Rescued by a Stranger

by Lizbeth Selvig

  The edict he pronounced on himself represented the darkest moment in his entire story, but Jill’s heart didn’t despair, it cheered. She had no clear idea how she’d convince him of the fact, but she knew, as surely as she knew she was taking Chase home to Robert’s, that Clara Washington knew something about trust he did not.

  “I DON’T KNOW why I’m doing this.” Chase growled, staring out the car window.

  Jill knew he hid true trepidation beneath the crabbing. She took his hand and kneaded his fingers. From the back seat of Brody’s ’99 green, the-body-doesn’t-look-too-horrible-but-nobody’s-going-tosteal-its-hubcaps Honda Accord, she watched the six blocks between the Saunders Clinic and Clara’s house pass in a dingy blur.

  “Because you love me,” she said lightly.

  “You have no idea how true that must be.”

  “Gosh, I think that’s one of the most romantic things you’ve ever said.” She laced her fingers through his, picked up their intertwined hands, and kissed his knuckles.

  “Oh lordy, Jill, I am sorry.” Brody laughed from behind the wheel. “He’s always been a little serious, but I’da thought the lessons I gave him about romance would have stuck better’n that.”

  “Shut up, Brody.” Chase growled, but returned the squeeze on Jill’s hand.

  She’d made this trip once already, yesterday, and she was still star-struck at the memory of the woman Brody had taken her to meet. Chase had no idea Clara expected him, or what was about to whack him upside the head. She smiled tenderly, wishing she could put into words what the mixture of raw courage and vulnerability in his character meant to her. She would never stop regretting what a huge virtual smack to her own head it had taken for her to see it, but she’d sure as heck spend the rest of her life proving she’d never forget it.

  “Here we are!” Brody pulled up to a small, white clapboard house on a simple street whose houses held little curb appeal except tidiness.

  “Jeez, kid, what are you so hyped up about? This isn’t the circus. Ain’t like you’re getting popcorn and a pony ride.”

  “No. that’ll be from me.” Jill kissed him soundly.

  “Hey, this is a family cab,” Brody said. “None of your kinky, pony ride sex talk.”

  “Shut up, Broderick,” Chase said again.

  They exited the car and made their way up Clara’s short sidewalk to the two-step porch in front of her door. Chase shuffled like a condemned prisoner. Jill propelled him gently forward. Brody whistled the first two phrases from Chopin’s funeral march, and at the door, Chase punched him in the arm. It was hard to believe these two men saved peoples’ lives on a daily basis.

  “Look,” Brody said, rubbing his arm. “This is going to be all right. Trust us.”

  Jill rapped at the aluminum screen door. It took only seconds for the inner door to fly open. Clara Washington wasn’t elderly—Brody had said she was not yet sixty-five—but her broad face carried more than its share of work worn creases. Her sun-bright smile encompassed all of them, but her ebony eyes shone with flecks of deepest gold strictly for Chase.

  “Hallelujah! Law’, son, I done thought you up and flew to the moon.” Clara pushed open the screen door. “Now you get your skinny little self in here. It’s about time you came to see me.”

  Chase’s jaw worked soundlessly and he looked at Jill. With her pulse beating triple-time on his behalf, she nudged him until he stepped into the house. Brody patted him on the shoulder and closed the screen door behind him.

  “Hey, what—”

  “You jes’ let those two beautiful people go on out into the sunshine and close this door behind you, Chase Preston. You and I need to have a little talk.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and caught Jill’s eye one last time. He looked on the verge of laughing or crying. Or both.

  Brody stood on the stoop once Clara’s door had closed and cocked his brow toward heaven. “Up to Him now.” He took Jill’s arm. “Let’s go. Clara will send him to the park when they’re finished.”

  She nodded. “I hope forcing this wasn’t a bad idea.”

  “Listen to me, beautiful girl. My brother is ten times the physician that I am. I’m a MASH doc. Life or death, patch ’em up, race the clock. I’m good at that, and I actually enjoy the challenge. Chase—he’s the soul and the artist of doctoring. Prevention, families, kindness, diagnosis, bedside manner. But don’t get me wrong, he’s tough as an old wolf and fights just as hard when he needs to. There are kids alive in this neighborhood because of my brother.”

  “I believe that.”

  “But the last year around here has loaded bricks onto his wagon faster ’n a little kid sneaks food to his dog. Tiana was just the last brick. So, believe this, too—anything that will bring my brother back to himself is a good idea. I never thought of making him talk to Clara. Forcing this was a stroke of genius.”

  “I know he must be a good doctor,” she said. “I think he even healed my stupid truck. It certainly has a crush on him. Not as big as mine, of course.” Her face heated, and she grinned at the ground.

  “And not as big as his on you. C’mon. Let me tell you how I know that.”

  THE DILAPIDATED NEIGHBORHOOD park a block from Clara’s house needed repairs desperately, but it shone like a wonderland as Chase crossed the street and headed for the two figures sitting on a pair of ancient swings that still had sling seats and hung from chains thick enough to shackle prisoners.

  Chase hadn’t seen anything look like a wonderland around this city in years. Now, one bright beacon filled the scarred park with golden light. She didn’t see him at first; she rocked the swing in random patterns with her feet and laughed at something Brody said.

  He’d miss Brody.

  Jill finally caught sight of him and stilled, but everything inside him came alive. Childlike excitement warred with thoroughly adult desire and male reactions.

  “Who are you?” she asked, when he reached her. “There’s something about you I don’t recognize.”

  “I’m wearing a lotta of things I haven’t worn in a while. Gratitude. Happiness. Love.”

  “You sound like a danged ol’ girl.” Brody stood, grinning. “I’ll be giving you two a wide berth now—”

  “Stay.” Chase commanded him the way he would Angel—who had stayed with Julia at the clinic as chief entertainer of children. “Close your eyes if you don’t like the mushy stuff, but I’ve got something you need to hear, too.”

  “I was afraid of this.” Brody sat back down on the child’s swing. “Clara gave you your balls back.”

  “No.” He searched in Jill’s rich brown eyes and saw exactly what he’d hoped to see—unclouded, unequivocal, undeniable love. “She showed me I never really lost ’em. And that you are something else.”

  Jill laughed and literally jumped at him. He caught her as she wrapped her legs around his hips. “Dang right, I am. I’d have to be to land you.” She pressed her mouth to his and tasted like sweet heat and eagerness.

  He explored their kiss for the first time without a veil of hesitancy and guilt between them. Love, clear and fresh like a Minnesota stream, poured over him, and he knew without having to ask that all Jill’s doubts were also gone. She pillaged him like she’d discovered long-lost treasure, and they kissed a long time as if Brody wasn’t there.

  “Ahem,” Brody said at last. “This really is very, very boring.”

  Chase pulled his mouth from hers but didn’t put her down. “You set up this meeting with Clara.”

  “I did,” she admitted. “I knew you had to be wrong about her trust in you. And? What did she say?”

  “In a nutshell? That I’m so damn dumb if I threw myself on the ground I’d miss.”

  Brody snickered.

  “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Jill giggled, too. “We could have avoided all this driving and crying and stuff.” She slid herself down his body, brushing dangerously against his pelvis. With no reason to hold back, he was quickly turning into an impatient t
eenager.

  However, he pushed her away. There were, unbelievably, more important things than what his body wanted right now.

  “There’s a lot of stuff we can’t avoid, honey. Stuff we have to figure out.”

  “Together,” she said. “We’ll figure it out together. Hang on.” From beside the swing set she dug her phone out of her purse and scrolled around the screen for a few seconds. At last she held it out to him. “From Dee. Just this morning.”

  The simple text message held his future.

  The permit request for the gravel pit was officially withdrawn last night, and Krieger announced his “retirement” from Connery Construction. Sandhurst plans to sell the rest of the land. Robert is happy dancing. Okay, would be if he could. :-)

  “It’s ours?” he asked, looking stunned as reality hit home. “The farm?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced to his brother. “Clara also told me it wouldn’t be selling out for me to leave the clinic here in Memphis to Brody.”

  “I could have told you that, you moron,” Brody said, a catch in his voice. “You’ve done more here in ten years than ten doctors. Go. It’s time for you to make a family.”

  “You know anyone who wants a family?” Chase searched Jill’s face again and found tears in her eyes and laughter on her lips.

  “I’ll ask Gladdie and Claudia to give finding you someone a shot. They’re the matchmakers. Is it okay if I put my name in the hat?”

  “It better be the only one in there fifty times.”

  “Alrighty then.”

  “Seriously. I want to come home. Whether you go off to the Olympics or to the university or just see what comes, I’ll always be your home.”

  “No Olympics. That was someone else’s dream. I do think the vet school one is mine—why throw away two years of something wonderful? Other than that, I’m my father’s child. I have no idea what all I’ll find to do. Teach? Start a program for special needs riders? Work in a new clinic with you? But I promise to find whatever it is in Kennison Falls, not South America. Can you live with that?”

  “For the rest of my life.”

  He lowered his kiss to her lips, softly this time. Sure hands slipped around his waist, and Jill’s eyelids drooped closed as her head tilted. He slid his fingers through her hair and pressed her for more tongue, more fire, more contact. All fuel for his greedy hunger.

  “That’s it.” Brody huffed and stood. Chase broke their kiss enough to see his brother dismiss them with a wave of his hand. “I do not have to watch this. You two can walk home when the hormones have worn off.”

  “See you in fifty years then.” Chase’s grin bumped against Jill’s lips. Their noses smashed. Their laughter mingled.

  “Aw,” she said. “He can come to the wedding before that. Don’t you think?”

  Epilogue

  DELANEY PRESTON SNAPPED off a dry stalk of oatmeal-colored, fall bluestem and popped the slender end into his mouth Huck Finn–style. He’d left his tuxedo jacket on the porch next to Robert, and now the warm October breeze tugged at his fancy shirt and fanned his face. Many things in Minnesota had changed over twenty-five years but not the pleasure of an Indian summer. It was a blessing of a day for a wedding.

  Cresting a small hill, his camera in hand, Delaney gazed below to the farmyard that looked like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. Three bedraggled outbuildings dotted the yard, but Robert’s house glistened with fresh white paint, and the barn sported a new coat of traditional red, at least on the two sides visible from the driveway. Only so much could be done in six weeks, after all. Even with the passel of friends Jill and her sister, Deirdre, had amassed, there’d been more to do before the wedding than paint buildings.

  Women could be utterly amazing. Ask them to take time and bake your favorite pie for dessert, and there were insurmountable obstacles. Tell them there was no way to plan a wedding in a month and a half, and they snapped their fingers like magical wood sprites and put on a gala.

  No, he amended. Calling it a gala was unfair. The outdoor wedding two hours earlier had been lovely, but there’d been nothing ostentatious about it or the celebration going on now. From his vantage, he could see another spot of beautiful white: his new granddaughter, pretty as a Kentucky primrose, wearing just enough Chantilly lace to honor her brand-new husband’s Southern heritage.

  His old heart swelled with contentment. Although he was father, Poppa, and great-grandpoppa to enough children that he couldn’t come up with an exact number without figuring, Delaney allowed himself an indulgence he’d never speak out loud: the knowledge that his favorite grandchild had been granted the greatest gift a man could receive—perfect love.

  He snapped his photos, using the color-drenched woods as a backdrop, and they looked beautiful in the new-fangled digital view screen. From out of the tall grass alongside the road, Chase and Jill’s dog bounded to join him, still wearing a collar decorated with flowers.

  Angel.

  He patted his leg, and she came for a scratch between her pointed little ears. She’d been his constant companion since he’d arrived a week before, a presence so comforting, he swore he’d known her for years. Her uncanine-like spirit reminded him of his beautiful Mary—and that was purely crazy. Self-admittedly he was the indulged, overly spiritual Preston patriarch, but he’d never been one to reincarnate folks. He’d tried to explain the peculiar feelings about the dog to Chase, and his grandson had surprised him.

  “You don’t need to convince me,” he’d said. “The dog is inexplicable. No one will ever convince me she didn’t lead me straight to this wedding. She startles me often, always being where she needs to be. And she knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “Whatever needs knowin’. She’s Angel.”

  “An angel?” he’d asked, laughing.

  “Maybe so.”

  Delaney ambled back into the yard approached Robert, who sat in a wooden swing beside the front porch, shooing away a jovial woman trying to give him food.

  “This is why I don’t invite people to the place, Gladdie Hanson,” he groused, his voice not exactly soft despite the slight lisp. “They don’t mind their own business. You’ve already stuffed me like a laundry hamper, now take this away.”

  Robert, too, had shed the tuxedo coat Jill had pressed him into wearing, and the woman, Gladdie, gave one of his exposed suspender straps a minuscule snap. “You look like skin and bones, so don’t Gladdie Hanson me, Robert McCormick. You can’t turn down my apple crisp, and you know it. Put some meat back on those crotchety bones.”

  In the end, of course, Robert took the bowl and growled his thanks. According to Chase, the old farmer might never regain his full pre-stroke coordination, but he could walk, and he was certainly feisty enough. Delaney, being an old farmer, too, liked Robert a lot.

  “There she is!”

  A young teenager, with the brightest swash of red and pink in her short hair Delaney had ever seen, squatted to greet Angel. The girl was one of Jill’s students, he was given to understand, and she was a contrast in something—he wasn’t sure what. Her party dress was pretty enough, in blues and greens with enough skirt to twirl. But some sort of black polish with sparkles adorned her fingernails, and she wore black boots only half laced up over blue knee-high stockings. She smiled at him shyly.

  “They want a picture with Angel. Can I take her?”

  “Of course, of course. I’ll follow you.”

  He found a mini circus set up beside the barn, attended by a knot of relatives and friends. Delaney sidled up to his oldest son, Chase’s father, who looked on in bemusement.

  “He always has done things his own way.” Chaz indicated Robert’s enormous black-and-white Clydesdale mare, standing statue-still, her lead rope in the hands of a young girl in a wheelchair. “How can this be safe?”

  “Thomlinson is right there.” Delaney nodded at the veterinarian who’d walked Jill down the aisle. He couldn’t have looked more like a proud daddy had he be
en Jill’s own. “I get the feeling there aren’t many animals in Jill’s care that don’t do exactly what she wants.”

  “He did convince a special girl to take him on, didn’t he?” Chaz laughed, and put his arm around Delaney in a quick hug. “I’m proud of him, Pa.”

  “As well you should be.”

  A sudden groan rose from down the line of guests. “Oh, not the dress on the horse!” Jill’s mother threw her hands over her eyes when her daughter, lace skirts and all, rose onto Gypsy’s back with the help of Brody, David Pitts-Matherson, and Chase. Jill arranged herself as easily as if she rode sidesaddle every day, and stroked the horse’s thick neck. The official photographer ordered people around until all at once the photo-of-the-day appeared in front of everyone’s eyes. Jill gazed down, her eyes shining but focused on no one but Chase. He tilted his face upward, moony-eyed as a tamed wolf pup. The huge-eyed Clydesdale bent its crested neck around to look at them both. And Angel, sitting attentively at Gypsy’s massive hooves, faced all three.

  “Ah, the beauty and promise of youth.” Gladdie Hanson and her sister Claudia touched Delaney on the shoulder and fell in, one to his right, the other between him and Chaz, as the wedding photographer clicked away. “So pretty,” Gladdie continued. “If only we could freeze such moments and keep our lives permanently fresh and optimistic.”

  “Come now …” To everyone’s surprise, Robert shuffled up and stood beside Claudia, who took his arm. “Where would be the adventure in that?”

  A cheer went up, punctuated by one decisive bark from a very excited black-and-white dog. Delaney raised his eyes as Jill slid straight off Gypsy’s back and in Chase’s waiting arms.

  About the Author

  LIZBETH SELVIG lives in Minnesota with her best friend (aka her husband) and a hyperactive border collie. After working as a newspaper journalist and magazine editor, and raising an equine veterinarian daughter and a talented musician son, Lizbeth entered Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart® contest in 2010 and won the Single Title Contemporary category. That book, The Rancher and the Rock Star, became her debut novel with Avon Impulse. In her spare time, she loves to hike, quilt, read, horseback ride, and play with her four-legged grandchildren, of which there are nearly twenty, including a wallaby, an alpaca, a donkey, a pig, two sugar gliders, and many dogs, cats, and horses. She loves connecting with readers! Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and at www.lizbethselvig.com.