Christmas Where She Belongs. Meredith Webber

it’s going to be a problem, you inheriting Mike?’

      The only response was a narrow-eyed glare, but even glaring those eyes were special.

      They reached the café and Clancy chose a table at the outside edge of the pavement, no doubt assuming it would keep Mike out of other patrons’ way. But she didn’t know Mike.

      ‘So!’ she said, sitting down with her back to the quiet road. ‘Start at the beginning, who you are, why are you here, who is or was Hester and, probably most important of all, as I can’t keep the dog, what are you going to do with him?’

      He smiled at her.

      ‘Very succinct summation of the main points. No wonder you’ve done so well as a teacher,’ he said.

      The smile was Clancy’s undoing. It sneaked through her skin and curdled in her blood, turning it thick and sluggish, but no matter how her body was behaving, she couldn’t let him get away with the jibe.

      ‘I am a nurse educator, the senior lecturer in surgical nursing and theatre skills at the university,’ she pointed out.

      The man’s smile widened.

      ‘Just as I said—a really good teacher! You must be to have done so well. But tell me, having trained to nurse, what made you go into teaching? Did you not like nursing?’

      He was impossible.

      ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, we’re here to talk about the dog, not me.’

      ‘Ah, Mike!’ the infuriating man drawled, while the dog sniffed the leg of a leggy blonde three tables away and was rewarded with a bit of buttered and very jammy croissant.

      Should she call the dog? Clancy wondered. Would it come if she did?

      ‘Start with who you are,’ she said to the man, deciding it was easier to ignore the dog.

      ‘My name is McAlister Warren, and—’

      ‘McAlister Warren? That sounds more like a firm of lawyers than a name.’

      Yes, that had been rude, but she was strung so tightly the words had just slipped out. Anyway, the situation was so bizarre, surely a little rudeness wouldn’t count.

      Not that rudeness affected the man. He could give as good as he got.

      ‘It’s the name my parents gave me,’ he said smoothly, ‘and coming from someone called Willow Cloud Clancy, your criticism of my name is a bit rich.’

      Clancy cringed. Few people knew her real name, and those who did would never dare to use it. She’d been Clancy from her first day at school—at real school, that was …

      ‘Everyone calls me Clancy,’ she said, aware that colour had crept into her face. He was right—she should never have mentioned names.

      ‘Good choice,’ he said, smiling cheerfully at her across the table and causing the little hairs on her arms to stand on end as if his words had brushed her skin. ‘Now, coffee? Something to eat with it?’

      Clancy had been so busy trying to work out why the man was affecting her, she hadn’t noticed the waitress, one she didn’t know, approach the table.

      ‘Long, black and nothing to eat,’ she managed to reply, hoping coffee—black—might get her brain working again while certain that the way she felt, she’d choke on food.

      ‘So, you’re Mac,’ she prompted. ‘From Carnock, was it?’

      As she said the word, a memory stirred and she knew why she’d opened the door. Once, long ago, she’d searched for a town called Carnock on a map in the school library, wondering just how far away it was and whether she could walk there if she started early enough. She was a good walker, and every morning walked a long way uphill to catch the bus to school …

      ‘You’ve heard of Carnock?’

      Mac’s question was casual enough, but Clancy could feel his attention was focussed fully on her, as if the question had some deeper meaning.

      ‘One of the towns that had to be totally evacuated during the floods last year?’ she responded, realising she hadn’t connected the town to her childhood memory back then. It had to be the talk of an inheritance that had triggered the memory now.

      Although, back when she had set out to walk there, and the search parties had returned her to the hippie commune that had been home, her mother had told her that while her father might have lived there once, it was the last place on earth he’d have gone back to—a place he’d hated.

      ‘And that’s all you know of it?’ Mac persisted.

      Clancy frowned at him.

      ‘It might have been the town my father came from, but as I never really knew him, and as my mother always said he wouldn’t be seen dead in the place ever again, I doubt you’ve come to tell me he is dead. Although …’ she looked across to where Mike was now being offered bacon and egg at a far table ‘… leaving me a dog would be consistent with his complete lack of presence in my life.’

      ‘You know nothing of him?’ Mac asked.

      ‘He went away—that’s all I know. All my mother would ever say. I was two, maybe three—’ She broke off suddenly, shrugged, then added, ‘Actually, having escaped the commune and my mother’s hippie lifestyle as soon as I possibly could, I can’t find it in my heart to blame him.’

      Mac turned her words over in his head, but found no bitterness in them. How sad that all she knew of her father was that he’d gone away. How hurtful it must have been for her, growing up with that knowledge.

      But he was on a mission and couldn’t afford to be distracted by this woman’s unhappy childhood—if it had been unhappy.

      ‘The thing is, your father did come from Carnock and, no, he didn’t turn up dead there—in fact, as far as Hester was able to ascertain, he’s still alive—but he is, in her opinion, a total waste of space and you probably didn’t miss much not having him around.’

      Clancy didn’t look convinced, but at least she was intrigued enough to ask, ‘And exactly who was Hester?’

      ‘Hester Clancy was your great-aunt, and an utterly wonderful woman. Every small town has someone like Hester, but Carnock was blessed with the best. Hester was the person young girls went to when they discovered they were pregnant, she was the person battered women eventually talked to, she’d find the money to send the clever kids in town to university when their parents couldn’t afford it, and after the floods she had three families living in her house for nearly a year while their homes were rebuilt.

      ‘She fought insurance companies and the flood-fund people to get the best deal for all of them, and practically forced tradesmen to work in Carnock when they could all be getting better money in the nearby mines.’

      ‘Wonder Woman, in fact,’ Clancy muttered, and although there was no meanness in the remark, Mac couldn’t let it slide.

      ‘Not really. Just caring, and giving, and very, very sensible.’ He paused, then had to add, ‘I imagine you’ve got the same sensible gene. Small apartment close to where you work, waiting until you can afford to buy good furniture rather than spending foolishly on rubbish—’

      ‘I can buy furniture whenever I like,’ Clancy retorted, the flash of fire in the green eyes suggesting she’d been called sensible before and hated it.

      ‘I’m sure you can,’ he soothed, but he couldn’t resist smiling, and slowly, reluctantly, she smiled back, her whole face lighting up, the radiance doing something to his lungs so his breath lodged in a lump in his trachea.

      ‘So, Hester the wonder woman left me a dog?’

      Had she, too, felt whatever it was that had zapped between them? After a silence that seemed to stretch for ever,