Rose

  Banana! Panic grabs me. Why haven’t I been worried about him this whole time? I’ve been so focused on the stupid laptop and that jerk officer, I haven’t checked on him in almost thirty minutes.

  I walk quickly back to the lobby and find my buddy sound asleep. The painkillers and leftover anesthesia are working their magic, making it possible for him to miss the worst of the pain. He isn’t going to be happy later when he tries to move around, but for now, he’s okay. I look up at the ceiling, battling tears. Thank you, God, for saving my puppy.

  The idea of someone saving Banana makes me think of John, the vet. He took off the moment he was done with the surgery, leaving me to finish the stitches. Whatever he wanted to talk to me about went with him. He was bothered when he got here and not any better when he departed, but I’m not going to worry about that now. My plate is already full enough.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next three hours pass in a blur. I finally have a chance to breathe and eat the breakfast that has grown cold and hard on my desk. For at least a few moments, I am alone. I can sit and wallow in my bad fortune for a little while before I have to put on a happy face for the world.

  John, my trusted veterinary partner of five years, is bailing on me. He called and gave me some lame excuse about his practice growing and the distance becoming too much, but he also mentioned the town council, so I know what the real score is: they got to him. Betty harassed and threatened him enough that he finally bought into her bullshit. He can’t take the risk of helping me anymore.

  I don’t get it. My lawyer has done such a great job all these years coming up with legal support for the fact that I can run this business the way I do using John as a contractor veterinarian. So what’s the big deal? Why is Masters now suddenly chickening out? I’ll probably never know, because he wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Not really. The guy is very good at beating around the bush and playing head games, something I never knew about him before. He reminds me of a guy I dated a few years back in college, who I thought I loved but who was just using me. He was a master at playing head games. I never saw that heartbreak coming.

  I lean back in my chair and stare at a ceiling that’s stained from several roof leaks. Why, oh, why must this building suck so much? My mind drifts a little, fantasizing about what I wish I could have, besides an unstained white ceiling. I dream of a state-of-the-art medical facility with no expense spared and a veterinary school diploma on the wall with my name on it. I could do everything with one of those; I wouldn’t need to depend on weak men like John Masters to help heal my patients.

  I snort, thinking about that man. Masters? . . . Please. Talk about a misnomer. Master of what, I’d like to know. Master of nothing, since he lets women like Betty Beland boss him around. Jerk-head.

  I sit up straight in my seat and sigh. Reality is back, slapping me in the face with her cold, cruel hand. There will be no fancy medical building or vet school diploma on my wall. Graduate school just wasn’t in the cards for me, and no amount of dreaming or fantasizing is going to change that. The family and the farm needed me here and then so did the animals who started showing up at our door one after another in a steady stream. It’s not like I could abandon them for four years of focusing on my dreams. Doing what I do is good enough.

  There’s a huge risk in going to vet school, too. There’s all the money involved, the pressure, the time spent away from family who depend on me to make ends meet. I would never put them through that, and frankly, after four years at the local college, I didn’t think I had four more in me. No way was I going to risk all that money and difficulty for my family just to fail out. Besides . . . I don’t need a veterinary diploma to help and heal animals. I do it every single day.

  I stare at the door longingly. Sometimes I just want to walk right through it and keep on going . . . never come back. It sure would be easier not having to deal with the stress of unpaid bills and the nonsense brought by Betty Beland. But I’d never do that, of course, because I have all these beautiful little souls counting on me. I hear one of them whining in the back room, demanding my attention. It’s a puppy who was abandoned on my doorstep last week. He had an eye infection that was so bad we almost had to remove it, but he’s better now, and waiting with two eyeballs for someone to adopt him. If I had my computer, I’d be uploading the pictures I took of him yesterday to the Internet right now. Poor little nugget. He’s loaded with love and just needs a person to share it with.

  I go into the back room and find him waiting patiently at the door of his kennel for me, his little tail wagging. He’s a pitiful mix of basset hound and dachshund, which means he could not be any uglier or more adorable. I take him out of the kennel and cuddle his long, heavy body in my arms. His short, chubby legs and sharp baby nails poke into me as he tries to climb higher, attempting to get nearer to my face.

  “What are you doing, Oscar Mayer? Was that you causing all the fuss in here? Don’t you see your injured friends in here trying to sleep?”

  He pants and licks and wiggles and squirms and barks. He’s ridiculously happy to see me, even though I was just in here thirty minutes ago cleaning out his kennel. I can’t bear to put him back in there now that I have his warm body melting into mine. “Come on out front with me, little stinker. You can keep me and Banana company.”

  My two-legged Banana Muffin now has a child gate all the way around him, keeping him from crawling away from his resting spot, and keeping any visitors like Oscar Mayer puppy from getting too curious. Even with painkillers, my patient is in considerable pain and will be for at least the next week. He already tried to stand once today and quickly gave up.

  As I’m walking out of the hallway and into the main room, the door to the clinic opens. A hunched-over man wearing what looks like a safari hat and a dark-blue coat comes shuffling in. He comes inside and puts a stack of mail on my desk.

  “Hey, Hal.” I shift the puppy so he’s hanging over my shoulder like a human baby, freeing up my face and attention for the mailman. “How are your knees holding up?”

  He shakes his head. “Not good, not good at all.” He winces, using acting skills that could have won him an Oscar had he ever been in a film and not just in my life. “This cold weather makes me ache all over.” His wrinkled face creases as he lays it on thicker. You’d think he had a sword stuck in his gut the way he’s folding in on himself.

  “I hear you. Did you try rubbing in some of that tea tree oil like I suggested?”

  “I did. And it did help. But I ran out.” His face is all innocence now, as if he’s not here looking for more of the tincture I use for arthritic animal joints.

  I sigh and shake my head. “You’d think, being the postman, that you’d know a little bit about ordering things online.”

  “I do, but you know what? . . . I’m kind of old-fashioned. I don’t really like all that online ordering. That’s how my knees went bad so fast . . . all those packages. You know, before Amazon came along, everything was fine. People used mail-order catalogs, which took a lot of doing. Took some time. Took some money to pay for the shipping. Christmas was a little busy, but nothing like it is now. But the day that company took off, and people could just click-click-click their paychecks away, my workload quadrupled, and then it quintupled, and then it got a hundred times worse. Seems like every week I’m carrying more and more boxes.” He’s clearly disgusted with the public’s online ordering habits.

  “Damn that Amazon,” I say. “Knee-destroying bastards.” I try not to smile but fail. I don’t feel at all guilty about the amount of shopping I do online. It’s the only way I can get some things without having to drive an hour on questionable roads.

  “Yeah. Bastards.”

  “And those damn televisions and automobiles too,” I say, feigning seriousness with a raised fist. “Grrrr. So annoying.”

  He opens his mouth to agree, and then stops. His face falls. “Don’t sass me, girl.” He points at me. “I told you, my knees are sore. I’m not in t
he mood.” He turns to leave, shuffling even more drastically than when he came in.

  I walk over to the tall medicine cabinet behind my desk and pull out a small dark-blue jar, hurrying over to give it to him before he reaches the door. I put the puppy down on the floor and hand it over.

  “What’s this?” Hal asks, as if he doesn’t know.

  “It’s for your knees. Just rub a little bit on both of them in the evening, on the sides and back of the joint.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” He smiles big at me, revealing the large gap between his front teeth.

  “Don’t call me Doc. You know I’m not a doctor.” All I need is the town council thinking I’m telling people I’m a vet. They’d shut me down for sure.

  “You’re a healer. In my book, that makes you a doctor.” He nods his head once, like it’s now a fact; I am officially a vet because Hal Warner, the postman, says so.

  I hold the door open as he walks out, now with a spring to his step since he no longer needs to wrangle more tea tree oil out of me.

  “Stay warm,” I say.

  “You too. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I shut the door quickly, shivering with the chill. I rush back over to my desk and sit down, hoping the space heater at my knees will quickly warm me back up. I hear a noise and look down to find the little stinker, Oscar Mayer, digging through my purse.

  “Get out of there, you tiny punk.” I grab him and put him in my lap. He’s holding a tampon between his teeth.

  “What are you doing? You’re not supposed to touch those things. That is so rude.” I lower my voice and whisper next to his floppy ear, “Those are girl things and they’re not for you.”

  I try to take it from between his sharp baby teeth, but he’s not having it. He wrestles me for it, growling when I try to pull it away.

  “Let go of that. How dare you.” I can’t stop laughing. “No, sir, it is not a toy!”

  His tail rests over the desk, shuffling my mail around as he wags it. Some of the letters are thrown off to the side, revealing an envelope from the middle of the stack whose return address and logo I know only too well.

  I put the puppy down on the floor and let him play with his new non-toy. No one is here but us animals and poo picker-uppers, so what do I need to worry about? Other than this bad news that’s arrived in the form of a letter from the town council, that is.

  Picking up the envelope, I stare at it, dread filling me. What do they want now? I tear it open and find the familiar letterhead—a missive accompanied by a legal document that’s several pages thick. My heart deflates like a leaking balloon. “Oh, for poop’s sake, what . . . ?” It’s all a bunch of legalese, but if I’m reading it correctly, it says I’m being sued. “You have got to be kidding me.” What am I going to do now?

  Suddenly, as if in response to my question, the front door flies open. I look up as the gust of cold air hits me. There’s a man standing in the entrance, for a split second looking like some kind of superhero who’s come to save the day. I blink a few times before his identity registers. My heart beats just a little bit faster than usual.

  “Mr. Lister? What are you doing here?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I stand, dropping the letter on my desk. I’ve met Greg Lister a few times now, and I wouldn’t say that those meetings were entirely pleasant. I know we’re not supposed to shoot the messenger, but he has carried some pretty ridiculous news with him whenever he’s come out to the farm. I wish my heart wasn’t beating so damn fast. It’s going to make me sound breathless when I talk, and he’ll think he makes me nervous. And even if he does do that, it’s not like I want him to know it.

  The first time he came to Glenhollow Farms, it was to tell my sisters and me that Red Hot wanted to pay us ten million bucks apiece as some sort of early inheritance or delayed child support. The second time was to announce that Darrell—a former member of Red Hot and now persona non grata—was making claims against the band that might actually hold up in court. I block out all of their gossip whenever they talk about it in my presence because it doesn’t affect or involve me, so I really don’t know what’s going on with that now.

  “Hello,” he says, coming into the room and shutting the door behind him. “I heard you had some trouble down here last night, and I thought I’d stop by to see if there was anything I could do.”

  I can’t help but stare at him. He’s wearing form-fitting, dark-blue jeans that bunch at the ankles, a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, and a dark-green down vest. His boots look brand-new, made of the type of yellow leather worn by men in construction. He looks like he just stepped out of a catalog for L.L.Bean—impeccable to a fault.

  Now that I think about it, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen even a speck of dust on the man. He is big-city perfection, more suited to a magazine’s pages than to real life. His dark hair is cut in a style well suited for work in a high-rise Manhattan law firm, but today it’s ruffled by the wind. His face is all chiseled angles with wide, high cheekbones, a broad chin, and deep-set, steel-gray eyes. In other words, he’s completely out of his element here on the farm, and he makes me almost drool because he is entirely too handsome for his own good. The wind he let in carries the scent of his cologne over to me, and my eyes drift closed for a fraction of a second as I inhale. Damn. He even smells good. My memory of him has not paled in the least since I last saw him, and he’s still the handsomest man I’ve ever met.

  He clears his throat.

  “Do?” I finally say, jolting myself out of my self-imposed hypnosis once I realize that he expects some sort of reaction from me.

  His attention is pulled away from the conversation when Oscar Mayer runs over and jumps onto his feet.

  I instantly see the future with a clarity that is normally reserved for women with crystal balls and tarot cards. I know exactly what is about to happen—the disaster that awaits. I’m reaching out my hand to stop it as Lister leans down to greet the puppy.

  “No! Wait!” I yell.

  Too late.

  Oscar Mayer is so excited at the attention he’s getting from this great big human, he loses control; in response to Lister’s greeting, the puppy pees on the man’s brand-new boot. The left one. The next thing he does is drop his new toy on Lister’s other boot. The right one. He looks up at the man with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out, panting with happiness.

  Oscar Mayer is in love with Lister, and now Lister is picking up the toy his new best friend brought him . . . a dog-drooly, soggy, raggedy old tampon that should be in my purse, in a wrapper, hidden from the view of every single non-female person in the entire world.

  Lister stands straight, examining the tampon closely as he turns it around, swiveling it left and then right, frowning as he tries to figure out what it is. The string hangs down and tangles in his fingers.

  “Put that down!” I yell with way more force than I mean to.

  Both the puppy and Lister immediately respond: Lister drops the tampon like it’s a hot potato, and Oscar Mayer sits on his chubby rump, looking over at me with his tongue hanging out. He is so very proud of himself.

  “What was that?” Lister looks up at me, stricken, his hand frozen in front of him.

  I try to smile through my life that is a complete disaster. “Just a dog toy. Ha, ha! No big deal.”

  I grab some tissues from the nearby box and rush around the desk, running over to pick up the puppy before he can do any more damage. I snag the tampon, too, and slide it into my pocket. “Here.” I hand Lister the tissues.

  “What am I supposed to do with these?” He stares at them with dread in his eyes.

  I look down at his feet, cringing as I answer. “I thought you might want them for your boots.”

  He looks down and stares at the big stain on his toe. There are a couple little droplets next to the bigger stain, and if I stare at it in just the right way, it looks like Oscar Mayer actually peed a happy face onto the leather.

  “I think I just got marked,” he sa
ys. Believe it or not, he doesn’t sound angry.

  I can’t help but be grateful at Lister’s easy acceptance of being urinated on. I’m pretty sure his three-hundred-dollar boots will never be clean again. “He’s young. He’s still learning to control himself.”

  Lister sighs and leans down to wipe his boot. “I should’ve known better.”

  I have to think about that for a couple seconds before it hits me. “That’s right. You have a dog, don’t you? If I recall correctly, she’s a Yorkie?” The first time Lister arrived at our house, she was in the car with him.

  “Yep.”

  It’s a breed famous for peeing on feet when they’re young, so I have to agree with him; he should have known better. I’ve treated exactly three of them here at the clinic, as pets of people in town. One had intestinal problems and the other two needed to be spayed—an operation I paid Dr. Masters to do.

  “Where is she now?” I ask.

  “She’s back at my place. I have someone watching her.”

  “What’s her name?” I ask, trying to keep his mind off the idea of Oscar Mayer’s weak bladder.

  “Veronica.”

  “Your dog’s name is Veronica?”

  “Oh. No. Uh . . . my dog’s name is Tinkerbell. Tink for short.” He stands up with his dirty tissues and looks around. I take them from him gingerly and walk with the puppy back to my desk, pulling the chewed tampon out of my pocket and dumping it with the tissues into the trash bin.

  “Thanks for coming, Lister, but I don’t think there’s much you can do here.”

  “You can call me Greg, you know. Lister’s my last name.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I feel silly now and get a little hot under my collar with embarrassment. “Of course it is. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He walks over and stops at the baby gate that surrounds Banana, looking down into it. “How’s your dog doing? I hear he got injured last night. Looks serious.”

  “He’s okay. Well, he’s going to be okay.” My heart seizes up a little as I say that and look over at Banana’s still, sleeping form. He’d normally never let anyone walk into the clinic without at least checking the person out, so the fact that he’s dozing through Lister’s—Greg’s—visit says a lot. I’m praying with everything I have in me that I’m telling the truth, that he’s going to be fine when this is all over.