Just for Today.... Emmie Dark

of thought, and it was a moment before he identified it as the phone. Rob and Hailey’s landline, not his mobile.

      Whoever was calling was keen to get an answer. The answering machine kicked in but the caller hung up. Then as soon as the answering machine disconnected, the phone started ringing again.

      “Yeah?” Sean managed to stumble from the sofa to the phone, but a polite “hello” was beyond him.

      “Man! Where have you been? I’ve been calling your mobile for the past hour!” Rob’s voice was equal parts annoyed and frantic.

      Sean’s phone was on silent. He’d changed the setting when he’d entered the house with Jess, because he hadn’t wanted to be disturbed. That was too much to explain, though. “What’s up?”

      Rob swore. “Stupid Lucy. She’s pulled out.”

      “Huh?” Lucy?

      “The house sitter—Hailey’s cousin. She’s a university student and she’s met some guy who lives on the opposite side of town so she’s decided she doesn’t want to look after the house and Suzie anymore.”

      “Oh.”

      “Our flight leaves in a couple of hours.”

      Sean scratched his stubbled jaw. He now deeply regretted the impulse to finish the bottle of red. If only he’d left it at one or two glasses. But the way things had ended with Jess had left him with a weirdly unsettled feeling—as if he’d somehow done something wrong. He hadn’t wanted to think too much about that, and diving deep into the cabernet sauvignon pool had seemed like a good idea at the time.

      “That sucks,” Sean said, trying to sound sincere. His thoughts hustled to catch up.

      “So we need your help.”

      Ah. Right. There was the reason he needed his brain right now.

      “Can you stay a couple more days?” Rob asked. “Just long enough to organize a kennel for Suzie? If you need help, Hailey’s boss, Jess, could probably give you some advice—there’s a fridge magnet in the kitchen with her clinic details. We thought about asking her to take Suzie, but it’s a big imposition for six weeks. Lucy has agreed she’ll come and collect the mail once a week, and that should be enough—”

      Rob broke off as a muffled voice spoke in the background—Hailey. Sean couldn’t make out what she was saying.

      “Yes, yes,” Rob said, annoyance strong in his voice. He then clearly passed on what it was Hailey had said. “And don’t forget to take the garbage out when you leave, because otherwise it will sit there.”

      It prickled that his brother—his younger brother—didn’t trust him enough to know to take the garbage out. It prickled even more that they hadn’t even thought to ask if he would step in and look after the house for them. It was just assumed that he wouldn’t accept the responsibility.

      Just like Jess with her quip about the women’s underwear—Sean hated that people always expected the worst from him.

      Especially his family.

      Just because he loved words and pictures more than numbers, his family of accountants figured he wasn’t capable of any kind of logic.

      Story of his life.

      “I was planning to be in Sydney for a meeting I have on Monday,” Sean began.

      “I know.” Rob sighed, a heavy, put-upon sound. “Okay, well maybe we’ll just have to ask Jess to pick up Suzie and organize the kennel.”

      Hailey’s voice was shrill in the background. Sean was sure he heard the words told you so in there somewhere.

      “Listen, mate,” Sean said, raising his voice, his hurt transforming into irritation. He might prefer a more freewheeling life than his tradition-following brother, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of being responsible when the occasion called for it.

      “Would you just shut up for a second and let me talk? I was going to say, I have a meeting in Sydney but I can arrange to do it by teleconference. Why don’t you just leave it all with me? I’ll stay here and take care of things for you. I have to be back in Melbourne in two weeks for a convention anyway.”

      There was a moment of silence.

      Did his brother really mistrust him that much?

      Sean jumped in, quick to give Rob the out he so clearly needed. “If you don’t think I can do it, that’s fine....”

      “Dude, it’s not that at all.” There was a pause as Rob seemed to choose his words. “I didn’t want to ask, because I know it’s not your scene. But if you were up for it, I’d be grateful. We both would.”

      Sean doubted that Hailey would be all that thrilled with Sean’s presence in the house for more than the couple of nights he’d originally been allocated, but he was prepared to take his brother at his word.

      “Then just forget about it all. Get your things together and head out to the airport. It’s all cool.”

      “Yeah? Seriously? Are you sure?”

      “Seriously. Just go...have fun. I’ll work things out. If there are any problems, I’ll call.”

      “Just a sec.” There was the muffled sound of a hand covering the phone and an indecipherable conversation. Sean just bet it was Rob convincing Hailey to go along with the plan. Then Rob returned to the call. “Thanks, mate. I owe you one. First the wedding and now this. I owe you big-time.”

      “Yeah, yeah. Name your firstborn after me.”

      Rob laughed. “Sure. I’ll get started on that right away.”

      Sean heard Hailey’s voice in the background, asking what they were talking about.

      “You’ll be waiting awhile,” he heard her yell out after Rob explained the request.

      Sean smiled to himself at her vehemence. “I bloody hope so,” he said to Rob.

      “We’ll need to discuss this further. It could get awkward if it’s a girl.”

      “There’s always Shauna.”

      Rob laughed again, and Sean found himself joining in. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad I’m here, okay? The last thing I need is for them to discover I’m a sitting duck.”

      “Deal.”

      They said their farewells and Sean hung up the call and looked around the room. His suit was still lying over the chair, his shirt a crumpled pile on the floor. Under the table, near the wall, was a scrap of black lace he was just betting was Jess’s thong.

      “Home,” he muttered to himself. His home for six whole weeks. His stomach tightened, but the thought wasn’t nearly as scary as it should have been.

      * * *

      DEALING WITH a potential outbreak of Q fever for one of her regular clients—a breeder of Cavalier King Charles spaniels—was just the kind of Monday morning Jess needed to distract herself from the weekend. Following through to notify anyone who could have been exposed, reporting it to the department of health for further investigation and then moving on with her usual roster of patients—a couple of minor injuries, the usual canine and feline parasite infestations, an infected paw on a gorgeous Irish setter—it was easy to feel as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. While animals and their anxious owners were in front of her, she was focused.

      But any moment of downtime, left to her own thoughts, her stomach would slowly turn flip-flops. Her cheeks still burned when she recalled the knowing look she was sure she’d seen in the car park attendant’s eyes yesterday when he’d processed her ticket, clearly time-stamped from the night before.

      Ridiculous. In this day and age, it wasn’t as if a one-night stand was particularly remarkable or even that noteworthy. It wasn’t even the first she’d ever had—although