A Puppy for Christmas Page 21
‘Well, their loss is our gain.’
His smile was worth her present discomfort.
She swallowed past the squirm of her stomach and glanced at her watch.
‘I need to head home for an hour. Get some clothes, water the plants. You’ll be okay until later?’
‘You’re going to stay.’ It was more a sigh than a question.
She stared at him, right down deep into those fathomless eyes. ‘I don’t want to miss it.’
And with every moment that passed ‘it’ became more about the opportunity to spend some time with Gabe and not just about seeing the pups emerge. But she’d go on kidding herself as long as her subconscious would permit it.
This was about the dogs.
Sure it was.
CHAPTER FIVE
December 29th
‘HOW MANY CHANGES of clothes did you bring with you?’ Gabe asked slightly above a whisper as she wiggled backwards out of A-den’s hatch the following night and felt around with her feet for the floor. She understood his question. She was filthy.
Again.
‘Any further and I’ll be in there with her,’ she said, with no small amount of satisfaction.
It had been a tough dig, but the tunnel between dens was holding and it would only take a slight poke through to breach the remaining few inches of dirt. Curious Mjawi would do the rest. Or desperate Mjawi, to save her pups. Ingrid stood and steadied herself, then turned and smiled up at him. Bits of grit fell into her mouth.
‘I think we’re done,’ she said past them.
Gabe shone his torch into the space she’d just been working in and nodded. ‘Nice job, Ingrid.’
He reached his long arm up the den entrance and grabbed the inflated block they’d been sealing it with, let the air out through the popped valve, then quickly closed up the inspection hatch.
She shook her hair and loose dirt went flying. ‘Remind me about this moment the next time I have a good idea that no one but me can carry out.’
Gabe chuckled and rattled the inspection hatch to make sure it was secure. ‘I will.’
It was just something to say. It didn’t imply any kind of future between them or any kind of intimacy. But it dried her mouth completely. Then he turned and inspected her.
‘Hold still.’
Her breath grew even shallower as his large fingers slid behind her head and his thumbs wiped away the worst of whatever was on her face. She hated to think. She’d found more than just earthworms and the odd beetle while digging her way towards B-den. But this moment made those moments totally worth it. She stood, unusually compliant, and let him drag his flesh over hers.
It had been a long time between shivers.
‘So now what?’ she breathed, but didn’t move away.
‘Now we wait. Watch for signs of her den deteriorating.’
‘You don’t think she’ll move them just because?’
‘No. She’ll only move them to keep them safe. But what you’ve just done... That will mean they have a safe bolthole if B-den caves in.’
It was an odd mix of pride and futility—she’d have been instrumental in saving their lives if their den collapsed, but if it didn’t then all her work was purposeless. She decided to stick with pride.
He tipped his head. ‘For someone who saves animal lives every day, you look pretty pleased about that.’
‘I am. It’s different. This is about prevention.’
‘Is that why you wanted to change careers?’
‘Partly. I like what I do, but I want to contribute to the long-term management of our animals, not just their occasional care.’
‘Shovelling dung appeals that much, does it?’
She smiled, knowing that mundane tasks were the price they all paid for the more engaging, higher level tasks. Besides, she’d done her fair share of repetitive dirty jobs in the hospital.
‘It’s hard to form relationships with the animals there. The ones who are in long enough to bond with are the ones you can’t afford to bond with.’
‘Not sure zookeeping is the right choice, either, if it’s bonding you’re after. We can be transferred without notice, animals get transacted out to other zoos, there are management decisions. It’s not exactly stable.’
‘It couldn’t possibly be a faster revolving door than at the hospital.’
‘Is that what you’re looking for—constancy?’
‘I’d like to come to work every day and see the same faces. I’d like to get to know every dog out there by sight and have them be happy to see me.’ I’d really like not to come into work and find some animal I’ve spent two weeks nurturing back to health has declined and gone overnight. ‘I wouldn’t mind working with them when they’re healthy instead of only when they’re sick.’
Maybe then she could get a bit of certainty back in her working life—if she couldn’t get it in her personal one.
She stepped back a bit. ‘Anyway, it’s a moot point. I didn’t get the job.’
‘This time.’
True. It had been a year since the vacancy Gabe filled had opened up. That made the next one a whole year closer. Not everyone was wedded to the place as she was.
‘Will you try again?’
‘Maybe. Just don’t you go for the next one.’
‘I promise.’
His laugh was like fingers trailing up her skin. Seductive. Hypnotic. She let it coax a smile out of her.
‘Careful. I’ll start believing you’re comfortable around me.’
It was testament to how he could winkle his way under her skin that she blurted, ‘I’m never comfortable around you.’
Anyone else would have stepped back, offended. Gabe stepped forward and his eyes blazed into hers.
‘Why?’
She could lie, she could mumble something with a passing resemblance to credibility. She could. But she didn’t because he really wanted to know. ‘You’re always so intense.’
Although always wasn’t strictly true. There’d been entire minutes the night they were together that he’d lain in languid half-sleep, his fingers tracing patterns on her skin, about as disarmed as a human being could be. But such moments had been as rare as some of the animals they cared for.
‘I have a lot of passion,’ he murmured.
Wasn’t that the truth? In everything he did.
He frowned. ‘I don’t like that it makes you uncomfortable around me.’
‘Uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean unpleasant—’ though this conversation certainly was leaning that way ‘—it just means I’m not...relaxed.’
‘How can I change that?’
You can’t. And there it was again. As many times in two days she’d realised her issue with Gabe was more about herself than him. She sighed. ‘It’s complicated.’
Something in his eyes shifted as he caught her drift. They gleamed. ‘Good complicated or bad complicated?’
Really? You want me to spell it out? Fine.
‘It’s not getting any less...’ She waved her hands as if that would help churn up words from the ether and fling them towards her struggling lips.
Gabe exhaled in the gaps between her speech, bringing their breathing into sync. An old zoo trick to help relax a stressed animal. It irritated her that it worked on her so immediately.
‘Any less...?’ he murmured.
But she wasn’t that brave. ‘You don’t feel it?’ she hedged.
‘Depends on what you were about to say.’ He shuffled closer and looked down on her. ‘Are you talking about what happens to the air when we stand this close...?’
Sure enough the air around them seemed to thin and divest itself of its oxygen. She sucked in a pointless breath.
Okay. So he felt it.
She just nodded.
His eyes darkened. ‘That doesn’t make me uncomfortable.’
You’re not me. She turned away. ‘It’s not appropriate. We’re at work.’
‘I’m not working. Not till morning.’
‘I am.’
‘Yeah. You are.’ He let the silence hang for a bit and lowered his hand. ‘Until eight.’
She glanced back at him.
At the smile in his eyes.
At the badly disguised promise behind that.
He let her off the hook and returned to the monitor, hit rewind to view back what they’d missed while they’d been lost in each other.
Ingrid let her breath out slowly and quietly. She’d been foolish to go there at all. Just because she couldn’t be mad at him any more for getting the job it didn’t mean it was safe to let herself get close to him. Nothing else had changed for her.
One night was all well and good, but...longer? Trust was not something she gave easily these days.
They were colleagues, and maybe now they could be friends.
That was all.
CHAPTER SIX
December 30th
WATCHING GABE SLEEP was becoming a dangerous habit. Most people got less attractive when they were sleeping. They sagged and gaped and were somehow...diminished when unconscious. Gabe just got better with the relaxation of his muscles.
Softened.
But it hardly seemed fair to watch him, since she’d be mortified if he did the same thing to her when she was off shift.
She turned back to the monitor. Mjawi had emerged at first light from B-den for her morning salute to the dawn—squeezing, as always, out of the entrance hole and leaving the pups sleeping deep inside. A subordinate male immediately took the chance to crawl into the den and investigate. If it had been lion or hyena they were watching that would have been cause for alarm, but wild dogs were the closest thing to being caring that carnivores got, and every dog looked out for the future of the pack. Ingrid knew he’d nuzzle them to death before doing anything more sinister.
Mjawi thought a bit of puppy-sitting was just fine. She flopped down by the waterhole and enjoyed the fresh morning air. Ingrid zoomed one of the perimeter cameras in on her to check her condition.
It seemed hours and yet just moments until Gabe’s raspy morning voice murmured from behind her.
‘She looks good.’
Glossy coat, good clean muzzle, and as well fed as such a lean species could appear. ‘She needed a break.’
‘From a dozen pups? No doubt.’
Ingrid tipped her head back to look up at him. ‘Are you truly expecting a dozen?’
Gabe shrugged. ‘That’s pretty common.’
Wow. From zero to twelve. That was some family. And here she was complaining about her shift from being one to one of five.
‘Safety in numbers.’ He shrugged. ‘In the wild getting your pack size up is a priority if you want to survive. Family is all.’
Ingrid shifted against the uncomfortable thought that maybe that was what she was supposed to be doing. Her parents had done their job and got her to adulthood, and then they’d gone back again and brought more life into the world with the people they now loved—and they were working hard to get them to adulthood too. Her brothers and sisters were only babies—a mix of half and step-siblings—but they were family. And they might as well not have a big sister if she didn’t get a handle on her unconventional family.
She glanced back at the empty entrance to B-den. That subordinate male wasn’t complaining that he wasn’t alpha, that he didn’t get to have offspring of his own; he was just pitching in and doing what he could for the betterment of the pack.
Maybe the only person Ingrid was ultimately hurting was herself.
On screen, Mjawi jogged lightly back to the entrance to the den and squeezed her head and shoulders into the hole. Halfway in, her feet dug in and she started to retreat as the male emerged. The two of them met right at the entrance and a momentary battle for access broke out. As the male kicked and reared back the den entrance took quite a beating, and Ingrid suspended her breath and waited for it to cave in.
Gabe was up and out of the camp bed and halfway to unlocking the A-den hatch by the time the momentary flare-up settled.
‘It’s fine, Gabe,’ Ingrid urged. ‘He’s out. She’s gone back in.’
‘How’s the entrance tunnel?’
Ingrid stood aside so that he could get a good look on the monitor. ‘Battered. But still holding.’
Though a clump of earth fell from its roof as they watched. She lifted her eyes to his.
‘I think it’s just a question of when, now,’ he said, ‘not if.’
‘Should we break through?’ Their estimations said there were just inches between Mjawi’s tunnel and Ingrid’s.
He thought about that long and hard. ‘No. Not yet. But I think we’re in for a long day.’
More earth sprinkled down across the entrance to the den. Ingrid pressed her lips together and tried to imagine a first-time mother—and a first-time tunnel-digger—knowing enough to get a dozen pups out in time.
Not likely.
‘Just say the word.’
He turned and looked at her. ‘Are you going to be okay if this doesn’t end well?’
Occasional loss of life was a reality in being a vet nurse. And in running a zoo. ‘Let’s just do our best not to let that happen.’
Gabe nodded.
They watched the tunnel entrance until the earth found its natural stability again. Then Gabe left to shower and eat and be back in time for his shift. Ingrid splashed some milk from the drugs fridge into a wax-lined single-serve cereal packet that doubled as its own vessel and tucked into the crunchy flakes as she watched the other dogs investigating the morning. They frolicked until they flopped, exhausted, in the shade. But it would only take one to rouse the rest of the boisterous pack back into chaotic activity.
She smelled Gabe’s return before hearing it. Soap and French aftershave were as good as a neon sign when you were working with the stinkiest species in the zoo. Her body half turned to him before she could temper its traitorous reaction.
At the last moment she turned her eagerness into a clumsy sort of update. ‘No real change.’
Better that than have him see the flash of excitement she’d felt. He’d only been gone half an hour.
He strode from the bright morning light into the darkened room like some kind of archangel. Tall men had such a way of moving, and something about them being damp and smooth-shaven made that even harder to ignore.
She fought it—hard.
He stopped right up close to her, just behind her left shoulder. She could practically feel the amusement pumping off him. He knew what he was doing. He’d been standing extra close, whispering extra low, smiling extra sexy since she’d fumbled her way so badly out of the admission that she still responded to him physically.
Only it was more than physical—as her reaction of moments ago showed. It was Gabe she responded to, not just his body. It was him she wanted to talk to—for hours, to get deep under his skin, to see what made him tick and how he’d become the man he was. It was his mind that stimulated hers and his pain that hurt her.
‘I’m going to grab some breakfast,’ she lied, knowing her shift wasn’t up for two hours yet, but knowing he would cover for her. ‘See you later on.’
She was up and away from Gabe’s eau de gorgeous and his high-frequency energy before he’d even acknowledged her words. She crossed the yard behind the night quarters and cut up an embankment on a set of stone steps that hadn’t been used by the public for two decades.
A go
od hot shower would take her mind off Gabe. Or a good cold one. She just needed time away—a literal and emotional time-out. Working together so closely like this was bound to blur their usual boundaries. She just needed to get a better handle on her innermost thoughts and stop blurting them out.
Feeling them was one thing...
Indulging them was not an option.
A relationship was the last thing she wanted. Not when she was building herself a new career and future. Not when she was so determined to shore up her place in the organisation she’d worked at for so many years to bring her spinning world to a halt.
She’d allowed herself that one night with Gabe a year ago because she’d believed it came parcelled up with its own expiry date. He was leaving. Except then he wasn’t. The last-minute chance she’d thought she’d been exploiting had suddenly loomed long and open-ended in front of her, as unpredictable as the rest of her world.
She could forgive herself that one time because she hadn’t known he was staying. This time she knew. This time there could be no forgiveness.
There could be no more ‘times’.
Her job now was to push Gabriel Marque and his hard-jawed, purry-accented, broad-shouldered gorgeousness way back in her mind. Despite what her body thought was a good idea. Despite what her heart whispered.
Hearts were no way to run a life. They were way too capricious.
And when you were working hard to bring stability to your life inconstancy was not something to be encouraged.
All she wanted was a good job with a clear career path where she could build relationships with the people and animals she worked with. She didn’t want complications. She didn’t want tumult.
She didn’t want Gabe.
Even if—very much—she did.
* * *
JUST FOR SOMETHING different she swung back, clean and emotionally shored up, via the visitors’ side of the wild dog exhibit. Her path took her through the Okavango Delta exhibit, and passed lions, giraffe, rhino, zebra all resting in their enclosures. Meerkats. A serval. A mini-wetland dotted with flamingo and pygmy hippos. Some lifted their heads, surprised to see a human up and about so early.