Misty and the Single Dad

adventures…’

What was she talking about? Don’t go there, she told herself, confused at where her mind was taking her. If he’d never had those adventures…like she hadn’t?

This was not about her.

She made herself step down from the veranda. This man’s life, his past, was nothing to do with her. She needed to return to the nursing home to make sure Gran was settled for the night. She needed to go home.

Home… The home she’d never left.

Nick didn’t stop her. He’d withdrawn again, into his isolation, where risks weren’t allowed. He seemed as if he was hardly seeing her. ‘Thank you for listening,’ he said formally.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said, just as formally, and she turned and left before she could ask him-totally inappropriately-to tell her about Africa.

What was he about, telling a total stranger the story of his life? It was so out of character he felt he’d shed a skin-and not in a good way. He felt stupid and naive and exposed.

He’d never done personal. Even with Isabelle… He’d hardly talked to her about his closeted childhood.

So why let it all out tonight? To his son’s schoolteacher?

Maybe it was because that was all she was, he decided. Bailey’s teacher. Someone whose focus was purely on his son. Someone prepared to listen when he needed to let it all out.

Why let it out tonight?

Justification?

He stared around at the shabby house, the empty walls, the lack of anything as basic as a storybook, and he thought that was where it had come from. A need to justify himself in the eyes of Misty Lawrence.

Why did he need to justify himself?

He didn’t want her to judge him.

That was stupid, all by itself. She was a country hick schoolteacher. Her opinion didn’t matter at all.

If it did… If it did, then it’d come under the category of taking risks, and Nicholas Holt no longer took risks.

Ever.

She went home, to her big house, where there was only herself and the sound of the sea.

Africa.

She’d just got herself a dog.

Africa.

Nick’s story should have appalled her. It did.

But Africa…

Since Gran’s stroke, she’d started keeping her scrapbooks in the kitchen where recipes were supposed to be. Dreams instead of recipes? It worked for her. She tugged the books down now and set them on the kitchen table.

She had almost half a book on Africa. Pictures of safaris. Lying at dawn in a hide, watching a pride of lions. The markets of Marrakesh.

Africa was number eight on her list.

She had a new dog. How long would Ketchup live?

She picked up a second scrapbook and it fell open at the Scottish Highlands. She’d pasted in a picture of a girl in a floaty white dress lying in a field of purple heather. Behind her was a mass of purple mountains.

She’d pasted this page when she was twelve. She’d put a bagpiper in the background, and a castle. Later, she’d moved to finer details. Somewhere she’d seen a documentary on snow buntings and they had her entranced-small birds with their snow-white chests and rippling whistle. Tiny travellers. Exquisite.

Birds who travelled where she never could. She had pictures of snow buntings now, superimposed on her castle.

She flicked on, through her childhood dreams. Another scrapbook. The Greek islands. Whitewashed houses clinging to cliff faces, sapphire seas, caiques, fishermen at dawn…

These scrapbooks represented a lifetime of dreaming. The older she was, the more organised she’d become, going through and through, figuring what she might be able to afford, what was feasible.

She’d divided the books, the cuttings, into months. She now had a list of twelve.

Exploring the north of England, the Yorkshire Dales, a train journey up through Scotland, Skara Brae, the Orkneys… Bagpipers in the mist. Snow buntings. Number ten.

Greece. Number two.

Africa.

Risks.

Bailey.

She closed the book with a snap. Nicholas was right. You didn’t take risks. You stayed safe.

She’d just agreed to keep another dog. She had no choice.

Her computer was on the bench. On impulse, she typed in Nicholas Holt, Marine Architect and waited for it to load.

And then gasped.

The man had his own Online Encyclopaedia entry. His website was amazing. There were boats and boats, each more wonderful than the last. Each designed by Nicholas Holt.

This man was seriously famous.

And seriously rich? You didn’t get to design boats like these without having money.

That a man like this could decide Banksia Bay was the right place to be…a safe place to be…

‘It makes sense,’ she told herself, and she flicked off the Internet before she could do what she wanted to do- which was to research a little more about Africa.

‘I have a dog now,’ she told herself. ‘Black runs are probably cold and wet. Doesn’t Scotland have fog and midges? Who knows what risks are out there? So gird your loins, accept that dreams belong in childhood and do what Nick Holt has done. Decide Banksia Bay is the best place in the world.’

But dreams didn’t disintegrate on demand.

Dogs don’t live for ever, she told herself. Her list money was still intact. She could hold onto her dream a while longer.

One day she’d complete her list. In her retirement?

Maybe.

Just not one day soon.

CHAPTER FOUR

KETCHUP decided to live.

At nine the next morning Misty was gazing down at the little dog with something akin to awe. He was still hooked up to drips. His back leg was splinted and bandaged. He had cuts and grazes everywhere, made more gruesome by the truly horrid-coloured antiseptic wash, but he was looking up at her with his huge black eyes and… his tail was wagging.

It had lost half its fur and it had probably been a pretty scrappy tail to start with, but it was definitely wagging. The eyes that looked at her were huge with hope, and she fell in love all over again.

‘How can he have been at the shelter for two weeks and no one claimed him?’ she demanded of Fred, and the old vet smiled, took out the drips, bundled the little dog up and handed him over.

‘Not everyone has a heart as big as yours, Misty. Not everyone accepts responsibilities like you do.’

‘What’s one more responsibility?’ she said and, yes, she felt a little bitter but, as she carried Ketchup out to her car, she wondered how she could feel bad about giving this dog a home.

There was no way she could leave Banksia Bay with Gran like she was. Ketchup would make life better-not worse.