The Bride Wore Red Boots

by Lizbeth Selvig

  Sam nodded. “That’s actually helpful.”

  “Is there a chance Rory will be moved to a different home?”

  “A chance. Sometimes we just have to try several places in order to find a good match.”

  “Can you keep me in the loop? I’d like to be able to find him.”

  “Of course. Goes without saying.”

  THE AFTERNOON’S EVENTS should have elated her. Buster semilocated. Social services looking into Rory’s well-being. Instead, her head pounded with concerns she really didn’t want on her plate. Hunting down a homeless cat. Monique’s health. Half-worrying about Brooke’s prediction that she’d overstepped her bounds with Dr. Wilson. Finding time to help her sister. Knowing she’d have to speak again with the annoying Gabriel Harrison . . .

  Wondering why her stomach insisted on flipping cartwheels every time his name and the memory of his low, smoky voice ran through her brain.

  She reached her office and gratefully closed the door. She had no more rounds today and no more meetings. More than ready to leave, she gathered her coat, her purse, and her laptop. And yet, a weird, internal nagging feeling that she needed to follow up on Buster wouldn’t let her walk out. With a sigh, she sat at her desk and unfolded the yellow sheet of paper from Hannah White. Picking up her office landline phone, she dialed the number for St. Sebastian’s Shelter.

  The woman she spoke to remembered the earlier call about Buster. Mia identified herself and her reason for wanting to find the homeless man.

  “I’m not looking for him as such,” she said. “I am only after any information he has about my patient’s cat. Even if he can tell me no such animal exists.”

  “I will be glad to have Aaron—Buster—contact you if I see him again,” the woman said. “I haven’t seen him in nearly two weeks, however, so I can’t promise you when that might be.”

  “That’s all I can I ask,” Mia said. “Thank you for your help.”

  “I wish you good luck,” the woman said. “I hate hearing about lost pets and sick kids. I hope you can reunite the boy with the cat.”

  Her attitude sent the first warmth in four hours through Mia’s body. She wouldn’t do the woman’s job on a dare. Surgery was a snap compared to figuring out how to shelter and feed the homeless and hungry.

  By the time she reached her building in the Upper East Side an hour later, her headache had peaked into the kind of pounding pain that made climbing the steps to her third floor apartment excruciating. Not that the pain was unfamiliar. Lately headaches had become all too commonplace—so much so, she had a routine to deal with them.

  She flipped her low-heeled pumps straight from her feet into their corner of her bedroom and stripped every stitch of clothing, from her red-and-white pinstriped blouse to her navy pencil skirt, bra, and underpants, off her body and set them into the laundry hamper. Gratefully and gloriously, she replaced them with her loosest, ugliest gray sweatpants and a fairly hideous multicolor striped, polar fleece pullover that, strictly by virtue of its coziness against her skin, eased her impending migraine by a fraction.

  One glass of ice-cold water and the full adult dose of eight hundred powerful milligrams of ibuprofen later, she shuffled into the kitchen, popped a K-Cup of hot chocolate into her trendy new single-serve coffee maker and slipped her favorite mug into place. Surgeons Do It on the Table, it said.

  “If only,” she said out loud.

  While the chocolate brewed she opened the refrigerator and searched fruitlessly for anything that sounded or looked good. This, too, was part of the headache routine, and as usual she closed the fridge door without choosing anything. There wasn’t even a lack of choice—she kept a well-stocked kitchen—but cooking sounded far too painful, and fresh anything sounded far too healthy. Finally, when her cocoa was ready, she grabbed a package of graham crackers from the cupboard and carried the nonnutritious comfort food into the living room.

  She loved her condo. It truly was her one haven away from the world of relative insanity she inhabited eighty percent of the time. She’d chosen that chaotic, high-pressure world, and she loved it, too, but here—headache or no—she could leave the hospital behind if she chose.

  She retrieved her laptop from her briefcase in the foyer and flipped on her gas fireplace on her way back to the couch. On the mantle her array of family photos smiled out from various rustic frames collected at flea markets and antique shops over the years. A group picture of her and her five sisters from twenty years before always made her smile. She’d been twelve, Harper ten and Joely seven. Each had held one of the triplets, not quite four, and each was dressed in jean shorts, a western-yoked shirt, and her favorite pair of cowboy boots. Mia’s had been red. Back then she’d never let any of her sisters copy her red boots—they were her symbol, her favorite thing even now. The triplets could wear pink; that was as close as she allowed. The others were at the mercy of brown, black, or blue.

  They still teased her even though she’d lifted the ban long ago. The sisters had recreated the picture just two months ago at their father’s funeral. Now six grown women smiled out from that image—successful women all. They still looked darn good in cut-offs and cowboy boots. Mia’s boots were still red. But they weren’t any of them nearly as carefree as they’d been in the original photo.

  She touched the picture of her father, the pang of loss always stronger after a tough day. Sam Crockett, tough, proud, handsome—a Wyoming cattleman to the depths of his heart. He’d inherited, expanded, and run one of the largest, wealthiest ranches in the state. And he’d died at age sixty-eight leaving Paradise Ranch to his wife and six daughters. None of whom had possessed the slightest interest in running it.

  Mia had been the only one groomed for the job, and her father had expected to take over until the day she’d left for college.

  She turned away, settled into the deep, heavenly cushions of her burgundy leather sofa and pulled a thick afghan, knitted by her beloved Grandmother Sadie back in Wyoming, over her legs. She’d broken her father’s heart the day she’d turned her back on the ranch. Or so he’d claimed—if not in those exact un-masculine words. It had been more like, “This isn’t what I hoped for, darlin’. I’ve got nobody who can take my place. You were it.”

  She’d never understood how, out of six children, he’d only picked one to groom. But it had been true. The burden had been hers, and she’d never quite lived up to the task of carrying it. No matter how many As in school, or awards in science fairs or Future Farmers of America competitions or letters in chess she’d received, there was always improvement to be made.

  She looked again at the mantle and picked out the picture of her sister Harper with her soon-to-be husband. Harper wouldn’t have been second or even third choice as heir, stuck as her head had always been in painting rather than cattle and the management of fifty thousand acres. And Cole standing beside her had once been Mia’s beau. She should be bitter, but she was grateful. She and Cole had never belonged together, for so many reasons. And they’d never been as deliriously happy as he and Harper were today.

  And she’d never in ten lifetimes have agreed to run Paradise Ranch with him the way Harper had.

  “Daddy, I hope you see how right it is that I’m still here and your crazy little artist is running the place,” she said to the picture, and flushed at the sound of her voice in the quiet room. She glanced around the serene space with its neutral color scheme—rich browns and taupes with touches of burgundy and sage green.

  Her unusual contemplation unnerved her slightly. It had to be the headache, and the silence after the insanity of this day—surrounded by children and parents and all their current worries not so much different from the ones she’d grown up with. Now more concerns about Joely back home made being alone throb like an old, aching wound.

  She rubbed her temples, broke open the crackers, and dunked one resolutely in the steaming mug of cocoa. She bit into the softened graham-y heaven and closed her eyes. This had been her favorite snack since
childhood. Another slice of her headache slipped away.

  After three crackers, she opened her computer and brought up her work schedule for the next month. What had Gabriel said? The fourteenth. That was Joely’s appointment. Wait, Gabriel?

  “Please, call me Gabriel. I’m a civilian.” He’d been making that request since the day they’d met. She mimicked him out loud in a ridiculous voice that didn’t do him justice—or fairness. But he was an arrogant know-it-all. Well, sometimes.

  A movie-star handsome, arrogant know-it-all.

  Oh, for crying out loud.

  She pushed him out of her thoughts and studied her appointments and scheduled surgeries. Every day through the tenth was filled. And she had two routine tonsillectomies scheduled for, crap, Tuesday morning the fourteenth. That was going to make it pretty much impossible to get to Wyoming during the day.

  Disappointment rose bitterly, although she didn’t know why. Joely’s situation was something she could discuss perfectly easily over Skype. Her schedule was always filled.

  She really was exhausted.

  She closed her laptop and set it aside, pulling the afghan close around her chin and fluffing a throw pillow behind her. With little care as to what appeared in front of her, she turned on the television set. Six o’clock evening news. Perfect.

  Gabriel Harrison appeared on the screen. A large Garfield-colored cat lay draped in his arms, and he stroked it slowly, with pinky raised, like Dr. Evil in an old Austin Powers movie.

  “Dr. Crockett, I’m sorry but you cannot speak to this cat. He’s my client, and he does not want to go into foster care.”

  “He has no place else to go. It’s not safe to wander the streets.”

  “You’ll have to take it up with the Supreme Court. I’m only doing my job.”

  “I know my rights, Lieutenant. I demand to know where you intend to put him.” She stomped her foot to make her point.

  “He’s going to a group home for indigent cats. He has no way to pay for a nice foster mother.”

  “The veterans’ administration can’t just kick him out. He has eight more lives, but they’ll be wasted overnight if he goes to a group home.”

  “I’m just doing my job.” Somewhere next to him a phone began to ring. “Excuse me,” he said. “This is the director of the home now.”

  “You have the same phone ring I do,” she said, confused.

  Her eyes flew open. Beside her on the coffee table, her phone buzzed, and her ring tone blared through the empty room. The news was just ending. Bolting upright, she pressed four fingers of her right hand against one temple, but the headache had lessened substantially. Afraid she’d miss the call, she answered without looking at the caller ID.

  “Hello, Amelia Crockett.”

  “Dr. Crockett? Hello. This is Aaron Sanderson. You might have heard my name as Buster. I think you’re the answer to a prayer.”

  Chapter Four

  GABRIEL HARRISON RAN a hand over his eyes and stared at the mayhem spread out before him like a buffet of frat-boy pranks. He hadn’t believed over the phone that the aftermath of this practical joke was so widespread. Now he knew he was probably flirting with losing his job by laughing.

  His men didn’t do things by half.

  The Honda Civic belonging to the head of Wyoming VA’s Department of Veterans’ Benefits stood at the front of a line of three cars right outside the veteran’s service building. It was plastered bumper to sunroof to trunk with colorful sticky notes. Not a sliver of paint showed, not a glint of window could be seen. One door was pink, another green, and the windows were all like checkerboards, with blue and white squares. Spelled out along one side in purple notes was the phrase “Send a memo, Dick.” A reference to the car’s owner, Dick Granville.

  The third car in the lineup, a green Ford Escape, belonged to the deputy director of the whole medical center, and it was swaddled front to back in who-knew-how-many layers of clear plastic cling wrap. Gabriel winced and rubbed his eyes.

  The real mess, however, came at the expense of the middle car, a brand-new black Lexus owned by the executive director, Frank Simms. Someone had rigged a mini-bomb with a payload of whipped cream to trigger by opening the car door. A partially demolished box about eighteen inches square sat on the ground beside a back tire, and every spot in its wrecked vicinity was covered in dripping white goo. This included the car’s interior, the bases of three flag poles in a center island of the driveway, and six people, one of whom was Frank Simms himself.

  Gabriel knew exactly who’d done the deeds, as well as why. No matter. He and the eight men participating in his experimental PTSD project were in serious effing doo-doo here. But, damn, this was a seriously skilled prank job by his guys, who’d clearly paid way too much detailed attention to his stories about the college hacks he’d taken part in back in the day. An unconscionable flare of pride in his group got tamped down quickly. What Gabriel saw as a nonviolent outlet for serious frustration by a group of angry-but-healing, mentally wounded men, who could just as easily have taken a far more dangerous tack, would be viewed as vandalism by the higher-ups.

  “Harrison!”

  He swallowed the last urge to burst into laughter and faced Pete Oswald. For all intents and purposes he and Pete did the same job, but because he’d been at the job six months longer, Pete was de facto leader of their patient advocacy staff. A humorless man at the best of times, he now wore the crazed mask of someone looking for live bodies to hang.

  “Pete. This is . . . ” The traitorous urge to laugh assailed him again, and he coughed into his hand. “This is a mess. I’m sorry.”

  “You have every reason to be. Your band of crazies has been racking up confrontations with the director and the benefits office for three months now. I think it’s fairly obvious they targeted the top three people at this facility on the exact day they had an all-hands meeting.” He shook a limp piece of paper in front of Gabriel. “Besides, they left this.”

  The paper had clearly been a victim of the cream, but the writing was still legible.

  “To the leaders of our esteemed Veterans Administration. Over the past several months, many attempts to get the attention of anyone who can help us have failed. We’re forced to conclude that you haven’t received our e-mails, letters, or phone calls. We hope that once you’ve received these messages, you’ll finally consider our requests. We are in need of help with the following servicemen’s records. Once our requests have been acknowledged, we’ll appear in person and discuss discipline for our actions.”

  There followed the names, service identification numbers, and case numbers from all eight of the men Gabriel was working with.

  “Well, this seems pretty straightforward to me,” Gabe said.

  “It’s straightforward, all right. You get these guys into my office by eight hundred hours tomorrow, or I’ll have them up on charges.” He started to turn away.

  “C’mon, Pete.” Gabriel touched the man’s upper arm to stop him. “You don’t have the power to do that.”

  “They are under our auspices, and you’re the one who put them there. The nail goes into our coffin, so in this fight they’re our dogs. Your dogs.”

  “Look. They all live in the same building and they talk. They’re frustrated, and they don’t have faith I can help anymore because the benefits jokers don’t listen to me, either.”

  “Beside the point. If they act like a gang of street thugs, talking each other into shit they’d never think of on their own, somebody has to act like a parent.” Pete grinned humorlessly. “Hello, Daddy.”

  “They won’t come. Unless it’s for us to listen to them.”

  “Oh, I think they will.” Pete’s voice was threatening, like a rattlesnake emerging from under a rock.

  “Or what? You can’t court martial them. Are you going to threaten to halt their benefits? Half of them are already waiting for decisions on money or services they should have received months ago. Have you ever considered helping me side with t
hem?”

  “The United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  Gabriel had to laugh. “Right. Terrorists should all be this benign. Look. Help me get them heard. We’ll make them pay for damages, and if the director wants to press charges, so be it.”

  Pete deflated slightly. Gabe looked over his shoulder at the whipped cream-covered director who was speaking with several police officers. To Gabriel’s surprise and relief, Director Simms was wiping his shirt with a towel and smiling.

  “Why these guys, Gabe?” Pete sighed. “Eight of the most cracked men in the West, and you put them together.”

  “Because we’re the ones who cracked them. We sent them to hell, and now we expect them to come back and behave like nothing’s different in their worlds. I know from personal experience that isn’t close to true. And this ‘shit’ they pulled tonight is nothing remotely like the shit they were asked to pull in that Sandbox. So cut ’em some slack, give them some time. Let me explain to—” Gabe was cut off by the electronic warble of his cell phone.

  He pulled it out and saw the private number for one of his favorite clients, a severely injured auto accident victim named Joely Crockett. It was nearly seven thirty—awfully late to be calling him. His brows drew together.

  “I have to take this, Pete.”

  Pete waved him away. “I’ll deal with this now. I’d rather be the one to do it anyhow.”

  Gabriel nodded and answered his phone. “Joely?”

  “Gabe?” Her voice shook with tightly coiled anxiety. “I’m so, so sorry to call you this late.”

  “Hey, it’s perfectly all right. Is something wrong?”

  “The doctor came up tonight and said they’d taken a more thorough look at the MRI from this afternoon. They found something they want to double check—a . . . a cyst that’s formed unexpectedly. They want to do another MRI right now because, if it’s where and what they think it is, they want to do surgery first thing in the morning. But, it’s risky; they’d be working right on the spinal cord. I don’t know much else.”