“Yes,” he said, still not a hundred percent sure he wasn’t carrying on a conversation with some complex hallucination. “I want answers, like, what are you doing here?”
“Playing the violin.” The simple reply sounded almost flippant to her ear, so Elizabeth added, “Trying to make amends by serenading you.”
“Serenading me,” he echoed incredulously.
She nodded. “It’s really the only way I know to show you how very deeply sorry I am. I let the violin speak for me.” And hope it’s enough, she added silently.
Jared’s eyes never left hers. She could almost feel them delving into her soul. He was neither smiling nor frowning. His expression was entirely unreadable and that in turn made her feel very nervous.
It also made her think that she might have just willfully destroyed her chances of ever attaining paradise. Because, belatedly, she realized that was what life with him would have meant.
Paradise.
“I’d rather you spoke, not played,” he said.
It took her a long moment to find her courage. “I was afraid,” she finally told him after a beat. “I know it sounds stupid, but I was afraid,” she repeated. “Afraid I loved you too much, afraid that losing you would destroy me the way I thought losing my mother had destroyed my father.”
“I met your father,” he replied in a voice still devoid of any emotion. “He didn’t seem all that destroyed to me.”
“That’s because his love for my mother made him strong,” she explained. She hadn’t realized that before, but now, it seemed so obvious. How could she have missed that? “He told me that. He also said something to the effect that the precious moments he’d spent with my mother was worth far more than an entire lifetime of bland, cocooned safety. He advised me to seize what I was lucky enough to have—if I still have it,” she added, deliberately looking at Jared and waiting for him to tell her, one way or another, if her apology had come too late to do any good.
If she had hurt him too much to be forgiven.
Rather than answer her directly, Jared took her by the hand and led her back into his office.
Closing the door, still maintaining a distance between them, he began to speak. He started by bringing up the past, just as she had done.
“My father once told me that when he first saw my mother, he just knew. Knew that she was different. Knew that she was special. That she was, in effect, ‘the one.’ The one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.
“Until just recently, I thought it was just some nice little bedtime story he’d woven together for Megan and me when we were kids. A fairy-tale love story that had very little truth in it. But now I realize that it actually can happen. That sometimes, if you’re very, very lucky, lightning does strike you and your path actually does cross with the one you were meant to be with. Destined to be with,” he emphasized.
Elizabeth blew out a shaky breath. Part of her was more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. Afraid to hope that he was offering her everything she’d ever wanted. And still afraid in some deep part of herself that if he was saying what she hoped he was saying and she in turn said yes, that she would be leaving herself open to an entire world of hurt.
But practically, if she said no, if she suddenly still retreated and walked away in order to stay “protected,” how much less would she ache? How much less would she really hurt?
She suspected that the damage was already done.
This way, at least she would get to build up a stockpile of happy memories first, before she had her heart ripped out from her chest.
And who knew? Maybe she’d be even luckier and never feel the grief of death because she would be the first to go, not him.
It was risky, but there was at least a fighting chance of coming out ahead if she took a chance on love. At any rate, she’d be condemned to a life of eternal sorrow and regret if she continued to play it safe.
“So, what are you saying?” she asked. “That you want me back?”
“No, not ‘back.’ I never gave you up to begin with. I want you for forever, Elizabeth. I want you until the day one of us dies, and hopefully that won’t be for a very long time.” Well, he’d placed all his cards on the table. It was time to find out if he was destined to be a winner, or a loser. “What do you say?”
She felt as if she were dreaming.
But if she were dreaming, would she be trembling this way? Would her heart be overflowing with such incredible joy?
She ran her tongue along her lips before she answered, afraid they would stick together in midword. “You make it very hard to say no.”
“Lady, I’m going to make it impossible to say no,” he promised her firmly.
She couldn’t help teasing him, now that she finally realized that all her wishes could come true. “You know, in some states that’s called stalking.”
Unfazed, he countered with, “And in other states, it’s telling you that I’ll love you until the day I die.”
“You love me,” she repeated incredulously. That was the only logical upshot of all this, but she was having trouble fathoming the reason. After all, he really hadn’t said anything about having feelings for her before. On the contrary, he’d made it seem that if he couldn’t have the perfect relationship, he didn’t want any at all. “Why?”
“Because I’m into self-torture,” he said drily. “Why do you think?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he told her. “Because even though you ran over my self-esteem with a steamroller, you are still the most exciting, the most intelligent, most wonderful woman I have ever known, and my life feels as if all the lights have gone out of the world whenever you’re not around.”
Oh God, how had she gotten to be so lucky? she wondered. “Yes!” she cried out loud.
“Yes?” Just what was she saying yes to? That she agreed with him, that she would stay with him, that she would marry him or that she knew she was the power source in his life?
“Yes,” she breathed again. “To everything. Most of all,” she said, weaving her arms around his neck, “yes to you.”
He smiled into her eyes, relieved and happier than he’d ever been. “I can live with that.”
“As long as you live with me, everything else is just icing,” she murmured.
“I’ve always had a weakness for icing,” he said just before he sealed his lips to hers.
* * * * *
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Chapter One
“Come on, Luke. Come on, buddy. Hang in there.”
Her wipers beat back the sleet and snow as Caidy Bowman drove through the streets of Pine Gulch, Idaho, on a stormy December afternoon. Only a few inches had fallen but the roads were still dangerous, slick as spit. For only a moment, she risked lifting one hand off the steering wheel of her truck and patting the furry shape whimpering on the seat beside her.
“We’re almost there. We’ll get you fixed up, I swear it. Just hang on, bud. A few more minutes. That’s all.”
The young border collie looked at her with a trust she didn’t deserve in his black eyes and she frowned, her guilt as bitter and salty as the solution the snowplows had put down on the roads.
Luke’s injuries were her fault. She should have been watching him. She knew the half-grown pup had a curious streak a mile
wide—and a tendency not to listen to her when he had an itch to investigate something.
She was working on that obedience issue and they had made good strides the past few weeks, but one moment of inattention could be disastrous, as the past hour had amply demonstrated. She didn’t know if it was arrogance on her part, thinking her training of him was enough, or just irresponsibility. Either way, she should have kept him far away from Festus’s pen. The bull was ornery as a rattlesnake on a hot skillet and didn’t take kindly to curious young border collies nosing around his turf.
Alerted by Luke’s barking and then the bull’s angry snort, she had raced to old Festus’s pen just in time to watch Luke jig the wrong way and the bull stomp down hard on his haunches with a sickening crunch of bone.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she cursed under her breath as the last light before the vet’s office turned yellow when she was still too far away to gun through it. She was almost tempted to keep going. Even if she were nabbed for running a red light by Pine Gulch’s finest, she could probably talk her way out of a ticket, considering her brother was the police chief and would certainly understand this was an emergency. If she were pulled over, though, it would mean an inevitable delay and she just didn’t have time for that.
The light finally changed and she took off fast, the back tires fishtailing on the icy road. She would just have to trust the salt bags she carried for traction in the bed of the pickup would do the job. Even the four-wheel drive of the truck was useless against black ice.
Finally, she reached the small square building that held the Pine Gulch Veterinary Clinic and pulled the pickup to the side doors where she knew it was only a short transfer inside to the treatment area.
She briefly considered carrying him in by herself, but it had taken the careful efforts of both her and her brother Ridge to slide a blanket under Luke and lift him into the seat of her pickup. They could bring out the stretcher and cart, she decided.
She rubbed Luke’s white neck. “I’m going to go get some help, okay? You just hold tight.”
He made a small whimper of pain and she bit down hard on her lip as her insides clenched with fear. She loved the little guy, even if he was nosy as a crow and even smarter, which was probably why his stubbornness was such a frustration.
He trusted her to take care of him and she refused to let him die.
She hurried to the front door, barely noticing the wind-driven sleet that gouged at her even under her Stetson.
Warm air washed over her when she opened the door, familiar with the scent of animals and antiseptic mixed in a stomach-churning sort of way with new paint.
“Hey, Caidy.” A woman in green scrubs rushed to the door. “You made good time from the River Bow.”
“Hi, Joni. I may have broken a few traffic laws, but this is an emergency.”
“After you called, I warned Ben you were on your way and what the situation was. He’s been getting ready for you. I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.”
Caidy waited, feeling the weight of each second ticking away. The new vet had only been in town a few weeks and already he had made changes to the clinic. Maybe she was just being contrary, but she had liked things better when Doc Harris ran the place. The whole reception area looked different. The cheerful yellow walls had been painted over with a boring white and the weathered, comfortable, old eighties-era couch and chairs were gone, replaced by modern benches covered in a slate vinyl that probably deflected anything a veterinarian’s patients could leak on it. A display of Christmas gifts appropriate for pets, including a massive stocking filled to the top with toys and a giant rawhide bone that looked as if it came from a dinosaur, hung in one corner.
Most significant, the reception area used to sit out in the open but it was now stuck behind a solid half wall topped with a glass partition.
It made sense to modernize from an efficiency point of view, but she had found the comfortably worn look of the office before more appealing.
Not that she cared about any of that right now, with Luke lying out in her truck, cold and hurt and probably afraid.
She shifted impatiently. Where was the man? Trimming his blasted nails? Only a few moments had passed but every second delay was too much. Just when she was about call out to Joni to see what was taking so long, the door into the treatment area opened and the new vet appeared.
“Where’s the dog?” he asked abruptly, and she had only a vague impression of a frowning dark-haired man in blue scrubs.
“Still out in my truck.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Why? I can’t treat him out there.”
She wanted to take that giant rawhide bone out of that stocking and bean him with it. “Yes, I’m aware of that,” she said, fighting down her frustration. “I didn’t want to move him. I’m afraid something might be broken.”
“I thought he was gored.”
She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she had said in that frantic call to let Joni know she was on her way.
“He did end up on the business end of a bull at some point. I’m not sure if that was before or after that bull stepped on him.”
His mouth tightened. “A young dog has no business running wild in the same vicinity as a dangerous bull.”
His criticism stung far too close to her own guilt for comfort. “We’re a working ranch at the River Bow, Dr. Caldwell. Accidents like this can happen.”
“They shouldn’t,” he snapped before turning around and heading back through the treatment area. She followed him, heartily wishing for Doc Harris right now. The grizzled old vet had taken care of every dog she had ever owned, from her very first border collie and best friend, Sadie, whom she still had.
Doc Harris was her friend and mentor. If he had been here, he would have wrapped her in a warm hug that smelled of liniment and cherry Life Savers and promised her everything would be all right.
Dr. Ben Caldwell was nothing like Dr. Harris. He was abrasive and arrogant and she already heartily disliked him.
His eyes narrowed with surprise and displeasure when he saw she had followed him from the waiting room to the clinic area.
“This way is quicker,” she explained. “I’m parked by the side door. I thought it would be easier to transport him on the stretcher from there.”
He didn’t say anything, only charged through the side door she indicated. She trotted after him, wondering how the Pine Gulch animal kingdom would get along without the kindness and compassion Dr. Harris had been renowned for.
Without waiting for her, he opened the door of the truck. As she watched, it was as if a different man had suddenly taken over. His harsh, set features seemed to ease and even the stiff set of his shoulders relaxed.
“Hello there,” he crooned from the open vehicle door to the dog. “You’ve got yourself into a mess, haven’t you?”
Even through his pain, Luke responded to the gentle-sounding stranger by trying hard to wag his tail. There was no room for both of them on the passenger side, so she went around to the driver’s side and opened that door, intent on helping to lift the dog from there. By the time she made it that short distance, Dr. Caldwell had already slipped a transfer sheet under the dog and was gripping the edges.
His hands were big, she noticed, with a little light area of skin where a wedding ring once had been.
She knew a little about him from the gossip around town. It was hard to miss it when he was currently staying at the Cold Creek Inn—owned and operated by her sister-in-law Laura, married to Caidy’s brother Taft.
Though Laura usually didn’t gossip about her guests, over dinner last week her other brother, Trace—who made it his business as police chief to find out about everyone moving into Pine Gulch—had interrogated her so skillfully, Laura probably didn’t realize what she had revealed.
From that conversation, Caidy had learned Ben Caldwell had two children, a girl and a boy, ages nine and five, respectively, and he had been a widower for two years.
Why on
earth he had suddenly pulled up stakes to settle in a quiet town like Pine Gulch was a mystery to everyone. In her experience, people who came to this little corner of Idaho in the shadow of the Tetons were either looking for something or running away.
None of that was her business, she reminded herself. The only thing she cared about was the way he treated her dogs. Judging by how carefully he moved his hands over Luke’s injuries, he appeared competent and even kind, at least to animals—something she generally considered a far more important character indicator than how a man treated other people.
“Okay, Luke. Just lie still, there’s a good boy.” He spoke in a low, calm voice. “We’re going to move you now. Easy. Easy.”
He handed the stretcher across the cab to her and then reached for the transfer sheet. “I’m going to lift him slightly and then you can slide the board under him. Slowly. Yes. That’s it.”
She had plenty of experience transferring injured animals. Years of experience. It bothered her to be treated as if she didn’t know the first thing about this kind of emergency care, but now didn’t seem the time to correct him.
Together they carried the stretcher into the emergency treatment room and set the dog gingerly down on the exam table.
She didn’t like the pain in Luke’s eyes. It reminded her a lot of how Lucky, her brother Taft’s little beagle cross, had looked right after the car accident that had nearly killed him.
Now Lucky was happy as a pig in clover, she reminded herself. He lived with Taft and Laura and their two children at Taft’s house near the mouth of Cold Creek Canyon and thought he ruled the universe. If Lucky could survive his brush with death, she couldn’t see any reason for Luke to do otherwise.
“That’s a nasty puncture wound. At least an inch or two deep. I’m surprised it’s not deeper.”
That could be because she had managed to pull Luke to safety before Festus could finish taking his bad mood out on a helpless dog.
“What about the leg? Can you save it?”
“I’m going to have to x-ray before I can answer that. How far are you prepared to go for his care?”
A Perfectly Imperfect Match (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 17