Wish Read Free

but woman and boy were nowhere to be seen. He should have put a screen door on that doorway years ago.
    ‘Go on, Blue.’ He motioned the dog towards the house. ‘Get on up to the house and stay.’ Blue dog, who knew what to do with a king brown or a red-bellied black snake or any one of a dozen other threats Adam could name.
    The dog took a few steps towards the house, hesitated, and looked back at him.
    ‘Go,’ he ordered gruffly. ‘I’ll be back for you tomorrow.’
    When they were gone.

Chapter Two
    Something was on the verandah. Billie heard the thump of it and after that a silence unlike any she’d experienced. An earthy, waiting silence that dared her to fill it with human noise and mocked her when she reached for the clock radio and found a station that offered up music. So what if she wasn’t used to the night sounds hereabouts? She’d
get
used to them soon enough.
    Or not, if Adam Kincaid had his way.
    Cup of peppermint tea time and a hot chocolate for Cal, but as Billie turned to pick up a couple of mugs a dark shadow moved outside the doorway. She let out a startled gasp and the shadow took off.
    But then the shadow came back and slowly, warily, moved into the light.
    Shining brown eyes. Two black-tipped pointed ears. A dog.
    A dog with the audacity to stand there grinning at her while she took great gulping breaths and tried to stuff her pounding heart back inside her chest with her fist.
    Adam Kincaid’s dog.
    ‘Nice doggy,’ she gasped, ‘Good dog.’ All the time wondering what this particular dog was doing
here
. He cocked his head to one side and stared at her, probably wondering if she was through with the hysterics. She was.
    Mostly.
    ‘What happened?’ Cal skidded into the kitchen. ‘Oh.’
    Oh
? A mildly surprised
oh
? That was it?
    Cal dropped down beside the dog and patted his head. The dog responded with a tongue in Cal’s ear.
    ‘He’s thirsty,’ said Cal.
    ‘Really?’ But Billie filled a cereal bowl with water, and set it on the verandah. The dog took to it enthusiastically. ‘You were right.’ She looked around for Kincaid and saw him in the distance, driving his bull further down into the valley. She half expected the dog to go streaking after his master once he’d drunk his fill but the dog just stood there.
    ‘Off you go,’ she said, with a wave of her hands. ‘Pit stop’s over.’
    The dog sat.
    ‘Can he come inside?’ asked Cal.
    ‘Does he
want
to come inside?’
    Stupid question. The blue dog was
overjoyed
by that particular notion.
    ‘What do we do with him?’ asked Cal next. Not that they weren’t dog friendly – they’d just never had one.
    ‘I don’t know. Let Kincaid know he’s here, I guess. If he doesn’t know already.’ She had the man’s phone number – it was on the lease agreement – and she had her mobile. Billie fished it from her handbag.
    What she didn’t have, was a signal.
    Kincaid had mentioned that.
    Billie returned her phone to her handbag. ‘Go home,’ she told the dog.
    ‘Maybe he just wants a rest,’ said Cal.
    ‘He looks pretty rested to me.’ But she let the dog follow Cal around the house, and she shut the kitchen door and turned the old-fashioned key in its lock before going from room to room, shutting doors and windows as she went so that no other creature could walk, crawl or slither in uninvited. She drew curtains and directed Cal to the shower, at which point the blue dog started following her around.
    ‘Why are you here?’ she asked the attentive canine. ‘You don’t
look
like the disobedient type. You want to go now?’
    Billie opened the door. ‘No offence,’ she murmured. ‘But I don’t know you.’
    Blue dog moped his way through the doorway and settled down on the doormat with a distinct air of martyrdom. Billie shut the door on him with a distinct sense of guilt.
    Cal came out of the shower clean and then it was Billie’s turn to brave the tiny concrete bathroom and swap her driving clothes for