The Other Side of Us (Harlequin Superromance) (4 page)

He could hear footsteps inside the house. He braced himself for
more rudeness. Mackenzie opened the door and stared at first him, then the
dachshund.

“Why do you have my dog?” she asked, a frown furrowing her
brow.

“Because he was in my yard. Twice. The fence between our
properties is riddled with holes.”

She crouched, one hand reaching for the door frame for
balance.

“Mr. Smith, what have you been up to? Have you been out making
new friends?” Her tone was warm, even a little indulgent.

She knelt, rubbing the dog beneath his chin. Oliver stared at
her down-turned head, noticing something through her dark, clipped hair. A
white, shiny line sliced across her scalp along the side of her skull, then
curled toward the front just inside her hairline.

A scar.

A pretty wicked, serious one by the looks of it.

She glanced at him. “Thanks for bringing him back.”

She wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup. Her skin was very fair
and her long, dark eyelashes stood out in dramatic contrast to her piercing blue
eyes.

She unclipped the leash, then straightened. Maybe he was
looking for it after seeing the scar, but it seemed to him the move wasn’t
anywhere near as easy and casual as she’d like him to think. He reminded himself
of the reason he was here—and it wasn’t to ferret out her secrets.

“We need to do something about the fence,” he said.

“There’s never been a problem before. Mr. Smith isn’t much of a
roamer.”

“I think he’s more interested in Strudel than exploring the
terrain.”

“That’s never been a problem before, either.”

His back came up. Admittedly, he’d come here primed to be
annoyed because she’d been so dismissive earlier, but there was a definite tone
to her words. As though somehow he and Strudel were responsible for her dog’s
behavior.

“I guess times have changed. We should probably do a temporary
fix and then get some quotes to have it repaired.”

The phone rang inside her house and she glanced over her
shoulder. The move drew his attention to her breasts—small but perky. He gave
himself a mental shake. As if he cared what her breasts looked like. They were
attached to the rest of her, which was toned within an inch of its life and way
too scrawny for his tastes.

“I need to get that,” she said as she refocused on him.

“Fine. But we need to deal with this fence or Mr. Smith is
going to come visiting again.”

“I’m sorry, but I really need to take this call. I’ll get back
to you.” There was a distracted urgency beneath her words as she reached for the
knob.

He opened his mouth to protest—as the door swung shut in his
face for the second time that day.

“You cannot be serious,” he told the shiny black wood.

But she was. She was also the rudest person he’d ever had the
misfortune to meet. He was tempted to knock again and force her to deal with
him, but he had an image of himself knocking till the cows came home and her
ignoring him as she dealt with her vitally important, utterly life-transforming
phone call.

He’d been de-balled quite enough by his wife’s staggering
infidelity, thank you very much. He had no intention of hanging around to play
the part of supplicant.

He remembered an old saying as he returned to his aunt’s house:
no good turn goes unpunished.

Indeed.

CHAPTER TWO

M
ACKENZIE
REACHED
THE
PHONE
just as it
stopped ringing. She checked caller ID and swore when she saw Gordon’s number.
She’d talked to Linda earlier and managed to convince her to prompt Gordon into
calling. Linda had come through—and Mackenzie had been too busy dealing with
Oliver What’s-his-name to take the call.

Unbelievable.

She hit the button to return the call and prayed that Gordon
hadn’t already moved on to something else. She willed him to pick up as the
phone rang at the other end. She was about to give in to despair when Gordon’s
voice came over the line.

“Mackenzie.”

“Gordon. How are you?”

“Good enough. More importantly, how are you?”

“Getting there. Better every day.”

He grunted. She pictured him sitting at his desk in Melbourne,
feet up on the corner, big belly straining at the buttons on his shirt.

“How are the headaches?” he asked.

“Better. Much better.” She didn’t mention the fact that she
still struggled to spend more than a couple of hours at a time on her feet
before her back started acting up and that she struggled to stay awake after
eight at night.

“That’s good to hear.” He sounded distracted and she knew she
wouldn’t hold his attention for long.

“Listen, Gordon, I’ve been wanting to talk to you because I
know Philip’s contract is coming up for renewal.”

Philip had been brought in to fill her role while she
recovered. An experienced producer, they’d been lucky to catch him between
gigs.

“It is. Still got that steel-trap memory, I see.”

What she had was a heavily used calendar function on her
iPhone, but he didn’t need to know that.

“So, have you spoken to him about renewing for a shorter term?”
She wrapped her free arm around her torso, tension thrumming through her body as
she waited for Gordon’s response.

“We haven’t had that conversation yet.”

“Right. Well, I wanted to suggest you go for three months. I’ll
be more than ready to get back to it by then.”

Gordon sighed. “Mackenzie...our hands are tied here. You have
to understand that.”

A chill ran down her spine. Was he saying what she thought he
was saying? “What does that mean?”

“It means we can’t afford to lose him. The show needs
continuity. If he won’t consider a short term, we’ll have to look at something
longer. It’s a shitty situation, I know, but he’s done a great job for us.”

Mackenzie bit back the urge to remind Gordon that she’d done a
great job, too, in the three years prior to the accident. She’d increased the
ratings by nearly thirty percent, streamlined the story department and used her
influence with her ex-husband, Patrick Langtry, to persuade him to join the
cast—a move that had led to another ratings bump. Gordon knew all that, though.
It simply didn’t mean anything to him while she was sidelined.

There was a reason Hunter S. Thompson had described television
as “a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die
like dogs.” The industry was ruthless, ratings driven and peopled with huge
egos. God only knew why she’d spent the bulk of her adult life loving the hell
out of it, but she had and it was where she wanted to be.

Once she was on her feet again.

“I’ll be back soon, Gordon. I’ve had some great ideas for the
show, too. Something to really kick us into the new ratings period.”

“You don’t need to pitch yourself to me. I’m going to offer him
a month-by-month contract. I’m not expecting him to be happy about it, and I
know for a fact there are other production companies sniffing around. I’ll do my
best, but you need to understand that, at the end of the day, we have to do
what’s best for the show.”

Even if that meant giving away her position while she was on
sick leave for injuries acquired while on the job. If she hadn’t been driving to
that location shoot, she wouldn’t have had the accident. It was that simple.

She opened her mouth to remind Gordon that he was legally
obliged to keep her job open for her, then closed it again without saying a
word. Nobody ever got ahead at Eureka Productions by resorting to lawyers at ten
paces. No one who worked
behind
the camera,
anyway.

“Don’t worry, Mackenzie. You’ll be looked after. You’re still
our little pocket rocket.”

Mackenzie bared her teeth. How she hated that offensive,
patronizing nickname.

“Will you keep me in the loop?” It was a testament to her
strong will that she managed to keep her voice even and her tone pleasant. No
way would she give Gordon the leverage of an emotional outburst. If he
recognized a weakness, he wouldn’t hesitate to use it against her. “Let me know
how things go with Philip?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“Network negotiations must be coming up soon, too. Any
indication they might go for the Christmas special again this year?”

“They like to play their cards close. Listen, Mackenzie, I’d
love to chat but I’ve got a meeting in ten.”

“Sure. Thanks for the call, Gordon.”

“Look after yourself, sweetheart.”

Mackenzie dropped the phone onto the coffee table and sank onto
the arm of the sofa.

Shit.

If Philip played hardball and pushed to have her job
permanently, there was a very real chance that she would be out in the cold.

The thought was accompanied by a flurry of panic and a stab of
pain behind her right eyeball. She pressed her fingers to her temple, squeezing
her eyes shut briefly before searching for painkillers. Normally she tried to
get by without medication. At the worst of her recovery she’d been on so many
tablets she’d had a special dispenser to keep them all straight. She’d been
fuzzy headed and a step removed from the world most of the time, and she’d
fought with her doctors to reduce her daily intake to the bare minimum. These
days, she avoided anything that came in a foil sleeve, even a humble aspirin.
But she could feel the headache building behind her eyes and knew from
experience that it would snowball into something ferocious if she didn’t nip it
in the bud now.

Mr. Smith pattered after her as she made her way to the
bathroom. Seeing him reminded her of her new neighbor and his concerns about the
hole-riddled fence. She supposed she should be more worried, but Mr. Smith was
ridiculously attached to her and he’d never run away before. She figured he was
simply excited about having a little buddy next door. Once the novelty had worn
off he’d settle down.

Still, she should probably look into having the fence repaired,
as Oliver Golden-Stubble had suggested. Not that she wanted to pour her
precious, limited energy into anything unrelated to her recovery, but if it had
to be done, it had to be done.

She swallowed two painkillers. A noise started up outside as
she chased them with a glass of water. Someone hammering—in what sounded like
her
backyard. She made her way to the picture
window in the living room. The noise wasn’t coming from her backyard, but the
neighbor’s. Oliver was out there, working away with hammer and handsaw.
Repairing their shared fence, apparently. Obviously he hadn’t been prepared to
wait until they could hire a professional.

She watched him work, arms crossed over her chest. She’d never
been attracted to redheaded men, but there was no denying this man’s appeal. His
hair was a deep chestnut, more of a reddish-brown than a true red. As for his
body... She would have cast him as a love interest on
Time
and Again
in a heartbeat if his audition had come across her desk. He
had the kind of body women fantasized over—broad shoulders, deep chest, flat
belly, tight, firm little backside...

He pushed his hair out of his eyes, then turned to say
something to his dog. There was a smile lurking around his mouth. Both times
she’d met him she’d had the sense that he was a man who laughed easily. One of
those comfortable-in-his-own-skin men. She wondered idly if he was married. He
seemed like a married man to her. Hard to put her finger on why, but she usually
had good instincts about that sort of thing.

He glanced up, his gaze locking with hers across twenty meters
of garden and fence. Feeling caught, she took an instinctive step backward, then
realized retreating only made her look guilty and furtive. She forced herself to
stand her ground and hold his gaze. After a beat, he broke the contact,
refocusing on his work.

She escaped to the kitchen, feeling oddly rattled. She wondered
how long he planned to hang around. She hoped it wouldn’t be for long. She
didn’t have time for distractions.

The painkiller was starting to make the world go fuzzy at the
edges, but it didn’t ease the panic left over from Gordon’s phone call. She
returned to the living room and sat in the corner of the couch.

If she lost her job—

She clamped down on the thought. It wasn’t going to happen. She
wouldn’t
let
it happen. That job was her life. No
way was she letting it slip through her fingers.

* * *

O
LIVER
FIXED
TWO
of the
holes in the fence before he’d exhausted the small stash of nails he’d had in
his tool chest. He’d taken the precaution of packing it and a few power tools
before he left Sydney, based on the assumption that Aunt Marion’s place might
need a few hinges fixed. He hadn’t expected to be getting down and dirty on his
first day.

There were still holes to patch, but he decided they could wait
until tomorrow and packed his gear away for the night. He got takeout from the
local Chinese restaurant and spent the evening staring into the fire he built,
downing a six-pack of beer and feeling disconnected from the world in general.
Since distancing himself from his old life had been the whole point of his trip,
he figured he was off to a good start.

He woke to overcast skies and the realization that he should
have turned on the water heater last night. An icy-cold shower left him
shivering and pissy. He whistled for Strudel to get in the car then drove into
town, wondering if he had a chance of getting the remaining holes in the fence
repaired before it started to rain. Judging by the dark, moody-looking clouds
overhead, probably not.

He spotted a small, soberly clad woman the moment he entered
the hardware store. For a few seconds he thought it was his surly neighbor, then
the woman turned and he saw she was much older than Mackenzie. Just as well. He
wasn’t in the mood to be polite this morning. Not that Mackenzie seemed overly
concerned about social niceties.

He remembered the look they’d shared across the fence yesterday
as he trawled the shelves for nails. He’d felt her watching him before he’d
glanced up. Not that he’d known he was being observed per se; he’d simply known
that something was not quite right. And there she was, watching him from her
window, a slim figure, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she studied
him.

She was one of those people who had perfected the art of giving
nothing away—expressionless face, emotionless eyes. She’d held his gaze, cool,
unreadable. Assessing.

He made a rude noise in the back of his throat. She’d probably
been congratulating herself on getting her fence repaired for free. Certainly
she hadn’t seemed in a hurry to do anything about it when they’d spoken, and she
hadn’t rushed out to offer her assistance yesterday, either.

Belatedly he recalled her scar and the labored way she’d gotten
to her feet. Maybe she wasn’t in a position to offer her assistance, physically
speaking. He immediately dismissed the notion as he remembered the lean strength
of her body and the fact that she’d clearly finished a workout when he’d first
knocked yesterday.

She probably simply considered manual work beneath her, in the
same way that common courtesy seemed to be beyond her.

Aware that he’d let himself get bent out of shape over her once
again, he concentrated on his search. By the time he’d completed a tour of the
small store, he still hadn’t located the nails and he gave in and approached the
elderly man behind the counter.

“If you’re looking for sandbags, we’re all out, sorry,” the
salesclerk said before Oliver could open his mouth.

“I guess it’s just as well I’m looking for nails, then,” Oliver
said, more than a little bemused by the man’s opening gambit.

“What sort?”

“I’m repairing a fence.”

“You’ll want bullet heads, then.”

Oliver followed the man to the far corner of the store and
selected a carton of nails.

“Had a run on sandbags today, have you?” he asked as they
returned to the counter, more to make conversation than out of real
curiosity.

“People having conniptions over the weather report. Bloody
drama queens, those people in at the weather bureau. Storm will probably pass
out over the water and not even touch us. Same as usual.” The clerk shook his
head, clearly unimpressed with modern science.

“Is there a storm warning?” Oliver glanced out the window. Sure
enough, the sky had grown even more forbidding since he’d left the house.

“So they say. Probably worth clearing out your gutters and
downpipes, but I wouldn’t go blowing up your water wings just yet.” The old man
laughed at his own joke.

“Thanks for the tip.”

Oliver switched on the radio when he got to the car and scanned
through the frequencies until he found a weather report. Sure enough, they were
predicting heavy rain for the southern part of the Mornington Peninsula, with
warnings of flash flooding and high winds.

Awesome. Was it just him, or was Flinders really rolling out
the welcome mat? A rude neighbor, a decrepit fence and now imminent flooding.
And it was only day two.