“Do I have a reputation?”
“You mean, do people talk about the fact that you’ve dated every nice-looking woman in the county? Yeah, I can safely say you have a certain reputation.”
His partner’s obvious enjoyment of his discomfort was almost the last straw—but he had to speak to someone. “A volunteer from that cat shelter, Ten Lives, came to see me.”
“So let me guess. She’s single and attractive. And she turned you down.”
“She told me she was tired of being judged on appearances.”
“My, you must have been subtle.”
“I asked her out to dinner!” Eric said in outrage. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, baby, your place or mine?’ ”
“Look at it this way,” his partner said. “You won’t have time to date, anyway, not when your son gets here.”
The dull ache Eric had been trying to ignore sharpened to a knife stab. “He doesn’t want to come.”
Dear Reader,
I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that I, like Madeline in Beauty & the Beasts, have enough cats to make rolling over in bed at night a little difficult sometimes. Also like Madeline, I volunteer with a no-kill cat shelter, Purrfect Pals, which is the model for Ten Lives, although I’ve freely changed it to suit the story. Many of the cats in Beauty & the Beasts are real, in spirit if not details. Chevy and Ron lived in my fourteen-year-old daughter’s bedroom. The older cats like Mittens and Dusky are the ones that break my heart—and give me the greatest satisfaction when we find them loving homes.
When I write a novel, I’m always in love with my hero, and I always identify with my heroine. But this time it was the cats who moved me to tears and smiles. I hope you feel the same. I hope, too, that you take my message to heart: please, please, neuter and spay your pets. And if you have the time, or just a few dollars, help your local shelters and animal rescue organizations, especially those like Purrfect Pals that don’t euthanize unwanted animals.
Now go ahead, fall in love with Eric. Just save a soft spot for Chevy, Ron and the rest of the feline gang!
Sincerely,
Janice Kay Johnson
Purrfect Pals
230 McRae Road Northeast
Arlington, WA 98223
Beauty & The Beasts
Janice Kay Johnson
For Kathy,
with affection and admiration,
and for all the “pals.”
CHAPTER ONE
“OKAY, GIRL, JUST RELAX,” Dr. Eric Bergstrom murmured as he deftly parted the hair on the calico cat’s foreleg in search of a vein.
“How do you know where to get blood from?” the teenage girl asked, eyes wide. “I mean, since she’s got hair everywhere.”
Eric smiled. “I know where to look. The tricky part is getting any blood from a cat as dehydrated as this one.” He slipped the needle into the vein and eased the plunger out, allowing a trickle of red into the syringe. “Ah. Well, we’re in luck this time. Often the vein just collapses.”
“Is that enough blood?”
“I don’t need much.” He removed the needle. “This’ll let me check her kidney function. If they’re failing…” He hesitated.
The teenager’s face crumpled in distress, but she squeezed her lips together and nodded. She’d found the cat huddled in the family’s woodshed and rushed it straight to the vet. Her mother, she’d candidly told Eric, didn’t know about the cat yet, but she was sure Mom would let her keep Callie.
“That’s what I’ll call her,” she concluded, gently stroking the thin back.
Five minutes later Eric was surprised to find that Callie’s kidneys were functioning well. In this case, then, they’d take a fecal sample and check for internal parasites—coccidia was a good bet, he thought— and get her on an IV and a massive dose of antibiotics.
The girl left Callie in his care, and June, one of the technicians, carried the pitiful animal to their isolation room in the back to get started.
Eric scrubbed his hands, then stuck his head around the corner and in a low voice asked the receptionist, “Who’s next?”
She glanced around the waiting area, then turned in her chair. “Um…a Ms. Howard is here to see you. She says she’s a volunteer from a no-kill cat shelter. She wants to talk about the possibility of us providing veterinary service for them.”
He leaned a little farther around the corner so that he could see over the receptionist’s head into the room. A mother and two children waited with a bulldog on a leash. Faintly amused, he noticed that the youngest kid and the dog bore a startling resemblance. Near them a cat grumbled in a carrier beside a heavyset woman. At the counter a young couple was picking up their newly spayed spaniel pup. He smiled and nodded at them.
Only one woman waited alone, sans animal, apparently absorbed in a paperback book. And damned if she wasn’t a stunner, even in worn jeans and a sacky mud-colored T-shirt. Slender, with a mass of rich auburn hair she’d yanked back in a severe braid and the kind of swanlike neck that could make a model’s career, she possessed a face to launch a thousand ships: incredible cheekbones, full lips and exotic thick-lashed eyes. She must be on her way to the shelter to clean; no woman who looked like that appeared in public without makeup and so unflatteringly dressed without a good reason. He’d give a hell of a lot to see her in a snug skirt and silk blouse, with her hair loose and tumbling over those slim shoulders.
He strode out into the waiting room. “Ms. Howard? I’m Dr. Bergstrom.”
The auburn-haired beauty glanced up, then marked her place in her book. Rising to her feet, she held out a hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said pleasantly. “I wonder if you could spare a few minutes.”
Her hand felt fragile in his. He let it go with reluctance. “Certainly. Why don’t you come back to my office.” He gestured for her to go ahead of him, wondering at the wariness in her eyes when she inclined her head.
With automatic masculine approval, Eric noted the sway of Ms. Howard’s hips and the grace of her carriage. She appeared to be about five foot ten.
In his too-small office he lifted a heap of files off the one chair facing the desk. “Please, have a seat.”
Her gaze took in the wall of veterinary reference books, the cabinets, the stacks of files—each with carefully squared corners—that covered his desk. Eric in turn admired her eyes, green flecked with gold. Her driver’s license probably called them hazel, but no word so mundane could describe a color that made him think of shafts of sunlight touching a mossy forest floor.
He became aware that those eyes had settled on him in a way that made him suspect she was aware of his turn of mind and was less than pleased to have inspired it. Hell, maybe she was sick of men staring at her. He didn’t like thinking he was just like all the rest.
“Dr. Bergstrom,” she said briskly, “I’m a volunteer with a small no-kill cat shelter called Ten Lives. You may be familiar with it. There’ve been articles in the local paper, and we regularly do adoption days at some of the larger pet-supply stores between here and Seattle.”
He nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen mention of the shelter.”
“In the past, Dr. Heyer from Granite Falls has done our veterinary work. Unfortunately, as you may know, he’s retired.”
Eric cut to the chase. “I presume he gave you special rates.”
“Yes. We simply can’t afford to pay regular rates and keep our adoption fees reasonable.” She made a face. “Even if we charged exorbitant fees, we couldn’t pay your normal charges. We simply have too many cats that are living out their lives at the shelter. At best our expenses are steep.”
When he asked, she described the facility: the cats had the run of a house and a generous area o
utdoors, as well, that was fenced with chain-link. A separate building that used to be a garage housed feral cats, who had their own outdoor runs. The bedrooms were used to separate newcomers and to keep kittens apart from the adult cats.
“We have cages, of course, to quarantine the cats initially and to keep sick ones isolated. The house has a small mother-in-law apartment where the woman who conceived and runs the shelter lives. We have a full-time housekeeper and quite a few volunteers who clean or take animals to the vet or whatever. I do a little of everything.”
He nodded, savoring the unusual experience of being pleased on both intellectual and sensual levels. He was aware of Ms. Howard as he hadn’t been of a woman in a long while. Damn, but she was lovely. Her wrists and hands were narrow, her fingers long, the movements they made graceful and unstudied as she gestured. The fact that she wore no fingernail polish surprised him, though he was more interested in the absence of a wedding or engagement ring. Her ivory cheeks flushed with her passion for saving these abandoned or mistreated animals.
But he took in what she had to say, too; he and Teresa Hughes, his partner, had been discussing how they could make a practical contribution to the reduction in the number of animals that ended up euthanized at the county shelter week in and week out. They tried to keep the cost of neutering down and offered the service free when they suspected that owners couldn’t afford to pay. But beyond that, the practicalities had stopped them.
“I’ll want to see the shelter,” he said abruptly, “and I’ll need to talk to my partner. Assuming she agrees and I’m satisfied with your facility, I can see my way to giving you a couple of hours free every week. I could neuter male cats on the spot, for example, doctor any minor problems, draw blood. We can set a reduced rate for those that have to come to the clinic and for medications and surgery. Is that what you had in mind?”
She blinked, and he knew he’d surprised her. “It’s better than what I had in mind. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but Dr. Heyer didn’t volunteer any time free.”
Eric leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “His was a one-man practice. I know how that is. You work twelve-hour days, get called out in the middle of the night, and you’re still behind all the time. I can afford the luxury of volunteering an hour or two because I’ve taken in a partner.” He smiled crookedly. “Now I only work ten-hour days.”
“He was having a harder and harder time squeezing us in.” Ms. Howard wrinkled her nose, an effect that her physical perfection rendered charming. Hell, she probably looked magnificent brushing her teeth.
Letting his voice become a shade huskier, he asked, “Do you have a first name?”
She stiffened. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”
For a disbelieving moment, he thought she was going to leave it at that. Evidently she wasn’t interested in getting personal.
Apparently, however, she also remembered that she wanted him—in a manner of speaking—and she acceded with a stiff “Madeline.”
He tried to make his grin disarming. “Eric. You may see some of my partner, too, Teresa Hughes.”
Madeline Howard’s high brow creased for an instant before smoothing. “Oh! She’s Jess Kerrigan’s sister-in-law, isn’t she?”
“You know Jess?”
She gave him a cool look and he had a sudden suspicion that she was aware he’d dated Jess Kerrigan briefly after her divorce. Good God, maybe Jess had given her a play-by-play. He seemed to recall, thank God, that the relationship hadn’t amounted to much, dying a natural death from disinterest.
“Yes, we’re friends.” Obviously disinclined to chat, Ms. Howard rose to her feet. “I won’t take up any more of your time. When would you like to see the shelter?”
She wasn’t interested; he ought to let her off the hook. But he couldn’t make himself. Stubbornness had awakened, along with awareness. If she was married or involved, okay, he could accept that. Otherwise, he wanted to know what she had against him.
He stood, too, hands flat on the desk. “When’s good for you?”
“I don’t necessarily have to be there.”
Smoothly Eric said, “Look, I need to have one person to be my contact. I’d appreciate it if you are there, since you were the one who approached me. I may have questions.”
He’d won another battle, if not the war, because after a brief internal struggle, visible on her face, she said with reasonable grace, “I can make myself available almost any time. One of the beauties of working for myself.”
Maybe she was a model. “What do you do?” he asked.
“I own a women’s clothing store in Everett. Madeline’s.”
“I’ve driven by it.” He wouldn’t have noticed it at all, except that the clothes in the window and the delicate gold script above it whispered elegance in a way he might take for granted in downtown Seattle, but didn’t expect to see in a blue-collar town like Everett. “How long have you been open?”
“Four years.”
“So you know something about long hours, too.”
Ruefully she nodded. “I lost money for a year, then broke even for another one. But I’ve built up a steady clientele, and the store is doing very well these days.”
“Good for you.” He smiled with deliberate lazy charm and circled the desk, going to the door. With one hand on the knob, he paused. “How would late tomorrow afternoon be? You could show me around the shelter, and then we could have dinner afterward.”
Madeline’s head tipped to one side and she subjected him to a disquietingly thoughtful scrutiny. “Are you asking me for a date?”
He leaned back against the door and crossed his arms. “Yeah, I think that’s the idea. Are you married?”
“No.”
Ah. “Then…?”
“Thank you, but no. I’m afraid dinner is out.” Her gaze never wavered. “Tomorrow afternoon would be fine, though. Four o’clock? Five?”
“Five’s good.” He didn’t move. “Why not dinner?”
“You’re not used to a polite refusal?”
“It wasn’t all that polite.”
“Then I apologize. I’m afraid I’m just not interested.” Her poise would have put a presidential candidate to shame. Except, Eric noted, for the pink that again tinged those aristocratic cheekbones.
He frowned. “You’d made up your mind about me before you came here. Is that because I dated Jess?”
She pressed her lips together. Even tight, they weren’t any less kissable. “You do have something of a reputation.”
Eric was stung. He grunted and stepped away from the door. In the act of opening it, he asked, “Do you always listen to gossip?”
Instead of fleeing, Madeline said, “Tell me—why did you ask me out?”
“Because you’re beautiful and I’m attracted to you.” He paused for only a heartbeat, although it was long enough for him to see he’d blown it. Frost had glazed her eyes. “Besides,” he added, “I figure we have at least one thing in common—we both love animals.”
She gave him a smile as chilly as her gaze. “If you’d said that first, I might have agreed to dinner. Unfortunately what you really judge on is appearances, and frankly I’m rather tired of that. Shall I see you at five o’clock tomorrow, Dr. Bergstrom?”
He could read her thoughts; she was wondering if his offer of veterinary service had been contingent on her willingness to go out with him. Knowing the possibility had even crossed her mind steamed him.
“Yes,” he said tautly. “You will.”
He walked her out, then led the family with the bulldog into an examining room. Kneeling, Eric stroked the dog’s head. He was a handsome fellow, if you liked a face that appeared to have met a car bumper.
Madeline Howard, Eric reflected, would give him hell for that thought.
Somebody ought to tell her that men and women usually did judge on appearances when they first met Sexual response was physical; goddammit, sex was physical. A man didn’t get hard because a woman wa
s generously endowed with compassion.
Maybe ugly men turned her on.
“Is something wrong with Soldier?” the mother asked anxiously.
He jerked back to the present company. Drool hung like an icicle from the corner of Soldier’s mouth. Eric straightened and reached for a tissue.
“No, no,” he said reassuringly. “Is he having problems?”
“I don’t think so.” Her youngest, who’d been attempting to scramble onto the windowsill, succeeded. Exasperation replaced the doubt in her voice. “Jeremy, you promised to stand right here next to me.” With a firm hand she deposited the teetering boy back on the floor just in time to save him from falling one way or the other. Probably out, taking the new screen with him. To Eric she said, “Soldier just needs his shots.”
Feeling like a fool, Eric carried on about what an outstanding example of his breed Soldier was. The dog’s owner was too busy corralling Jeremy to listen. Only the older boy, perhaps five, listened solemnly. Eric made quick work of checking the bulldog’s ears and gums and then slipping the needle under the loose skin at the dog’s neck.
As he saw them out, he thought of suggesting that she put the leash on the youngest kid, instead of the dog. He needed it more.
“Yeah, Ms. Howard,” he muttered to the empty examining room, “and the kid’s uglier, too. Sue me for noticing.”
Behind him one of the technicians coughed. “Doctor, your son is on line three.”
“Here?” Jarred by alarm, he retreated to the phone in the dispensary. He talked to Garth once or at most twice a week, always evenings. The boy lived with his mother two states away, in the San Francisco Bay area. He had never before called Eric at the clinic.
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