by Hope Ramsay
“What’s to think about?”
“I am attracted to you. I really am. And I think it might be nice to have fun this summer. But I want to make Magnolia Harbor my home, and I’m not sure I want to get on the wrong side of the police chief.”
Abby collapsed back into her seat. This was the story of her life. Maybe Noah was right. Maybe she should ditch this small tourist town and go on down to Charleston for the rest of the summer.
Chapter Ten
Over the next several days, Lia settled into the third-floor garret room at Howland House and the office manager job at the clinic. She even found a few minutes to run back up the road and rescue her box of pots and pans. It was a testament to their worthlessness that no one had stolen them in the two days she’d been sleeping at the clinic and obsessing about Prince.
Who was doing just fine. He was almost up on all fours, wearing an e-collar around his neck as he scampered around the area behind Lia’s desk in the reception area. Every day he put more weight on the leg, plus he was growing like a weed. Lia took him out every couple of hours, and he was totally getting the idea of where to do his business.
He stayed at the clinic at night because Lia knew better than to sneak him past Ashley. She’d done that with Whiskers, and it had gotten her family evicted. Unfortunately, all her attempts to goad Rev. St. Pierre into adopting Prince had failed miserably. The Rev, as everyone called him, seemed to think that God had put the dog in her path for a purpose.
Lia didn’t really believe in God, not the way her chaplains did anyway. God had never answered any of her prayers. And besides, there were so many Gods out there; which one was the right one to pray to?
So she took care of Prince by day and then locked him in his crate at the clinic by night. The puppy didn’t seem to mind, which made it easier to become a routine.
But it was a routine that couldn’t last forever.
There were other routines that followed from this, like getting to work early to walk him. And a few others that followed from that. Like making the first pot of coffee so there would be a cup for Noah when he showed up at eight in the morning to check if there were any patients.
The doctor loved his coffee as much as Lia did. And really, it was a pleasure to greet him every day with a cup when she was repaid with one of his sexy-as-sin smiles. Did he have any idea of his impact on the female gender?
He must. Handsome guys usually did.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to keep Noah around the clinic on Wednesday and Thursday. They didn’t have any patients. Prince was on the mend, and everything, including the veterinary management software, had been organized and installed.
So he went off with his old sailing buddy Harry, and Lia got to work creating a handbill that announced the reopening of the clinic. She enlisted Donna and several of her friends from church to distribute the flyers all over town.
Lia also called two local community colleges on the mainland with vet tech programs and spoke to their job placement offices. By Friday morning, she had a list of five potential candidates for Noah to interview on Monday. Then, wonder of wonders, the flyers worked.
Four pet owners called for appointments on Thursday afternoon. So when she pressed a coffee cup into Noah’s hand on Friday morning, she could tell him that his first patient, a kitten named Pete, would be arriving at 9:00 a.m. “He’s only eight weeks old,” Lia said, “And this is his first visit to the vet.”
“You mean we have a wellness visit? Already? How?”
“I told you. Your grandmother and her church friends handed out flyers.”
“Right. Why does it make me nervous that you have connected with my grandmother’s church friends?” He leaned against the end of the reception desk as he sipped coffee from a mug bearing the clinic’s logo. The board had certainly thought of everything, hadn’t they? Except for the difficulties of staffing the place.
“What’s the matter, don’t you trust your grandmother’s church friends?” she asked.
He snorted a laugh, and the lines around his eyes crinkled up. Oh man, he was some kind of good-looking. “I have this feeling they’re going to do everything in their power to convince me to give up my life in Charleston.”
“And what’s so great about life in Charleston? Got a cute girlfriend?” Oh, crap, why had she said that? It felt as if someone had taken a blowtorch to her face. She needed to hide before he saw the blush, but there was nowhere to go that wouldn’t require her to walk right past him and maybe brush against him. Damn the man, he was standing right in the way of her only escape route.
The twinkle in his baby blues got a little more sparkly, like he was amused by what she’d just said. Oh, the humiliation. She needed to remember to treat Noah like a commanding officer. Except she was already starting to think about him as Noah and not Dr. Cuthbert. Good thing she expected a transfer to Rev. St. Pierre’s church to come in soon.
“No,” he said. “No girlfriend. Just a job I like. A lot.”
“You could do your job here.”
He shook his head. “It’s not the same. I’m an emergency room surgeon in Charleston. Here, I’m doing well kitten visits.”
There was nothing wrong with his ego. But it masked something else. “What have you got against kittens?”
“Not one thing. They’re adorable. Universally. But…”
“But you don’t like living here?”
“We’ve had this conversation.”
“I know.” She looked down at the collection of Post-it Notes on her desk. She had a complicated but very effective way of managing her to-do list using Post-its and color-coded pencils. On the left side of her desk were the work-related tasks, the calls to the community college, the schedule for the upcoming vet-tech interviews. On the right side of her desk were the personal Post-its covering her efforts to find Prince a home, her search for a permanent living space, and her plans for getting to know Rev. St. Pierre’s congregation better.
But in the middle, she had one pink Post-it with the list of things that were bothering her. Rev. St. Pierre knew all about her neon pink Post-it. He called it her Radar list.
And right now she had two names on the list. Ashley Scott and Abby Cuthbert.
Ashley because she’d seen the sadness in her eyes.
Abby because Lia had seen the young woman at Annie’s Kitchen Wednesday night, and Abby had been with an older man. Her intuition had buzzed the moment she spied them walking into the restaurant. They didn’t look like a match made in heaven. Abby was trying too hard, and he looked like one of those old guys you see at conventions, dressed in business casual with a much younger woman on his arm.
Plus they’d been awkward together, awkward as if they were sneaking around or something. Or just uncomfortable. But that had changed. By the time Lia had left Annie’s, Abby and her older guy were leaning in to each other as they talked. Like a couple finding common ground.
Maybe this was a good time to get to work on that pink Post-it. She looked up into Noah’s face and those ridiculously baby blues that turned up at the corner as if he was deeply amused. “Not to change the subject or anything, but I was wondering if you knew anything about the older man that Abby is involved with?”
“Why do you ask?” His eyebrows lowered.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I saw them Wednesday night at Annie’s Kitchen. I’m not gossiping, I’m just saying that he looked a lot older than her. You know? He’s got gray hair.”
“Yes, I do know. And you were listening at keyholes the other day. So you already know that Ethan thinks I should confront the guy and tell him to back off. But—”
“Oh, no, you can’t do that.”
His eyebrows reached for his forehead. “No? Why not?”
“Because she’s definitely into him. And I don’t think she’d appreciate her older brother interfering.”
“That’s exactly what Momma said. But even she’s a little concerned. She met him the other day and says he’s quite
a bit older. Momma’s been trying to talk to Abby, but she’s been in avoidance mode.”
“I can talk to her if you want. It might just be a summer thing, you know?” Although Lia wasn’t so sure about that.
“Well, if you—”
His words were cut short when a woman came flying through the front door carrying a fluffy gray dog in her arms. It was clear the dog was in a bad way, but that wasn’t what almost knocked Lia off her feet.
Her radar went off like a klaxon calling sailors to their battle stations. Something about the way the woman moved told her everything she needed to know. This was how it started. A woman with bruises you couldn’t see.
* * *
Noah turned around just as Kate Joyner came through the front door carrying her toy poodle Napoleon, who looked as if he was having trouble breathing. Kate was one of Momma’s friends, and her husband had been Daddy’s bass-hole fishing buddy since they were in middle school. Brandon Joyner, Kate and Bud’s son, who now lived up in Columbia, had been one of Ethan’s best friends.
“What the hell happened?” Noah asked, scanning Kate’s panicky face and the odd way she was walking, as if she’d hurt her back. “Are you okay?”
“We were in a car accident, and Nappy wasn’t restrained.” Her voice wavered. I didn’t think it was serious but this morning he woke up and he was breathing like this and coughing up blood.” Her distress was palpable.
It sounded like a pulmonary contusion, maybe worse. “Lia, I’m going to need your help.” He barked the order but she was already on her feet heading in his direction.
He stepped forward and took the dog from Kate. “Wait here. I’ll be right back. We’re kind of short-staffed, but we’ll take care of him, okay?”
Kate nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s going to be okay?”
“We’ll see.”
He carried the dog into the back and placed him on an exam table.
“No X-rays?” Lia asked, following in his wake.
“Not yet,” he said as he checked Napoleon’s lung sounds and the color of his gums. He was cyanotic and dyspneic, indicating that he wasn’t getting sufficient oxygen. So Noah got out the oxygen mask. “I need to stabilize him before X-rays or he might go into respiratory arrest.”
“Oh. What can I do to help?”
“Hold the mask in place. I’m going to perform a thoracentesis.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a procedure to remove fluid around his lungs. My guess is that he has a pneumothorax, which is a bruised lung, and it’s bleeding into his chest cavity.”
He grabbed the shaver and clipped Napoleon’s chest on both sides between the seventh and ninth intercostal space, and then scrubbed the area with some Betadine before he administered a small amount of lidocaine.
He waited a moment for the anesthesia to take effect before inserting the catheter included in the thoracocentesis kit, and aimed it near the eighth intercostal space, which was where he suspected the fluid to be. He advanced the catheter and felt the pop. After that he aspirated the fluid, which was bloody.
Napoleon immediately started to breathe easier.
“Now we can perform the X-rays,” he said, looking up at Lia, whose face had gone pale.
“Poor dog,” she said, a sheen in her eyes.
“He’s going to be okay. It’s probably just a broken rib and a bruised lung.”
They took Napoleon to the X-ray table, where they confirmed Noah’s diagnosis. “There’s no lung puncture. And no need for surgery. We’ll leave the catheter in for a day or two for further drainage. And we’ll need to wrap his ribs and keep him overnight for a few days.”
“Okay, but um…” Lia’s voice faded, and he had to force himself to remember that she wasn’t trained for any of this.
“What?” He looked up at her, into those deep, dark eyes that a person could literally get lost in.
“Do you think this was caused by a car accident?”
He blinked a few moments. “Why do you ask? This is exactly what can happen if a dog isn’t restrained in a car.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
She bit her lip. It was incredibly sexy. And then she shook her head. “Nothing. I was just curious is all.”
But she wasn’t just curious. Something was bugging her. He had no idea what. “A small dog like this one, left unrestrained in a car accident, becomes a missile. The dog is lucky he didn’t suffer worse injuries.”
“Okay,” she said in a dull tone. Then, “Do you need me?”
He shook his head. “Why don’t you go out there and tell Kate that Nappy is going to recover? I’ll be out to talk with her as soon as I get the dog settled in the kennel.” He glanced at the clock. “And if our kitten appointment is on time, then we’re already behind schedule today.”
“Imagine that,” she said with a little half-smile. She headed toward the reception room, giving him a lovely view of her rear end, which was sexy as hell even in those standard-issue, not-terribly-flattering khakis she was wearing today.
Damn. He needed to cool it. He was smart enough not to fool around with anyone he worked with. It was an ironclad rule. And in any case, the gossip around town was that she and Rev. St. Pierre were a thing.
He could believe it. She was smart and compassionate and incredibly competent—all the right ingredients for a minister’s wife.
Did that mean looking at her cute backside was a form of heresy?
Maybe so.
Chapter Eleven
Ashley Scott couldn’t believe she’d let Jenna St. Pierre rope her into playing on the Magnolia Harbor merchants’ softball team. But rules were rules. The teams had to be equally divided between women and men and women players had been hard for the teams to find.
She blew her bangs off her forehead. It was for a good cause, and it might be good for her business, but the last time Ashley had played softball, she’d gotten hit in the face with a ball. She did not want to do this.
She stood in the front foyer wearing a pair of yoga pants and an Atlanta Braves T-shirt that had once belonged to Adam. Beside her, Jackie was all decked out in his cleats and grass-stained pants from Little League. He had his own Atlanta shirt and ball cap and his fielder’s glove.
Jackie was terrible at baseball, but he loved it. And anything that got the kid away from his imaginary pirate friend was a good thing as far as Ashley was concerned.
“You need a baseball glove,” Jackie said.
“Jenna says there will be gloves at practice I can borrow.”
“Boy, Mom, I didn’t know you could play baseball.”
Ashley ground her teeth. Should she tell her son she had no earthly clue about baseball or softball for that matter? No. She would tough this out.
“Hi. You guys going to softball practice?”
Ashley turned to find Lia DiPalma coming out of the kitchen with a mug of coffee in one hand and a chocolate cookie in the other. Ashley hadn’t seen much of Lia the last couple of days. From what she’d heard on the grapevine—mostly from Donna—Lia had single-handedly organized the animal clinic. Donna practically glowed with praise for her.
Which irritated Ashley for some reason that was probably best not explored. Was it that she envied organized people? Or was it the fact that she now understood why Micah was so hot to convince Heavenly Rest that he needed Lia as his secretary? Or maybe it was the thought that the preacher would be spending his days with this competent and attractive woman.
Which was exactly Patsy’s plan. So…
She forced a smile. “I guess Jackie’s cleats gave it away. We are, indeed, headed to softball practice. And lord knows I could use a lot of it.”
Lia cocked her head. “Not feeling terribly confident, huh?”
“No. Not really.”
“I’m gonna play second base,” Jackie announced, even though Ashley had told him many times that he might not be allowed to play because the game was supposed to be an adult
thing.
“That’s cool,” Lia said, hunkering down to be on Jackie’s eye-level. “I always liked second base myself.”
“You play baseball?” Jackie’s eyes grew round.
Lia shrugged. It was something she did a lot for a woman who seemed to have her act together. “I played softball in high school. For a couple of seasons on two different high school teams. I couldn’t make the team as a senior though, because we moved into town after sign-ups were over.”
“Um, if you wanted to play for the merchants, you could,” Ashley said. “In fact, you could take my spot.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t—”
“You’d be doing me a favor. I could focus on the bake sale instead of getting my nose broken.”
“What?”
“That’s what happened the last time I played softball. I went down to field a ball, and it hit something and bounced right up into my face. Not fun. On the other hand, I know a lot about bake sales.”
“But Mom…” Jackie whined.
“But Mom what?” she said, looking down at the love of her life. “It’s the truth. I stink at softball, honey.” She turned toward Lia. “So are you busy for the next few hours?”
Lia stood up. “No. I was just about to check out the library.”
“Practice starts in twenty minutes. You want to come?”
Lia gave Ashley a big smile that was hard not to like. In fact, everything about Lia was likable. Darn it. The truth was, Ashley wanted to find some reason Lia wasn’t perfect for Micah.
But the sad truth was that her houseguest was perfect for the minister. As usual, Patsy Bauman was right, and far be it from Ashley to get in the way of Cupid’s arrows, or Patsy’s matchmaking plans.
* * *
With a skeleton staff, the Moonlight Bay Animal Hospital was not having Saturday hours. But someone had to look in on the patients, and it was unfair to make Lia do all the work. So Noah agreed to be the on-call Saturday staff.
He got to the clinic by nine o’clock and checked on Napoleon first.