Single Bells

  Anna Martin

  Copyright © 2022 Anna Martin

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any person depicted on the cover of this book is a model and is not affiliated with, nor do they endorse, this story.

  “Single bells, single bells,” Joel sang, off key, as he put one foot in front of the other and tried very, very hard not to fall over. “Single all the way.”

  The snow storm had swept in furiously since he’d left the house earlier that morning; now the fat flakes were being dumped on the ground with increasing ferocity. And all he was wearing was jeans and a dumb Christmas jumper. No coat.

  Stupid office Christmas parties.

  Stupid snow.

  Stupid Milly who suggested tequila shots to warm them up while they were huddled outside, fingertips going numb while sharing a cigarette outside on Grassmarket. Joel liked Milly, a lot, but she had terrible ideas when it came to alcohol.

  Especially when they both had to go to work in the morning.

  “Oh what fun, it is to ride on a….” He giggled to himself, thinking about all the things he’d actually like to take a ride on. “On a—oh fuck.”

  Joel wasn’t entirely sure what happened. One minute he was edging very slowly down the very steep hill; the next he was on his arse, skidding to an inelegant stop.

  Stupid shiny dress shoes that had no grip on the soles.

  “Are you okay?”

  Oh great. Even better. Someone had actually witnessed that.

  Joel got to his feet—slowly, keeping both hands and both feet planted until he was sure of his balance—and brushed his palms on his knees. He’d scraped his hands badly enough to make them bleed. Fortunately, all the alcohol in his system was stopping it from hurting too much.

  He looked around for the person who’d called out. And almost goggled at the sight.

  The man was standing in the doorway of one of the cottages, wearing joggers, slippers, and a dressing gown that was open enough to show off a toned chest with a smattering of dark hair. Joel forced his eyes upwards. He was wearing glasses, too.

  “Single bells,” he croaked again, mostly to himself.

  “Hey.” Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome stepped off the front step and into his garden. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Joel put both thumbs up and thrust them at his handsome stranger. “I’m great. Thanks.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He pointed down the hill. Way, way down the hill. “Church Street.”

  “No. Absolutely not. You’ll never make it in one piece. Come in.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t impose.”

  “It’s freezing. Come in, please.”

  “If you insist,” Joel murmured under his breath. He took very careful steps over to the charming front gate, not wanting to fall over again.

  It really was cold outside, but the cottage was cosy and warm, with the embers of a wood fire dying in the grate. A sleek grey cat was curled on a rug in front of it, her face tucked under one paw.

  “Here, sit down.”

  “I don’t want to get your sofa all wet.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Joel blinked the snow out of his eyes and tried to focus again. Focus, Joel.

  “Why are you awake, anyway? Isn’t it the middle of the night?”

  “I’m on call tonight. I usually try and stay semi-awake, just in case someone needs me.” He flashed Joel a brilliant smile. “Looks like someone needed me, even if you aren’t my usual patient.”

  “You’re the new vet,” Joel said as his brain woke up.

  “That’s me. Nicholas McLeish.”

  “Jolly old Saint—”

  “Shhh,” he said with a laugh. “Please don’t. Though I do usually go by Nick with friends. I’m only Nicholas when I’m in trouble.”

  “I’m Joel. Brodie. Joel Brodie.” That was definitely his name.

  “Hello, Joel. Want me to take a look at your hands?”

  Joel turned them over and stared for a moment at the red dots that were slowly blooming. He presented them for Nick to look at.

  “Sit down,” Nick said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Joel perched on the edge of the sofa, his hands palms-up on his knees. While he watched, the cat rolled over in an elegant stretch, spreading her claws and yawning widely, then curled back up again.

  “That’s Bastet,” Nick said from the doorway, making Joel jump.

  “Like the goddess?”

  “Mhmm.” He seemed pleased with Joel’s answer. “This might sting a little.”

  He cradled Joel’s hand in his own and quickly swiped an antiseptic wipe over the scrapes, cleaning away the dirt and grit. Joel stared at him, unable to come up with anything sensible to say. Nick had a long nose, strong eyebrows, and cheeks that were flushed pink from the cold. Joel thought that even if he wasn’t drunk, he’d find Nick exceptionally nice to look at.

  Nick picked up a tube of cream that smelled faintly medicinal and gently massaged it into Joel’s hands with his fingertips. Joel’s hands had turned very warm, very quickly.

  “There,” Nick said as he finished up. “All done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you cold?”

  Joel considered that. “Not really. I have had a lot to drink.”

  Nick smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I got that impression, yeah. Do you want a cup of tea?”

  Joel thought what he would really like was a large glass of Australian red, or a long slurp on whatever Nick was serving.

  “Tea would be great. Thank you.”

  But he still had his manners.

  Nick wasn’t tired, not really. He’d adapted to working strange hours years ago, and now he could grab a few hours of sleep when he needed to catch up without disrupting his circadian rhythm too much.

  It had been a long time since such an attractive man had stumbled into his house in the middle of the night, though. Caramel hair and wine-drunk eyes and a dimple in his cheek when he smiled. Oh, hell.

  His kettle clicked, and Nick poured hot water over the tea bags he’d already set in mugs.

  “Milk and sugar?” he called out.

  “Yes please.”

  Nick finished doctoring the tea, and carried the mugs through to the living room. Joel’s palms had stopped bleeding, and he was leaning forward with his elbows braced on his knees, watching the cat delicately lick her own arsehole.

  Charming.

  “Tea,” Nick murmured.

  “Thanks.”

  Nick took his habitual armchair.

  “So, I’m new around here, you’ll have to forgive my ignorance. I haven’t met many people yet.”

  “You’ve been busy?”

  Nick hummed and sipped his tea. “I’ve been setting up my practice for the past couple of weeks, trying to get settled in. I heard it’s been a while since you guys had a vet in the area.”

  “I honestly wouldn’t know,” Joel said. His eyes were still a little glassy, but Nick thought he might be sobering up. “My family used to own some of the land around here, though it’s been years since I’ve done any manual labour.”

  “What do you do?”

  Joel shifted in his seat. “I work for an app development company.”

  “Oh, really? I’m definitely not technologically minded.” Nick gave him an encouraging smile. “What does the app do?”

  “It, uh, brings people together?”

  It took a moment for Nicholas to get it. “It’s a dating app?”

  “Dating, hookup, sure. That sort of thing.”

  “That must be interesting.” Nick sipped his tea.

  “I work on user experience. I have a degree in behavioural psychology.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “So I look at all the data around how users navigate the interface; whether or not it’s intuitive or not, how long they spent looking for whatever it is they need before they give up and shut down. You don’t have long to give people what they want.”

  “That’s fascinating. I’ve never even considered anything like that before.”

  Joel shrugged. “It’s one of those things that we’re all so used to these days. We download a new app and within seconds we know how to operate it, because it works on principles that are familiar to us.” He took a sip of his tea. “What made you want to move all the way out here?”

  “I grew up in Edinburgh.”

  “Really? You don’t have the accent.”

  “We moved down to Bath when I was seven… I got teased, a lot, when I started school. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to talk posh like them.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “At the time I was more worried about fitting in than anything else. It was just me and my mum, my dad had left by then, and she wanted to be closer to her family.”

  “And now you’re back,” Joel murmured.

  “It was too good of an opportunity to miss,” Nicholas said. “I’ve been looking for a job in this area for a long time. This is close enough to Edinburgh that it feels like home, but practically on farm land so I can work with bigger animals.”

  “You’re going to be busy when it gets to lambing season,” Joel said. “The sheep farm is right behind my place.”

  “You said you
’re on Church Road?”

  Joel nodded. “I inherited my granny’s cottage. She left stuff to my cousins and my brother, but I was her favourite, so I got the house.”

  Nicholas laughed. “Well that’s a nice thing to inherit.”

  “I’m still doing it up. I love my granny, but I don’t share her taste in home decorating.”

  “So you only moved there recently?”

  “During the summer, yeah. Granny died last year. It took a long time for all the legal stuff to get settled before I could actually move in.”

  “And you were walking down Burner Hill in the middle of the night… why?”

  “Because,” Joel said, with a heavy sigh. “The taxi wouldn’t drive down. Said it was too dangerous, with the ice on the roads, and to loop around to get into the village from the other side would be another twenty minutes, at least. So I decided to jump out and just walk.”

  “In the dark. And the snow. With dress shoes on.”

  “I was very drunk,” Joel said. He sipped his tea again. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “I’m glad I was still awake,” Nicholas murmured.

  “I’m glad you were, too.”

  “You can stay for the night. If you want to.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that.”

  “Well, you can’t walk down the hill in this storm either, so unless you’ve got a tent in your pocket to camp in….”

  Nick realised the hidden meaning in his words a moment too late, just as a flush was starting to rise on Joel’s cheeks.

  “I don’t,” he croaked.

  “I’ll grab you a blanket. It should be warm enough for you to sleep in here.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nick found the spare blanket and put a fresh pillowcase on one of his own pillows before taking them down to Joel, who had taken off his shoes and left them by the front door.

  “Here,” Nick said.

  “Are you sure about this?” Joel asked. “I really don’t mind walking home.”

  Nick glanced out of the window, where the snow was falling thick and fast. “It would be irresponsible of me to let you go back out in this. Plus, I know who you are and where you live. I’m pretty sure you’re not going to rob me.”

  Joel gave him a weak smile. “Okay. Well, thanks.”

  Nick nodded and snapped his fingers for the cat, who ignored him. Oh, well. She’d come and find him in the night if she wanted to. He went upstairs without her and brushed his teeth, washed his face, and ran his fingers through his hair a few times. He’d left the bathroom window open that morning to let the steam from his shower escape, and it was freezing in here now. He pulled the window closed with a click and shut the bathroom door on the way to his bedroom.

  Settling into bed with one less pillow than normal was more unsettling than he liked and he tossed and turned for long minutes, willing his body to fall asleep. It was weird, knowing there was another person downstairs. He didn’t like to think much about how many years it had been since he’d shared his living space with someone other than the cat. Nick liked this cottage very much—it had felt like home the moment he’d moved in, and if he was still happy here after a year, he’d made a promise to himself that he’d approach the landlord about buying it.

  Being back in Edinburgh, or her suburbs, anyway, was a good feeling too. He liked the people here, their accents and the way of life. Everyone he’d met from the village had been very welcoming. Joel included.

  He fell asleep desperately trying to get the persistent Jingle Bells earworm out of his head.

  The next morning when Nick went downstairs, his blanket and pillow were neatly folded on the sofa with Bastet sleeping on top of both. Joel, and his silly dress shoes, had gone.

  That was fine.

  Nick hadn’t expected him to hang around for breakfast or anything. It wasn’t like they were friends.

  He made his usual bowl of porridge and ate it at the kitchen table while watching Bastet attack her bowl of turkey and duck meaty chunks. He spoiled her, he knew it, and he didn’t care. When they were both done, he transferred his coffee to a travel mug so he could take it with him on his morning rounds and layered up. The snow had stopped, thankfully, but heavy clouds hung ominously in the sky, threatening more snow later.

  He decided to get a move on.

  In the few weeks since he’d established his practice, Nick had been working hard to build relationships with the community around Dunmuir. Most of the pet owners around here were used to taking their animals into the bigger veterinary practice in the city, and the farmers had been forced to call a conglomerate who would send a locum vet if one was needed. That meant there wasn’t any continuity of care, and just as soon as he’d proved himself reliable, he was sure his services would be appreciated. Having a local vet would work out cheaper for the farmers in the long run.

  It had the potential to be a mutually beneficial relationship—once Nick had actually built those relationships.

  He started off at the sheep farm that Joel had mentioned was right behind his cottage. There were a few cottages on Church Street so it wasn’t immediately obvious which one belonged to Joel anyway, and the man himself wasn’t wandering around to give Nick a clue. He told himself that didn’t matter anyway, and made his way back to the farm house where Mr. Livingstone happily referred Nick’s questions to his smart-as-a-whip wife.

  Mrs. Livingstone was a short, compact woman of sixty with an attitude that told Nick she was in charge of the business and a physique that told him she was just as adept at sheep herding as her husband, despite her claims that she had nothing to do with the farm. They had two Border Collies sleeping next to the hearth in the kitchen, who submitted to Nick’s gentle inspection with surprising good humour.

  Since both dogs were known vet-biters, Mrs. Livingstone was more than happy with Nick’s offer of visiting them at home if they had any issues with Bonnie and Clyde in the future. He found that nervous animals were far more comfortable with vets if they didn’t have to go into sterile, scary environments for visits.

  That meant one family could be ticked off his charm-offensive list.

  Technically, Joel was allowed to work from home. He had a little office space set up in the corner of his living room that caught the morning sun and it was pretty comfortable, looking out of the window over the village.

  He’d bought a real Christmas tree from the market down the road and decorated it with a bunch of baubles he’d found in his granny’s attic. It felt good to put her decorations out again, like she was still a little part of this Christmas. Joel had a feeling he’d do it again next year, too.