It was a look that even made him chuckle.
And imperceptibly his mood lightened. His night was messed up. More than his night. All he wanted was to be back at Ballystone, home with his dogs and his cattle, with this disaster behind him. He should be glowering himself.
Instead he found himself grinning at the red-headed firebrand in front of him, and searching for words to make him...what had she demanded? Man up?
‘Don’t take no notice of me, ma’am,’ he drawled, still grinning, searching for a voice that might match the description. ‘Yep, one of those tiddly little trees might fall but if it do, I’ll be out there catching it with one hand and using it as kindling for your stove. You need more kindling? Maybe I could go out and haul in that tiddler that just fell.’
Their eyes locked. Her defiance gave way. A dimple appeared, right by the corner of her mouth, and the laughter he’d tried for was reflected in her eyes.
‘What if I say yes?’ she ventured, a tiny chuckle preceding her words.
‘Your wish is my command,’ he said nobly and then looked out to where he could see the ruins of the vast tree smouldering and sparking across the driveway. ‘I might need a pair of heatproof gloves, though. That tree looks hot.’
And gloriously, she gave a full-on chuckle. It was a good laugh, an excellent laugh, and it produced a flash of insight. Looking at her, at the signs of strain around her eyes, at her pale face, he thought it’d been a while since this woman laughed.
It felt good...no, it felt excellent that he’d been able to make it happen.
‘You want help with Flossie?’ he asked, bringing reality back into the room, but the smile stayed behind her eyes as she answered.
‘Yes, please. I would. Do you know much about dogs?’
‘I’ve had dogs all my life.’ He hesitated, still trying to keep that smile on her face. ‘But is it manly to confess I faint at the sight of blood?’
‘You carried her in. There’s blood on your shirt.’ It was an accusation.
‘So I did,’ he said, sounding astounded. ‘And so there is, and I haven’t fainted at all. Let’s try this new world order out, then, shall we? Let’s get your Flossie bandaged before my manliness fades before my very eyes. Okay, Nurse, I require more light, hot water, soap, um...’
‘Bandages?’
‘Of course, bandages,’ he said and grinned and then looked down at Flossie, waiting patiently before the stove. ‘And do you have a little dog food? A water bowl? I don’t know how long it is since she’s eaten but I’m guessing that may be the first priority.’
It was the first priority. She headed for the fridge to find some meat but her head wasn’t entirely focussed on the first priority.
This man behind her was...beautiful.
CHAPTER TWO
ON CLOSE EXAMINATION Bryn decided Flossie’s leg was probably not broken. She’d lost a lot of fur. An abrasion ran the full length from hip to paw but she was passive as Bryn cleaned, and when he tentatively tested the joint she barely whimpered.
She did, though, react with extraordinary speed when Charlie produced a little chopped chicken. And then a little more. She wolfed it down and lay back, limp again, but with her eyes fixed adoringly on Charlie. Her one true love.
‘That’s hardly fair,’ Bryn objected. ‘I get the messy part and you get the kudos.’ He snipped off the bandage he’d been winding and looked at dog and girl. Charlie’s nose was almost touching Flossie’s. Her curls were tumbling over the dog’s head. Flossie looked as if she hadn’t seen a bath for months but Charlie seemed oblivious. Germs obviously weren’t worthy of a mention.
‘She could do with a wash,’ he said and Charlie looked at him with the scorn he obviously deserved.
‘You’re suggesting we undo that nice white bandage, take her away from the fire and dump her in a tub.’
Flossie was looking at him, too, and the reproach in both their eyes...
Once again he had that urge to chuckle. Which felt good. Bryn Morgan hadn’t chuckled in a long time.
He rubbed Flossie behind the ears. With the thunderstorm receding to a distant rumble, the complete doggy tribe was in the kitchen, nosing around with interest. A couple edged in for an ear-rub as well and suddenly he had a line-up.
‘You can’t pat one without patting all of them,’ Charlie said serenely and once again he heard that chuckle.
It was a gorgeous chuckle. It made him...
Um, not. He had enough complications on his plate without going there. What was in front of him now?
He was sitting on faded kitchen linoleum before an ancient range, vintage kerosene lamps throwing out inefficient light but enough to show the raggle-taggle line-up of misbegotten mutts waiting to have their ears rubbed. While a woman watched on and smiled. While outside...
Um...outside. You could buy a house for the price of the car he’d been driving. How was he going to explain that one?
‘I have a good, thick soup on the stove,’ Charlie said, interrupting thoughts of irate bankruptcy trustees and debt collectors and car salesmen who still hardly believed in his innocence.
He focussed on the dogs instead. Would there be jealousy if he spent say one and a half minutes on Dog One and then two on Dog Two? He decided not to risk it and checked his watch. Charlie noticed and smiled.
‘Do you have overnight gear in the car?’ she asked. ‘I could lend you an umbrella.’
That hauled him back to the practical. Overnight. Of course. He was genuinely stuck here. There were all sorts of problems he should be facing rather than how many seconds he’d been rubbing Dog One.
One of those was where his overnight gear was right now.
‘You have a spare bed?’ he asked, cautiously.
‘I do. I’ll put you at the back of the house to give you a little peace because the dogs sleep with me. Except Possum. She usually sleeps by the back door. She’s my guard dog but if there’s any more lightning she’ll be in with me. And Flossie will definitely be with me.’
‘You’ll sleep with Flossie?’ She really was filthy.
‘I’m sure it’s good, clean dirt,’ she said cheerfully. ‘And I can’t tell you how much I’ve worried about her. If I had half a kingdom I’d hand it to you right now.’
‘Do you have a spare toothbrush instead?’
She blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘I’m a bit averse to lightning,’ he confessed. ‘I’m happy for my overnight gear to stay where it is.’ Wherever that was. Under one enormous tree.
He should tell her, he thought, but she was pale enough already and the knowledge that he’d been two seconds from climbing into the car and being pancaked was something she didn’t need to hear about tonight.
He didn’t want to think about it tonight.
‘I do have a spare toothbrush,’ she told him. ‘I was at a conference in a gorgeous hotel...some time ago...’ In another life. Moving on... ‘The free toothbrush was so beautifully packaged I stuck it in my toilet bag. If you don’t mind pink sparkle, it’s yours.
‘You’d give up pink sparkle for me?’
‘I said you deserve half my kingdom,’ she said and she was suddenly solemn. ‘I mean it.’
‘Then let’s go with one toothbrush, one bowl of soup and a bed for the night,’ he told her. ‘I’ll ask for nothing more.’
‘Excellent,’ she said and shifted across to help with the ear scratching. ‘Soup and toothbrush and I don’t know about you but I’m thinking bed’s next on the agenda.’
Her arm brushed his and with the touch... Things changed.
The tension was suddenly almost palpable. Were both of them thinking the same?
‘In your dreams,’ she said, sounding breathless.
Of all the stupid... Were the tensions between them so obvious? And she caught it. ‘I didn’t mean...you know I didn’t
mean...’ she stammered.
‘I wasn’t thinking,’ he said, blankly, but he was lying.
‘Yes, you were.’
‘If I was, I shouldn’t have.’
‘I know nothing about you,’ she said and then caught herself. ‘But even if I did...’
‘I’m a farmer from the UK,’ he told her, feeling a sudden urge to explain himself. Get things on a solid basis. ‘Thirty-five years old, here on family business. I’m heading back to London tomorrow.’
‘It still doesn’t mean I’m going to bed with you.’
‘Of course it doesn’t.’ He managed a lopsided smile. What was it about the night that was making things so off kilter? ‘Maybe electrical storms act like oysters,’ he tried. ‘But we’re grown-ups now. We can handle it.’
‘Yeah,’ she said but sounded doubtful.
‘So let’s do introductions only,’ he said, trying to sound firm. ‘We’ll get this on a solid basis. Not as a preamble to anything else. Just to clear the air.’ More, he didn’t want to make it complicated. Keep it simple, he told himself, and did. ‘I’ve said I’m a farmer. I live a couple of miles from the Welsh border and I’ve been out here because my uncle’s...’
That brought him up. How to explain Thomas? He couldn’t. Not tonight. Hopefully not ever. He didn’t even want to think of Thomas. ‘My uncle’s been living locally for a while,’ he said at last. ‘He’s moved on, but I needed to deal with things he left behind. But it’s done now. What about you?’
She looked at him doubtfully, as if she wasn’t sure who he was and what on earth was happening. Which was pretty much how he was feeling. Tensions were zinging back and forth that had nothing to do with the lightning outside. Or maybe they did. Electricity did all sorts of weird things.
Like make him want...
Or not.
‘I’m an interior designer,’ she said at last. ‘I had... I have my own business in Melbourne. But right now I’m babysitting seven dogs, two cows and fifteen chooks, trying to find them homes. Waiting for a miracle, which is not going to happen. Meanwhile, Mr Morgan, I have things to do, and not a single one of them involves thinking inappropriate thoughts about anyone, much less you. So you get these ears scratched and I’ll get the soup on and we’ll go from there.’
‘And I’ll be gone in the morning.’
‘Of course you will,’ she said briskly. ‘Just as soon as I...’ And then she faltered. ‘I’m sorry. The tree...it’ll take money to get that cleared.’ But then her face cleared. ‘It’s okay though. As long as your car has decent clearance and the paddocks don’t flood too badly, we can cut through a few strands of fencing and get you out across the paddocks.’
Decent clearance...right.
‘We’ll worry about it in the morning,’ he said and she sighed.
‘That’s my mantra.’ She rose stiffly to her feet and looked down at him in the dim light. ‘That’s what I tell myself every night...worry about it in the morning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I didn’t have to?’
* * *
The first storm front passed. The wind and thunder and lightning eased. Bryn slept solidly, in a decent bed, a hundred times better than the hard-as-nails motel bed he’d stayed in for the last few days. Carlsbrook was a one-pub, one-general-store town and why his uncle had set up base there...
But he knew why. Carlsbrook was a far cry from the resort-style lifestyle his uncle favoured but it was a district of smallholdings, of farmers proud of their cattle. It also had an aging population and sparse and difficult Internet connection, a district often cut off from the outside world.
It was a population ripe for his uncle’s scumbag activities.
But tonight he hardly thought about his uncle. He slept deeply, in an ancient four-poster bed on the second floor, while the wind whirled around the ancient weatherboards and trees creaked and groaned. There was something about this house, this home... The dogs.
This woman...
It felt like home. It was a strange sensation. Home was a long way away, Ballystone Hall, hard on the Welsh border. It was a magnificent place to live, but he never slept well there. But here, in this bed with its tatty furnishings, he fell into a sleep that was almost dreamless.
He woke as the second storm front hit.
It hit with such force he felt the whole house shudder. The thunderclap was so loud, so long, that the shuddering was more than momentary, and the lightning that flashed across the sky made a mockery of the window drapes. It lit the whole house with an eerie light.
The second clap of thunder followed the first, even louder, even stronger.
And two seconds later a dog landed on his bed.
A second after that, five dogs followed.
He’d assumed they were sleeping with Charlie. They’d definitely abandoned ship though, or abandoned their mistress. The first one in, Stretch, was a sort of dachshund with a whiskery beard that said something had happened to impede an ancient pedigree lineage. He launched himself up onto the bed, and before Bryn could stop him he had his nose under the sheets, wriggling under the covers and heading down to Bryn’s toes.
The next five dogs were all for following suit, but by then Bryn was prepared and had the sheet up to his neck.
And then the next lightning sheet lit the room and he looked at the door and Charlie was standing in the doorway holding a lamp. She was wearing a faded lacy nightgown and bare feet. Her hair was tousled as if she’d had a restless sleep. Her eyes were huge in her face and in her arms she carried Flossie. Whose eyes were also huge.
‘I... I’ve been deserted,’ she whispered. ‘The dogs are scared.’
‘And so are you?’ He was trying not to smile. Dogs, woman, the whole situation... And a woman in a wispy nightgown with a lamp. But she did look truly scared.
‘If it hits the house...’
‘Have you seen the size of those trees outside? It’ll hit those first.’
Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Her face bleached even whiter. ‘And the trees will hit the house.’
‘Not on this side,’ he said, struggling to think of the layout of the yard outside. His room backed onto the service yard out the back. The red gums were mostly at the front and the house was big. ‘But it’s really unlikely. I think the biggest has already been hit.’
‘My bedroom’s at the front.’
She stood there, her arms full of dog, and her face...
‘Tell you what,’ he said nobly. ‘How about you sleep in here and I go sleep in your room?’
‘N...no.’
‘Charlie...’
‘I don’t like thunderstorms,’ she whispered and there was an understatement. It was a big enough call that it had him throwing back the covers—shoving dogs aside in the process—and heading for the doorway. Heading for Charlie.
And when he got there, as soon as she was close, he realised the fear wasn’t just on her face. She was trembling all over. The dog in her arms was trembling, too, and he realised why the dogs had abandoned Charlie en masse. They wanted a leader who wasn’t terrified, and Charlie’s face said she wanted exactly the same.
A pack leader. He could do this. It was kind of compulsory—that he moved to reassure. That he took the final steps and took her firmly into his arms.
And held.
Flossie was in there somewhere, sandwich squeezed, totally limp, totally passive. Bryn was wearing boxers and boxers only because his pjs were somewhere under a burning red gum. As he felt Flossie’s rough coat against his bare skin he felt the dog trembling.
As Charlie was trembling.
He had Charlie around the waist. Her head was tucked into the crook of his neck as if she wanted to be close, closer.
He held her tight. His fingers splayed the width of her waist and his chin rested on her hair and he just...held.
And the feeling of
home deepened, strengthened and something was happening...
Her hair was so thick, so soft, and it smelled of something citrusy, something gorgeous...
No, gorgeous was the adjective for the whole woman. For all of Charlie. That he be allowed to hold her...
She was totally still in his hold, yet not passive. She wanted to be held by him. There was a dog between them but he knew she wanted to be as close to him as she possibly could be.
Because she was scared. For no other reason. This was a frightened woman and he was comforting her.
But she was gorgeous.
There was that word again. It was as if the word itself had seeped into his head and was changing something inside him.
Gorgeous.
Another clap of thunder shook the house and he felt her flinch. If it was possible, dog and woman clung tighter.
From back in the bed there were six terrified whimpers.
What was a man to do?
‘Come to bed, sweetheart,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘You and me and seven dogs. We’ll ride out this mother of a storm together.’
‘Together...’ He felt the war within, the fear of the storm, the fear of the stranger.
‘We can do this,’ he said. ‘One bed, one man and one woman might be a problem. One bed, one man and one woman and seven dogs... I doubt there’s a problem at all.’
* * *
She slept and there were seven dogs between her body and his. There was one clap of thunder too much, though, and at some time in the night, even in her sleep, her primeval fears must have overridden every other consideration. She woke and she was spooned in a stranger’s arms. Totally spooned. She had her back to him, his arms were around her and her body was curved into his chest. His face was against her hair. She could feel his breathing.
She could feel everything else.
He was wearing boxers.
He wasn’t totally naked.
He might as well be.
Her nightgown was ancient lawn and flimsy, and she could feel his body against her. His chest was bare. His arms, muscled, strong, were holding her tight. Bare arms against bare arms. Skin against skin.
English Lord on Her Doorstep Page 3
