Chapter 5
5
Paige was back in the café again the following Tuesday. She was the only customer, which was just as well given she’d just finished a FaceTime call with the Just Desserts gang, all laughing and joking over their mutual shenanigans.
Bella who was dealing with art gallery owner Chase and Astrid who was working on hockey superstar Aiden were kicking it, but she knew that Sienna had to play a longer game with Horrible Harvey.
She took a restorative bite out of her scone slathered with clotted cream and sipped her full cream milk coffee. Real milk, real cream. This pretending to be vegan thing was a lot harder than she thought it would be. And she hadn’t even lost weight from lack of gluten and practically every other joyous food known to man because she was pretty much existing on packets of crisps.
And visiting bakeries a little too often.
Glancing out the window, she spotted the dog from last week again. Two big brown eyes sitting atop a greying muzzle looking at her, his unkempt wind-ruffled hair whipping across his eyes. The dog still looked skinny and freezing.
‘Jiya,’ she called, keeping an eye on the animal that looked like it was now in a hurry to move on.
‘Yes, my bewdy?’
‘Does someone own that dog?’ A Border Collie around these parts surely had to come off one of the surrounding sheep farms?
‘He’s a stray. Been hangin’ around on and off the last couple o’ weeks. People have tried to take him in but he don’t seem to mind his own company.’
Paige nodded. But surely, he wouldn’t mind a little TLC?
The WI women approached the door then and the dog hurried off as they traipsed in from another blustery walk. It wasn’t raining outside but the wind hadn’t really let up all week and the sky while still grey wasn’t low and grey. A couple of times it had even looked like the sun might poke its way through.
It hadn’t yet. But hey, she lived in hope.
‘Hi again,’ Dorry greeted as she approached and the others swarmed the counter.
Paige smiled. ‘Hey. Another fine Cornish day to be out walking, I see.’
The deep crinkles in the older woman’s face split into ravines as she laughed. ‘It’s what we call bracing around these parts.’
Grinning, Paige cocked an eyebrow. ‘So where did you come from, originally?’
‘Buckinghamshire born and bred. Married a tin miner, been here ever since.’
Sixty years, Paige recalled from their chat last week. ‘Bet you’re still not considered local, though, right?’
Another hoot. ‘Right.’ She glanced out at the sea front. ‘You should join us on our walk if you’re sticking around for a while.’
Paige also turned her gaze to the view. ‘In this? No way. This is red wine and log fire weather. Not walking around the streets weather.’
The dog suddenly appeared on the beach, dashing down to the tide line, running in and out of the shallows chasing the retreat of the waves, getting soaking wet and sandy.
‘Jiya says that dog’s a stray?’ Paige said. ‘Surely someone must be missing him?’
‘The vet scanned him when he first appeared a fortnight ago. She says there’s no chip and he’s not wearing a collar. Nor has anyone come looking for him either. She was going to take him to the shelter but he escaped when she had her back turned and he’s been a bit of a ghost ever since. Here one moment, gone the next. There’s been notices put in all the local surrounding villages’ Facebook groups but no one’s claimed him so far.’
‘ Dorry .’ Elizabeth’s imperious voice travelled easily across the café . ‘You’re up. Jiya doesn’t have all day.’
Paige swallowed down the urge to laugh out loud at the way Doris looked pointedly around at the empty café. ‘Coming, Elizabeth,’ she replied placidly before turning back to Paige to mouth, ‘Bossy boots.’
Pressing her lips together, Paige said, ‘See you later.’
‘Maybe for the walk next week?’
Dorry did not give up. ‘Maybe. If the weather’s better.’
Paige returned her attention to the beach front as Dorry joined her girl gang. The poor mutt looked like such a forlorn figure on the freezing deserted beach, amusing himself in the hideous weather. Sighing, Paige wrapped the second scone she hadn’t got around to plying in jam and cream in a paper napkin and shoved it in her jacket pocket.
Quickly downing the last of her tea, she stood. ‘Bye ladies, bye Jiya.’
Everyone bade her goodbye and despite every sensibility she owned warning her not to go down to the beach and possibly catch her death like some nineteenth-century romance heroine, Paige’s feet took her there anyway.
She probably shouldn’t be engaging with a stray dog but considering how sedentary her job was, she could definitely do with a spot of bracing air.
Flipping up her hood on her Red-Riding-Hood-esque cape she’d found at a charity shop, Paige hunched into her coat beneath, her fingers wrapping around the scone in the left pocket.
Stepping onto the sand, she immediately noticed, despite the harbour being relatively calm, the flotsam and jetsam of the churning sea deposited on the shore. Twisted piles of dense, wet seaweed, the odd plastic bottle, gnarly driftwood, bits of old tangled fishing net and an array of shells were scattered in haphazard abandon.
It was as if the ocean had been tipped upside down and shaken onto the beach.
Paige made her way slowly toward where the dog was running back and forth, chasing the tide, barking at the water when it caught up with him. She stood and watched him for long minutes clearly enjoying himself. He might be a stray, he might need some meat on his bones, but up close, he didn’t look like he was feeling sorry for himself either.
On the contrary, he looked like he was enjoying life.
Finally, the dog noticed her standing off to one side and plonked his ass on the sand, his head turning from side to side as he regarded her solemnly, a pink tongue lolling from his mouth. He whined a little, his legs trembling as if he’d suddenly remembered it was January and he was freezing his bollocks off.
‘Hey there,’ Paige murmured as she slowly approached, keeping her voice neutral and a smile on her dial. ‘You got a home, boy? Or are you really a ghost?’
The dog didn’t say or do anything for several beats then took off along the beach, nose down, sniffing at various objects scattered across the sand. Ooo -kay then. That was successful. But, before she knew it, he was back, a crusty, faded tennis ball that had clearly seen far better days clamped between his jaws.
He brought it to her, depositing it gently at Paige’s feet.
‘Oh, you like to play fetch, huh?’
Bending over, Paige picked up the ball. It was rough, cold and wet against her fingers but she didn’t mind as she pulled her arm back to toss it, the dog never taking its eyes off the ball. Paige let it fly in the direction of the pier, hurling it as far as she could and the dog took off, a blur of limbs, tail and fur. Which only went to prove that he must have been someone’s because he’d obviously been taught to fetch.
He caught it on the third bounce and had it back at her feet within seconds and Paige dutifully picked it up and threw it again. And again. And again. After ten minutes, though, her face was burning from the slap of cold wind and her fingers were red and practically numb. Pulling the scone from her pocket, she offered that to the dog instead.
He dropped the ball like it was dead to him.
Paige crouched beside the mutt as he scoffed down the offering. ‘You like that huh, boy?’ She petted his head, scratching behind his ears which was about the only place on his body that wasn’t wet and sandy. ‘Better with jam and clotted cream, trust me.’
The dog angled his head a little as if to direct Paige to the sweet spot and she smiled as she obliged. ‘What’s your name then, boy? Are you a Max? Or a Beau? Or is it slightly grander? Are you a Zeus? Or an Apollo?’
None of the names seemed to have an effect on him as Paige petted.
‘Are you a ghost? Should I call you Casper? Yeah.’ Paige nodded. ‘You look like a Casper. Is someone missing you, Casper, or did you run away for a good reason, huh?’
He looked in good condition and hadn’t cowered or been mistrustful with Paige. In fact, quite the opposite – he’d trusted her immediately.
Clearly done with the twenty questions, the dog picked up the ball again and dropped it near Paige’s knee. ‘Sorry, Casper,’ she said on a laugh as she stood. ‘If I stick around outside any longer I’m going to turn into a Popsicle.’
The dog stared at her with his big brown eyes and whined a little. And if he’d done it deliberately to make Paige feel guilty, it worked. But her toes were officially frozen and her lungs were now aching from the constant shock of cold air.
A thought crossed her mind. A deliciously delightfully wicked thought. ‘You wanna come home with me?’
Both Jiya and Dorry had said the dog had resisted attempts at offering refuge so Paige wasn’t sure if he’d go for it and she sure as hell wasn’t going to drag the creature into the car against its will. But if he did go for it? She could only imagine Oliver’s face if she turned up with the sodden, bedraggled animal threatening to besmirch all that blinding white.
Yeah. He’d probably really hate that. He’d only grudgingly accepted Pavarotti.
The dog however had different ideas, picking up the ball and trotting away in the opposite direction. And that, Paige supposed, was that. Still, she was disappointed. And not just because she’d miss out on some fun and games with Oliver but also, it was cold and wet and the thought of this dog out in the January weather just didn’t sit right.
But, she couldn’t force the animal into a warm, dry, freaking luxurious beach-side house of a famous dead British actor, could she?
As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Casper was lying on the pavement, manky ball from the beach sitting beside him, waiting for her when she got back to the Mini half an hour later, two grocery bags in tow. Paige didn’t know how the dog knew it was her car – or Oliver’s car to be precise. Maybe he was a ghost dog. She was just inordinately glad to see him as he lifted his head from the cold concrete of the footpath and wagged his tail.
‘Casper,’ she greeted with a grin and the dog stood, picking up the ball and wagging his tail some more.
If anything, he was even filthier than when she’d left him on the beach. He looked as if he’d detoured across a field on his jaunt to the car, finding every muddy wallow and possibly cow pat along the way. He was a total disaster zone and not even Paige could countenance putting him in the front seat.
Oliver probably deserved it and more, but she’d become quite partial to the pristine internal condition of the car and just couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
‘Okay, but you’re going in the back, mister and into a bath as soon as we get home.’ Paige faltered at the ease with which that word had rolled off her tongue. It was not her home. It was Oliver’s home. Thanks to Harvey she’d probably never have her own home, never feel able to put down roots.
Pushing that aside, she peered sternly at the dog. ‘That is non-negotiable.’
The dog seemed agreeable and when she opened the boot, he obligingly jumped in, dropping the ball. But, as she was stashing her bags beside him, he decided to renege on the deal. In a blur of fur, he took another leap from the boot to the back seat and then, like he was used to manoeuvring around things, squeezed between the two front seats to claim the passenger one as his own, leaving a trail of sand and dirt in his wake.
Yeah, that was not the first time the dog had done that.
‘Casper!’ she gasped but all Paige could see from the boot were two ears fully pricked to attention and the swish of his tail.
Shutting the boot, Paige went around to the driver’s side and opened the door, prepared to chastise the animal. Crossing her arms, she injected a note of warning into her voice. ‘Casper.’
But Casper refused to even glance in her direction, his muzzle straight ahead as if she’d assigned him a role as navigator and he was ready and raring to go. Paige stared in dismay at the mud and sand smudges that decorated both the back and front seats.
Oliver would be pissed. She smiled to herself – perfect.
‘Hey Casper,’ she crooned as she reached for her phone.
The dog, obviously an expert in tone – even more evidence that he not only belonged to somebody but had been highly trained – turned his head with a tail thump, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He looked right at her, the fur on his face and ruff utterly filthy, like he’d been dipped in a diluted mud-and-sand-pie mix.
She shook her head at him and snapped a pic. Climbing in the car, she shut the door and quickly sent it to the girls.
Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 09.45GMT.
Paige
Guess who’s coming home with me?
Astrid
Is that a dog?
Paige
It sure is! I’ve called him Casper. The menagerie grows.
Sienna
Jaysus. Where did you find that? It looks like the creature from the black swamp.
Bella
Olly will have apoplexy! I approve this message 100%
* * *
Oliver didn’t think he was rare among men to admit that he enjoyed taking his morning constitutional. Maybe women did too – it wasn’t a conversation he’d ever had with one – but plenty of dudes he knew freely admitted the same. There was nothing quite as satisfying as those few peaceful minutes sitting on the throne – so to speak – flicking through a magazine as bodily functions did their thing.
Made a man feel like a king for a few moments. Like he could conquer the world. Yeah, it sounded really dumb but he didn’t make the rules.
This morning he was taking his in the toilet that adjoined a bathroom servicing the living area, when he thought he heard the garage door open. Paige must be back from town. Turning to the loo roll, he frowned. Someone – Paige, of course – had put the bloody thing on the wrong way.
What the hell?
Everyone knew there was a right way and a wrong way. The paper had to come over the top of the roll, not from underneath. It was like… science . For fuck’s sake, it was like finding the damn remote controls scattered all around the media room instead of lined up in a row on the coffee table where they belonged. Or his CDs replaced (when she bothered) willy-nilly on the shelf instead of following his carefully alphabetised system.
Seriously, since Paige had come to stay, nothing was the right way. She was like a reverse Mary Poppins, taking all things ordered and creating chaos.
And now this. Apparently, he couldn’t even take a morning dump without being inconvenienced, yet again, by the woman who had blown into his life only a week ago. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of it – she really was getting on his last nerve.
And she wasn’t leaving until the end of next month !
Irritated, he turned the toilet roll around. What kind of heathens didn’t know the unwritten rule of toilet paper? Had she been raised by wolves? He blinked. Actually… where did she come from? He realised they’d never really spoken a whole lot about her.
He knew she had a brother and a sister and a nephew called Bunky and a niece called Lulu. That was it. He supposed they didn’t talk a whole helluva lot. Which probably had a lot to do with him trying to avoid her because of a) the general chaos that surrounded her and b) those damn freckles which drove him just a little bit crazy and made him think – in the moments when she wasn’t being Mary Poppins’ evil twin – that maybe he could take a whole lot more of her.
But she knew about way more intimate things where he was concerned. His struggles with his script for example. And what he’d done to Bella.
He was just exiting the bathroom after washing his hands when he heard a strange kind of clicking noise. Frowning, he turned his head to locate it only to find some kind of feral animal trotting into the hallway from the door that linked the garage with the rest of the house. Paige, in some kind of cape contraption, her hair a veritable mass of knotty, windswept curls, followed closely behind.
What the…? She had to be joking. A strange animal and toilet roll the wrong way around?
‘Stop.’ He held up his hand and, to give them their due, both Paige and the animal – a dog – did halt. In fact, the animal, which looked like it had been rolled in sand, grass and mud, sat his ass on the pristine cleanliness of his polished blonde wooden floorboards. ‘That… thing , is not coming into my house.’
‘Shhh.’ Paige looked at him like he was about to produce a gun and shoot the animal. ‘It’s okay lovely,’ she crooned as she glanced at the dog. ‘Daddy didn’t mean it.’
Oliver almost choked. Lovely? Daddy? Nope. ‘Oh, hell no.’
‘Oliver. Casper’s a stray. I know you don’t have any idea how cold it is out there because I haven’t seen you leave the house but trust me, it is.’
Oliver had been in Cornwall in January enough to know exactly how cold it was which was exactly why he wasn’t venturing out. Mostly. And if he hadn’t, the pink in her cheeks would have told him anyway.
‘He has nowhere to go.’
The dog looked at him with big brown eyes, a string of drool forming around the area where a scruffy-looking ball was lodged in his mouth. A twinge of guilt hit Oliver square in the solar plexus. ‘How do you know he’d called Casper if he’s a stray?’
He rolled her eyes at him. ‘I don’t. But we have to call him something.’
‘Um… no we don’t!’ For God’s sake, he had a fucking hamster in his life he didn’t want. He certainly didn’t need a mangy-looking dog. Oliver shoved a hand through his hair. ‘Where did you even find him?’
‘He hopped in the car.’
Oh, bollocks. The creature had been in his car ? Oliver shuddered to think what state it was in. ‘Just… jumped in?’
‘I’ve seen him around town the last few times. He doesn’t have a collar and he doesn’t have a chip and no one knows where he’s come from and people have apparently tried to take him in but he keeps evading them.’
‘He didn’t evade you.’
A small smile played on her mouth as she shrugged. ‘I guess I’m irresistible.’
Oliver glanced at the dog who looked back at him with a dude, it’s true expression and he wondered if anyone ever said no to her. Or was it that they just struggled to escape the centrifugal force of her as she spun around spreading the chaos of metabolically challenged hamsters and filthy strays.
And fucking loo rolls.
As if sensing he was about to capitulate, she walked toward him, peeling off her cape to reveal a raggedy ass jacket that looked like it had inspired Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colours. ‘I called the vet, she knows I’ve taken Casper home.’ She unzipped the coat then and shrugged out of it to reveal another classic T-shirt.
Surely not everyone was Kung Fu fighting.
He would have laughed out loud normally but the shirt was V-necked and he was distracted by the dusting of freckles across her décolletage.
‘It’ll just be until someone claims him. There have been notices put up on all the local Facebook groups and church halls in the district.’
She stopped as she drew level with him, her zesty lime fragrance surrounding her like a reverse forcefield – attracting not repelling.
‘I couldn’t leave him out in the cold. Not when he looked at me with those eyes.’
Oliver glanced at the dog who gave him the eyes and sighed. ‘Fine.’ Lifting his gaze to Paige, he said, ‘But this is only temporary.’
She nodded quickly. ‘One hundred per cent. Just until his owner comes forward.’
‘And that ball.’ He pointed to it. ‘Is not coming in the house.’
As if he absolutely knew which side his bread was buttered on, Casper dropped the ball in an instant and it fell to the floor with a flat, wet thunk. Gross. Oliver shook his head as he turned his attention back to Paige.
‘He’s not allowed on any of the furniture.’
‘Of course.’
‘He’s only allowed on this level and in the media room. Not upstairs on the beds.’
‘No beds. Check.’
Oliver chugged out a breath as he looked from the woman to the dog and back to the woman again. They were both patiently awaiting his next edict. Like he was some damn dictator, but he needed to claw back some control here or there’d be worse things than loo rolls the wrong way around.
Although what that could possibly be he couldn’t imagine. The zombie apocalypse?
‘He needs a wash before he goes any further.’ He pointed at the bathroom door beside him. ‘Use the shower.’
God knew the kind of ring Casper’s degree of filthiness would leave in a bathtub. Ninth circle of hell ring, for sure.
She smiled and gave him a little salute. ‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Oliver ignored how her eyes glowed and the way her mouth curved upwards. And just how much that little salute echoed through the sudden heat in his blood.
‘Come on then Casper, you heard Daddy, it’s shower time.’
Moving aside, his back to the wall to allow them passage, Oliver gritted his teeth. Do not put Paige – Bella’s friend – and Daddy in the same sentence.
The dog moved unhurriedly, his toenails clicking on the floorboards as she opened the bathroom door and he ambled in. She followed but drew to a halt when he said, ‘Paige?’
Her fingers wrapped around the door frame as she looked over her shoulder at him, all big hazel eyes and freckles and his blood heated a little more.
‘Uh huh?’
‘Stay away from the damn pear tree down the end of the road.’
Her brows scrunched together, confusion clouding her eyes. ‘Um… okay?’
‘Just in case there happens to be a bloody orphaned partridge in need of a home.’
It took a beat but then her frown smoothed out and her mouth kicked up at the sides and she laughed. And then he was laughing because this woman was turning his house into a bloody zoo and he should be mad as hell. He was mad as hell, damn it. But there was something so delightfully unhinged about it, he couldn’t help but laugh.
‘No partridges, I promise,’ she murmured and then disappeared into the bathroom.
Right. Like he was going to take that to the bank.