wait!’ said Kate, scrabbling at the back door handle as he gunned the ignition.
He frowned impatiently at her through the open window. ‘There’s no need for you to come. I know where I’m going—’
Kate’s shaking hands succeeded in getting the door wrenched open. ‘Of course I have to come,’ she said, shocked he would think otherwise. ‘I injured him; I’m responsible for him. I can’t just abandon him for others to look after!’
‘Nobody’s accusing you of abandoning him. You got help, that’s as much as you could do.’ He swore. ‘Damn it, I don’t have time to argue—’
‘So stop arguing and start driving,’ ordered Kate, climbing in behind him and shutting the door with a snap. She eased herself down on the bench seat by the dog’s head and squirmed her way into the seat belt, being careful not to entangle the animal.
‘What if something happened on the way?’ she pointed out as Drake pulled onto the road. ‘You have to concentrate on your driving. The poor thing is probably scared out of its wits as well as being in pain. He could hurt himself again if he starts to panic. He might not be used to travelling in a car.’ Her tight voice dropped into a croon. ‘Someone’s got to be here to hold your paw, don’t they, boy?’
The dog was lying on its side, and its panting breath moistened her bare thigh below her khaki shorts. She fondled a floppy ear and brushed the woolly strands of fur away from the single visible eye, which glistened dolefully, making her feel even more guilty. For once she was grateful when he gave her leg a disgustingly gooey swipe.
‘Oh! He licked me. Do you think that’s a good sign?’ she said hopefully.
‘Licking you is always a sign that something good’s about to happen,’ came the mocking response.
Kate’s glare drilled into the back of his head above the headrest. ‘How can you make jokes at a time like this?’
‘What better time to try and deflect thoughts of doom and gloom?’ he said harshly. ‘Humour in the face of adversity is a very useful human defence mechanism.’
Of course it was, and particularly so for Drake, she realised. The dry wit, flirtatious wordplay and entertaining anecdotes with which he avoided intrusive questions were the perfect distraction from his real feelings. Didn’t she do exactly the same thing when trying to shield herself from caring too much?
She looked over at his hands on the wheel, and noticed them shifting with a rapidity and frequency that wasn’t necessary for the control of the vehicle. He was fighting frustration, charged with adrenalin-fuelled urgency that he had to control for the sake of driving them safely on the narrow, winding roads.
She felt a movement against her leg, the dog trying valiantly to shift its heavy head into her lap, as if attempting to comfort her with its trusting forgiveness. She squirmed closer so that she could help him lift his grazed muzzle across her thigh.
In between croonings she speculated about his ownership, undeterred by Drake’s clipped responses.
‘I wonder who owns him. Do you know? A dog with three legs…he must be well-known in the neighbourhood—’
‘He certainly strays around—’
Kate was quick to cut him off. ‘He’s not a stray! Are you, boy?’ she soothed the dog. ‘He’s got a collar, but every time I try to twist it around to look for the tag, he cringes. He has to belong to someone. Someone who doesn’t look after you properly, eh, boy? I don’t think he can be fed very much, he’s always pestering me for titbits—’
‘If you bend over him in that purple bikini I can understand why.’
She met his eyes in the rear-vision mirror above the dash. ‘Drake! I’m being serious. He always seems to be ravenous.’
‘He’s obviously a hardened scrounger.’ His eyes flicked carelessly back to the road.
‘Don’t say that; he can hear you!’ said Kate, putting a hand over the dog’s ear. ‘I told you he has a collar. If his owner’s not caring properly for him he’s got no choice but to scavenge. He can’t very well hunt for himself with only three legs.’
‘He seems to have managed to track down your bleeding heart.’
She frowned at his apparent callousness. ‘His coat seems very messy,’ she said, picking out a burr. ‘He could do with a brush.’
He lifted his chin to bring the dog into his line of sight. ‘Probably been rolling in the dirt. He’s a mutt, not a show-pooch.’
‘I wonder if he’s ever groomed? Owners like that should be shot!’
‘I thought you were a proponent of non-violence?’ His narrowed eyes met hers for a brief challenge before swerving away again.
‘It’s just a turn of phrase,’ she said impatiently. ‘Pet owners have a responsibility.’
‘He’s more like a nuisance than a pet.’
Now she was truly shocked. ‘It’s not his fault. He shouldn’t be allowed to wander.’
‘Maybe he needs to roam.’
Kate gritted her teeth at his stubborn refusal to share her sensible concerns. How could she love such a hard-hearted man? And how could such a hard-hearted man ever make room in his petrified organ for the love of a child? She leaned across the dog’s head, her tee-shirt tickling its nose into a messy snuffle. ‘But it’s dangerous—’
‘This is the countryside; risks are assessed differently in remote areas,’ he said as she quickly leaned back again. ‘People here don’t keep their dogs penned up.’
‘But he could at least be kept in a fenced yard—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake—get real!’ He looked daggers at her in the mirror. ‘He hates being shut in. He goes berserk if you try to tie him up or keep him behind the fence; he nearly kills himself trying to get loose.’
Kate’s hands stilled their restless stroking, her eyes widening as the certainty hit her like a freight train.
‘He belongs to you!’
His eyes whipped back to the road. ‘He’s a stray.’
It all came together. The shocked curse. The grim examination. Having the vet’s phone number handy on his desk. And, most telling of all, the hard carapace of flinty self-control.
‘Maybe he was a stray, once. But he’s your dog now, isn’t he?’
‘Nobody wanted a hopeless mongrel like him.’ He shrugged. ‘He would have been put down.’
She took that as a yes. ‘Because he only had three legs?’
‘He had all four when he first landed on my doorstep,’ he said drily. ‘He lost his back leg when he practically shredded it ripping his way through a chain-link dog-fence I put up to keep him “safe”.’ He glanced back just long enough to see her wince. ‘Which of course only made him even more unattractive to your average dog-lover who either wants a purebred or something useful or cute.’
‘So when did you adopt him?’
‘I didn’t adopt him.’ He sounded as if she had accused him of an iniquity. The muscles at the back of his neck stiffened. ‘The vet says he was probably abused in a confined space as a pup—which makes him very much of an outside dog. I’ve never owned an animal, but said I’d let him hang around
at my place until something could be arranged that didn’t involve a lethal injection. That was five years ago, just after I built the house. Unfortunately no one ever answered the ads, and I’m still stuck with him.’
And still deep in denial about it!
He had built the house with the proceeds of that first book, she realised. Prior to that he had been a wanderer, spending his money as he went. But as soon as he’d had the means, he had made a place for himself, and, although he might categorise it purely as a place to write, a temporary refuge, it was more than that—it was home. He had been secretly putting down roots.
‘What happens to him when you go away?’ she asked curiously. ‘If he hates being shut up he obviously can’t go into a kennel.’
‘I usually drop him off with a mate of the vet’s, who has a lifestyle block up in the hills. In the shorter term I pay a local to come and live in the house,’ he admitted gruffly. In other words he firmly kept a foot in both camps—the dog owner and the rootless wanderer. And, of course, he also had his town mistress on a completely separate string!
‘Doesn’t he pine?’
‘Not noticeably. He likes company but he’s not particular. He doesn’t like to be owned. Mostly he needs the freedom to come and go.’
He could be talking about himself, thought Kate, struck by the stunning psychological similarity. They both had attachment issues. She had often wondered about Drake’s family background, but he had never responded to her tentative comments, and she knew only the vague details—that he had been orphaned as a teenager by the death of his mother, and had no contact with his father. She suspected abuse, but had known better than to ask.
She did have one more question, however, that did urgently require an answer: ‘So what’s his name?’
‘He didn’t come with a birth certificate.’
‘You must have given him a proper name.’
‘Since he never comes when I call him, it seems a bit pointless.’
