by Radclyffe
Jenna studied Alice from across the lobby as she waited for the bellman to load her bags into the limo Alice had arranged to take them to the airport. Alice was everything she found appealing in a woman—aggressive, competent, confident. When she’d pitched her first novel to Alice at a book fair almost ten years earlier, she’d been young, unagented, and naïve. She’d felt a spark of attraction, of connection, the moment she’d sat down across from the older, sophisticated woman, and she’d known from the glint of interest in Alice’s eyes that Alice felt the pull too. But three minutes into Jenna’s pitch, Alice had said, “You’ve got a winner and I can sell it for you,” and that was the end of anything sexual between them.
For Alice, business trumped lust and, Jenna suspected, possibly even love. She wasn’t certain about that, because she’d never seen Alice in a serious relationship. Alice never lacked for female companionship, but like Jenna, she never dated anyone exclusively and rarely for very long. They were similar that way, which was probably why they got along so well. Most of the time.
Watching frown lines form between Alice’s eyebrows as she crossed the lobby to her, Jenna did not think this morning was going to be one of their more amicable moments.
“Jesus,” Alice said in a low voice, “you look like hell.”
Jenna knew that wasn’t true. She looked fine unless someone looked closely. Under careful scrutiny, the light makeup she’d applied would not completely cover the circles beneath her eyes or disguise the gaunt hollows in her cheeks.
“Don’t start,” Jenna said. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
“I know you didn’t get any sleep, damn it. You at least have to eat.” Alice glanced at her watch. “We’ll get breakfast at the airport. I’d rather clear security—”
“Great,” Jenna said quickly, because she really wasn’t hungry. Exhaustion tended to blunt her other senses. At least all of them except the senses Brin MacIntyre had taken care of quite thoroughly the night before. She wondered how long she could survive on adrenaline and endorphins. She smiled to herself. If she managed to find a Brin MacIntyre in every city on her tour, she just might make it after all.
“What’s so funny?” Alice held the heavy glass door open for Jenna to pass.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about the rest of the tour.”
“It’s going really well, you know,” Alice said as they waited under the canopy while the limo driver and the doorman loaded Alice’s luggage into the trunk of the spacious Town Car. “There’s been a lot of buzz after every event and the sales numbers look excellent. This book is going to get you a Golden Quill.”
Jenna snorted. The prestigious award was a coveted prize for any romance writer, but despite her growing popularity, she wasn’t a contender for that award yet. At the pace she was going, in five years, she would be. “That would be great, but I’ll be happy just to see the book do well.”
“I had a long conversation last night with Edith Reynolds,” Alice said, referring to a well-known New York editor. “She agrees with me—you’re ready to break out and bring a crossover audience with you. She’s interested in small-town contemporaries with a little heat, and you’re perfect for that. She wants to bring out three in one season.”
“Three? In what…the next year?”
“You’ve handled that many before,” Alice pointed out.
“Sure, but not when I had two others already scheduled.” Jenna shook her head. “If I’m going to start a new series, you know it has to come out strong. I can’t take the chance of being rushed.”
“We can’t say no to this. If I have to, I’ll get you an extension on one of the others.” Alice made a soothing noise and rested her palm low on Jenna’s back, guiding her into the rear of the car. “I have faith in you, sweetheart.”
Jenna’s headache went seismic. Opportunities like this didn’t come along every day. She wrote faster than almost anyone working in her genre, and she wanted to stay out ahead. She had to stay out ahead. Talented new authors cropped up every day. “You know I’ll do what needs to be done. But damn it, Alice—it better be iron-clad.”
“You know it will be.”
Jenna gazed out the window of the limo on the way to the airport, too tired to carry on a pointless conversation. Alice knew what she was doing. For some reason, Jenna’s stomach objected to the stop-and-go motion of the limo in the crowded airport traffic and she struggled to ignore the rising nausea. By the time the vehicle pulled to a stop in front of American Airlines, she feared she was seriously in danger of vomiting. She brushed the back of her hand over her forehead and realized she was sweating.
“Are you all right?” Alice asked.
“Yes. I guess I probably do need some breakfast.” Jenna remembered the room service cart that she’d never brought into her room. When had her last meal been? Lunch in DC the day before, or had it been breakfast?
Cool fingers cradled her jaw and Alice’s worried eyes swam into view.
“Sweetheart, you really don’t look well.”
“I’m fine,” Jenna said, a little breathless. Outside the limo, a redcap was efficiently stacking their luggage onto a cart. “Let’s get the check-in taken care of. Some coffee and a bagel will fix me right up.”
“All right. But tonight you’re getting a solid eight hours if I have to tuck you in myself.”
“Promise.” Embarrassed by Alice’s concern, Jenna quickly pushed across the seat and followed Alice out. The instant she stood, a wave of dizziness cut her legs out from under her and she collapsed.
Chapter Three
“Has she been rolling?” Gard leaned on the stall gate, observing the bay mare. Her neck glistened with sweat and she shifted restlessly, intermittently pawing the ground with her front hooves. Despite being agitated, she was also listless. Her abdomen was not grossly distended, but she definitely displayed signs of intestinal colic. While not often fatal, the disease was still the number one natural killer of horses and could go from a medical problem to a surgical emergency within hours. By then it was often too late.
“Nope—she looked like she wanted to but I walked her a bit and she calmed down some.” John McFarland was about Gard’s height—five-ten or so, and had probably once had the same coal black hair as she did. His was still thick, but gray now, and where her eyes were charcoal verging on midnight, his were light blue. He resembled most farmers Gard knew—weather-lined skin putting his age anywhere between forty and sixty, clear direct gaze, work-roughened hands. His tone was typically laconic, but his concern was evident in the furrows across his brow and the tight line of his mouth. A fifth-generation farmer, he knew his way around all the common ailments likely to affect his stock, but Gard went through the list of questions that needed to be asked so she didn’t overlook anything.
“When did you first notice she wasn’t right?”
“Right before I called you. She was fine last night. Can’t be more than a few hours, whatever’s going on.”
“Teeth okay? No problems with worms?”
He shook his head.
“Change in her feed?”
Again, a negative jerk of the head.
“How old is the foal now?” Gard asked. “Two months?”
“Just about that,” McFarland said.
Gard hadn’t attended the foaling, which was normal for uncomplicated deliveries. A seasoned farmer could handle normal births and even some complicated ones without veterinarian assistance. Sometimes she wasn’t called in until situations had turned desperate, but that was the job. She hadn’t grown up among the independent, self-sufficient people she now counted as her friends and neighbors, but when she’d moved into their midst, she’d instinctively recognized that here, unlike the circles she was used to, wealth, power, and position did not earn respect. Only honesty and competence did, and she worked hard to deserve it. “Nothing unusual with the birth?”
“This one was her second, and easy. Can’t say as I’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary with her.”
“Hold her head so I can get a listen.”
They eased carefully into the stall so as not to startle her, and while John held the lead shank, Gard listened to her abdomen. “Pretty quiet. Heart rate’s good, though. Let’s get a tube down and empty her stomach.”
Gard opened her kit and pulled out a thick coil of rubber tubing to pass through the mare’s nose into her stomach as well as a long plastic sleeve for the rectal exam. When the intestines failed to function because of mechanical obstruction or surrounding inflammation, gas and fluid built up in the stomach. If it wasn’t evacuated, the stomach could rupture, which always led to death.
“Ready?”
McFarland nodded, gripping the rope attached to the halter close to the side of the mare’s head.
Gard slid the lubricated nasogastric tube into the horse’s nostril and gently advanced it until bilious fluid and air came rushing out. She nudged a bucket over with her foot to catch the drainage. “Not a whole lot.”
McFarland grunted. The relatively small volume of accumulated fluid in the stomach indicated that whatever was wrong had not progressed very far, which was an excellent sign. Once the evacuation was complete, Gard removed the tube and went to work at the other end of the mare. After she stripped down to her T-shirt, she slipped a long plastic glove over her right arm to well above her elbow. She squeezed some lubricant into her palm and carefully eased her hand into the horse’s rectum. She went slowly, knowing the mare was in pain. She didn’t want to get kicked and she didn’t want to risk damaging the fragile colon. When she was nearly at the extent of her reach, she encountered a sizable amount of manure and carefully loosened the mass, extracting as much as she could. Inverting the glove and tying it off, she set the specimen next to her kit to examine in the lab for parasites or unusual foreign materials.
“I don’t feel anything twisted. Might be she’s just impacted,” Gard said. “There’s quite a lot up there. I’ll put some water with a little mineral oil down the tube and see if that doesn’t loosen her up. That and some Banamine for the pain may do it.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her the next couple of hours,” McFarland said.
“Call me if she gets worse,” Gard said after she administered the medications.
“Thanks, Doc.”
Gard gathered up her equipment and hauled the tackle boxes back out to her truck. After storing them away, she climbed into the cab, where Beam greeted her as if she’d been gone for a week. She pulled out a billing form from a plastic file box she kept on the floor on the passenger side and quickly filled in the appropriate spaces so her office manager could send the bill. Then she fished around in the glove box for her cell phone and checked the number Rina Gold had given her.
Time to call Jenna Hardy.
*
Jenna came to amidst a cacophony of voices that were way too loud, a glaring white light that was way too bright, and a murderous headache that made her want to vomit. With a moan, she draped her forearm over her eyes.
“Jenna?” Alice asked. “Sweetheart, are you awake?”
“God, I wish I weren’t. What the hell happened?”
“You…fainted.”
Jenna lifted her arm enough to open her eyes and peered up at Alice. “Fainted? I never faint. Are you sure?”
“Believe me, I’m very sure. You scared the living hell out of me.”
“Where am I?”
“At the first aid station at the airport.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Just a few minutes. The ambulance is on its way.”
Jenna pushed herself up on her elbows, suddenly much more awake. “Ambulance? What for? I’m fine.” She stared around the barren cubicle. A single molded plastic chair, a two-drawer metal cabinet with a steel tray of wooden tongue depressors and a box of latex gloves on top, and a wall-mounted blood pressure cuff were the only furnishings. She was on a narrow stretcher with a thin sheet covering her to the waist. Thankfully, she still had all her clothes on. “Where’s my briefcase? My computer’s in it. The galleys—”
Alice pointed to the floor. “I have your things right here.”
Jenna sighed. “I backed up my latest chapter on a jump drive but I didn’t send it off-site yet. If I lost that—”
“Don’t worry about any of that.” Alice gripped Jenna’s hand. “Lie back down. Seriously, Jenna. You went down hard and you need to rest.”
“What time is it? We need to get through security.” Jenna impatiently threw off the sheet and swung her legs over the side of stretcher. Immediately, her head swirled, her stomach somersaulted, and she scrunched her eyes closed to stop the merry-go-round. “God, I must have a migraine. I’ve never had one before. I will never badmouth people who say they get migraines ever, ever again.”
Alice circled Jenna’s shoulders. “We don’t know what’s going on right now. But you need to lie back down. I’ve canceled our flight.”
“You what?” Jenna gaped. “Alice! I’ve got a signing scheduled this afternoon and a two-hour event tonight. We’ll never make it if we don’t take this flight.”
Alice braced both hands on her hips, her expression one Jenna couldn’t decipher, and she’d seen Alice in every situation imaginable. “I’ve canceled the rest of the tour.”
Jenna gripped the edge of the metal stretcher, panic making her limbs weak. “What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t had a vacation in two years. You’ve been pushing—” Alice looked away, her voice tight. “I’ve been pushing you at an inhuman pace for the last six months. You need to slow down. You need to take a break.”
“I can’t take a break! I’ve got deadlines. I need to tour. I’ve got a new book to promote—”
“Your new book is going to do fine without you schlepping around the country touting it at bookstores. That’s what happens when you’re a bestseller. Your name sells your books.”
“I’m not there yet,” Jenna said, alarm flooding her chest. She couldn’t go back. She’d never go back. Her writing was her ticket to the life she wanted, the life she needed. “Alice—”
“It’s done, Jenna,” Alice said. “The tour is off.”
Jenna’s stomach lurched, letting her know in no uncertain terms if she didn’t lie back down, there would be nasty repercussions. Reluctantly, she settled back and covered herself with the sheet. “What did you tell them?”
“That you had an unexpected change in an upcoming deadline and that you’re terribly sorry to disappoint any of your readers, but you thought they’d be happier if you were writing your next book so they could get it on time.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me.” Alice stroked Jenna’s hair. “Let’s just take care of you. You need a thorough physical and a vacation.”
“One step at a time. I’ll get checked out, if that will make you happy.” They could argue over what came after that later, but Jenna was certain of one thing. She wasn’t taking a break. “Then we can decide what I’m going to do next.”
Alice looked like she was about to protest, but then a ringing cell phone interrupted her. She glanced down at her waist and then at Jenna’s briefcase. “It’s yours. You want me to get it?”
“No,” Jenna said, holding out her hand. “I can take it.”
The call had to be business, and business was exactly what she needed.
*
“Hello?” Jenna said.
“Ms. Hardy, this is Dr. Davis. I’m—”
“That was certainly fast,” Jenna said, unable to squelch her irritation. She did not want to deal with any more of this until she could deal on her own terms, not lying flat on her back with a pounding head and a queasy stomach. “I don’t have my calendar right at hand, but—”
“I’m sorry?” The woman on the other end of the line had a resonant, alto voice. She also sounded confused and slightly annoyed.
“Really, I’m sure my agent told you we’re still at the airport. I’ll make an appointme
nt—”
“I’m afraid you might be confused about the reason for my call, Ms. Hardy.”
Jenna could see Alice frowning and she held the phone away from her mouth and whispered, “Did you call a doctor’s office to set up an appointment for me? Give them my number?”
“No,” Alice said. “I’m fast, but I’m not that fast. Besides, you’re going to see my doctor. I’ll take care of making the arrangements. Who is that?”
“I have no idea.” Jenna stared at the phone. “Who is this?”
“As I said a moment ago,” the smoky-smooth voice responded, the slight edge having blossomed into unmistakable irritation, “my name is Gardner Davis—”
“You said you were a doctor?”
“Yes, I’m—” She sighed, paused, and finally said, “I’m sorry. I’m sure this call has come out of nowhere and I’m not explaining the situation very well. I’m calling from Little Falls, Vermont. I’m the county coroner. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but we believe that a distant relative of yours has died and you’re the next of kin.”
“Well, you’ve made a mistake,” Jenna snapped. “I don’t know anyone in Vermont. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever even been to Vermont.”
A dry chuckle came down the line. “From what we’ve been able to trace through a records search, Elizabeth Hardy would have been a very distant relative. She was in her nineties. We’re not a hundred percent certain, which is why I have a few questions, bu—”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Gardner Davis.”
“As I said, Dr. Davis, you’re mistaken.” Jenna hadn’t talked to Darlene since she’d left home eleven years ago, a few months before her eighteenth birthday. She thought there might be a half brother or sister somewhere from the father she’d never known, but she’d never met them and didn’t care to. That life was far behind her, a different existence—before Cassandra. Before everything that mattered. She didn’t have any family, she didn’t want any family, and she didn’t have time for this now. “I’m afraid I have to go.”