by the firepit and followed the barking. She jogged to the edge of the large house and rounded the corner. Toward the back of the property, some distance away, she could see Bailey as she pranced excitedly on the spot, tail wagging as she leapt in the air and caught a ball which had been tossed to her.
Ava shook her head in amusement; for all his protests Kelley had obviously fallen for her soppy dog. She headed toward them. Every time Bailey caught the ball she would trot forward, disappear out of sight for a few seconds, presumably to drop it at his feet, then back up again, tail wagging, as she waited for it to be thrown again.
‘I knew you couldn’t resist her,’ Ava laughed as she approached. ‘I thought you were going to pee not play catch with my dog.’
She stopped by Bailey who was sitting on her haunches, ball in her mouth as she grinned, tail thumping against the dry, browning grass. Turning her head, she frowned in confusion. There was no one there, just an empty brick alcove in the wall.
‘Kelley?’ Ava looked around but there was no one and no way he could’ve disappeared without her seeing him. ‘Kelley?’
Kneeling down beside Bailey she reached out and took the ball from her dog’s mouth, turning it over in her hands as she studied it.
‘Where did you get this girl, huh?’ she rubbed Bailey’s coat.
The ball was small and hard, like a baseball, and made from a dark tanned leather which was partially cracked in places from age. The stitching was worn almost smooth and across the middle, branded untidily like it had been done with a heated penknife were the initials P. L. M.
Ava turned and glanced thoughtfully at the concealed alcove. She could’ve sworn someone was throwing the ball to her; she’d watched Bailey jump up and catch it in her mouth. Perhaps she’d managed to bounce it against the wall somehow and caught the rebound.
A sudden, terrifying scream pierced the air and had Ava standing abruptly. Dropping the ball thoughtlessly from her suddenly lax fingers, she left it lying in the tall brown patch of grass and ran back toward the front of the house.
The screaming seemed to be coming from just inside the tree line. Heading straight for it, with Bailey loping alongside her, she came to a skidding halt just in time to see Kelley zipping up his jeans and looking absolutely mortified. In front of him stood a group of well-dressed elderly ladies, one of which she recognized.
‘Mrs McCarthy?’ Ava frowned as she stared at a slightly shorter woman, she didn’t recognize, swooning in Bunty’s arms.
‘Bunty dear, call me Bunty,’ she corrected fanning her friend casually as if she caught her fainting every other day. ‘Sorry about Betty, she has a nervous disposition. We were on our way to visit with you, but it seems one of the trees came down in the road last night, so we left the car and walked the rest of the way. Although it’s a pleasant morning for a stroll through the woods, we weren’t expecting to see quite so much of Mr Ryan here.’
‘Nonsense,’ another lady, wearing candy floss pink, ruffled chiffon, smiled slowly as she winked a heavily mascara clad eye at Kelley who seemed to flush an even deeper shade of red. ‘It’s always a pleasure to run into one of the Ryan boys.’
Kelley took an involuntary step behind Ava as if he could somehow use her as a human shield.
‘Uh,’ Ava replied awkwardly, ‘um okay, well welcome… I guess.’
‘Hey,’ a deeper male voice intruded and as they all turned to look, Killian appeared through the trees. ‘Have I interrupted something?’ he glanced around, noting all the older ladies before landing on his brother. ‘Kelley?’ he greeted curiously, ‘I thought that was your car further down the hill.’
‘Crapped out on me last night,’ he replied. ‘Sorry, beg your pardon, broke down last night,’ he amended when one of the other ladies, this one with a carefully sculped perm, wearing a peach twin set and a small golden cross, glared at him.
‘Last night?’ his eyes glittered in amusement as they dipped to Ava for the barest fraction of a second. ‘I kept telling you the sparkplugs needed cleaning.’
‘Yeah yeah,’ Kelley scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably, ‘I’ve been meaning to get it serviced.’
Killian shook his head as he turned to Ava.
‘What are you doing here? Ava asked. ‘I thought we’d agreed to