And Sam had called April. That smarted, I had to admit. Still, knowing that he was the kind of guy who would call April only reinforced my opinion that I was mistaken in my favorable estimation of the man. A half hour later when I found myself still thinking about him, I realized if I was going to get through this busy week, I would have to purge Dr. Sam Long from my mind.
I succeeded, for the most part. As Helena promised, I had plenty of work to keep me occupied, and then some. In fact, I had the faint impression that Helena was intentionally burying me in work, which did not give me warm fuzzies for having asserted my opinions. Maybe it was just in my mind, but it seemed that some invisible wall had sprung up between us—Helena withdrew into her office and we communicated by cryptic phone and e-mail messages, and through passed file folders. I tried to blame her mood on hot flashes, but I confess that I took it personally and I could feel myself pulling back as well. Monday and Tuesday passed in a paperwork haze.
Wednesday, however, brought a couple of developments in my life. One I’d anticipated, but the other was a bona fide gotcha.
Dad’s secretary called to say he couldn’t make it up to see me that week, but would try to catch up with me the following week. Nothing new there.
And Daniel Cruz called and asked me to go to the movies with him. Saturday. Eight o’clock. A romantic comedy. He’d pick me up. I was stunned. I said yes.
By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I was sure the long hours over my desk would result in a humped back, but I wasn’t too worried because I was starting to think I might actually be settled down with a nice guy before the hump became too unsightly.
And, I was happy to say, Dr. Sam Long was receding in my thoughts.
Okay, only a little. But it was a start.
At five minutes until five o’clock, my phone rang. It was Helena.
“Kenzie, could you come to my office, please?”
At the somber tone of her voice, I knew something was up. I only hoped, as I walked to her office, that it wasn’t my employment contract. She probably had noticed the wall that had sprung up between us and wanted to replace me. Admittedly I had been operating all week in a fog, distracted by personal events and non-events. She probably thought I was so taken with the idea of writing for the magazine that I’d lost focus on her objectives. Mentally rehearsing an apology, I knocked on Helena’s office door.
“Come in.”
I opened the door and walked in. Helena still had that pinched looked. “Close the door, Kenzie.”
I obliged, then wobbled to one of the chairs sitting in front of her desk and sat on the edge.
Helena steepled her hands in front of her and sighed. I was on the verge of throwing myself at her feet when she spoke.
“Kenzie, I have a special assignment, and I think you’re the best person for it.”
I blinked. “Okay” Then I remembered the “assignment” involving the pet salon. “Is this work-related?”
Helena seemed distracted. “Hmm? Oh, yes” She sighed again and worked her mouth from side to side. “Kenzie, what do you make of this cover curse business?”
“I…don’t believe in curses. The freak accidents are all just a coincidence.”
Helena nodded, then sighed again. “I just received word that Jane Suttles fell off a platform where she was staging an event and broke both arms.”
My hand flew to my throat. “That’s terrible.”
“For her and for us. The accident will only fuel the fire if word of this silly cover curse gets out. So you’ll understand why I’m asking you to do what I’m going to ask you to do.”
I waited.
“I’ve arranged for you to visit Dr. Long in Jar Hollow for a few days.”
My heart sputtered. “Excuse me?”
“The issue with his picture on the cover will hit the stands Sunday. For the week that he’ll be on the cover, I need someone to keep an eye on him.”
“Keep an eye on him?” I squeaked.
She nodded. “Part baby-sitter, part bodyguard. You’re perfect for the job.”
“I’m perfect for the job?” My vocabulary had vanished. I could only repeat what was being said to me.
“Absolutely. Dr. Long knows you and seems to enjoy your company. I’ve taken the liberty of calling him. I told him you were coming to write an article on the life of a small-town veterinarian.”
“Write an article?”
“You said you wanted to try your hand at writing.”
“Try my hand at writing.”
Helena spread her hands. “Here’s your chance. While you’re there, all you have to do is keep Dr. Long out of trouble.”
“Out of trouble?”
“Keep him so busy playing host and taking you on house calls or barn calls or whatever he does that he doesn’t have time to run around putting out fires and being in danger.”
“Helena, I can’t stop the man from responding to a fire!”
“Well if you can’t distract him, at least you’ll be able to let me know if something happens before anyone else finds out. Then we can organize damage control if we have to.”
“How will I get there?”
“You do drive, don’t you?”
“In the loosest sense of the word.”
She dismissed my concern with a wave. “You’ll be fine.”
“Where will I stay?”
“Dr. Long has guest quarters.”
“At his home?” I was weak—or giddy, I couldn’t be sure. “When would I leave?”
“Tomorrow morning. You should arrange for a rental car to be delivered to your flat.”
“H-how long would I stay?”
“Until next Sunday, when the new issue will hit the stands.” She shoved a folder into my hands. “I’ve made some notes to help you with the article. Stay in touch.”
My head felt as if it might explode. I was supposed to show up on Sam’s doorstep and play house with the man for a week? I had to sit down. When I realized I was already sitting down, I considered sprawling on the floor.
“Oh, and Kenzie—there is one other thing.”
I swallowed, thinking there was nothing she could say to make things worse.
“I’ve been thinking about Dr. Long’s recommendation to have Angel spayed, and I decided he’s right. He’ll be expecting her.”
“Expecting her?” I was back to repeating.
Helena cleared her throat. “Dr. Long agreed to spay Angel this week.”
Dread settled in my stomach. “And how exactly is Angel supposed to get to Dr. Long’s?”
My boss angled her head and gave me a magnanimous smile. I realized that things could indeed be worse.
8
“CALL ME when you get there,” Helena said. She threw Angel a kiss, and waved until we disappeared from sight in the silver Volvo I’d rented (a safe car, I’d justified). Right away, Angel, who sported a floppy lavender bow between her ears and sat on a pink blanket in the passenger seat, began to whine.
“I know how you feel,” I said, nursing nausea over the thought of seeing Sam again, and under such convoluted circumstances.
Angel gave me a doubting look.
“Okay, so I’m not going to have to get fixed when I get there,” I conceded, “but trust me—it’s for your own good. When you leave, you’ll be cured of the male element altogether, while I…” I swallowed hard. “Won’t be.”
Angel wasn’t buying it. She must have sensed my perverted feeling of relief that having her doomed little uterus along lent more credibility to my trip. It wasn’t as if Sam had invited me to travel upstate and observe him offering up cures for spoon-swallowing pigs for this article I was writing. Despite that Helena had contacted him to set up this excursion before she even told me about it, I was paranoid that he’d think it was my idea in a desperate attempt to get close to him.
Granted, during the three-minute conversation I’d had with him last night, he hadn’t sounded suspicious or perturbed about having me and Angel
as houseguests for the next week, but I chalked up his cheerfulness to country-manners. Besides directions, the only extra conversation he’d offered was, “Bring a pair of boots.” I wasn’t completely clear why, but I’d dutifully packed my red calfskin Stuart Weitzman boots along with enough antihistamine to spike pharmaceutical stock prices. At the last minute, I added the homemade dildo. Since Sam had agreed to cast the mold when he thought he’d never see me again, I thought it only fitting to return it.
That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to think about.
For the drive I had opted for a pair of black Seven corduroy slacks, a pale yellow Juicy Couture sweater, and a pair of teal, mid-heel Miss Sixty slides. I’d dressed down because, assuming that life in Jar Hollow was a bit more casual than Manhattan, I didn’t want to stand out from the locals.
I tried to force aside my concerns about my destination and concentrate on the matter at hand: driving. I could count on one hand the times I’d sat behind a steering wheel, and the instrument panels of cars had changed quite a bit in the fifteen years since I’d passed my driving exam in the coned-off parking lot of the DMV.
After much trial and error, I found a pop rock station on the radio, then turned the shiny Volvo in a northwesterly direction and settled in for the four-hour drive.
One hour in, the skyline had disappeared behind me, I was tired of pop rock, and we had encountered a particularly curvy two-lane road. Angel’s head began to bounce like a bobble-head doll, then she started projectile vomiting. Carsickness, I deduced rather quickly.
By the time I’d guided the car onto the shoulder of the road, I was gagging, and would have upchucked myself if I’d had breakfast. I stuffed bits of paper napkin up my nose to ward off the stench, then tackled the mess with more napkins and a bottle of pricey spring water. By the time I got Angel and her surroundings cleaned up, I was seriously considering turning around and hightailing it back to NYC.
My cell phone rang. I dug it out of the depths of my shoulder bag, praying it was Helena calling the whole thing off. “Hello?”
“How’s it going?” Jacki asked.
I laid my head back. “Badly. Both the dog and I are carsick. I think it’s a sign.”
“It doesn’t take much to get you sick,” Jacki pointed out. “Besides, you’re on your way to see a doctor, right? He’ll make you all better when you get there.”
“Since I’m not imposing enough as it is.”
“Hey, this wasn’t your idea.”
I chewed on my tongue, then voiced the concern that had been niggling at the back of my mind from the get-go. “I could have said no.”
“Yes.”
“Well.”
“Well, what?”
“Well, what do you suppose that means?” I demanded.
“Hmm, let’s see—you didn’t say no to spending a week in the country with a gorgeous doctor who has a yonker the size of a summer sausage? I believe that means you’re not insane.”
“You know I can’t do anything with him while I’m there,” I hissed. “I’m going on business, and the man has a heart problem. I’m supposed to look out for him, not incite a coronary.” (In a desperate moment, I had divulged the cover curse rumor to Jacki, with the promise of a slow death if she told anyone.)
“He seemed to have survived your first night together.”
I thought about April’s assertion that the good doctor wouldn’t last long in her company, and realized that my being the least likely person to mix business with pleasure was probably one of the reasons I got this assignment. “I’m not going to press my luck.”
“Come on—do you really believe you can live under the same roof with the man for a week and not give in to temptation?”
“Jacki, this will be different from meeting in a dark bar. We know each other now.”
“All the better.”
I shook my head at her romanticism. “Even if Sam wanted to…you know—and I don’t believe he will—I can’t risk it.”
“Can’t risk what?”
“My job,” I said. “Remember—that little thing I call a career? And I can’t risk my health, either. I’m allergic, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Jacki said, her voice thick with frustration. “I have to run.”
“Are you and Ted doing something this weekend?” A dumb question considering they were spending almost every spare moment together.
“We’re driving to the Jersey shore for the day.”
“Sounds fun,” I mumbled. “When will I get to meet this guy?”
“When you cut the cord between you and Helena Birch. You work too much.”
“Easy for you to say, Jacki—you’re a success in your field. But I feel like I’m so…behind. Overdue. If this is my big break, I want to make the most of it.”
Jacki sighed. “Then go for it. But wear your seatbelt. And give yourself permission to have a good time. And call me.”
“Okay.” I slowly disconnected the call and looked over at Angel. The pooch sagged against the seat, but at least the sparkle had returned to her beady little eyes.
For some reason I didn’t want to explore too deeply, her beady little eyes reminded me of Daniel Cruz. “I reneged on a date with a perfectly nice guy to go on this road trip,” I informed my traveling companion.
Angel lifted her head and yipped, as if encouraging me to go back.
I spied a lone quarter in the plastic console between us. “Coin toss,” I announced. “Heads we go forward, tails we go back.”
Angel seemed agreeable.
I tossed the coin in the air, but my eye-hand coordination wasn’t the best. (Okay, I was always the kid who took score during recess sports.) I missed, and the quarter fell down the crack between my seat and the console. Angel looked at me and I pursed my mouth, trying to decide what I’d wanted the coin to tell me.
God help me, I did want to see Sam again, if only to put to rest the perception that I was a tipsy, shirt-snatching woman who made a habit out of picking up guys at bars for one-night stands.
“Okay, we can do this,” I said. “We’ll go and make the best of it. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Angel gave me the dubious look of someone about to go under the knife, which I decided to ignore. But when the faint scent of throw-up reached my nose, I realized that in order for the remainder of the drive to be tolerable, we’d need to roll down the windows. Since the spring temps were still a bit chilly, I pulled an Amy Tangerine coat from my suitcase, and opened the Louis Vuitton overnight case that Helena had given me for Angel. From the jaw-dropping array of sweaters, coats, collars, accessories and food treats that looked good enough for human consumption, I found a lavender polka-dot sweater (designer) to match the bow in her hair. I had never dressed a dog before, so that took a little maneuvering, but in the end, Angel looked every inch the princess that she was. The pooch seemed to know she was color-coordinated because she perked up a bit, even licked my face a couple of times. I was glad I had packed anti-bacterial sanitizer.
I rolled down my window, but lowered the passenger-side window only a couple of inches to circumvent potential disasters in the event Angel had suicidal tendencies. Still, the ventilation was enough to send the wind whipping through the car like a whirlwind when we got under way. I turned up the radio volume and we sped down the highway like a couple of girls resigned to whatever fate flung our way.
We drove by and through numerous towns. Since I rarely left the city, I found the foliage and the signage positively fascinating—people put words on anything that didn’t move, including roofs and water towers. The farther I drove, the more quaint the names of the towns. Tree Gum. Weeping Wonder. Used Branch. (Used for what, I was dying to know.)
I wasn’t making good time because after nearly going airborne when I swerved to miss what might have been a squirrel, I had driven the last one hundred miles with one foot on the gas and one on the brake in case any other critters decided to hurl themselves underneath my wheels.
I rolled into the city limits of Jar Hollow, population 5,842 at 7:00 p.m. with a full bladder and shin splints from toggling the foot pedals. Despite the ventilation, I suspected I reeked of doggie throw-up, so I thought it prudent to freshen up before I saw Sam again. I also needed directions to his residence because the page with that information had been sucked out the window during the squirrel incident.
Jar Hollow was a picturesque little town, complete with a town square populated by a few pipe-smoking old men, a bubbling fountain and a waving American flag. Yellow tulips marched along the base of a monument holding a cannon. I looked for a barber-shop pole and found it on the other side of the square—Doo-Dad’s was open for business. A few doors down, Fi’s Flowers was having a sale on carnations, and farther down the street, a red-and-white striped awning marked an ice cream shop, the word Malts spelled out in neon. I’d never had a malt, but assumed they were pretty good to warrant that kind of window space.
The downtown area consisted of about ten blocks of squatty brown brick buildings with long, large windows, some empty, some claimed by a community college extension program. All I could think was how much and how quickly they would go in the city as loft apartments or condos. The downtown area seemed to be situated on the lowest-lying land in the city. Tree-covered hills hemmed the town, then gave way to tree-covered plateaus dotted with house roofs and ribbons of roads. The lime-green of new spring growth swathed every living thing. I was in a Norman Rockwell painting. Me and my purple-sweatered dog.
A few hundred feet ahead I spotted a place called Chickle’s, which appeared to be a diner with gas pumps and a souvenir shop that sold gen-u-wine Indian arrowheads. And most importantly, Chickle’s looked as if it probably had indoor bathrooms—a must since the clerk at the last place I’d stopped had handed me a key with a wooden paddle attached to it and pointed “around back.”
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