One Summer

by JoAnn Ross

  “Sorry!” Janet covered her mouth with her hand.

  Too late. A second later the bell on the door jangled. Then jangled again. And, as the receptionist bustled out to start triaging their patients, yet again.

  Amie and Charity exchanged a resigned look. The deluge had begun.

  20

  Kara Conway was sitting out on the porch of Sax Douchett’s cliff house—which she and her son, Trey, had moved into—sipping a glass of wine and watching the early-evening sunlight dance on the waves. Although winters might admittedly be gray and wet here on the coast, summers were heaven.

  “I saw your brother’s friend today,” she said as she rocked on the porch swing with the man she’d fallen in love with.

  “What friend was that?” he asked idly as he sipped on a beer and played with the strands of hair hugging the nape of her neck.

  “The one from the wedding. The photographer.”

  “Gabe St. James.”

  “That’s him. He was walking on the beach.”

  “Taking pictures?” Now he was nuzzling her neck, which made it really difficult to concentrate. With Trey on a sleepover and Bon Temps closed on Monday evenings, Kara knew exactly what Sax had in mind. The same thing she’d been planning, which was why she’d stopped by the Oh So Fancy lingerie boutique and picked up a pretty rose pink silk and lace camisole and tap pants, which she was currently wearing under her jeans and T-shirt as a sexy surprise.

  “No.” She tilted her head back, allowing his lips access to her throat. “He had a dog.”

  “I know. I saw it sitting in the front seat of the Jeep when he stopped by Bon Temps yesterday. But I couldn’t tell what kind it was.”

  “I’ve no idea.” Just when things had begun to get interesting, she’d managed to sidetrack them. Reminding herself that they had all night, Kara took another sip of wine. “Some little black thing. Maybe part Shih Tzu, with some poodle in it.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. He said he was just keeping it overnight until Charity can find it a home.”

  He laughed again, the deep rich sound slipping beneath her skin and warming her from the inside out, as it always did. “That’s what he told me. I also told him good luck with that.”

  “Once again we’re on the same wavelength.”

  He’d always been able to read her mind. Even back when they’d been in high school. Giving up on the seduction part of the evening for now, she leaned her head on his shoulder and watched the fishing boats chug along the horizon, nets trailing behind them.

  “I think there may be something going on between them,” Sax said. “More than her trying to place another dog.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “It was more what he didn’t say. And the way he didn’t say it.”

  Kara frowned. “I don’t know if that would be such a good idea.”

  “Why not? They’re both single and uncommitted.”

  “She’s had a sex moratorium since she called off her wedding.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Damn if it isn’t true. Men don’t stand a chance because women do tell each other everything.”

  Female bonding and sharing information is cultural, going back to the beginning of time. It was important to keep the community together while the men were out hunting woolly mammoths. And it’s not like males don’t tell each other stuff. I refuse to believe that you only talk sports over those poker games and fishing trips.

  “My point,” she stressed, holding up a finger as he opened his mouth to argue, “is that if Charity’s going to get back on that particular horse, so to speak, perhaps she ought to start out with an easier one.”

  “One who’s already been broke.”

  “So to speak.”

  “I was celibate until you came to town.”

  “So Kelli told me.”

  “What? How the hell did the woman who’s now my sister-in-law know that?”

  “Cole told her. And she told me.”

  “Like it was any of her damn business,” he muttered.

  “You had a reputation back in the day,” Kara reminded him. “I think she just wanted to reassure me that you’d changed. Settled down.”

  “Cole shouldn’t have told her. We only talked about sex once. In generalities, when we were discussing fixing up Bon Temps and he told me I should get laid.”

  “Which you did.” She pressed a kiss against his frowning lips, then snuggled closer again. “But you were different. You were ready for a relationship when you came back to town.”

  “I’m not sure about that. But I sure as hell was ready for you.” He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “As for Charity, unless she has plans to open up a vet clinic in a convent, it makes sense that after nearly two years she’d be ready to get back on the horse. Or, mixing metaphors, the bike. Since I always figured sex is a lot like riding a bike. Once you figure out how to do it, it just comes back naturally.”

  “Which certainly seemed to be true for you.”

  “Why, thank you, chère.” He put his fingers beneath her chin, tipped her head up, and touched his lips to hers, creating the slow, familiar smoldering stir she figured she’d still be feeling when they were a hundred.

  “But, as I said, he just doesn’t seem right for her. Not when there are so many other nice, easier men in town.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want easy. Maybe after all this time going without, she isn’t interested in training wheels. You turned out to have a thing for bad boys. Ever think she might want to take a walk on the wild side?”

  “You’re not the same rebel you were in high school,” she reminded him. Though he still had enough of that bad-boy flare to keep things interesting.

  “True enough.”

  “So,” she mused, “I suppose it’s true that opposites attract.”

  “Works in our case,” he agreed.

  “But I don’t know.” She shook her head. “He just seems so intense. I like to think that I’m a pretty good judge of people—”

  “You are. Which is undoubtedly important in the cop business.”

  “It is.” And often could make the difference between life and death. Something her late husband had, tragically, found out the hard way. “And from the vibes I was getting from your Marine friend, just in that short time, I worry that the two of them together could be a lot like nitroglycerin and a flamethrower.”

  “They’re grown-ups. They’ll be okay. And speaking of flames.”

  He kissed her again. Longer, deeper. Skimmed a wicked hand from her shoulder down to her thigh.

  “What would you say,” he murmured against her mouth, “to going back in and setting some sheets on fire?”

  Reminding herself that Sax was right, that Charity was a grown woman who’d had the guts to call off a wedding at the last minute, while guests were waiting for her to walk down the aisle, Kara put the problem aside for a time as she twined her arms around his neck.

  “I’d say you just read my mind.”

  21

  Although she’d experienced some tense moments during her career—such as the time a bullmastiff had plunked his huge butt down on her porch and refused to enter the clinic until she’d lured him in with a particularly smelly treat—Charity was not accustomed to feeling nervous.

  “It’s just dinner,” she repeated yet again as she smoothed lotion into her skin after the shower she’d taken to wash off the kennel/hospital smell, then spritzed on the matching scent.

  Which is why you’re using that outrageously expensive perfume, a little voice in the back of her head piped up. Which, until the wedding, had been sitting on the counter for the past six months.

  It had been a Christmas gift from her father, who, like her mother, tended toward excess. A trait that appeared to have escaped her. The fact that the name was written on the label in real gold leaf had been enough to make her put it aside, waiting for a special oc
casion.

  Not that this was a special occasion.

  After all, if she didn’t use it, it would dry up. Or evaporate. She was only being frugal.

  Okay. That was a lie. The truth was, like it or not, this was a date. She couldn’t try to insist that it was about placing another homeless dog. She had, after all, managed to find homes for dozens of animals since coming to Shelter Bay and none of those cases had involved dinner. Well, except for a few meals at the Douchetts’ home, but that had evolved much more into friendship than business.

  Still, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t gone on plenty of dates over the years. Doing some quick math, she realized she’d been dating for seventeen years. Well, technically fifteen, taking into account her recent two years’ moratorium. But that still worked out to more years of going on dates than she’d been alive when she first went to the Spring Fling dance with Charlie McMann her junior year of high school.

  So why was she even more nervous now than she’d been back then?

  Maybe because she was out of practice?

  Or more likely because Charlie, who was currently a pharmacist in Reno, was no Gabriel St. James. Charlie had been sweet, shy, and absolutely harmless.

  Again, unlike the Marine, who was due to arrive in less than an hour. She suspected, given his years in the military, he’d be punctual.

  She was already running late, thanks to the insanity that had ended her day: a case with a cat she’d diagnosed with diabetes, which required explaining to the upset owner how to inject the prescribed insulin; a routine dental exam on a cat that had ended up in surgery for two extractions; a Lab that had been shedding too much even for summer, and that she’d diagnosed with heartworm, contracted because the owner, a laid-off mill worker, hadn’t been able to afford to buy the preventative medicine; and yet another unexpected surgery to remove a Hot Wheels fire truck from a Dalmatian’s stomach. Since the surgery wasn’t life threatening, she’d allowed herself to laugh with the owner once the metal truck had been retrieved.

  Just thinking of the irony now took a bit of the edge off.

  She was smiling when her mother appeared in the doorway. “You’re not going to pull your hair back like that, are you?” Amanda asked with obvious disapproval.

  “It can be breezy at the harbor.” She fastened it at the nape of her neck with a silver clip.

  “Loose is sexier.”

  “Then I’m on the right track. Because I’m not going for sexy.”

  “Well, isn’t that the waste of a date?”

  “I fail to see how having strands of hair stuck to my lipstick could be considered sexy.”

  “You have a point.” Her mother fluffed her own perfectly coiffed hair that always made her look as if she’d just walked out of a chichi salon. “Though that would call attention to your mouth.”

  “I don’t want to call attention to my mouth. I don’t want to call attention to any part of my body. In fact, I’d just as soon stay home.”

  “Too late,” her mother said as the doorbell rang downstairs with a peal of chimes. “I’ll go let him in.”

  Damn. She might be out of practice when it came to dating, but Gabriel St. James was even worse than she. What was he doing arriving thirty minutes early?

  She threw on her new outfit, quickly slipped into the sandals, and was on her way down the stairs when she met her mother, who was on her way back up.

  “It’s not him,” Amanda said. “There’s a woman waiting in the foyer. With what I’m guessing, from her expression and red-rimmed eyes, is a serious problem.”

  Charity had learned early on in her career that most vets, especially ones in small towns that didn’t have an after-hours emergency clinic, were on call twenty-four hours a day. Another important reason to love the work, she thought as she walked into the clinic.

  Sofia De Luca was sitting on the love seat in the foyer, Rosemary lying at her feet. Sofia’s face was blotchy and her eyes were, indeed, red-rimmed. Although the dog obviously lacked strength, Rosemary managed a welcoming thump of her tail. A young man Charity recognized as one of Sofia’s gardeners was standing by the door, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else.

  “It’s time,” the older woman said, pushing herself to her feet. “Rosemary told me.”

  To anyone who’d not grown so close to a beloved animal, that statement might have sounded foolish. But Charity had witnessed this situation too many times to not totally believe it.

  She placed a hand on Sofia’s arm. “I’m so sorry. But if it’s any consolation, I believe you’re doing the right thing.”

  It was always hard to euthanize any pet. But Rosemary had a dreadful long-term prognosis. Perhaps, by increasing the medications and with constant care, they’d be able to eke out a few more weeks. But her suffering, as well as such a long good-bye, would be painful not only for the dog but for its owner.

  “Well, it’s not as if we didn’t all know it was coming.” Sofia sighed wearily and for the first time since Charity had met the herb-farm owner, she looked every bit of her seventy-plus years. “And she’s been trying like the dickens to stay with me, but I realized this afternoon, when she could barely lift her head, that she was ready to let go.” She glanced over at the silent young man. “Fortunately, Benny was working late, transplanting some lavender, and offered to carry her to the car. Then into here.”

  Charity offered him a slight smile. “Thank you.”

  “I was glad to do it.” Red flooded into his already ruddy cheeks as he apparently realized how that might sound. “I mean, I’m not glad about Rosemary dying. That’s really a bummer. But I’m glad I was there to help.”

  “We know, dear,” Sofia said soothingly. She managed a wobbly, encouraging smile of her own toward the young man.

  “You didn’t have to come into town.” Charity had assured Sofia that when the time came, she’d be willing to make a house call.

  “We wanted to.” The smile faltered as she bent down and rubbed Rosemary’s ears. “Rosemary does so love to ride in the truck, I thought she’d enjoy one more spin around the harbor. She perked up a bit at the sound of the gulls.” Her voice cracked a bit on that part. “She’s always enjoyed chasing them. I picked her up a crab cake at the Crab Shack, which is another of her favorite treats. She managed a little bite, but I suspect that was partly to please me.”

  “She’s always loved you.”

  “She was my husband’s dog,” the older woman said. “I didn’t really want another after our beloved cocker, Peggy, passed on. But Joe convinced me that the house was too quiet with just the two of us.” She rubbed an age-spotted hand over the top of the dog’s head. “He was right. Rosemary brought so much joy and energy back into our lives, I don’t know what I would have done without her when he got the cancer.”

  She sighed. “And then it caught her, too.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re not the only one.” She drew in a deep breath. Squared shoulders clad in a denim shirt. Her eyes, shiny with unshed tears, met Charity’s. “We’d best get on with it.”

  Charity led the trio out to the contemplative garden, then instructed Benny to lay Rosemary onto the lawn, which still carried the sweet scent from this morning’s mowing. When Sofia sat down beside her, the dog put her head into the woman’s lap.

  “I’ll be back in a couple minutes,” she said, wanting to give Sofia and her beloved companion one last private moment to say good-bye.

  Benny, who followed her back into the clinic, was more than happy to wait while Charity performed what was always the most difficult part of her profession.

  The dog’s death was swift, peaceful, and merciful, and although Charity knew it may have been merely a trick of the light, she thought she viewed the life leave Rosemary’s eyes an instant before she administered the injection.

  “She’s already somewhere else,” Sofia said with what sounded like relief, despite the grief lining her face. Charity had seen such conflicted emotions too many times.


  “Eating crab cakes,” Charity said.

  “And terrorizing gulls.” Sofia chuckled even as the tears began to flow.

  The prearranged plan was to leave the dog’s remains with Charity, who’d arrange for cremation, then bring the ashes in the simple wooden urn back to the farm. Charity gave the woman a hug.

  “Stay as long as you need,” she said.

  “Thank you.” The elderly woman’s words caught a bit on the lump in her throat.

  Charity went back inside and waited.

  After she’d come inside and thanked Charity, then said good-bye, Benny walked her out to the truck, then returned to carry the dog into the room where Charity would finish the job. Although she could have taken care of that herself, she understood it was something he wanted to do for his employer. And friend.

  Standing on the porch, Charity watched the two of them drive away.

  What Sofia didn’t know was that Charity always took a clay paw-print cast of each animal she euthanized. In this case, there’d be a memory of Rosemary in the garden of Lavender Hill Farm, where she’d walked with Sofia for so many years.

  The dog had lost a great deal of weight in the past weeks. Enough that Charity was able to lift its body in the freezer, where it would stay until the crematorium employee picked it up tomorrow.

  Feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders, even knowing they’d done the right thing, she scrubbed up, then went into the kennel, where she found Winnie nursing her pups, who were happily suckling away.

  “We’ll give it a few days,” she said, patting the bulldog’s broad head. “Maybe a few weeks. Then I’ll take you out to the farm to visit and see how you two get along on your first date.”

  Damn, she’d totally forgotten about her date with the Marine. Looking down at the grass stains on her new white jeans from sitting on the lawn with Sofia and Rosemary, she realized she’d have to change clothes.

  “Maybe it’s a sign,” she muttered as she crossed the foyer, headed toward the stairs to go back up to her apartment. “That this damn date wasn’t meant to be.”