was intrigued. This was so far from her preconception of Alistair that she had to probe further. ‘You found him?’
‘You don’t think I’d go out and choose a dog like Flotsam, do you?’ Alistair asked. He was concentrating on lifting the casserole from the oven, and she couldn’t see his face, but she thought he sounded as if he was smiling. That’d make a change.
‘I guess I didn’t think that.’ She stooped and fondled the dog’s scruffy ears, and he reached out a scratchy tongue and licked the back of her hand. He was a seriously enchanting little mutt. No, she hadn’t thought he’d choose a dog like this. But neither had she thought a man like Alistair would have a dog like this foisted on him. Or a man like Grant.
She needed to separate the two. Desperately.
‘So how did you find him?’ she managed.
‘He was washed up after a storm,’ Alistair told her, seeming not to notice her discomfort. ‘There was a cyclone here a few months back. A boat was smashed up on the rocks. Indonesian. A couple of sailors were injured and ended up in hospital. The cargo was fish. We suspect it was taken illegally from Australian waters. Anyway, I walked down to the beach a day after the storm and the smell was unbelievable. Tons and tons of tuna, swept up on the beach and left to rot. Our local fisheries officer was taking photographs as evidence, and while he was photographing a pile of fish, the pile moved.’
‘It moved?’ Sarah was still rubbing the little dog’s ears. Flotsam looked up at her with eyes that said, Oh, isn’t this the most pathetic story—rub me some more! ‘You mean— Flotsam was underneath?’
‘He was crushed under a load of rotten fish. Heaven knows how he managed to survive. At that stage the boat had been broken up for forty-eight hours. Anyway, Flotsam’s leg was badly broken and he was barely alive, but I hauled off a fish and he looked at me…’
‘With his patched eye?’
‘It’s a great eye,’ Alistair said, and there was no doubting the genuine affection in his voice as he looked at the little dog—who was rubbing himself round and round Sarah’s hand so every inch of his scruffy little head was covered. ‘Sam—the fisheries officer—said he was probably an Indonesian dog, was breaking all sorts of immigration laws by being here, and would have to be quarantined for six months if he was to stay. The best thing would be to put him down. But still that crazy eye looked at me. So I went back to the hospital and asked the wounded sailors if they knew him. They all swore they knew nothing about a dog. By the time I returned the eye had worked on Sam as well. So Sam and I declared him officially an Australian dog who’d obviously been walking along the beach minding his own business when two tons of tuna landed on his head.’
Sarah stared—and then choked. ‘Oh, of course. That’s the obvious thing to think, isn’t it?’
‘It was the obvious thing to think if we didn’t want to put him down,’ Alistair told her, deadpan. ‘Anyway, we treated his leg—and a tricky little piece of surgery it was, too. Broken tib and fib with resultant complications. Then he had to stay here in these quarters just in case quarantine was called for, and afterwards…’
‘You couldn’t get rid of him,’ Sarah said on a note of something akin to amazement, and Alistair scooped casserole onto three plates and managed a rueful smile.
‘See? I’m not always the evil twin. And as for putting him down…could you?’
‘No.’ She looked doubtfully at the dinner plates. And then at Flotsam, whose short, stumpy tail was doing helicopter rotations.
I’m not always the evil twin.
Did he know what Grant used to say about him?
It didn’t matter. Not any more. She had a job to do here, and a little dog to concentrate on to break the tension. ‘Does he sit up at the dinner table, too?’
‘He’s fussy who he dines with,’ Alistair said ambiguously, and carried the dog’s plate through the screen door out to the veranda. He set it down on the step while Sarah watched through the screen. ‘Here, mate—you can eat in privacy out here.’
Sarah stared. And felt her anger build. Whew. There was only one way to meet this hostility, she decided. Head-on. ‘Are you suggesting you’d rather eat out there, too?’ she demanded, and Alistair appeared to think about it.
‘Maybe. But I’m hungry. I’ll eat fast.’
‘Meaning you want as little contamination from me as possible?’
‘You said it, not me, lady,’ Alistair told her. ‘But let’s just leave it there.’
The silence was deafening. They ate, and the tension was growing all the time. Sarah stirred the casserole—which was some sort of indiscriminate stew—and wished she could be anywhere but here.
One mistake…
No. It had been more than one mistake. She’d been hauled into Grant’s world. She’d been caught in the bright bubble of laughter and excitement and sheer buzz, and she hadn’t looked below the surface until it was far, far too late.
She’d met his family.
She remembered the night Grant had given her the engagement ring. He’d taken her up to the top of the Rialto Tower in Melbourne, where the lights of all the world had spread out beneath them.
‘Now, when all the world is at our feet, I’m at your feet,’ he’d told her, and he’d knelt and given her the most exquisite diamond.
The moment had been something out of a fairytale. It had seemed…fantastic. But she’d looked down at that gorgeous laughing face and she’d felt a stir of disquiet. It had happened so fast—it had been as if they were playacting. Was there any substance there?
But she’d accepted. Of course she’d accepted. He had to be special. After that wonderful Christmas she’d wanted so much to be a part of his world. So she’d worn his ring, and she’d loved him and laughed at his jokes and been carried along in his world, until reality had finally hit and she’d seen what really lay beneath. And she’d realised the real reason she’d agreed to marry Grant.
Loving one twin was no basis for marriage to another.
Crazy thought. It was a crazy time, long past. She needed to focus on now. On what Alistair was saying.
‘You don’t wear his ring.’
Alistair was watching her from the other side of the table. His voice was carefully neutral—neither approving nor disapproving.
‘I thought you wanted to stay impersonal.’
‘So I do.’ His eyes stayed calm—watchful and appraising. ‘But I’m still wondering.’
‘I’m not in another relationship, if that’s what you mean,’ she told him. ‘But, no, I’m not still pining for Grant. I’ve moved on. Don’t you think it’s time you did, too?’
‘I don’t think you can move on from Grant.’
‘He’d have liked to hear you say that,’ she said, and there was no way she could keep the note of bitterness from her voice. ‘He had us all dancing from his strings. You included.’
‘I never did what he wanted.’
‘No, but you judged on his behalf.’
‘You killed him.’
It was like a punch to the face. Dear God…
She took a great lungful of air and it wasn’t enough. She found her eyes filling. Numbly, blindly, she stood.
What had she told him? That she’d moved on?
She’d done no such thing. The pain was right there, waiting to slam back. And it slammed back now.
She was not going to let this man see her