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‘You can’t take her when you leave.’
Jo started to stalk away, but he strode after her.
‘She loves it here. Jo, I... Look, I know it’s unfair, but she’s adopted me—bonded with me. I didn’t mean for it to happen.’
From the corner of her eye she saw the weak excuse for a smile that he shot her.
‘I’ll make a deal with you. You keep the puppies and Bandit stays here with me. I’ll look after her—I promise.’
‘Look after her?’ She whirled to face him. ‘You can’t even take her to the vet! I can’t in any conscience leave her here—even though she loves you and merely tolerates me. Even though I know she’ll be way happier here than she will be with me.’
He took a step back from her, his mouth pressed so tight it turned his lips white.
‘I don’t know why I expected something better from you. You wouldn’t even visit your brother when he was in hospital, though you had to know it was the thing he most wanted.’
He’d frozen to stone.
There was no room in his life for compassion or love or responsibility to his family...just a manufactured guilt that took over his every breathing moment.
She turned away, not knowing why her heart hurt so hard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JO COUNTED OUT the eggs she’d need for the soufflé and had started to read the ‘Hints on soufflés’ section of a cooking website she’d found when voices floated in through the open front door.
Voices? She lifted her head and frowned. Surely not? She hadn’t heard voices—as in more than one person speaking, having a conversation—since she’d arrived. She didn’t count the way either she or Mac spoke to Bandit. Or her and Mac’s often fraught and adversarial conversations.
He doesn’t kiss like an adversary.
He kissed like a dream.
Stop it!
She cocked her head and listened harder. There was definitely more than one voice.
The voices grew stronger as she marched through the house. She pulled up short of the front door when she found Mac talking to an unknown man by the front steps—a man carrying what looked like a doctor’s bag.
Mac didn’t appear the least bit self-conscious. Could the man be an old friend?
She looked at the bag again and then it hit her. A vet! Mac had called out a vet.
She had to fight the urge to race outside and throw her arms around him. Oh, he’d love that, wouldn’t he? Not. She straightened her shirt and then pushed outside as if it what was happening in front of her was the most normal thing in the world.
Could Mac conquer his fear of what the world thought of him one person at a time? She crossed her fingers behind her back.
She strode across the veranda. ‘I thought I heard voices.’
‘Jo, this is Daniel Michener. He’s the local mobile vet.’
She hadn’t considered for a moment that this area would warrant a mobile vet.
‘There are a lot of hobby farms—not to mention dairy farms—in the area,’ Daniel explained when she said as much. ‘It’s a bit hard to bring a cow, horse or an alpaca into the surgery.’
Which made perfect sense when she thought about it. ‘Well, I’m really glad you can give Bandit a once-over.’
‘I understand you adopted her and know nothing of her history?’
Jo grimaced. ‘I was told she was a purebred seven-year-old male border collie, microchipped, neutered, and fully vaccinated.’
He laughed. ‘Let’s take a look at her, then.’
Mac played veterinary nurse, soothing Bandit and convincing her to co-operate with Daniel. He made a rather nice veterinary nurse, with those big hands gentle on the dog’s neck. She shivered at the way he’d run a hand down Bandit’s back while talking to her in low, reassuring tones. The sight of the broad man with the small, fine-boned, not to mention pregnant dog made her heart pitter-patter.
He glanced up and caught her staring, raised an eyebrow. She shrugged and forced her gaze back to Bandit, tried to ignore the way her breath hitched in her chest.
The vet gave Bandit a clean bill of health. ‘You should expect the puppies in about a month.’ He clicked his bag shut. ‘My best guess, looking at her teeth, is that she’s three years old—and this is not her first litter, so she’ll probably be a good mother.’
Not her first?
She moved in a little closer and Mac’s scent—all warm cotton, coconut and dog—hit her. It was all she could do not to swoon. She had to step back again.
‘Can you tell how many puppies she’s going to have?’
