by Nikki Logan
She lifted the first pup out of the sack and tucked it close to her gown with her gloved hand. She effortlessly delivered the vaccine into its rump with the other. With the baggy skin so typical of puppies, and the stoic nature so typical of its species, it barely blinked at the small sting. She examined its rear end to determine gender, and then sat the wide-eyed, blinking pup in the scales and got a start weight. Finally she caught up a scruff of neck skin and injected the tiny microchip in between the muscle and skin, then slipped the animal straight back into the bag with its litter-mates.
While the pups consoled each other, she scrawled a scientific kind of shorthand onto her notepad. Identification, gender, microchip number and identifying features.
Then it was on to pup number two.
‘Gabe’s going to be very sorry he missed this,’ she said softly to the second pup. ‘He really wants you guys to be strong and healthy. He’s worked so hard to make sure you all make it to adulthood.’ She flipped the surprised animal over and checked its genitals. A boy. ‘You’ll like Gabe. Everyone does. He’s worked with all your wild cousins...’ Jab with the vaccination. Quick physical check for condition, then onto the scales. ‘You couldn’t have someone more dedicated or determined to help save your species looking after you.’
She slipped the second pup back in with its siblings and went for the third, glancing at the monitor again in between.
‘He’s not always the easiest to understand,’ she murmured, scanning number three with the chip-reader to make sure she hadn’t already handled it. ‘Maybe because he’s French, or maybe just because he’s a man. We think very differently, human males and human females...’ Vaccine. Weight. Microchip. And the whole time she kept up her gentle monologue. ‘It’s kind of our thing. But we all keep trying because we all want to find the right mate for us. Just like your mum and dad did...’
She returned the third pup to the sack, scribbled down its identifying features and then slid the stinky glove back on. ‘Not that I’m saying he’s meant to be my mate,’ she said to the unconcerned pups as she lifted them carefully back into the den, ‘and not because I believe love is for ever...’
She paused, frowned, and then reached for three new pups.
‘Love doesn’t last. I learned that the hard way,’ she told the bag of puppies as she prepared three new vaccines and three sets of microchip injections. The bag wriggled and shifted on the table, but the pups stayed quiet in their warm, dark place. Good survival instincts. She checked the monitor again. Mjawi still slept.
‘My parents split up after twenty years together. Turns out they only stayed together for me. All that unhappiness for me.’ She carefully separated pup number four, and brought it out of the bag. ‘Makes a girl wonder what else in my life they were faking.’ She checked its underside. ‘You get it; you’re a girl. Imagine your whole life being based on a lie.’ Both injections, and onto the scales.
‘Is it any wonder I just want to do well here? Make a future for myself? To have something that’s real and mine and won’t change every five minutes. Huh?’
The tiny pup blinked its enormous black eyes at her, as though trying to empathise.
‘Yeah, you get it.’ She slid the female pup back into the bag and separated the next one. ‘Gabe thinks it’s personal,’ she confessed to it, ‘but it’s not. If I was going to let myself love someone it would totally be him. He’s gorgeous, compassionate, bright, driven. I don’t care what his family does, or who they are. I just like him for him.’ Onto the scales. ‘Seriously like him.’ Her thumb caressed the soft space between the pup’s ears and she stared at the curious compassionate face tipped up at her. Its innocence made her heart squeeze. And it made her confess aloud what she’d not even let herself acknowledge internally. ‘Love him, really.’
A ton of long-carried emotional pressure floated off her burdened back.
She loved Gabe.
Despite everything she believed, she’d gone and let herself actually fall in love with him. A year ago, probably. She’d just written the pain off as bitterness. And believed her own lies.
The little pup in her hands sighed, like a rotund little barometer of her mood.
‘Not that it matters,’ she said tightly, finishing it up and returning it to the sack, ‘because I can’t let anything happen between us. I can’t risk that.’
Pup number six was already entranced by her voice and seemed entirely happy to pick up her monologue where the previous one had left it. She checked its gender first. ‘You’ll get to see him every day, and you’re female so I know you’ll be as much a sucker for those gorgeous eyes and French accent as I am. Let me give you a tip right now. He has tough standards for others—which I think is a good thing; it makes you want to do well to please him. But he has even tougher ones for himself. It’s because of his family; seems like they’re a bit heavy on expectation and light on acceptance.’
Something about finally admitting her true feelings for Gabe—even if only to a sack full of wild puppies—had opened up a tidal gate of awareness. She felt as if she was finally seeing him for the man he really was.
Too late.
Pup number six squeaked when she injected the microchip, and Ingrid’s eyes flew to the monitor. Out in the exhibit Mjawi lifted her head for an eternity between heartbeats, but then flopped back down, relaxed. Ingrid’s thumb stroked the pup back into silence.
‘So,’ she said, tumbling two of the three back into the den and collecting up the final two into the sack with their sibling. ‘Gabe really needs someone to love him for exactly who he is—to convince him how amazing his dedication and determination are. And that can’t be me,’ she told pup number seven. He really seemed to empathise. ‘So I have to hope it will be someone else. Even if that’s hard to watch.’ Gentle shot in the haunches. Quick weighing on the scales. ‘And it will be.’
She treated the final pup. It sat happily in her hands, confident and unafraid, and she wondered if it was the same one she’d seen emerge briefly from the den before Mjawi shooed it back inside days earlier. It had the hallmarks of a leader.
‘Well, there you go, little one,’ she whispered, putting it back into the den with its siblings and feeling inexplicably sad. ‘This has been the most amazing way to spend Christmas, and even though I won’t see you again up close like this I want you to know that I’ll remember it. For ever.’
And not just because of them.
She reached past them and retrieved her mangled mobile phone. Then she gave them one final look, turned off her head-lamp, swung the den door closed and locked it securely, and released a long, aching breath.
Discovering love and having an experience like that all in the same half-hour... She rested her forehead on the cold steel and let the cool of the hatch door soak into her warm cheeks.
‘You rang?’
She spun at the deep, soft voice. Gabe stood leaning on the doorframe she’d used just hours ago to hold her up. How had he known to come? More importantly...how long had he been there?
‘The pups—’
‘I know,’ he murmured, holding up his phone. ‘You rang me.’
Confusion boiled in her mind, and though she heard the words it was moments before she could make sense of them.
‘I didn’t.’
‘Someone did.’
She glanced down at the ruined phone in her hand. Its little screen glowed with half-life and displayed a number on its screen. Gabe’s number.
The pups—had one of them sat on the recall button?
Her throat tightened horribly. ‘Could you hear?’
His gaze was steady. ‘Enough to know you needed me.’
She let her breath out carefully. Okay...so he’d only heard some of it.
But then he stepped into the little room. ‘Enough to know you love me.’
Agon
y washed through her in a hot rush and her throat closed right over. He’d heard it all.
‘I suppose it never occurred to you to stop listening?’ she croaked.
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘It was just...conversation. To keep the pups calm. I would have said anything.’
He stepped in again. ‘But you didn’t say just anything. You talked about me.’
‘I...’ But what could she say that wouldn’t make it worse? ‘Can we just discuss the pups, please?’
He nodded, but his eyes stayed locked on hers. ‘I want to talk about the fact you love me first.’
Oh, God...
He stepped in again, and Ingrid stumbled backwards.
‘You pushed me away to protect yourself,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I told you I didn’t want a relationship.’
‘You didn’t tell me why. You didn’t tell me how much your parents’ divorce affected you.’
Old pain flared up. ‘I’m an adult. I’m not supposed to be affected by it. I’m supposed to understand it.’
‘You’re their child first and an adult second.’
His empathy almost undid her. ‘Did they think it was going to hurt me less if they waited until I left home?’ she whispered.
‘They probably did.’
‘They have no idea how it hurt me.’
‘Then tell them.’
Her pain morphed into a razor-sharp laugh. ‘I can’t tell them.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’ll be devastated.’
‘So instead you carry it alone—all that hurt and sorrow? Yours to bear?’
‘They’ll think I hate them.’
‘Do you?’
Would it burn this much if she hated them? Or did it only ache because she didn’t? Like with Gabe.
‘Love hurts,’ she blurted.
His eyes softened and he stepped right up to her, caressed her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not supposed to.’
‘If they didn’t love each other then how do I know they loved me? What if they were faking that, too?’
‘You’re their daughter. Of course they love you.’
She threw her hands up. ‘I believed they loved each other.’
He stared at her long and hard. Nodded. ‘From what you’ve told me they cared enough to let each other go with respect. Freeing them up to find true love.’
She stared at him, his handsome features shifting and welling through the tears in her eyes. ‘How can they trust what they’ve found is love?’
‘How can they?’ He cocked his head. ‘Or how can you?’
Her breath halted.
His murmur was lower. ‘You did break it off with me a year ago because I was staying, didn’t you?’
She pressed her lips together. Nothing she said now could be good.
‘But not because I wasn’t good enough, which is what I feared.’ His fingers slid round to rest on her nape. ‘You broke it off because I was good enough. And that scared you.’
‘No...’
‘Me leaving meant you could indulge the connection between us and then weep as I headed for the airport a few weeks later.’
No...
‘But me staying... That wasn’t an option—because that would require you to take a risk.’
Realisation rushed through her.
‘What if we made a mistake?’ she breathed. ‘Like my parents? Discovering five years into their relationship that they’d made the wrong choice and then sticking it out for another decade and a half because they had to.’
‘Because they chose to. They wanted to protect you.’
‘Then they should have stayed together!’ The words burst out of some place way deep down inside. Confused anger rushed through her veins. She pulled away from Gabe’s gentle touch. ‘I just wanted them to love each other.’
‘And I want my parents to love me differently. But we can’t make it so. They’re not perfect just because they’re parents.’
‘Love is supposed to be for ever,’ she said, much softer now.
‘Oui. It is.’ He stroked her hair back from her face. ‘But it’s not faultless, and it’s not easy. And staying together when the love has gone only destroys you, I think. Or those around you.’
She blinked up at him.
‘My parents don’t have the strength of character to release each other,’ he said. ‘To be free to find true happiness instead of slowly dying inside. It’ll take them their whole lives to realise, and by then it will be too late. And my brothers might have gone with them.’ He lifted his eyes back to her. ‘So if anyone should question love, it’s me.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘I celebrate love. I believe in love.’ His eyes darkened. ‘I want love.’
Her breath grew choppy. ‘Why?’
‘Because what else is there—ultimately—when the money and the property and the air and water are all gone? What will we have to make us human if not love?’
Her laugh was watery. ‘God, that’s a dismal image. Is it supposed to make me feel better?’
He took her hands in his. ‘It is. Because when we’re old and grey and have spent every penny we have on living a life that enriches us, instead of hoarding it so we can feel rich, I will hold you in my arms and shield you from any more hurt or disappointment or loss, because that is what love is supposed to do.’
Her heart swelled up to constrict her air. She stared up at him. ‘You love me?’
‘Ingrid, you are more a part of me after our handful of hours together than the people I grew up with. I have a void inside me that is shaped just like you. I just didn’t recognise the shape until I met you.’
Words simply would not come. But that was okay because Gabe was in full French romantic flight and he filled the silence for her.
‘And every woman I dined with in the past year that wasn’t you, every conversation I had that wasn’t with you, every morning I woke up without you there, just made that void seem larger and more obvious.’
But naming her fear hadn’t dispelled it. She took a tight breath. ‘What if it doesn’t work out?’
A dozen new creases appeared in his brow. ‘How would we be any worse off?’
She shook her head. ‘I used to be love’s greatest champion.’ Back in the days of pink bedspreads and blissful ignorance and teen movies.
He scooped her hands into his. ‘Let me champion it for you. You trusted me with your life in that tunnel. Won’t you trust me with your heart?’
Trust.
Was that what this was all about? Trusting him? Trusting love? Was there anyone on this planet she had more faith in?
‘Is it weird to be calling it love after just one week?’ She threw up her final, desperate obstacle. After this there was nothing left.
Except potential so bright she dared not look at it.
He shrugged in that adorable French way of his. ‘One year, one month and one week. I never stopped watching you, thinking about you. I never stopped loving you. Even if I didn’t know that I’d started.’
‘Never?’
He stepped closer. ‘Jamais.’
‘What would have happened if I hadn’t taken Cara’s Christmas shifts?’ she breathed.
He frowned. ‘I’d like to think I would have come to you anyway. But I believed you’d walked away because I wasn’t good enough. And until this week I concurred.’
‘Oh, Gabe, you are so much better than me.’
He dipped his head. ‘We’ll have to agree to disagree.’
‘Or you can let me spend the next twelve months proving you’re wrong.’ She pressed her lips against his fingers.
‘I won’t ever agree that you’re anythin
g but perfect.’
‘Hardly.’
He chuckled. ‘Look at that. Our first fight.’ Then he pulled her up hard against the warmth of his body. ‘Some Christmas, non?’
She nodded and her cheek rubbed on his shirt. ‘I missed it. But I was only hurting myself, really.’ And probably her parents, without meaning to. ‘Maybe we can do Christmas properly next year?’
‘A tree? Gifts? Carols?’
She nodded. ‘Family. Joy. Togetherness.’
He sighed. ‘The Christmas holidays have always been a difficult time for me. Now they will always be the time that the woman I love came back to me.’
‘I’ll remind you of that every year.’
‘I hope so. Until we’re grey and old.’
She tipped her head up. ‘And poor?’
‘And rich,’ he said, lowering his lips to hers again. ‘With love.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
New Year’s Eve
INGRID WENT HOME as soon as her shift was over, but this time it wasn’t to avoid Gabe or to hide from him. It was to hurry back to him. Suddenly the best part of leaving was returning.
She knew she couldn’t sit in front of the man she loved saturated with the rank smell of wild dog puppies and smeared with their dirt, and she feared she couldn’t sit with him all through the day as their colleagues came and went and not be able to touch him again.
But while her shift should have started at eight p.m., her day—her new life—began instead. At a time when the last zoo staff had gone home and she could be alone with Gabe. She traded in her T-shirt and jeans for a soft skirt and blouse—casual enough to be appropriate, but feminine enough to be special. It had been a long, long time since she’d felt anything but beige.
Since she’d managed to check, vaccinate and microchip all eight pups the night before, Gabe had stayed on to finish voluntarily, going over her data and working on his study. But she wasn’t about to let him leave that room without celebrating New Year’s Eve since they’d both missed Christmas entirely.
She swung around the corner and nudged the door of the monitoring room with her basket.
Gabe tipped his head back in his seated position in front of the monitors, then tossed his notepad aside and swung to his feet as soon as he saw it was her. The concentration lines between his brows lifted and cleared, and the focus in his eyes was replaced with a different kind of interest.
