Summer on Moonlight Bay

by Hope Ramsay

  She’d never known the family dog. And Momma and Daddy split up a couple of months after Abby had come into the world. In a way, his little sister had replaced Duke in Noah’s mind. He would go to the ends of the earth to protect her.

  Which meant he was more than just concerned about the possibility that some older guy was hanging around her. He didn’t want to slap her into a chastity belt but, in his opinion, no one was good enough for her.

  He was about to ask her about this Grant dude when she turned toward him, her blue eyes dazzling, and said, “You should name him Prince Charming because he’s going to be very regal when he grows up, I think.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess it’s better than calling him the Prince of Darkness,” Noah quipped.

  She stuck out her tongue.

  “I don’t think we should call him by any specific name. He’s going to get adopted by someone so better not to confuse him. And you should go. Momma probably needs help getting ready for bed.”

  “You don’t have to do this, you know?”

  “What? Stay here and watch the dog?”

  “No, haul Momma back to Charleston where she doesn’t want to go. I can commute to Horry-Georgetown Technical College. They have a nursing major, you know.”

  “No. You deserve the scholarship you earned to USC, Abby. And you don’t want to be a nurse. You told me you wanted to be a doctor. It’s time for me to help out.”

  “Well, if you really wanted to help Momma, you’d think about taking this place over. She doesn’t want to leave Jonquil Island. She’s lived here all her life. And as for me, I’m not sure I really want to make the commitment to become a doctor. Becoming a nurse might be okay.”

  “Might be? Does this have anything to do with Grant whatshisname?”

  “What?”

  “Ethan told me this older guy has been flirting with you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “He hasn’t?”

  “Uh, well, not that I’ve noticed. And Ethan is demented. Just sayin’.”

  “Oh, okay. I was worried.”

  “Because you’re a worrywart. I’m fine. Ethan is a pest. And no, Grant Ackerman, who is gorgeous and hangs out at Rafferty’s on the nights when the Buccaneer sailors practice, is not hitting on me, okay? And I wish you’d consider staying here with Momma.”

  “I’m not staying,” he said, taking another bite of his burger.

  “I wish you would. I wish you and Daddy would make up. I mean, I know he can be a jerk a lot of the time. But…” Her voice faded off, and she shrugged.

  “You should go. Momma—”

  Just then, someone rattled the front door.

  “Jeez, Granny must have told the entire town that I’m here looking after an injured dog.”

  Abby laughed and pushed up from the floor. “Yeah, I bet she did. I’ll go see who it is.”

  He followed Abby out into the reception area, not trusting her to turn patients away. But, once again, it wasn’t a new patient.

  It was the woman who’d brought the dog in. What the hell had she come back for? Hadn’t she made it clear she wasn’t interested in adopting Prince? He inwardly cringed. He was not going to think about that puppy as Prince.

  Abby opened the door. “Can I help you?”

  “Uh, hi,” the woman—Lia? Mia? Noah couldn’t remember her name—said. She carried something that looked a lot like a sleeping bag tucked under her arm. “Hi,” she repeated when she saw him standing behind his sister. She gave a lame wave and spoke again. “Um, well, it turns out that I don’t have a place to stay tonight. And I was wondering…”

  Noah strode to the door. “What do you want?” he asked, letting his annoyance show. In some corner of his mind, he knew his animus toward this woman was unreasonable. She hadn’t injured the puppy. She’d just found him and brought him in and created this no-win situation for him.

  Unfortunately, dogs who came to him with trauma caused by automobiles were special. Saving them had become a higher calling. But for Noah, when a dog collided with an automobile, someone was always at fault. Always.

  Not this woman, of course. But lacking someone to yell at, she provided an easy target.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with a little shrug. “I thought I was going to be able to stay at Chaplain St. Pierre’s house, but it’s not possible. So I was wondering if I could crash on the floor tonight, and then I could pay you back by unpacking the boxes in the storeroom. I probably need to do that anyway because I know that I messed up your vacation when I brought the dog in this afternoon. And really, I would give him a home if I wasn’t homeless myself, and if I really thought I actually deserved a dog, and…”

  Her rapid-fire explanation petered off. She looked up at him with those dark coffee-bean eyes and then cocked her head, reminding him of an adorable cocker spaniel. Funny how she referred to Rev. St. Pierre as a chaplain. She hadn’t been out of the navy for long.

  Damn. Had he even stopped once to thank her for her service? No. He’d been too busy—and too angry about the dog’s injuries—to give her a chance. He’d been a complete jerk, hadn’t he?

  “I’m babbling, aren’t I?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Abby said, opening the door wider and waving her inside. “Noah will fix Prince up good as new.”

  “Prince?”

  “Granny named him. We were just debating whether that’s short for Prince Charming or Prince of Darkness.” Abby gave Noah a bratty-little-sister look followed by an eye roll.

  “Maybe Prince of Darkness. When I first saw him, I thought he was a piece of tire lying in the middle of the road. I almost hit him too.” She crossed her arms over her chest as if she were giving herself a hug. As if just the near miss had left her shaky and upset. Noah felt an unwanted pang of sympathy.

  “Come on in,” Abby said.

  The woman crossed the threshold. “Hi, I’m Lia DiPalma.”

  “I’m Abby Cuthbert. Noah is my brother.”

  “Oh.” Lia cast her glance from one to the other. “I can see that,” she said.

  “I brought a blow-up mattress,” Abby said before Noah could shut her up. “It would solve a big problem if you could stay here overnight with Prince. That way Noah can come home and help with Momma. Momma has MS and needs a lot of help getting ready for bed. But, you know, he didn’t want the dog to be alone.” Abby turned toward Noah. “Isn’t that right? I mean, we were just talking about how Momma needs some help getting ready for bed.”

  “Yeah, I guess, but—”

  “So Chaplain St. Pierre?” Abby interrupted, turning back toward Lia. “You mean the preacher, right?”

  Lia’s cheeks pinked a little. “Yeah. I guess it’s a force of habit to refer to him that way. I was in the navy with him. I was a non-com in the unit that supports the naval chaplains. He was my CO for a time.”

  Abby laughed. “Yeah, well I can tell you haven’t been out of the service long because I have no idea what a CO or a non-com is. But it’s okay. So, you were planning to stay at his house?” Abby asked.

  Lia blushed a deeper shade of pink. “Uh, yeah, but I didn’t realize that non-fraternization rules still applied. It’s okay. I’m really good at roughing it. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. And if that’s not okay, I can always sleep in the car.”

  Well, crap. Noah wasn’t about to make the woman sleep in her car. Especially not when Abby turned toward him with a lifted eyebrow, waiting for him to show some compassion. Which the woman deserved. In fact, Prince was one lucky dog. If Lia hadn’t come along and rescued him, he might well have been hit by another passing motorist. The tension in his neck eased a little. He might be annoyed at his mother and his grandmother, but she was not at fault for that.

  “Okay, you can crash here. But don’t feel obliged to help unpack all those boxes,” he said.

  The woman gave him the tiniest of smiles, just a lift of her lips and a turning up at the corner of her big, sad eyes. “Oh, it’s no problem. I don
’t have anything to do until lunchtime. I’m sure I can get everything shipshape in no time.”

  And that, in a nutshell, was precisely what he was afraid of.

  Chapter Four

  Dr. Cuthbert wrote out a long list of instructions for Lia and then left her with the blow-up mattress and her sleeping bag and a box of take-out food that Abby brought from Rafferty’s.

  It was still on the early side so she spent the first hour or two in the kennel room with Prince. He was a little dopey on pain meds, but he still raised his head and gave her a tail wag when she sat down on the floor next to his cage. That tail wag broke something in her heart. How on earth could the dog wag its tail when it was in pain like that? And how the hell could anyone have abandoned this dog?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to keep the tears from flowing again. “I can’t adopt you. But I promise I’ll do everything I can to find you a home. I got a good look at Micah’s place tonight. He’s got a yard and plenty of room. I think every holy man needs a dog, right? Especially an unmarried minister. You could help him attract a nice, dog-loving woman. So don’t worry. I’ll figure it out, okay?”

  It was funny really. She was telling the dog all the stuff she was going to do for him to help him find a home with Chaplain St. Pierre and how he would help the chaplain—no, the minister, or the preacher; that’s what folks around here called him even though technically in the civilian world he was an Episcopalian priest.

  She let go of a sigh. “Well, whatever they call him around here, you could help him settle down into his new life here in this little town.”

  Prince’s little pink tongue appeared. He was panting, but dogs did that, right? He didn’t appear distressed at all. In fact, she swore he was smiling at her. She couldn’t resist that smile.

  She reached through the cage and petted him. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, utterly content in that moment. She sat with him for a long time, wishing for impossible things and fighting against the tide of guilt that had been with her almost constantly for the last few months. She was damn well not going to add this dog to her list of regrets. She would not fail him.

  When her butt got tired from sitting on the floor, she finally left the dog, turned out the lights, and settled into her sleeping bag, thinking about how she would convince the chaplain to adopt the dog and how Micah St. Pierre would work a deal with his board so she could become the church’s secretary.

  It was a nice dream. She could help him with his congregation and maybe even use her intuition about things again. What were the dangers here? There weren’t any forward deployments to worry about. There weren’t sailors suffering from PTSD to counsel. There weren’t the stresses on the spouses and families that navy life created.

  What could go wrong in a small tourist town? Not that much.

  She woke up a couple of times to check on the dog, but Prince seemed comfortable. She was dead asleep when someone rattled the front door.

  Without her morning coffee, she was groggy as crap, but she managed to find the front door, where Dr. Cuthbert stood, wearing Hawaiian-print board shorts and a white compression shirt that clung to every muscle of his impressive chest.

  He was a sight to behold. And was he carrying a cardboard food tray with a couple of polystyrene coffee cups? Okay, so maybe he wasn’t such a jerk after all.

  She opened the door. “Tell me that’s coffee.”

  His dimple came out to play, and her libido noticed. Down, girl. This guy was not for her.

  “It is,” he said. “I thought you might need some since you were probably up and down all night looking after the dog. How’s he doing?”

  “He’s been sleeping mostly.” She stepped aside to let the doctor pass.

  He handed her one of the cups of coffee, and the deep, rich aroma tickled her senses. “I brought a bunch of cream and sugar in case you—”

  “No, black is fine,” she said, taking a sip of the magic morning elixir. It wasn’t until the warm liquid hit her throat that she awakened enough to realize what she must look like. She’d gone out to the SUV last night to get her big Navy sweatshirt and plaid PJ bottoms. To say that she had a case of bed head would be an understatement.

  Yikes! She needed to get her hair up into a regulation bun ASAP.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It’s almost six.”

  She glanced at the sky beyond the storefront window. It was just getting light. “You always get up this early?”

  “When I have surgery scheduled. But don’t mind me. I’ll just go check on the dog and you can”—he waved at the sleeping bag and blow-up mattress—“tidy up or something.”

  Right. She needed more than tidying. She needed her toothbrush and a shower. But there wasn’t a shower in the clinic, although there was a sizable bathroom where she gave herself a spit bath, put her hair in order, and dressed in a fresh pair of Levi’s and a T-shirt. The sun might be just above the horizon but it was already hot and muggy outside when she stowed her sleeping bag, toiletry kit, and dirty laundry.

  She needed to get herself a pair of shorts or a sundress. As if she’d ever worn a sundress. But Levi’s in this heat were inadvisable. She made a mental note to southernize her wardrobe once she got a job. But right now, it was time to get to work organizing the clinic.

  She headed back into the storeroom and was about to dive in when the good doctor called her into the operating room. “I need your help. Are you squeamish about blood?”

  Was she? She’d seen a lot of it recently. But it wasn’t the blood that freaked her out; it was the violence. “I’m okay, but—”

  “Good. Put on one of those gowns.” It was an order. She’d been in the navy long enough to recognize the tone.

  She chose to follow it. And then for the next hour, she fumbled her way through assisting the doctor, who didn’t seem at all nervous about having her help. Ten minutes into the procedure he casually asked her, “So tell me again why you don’t think you can give this dog a home?”

  “I can’t. I just separated from the navy, and I don’t even know where I’m going to settle. I’m hoping I can get a job at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, but I guess that depends on the board of directors. And even then, I don’t know a thing about dogs. And the truth is I’ve been a rolling stone all my life. I’ve never lived for more than a couple of years in one spot. My mother was a nomad. And then I joined the navy. So…”

  “Sounds like a fun life to me,” he said as he dissected the dog’s hip area. There was not nearly as much blood as she expected.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to move around a lot.”

  “Sounds better than staying in one place that you hate.”

  “You grew up here in Magnolia Harbor?”

  “I did. And I left at seventeen and never came back. Except to visit. Couldn’t get out of this place fast enough.”

  “Really? I’m surprised. I used to hear Chaplain… I mean Reverend St. Pierre talk about this place all the time. He made it sound like a good place to live.”

  “It has its charms. The sailing is good. And the beach at the state park is really beautiful. But a place is made by the people who live in it. And I didn’t like some of the people here.”

  “No? Like who?”

  He looked up, scalpel in hand, and gave her a blue-eyed stare over his paper mask that told her to mind her own business. Her sixth sense tweaked. There was a story here.

  “So that’s why you haven’t volunteered to help out the clinic?”

  He let go of a long-suffering sigh. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, but if another dog came in with like allergies or some other minor issue, would you send him to the mainland?”

  “Are you in league with my grandmother?”

  “I don’t really know your grandmother. I’m just curious.”

  “Well, stop being curious. Curiosity killed the cat.”

  That shut her up. She had never liked that particular sayin
g. Not because Whiskers was curious, but just the whole dead cat thing. It brought up bad, bad memories.

  Thankfully he stopped asking questions as he began to remove broken pieces of bone at the top of the dog’s femur. The silence became oppressive until he said, “I had father issues.”

  “Oh. I never had a father either.”

  He looked up again. “No?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if Mom left him or he left Mom. I think it was probably Mom who left. She was very good at leaving and not very good at staying. You know?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t. I’m trying to get my mother to move to the mainland, and she’s being very stubborn about it. She doesn’t like change.”

  “I take it she’s still married to your father?”

  He shook his head. “No. They split up a long time ago. When I was thirteen.”

  “Oh.”

  He stopped talking again, leaving Lia with a million questions she decided not to ask. It wasn’t as if he was some troubled sailor who needed counseling. And she wasn’t required to probe to see if there was a morale problem.

  Twenty minutes later, after taking out all the bone fragments and sewing up ligaments, he began to manipulate the dog’s leg up and down. “He’s got good range of motion, and he should do just fine. But he should probably get some physical therapy. We should find an adoption agency on the mainland that can put him in a foster home for a while until he’s ready for a forever home. I can probably find someone in the Charleston area who knows how to help him with the rehab.”

  A sudden longing gripped Lia’s insides. Finding a foster home for Prince was probably the best thing, but for some reason, she didn’t want to let the dog go.

  “I was going to see if I could convince Reverend St. Pierre to adopt him.”

  “Micah?”

  She shrugged. “Reverend St. Pierre needs a dog.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Her face heated. She was not about to explain that the dog would help the local priest attract the right kind of woman. “He just does,” she said.