Nikki and the Lone Wolf / Mardie and the City Surgeon: Nikki and the Lone Wolf / Mardie and the City Surgeon

‘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.