Chapter 29
Kurt hugging him had recalled everything about their date that had come so very close to being perfect, and even now, after ten days, Murray regretted their evening being interrupted.
Though, if it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have the pups. Maybe it was for the best.
‘You are walking the dog,’ Kurt pointed out, needlessly.
‘I am,’ Murray confirmed, also pointlessly.
‘I have been thinking, Murray, about you and me…’
Everything about Kurt’s lovely mouth, his lovely accent, his personality, it was all so nice and so appealing, but Murray couldn’t deny something had come between them since the date, something that made him hope Kurt wasn’t about to suggest they try going out again.
‘I like you a lot…’ Kurt was saying, his smile breaking sweetly, all his emotions on show and nothing hidden. All the qualities Murray had shied away from in the past.
He’d been afraid of keen men. But Kurt liked him, plain and simple, and had Murray run a mile in the opposite direction?
No. He’d tried finding out if there was something more between them, other than fancying him a ridiculous amount.
In the last few days, when he allowed himself to be honest, it wasn’t Kurt’s generous feelings and easy manner that put him off attempting a second date; it was simply that they weren’t all that well suited.
‘Listen, Kurt,’ Murray interrupted, ‘I like you too, a lot, you’re gorgeous, actually, but…’
‘I think we should be friends,’ both men said at the same time.
‘What?’ Kurt laughed. ‘You’re passing up on this?’
This sent Murray into a fit of throaty laughter, which, were a particularly sensitive person straining their ears for it, might be heard resonating across the mountain range.
‘Hey! You were giving me the brush off too!’ Murray said, landing a friendly fist on Kurt’s arm. Murray ignored the accompanying intrusive memory of the inked skin and taut muscle hidden away under Kurt’s padded winter layers.
‘Oh, well,’ Kurt said laughingly. ‘Friends is good.’
They’d stayed like this for a while, chatting about the dogs, and the builders’ progress on the extension, how the scaffolding was coming down soon, and Kurt’s plans to leave in a few days. His next posting would be in a villa complex in Andalucía.
‘Sounds terrible,’ Murray mugged. ‘Won’t you miss all this?’ He was pointing to the low clouds rolling in, but Kurt was gazing right into his eyes, making a small bite on his bottom lip.
‘I’ll miss it,’ Kurt said, before stepping close and delivering a kiss to Murray’s mouth, lingering the teensiest millisecond longer than was strictly friendly, and then he was off, on his way to the construction site, leaving Murray glad they’d talked and (because he’s not made of wood) a tiny bit giddy from the kiss.
However, the light-headedness from Kurt’s goodbye was obliterated almost immediately by a text message making his phone ping. It was from Ally.
Incoming in about 10 seconds. Barbara is on her way to her office to phone you! We just had the morning huddle and your name might have been brought up to take on some upcoming freelance jobs.
Murray’s instincts were to immediately swipe his phone off, but she’d anticipated this.
PICK UP! And say YES to anything she offers you. P.S. You owe me big time!!! This is your return ticket back into the world!
He didn’t have time to reply, because sure enough his phone was ringing with Barbara Huber’s name on the screen next to the descriptor ‘Big Boss’.
‘Y’ello!’ he answered, stupidly. Since when did he answer calls like that?
‘Murray? It’s Barbara, but I suspect you knew that,’ said a sharp, smart woman with a sharp, smart German accent, ‘since your sister has forgotten the office walls are made of glass and I can see her texting you.’
‘Oh!’
‘And now she’s staring in at me through the glass, and now I’m waving, and… yup, there she goes, back to work.’
Part of Murray cringed for his interfering twin, because she did not want to piss off Huber, but part of him loved her all the more for trying to wangle whatever this was about to be.
‘Yeah, Ally mentioned something about freelance work,’ Murray confessed, gritting his teeth as Nell decided now was the time and this was the high street lamppost to do her morning wee against.
Barbara didn’t mince her words.
There were three contracts on the table. Future Proof Planet needed overseers for transferring funds from Switzerland to new community projects in various spots around the globe, and all of them required an experienced person to accompany them and get the projects’ initial phases off the ground.
This had been one of Murray’s favourite perks of the job: travelling all over the place, meeting people, seeing the world, learning new sustainability strategies.
‘I know you made it clear you were never coming back to HQ…’
‘That’s right, I can’t,’ he said.
‘You were always competent, Murray. A safe pair of hands. A people person. That’s why we hired you.’ He heard that change in intonation. She was telling him he hadn’t been brought in as a mere perk of the job for Andreas.
‘And you know,’ Barbara went on, confidingly, ‘Andreas Favre won’t be with the charity for much longer.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Strictly between ourselves? He’s been headhunted by David’s company.’
Her tone conveyed her feelings about that. She’d lost her right-hand man to Andreas’s billionaire boyfriend, David Zoros, and his space tourism firm.
Murray let that sink in. David had been a major supporter of Future Proof Planet for a long time, appeasing his conscience (and avoiding the taxman), by giving millions in donations to the charity.
Ultimately, Andreas Favre had sold out and turned corporate for a rich old space junk salesman.
Maybe every eco-warrior CEO has their price, thought Murray, but it would never be him sleeping with (and in the pay of) one of the biggest polluters on earth.
‘You don’t have to agree now, but I hope I can tempt you by saying the first posting is to an ocean-cleaning co-op on the beaches of Bali.’
Murray would be mad not to accept right away.
Nell, however, had her lead tangled around the lamppost and was now bouncing for joy at the sight of Cary’s wandering cat, Dinah, over the road, as much of a fluffball as it was mean and hissing.
He struggled to keep the phone to his ear while untangling the barking dog.
At that moment Cary’s truck pulled up alongside the cat and Murray only half-observed the carpenter getting the feline into the passenger seat beside him and driving off at speed towards the town limits.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘I will need a decision for HR in the next fortnight. I’ll send over the project files for you to look over. And Murray?’
He straightened up, holding tight to the lead.
‘Your sister fought hard for you in today’s meeting. I won’t keep these avenues open for you forever.’
‘Got it. I appreciate you…’
Barbara had hung up the call.
‘Bali?’ Murray mused out loud, not that Nell was listening. ‘What would I do with you and the puppers if I was sent to Bali?’
Nell didn’t have an answer for that, but she did reckon searching for that disappearing cat along the high street was a good idea. Murray braced tight on her lead to control her.
‘What you need, Nell, is a good, long, calming…’ Murray scanned the town and the mountain vista beyond, his eyes lighting on the boulder pass that led to Finlay’s cottage, ‘…walkies?’
Nell, in her heartfelt agreement, dragged him off the pavement, into the slow-moving traffic and right across the street. A hill walk was what they both needed.
* * *
Up on the pass, minding his business, through binoculars, Finlay hadn’t caught Kurt’s kiss goodbye, but he had clocked the determined strides Murray was making, right this second, up the hill path towards him with that besom of a dog, and they were already drawing level with the rangers’ station carpark.
There was only one reason Murray would be marching that daft mutt up the mountain, and Finlay had no intention of being found when he came knocking, looking for an adoptive dog-dad.
He zipped his coat and hightailed it for the line of low cloud now sitting down fully over the upper slopes and obscuring everything there with freezing droplets of fog. He’d hide out until his mountain was his own again.
Finlay didn’t have the presence of mind to stop and examine any other reasons he feared being in Murray’s presence, but if he’d taken his time, his concerns would be numbered: one, Murray was infuriating; two, Murray was excessively braw to look at and very intriguing; and three, Murray wasn’t interested in him one iota, and that stung quite a lot.
In his haste to do a runner, Finlay didn’t entertain any of this stuff and, just as fatefully, the fleeing Finlay didn’t witness Nell slipping her collar and bounding like a seal on legs, her hindquarters undulating with excitement as she broke away, her tail helicoptering with the sheer joy of being free, an itinerant dog once more.
He also didn’t see poor Murray, not a natural hillwalker by any stretch of the imagination, trudging exhaustedly behind, wheezing the wayward mutt’s name (and a number of other more colourful names as well), just as the clouds were sinking down further over the hills with the weight of their freezing raindrops.