Please let her not be badly hurt, or worse.
Please.
It was raining, the sort of rain that looked deceptively light but seeped into every fibre and weighed you down; Georgie was glad of the waterproof coat she’d bought the previous month, and even more glad of the drawstring hood.
‘We’ll start this way,’ Ryan said, gesturing diagonally to the hills, ‘and we take it in turns calling and listening. We’ll walk for fifteen minutes, then turn ninety degrees and walk that way.’
Half an hour of trudging, and she was freezing but she wasn’t going to admit it. Worse than the physical discomfort was the coldness and fear inside. She knew that Ryan loved his dog more than anything. If anything had happened to Truffle...
Ryan had never known fear like this.
He was used to losing people. His mum, her family, a string of foster parents. But losing the dog he’d loved since he’d first met her, the only one in his life who hadn’t deserted him... The more he thought about it, the worse it was. It wasn’t blood pumping through his veins, it was adrenaline; and it wasn’t air in his lungs, it was pure solid fear. All that was left was a shallow space that kept him functioning. Just.
Gone.
His dog couldn’t be gone.
Truffle was all the family he had.
Was this how the parents of his patients felt, when they sat at their very sick child’s bedside? As if the whole world was being sucked into a black hole, every speck of light diminishing?
It was unbearable.
Just putting one foot in front of the other was such an effort that he didn’t have the energy to run. Every time he called for his dog, his throat hurt. Every time he listened for an answering bark, his ears felt as if they were buzzing. And every time he glanced at his watch to see if it was time to change direction, he found that only seconds had passed.
How could time move so slowly?
How could this hurt so much?
What if they didn’t find her?
Ryan didn’t even speak to Georgie. Not that she blamed him. What she’d done was the worst thing ever: she’d lost his dog.
Clara would never have made such a stupid mistake.
If anything had happened to Truffle, Georgie knew she couldn’t stay at Hayloft Cottage. She wasn’t even sure that she could still work in the same department as Ryan. He’d never, ever, ever forgive her.
The friendship they’d been developing, the attraction they’d both been struggling to ignore—that would turn to sheer hatred in a nanosecond.
Please let them find the dog.
Another ninety-degree turn, more calling, more listening, and still nothing.
They trudged on.
And on.
And then finally she heard a bark. Or was it the wind and she just thought it was a bark because she so desperately wanted to hear the dog?
‘I think I just heard something. Call again!’ she whispered urgently.
Ryan did so.
It was faint, but this time there was a definite answering bark.
Oh, thank God.
Truffle wasn’t dead. Though she might be hurt. They were walking in the direction from where they’d heard Truffle bark, but it didn’t sound as if the dog was coming to meet them. When Georgie scanned the area in front of them, she couldn’t see any glint from Truffle’s reflective collar—a glint that should be there, even in this low light.
She grabbed the torch from her bag and switched it on. Although it was small, the beam was really powerful as it swept the ground in front of them, and finally she caught a glimpse of something reflective. ‘Look. I think that’s Truffle’s collar.’
Except it wasn’t moving.
If Truffle had heard them, why wasn’t she coming towards them?
Ryan was moving faster than she was, but she didn’t try to run after him; the last thing he needed was for her to sprain her ankle or something and need his help getting back to the cottage. She made her way carefully behind him, and when she finally reached him he was on his knees next to the dog, and Truffle was covering his face with licks and making little whimpery noises.
‘She’s stuck in a rabbit hole,’ he said, and she realised that he was digging the dog out with his bare hands. ‘Daft beastie. You’re not going to disappear into the hills again like that in a hurry, are you?’
The dog wuffed gently and gave a feeble wag of her tail.
‘I’m so glad she’s all right.’ She dropped to her haunches and stroked the Labrador. ‘You’ve been out here for ages, poor girl. I’m so sorry. It was all my fault. You’re cold and you’re wet, but you must be thirsty.’ She took the flask from her bag, removed the lid, and tipped cold water from the bottle into it so the dog could lap at it.
Truffle drank two whole cupsful.
But when Ryan had finished digging her out, it was clear that Truffle wasn’t going to be able to walk back to the cottage with them because she was limping badly on the leg that had been trapped in the rabbit hole.
‘I don’t know if it’s a fracture or a sprain,’ he said. ‘But I’m not risking it getting any worse.’ He bent down and lifted her up.
Nearly thirty kilos of wriggly Labrador, but he’d lifted her as if she were a feather.
And his eyes were wet.
Georgie hated herself. Hated that she’d been as careless and thoughtless as Charlie had been towards her.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ she asked.
‘I think you’ve done enough.’
‘Ryan, everyone makes mistakes.’
‘Yeah.’ A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘This dog is my family, and you put her at risk.’
The pain in his voice stopped her biting back any more. ‘Do you want me to call the vet?’
‘You won’t have a signal out here.’
She looked at her phone anyway. But it was a vain hope: of course he was right. He was the local, and she was a stupid, dizzy city girl.
When they finally got back to the cottage, she sat next to
