Christmas Where She Belongs

‘Carnock Hospital, Annabelle speaking. That you, Mac?’

Clancy pressed the button that cut off the call and handed the phone back to Mac, whose hand closed over it just as it began to ring. He glanced at the number displayed and somehow stopped the noise without answering, instead slipping the phone back into his shirt pocket.

‘You didn’t want to chat with Annabelle? Catch up on what’s happening? Share a few student reminiscences?’ he asked, though it was apparent he hadn’t wanted to speak to Annabelle either, for who else would have been phoning right then?

Now she studied the man, a move aimed at distracting her mind from the reminiscences that lay between her and Annabelle!

Scruffy, that’s what he was, yet it was a very appealing scruffiness, maybe because of the twinkle that was almost always evident in his dark brown eyes.

It was dangerous, that twinkle, something to beware of, so she ignored it, and the teasing note in his voice, and answered as coolly as her overheated and still-jolted body would allow.

‘I imagine we can catch up in Carnock,’ she said, although catching up with Annabelle had never been high on her wish list for the future.

‘You will, at that,’ Mac assured her.

Some assurance!

‘So, one o’clock!’ Clancy said, knowing she had to get away right now, before the clashing chaos of attraction and memories had her disintegrating into a twisted mass of nerves on the footpath. ‘I need to pack,’ she added as she stood up, knocking over her chair in her haste. ‘It’ll be hot, I imagine.’

She bent to pick up the chair but Mac was before her, his hand brushing hers as she grabbed at it, his quiet ‘Let me’ suggesting he’d somehow read the turmoil inside her.

And now they were both bent, heads close together, gazes locked, something shimmering in the air between them, something that definitely wasn’t distrust …

Mike saved the day, leaping over the fallen chair and knocking over the table.

Clancy had to laugh. The dog was sitting in the middle of the shambles, grinning his idiotic grin.

‘Well, I’m glad someone’s laughing,’ Mac growled, as he righted the table. ‘You go and pack. I’ll settle up for the damage before I kill your dog.’

‘You brought him here,’ Clancy reminded him, and Mac sighed.

‘Indeed I did,’ he said, and Clancy couldn’t miss the regret in his voice.

She slipped away, thinking not of Annabelle Crane and James but of whether Mac’s regret was for bringing the dog to the city, or was it for getting himself involved with her?

Although they were hardly involved—he was a lawyer who had contacted the beneficiary of a will, and she was the beneficiary. It was purely a business meeting.

Maybe!

Packing took all of fifteen minutes, cleaning out the refrigerator and giving her next-door neighbour the perishables another ten, which left Clancy with two hours and twenty-two minutes to fill before one o’clock.

She considered using the time to contact her mother, a process that could take easily that long as it involved contacting a neighbour who had a phone, who then raised a flag to indicate there was a message for someone in the commune. It could be that the flag wouldn’t be seen for hours. Or days.

And if days, she’d be gone before her mother phoned back, and then she’d worry when she couldn’t get hold of Clancy, so all in all it was better to write.

Two hours and eighteen minutes—decisions didn’t take up much time.

Well, sitting around was no good because then she’d start thinking, and if she started thinking she’d regret making the impulsive decision. She never made impulsive decisions, knowing they invariably led to loss of control, and being in control was the mainstay of her life.

Or had been for some time …

She found some paper and began the letter, telling her mother of the unexpected appearance of Great-Aunt Hester in the family tree, and the strange bequest.

I’m not going because I still hanker for a father, she wrote, although as she put the words on paper, she wondered if they were entirely true, but because this woman left me her house and dog in good faith, so the least I can do is have a look at the situation, sum it up and make a decision.

There, that sounded sensible. No need to mention Annabelle Crane being in Carnock.

Sometimes Clancy thought her mother regretted the break-up with James more than she herself did. But hadn’t it been the shock of James’s visit to the commune, and meeting her mother’s extraordinary friends, that had started the disintegration of their relationship …?

Determined not to dwell on the past, she finished the letter and went into the alcove in her bedroom that she thought of as her office. Once there, she was able to lose herself in the first item on her ‘to do’ list, the preparation of lectures for the following year. She wanted to make them more challenging, particularly for the first-year students, so they would get a feel for the job they were training to do.

So, of course, rather than waiting by the front door at one o’clock, she was lost in Lecture Two when the buzzer buzzed.

Shoving her laptop into its case, she slung it over her shoulder, grabbed the small bag with her belongings, and her handbag, and hit the button to allow Mac and Mike entrance to the lobby. ‘I’ll be right down,’ she said into the intercom, and raced down the stairs, knowing it would be faster than taking the elevator.

Flushed from her downward dash, she arrived in the lobby to find Mike in trouble again, this time from a tenant Clancy didn’t know, a woman who’d emerged from the elevator with a Siamese cat on a lead.

‘He likes cats,’ Mac was saying to the woman, who’d grabbed her pet from beneath Mike’s smiling face and was glowering at Mac.

‘Dogs are not allowed in this building,’ the woman said, and she stalked out the door.

Mike let her go, discovering Clancy instead and rushing up to her to greet her with his front paws on her chest, so with the weight of her baggage she’d have gone flying if Mac hadn’t slung his arm around her to steady her.

The area of skin beneath the clothes that touched that arm prickled with awareness, then the arm dropped away, while Clancy battled an urge to run straight back up the stairs.

Control!

‘Does he cause trouble wherever he goes?’ she asked, determined to ignore her reactions to the man, and looking at Mike, who was now sitting in front of her doing a perfect dog act.

‘Everywhere!’ Mac said in a despairing voice, but Clancy heard the smile behind the words and understood that Mac loved the silly animal, just as Great-Aunt Hester must have.

Great-Aunt Hester—just thinking about the woman gave Clancy a weird sensation in her stomach.

She had family! Real family! Or at least she had done …

Of course, she’d always known her mother had family, somewhere down south, maybe in Victoria, but her mother’s insistence that the fellow members of the commune were the only family she wanted or needed had meant Clancy had never known any of them. Which, by and large, had been okay.

Mac had taken her belongings and she was following him out the front door towards an ancient, battered, rusting four-wheel drive while she considered all of this. But as he stowed her bags in the back and opened the rear door for Mike, Clancy realised there was one question she hadn’t asked and probably should have.

With her hand on the doorhandle, she turned to Mac.

‘How did you find me?’

‘I didn’t,’ he said, with a grin that seemed to light up whatever little corner of the world he was currently inhabiting. ‘Hester found you. I have a feeling she had some kind of agent look into it.’

‘An agent? You mean a private detective? She had someone following me?’

The grin turned into a laugh so the dark eyes sparkled with devilment.