Nikki and the Lone Wolf (7 page)

 

Gabe slipped underwater, checked the propeller and inspected the hull. Minutely. It was the best checked hull in the fleet. Then he went back to mending cray-pots. By nine he was the only person in the harbour.

The rest of his boats were out, and he was stuck on dry land. Because of Nikki.

What was she about, removing his alarm? Telling Hattie to go without him?

He'd needed to sleep, he conceded. His head still ached.

Because she'd hit him.

It was an accident. She meant no harm.

She meant to keep the dog. Horse.

It was a stupid name for a dog. A dog needed a bit of dignity.

Dignity.

She'd have to get that fur unmatted, he thought, and getting the tangles out of that neglected coat was a huge job. Did she know what she was letting herself in for?

It was nothing to do with him. Nothing! He wasn't going near.

She was living right next door to him. With her dog who needed detangling.

He'd yelled at her. Because she'd picked up a few rocks.

He'd behaved appallingly.

Why?

He knew why. And it wasn't the memory of his mother. It wasn't the dog. It was more.

It couldn't be more. He didn't want more, and more wasn't going to happen.

It was dark. Time to head home.

Maybe he could take Jem's old brushes across to her. A peace offering.

That wasn't more. It was sensible. It felt…okay.

But when he got home there wasn't a light on, apart from the security light he kept on in the shared porch.

Were she and the dog asleep?

She'd slept this afternoon. He'd seen her, curled on the hearth with the dog.

With Horse.

They were nothing to do with him.

He glanced at the gap in the stone wall. Sensed the faint echo of Nikki. And Horse.

By his side… Shades of Jem.

He was going nuts. The hit on his head had obviously been harder than he thought. Ghosts were everywhere, even to the feel of Jem beside him. Jem had always been with him, on the boat, under his bed, by the fire, a heartbeat by his side.

Whoa, he was maudlin. Get over it.

Disoriented, he found himself heading for the beach. A man could stare at the sea in the moonlight. Find some answers?

But the only answers he found on the beach were Nikki and Horse.

T
HEY
were sitting just above the high water mark, right near the spot where Horse had stood and howled last night. Gabe saw them straight away, unmistakable, the silhouette of the slight woman and the huge, rangy dog framed against a rising moon.

Maybe he'd better call out. Warn her of his approach. Who knew what she was carrying tonight?

‘Nikki!'

She turned. So did Horse, uttering a low threatening growl that suddenly turned into an unsure whine. Maybe the dog was as confused as he was.

‘Gabe?' She couldn't see him—he was still in shadows. She sounded scared.

‘It's Gabe.' He said it quickly, before she fired the poker.

‘Are you still angry?'

Deep breath. Get this sorted. Stop being an oaf. ‘I need to apologise,' he said, walking across the beach to them. ‘I was out of line. Whether you keep Horse is none of my business. And snapping about the stones was nuts. Can we blame it on the hit on the head and move on?'

‘Sure,' she said, but she sounded wary. ‘I did hit you. I guess I can afford to cut you some slack.'

‘Thank you,' he said gravely. ‘Are you two moon watching?'

‘Horse refuses to settle.' She shifted along the log she was perched on so there was room for him as well. ‘He whined and
whined, so finally I figured we might as well come down here and see that no one's coming. So he can finally settle into our new life.'

‘Your new life?' he said cautiously, sorting wheat from chaff. ‘You really intend changing your life?'

‘My life is changed anyway,' she said. ‘That's what comes of falling for a king-sized rat. It's messed with my serenity no end.'

Don't ask. It was none of his business.

But she wasn't expecting him to ask. She was staring out to sea, talking almost to herself, and her self containment touched him as neediness never could.

Since when had he ever wanted to be involved?

Horse nuzzled his hand. He patted the dog and said, ‘You fell for a king-sized rat?'

Had he intended to ask? Surely not.

‘My boss.'

He had no choice now.

‘You want to tell me about it?'

 

She had no intention of telling him. She hadn't told anyone. The guy she'd thought she loved was married.

Her parents knew she'd split with Jonathan but both her parents were on their third or fourth partner; splits were no big deal. And in the office, to her friends, she'd hung onto her pride. Her pride seemed like all she had left.

But here, now, sitting on the beach with Horse between them, pride and privacy no longer seemed important.

So she told him. Bluntly. Dispassionately, as if it had happened to someone else, not to her.

‘Jonathan Ostler of Ostler Engineering,' she said, her voice cool and hard. ‘International engineering designer. Smooth, rich, efficient. Hates mixing business with pleasure. My boss. He asked me out four years ago. Six months later we were sharing an apartment but no one in the office was to know.
Jonathan thought it'd mess with company morale. So… In the office we were so businesslike you wouldn't believe. If we were coming to work at the same time we'd split up a block away so we'd never arrive together. He addressed me as Nikki but I addressed him as Mr Ostler. Strictly formal.'

‘Sounds weird.'

‘Yes, but I could see his point,' she said. ‘Sleeping with the boss is hardly the way to endear yourself to the rest of the staff, and Jon was overseas so much it wasn't an effort. A few people knew we were together but not many. So there I was, dream job, dream guy, dream apartment, four years. Dreaming weddings, if you must know. Starting to be anxious he didn't want to settle, but too stupidly in love to push it. Then two months ago there was an explosion in a factory where we'd been overseeing changes. The call came in the middle of the night—hysterical—our firm could be sued for millions. Jon caught the dawn plane to Düsseldorf with minutes to spare, and in the rush he left his mobile phone sitting on his—on
our
—bedside table. The next day our office was crazy. The Düsseldorf situation was frightening and the phone was going nuts. Jonathan's phone. Finally, I answered it. It was Jonathan's wife. In London. Their eight-year-old had been in a car accident. Please could I tell her where Jon was.'

‘Ouch.'

‘I coped,' she said, a tinge of pride warming her voice as she remembered that ghastly moment. ‘I made sympathetic noises. I made sure Jonathan Junior wasn't in mortal danger, I got the details. Then I left a message with the manager of the Düsseldorf factory, asking Jon to phone his wife. I told him to say the message was from Nikki. Then I moved out of our apartment. Jonathan returned a week later, and I'd already arranged to move here, to do my work via the Internet.'

‘But you still work for him?'

‘Personal and business don't mix.'

‘Like hell they don't,' he snapped. ‘I've had relationships
go sour between the crew. It messes with staff morale no end, and there's no way they can work together afterwards.'

‘I'm good at my work.' But her uncertainty was growing and she couldn't put passion into her voice. ‘The pay's great.'

‘Can you work for yourself?'

‘It's a specialist industry,' she said. ‘I couldn't set up in competition to Jon. I could work for someone else, but it would have to be overseas.'

‘So why not go overseas?'

‘I don't want to.' But she'd been thinking. Thinking and thinking. She'd been totally, hopelessly in love with Jonathan for years and to change her life so dramatically…

Why not change it more?

Tomorrow. Think of it tomorrow.

‘And now I have a dog,' she said, hauling herself back to the here and now with something akin to desperation. ‘So here I am.' Deep breath. Tomorrow? Why not say now? ‘But I have been thinking of changing jobs. Changing completely.'

‘To what?'

How to say it? It was ridiculous. And to say stone walling, when she knew how he felt…

But the germ of an idea that had started today wouldn't go away.

Putting one stone after another into a wall.

Crazy. To turn her back on specialist training…

Oh, but how satisfying.

It was a whim, she reminded herself sharply. A whim of today. Tomorrow it'd be gone and she'd be back to sensible.

Don't talk about it. Don't push this man further than you already have.

‘I don't know,' she managed. ‘All I know is that I need something. Woman needs change.' She hugged Horse, who was still gazing out to sea. ‘Woman needs dog.'

‘No one needs a dog.'

‘Says you who just lost one. I wonder if Horse's owner misses him like you miss Jem.'

‘Nikki…'

‘Don't stick my nose into what's not my business? You've been telling me that all day. But now… I've told you about my non existent love life. You want to tell me why I can't finish your stone wall?'

‘It's my mother's wall.'

‘And she disapproves of completion?'

‘She died when I was a child. She didn't get to finish it.'

‘So the hole's like a shrine,' she said cautiously, like one might approach an unexploded grenade. ‘I can see that. But you know, if it was me I'd want the wall finished. Are you sure your mum's not up there fretting? You know, I'm a neat freak. If I die with my floor half-hoovered, feel welcome to finish it. In fact I'll haunt you if you don't.'

‘You don't like an unhoovered floor?' They were veering away from his mother—which seemed fine by both of them.

‘Hoovering's good for the soul.'

His mouth twitched. Just a little. The beginning of a smile. ‘Do you know how much hair a dog like Horse will shed?'

‘He has to grow some hair back first,' she said warmly. ‘He grows, I'll hoover. We've made a deal.'

‘While you've been sitting on the beach, staring at the moon.'

‘It's filling time. How long do you reckon it'll take him to figure whoever he wants isn't coming?'

‘Dogs have been faithful to absent masters for years.'

‘Years?'

‘Years.'

‘I was hoping maybe another half an hour.'

‘Years.'

‘Uh-oh.'

‘And years.'

‘I don't know what else to do,' she whispered.

Her problem. This was her problem, he thought, and it was only what she deserved, taking on a damaged dog…

As he'd taken on a damaged dog sixteen years ago and not regretted it once. Until it was over.

He'd had his turn. Yes, this was Nikki's dog, Nikki's problem, but he could help.

‘I don't think you're doing anyone any favours by letting him stare at where a boat isn't,' he said.

‘I'm doing my best.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I know that.'

She cast him a look that was suspicious to say the least. ‘I didn't mean to mess with your mother's memory,' she told him.

‘Yeah.' He deserved that, he conceded. Like he'd deserved the hit over the head? But she had her reasons for that. Her heart was in the right place even if it was messing with…his heart?

That was a dumb thing to think, but think it he did. Since Lisbette left…well, maybe even before, a long time before, he'd closed down. Lisbette had whirled into his life, stunned him, ripped him off for all he was worth and whirled out again. He'd been a kid, lonely, naïve and a sitting duck.

He wasn't a sitting duck any longer. He'd closed up. Jem had wriggled her way into his life, he'd loved her and he'd lost her. She'd been the last chink in his armour, and there was no way he was opening more.

But this woman…

She wasn't looking to rip him off as Lisbette had—he knew that. Lisbette, getting up every two hours because she was worried about him? Ha!

Nor was she trying to edge into the cracks around his heart like Jem had. She might be needy but it was a different type of needy.

It was Nikki and Horse against the world—when she didn't know a blind thing about dogs.

She was blundering. She was a walking disaster but she was a disaster who meant well.

‘I overreacted with the wall,' he conceded. ‘I looked out and saw you and the dog and that's what I remember most about my mother. Her sitting for hour after hour, sorting stones. She did it everywhere. She and Billy.'

‘Billy?'

‘She had a collie. He seemed old as long as I can remember. He pined when she died, and my dad shot him.'

‘He shot him?' She sounded appalled.

‘He was never going to get over Mum's death.'

‘You were how old?'

‘Eight.'

‘You lost your mum, and your dad shot her dog?'

How to say it? The day of the funeral, coming home, Billy whining, his father saying, ‘Get to your room, boy.' A single shot.

He didn't have to tell her. She touched his hand and the horror of that day was in her touch.

‘And I hit you over the head,' she whispered. ‘And Henrietta said your wife left you. And your own dog died. If I were you I'd have crawled into a nice comfy psychiatric ward and thought up a diagnosis that'd keep me there for the rest of my life. Instead…'

‘How did we get here?' He had no idea. One minute this woman was irritating the heck out of him, the next she was putting together stuff he didn't think about; didn't want to think about. This was his place, his beach. He'd come down here for a quiet think, and here he was being psychoanalysed.

He felt exposed.

It was a weird thing to think. She hadn't said anything that wasn't common knowledge but it was as if she could see things differently.

She had her arm round Horse's neck and she was tugging
him close, and all of a sudden he felt a jolt, like what would it feel to be in the dog's place?

The dog whined. Stupid dog.

‘You want dog lessons,' he said, more roughly than he intended.

‘Horse doesn't need lessons. He's smart.'

‘He's staring at an empty sea,' he said.

‘He's devoted. He'll get over it. Needs must.'

‘Says you who's still pining for your creepy boss.'

‘I'm trying to get over it,' she said with dignity. ‘I'm not sitting on the beach wailing. I'm doing my best. Don't we all?'

She rose and brushed sand from the back of her trousers. With his collar released, Horse took a tentative step towards the sea. Nikki's hand hit the collar at the same time as his did. Their fingers touched. Flinched a little but didn't let go. Settled beside each other, a tiny touch but unnerving.

Settling.

Things were settling for him. He wasn't sure why.

Maybe it was watching her reaction to what he'd told her tonight, added to what he knew local gossip would have told her. His mother's death, his father, Lisbette, his mother's dog and Jem… Her reaction seemed to validate stuff he tried not to think about.

Permission to feel sorry for himself?

Permission to move on.

Towards Nikki? Towards yet another disaster?

Not in a million years. He'd spent all his life being taught that solitary was safe. He wasn't about to change that now.

But he could help her. It was the least he could do.

‘Horse needs a master,' he told her.

‘He's only got me,' she said defensively. ‘Why are we being sexist? A master?'

‘I mean,' he said patiently, ‘a pack leader. He's lost his. He's looking for him; if he can't find him he needs a new one.'

‘Right,' she said. ‘Pack leader. Can I buy one at the Banksia Bay Co-op?'

He grinned. His hand was still touching hers. He should pull it away but he didn't. Things were changing—had changed. There was something about the night, the moonlight on the water, the big needy dog between them…