Page 41 of The Christmas Competition

I’d put on an old pair of coveralls that I normally wore for doing repairs and odd jobs around my place. It saved getting any decent clothing dirty.

I gathered up my things and set off across the street, pressing Nisa’s doorbell on arrival. I found my pulse gearing up in anticipation of seeing her.

She opened the door, dressed in mom-​style blue jeans and a white T-shirt under a baby-​pink cropped woolen cardigan, her hair loose and in shiny waves about her shoulders. Something about the image heightened my pulse. Suddenly I felt it beating in places I hadn’t previously been aware of. My chest, my throat, the tips of my fingers. The sensation intensified when I realized the cropped nature of the T-shirt and cardigan meant that when she moved, I’d get a flash of soft-​looking brown skin.

“Welcome!” she said brightly, ushering me in. “Thank you so much for doing this.”

I chuckled as I set down my stuff to shuck off my shoes. “You’ve already thanked me a number of times, Nisa.”

“I know,” she said, gesturing with her hands the way I now realized she always did when she was feeling animated. “But I really am grateful.”

“It’s no problem,” I told her. I lifted my bucket. “Can I fill this in your utility room?”

“Sure, sure,” she said, leading the way through.

I followed her, trying to keep my eyes off the way her jeans hugged the contours of her arse and the smooth tawny skin of her lower back peeking out under her cardigan, my pulse throbbing under my skin.

I paused to stoop down and pet Izzy, who came trotting through the kitchen to wind herself between my legs, purring loudly as I stroked her soft fur. “Hello, puss.”

I stood again to continue after Nisa, who was watching me from the utility room with a soft expression.

I began filling the bucket with some hot water, adding the cleaning fluid, and hoping this task might distract me from what I was feeling right now. Izzy entered the area, and Nisa lifted her to cuddle the cat against her chest, giving her a kiss on her furry head.

“Can I make you a coffee?” she asked, watching me expectantly.

“Maybe in a bit? I want to get some of the work done first,” I said, attempting to concentrate on the bucket.

“Okay. I did give it a little clean already, so hopefully not too much scrubbing required.”

I shot her a smile over my shoulder as I rolled up the sleeves of my navy coveralls. She watched the movement of my hand as I smoothed the material over my forearm, her eyes widening. Then she looked away, placing Izzy back down and shifting from one foot to the other as the cat trotted off. “Can I help you with it? This sort of thing isn’t really my forte but you can give me tasks.”

I shook my head, turning off the tap. “That’s okay. I like working alone. And it’ll give you chance to have a rest after all the recent stress.” I had always worked best alone. That was why I hadn’t hired an assistant or brought in a partner after I’d taken over the veterinary practice from the previous owner. He’d employed me as his assistant, and then when he retired I took it off his hands as the sole vet.

At one point Katie had suggested formalizing our working relationship and becoming partners, effectively becoming two branches of the same business, with her running the Auchness branch and me the Inverglen one. But I had declined the offer. Better to be on my own; then there was no chance of it going tits up when my partner left.

Nisa followed me into the living room, continuing to chat. I got the feeling she liked the small talk.

“Cool, cool,” she said. “It’ll give me a chance to work on my mystery, actually.”

I set up my bucket, deciding to start on the window. “You read mysteries?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Well, yes, but I mean a real mystery. Something at the community hospital.”

I dunked my sponge into the water. When I glanced over, her eyes were a little wide again as she watched me squeeze the sponge. “A medical mystery?” I asked her, turning away and placing one hand on the sill to brace as I scrubbed with my other hand.

She was silent for a beat, then she cleared her throat. “Yeah, kind of. A patient with an unknown past. I’m trying to help her remember. She has dementia and a delirium.”

The frame was coming clean nicely. “I’m assuming human delirium is similar to the kind my animals get. Confused due to some sort of situation like post-​anesthesia or an infection?”

“Yes, exactly that,” she said, excitement lifting her voice. She was beyond adorable when she was excited. “She had a severe infection, which made her cognition really poor. It’s taking her a long time to recover, but I think her baseline is impaired anyway due to underlying dementia.”

She went on to chat more about her patient, though I could tell she was careful to be vague so as not to break her patient’s confidentiality. Not that I would know who the person was anyway, but I still admired her integrity. Sitting on the sofa watching me work, she said this person mentioned a son, and Nisa hoped to figure out who he was so she could reunite them. I smiled as I scrubbed the window frame clean; this woman had a heart of gold. And a diamond-​coated determination. Lucky for me it now seemed to be directed toward solving this mystery rather than being in a feud with me.

“Anyway,” she said, after pausing to come up for air. Her voice switched from animated Nisa to self-​conscious Nisa. “I’d better stop bothering you with my inane chatter. Let me know once you’re ready for a coffee.”

And with that, she left the room, leaving me feeling a little bereft at losing her company. Yet having someone talk to me while I was concentrating on a task wasn’t normally something I enjoyed.

After a couple of hours, I had the window and the wall scrubbed clean of soot and I joined Nisa for a break in the kitchen. I washed my hands and forearms in the utility room first, careful to wash the sink down afterward to rid it of sooty water. Then we sat across from each other at the dining table, just like we had the other day when she did her Santa sabotage reenactment for me.