“I have to have recommendations?”
“In your case, I’m recommending you, so I guess you qualify.”
* * *
THE ORIENTATION CLASS consisted largely of filling out paperwork and listening to Earl and Seth talk about how much work it took to become a licensed rehabilitator. The talk was probably intended to limit participants to people who were serious and not simply dilettantes looking for an alternative to bridge night. Earl and Seth treated Emma like any other prospective pupil. She kept her head down and gave no sign that she knew either of the instructors. Finally, everyone left completed registration forms on the desk at the front of the parish hall and filed out into the parking lot. Emma knew that if he could, Seth would come to her when he finished.
The parking lot was half-full and well lit. There was a man standing under one of the lights. As she got closer she recognized him.
It was Everett Logan.
She considered walking by him as though she hadn’t seen him, but that would be rude. She did, however, keep walking and nodded to him as she passed. “Good evening, Mr. Logan.”
“Everett, please.” He gave her a big smile and fell into step beside her. Oh, great. Just what she needed, to land in the middle of the family feud when Seth might walk out of the building at any moment. If he found her consorting with Everett, he’d have a fit.
She watched Everett turn up his charm, but it didn’t touch her. He seemed surprised by her lack of reaction. She dealt with people who were experts at charm. Everett wasn’t even in the top ten.
“Were you waiting for me?” She walked toward her car, which was in a well-lit corner of the lot. They weren’t alone, but she didn’t feel comfortable talking to this man in public or anywhere else.
“Not exactly waiting for you, although Laila told me you were going to the orientation class. She said Seth was leading it tonight.”
“You’ve spoken to Laila? About me?”
“Oh, Laila and I talk most days.”
God, he sounded glib. She would’ve believed him, if she hadn’t known how much Seth doubted his veracity. “I wasn’t aware that you talked so often.”
He chortled. Again, very charming, completely natural. But somehow off-putting. A performance for her benefit. One that he obviously hoped would be reported to Seth to prove that he and Emma were friends.
“Laila doesn’t tell Seth we talk, of course. He’s still carrying around a great big load of guilt. Laila keeps telling him it isn’t good for him. But when you’re as close as Laila and I have been for so many years…”
“I really must go, Mr. Logan.” She turned and walked quickly to her car.
Behind her, he said, “Nice to see you, Emma. Come into the store sometime. I’ll take you out for coffee.”
She slid into her car, shut the door and hit the ignition. Coffee? With Everett Logan? Alone? Not in this lifetime.
But hadn’t she just been thinking about brokering a truce between Seth and his father? The nerve of the man talking about Seth’s guilt with no mention of his own!
She wondered if he was drinking again. The AA pin meant he’d been sober for two years before he received it, but she had no idea how long he’d been sober since it was awarded to him. She didn’t smell alcohol on his breath, but that meant nothing. He seemed stone-cold sober, but that meant nothing either. Plenty of people in her world could be one step shy of knee-walking, yet act completely sober.
She was coloring her Everett encounter with everything she had heard about Sarah’s death from Laila and Barbara and Seth himself. Not from Everett, however. His view of life had very little to do with the facts as she’d been told them. She could usually tell the difference between fact and convenient fiction. But not always. She’d bought Trip’s stories. Buying a colleague’s stories got her fired.
What was there about Everett that struck her as creepy?
He was too clean. His clothes were too sharp. Suit and tie in Williamston? To work in a hardware store? He’d obviously shaved twice today and used expensive aftershave. She hated aftershave. Seth smelled like soap. Even Trip hadn’t used perfumey aftershave.
Everett was too aware of her. Watching her reaction to what he said as though he were reading a script and seeing if she’d recite the lines he expected back at him. She hoped she hadn’t.
She’d worked with clients like that and always found them difficult. They tended to lie or stretch the truth, often when the truth would have served them better.
Where did Everett’s money come from? Surely not a sales job in a hardware store. Was Laila giving him money? Seth would hit the ceiling if and when he discovered that. Should Emma suggest it? And tell him about her meeting with Everett?
She shrank from telling Seth. Not her business. But if she neglected to tell him and he found out…
She loved Seth. No way could she allow him to be taken advantage of. Or Laila either.
Maybe she would stop in at the hardware store. She wouldn’t go so far as to have coffee with Everett, though. But she would call Laila to see if she really did speak to Everett almost every day. Seth might see even that as a betrayal. After all, his mother hadn’t told him. Why? What was Laila afraid of?
Or maybe Emma didn’t want to know. If she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have to decide whether or not to tell Seth.
Emma drove home alone and went to bed alone. The house no longer held the faintest scent of skunk. But it felt very empty without Seth.
She still missed her babies. Seth was right. She needed another foundling. Would she actually sign up for the animal rehabilitator class? It wouldn’t be fair to start the course, take a place that might have gone to someone who was totally committed and lived in the area, then give the whole thing up if she decided to go home to Memphis.
Seth had never said he loved her, never asked her to stay, never asked whether she even wanted to stay. The old-fashioned romantic ideal should have morphed from a leisurely courtship with mind-blowing sex while she found a great job in Williamston at the same salary she’d had in Memphis or close to it. Something with a career path to status in the company. Something as much fun as working for Nathan had been—most of the time.
Eventually after she and Seth knew each other well, they’d marry. She could redo Martha’s house and rent it out. Maybe enlarge Seth’s house. Restore the overgrown pasture, clean the little pond and replace the roof on the barn. They could rent out that land. Wouldn’t bring a great deal of income, but then she didn’t need a closet full of evening dresses up here.
And she could do her own nails.
Over lunch with Barbara the next day, she decided to tell her about running into Everett. “He was waiting for me,” she said.
“What did he want?”
“To ingratiate himself with me. I have no idea why.”
“He knows about you and Seth.”
“What about me and Seth? Yes, we spend a lot of time together, but nobody’s mentioned anything formal. Neither one of us is…”
“Bull. If this ‘uncommitted’ relationship were to break up, which one of you would have to move? Could you keep living across the street from Seth? How would you feel if he brought another woman home?”
“He has every right to do that.”
“If you brought another man home, he’d probably break down your door and toss the poor guy into the pond. And feed him to the turtles. Based on what I heard from Velma, he considered doing it to your friend Nathan.”
Since Seth had admitted he’d been jealous of Nathan, Emma couldn’t contradict her.
“He wants you to stay, Emma. He won’t pressure you. You’re going to have to tell him, not the other way around.”
“My father keeps saying I need to look at this logically. So, logically, Seth wouldn’t be uprooting his life, or giving up anything—not his friends, his career or even his house. I
would be giving up everything I’ve worked for. I’d have to sell my town house instead of renting it, and not see my friends or my family as often. And Seth definitely hasn’t asked me to stay, or even asked whether I’m thinking of staying. It’s the big pink elephant in the room.”
“What do you want?”
“Time. Time I don’t have. I thought I was in love with someone else very recently. I wasn’t. He certainly wasn’t in love with me. How can I be sure that what I feel for Seth is love? And how does that fit with the reality of living in a world where I have to make a living? Hate to tell you, Barbara, but this job, as much as I appreciate it, won’t pay my bills for long.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, stop overanalyzing! What do you feel?”
“That I don’t know how he feels.”
“Ask him.”
“‘Hey, Seth, are you in love with me and what do you want to do about it?’ I couldn’t get up the nerve to do that on my best day.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Okay, how’s this? ‘Gee, Emma, we have great sex, but I’m not interested in anything else. So long. I’ll give you a call the next time I’m in Memphis. Maybe we can hook up.’”
Barbara laughed so hard she choked on her coffee. “I’ll be darned if you’re not insecure. When I met you I thought you were the most together woman I’d met in ages. And here I find you’re every bit as scared as the rest of us.”
“I try not to let the bastards see me sweat, okay? But, yes, I am insecure. That happens when a kid loses a parent early, the way I lost my mother. I do not trust life. Better not to expect permanence.”
“Seth lost his sister. Does that mean he has the same permanence issues?” Barbara asked. “If so, you both have to get over it, or I’ll never be a godmother.”
The next day was one of Emma’s at the clinic. Spring rain sluiced down so hard that even Mabel stayed in her goose house warming her goslings. So far, motherhood had not improved her temperament.
In the few quiet moments when she was working at the clinic as she was today, Emma had streamlined the clinic’s computer system to organize appointments and keep up with billing clients. After she sent an orange tabby back to surgery to be spayed, she was free to answer the clinic phone on the first ring, the way she preferred. It wasn’t always possible.
“Good morning, Carew Veterinary Clinic,” she said.
“Emma, good morning! Beautiful day for ducks, isn’t it?”
Everett Logan. Damn. Several times in the last few days his name had come up on her call log. She’d ignored the calls. This time he’d blocked the caller ID. Sneaky. “Mr. Logan, how can I help you?” Not just cool, but cold.
“You recognized my voice! How about that. I’m flattered. We’re having a slow day at the store. I wondered if you’d join me for lunch.”
“What? Where? In town?” She wanted to shout, “Are you crazy?” She took a deep breath and said with what she hoped was aplomb, “I’m sorry. That’s not possible.”
“You don’t have to worry that we’d run into Seth. I happen to know he’s in Nashville in a budget meeting all day and maybe tomorrow. Didn’t he tell you he’d be gone?”
“Nashville is hardly ‘gone,’ Mr. Logan.” She wanted to say, Don’t you play gotcha games with me. I’ve won against the best. “Nonetheless, Mr. Logan…”
“Please, call me Everett. I’m not that much older than you are, you know.” He chuckled.
She wanted to tell him, You darned well are. This was becoming a multilayered conversation. She didn’t like any of the layers. “We never leave the clinic at lunch, Mr. Logan.” That was a lie. Both she and Barbara did leave from time to time. Everett Logan didn’t need to know that, although somebody had probably told him.
She’d taken Nathan to lunch at the café, for example. But she hadn’t actually been on the clinic schedule to work the day Nathan showed up.
“I could pick up some sandwiches and come to you.”
“Why would you want to drive all the way out here to have lunch with me?”
He actually chortled. Did he think he’d won?
“I want to get to know you. After all, if things keep going the way they are, you and I will be kin.”
What a horrible thought. “No. Do not come out here, do not pick up sandwiches. For future reference, this is a business phone for the use of our clients, not for personal calls.”
“We have a cat at the store. Maybe I can borrow her.” Again, he chortled.
She sighed. Okay, no more Ms. Nice Guy. “Mr. Logan, do not borrow a cat, do not bring sandwiches, don’t call here on this phone. I intend to continue to call you Mr. Logan, and unless you get off this phone, I will hang up on you.”
“Come on, honey, lighten up. I’m well aware that you and my son are…shall we say, close. Laila says you’re good for him. It’s not good for a man to live alone. I’m on your side. I’m really a very nice person.”
Oh, Lord, he was drinking. She heard it in the precise way he spoke. She didn’t get angry often. She usually didn’t get mad about injuries to herself, only to her family and friends. Although the last time she’d been angry was when she discovered Trip’s infidelity. But this man was trying to injure the man she loved, to interfere with his peace of mind and to take advantage of Seth’s mother, who she hoped would grow to be her friend.
Since there were still three clients in the waiting room with their animals, Emma dropped her voice. “First of all, Mr. Logan, go find an AA meeting. And take off your sobriety pin. I can hear over the phone that you don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you do. I am completely serious. Do not attempt to get in touch with me, or I’ll tell Laila and Seth that you’re drinking again at eleven in the morning. How can you do this to Laila? She wants you and Seth to at least be polite to each other, but that’s not possible so long as you don’t acknowledge your responsibility for your own child’s death.”
He started to break in. “Listen—”
“No. You listen. You broke the rules, not Seth or Laila or even Sarah. As a parent you were responsible for obeying the rules. Your daughter was a child. Seth was a child. Sarah had to do what you said, even if it cost her life. You were drunk and driving crazy and sitting on your life jackets. No wonder Seth believes in rules. You break them because you think you can get away with anything if you smile big enough. Well, you can’t.”
“I have an illness…”
“You’re the only one who can fix that, and I don’t see you giving it much of a shot. Mr. Logan, go to a meeting.” She narrowly avoided slamming down the phone. She sat there trying to keep from hyperventilating. Her hands were shaking.
The two cats and one dog waiting with their owners didn’t eavesdrop, but Emma knew their owners certainly did. They studiously avoided looking at Emma. And wouldn’t that little exchange make the rounds before nightfall?
She shouldn’t have spoken to Everett like that, but she couldn’t help herself. Everett would call Laila before Emma could. Lord only knew what Seth would say, because Laila would tell him Everett’s version of their conversation.
Emma had no intention of calling Laila. And if Everett showed up at the clinic with sandwiches and a borrowed cat, she’d set the police on him.
While she and Barbara were eating lunch together, as they now did most of the days Emma worked at the clinic, Emma’s cell phone rang. Her heart turned over when she saw that Seth was calling. Then she realized she was listening to a voice message and not to Seth. Well, better than nothing, although she’d have preferred to talk to hm.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m in a meeting in Nashville. We’re going into a working lunch, so I don’t have time to talk. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier, but this came up at the last minute. I had to come home and pack after you left for the cli
nic. I got Mother on my way out of town, but I missed you.
“I doubt I’ll get back tonight. We’ll probably work late.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “This is not the way I planned to spend the evening and definitely not the night. What’s the sense of having a king-size bed if you aren’t in it? Sorry, got to go. I love you.” He rang off.
Emma stared at her phone. So that was the way Everett had discovered Seth was out of town. He must have talked to Laila.
What really mattered was that Seth had actually said, “I love you.” Easy to do on the phone. He’d never said it live, not even when they were making love. Or afterward when he was feeling very mellow. Was it just something to say to finish the conversation, or did he mean it? She wanted him to mean it, because she did.
Whatever Daddy thought, this was not a rebound. She’d never felt anything like it with Trip or any of the other men she’d known. Love came out of the woodwork and smacked you when you were least expecting it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SETH DOODLED THROUGH the budget meeting. It was deeply boring. He’d give anything to be out on the lake or beating through the brush, even if he was checking hunting and fishing licenses.
He hadn’t worried about his salary or his career path since his marriage broke up. He’d received appropriate promotions and raises since he’d joined the warden service—enough to support his single lifestyle. He wanted to stay out in the field, not move paperwork sitting behind a desk. But families cost money.
He was beginning to have hope that Emma cared for him at least a tenth as much as he loved her, so he’d put up with budget meetings and actively work toward promotion. He didn’t particularly like administration, but he was good at it.
He called Emma the minute he pulled out of the Nashville government parking lot, but got only her voice mail. You didn’t ask a woman to marry you on a cell phone. He’d stop in Williamston and pick up a dozen roses to take with him. Be waiting with champagne when she came home from the clinic. Home was no longer a dirty word since Emma was there. She’d find a job within commuting distance of Williamston. Maybe go to work for Barbara full-time, until she found something she liked better. Neither one of them was a kid. With luck she’d get pregnant. As long as they were together, they’d make whatever they chose to do work.
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 51