Meredith Webber - Hearts Of Gold

Not that this was a relationship. Other than purely work-related…

Not yet, hope suggested.

Maybe not ever, pessimism reminded him, giving an extra nudge with a reminder that she’d lied about not having met him before.

Unless she really didn’t remember…

Damn his pessimism! Right now he had to make amends to his colleague.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Of course you’re interested.’

They resumed their walk, but he’d lost the conversation. It was being with Annie that was the problem—being with his ghost. The kiss, if it had done nothing else, had confirmed that.

But it had done something else. It had stirred his blood and not a little lust, so he’d walked home determined to get to know her better. Actually, he’d walked home with phrases like ‘woo her and win her’ running through his mind, but in the sober light of day he had modified these aims.

In the sober light of day he’d also found his tattered list of the delegates at the congress, and had gone through it once again, searching among delegates and partners for an Anne, or Annie, even Joanna and Annabel—any name that might conceivably be shortened to Annie.

He hadn’t found one, and couldn’t help but wonder just who she was.

Get to know her first, he’d decided, yet now here he was, treating a simple question with suspicion.

‘So, are you going to answer me, or shall we continue this walk in silence?’

‘What was the question?’

‘I asked about Amy. Would it have made a difference if she’d had a paediatric cardiac surgeon do the first two ops?’

Alex set aside thoughts of stirred blood and lust and concentrated on his reply.

‘I couldn’t say that. So much can go wrong. There are risks involved in all operations. But I firmly believe we can cut down on the percentage of risks with more specialists and specialist units.’

They’d reached his gate and Annie stopped.

‘I want a shower, and need time to write a shopping list if we’re shopping straight after we drop off the dogs. Say half an hour? You’ll be going past my gate to get to the park so I’ll wait for you there.’

‘ You’ll wait for me?’ he teased, eager to rebuild the relaxed atmosphere they’d shared early in the walk.

‘Yes, I’ll wait for you. I don’t subscribe to the “women are always late” theory. I find, in fact, that women are more likely to be on time than men.’

She walked away from him, leaving him wondering just where things stood between them.

Not relaxed and easy, that was for sure! Her pert retort had underscored that point.

ANNIE managed to stay angry with Alex until she saw him emerge from his front gate twenty-five minutes later. Though it wasn’t Alex emerging from the gate that made her laugh, but the little black bundle of curls trailing along behind him on the end of a lead.

Alex Attwood had a spoodle! A designer-bred spaniel-poodle cross, clearly still a puppy as it was the size of a large guineapig. The little thing cavorted along behind him like a curly black wig caught up on a rat on speed.

‘I hope you’re not laughing at my dog,’ Alex said, though the corners of his mouth were twitching as if he understood her mirth. ‘And you know the old joke about a little dog killing a big dog. Tell your Henry he’ll choke to death if he tries to swallow Minnie.’

But Annie didn’t have to tell Henry anything. He was sitting at her feet, forty kilograms of Rottweiler muscle and bone, gazing at the little spoodle with love-struck eyes, while she yipped and yapped about his feet, and explored him as if he were a new kind of doggie toy.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ Annie said, kneeling down to pat the excitable little creature. She covered Henry’s ears with her hands and added, ‘I fell in love with these dogs at the pet shop, but really needed something big and fierce.’

Loyalty made her add, ‘Not that Henry’s all that fierce, it’s just his size that frightens people.’

‘I can see he’s not that fierce,’ Alex said gravely, and she looked down to see Henry was now lying down, so the little dog could lick his face and climb across his back.

‘He’s supposed to frighten people, not other dogs,’ Annie said defensively, then realised this conversation was veering dangerously close to places she did not want to go, so she called to Henry and started walking towards the park.

‘There’s a dog-walker who walks Henry and other dogs in this area every weekday,’ she told Alex, pleased they had the dogs to talk about. ‘Mayarma, her name is. If Minnie stays inside while you’re at work, you’d have to leave a key. She collects Henry and his lead from my dad, but other dogs she picks up straight from the yard. Are you interested?’

‘Very,’ Alex told her. ‘If someone could walk Minnie during the week, I wouldn’t feel guilty about not walking her at weekends, and as perfect strangers react to seeing me walking her as you did—with hysterical laughter—I’d as soon skip the park sessions. At least with you beside me, people might assume she’s yours and we’ve just swapped leads.’

Annie listened to the grumble but guessed he was far too self-assured to care what other people thought about his dog. But the conversation did raise a question.

‘If you’re embarrassed walking a wig on legs, why buy a spoodle?’ she asked.

‘Buy a spoodle? Do you seriously think a man my height would buy a dog this size? That I wouldn’t have considered the aesthetics of the situation?’

‘A girlfriend’s dog?’ Annie guessed, although the idea of a girlfriend brought a stab of jealousy in its train.

‘My sister’s idea of an ideal companion for me,’ Alex told her, gloom deepening his voice. ‘My sister has despaired of me ever having a long-term relationship with a woman, so when she was visiting me in Melbourne a month or so ago she bought me the most curly, frilly, impossible sort of dog she could find. To keep me in touch with my feminine side, would you believe?’

Annie was laughing so hard she had to stop walking, although Henry, determined to stay close to his new friend, was dragging on his lead.

‘She is all woman,’ she conceded. ‘That’s if dogs can be classed that way. Look at how she’s vamping Henry.’

They were entering the park, and as dogs were allowed off their leads in this part of it, she bent to unclip Henry’s.

‘Will she come when you call?’

Alex looked at his small responsibility.

‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘She’s been to puppy school, but seemed to think it was a place she went to flirt and play with other dogs. How seriously she took the lessons I don’t know, because sometimes she’ll obey all the commands she knows, but at others she’s totally deaf.’

‘Maybe Henry will teach her some sense,’ Annie suggested, although the way he was behaving made her wonder.

But Alex unclipped Minnie’s lead anyway, and the two dogs, so absurd together, gambolled across the grass, Henry using his huge paws with gentle insistence to guide the smaller dog around the trees and bushes.

‘I usually sit over there,’ Annie said, pointing to a comfortable seat beneath a shady tree. Since meeting Minnie and laughing at Alex’s story of her advent into his life, she’d relaxed. He’d made no move that could be indicative that she was anything other than a colleague, so she could put the kiss down to him wanting to prove something to himself.

Or to both of them.

And from now on, colleagues were all they’d be, so when he said things like ‘walk home together’ and she felt prickles of excitement, or when he put his hand on her back to guide her into a lift and she felt tremors of attraction, she had to pretend it hadn’t happened, and act like the efficient, dedicated, focussed unit manager he wanted her to be.