Olivia shifted from foot to foot. Chance lifted his head and glanced at her, as if telling her to calm down, that he was the one who should be nervous. “You’re right, boy,” she said to the dog, giving him a tender rub behind the ears. “Okay, let’s just worry about you for now.”
The door to the room opened again and a tall, thin blonde in a white lab coat entered the room. She could have been Olivia’s twin, with the same frame, same hair color, but most of all, the same wide, forest-green eyes. Was that what their mother had looked like too? There’d been no pictures at the house, and the Google searches Olivia had done had turned up a few grainy black-and-white newspaper images of a tall woman in a floppy hat, usually holding a rescued dog.
“Hi, I’m Diana Tuttle,” Diana said, putting out her hand. Her voice was peppy, friendly. Her eyes soft and warm, her features animated. “And who do we have here?”
DIANA TUTTLE, DVM was embroidered on one side of her lab coat and would have made her look official, maybe even clinical, except for the bright pink T-shirt she wore underneath. On the shirt, a cartoon drawing of a dog and cat in wedding attire was emblazoned above the words SHAKESPEARE’S LOST MANUSCRIPT: WOOFEO AND MEOWIET.
Olivia liked her on the spot.
“I’m Olivia. And this is Chance.” Olivia shook hands with Diana—the words my sister rocketing inside her. Her only sibling, well, that she knew of. But more, the only living tie to Bridget Tuttle and the answers Olivia had searched for all her life. Except that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing one blurted out, especially with the dog between them.
On the way over, Olivia had debated whether to tell Diana the truth, but now that the moment was here, she faltered. What if Diana didn’t know about Bridget’s other daughter? What if she didn’t want to know? What if she kicked Olivia out, the interloper who had inherited Bridget’s house? So instead, Olivia shook hands, noting Diana’s firm, warm grip, then released her sister’s hand and waved toward the dog. Take care of him first, she reminded herself. The rest could wait. It had waited this long, after all. “I found Chance in my backyard a few days ago, but it took some time to entice him to come close enough to catch him. He’s definitely hurt, and underweight.”
“Poor baby,” Diana cooed, leaning down to examine the dog with a gentle, practiced touch. “Let’s see what we have here. Okay, honey? Don’t worry, Chance. It’ll all be fine. I promise.”
Her sister had the same light blond hair that Olivia had, but styled in a shoulder-length, no-nonsense blunt cut. She was about the same height, and a similar build, but a little younger. Olivia guessed her to be twenty-nine, maybe thirty. She had a wide smile that reached her green eyes, and a tendency to tuck her hair behind her right ear, something Olivia did, too. An inherited trait? Or just a habit?
Or was Olivia looking for a connection that wasn’t really there? After all, they’d grown up half a country apart, with different parents. There was no reason to think they had anything in common besides some DNA.
And one wounded dog. Not exactly enough to build a family reunion on. Olivia worked a smile to her face and told herself it didn’t matter. But deep down inside, it did.
A lot.
* * *
For all practical purposes, the dog before Diana should have been dead. Underweight, malnourished, dehydrated, and cut from shoulder to belly with a deep, infected laceration that had crusted over and healed poorly. Chance looked up at her from the exam table with wary eyes that quivered with hope.
Save me, he seemed to say. Please.
Diana worked fast, inserting an IV into a vein in the dog’s foreleg, taking his pulse and temp, drawing blood for a heartworm test. The laceration would need to be opened up, cleaned, then stitched, but overall, Chance had lived up to his name. Thank God he’d been brought in before things got much worse.
“He’s had a bad time of it,” Diana said, running a hand down the dog’s fur. He barely stirred, save for a couple of friendly flicks of his tail against the table. Poor puppy. “I’m not sure what happened here, but it looks like he got caught under a fence or something that tore open his belly and it didn’t heal well, so now it’s infected. I’m going to shave it down, clean it up, and stitch it up again. He’ll need a round of antibiotics, for sure. But most of all, he needs rest, food, and water, and a lot of TLC from Mother Nature.”
Olivia let out a sigh. Relief showed in her eyes, in the way her shoulders eased. “You’re sure?”
“Yup.” Diana picked up the white plastic test package she’d set on the counter a few minutes earlier. “And he’s lucky. The heartworm is negative. Though I’d recommend getting him on some preventatives today. Since we don’t know where he’s been, we should also test for parasites at the next visit and get his shots up to date.”
“Will do. Thank you.”
Diana smiled. “Just doing my job.” She leaned back against the counter, and picked up the dog’s chart. “If you don’t want to take on all this by yourself, I can help you rehome him. Though he’s on the mend, he’s far from out of the woods, and he’s going to need a lot of care in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, our local animal shelter closed down a”—the words still caught in her throat, the grief hitting her anew—“while ago, but I can give you the addresses of a couple in nearby towns.”
“No, I’m good. I think I’ll adopt him.” Olivia smiled and gave the dog’s muzzle a gentle touch. “Do you, uh, know why the shelter closed down?”
“The owner got sick.” Four words, not nearly enough words to encompass the slow, painful decline of Bridget Tuttle. For the first time in her life, Diana had found herself wishing she’d gone into people medicine instead of animal medicine, because she’d sat by Bridget’s bedside, doing nothing but feeling helpless and trying to ease the pain of her mother’s decline and her losing battle against pancreatic cancer.
But in the end, her mother had cut Diana out of the will, leaving what few possessions Bridget had to a stranger up in Boston, some woman by the last name of MacDonald or something. That after-death slap had stung. Still did. Diana, a veterinarian, should have inherited the shelter. She’d tried, a hundred times, to talk her mother into resurrecting it, promising to help get it running again, maybe even moving her practice over there. But Bridget had always refused, saying she had other plans for the property.
Plans that didn’t include her daughter. Her child. Why would her mother do that?
Diana had thought she and her mother had no secrets. Turned out she’d been naïve about that, too.
Diana fiddled with the pen and wondered when it would get easier to accept what her mother had done. How she had, in the very end of her life, turned her back on her child. Diana cleared her throat. “The, uh, shelter was shut down a few months ago and no one has reopened it yet.”
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said.
I’m sorry? An odd response. Diana studied the woman across from her, then the notes on the chart. Olivia Linscott. A new transplant to Florida, she’d said, who had found the dog in her backyard. Something about Olivia looked familiar, though, but Diana couldn’t put her finger on the connection.
Diana refocused on the chart, the dog before her. “I’ll need to keep Chance here for a couple of days, but then he should be good to go home.”
“Okay.” Olivia made no move to leave.
“You can pay at the counter on your way out. Linda will have your bill.”
“Okay, thanks.” Olivia shifted her feet but still didn’t turn away.
“He’ll be fine.” Diana gave the dog a gentle pat. “We’ll take good care of him, and I’ll call you if anything changes.”
Olivia nodded. Stayed where she was.
Okay. Clearly, another owner reluctant to say good-bye, to trust her furry baby to strangers. Diana bent over to scoop up the dog. She turned toward the door that led to the surgery behind the exam rooms and reached for the handle.
“Diana?”
She pivoted back at the sound of Olivia’s voice. Weird for
a customer to call her by her first name. “Did you have a question, Miss Linscott?”
Olivia swallowed. She had taken a hold of the exam table, and her knuckles whitened with her grip. Was she that worried about the dog?
“Can I ask you something?” Olivia said, her gaze on the exam table.
“Uh, sure.” Maybe Olivia had gotten really attached to this stray. Diana did a little mental prep of her usual speech about the dogs in her care, and how Chance would be fine in the kennels for a couple of days while he recuperated.
“Did you . . .” Olivia paused, took in a breath, released it, then raised her gaze to Diana’s. “Did you know Bridget Tuttle?”
The question hit Diana like a left hook. She backed up a step, until the doorknob poked her in the hip. “She’s my mother. Well, she was my mother. She . . . passed away.”
“I know.”
Diana looked at Olivia—really looked at her, seeing her for the first time as more than the owner of a patient, and in that instant, Diana made the connection. It was in Olivia’s green eyes, a green like her own, like her mother’s, a dark, forest green unique to the Tuttle girls.
Before Olivia opened her mouth, Diana knew what Olivia was going to say. Knew why the name had rung a bell. For a second, Diana wanted to tell her to stop, not to speak the words out loud, not to turn Diana’s life upside down.
But Olivia didn’t hear that mental plea. She gave Diana a tentative smile, then exhaled a deep breath and said, “I’m your sister.”
Seven
Three days.
Luke stayed in his house, staying away from the windows, telling himself he didn’t need to get involved. He’d done his good deed for the week by bringing Olivia to the dog. She’d taken it to the vet, and probably gotten it medicated and bandaged.
The dog was fine, just fine. Then why did he keep on waiting for the familiar scratching at his door? Why did he worry about an animal that wasn’t even his?
And why did he keep thinking about a woman who had brought nothing but trouble to his life? Yet think about her he did. All the time. When he rolled out of bed, he wondered if she was next door, brewing coffee. When she came home at night, he wondered if she ate alone like he did, in a chair in front of a TV playing something inane. And when he went to bed, he wondered whether she was doing the same—and what exactly she was wearing, or not wearing, when she climbed between the sheets.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered to himself, and headed down the hall, away from the kitchen, where it was all too easy to walk outside and show he cared.
As he did, he passed the dining room. His step faltered. His hand automatically went to the wall for the light switch. He flicked it on, then off almost as fast. The brightness was too much, too . . . bright. He preferred the dim light filtering past the blinds, just enough to outline the shapes in the room.
His gaze caught on the bright white squares a few feet away. The medals, still packed in their cardboard boxes. Medals he never wanted, never earned or deserved. Medals he would give back in a second if it would change anything.
“Damn you. Just . . . damn you.” He backhanded the stack of boxes and sent them clattering to the floor. He heaved a breath, but it didn’t ease the tight, sharp pain in his chest.
Against the wall he could make out the slim frame of his bike. For an instant, he could feel the wind riffling down his back, hear the swish-swish of the tires against the road, feel the rush of exhilaration as he raced down a long, sloping hill . . .
His hand skimmed over the hard rubber wheel. The tire spun with soft, almost silent clicks, spinning easily beneath his touch, whispering a tempting song in the quiet. Feel the wind against your skin, the pavement beneath your seat. Get outside, enjoy the world again. Ride . . .
Luke jerked the wheel to a stop. He wouldn’t be riding this or any bike, not now, maybe not ever. Or jogging again, or doing anything that required vision. He missed the adrenaline rush of a good workout, the mindless pounding of his body, the sweaty exhilaration at the end. He missed doing something that forced his lungs to expand, his body to work harder, faster. He wasn’t the kind of man who sat around all day—
And yet that was what he had done for months.
The urge, no, need to do something gnawed at him like a rat. It was Saturday morning, and for ten years, he’d spent his Saturdays running or biking, something that got him outside, worked up a sweat, pounded out the week’s stresses, and got him as close to flying as he could be on the ground.
He closed his eyes, and in his head, he was out there again, hitting the pavement, while birds dipped into the glistening waters of the ocean and the soft caress of a spring breeze rippled down his skin. He inhaled the sweet tang of the ocean, mingled with the crisp scent of fresh-cut—
Those days had passed. He needed to quit thinking about what used to be. But as he turned away, he misjudged the turn and elbowed the bike, sending the Cannondale crashing to the floor. Luke cursed and bent to pick the bike up again.
He jerked the carbon frame back into place. As he did, his knee collided with the footlocker beside the bike. Pain shot up his leg. A fast string of cursing didn’t ease the pain but sure made him feel better.
He started to turn away, to limp back to the sofa. To retreat, as he had done so many times before. As his hand left the bike’s frame, a sudden fierce yearning for the life he used to have, the man he used to be, rose in his chest. He paused in the dim light, the dust tickling his nostrils.
“Goddammit,” he said again, but the curse had become a sob, a tear in his throat. He dropped to his knees beside the footlocker, his hands reaching along the sharp, hard corners, the smooth metal hinges, then back to the hasp at the center. The open lock sat heavy in his palm.
In his mind, he could see what wasn’t much more than a shadowed rectangle in the dim light. He knew every inch of the black footlocker, its sturdy body, its brass hardware, the silver lock on the front. A gift from his grandmother on the day he signed up for the Coast Guard. So you have somewhere to put all those medals they’re going to give you, she’d said.
If she only knew.
He turned, shifted onto the floor, and lifted the lid. His hand snaked beneath the folded uniforms, the leather shoe-polishing kit, the pristine white T-shirts. He stopped when he brushed against a thick folded paper, then the glossy surface of a photograph.
Joe.
Like an electric spark, the memory slammed into Luke, vivid, real, as if he were back there, two months ago, taking the helo up. The SAR alarm blaring in the station, the booming of the ops watchstander’s voice. Fishing vessel taking on water, five souls on board. Weather is a bitch, snow mixed with rain, wind gusting up to forty knots, swells up to twenty feet in frigid waters off Alaska’s coast.
“Jesus Christ, Ace. My mother could do a better job with that takeoff,” Joe said, as he settled his helmet on his head, his smile bright in the darkened interior of the helo.
“You going to be a backseat driver again?” It was a familiar argument, one that had been raging since flight school. Every mission, the two of them debated who had the better helo skills. Neither wanted to concede or admit to a draw. Instead, they teased each other like brothers every time they were in the air.
“Hey, if you get all tuckered out, I’ll be glad to take over the stick,” Joe said, his voice a slightly muffled staccato in Luke’s helmet. “You might need your energy for tonight when we hit the bar and score some pretty ladies to take home. That is, if you ever find a woman who meets your high dating standards.”
“Hey, I’m just waiting for your little sister to come on the market again.”
“My sister has taste, dude. She’d never go for a slacker like you.”
“If she has taste, then why is she related to you?”
Joe grinned and flattened a hand against his chest. “Because I’m irresistible.”
That last smile hung in Luke’s memory. Heartbreaking. Bittersweet. One quick smile, and in the next moment, the shit hit
the fan and Joe had never smiled again.
Luke stumbled to his feet, clutching the paper and the photograph. The last photo he had of Joe, taken in some seedy bar near AIRSTA Kodiak, the two of them celebrating after a mission. One dark hair, one blond, raising beers to the camera, arms around each other’s shoulders, goofy grins on their faces. Mike had taken the picture, taken it a month before—
Before Luke’s mistakes had killed his best friend.
His fingers skimmed over the paper, thick bond paper, folded three times, then in half again, creased from being in Joe’s locker ever since they’d landed at Kodiak and realized the danger they’d be facing.
The letter. The one almost every guy in the military wrote and hoped like hell would never get sent. Then came that day—
The helo pitched and rolled in the violent Alaska storm, as if Mother Nature were getting revenge on the humans who had soiled her beautiful land. The rescue swimmer’s cable whipped up and down in the powerful wind, making the thick steel seem as light as dental floss. Joe turned in the co-pilot’s seat, the ending already written on his face. “Promise me, Luke. If anything happens to me—”
“Don’t say that shit.” Luke held his death grip on the controls and issued a silent prayer. “Let’s get this mission done, get back to town, and get drunk like we always do.”
But Joe had known. Damn it, he had known. Joe cursed a prayer as the winds tossed the helo like a stuffed animal in a dryer, and the cable jerked, and the bottom fell out of Luke’s stomach.
Joe’s eyes gleamed bright in the darkness and his voice rose above the whine of the engine. “Promise me, Luke. Please.”
He’d held Joe’s gaze for one long second while time stood still and a glimmer of hope remained in Luke’s chest. “I promise.”
The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) Page 8