Never Say Never (Lakeview Contemporary Romance Book 3) Read online

  The receptionist gave her such a look of derision that Leah wondered if she had somehow inadvertently announced to the girl that she was the Queen of England. It was one of those ‘if you think I give a hoot about who you are and why you’re here, then you’ve got another think coming’ looks – the ones that were so prevalent when it came to what passed for service these days. Leah immediately regretted being so friendly. ‘Smile and the world smiles with you,’ her mother used to say, in the hope of instilling manners into her children. These days, it was more like ‘Smile and the world thinks you’re a nutter,’ Leah thought, with a self-effacing grin.

  From the receptionist’s eventual curt nod towards somewhere behind her, Leah deduced that she should take a seat on one of the plastic chairs lined up along the wall. She sat back, and despite herself began nervously wringing her hands together. Then she stopped herself, realising that at a time like this, greasy, sweating palms were exactly what she didn’t need.

  She picked up a magazine and was about to check her horoscope when she realised that that particular issue was almost three months out of date. She turned instead to the problem pages, thinking that troublesome spouses and illicit affairs were always in vogue.

  “Ms Reid?” She looked up, startled, to see a small, middle-aged man with a clipboard and more importantly, what seemed like a kindly face, looking questioningly at her. She nodded.

  “This way please.” He made towards an office doorway.

  Leah stood up, relieved. This guy looked like a bit of a pussy-cat. Maybe things were looking up and maybe just maybe, this mightn’t be such a disaster after all.

  But the questions were an absolute nightmare. Leah had quickly scanned The Rules the night before but had been unable to concentrate. She was too busy worrying about the main event.

  “Great day, isn’t it?” Leah babbled as she followed him inside, habitually falling back on the great Irish conversation starter. Well, it was either that or the Dublin traffic and Leah could hardly start moaning about that with him, could she? Certainly not in the circumstances.

  Two minutes in the room and all Leah’s hopes about this guy being a pussy-cat were cruelly dashed. He asked to see her driver’s licence and, when Leah handed it to him, he recoiled as if he’d been burnt.

  “Take it out of its sleeve, please, Ms Reid,” he ordered, his expression po-faced as Leah obliged. Uh-oh. It seemed she’d already got off to a bad start.

  Nonetheless, she steeled herself and tried to act confident – but not too confident – as he began the questioning. The first question was actually quite simple for her, something about the correct situation in which you should dip your headlights.

  “Well I never drive at night,” she answered pleasantly, “so that question doesn’t really apply to me.”

  He looked at her. “Can you answer the question please, Ms Reid?”

  Leah thought for a second. “Well, when another car is coming towards you I suppose, otherwise you’d blind him. Not that it makes any difference, people just tend to blind you anyway, which is exactly why I avoid driving at night.”

  He said nothing and went straight on to the next question, this one about the right of way on roundabouts. Leah was pleased – this was one she knew very well. The rules were very simple really.

  “When you approach a roundabout, you have automatic right of way.”

  He looked at her. “Explain further?”

  “Well when you approach a roundabout and you’re not planning to go round it and you just want to go straight through it, then you are automatically free to do so.”

  “I see.” By his face, Leah wondered if she had said something wrong. But no, roundabouts were her thing, the one driving situation where she was completely confident she was in the right. The problem was with the other drivers who didn’t know how to use the thing properly and Leah thought wearily, there was always one. She hadn’t the heart to beep her horn at the poor eejits (usually men) who didn’t know what they were doing, but the problem was they always beeped at her.

  Leah sat back in her seat, feeling better already and confident that she had aced that bit at least.

  A few minutes later it was time for the main event, and Leah walked out of the building ahead of the tester, leading him to where she had parked the car.

  To her utter surprise, he then asked her to walk around the car, ostensibly checking for broken mirrors and lights etc, and refused to entertain Leah’s protests that of course everything worked fine, wasn’t the car only two years old? Then he mortified her by asking her to recite the car’s registration. Why would anyone need to know that Leah thought, when, if she had forgotten where she’d parked it, the car could easily be found by pressing the alarm-button on her keys and following the sound? She knew it was a two-year-old Dublin registration but that was about it. The embarrassment.

  Would something that simple mean a fail? she worried, as she moved up a gear and drove towards the main street. She had just about remembered to put up her ‘L’ plates beforehand, Olivia having reminded her that not displaying her learner plates would definitely mean an instant fail. It had taken her close to an hour to find a place that stocked the stupid things, and nearly another one trying to stick them to the blasted windscreen.

  Leah cast a quick eye towards the tester in the passenger seat, being careful not to swing her ponytail too much – the more elaborate swings, Olivia warned her, were only for checking her rear-view and side mirrors. He was marking boxes and, as far as Leah could see, wasn’t watching her driving at all. That’s a bit rude, she thought. Despite herself she began to get annoyed. All these months she’d been dreading taking this test – for the third time – and hardly sleeping these last few days thinking about it, and then your man couldn’t even be bothered to test her properly. It was true what they said about them deciding in advance how many they were going to pass or fail, she thought, remembering an article she had read about the nature of the testing process and how it was all down to luck, or the mood of your tester. It had nothing to do with your driving, or your ponytail-swinging or whether or not you knew the blasted reg of your car.

  Leah looked up and quickly slammed on the brakes when she realised she had just been about to drive right through a zebra crossing – with of course the obligatory mother and buggy directly in her path. Yikes! She gripped the steering wheel and smiled beatifically at the tester. “Well, I suppose you could consider that great reflexes and reaction time, couldn’t you?” she said, a little unnerved by her own forthrightness. It must be the adrenaline making her giddy, she thought, checking her rear-view mirror before moving off again.

  The roads were crazy this afternoon – the traffic was crawling at a snail’s pace and it was as though the entire population of Dublin knew Leah was sitting her test and were out to make things hard for her. Take this person, she thought, spying a woman in one of those huge SUVs coming towards her, probably on her way back from the morning school run, a determined look on her face that suggested she wasn’t going to stop for anyone. As she came closer it became even clearer that this particular woman wasn’t going to stop or give way to anyone, Leah included.

  She mentally recited the rules of the road. The other driver’s side of the road was obstructed by parked cars and Leah’s was clear. Which meant Leah had the right of way, didn’t it? It meant that she was perfectly entitled to keep going, and the other driver had to stay out of her way didn’t it? Right, so she would keep going and Missus would just have to wait until she passed and the road was clear.

  So Leah did keep going and … oh blast her, Missus kept going too. They were getting closer and closer, each eyeing the other, neither willing to give an inch, until finally, in sheer desperation, Leah edged up on the kerb and onto the path. Of course Missus drove past with a face on her that would sink the Titantic and not a wave, a nod of thanks, nothing! Leah steered to her right and the Fiesta’s two wheels toppled none-too-gently back onto the road again.

  Leah
’s heart pounded. Blast it, blast it, blast it … would your man see that as initiative or would it be an instant fail? She wasn’t sure. No no, nobody was supposed to drive on the path, surely? There was nothing in the rulebook, mind you, but … Leah groaned inwardly, just wishing she could open the door and tell the bloody tester to sod off for himself. This was not going well. First she’d been a bit vague on the questions for the oral exam, then she couldn’t remember the Fiesta’s registration, not to mention the close call with the zebra crossing and now this! Was there anything else could go wrong at this stage? Anything at all? Well she might as well keep going and hope for the best.

  But, no sooner had Leah made her brave decision to proceed, than one of the ‘L’ plates she had so painfully positioned on her windscreen earlier came unstuck from the glass and fell neatly into her lap. Well, she’d definitely failed it now, hadn’t she?

  The look of pure horror – or was it terror? – on the driving tester’s face answered Leah’s unspoken question all too well.

  3

  That same morning, Olivia was cleaning her bathroom and wondering how Leah was getting on with her driving test, when the phone rang.

  “I’m really sorry to disturb you like this,” she heard Alma her manager say with genuine regret, “and really if I could have avoided phoning you I would have, but if we don’t operate soon, I think the poor little mite could die.”

  Olivia’s insides tightened. “Oh, no – what’s happened? Which one is it?”

  “He’s just been brought in. By the looks of things he was run over, then some kind-hearted soul,” she added with heavy irony, “tossed him into the ditch to die. I don’t know how long he’s held on but he was found by someone this morning out walking their own dog.” Her voice softened. “I don’t even know if we can save him but –”

  “Right. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Olivia said decisively. By the sounds of it, the patient mightn’t have long left. On call or not, the very least she could do was try. She put the phone down, grabbed a coat from the cupboard under the stairs and hastened back into the living-room.

  “Let’s get your coat on, pet, we’ve got to go the centre,” she announced to her daughter.

  A veterinary surgeon by profession, Olivia worked part-time at an animal shelter within driving distance from Lakeview, the village in which she and her four year old daughter now lived.

  Less than an hour’s drive from Dublin, Lakeview was very much a quintessential Irish tourist town with locally owned pubs, shops and a gorgeous café along one short main street. The cobbled streets, ornate lanterns and picturesque one-hundred-year-old artisan cottages decorated with hanging floral baskets, as well as the general ‘chocolate-box’ look and feel of the place had resulted in the town being designated heritage status. The lake itself was surrounded by well-maintained older houses and lavish, newer ones further out – all centred around the large oxbow lake from which the place took its name

  Olivia had moved there to be closer to her parents who’d retired to the sleepy little village years before, and she lived in Cherrywood Green, a small mature estate on the Dublin road side of town.

  She hated having to drag Ellie the eight or so miles to the shelter in Enniskerry but there was simply no time to call on her mother to babysit. Ellie normally loved ‘helping out’ but with such an emergency neither Alma nor Olivia would have much time to humour a little girl.

  “It’s not Angel is it, Mummy?” Ellie asked, her eyes wide as Olivia helped her into her coat. An elderly abandoned dachshund, Angel had been at the centre for sixteen months, and the little dog and Ellie had formed a special bond within seconds of setting eyes upon one another.

  Olivia knew that Ellie would have mixed feelings should poor Angel ever be rehomed. As would Olivia herself. Every dog, cat, pony and ferret had a special place in the hearts of all the employees and volunteers of Paws & Tails Refuge Centre.

  “No this little fella has just been brought in,” she explained, closing the front door behind them and hurrying Ellie towards the car. “Alma thinks he was hit by a car.”

  This poor dog wouldn’t be the first or indeed the last hit-and-run victim upon which Olivia had operated. She’d been working at the centre for years, having gone there not long after she and Peter bought a house in a Dublin suburb close by, originally intending to spend some time there before something better came along.

  But having witnessed the incredible dedication of the staff and volunteers, as well as the unfortunate condition of the abandoned and neglected animals, she had been unable to leave, despite Peter’s insistence that she would never make any money. That wasn’t the reason she’d become a vet in the first place, Olivia had argued. Yes, she could make a fortune in private practice in the city but why not use her skills on those poor animals that really needed it? Wasn’t that what vets were for at the end of the day? Peter, who at the time was struggling on his junior radiologist wages, couldn’t believe that she could be so unaffected by money – or in this case, the lack thereof.

  But for Olivia, it could never have been any other way. As Peter had said many times himself over the years, if she hadn’t continued working at the centre, she would have been “taking in and fostering every Tom, Dick and Fido that looked any way miserable”.

  Once Ellie had come along though, Olivia had to reduce her hours and now worked only a three-day week and occasional emergencies when Rick, the full-time vet was unavailable. This was one of those times.

  “You’ll save him, Mummy, I know you will,” Ellie said, her tone revealing utmost confidence in her mother’s veterinary skills. “You always save them – every one of them.”

  Pulling out onto the Dublin road, Olivia bit her lip, and marvelled at the blind and innocent trust of four-year-olds. Because Olivia knew well that, for all her talents, she hadn’t been able to save every one of them – and notwithstanding her medicinal know-how, she certainly hadn’t been able to use it when it mattered the most.

  There had been an emergency that day too Olivia thought sadly, her mind recalling that heartbreaking evening all those years ago. In fact, if there hadn’t been an emergency, she would have been home on time and things might have been totally different. If only that poor Labrador hadn’t swallowed that chicken bone and needed an emergency operation to remove it. If only she’d been home when she thought she’d be. If only, if only, if only ...

  THAT DAY she’d been feeling utterly shattered. Her feet had been killing her and even though it was only early afternoon, she was really looking forward to getting home. Especially on that day.

  It had all gone wrong from the second she arrived that morning. Unusually for Olivia she’d arrived at the centre ten minutes late – but although she wasn’t sure of it at the time, she’d been late for a very good reason.

  A short visit to her doctor at lunchtime confirmed her early-morning suspicions and from then on in, Olivia might as well have been on a different planet.

  Alma noticed it immediately.

  “Well spit it out,” the centre manager challenged Olivia soon after helping her administer worming tablets to a particularly skittish Alsatian.

  “Spit what out?” Olivia laughed, trying desperately to keep her news to herself but annoyed with herself for being so transparent. An open book, Peter always called her, and he was right. She could rarely keep a secret or her feelings from anyone. Her open face and particularly her wide, expressive blue eyes always gave her away.

  “Whatever it is that’s got you beaming like a Cheshire cat all afternoon,” Alma teased. “Although being married to a hunk like yours would probably be enough,” she added with a wink. “But you’ve been married a while now, so what’s different?”

  “Nothing,” Olivia said, unable to stop grinning and unwilling to look Alma in the eye. “I’m just in a good mood today, that’s all.”

  Just then the telephone rang, and as their budget couldn’t stretch to a full-time volunteer and Olivia was closest to the door, she
went out to answer it.

  “Paws & Tails Refuge Centre.”

  “Hi love,” Olivia heard Peter’s familiar voice and she grinned even more broadly.

  “Hi yourself,” she replied, although she was dying to blurt it out there and then, dying to share it with the world. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing really, just checking that you’re definitely on the eight to four shift today, right? You’re not on a split or anything?”

  “Nope – I’m out of here by four. Do you want me to pick up something for you?”

  “No, no – just checking. I could even be home before you yet, but I’m not sure – it depends on how things go here.”

  Olivia could tell by her husband’s weary tone that he was up to his tonsils – again. She hoped he would get away from the hospital that bit earlier today, not just because she had something to tell him, but also because he was working way too hard. He hadn’t been himself lately, and tended to be tired and a little moody, the stress of working all those long hours obviously taking its toll.

  “Did you get yourself seen to by any of the doctors yet?” she asked him. “About those palpitations you had last week?” It was probably a result of the stress he was under, but still Olivia didn’t want him taking any chances. And working as he did in a hospital, he was in the best place possible to get himself checked out. It was probably fine, but still –

  “It’s nothing, Olivia,” Peter replied, a little testily, and she thought she’d better not push it, and just let him get back to work. The sooner he did that, the sooner he’d be home.

  “Right, well, take it easy, love, and I’ll see you at home this evening.”

  “Talk to you later then.”

  Most definitely Olivia thought, smiling softly to herself as she put the phone down. Hopefully Peter would be home before her, because this particular evening they had plenty to talk about.

  She glanced up at the clock. Time for a quick afternoon tea-break. Olivia didn’t normally bother with tea-breaks, viewing them as a surefire way to unhinge her attempts at keeping her figure. Still, her tummy was rumbling, she’d had very little for lunch and, in fairness, she wouldn’t have to worry about her keeping figure for too much longer. And starving herself surely wasn’t good for the baby.