Christmas Where She Belongs. Meredith Webber

she did recover enough to ask, ‘The house with the three flood families living in it?’

      ‘No, no, they’ve all moved out,’ he assured her. ‘At the moment I’m your only tenant, although I must admit I don’t pay much rent—none, in fact. Hester took me in after the flood as well, but I’ve stayed on. She wasn’t well, you see, and the house is old and needed a lot of maintenance—’

      ‘Stop right there!’

      Clancy actually held up her hand to halt his explanation, and the waitress bringing the coffee stopped obligingly. By the time they’d sorted that out, and had coffee on the table, Mac had forgotten what he’d been saying, mainly because Clancy had smiled again and although it had been at the waitress, not at him, the smile had still caused problems in his chest.

      Now Clancy lifted her coffee cup, pursing her lips to sip from it, and Mac felt a judder in his heart. No way. This wasn’t happening. He didn’t do instant attraction. Both his long-term partnerships had been gradual, cautious involvements—and as both of them had failed, how much more disastrous would a relationship based on nothing more than physical attraction be?

      Relationship?

      Where was his head?

      ‘Start again with you, McAlister,’ Clancy was saying. ‘At the door you said you were a lawyer, then you show a hospital ID with “Angel Flight” on it, which I know doesn’t make you a doctor because you could just be a pilot with a plane, but none of this explains why were you sponging off this Hester until she died. Were you hoping to get the house and dog yourself?’

      ‘Heaven forbid!’ he retorted, pleased the woman’s accusation had cleared his head—if not his chest. ‘The place is falling down. I just didn’t want to leave her on her own. Also, it’s a good house, and has historical value, and it deserves to live. But so much needs doing to it. I could only keep things going, getting a tradesperson in when necessary, although I’ve become a dab hand at changing tap washers and cleaning blocked drains.’

      ‘That’s not making anything clearer,’ Clancy told him as she battled to make sense of the situation. She didn’t know if it was what he was saying or because of her reaction to him as a man, but for whatever reason every time the man spoke she grew more confused. ‘What are you really? A doctor, a lawyer, a carpenter, odd-job man …?’

      The man had the hide to laugh and Mike, apparently hearing the sound, came trotting across, grinning his stupid grin, a little bit of bacon dangling from the beard beneath his chin.

      The dog nuzzled his head beneath Mac’s hand and as Mac’s long fingers rubbed the dog’s head Clancy had the weirdest sensation that the fingers were touching her—rubbing her head, and ruffling her hair.

      ‘A doctor first. The lawyer and odd-job man are part-time jobs, like the farming. It probably won’t surprise you to know that although doctors are desperately needed in country areas across Queensland, the only lawyering the locals need is the odd will or a bit of conveyancing when they buy or sell something.’

      ‘Farming? Did you sneak farming in there as well?’ Clancy asked. ‘Law and medicine are both long degrees, and then there’s articles for a lawyer and internship for a doctor. So that makes you, what—a hundred and ten years old?’

      ‘I am thirty-six,’ Mac replied, somewhat stiffly, Clancy felt. ‘And for your information I started studying law, then switched to medicine after four years. After I moved to Carnock I finished my law degree as an external student and did the practical legal training course to get my practicing certificate.’

      ‘Okay, so you’re the town doctor and the town lawyer and you live in my house, which is falling down. Is that it?’

      ‘More or less.’ The reply this time was grumpy, to say the least. ‘Although it isn’t your house, it’s Mike’s.’

      ‘Mike’s?’

      The word came out as a yelp, which won an answering yelp from the dog himself, who shifted his allegiance from Mac to her.

      Clancy stared at the man who had, in less than an hour, turned her neatly ordered life completely upside down.

      ‘Can a dog inherit a house? Own a house? Are you sure that’s legal?’

      She patted Mike’s head to show she had nothing against him personally, and, apparently liking that, he rested his chin on her leg, liberally smearing her clean white cargo shorts with dog slobber.

      ‘Life tenancy,’ Mac responded, ‘after which it reverts to you, but—’

      Up to this point, the man had been looking at her as he explained things—in fact, he’d been looking at her so intently she’d felt uncomfortable, although that could have been the attraction thing. Now, not only had he left an ominous-sounding ‘but’ dangling at the end of his sentence, but McAlister Whoever was gazing over her left shoulder—towards the road behind them, not looking at her at all …

      ‘But?’

      ‘Well …’

      The man was hedging.

      ‘Actually,’ he began again, ‘to get the house, you have to take the dog.’

      ‘Actually,’ Clancy mimicked, ‘having heard about the house, I doubt very much I’d want it, while as for the dog—’

      Unfortunately, perhaps understanding he was the dog in question, Mike looked up at her at that moment … and smiled.

      No! No way! You do not disrupt your carefully planned life because a dog smiled at you!

      ‘Couldn’t the dog be mine in name but continue to live in the house with you?’

      The man did look at her now, studying her for what seemed an inordinate length of time before answering—only what he said wasn’t an answer at all.

      ‘I can understand you haven’t much time for your father, but have you no curiosity at all about him, about his family, your forebears? Wouldn’t you at least like to see the town, look at the house?’

      The nut roast had looked more like a dinosaur than a turkey, Clancy remembered, an image of the monstrosity flashing through her brain. While as for the wine …

      Now here was the perfect excuse not to go to Nimbin for Christmas. The summer break was three months long—she could visit Carnock for a couple of weeks and still have plenty of time to complete her ‘to do’ list.

      And though she was reluctant to admit it, the man was right, she did have a good deal of curiosity about her father. She’d just left it packed away in the cellar of her mind since her abortive attempt to find him back when she’d been a child.

      ‘I don’t have a car. Is there a bus, or a train?’ she asked, and Mac frowned at her.

      ‘You don’t have a car?’

      She frowned right back at him.

      ‘You make it sound as if it’s a sin against humanity—have you not heard of minimising your personal carbon footprint? And why would I need a car? A pleasant stroll across the pedestrian bridge over the river takes me to work and the city, I have parklands all around me, I have a bicycle if I want to go further afield. So, no, I don’t have a car.’

      ‘Well, you could fly back out there with me. I’m going this afternoon and I’m almost sure to be coming back down before too long. Otherwise someone in town could give you a lift.’

      He paused, again studying her a little too intently.

      ‘You’ll come?’ he added.

      She thought of her eight-year-old self setting out to walk to the place called Carnock, the page she’d torn from the atlas in the school library folded in her pocket, and suddenly the idea of seeing the town she’d been headed for all those years ago filled her with an excitement she hadn’t felt for a long, long time.

      ‘I’ll