‘Thank you,’ she managed and sniffed again and groped in her purse. ‘It’s very nice of you but I have a handkerchief.’
It was one in the morning before Jake finally finished. He was wrecked, emotionally and physically, and by the time he reached his apartment his legs didn’t want to work any more.
He worked out in the basement gym most mornings. He hadn’t this morning. One lost workout and his legs were turning to jelly.
Or maybe it was because of one lost Tori.
‘See, that’s what you can’t think,’ he told himself. ‘That kind of thinking does no one any good.’
But he rode the elevator and he thought those kinds of thoughts all the way up.
How soon could he go to Australia?
What use was going to Australia? He belonged here. Here was home.
Home. He turned the key in the lock and thought it was no such thing. It was grey.
He was starting to feel ill. He’d had Tori here and he’d let her go. Leaving him with grey.
He pushed the door wide and it was anything but.
It was decorated by Tori.
It might not be the same stuff she’d bought in Melbourne but it was as close as made no difference. Back in Australia she’d transformed a beige relocatable home into a riot of colour and life.
Here it was-a riot.
Colours, colours and more colours. Cushions, lamps, throws, vases, prints, weird and wonderful statues, a Persian carpet almost completely covering the cool grey tiles, an imitation log fire!
It was too much. It was…wonderful.
He found himself smiling, moving through the room, fingering things that were tactile as well as lovely. It was warm, inviting and wonderful.
His table had been moved against the wall. It was covered with a rich tapestry, and a vast mirror set behind it so it reflected the warmth of the lamps.
There was an antique desk against the far wall. The books he’d swept onto the floor last night were neatly stacked, ready to be used again.
And then…
A faint noise had him moving to the bedroom. He opened the door and a small brown cat stalked out, looking suspicious and curious and eager, all at once. A half-grown cat, fawn with a tip of white on its tail.
It was followed by another brown cat, even smaller, but this one had no tip.
Burmese? He wasn’t sure of his cats. They looked like Siamese cats, he thought, only different.
The first one sniffed his shoes, then carefully wound its way round and round his ankles.
The second one sat and watched, acting superior.
Cats…
There was a note on his bed-on top of the riot of an amazing patchwork quilt.
He found himself grinning. Ferdy and Freddy.
Ferdy-or was it Freddy?-yowled. His brother joined in, then both of them set their tails high and stalked over to the fridge.
What was he supposed to do with cats?
Bemused, he opened the fridge, and found what he was supposed to do with cats. Tori had thought of everything.
‘You’ll have to go back,’ he told them as he fed them, but he couldn’t do it tonight.
When would he find time to take them back tomorrow?
He had work to do before he went to bed. There was a case he needed to look up for the next day.
He sat down at his new desk and opened a textbook.
Ferdy was on his knee in seconds, followed by Freddy.
How was a man supposed to work when he was…when he was home?
Where was Tori right now? Somewhere around Hawaii?
Not that far.
Too far.
This place was wonderful.
It was missing something.
‘I don’t think I can,’ he told the cats, fondling two ears. Fondling four ears.
‘Impossible. My work is here.
‘Yes, but…
‘She’s just given me two more complications.
‘I can handle complications.’
He couldn’t, though, he thought, or not immediately. It’d take some thought.
‘Love takes time,’ he told the cats. ‘Months. Maybe years.’
Years didn’t bear thinking of.
He closed his eyes. This was crazy. He was a man who walked alone.
Ferdy dug his claws into his thigh and gently kneaded.
‘I don’t do pets,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I don’t do…love?’
He had this all the wrong way round. He’d go to sleep and he’d wake up in the morning being sensible.
Maybe, or maybe not.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE operation on Harley had been long and perilous. The big schnauzer was only seven years old, but the liver abscess he’d developed was as unexpected as it was lethal and the only option if he was to survive was to remove part of the liver.
At least Tori was no longer working by herself. Her new workplace had specialist canine surgeons. She’d been able to call for help, and then work as the assistant of a far more experienced surgeon.
All the same, she was exhausted.
She should be feeling perky and full of energy at five months pregnant, she told herself, but it wasn’t happening. Try as she might, she couldn’t be perky. Ever since she’d come back from New York-okay, even before that, ever since Jake left, she conceded-there’d been something exhausting her that wasn’t pregnancy. Something was trying to tug her back into the grey fog she’d been in after the fire.
And she wasn’t going to be tugged, she told herself fiercely as she worked. She had great friends, a lovely new job, caring colleagues; she’d just saved Harley, and Rusty and Itsy were waiting for her back home. Doreen and Glenda cared for the dogs during the day, but the dogs knew who their mistress was and when Tori arrived they almost turned inside out with joy.
They’d be expecting her now. Tori glanced at her watch and winced. She still needed to talk to Harley’s owners, and stop off and buy something for tea, and then collect the dogs…and the tiredness was insidious.
Two more days ’til the weekend, she promised herself, two more days until she could spend the whole time at home. But the weekend brought more problems. Most of the population of the relocatable village spent their weekends up on the ridge, working on their new homes, but for some reason her head still wouldn’t let her go there. And there was the other thing. At the weekend she had time to think of Jake.
The surgeon was closing. ‘It’s as good as we can get,’ he told her. ‘You want to go tell Harley’s mum and dad the good news?’
