by Sarah Hegger
“It used to make me jealous as hell.” Vince winked at her.
“It was meant to.”
They smiled at each other and their gazes locked.
God, but she’d loved the shit out of him. Vince’s smile always seemed to surprise him as well as everyone else, as it crept across his serious face. His hair still curled around his nape. While he kept his hair short because he hated the curl, she had always loved to wrap those silky curls around her fingers.
“Anyway, tell me how you are.” Kelly got a couple of orders ready and called out to their owners.
Vince nodded. “I’m good.”
“The children?”
“They’re okay.” He shrugged. “Adapting.”
He sipped his coffee, and she made up another order and walked it to her customer.
“You still in the same house, right?” She already knew the answer, but she didn’t want him knowing that. It made her seem creepy.
“Yup.” He nodded. “Chelsea and I thought it best for the kids to maintain as much of their normal lives as possible.”
Thank God, Jacob wouldn’t remember. If Kelly had her way, divorce would be in India’s near future.
“Morning, Kelly.” Pete Sparks tapped on her counter. “Can I get my regular order?”
“Sure.” Kelly got busy with Pete’s hazelnut lattes, nonfat cappuccino and double americano. He did the morning coffee run for the small realty office across the road from her. India would hate having her problems aired to Twin Elks, so Kelly forced her normal chirpiness. “Business still looking up?”
“Totally.” Pete beamed at her. “We seem to have more and more buyers interested in our part of the world.” He turned to Vince. “Say, if you ever want to put your house on the market, I could get you a good price for it. You could make some money on it.”
“No, thanks.” Vince grimaced. “It’s the kids’ home. They’ve had enough disruption as it is.”
Pete nodded and handed Kelly his reward card. “I respect that. Now that you’re a free man again, you should give me a call. We can get a beer sometimes. Plus, I have a regular poker night on Thursday with the same group of guys who get together for football games.”
“Yeah?” Vince looked interested.
“Unless you’re not a free man anymore?” Pete winked at Kelly. “You might want to put a ring on that.”
Vince flushed, which made Pete laugh all the harder.
He grabbed his order. “You’re welcome to join us if you’re free.”
The doorbell jangled behind Pete. He crossed the road, carefully carrying his tray of coffees.
“It’s good news that the real estate market is picking up,” Kelly said. “This town could do with some fresh blood.”
“I like it the way it is.” Vince finished his coffee and pushed his cup back. “Quiet. Everybody knows everybody else.”
Spoken like a man who hadn’t gotten stuck in the narrow dating pool. Then again, he had a way out of that. Only he didn’t seem inclined to take it. “New people bring new opportunities.”
Vince pulled a face. “There is that. But you know me, Bunny, I don’t like change.”
“Yes, I do know you, Stretch.”
And just like that they were back in high school. Bunny and Stretch, together forever and ever, amen.
Vince’s eyes darkened to almost black and his gaze drifted over her mouth. She knew that look. It was the one that came before he kissed her.
She and Vince had spent hours lying on her bed, petting and kissing, both of them virgins and nervous to take that final step.
Funny thing, when they had, it had been almost anticlimactic. Distinctly not what she’d read about in the dogeared passages of books she and her buddies had passed around. But then, what eighteen-year-old boy on his first time had enough experience to rock his equally inexperienced girlfriend’s world?
A little subtle prodding couldn’t hurt. “So, are you going to give Pete a call? Get together with him? I mean, if you have nothing better to do.”
“Maybe.” Vince stood and shoved his hands in his front pockets. “I’m not really that social, and I have the kids.”
Chelsea had given up primary custody in their divorce. Two children didn’t work with her new lifestyle. Chelsea brought out the bitch in Kelly, but she wasn’t apologizing for that.
All through high school, Chelsea had set her sights on Vince. Whenever Kelly turned up late to something, Chelsea had been there, keeping Vince company until she arrived. Every class Chelsea and Vince shared, miraculously, Chelsea had ended up sitting next to him. Finally, when Vince and Kelly had their biggest fight of all, who had stepped into the breach and soothed Vince’s ego with kind words and sex? No prizes for guessing the answer.
Chelsea had played the long game, and she’d won. Vince had married her once he’d found out she was pregnant.
And Kelly?
Well, she’d dated some. Maybe even come close to falling in love a time or two, but she’d never gotten over her Stretch.
“You know, you don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to.” Kelly was practically asking him to ask her out, for the love of God.
“I know that. See you tomorrow, Kelly.” Vince squeezed her hand. “I really am sorry about India.”
“Thanks.” What did a girl have to do to make him ask her out?
Vince strode out the door and sauntered toward his rig. A pregnant wife meant Vince had given up his college dreams and found a job to support his wife and imminent family. A few years ago, he’d started driving long-haul trucks. He said it was for the money, but Kelly bet part of it was getting away from his toxic wife.
Damnit! She needed to get Zen with the Chelsea thing.
Chelsea was in the past. Kelly was exactly where she needed to be, when she needed to be. Yada, yada, yada.
Why the hell didn’t Vince make a move already? Something. Anything. He’d give her one of those melting looks and then nothing. Nada! Zip! Zilch!
Her cell rang and Piers showed on the display. Her Zen left the building like its ass was on fire.
She nearly didn’t take the call, but then it should be interesting, so she answered, “Yes.”
“Kelly.” Piers sighed. “Thank God I’ve reached you. I got home and India isn’t here. Neither is Jacob. Do you have any idea where they are?”
“Really?” She had to take a moment. She couldn’t believe what he had said. “Give me a minute; I’m at work.”
She took longer to fill the next order to get her composure back. Ben would be very interested to know Piers had gotten back from his business trip. “Why are you calling me, Piers? You already know India and Jacob aren’t home, and you know why.”
“Kelly?” Piers sounded confused. “What’s going on?”
“As if you don’t know.”
“Kelly, please.” Piers took a jagged breath. “I’m freaking out here. I’ve called all her friends, and none of them have seen her. Do I need to call the police?”
Customers were glancing her way and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “You’ve got a nerve calling me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s cut the bullshit, Piers. I’m not buying.”
“Buying what?”
“I know what you did to India.”
The silence on the other end of the line stretched so long, Kelly nearly hung up.
Piers finally said, “I want to know that they’re safe. Please tell me they’re safe. I don’t understand what’s happening here.”
“They’re safe.” And she aimed to keep it that way. Piers wouldn’t get close to India and Jacob. “Not like you really give a shit.”
Piers didn’t speak for a long while. “Kelly, I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me.” He gasped. “Has India…done someth
ing?”
Oh, no, he was not going to deflect to someone else’s behavior. “What kind of something would India do?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He sounded impatient as he asked, “But you know, for sure, that they’re safe?”
“I do.”
Piers heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I got back from Houston, and they weren’t here. I called the housekeeper, and she said they weren’t here this morning when she came in, and it didn’t look like their beds had been slept in.”
Giving him anything, even the simple admission that India was safe, made her feel tainted. She certainly wasn’t going to listen to him play the confused, worried husband another second. “I have to go now, Piers.”
“Kelly.” Piers’s tone took on a sharper edge. “Listen to me for a minute. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but India left here without her medication. And she needs it.”
“Medication?”
“Yes.” Piers took a deep breath. “She didn’t want anyone to know, particularly not you, because she looks up to you so much. I don’t know, maybe she thought you would judge her.”
The son of a bitch to suggest such a thing. “India knows better than that.”
“Yes, she does.” Piers’s tone gentled. “Normally. But Kelly, she’s been battling postpartum depression, and it’s been going on for a while now.”
“Bullshit. She would have told me.” She and India shared everything.
Except, apparently, they didn’t anymore.
“I know how close you are.” Piers sounded apologetic. “And you’re her big sister, and she idolizes you. Maybe that’s why she never told you. She didn’t want you to think less of her.”
“I would never think less of her.” Kelly hated that Piers was getting in her head. She would never have said India kept secrets from her. Up until the moment she’d opened her door and seen India standing there with bruises on her. Bruises given to her by this motherfucker.
“I tell you who I do think less of, Piers.” She took her time, hoping it’d sink in, knowing he’d deflect. “I think less of the cowardly piece of shit who puts his hands on his wife in anger. The piece of shit who leaves bruises on her body. I think someone like that is the lowest debris of human filth I can imagine.”
Chapter Six
Gabe left Ma fussing over India and Jacob and took a walk with her big rambunctious puppy. The weather had turned in the middle of the night, like it did in Twin Elks. Crazy high winds blew in the change, and he had his coat on and a hat pulled over his ears.
After about fifteen minutes of lunging and squirming, the pup settled into the occasional jerk and pull. He needed training before he got much bigger and harder to handle. He also needed a name, but Ma kept saying it was disloyal to Poppy’s son Ryan to go ahead and name a dog he’d found. Apparently, Ryan and Ben had come across him cowering in a culvert. Like the days when Gabe was at home, Ma had ended up with another pet.
The dog shied at a swirling whirlwind of leaves and tried to hide behind Gabe.
With a firm yank, and a command to heel, Gabe got them walking again.
His years in Australia had turned him into a wuss for the cold. He wanted to get back there, not only to the place but to his project.
As one of two veterinarians working with a team of specialists on shark behavior and how to protect those incredible predators from the way overfishing had forced changes in their behavior, every day on the job had challenged him.
Then Belinda had hit thirty, and everything had changed.
A silver sedan stopped in the street a little ways up, and Peg’s permed gray head poked out of the window. “Hello, Gabe.”
The dog lunged at the car and Gabe jerked him back. “Heel.” It took a moment to get the squirming, eager-to-please puppy under control.
“Hi, Peg.” A great friend of his mother’s and chairman of the Twin Elks prayer chain, Peg had a thumb in every pie. As boys, they’d spent hours snickering and speculating about the size of her bra. “You look well.”
“And so do you.” Peg eyed him, top to toe, with an appraising gleam. “Dot says you didn’t get married over there in Austria.”
“Australia, and no.”
Peg screwed up her face in thought. “Don’t they speak German?”
“They actually have four official languages in Austria, and one of those is German, but I was in Australia.”
“Hmmm.” Peg tapped her hand on her window ledge. “You know, the Beckers are German.”
Some things you would never win. “Who are the Beckers?”
“The Beckers,” Peg boomed. “Live over on Homestead. They used to own the butchery until old man Becker got too old to run it anymore. Well, that’s what Charlene said, but between us, I think the butchery interfered with his time with the bottle.” Peg gave him a meaningful stare.
None of it meant a thing to him. “Er…sure?”
“Anywho.” Peg patted her rigid curls into place. “Their daughter, Sandra…no Stephanie, she speaks German and she’s single.”
“I’ll give her a call.”
“See that you do.” Peg winked at him. “You off to anywhere specific?”
“Nope, just taking a walk.”
“Hey!” Peg snapped her fingers. “You should meet our new veterinarian. She’s also single, but she doesn’t speak German.” She frowned. “At least, I don’t think she does.”
“Will do, Peg.”
That satisfied Peg enough to send her roaring off with a wave out the window.
Actually, he was curious about the new vet. As a boy, he’d spent his life running in and out of Dr. Roberts’s office. The old man had retired before Gabe left for school. He had kind of gotten the impression Doc Roberts would have liked him to take over the practice, but that was before Dad’s death, and shit hadn’t been the same since.
Not that Gabe had really considered taking it over. Family pets were not where his interests lay.
No, he wanted the sort of project he’d been working on in Australia before Belinda turned thirty, and her biological clock got to ticking.
Belinda was a great girl. They had so much in common. They both liked the outdoors and anything associated with that: hiking, rock climbing, camping, skiing, diving. Their vacations had been more like adventure getaways than relaxation, but that was the way they both liked it.
He took a right on Alameda and walked two thirds of the way down to the rambling, concrete seventies block that housed the Twin Elks veterinary hospital
The building was more or less the same, except for a new bright blue on the trim and the front door. The sign was new and under the name Twin Elks Veterinary Hospital was the name Cara Addison.
The new vet, who he really should meet, and who didn’t speak German. Maybe.
Sticking his cold hands in his pockets, he tried to warm them. It had all started for him there. As a kid, he’d been drawn to animals and driven Ma nuts picking up strays and the injured. He’d brought them all to Dr. Roberts and watched in amazement as the doc put them back together.
Sometimes he couldn’t, and those ones it had taken Gabe a long time to forget. It was through watching doc work that he’d decided what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
The dog pulled at the end of the leash, eager to get going again.
The clinic door opened, and a brunette strode out, arms clasped around her torso against the cold. About his age, with tight jeans and a sweater showing her curved in all the right ways, she was the sort of woman to pique anyone’s interest.
“Gabe Crowe.” She gave him a broad, sunshiny smile and held out her hand. A small, strong capable hand with nails cut short, made for working. “I’m Cara Addison.”
“The new veterinarian.”
“You got it.” She gave a husky laugh. “I keep hearing we should meet.”
&n
bsp; Gabe responded to her easy manner and her laugh. “You too, huh?”
“They’re thinking we’ll rip each other’s clothes off over de-fleaing a dog.” Cara was the sort of forthright woman he liked. A trait she shared with Kelly.
“I think their hopes were more around marriage and breeding a litter of little veterinarians.”
“Right.” She threw back her head and laughed, a husky sound that worked with her pinup vibe. She crouched and petted the dog. “Hey, there. You got a name?”
The dog lunged at her, tongue whipping every which way as he tried to make a new friend.
Gabe wrestled him back. “He doesn’t have a name, actually. My mom keeps refusing to give him one.”
“That’s not right,” Cara said to the dog and stood. “So, instead of standing out here in a semi-creepy way, do you want to come in? See what I’ve done?”
He really had nothing better to do, and he was curious. “Sure. If you’re not too busy.”
Cara pulled a face. “Unfortunately, I’m not. Twin Elks is slow to trust their pets to a newbie. They still insist on driving over to Springs rather than coming to me.”
“Dan Roberts was an institution around here.” Gabe followed her into the clinic. He made a mental note to chat with Ma and see what she could do. There was no power greater in Twin Elks than the prayer chain.
Inside, he hung his coat by the door. The old reception desk had been replaced by a sleek wood and stone desk that ran one side of the waiting room. In neat little alcoves to keep feisty pets separated, new benches sat ready for patients.
A big fish tank looked over a neat station for coffee and tea.
“It looks great.” A whole lot better than the old office. Dr. Roberts hadn’t cared much for decor and settled for blue walls and a couple of faded posters of dog breeds. Gabe walked over to a state-of-the-art scale. “This will make life easier.”
“It does.” Cara stood by the coffee station. “Coffee?”
“Great.” He really would talk to Ma. Cara had set the place up well.