Usual disclaimer: Characters are not mine, 'cept for the twins and the idea for them did come from reading another story, so credit to whoever that was.
Title ideas needed!
Listening to her mother's deep and calm breaths, Mandy fit her head slightly tighter into the curve of the older woman's neck. She'd been dealing with Emily's occasional anxiety attacks after her breakdown just before the twins were born. Adam was an expert at it, but as she had been away so much, Mandy was less confident. However, it was a part of her life and something she dealt with, just as she dealt with everything else fate could throw at her. She only dreaded when the twins, Sophie especially, hit the teens and started to argue and act out. That was going to be stressful.
Deciding on a moment to stop borrowing trouble, the blonde easily vaulted from her bed, causing her mother to groan and smile indulgently without opening her eyes. Ever efficient, Mandy unzipped and started to deal with her bag, not bothering to keep quiet about it. She knew that Emily would move in her own time and her room was too tidy for her tastes. Simultaneously slinging dirties into the hamper, settling photos in their old places on shelves and hiding presents in the cupboard, it barely took ten minutes to sort out the bag she had been living from for months. Of course, her own kit bag, the cylindrical sports bag she'd carried on, stayed intact in the corner.
Finally, her mother rolled over to look at her lazily. "Are we going somewhere?"
"Of course! The sun's going down and its casting all the long shadows and the light is dappled and everything is calm-"
"Yes Mandy, its dusk; your favourite time of day. Get to the point please."
"It's the perfect time for a walk!"
"Don't say-!"
Too late. The excitable labs had already heard their favourite word and the small house erupted with the tandem of two sets of demanding barks.
Groans came from three different rooms as the rest of the family realised Mandy's grave error which only prompted the girl herself to start laughing loud enough to be heard over the racket. Snagging the strap of her bag and her mother's hand, she hurled both downstairs, greeted by the sight of her siblings trying in vain to command the barking dogs that danced around their feet.
"Man-dy!" Sophie groaned, turning in circles to keep her dog in her line of vision, "Look what you did!"
"Well clearly I'm right, and Coby and Meg agree. Time for a –"
"Don't say it!" George yelled.
"Walk." Mandy finished, in a perfectly normal tone. Then she wisely braced herself against the renewed barks from the pups.
"Alright, alright, alright! Hush monsters!" Adam commanded, menacingly deepening his voice. The dogs instantly dropped to their stomachs, completely silent.
Emily shook her head. "I will never know how he does that."
"It's all in the tone of voice" he replied, dropping her a wink. Mandy didn't even want to think about why her mother blushed.
Meanwhile, Sophie and George had already attached matching blue and red leather leads to their dogs' collars. Mandy rolled her eyes at them. "That's not stereotypical at all."
George looked confused and yelled to their parents, "Mum, dad, what's 'stereotypical'"
Emily replied, not taking her adoring eyes from her husband's face while he helped her on with her coat. "It means that you follow the expected image of something."
"Like red for a girl and blue for a boy" quipped Mandy at her frowning little brother.
He opened his mouth to make the kind of retort that would have got him in trouble before his twin cut in.
"We're not following anything. Cobes and Meg just like those colours. Don't you, baby?" The pup seemed to smile as Sophie lightly kissed her muzzle, barking once as if to agree with her Mistress.
"Yeah. Exactly." George said, sulkily. He whistled, bringing his dog straight to heel.
"No whistling in the house." Adam and Emily scolded idly.
"Kay."
"Right."
Mandy rolled her eyes, wondering how long her family were going to be dreamily staring at each other. And that included the dogs.
Half an hour later and Mandy was smothering her giggles into her hand as George, a born story-teller when he wasn't being petulant, rattled through six different voices as he told the story of an incident at school. It was a good thing Coby was off the lead, up ahead with Meg, otherwise the wild gesturing he was doing would have pulled the poor dog's head every direction you could care to name.
They were just coming back to the first road of the village when Mandy saw him. The sun glinted off his coal black hair, flashing over her eyes and making her look up. She gasped lightly as he took in his toned body under his loose shirt, his muscled arms carrying a box full of assorted books and a lamp. His stride was powerful and long and glasses framed his eyes. Oh how she longed to know what colour his eyes were!
What the hell, girl? What are you thinking? But there was no denying it, she was so attracted to this mystery man that it was almost dragging her across the street to corner him in front of Mr Baggilo's Tudor fronted cottage. She froze, the wind whipping her hair over one side of her head.
"Who is that?" she demanded of her parents, completely cutting off her brother.
"Hmm? Who?" Emily replied, looking around.
"Him!" Mandy near-whined, pointing at the obvious man.
Adam and Emily looked at each other in confusion as Soph and George stared at him, clearly not recognising him either.
"Mandz...Don't you know him?" Adam asked, looking at her like she'd gone insane.
"No, of course not, otherwise I wouldn't be asking!"
A smile slowly grew across her mother's face as Emily finally answered. "Mandy, that's James Hunter."
The young blonde vet's eyes popped and her mouth grew into a huge beam. She could feel her pointing hand shaking as she whirled back to the man. To The man. James. Her James.
"James Hunter..." she repeated in wonder.
Oh it feels good to be back with these two. And our hero finally enters the picture.
Huge apologies to those of you I promised this before now. Life got in the way, again!
In reviews, please tell me all the details of James you can remember! Mandy wants to know the colour of his eyes, and so do I! Do we know anything about his parents?
Also, I have actually drawn this scene. It was the first that popped into my head when I reread the first chapter of the first book. Check it out on deviantart(dot)com. My user name is Elriaen, same as on here and the picture of this scene is called 'Who's that?'. Comment and look around my gallery if you'd like, I don't get many people doing that!
Hold onto your hats though folks, this one will be a bumpy ride to love!