Page 28 of Fundamentals in Flirting

“Yes! You called me, you idiot, so of course it’s me,” I said with an undisguised sigh. I’d made my way across the yard and was finally able to put everything down in the tack room. “What do you want?”

“I need your help,” he said quietly. “And calling someone an idiot is definitely not on the wooing curriculum at the Fraser Foundation for Flirting, just so you know.”

“The Fraser Foundation for what? Actually, never mind, I don’t want to know,” I muttered, closing my eyes. “What kind of help do you need?”

“I’m in my shed and there’s a sort of devil sheep in here and it won’t let me out.”

“A ‘devil sheep’?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, you’re going to have to run that all past me again.” This must be a wind-up. Teddy had said a lot of really random stuff in the last minute or so, and my brain was struggling to compute it all.

“First, I am not an idiot. Perhaps you should repeat that for me, Hannah?” He paused, but when I remained silent, he sighed and carried on, “Secondly, I’m trapped in my shed.” Another slightly pregnant pause. “And thirdly, I need your expertise to help me escape.”

“From the clutches of adevil sheep?” I added, thinking that I might use this turn of phrase in the future. Some of my ovine patients could certainly be classified as devilish.

“Yes.”

“Do you need me to come right now?”

“If you would, yes please, otherwise I don’t think I’m getting out of here alive.”

“You are quite possibly the most dramatic person I have ever met, Ted Fraser.”

“Please, Hannah, I don’t know how much longer I can fend it off.” There was a distinctive bleat in the background and Teddy let out a decidedly unmanly noise.

“Fine. Where are you?”

“Come around the side of the house and go straight out the back. The shed is about a hundred metres away at the bottom of the garden. Please be quick.”

“I will. But I’m at the stables so may be a while.” I heard him groan, but what did he expect me to do? “Be brave, Teddy, I’m coming to rescue you.”

“Hurry,” he hissed, and then the line went dead.

A Cheshire cat-sized grin stretched across my whole face, and I began to laugh as I slipped off my riding hat. I hung it neatly on its allotted peg with all my other stuff and headed out to my car. The images that my mind was conjuring up about this predicament were too funny. And so, with a light-hearted bounce in my chest, I drove towards The Old Rectory.

* * *

Pushing open the ancient creaking garden gate at the side of the house, I called out just in case he was lying in wait to prank me. “Hello? Ted?”

But there was no answer. Maybe this was actually happening and it wasn’t a joke. Maybe all six foot three inches of well-muscled, highly educated, supremely confident Edward Fraser were indeed trapped in a shed with a terrifyingly devious demon sheep. This made me smile even more. Hilarious.

Heading down the shadowed path by the side of the house, I stepped out into the sun-dappled back garden and began threading my way amidst the undergrowth, following some stepping stones twisting between towering walls formed of overgrown bushes higher than my head on both sides. In front of me, there were some low outbuildings, at one end of which a stable door stood ajar. This looked like the probable setting for the comedy sketch I was imagining, and I rubbed my hands together in wicked glee.

“Ted?” I called through the doorway.

“In here! Where have you been?”

“I told you – I was at the stables. I came as quickly as I could.” As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, a dusty, tumbledown shippen, split into several small pens by old wooden gates, came into view. At one end of the building was Teddy, pressed firmly up against the wall. There was a broken gate by his feet and a large, rotund white Angora goat gazing up at him and blocking his exit to the door. “Made yourself a friend, have you?”

“It broke down the gate to attack me,” Teddy whispered, his eyes huge and round with terror, his body attempting to become one with the whitewashed stone wall behind him.

“Attack you?”

“Yes, it made this awful noise.” As if on cue, the goat bleated loudly. “Just like that. Then it charged at me. What kind of animal even is it?”

I snorted and laughed. “Ted, it’s a goat, and it just wants to be friends.”

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