Mutt pulled the dog away. ‘Woah, no kisses.’
Nina didn’t join in his laughter and the abrupt look she gave him made him stop.
‘Sorry. Right, well… we’ll leave you to it. I’ve just set the computer stuff up. Should all be working fine now. Mind, the walls are still drying.’ Putting the dog down, he grabbed his tool belt from the floor and fixed it around his waist.
Nina didn’t reply. She was already logging into her work’s email server.
‘Sorry again, about the shoes.’ He hesitated, seeming to linger, watching her with his eyes sharpened, as though wondering if she’d answer. ‘Merry Christmas?’ Bear watched on too, panting happily.
Nina lifted her head but not her eyes, just as Mutt was giving up on the pleasantries and leaving. ‘Hmm?Yeah, yeah, sure, Merry Christmas. Can you prop the door open when you go,’ she muttered, absorbed in her need to reach out to New York.
Mutt sniffed a wry laugh and left with Bear tumbling along behind him, but not before stopping to open the windows all along the outer corridor so the woman with the transatlantic accent, five-hundred-dollar shoes and an aversion to cute puppies could breathe easily.
Chapter Eleven
Sisters
‘As long as you’re sure?’ Atholl said, eyeing Beatrice with concern as they stood on the inn steps that evening, waiting for the car to pull up. It was after eight and entirely dark and starlit along the Port Willow seafront, apart from the glow of the snow and swaying Christmas lights.
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ she insisted. ‘Just excited, that’s all.’ Beatrice couldn’t meet Atholl’s eyes. All through dinner service she’d fought against the urge to march straight up to Atholl in the bar where he was pulling pints to tell him the news, but a stronger instinct had warned her off.
She’d done it before, told someone she was pregnant, and she’d watched their heart swell and all their loving, fatherly instincts kicking in. Then she’d watched Rich shatter when the sonographer told them their tiny boy was gone.
She needed to know for sure. A hunch wasn’t enough. Even if all she had the appetite for at dinner time was sliced tomatoes on toast and even that she had almost thrown up straight afterwards, and, come to think of it, her waistband did feel kind of tight, but that could easily be from all the lovely inn food this winter. Luckily Gene had been too absorbed in cooking his cullen skink to notice how green she’d been as she helped serve his seafood specials to the crafters and locals getting festive in the busy bar restaurant, so he wouldn’t be mentioning anything to his younger brother.
Atholl leaned closer. ‘You know if there’s anything worrying you, you’re to tell me, don’t you, Beattie? And I you. Even if it’s just a sma’ thing? Mind?’
Beatrice nodded, recalling the promise they’d made one another at the coral beach back in the summer. There was nothing the couple kept from each other now and their openness had enriched their relationship, making everything easier and more intimate, deliciously so.
‘I promise I’ll tell you whenever I have something to tell, OK?’
Atholl, looking not entirely convinced, turned to her and swept a gentle hand over her cheek. Beatrice could feel him surveying her eyes, dark-circled from crying earlier. She was relieved for the sudden flash of bright headlights that lit up the inn doorway.
‘Here they are,’ Beatrice cried, breaking away.
Atholl shifted the traffic cones from the best parking spot in town, right by the doorstep, and waved the car in.
‘Angela!’ Beatrice cried, seeing her sister stepping out, grinning and stiff from their ten-hour drive.
As the sisters hugged, Atholl walked round to the roadside and helped Vic, who was struggling with a nappy bag and some contraption she informed Atholl was a baby bumby, which didn’t help the bemused Atholl at all, but he filled his arms and carried the women’s luggage inside, coming back to lift the sleeping Clara into the inn in her car seat. Vic kissed Beatrice’s cheek as she passed inside, following her tiny daughter.
‘Did you get it?’ Beatrice whispered to her sister.
‘I did,’ Angela replied, pulling the slim box from her coat pocket right there on the pavement.
‘Oh my God, put it away!’ Beatrice cried, before ushering her sister inside, glancing up and down the street in case they’d been spotted with the pregnancy test. Had Seth been nearby there’d be no hope of keeping their secret beyond the call for last orders.
Two pink lines. Bright pink.
Beatrice was still clutching her hand across her mouth, frozen to her spot, perched on the laundry basket. So far, no words had escaped her.
‘It’s OK, just take a minute,’ Angela told her, letting the stick her sister had at first been too afraid to look at, fall to her side.
‘Ninety-nine percent accurate?’ Beatrice gasped at last.
Angela laughed. ‘So the box says.’
‘When did it even happen? I… I…’ Beatrice shook her head, unable to fathom it.
