Seven Reasons Why

by Neesa Hart

Zack squelched an irritated sigh. Evidently, nothing he was going to say would convince the woman he wasn’t some kind of damned invalid. He didn’t like the thought of August Trent thinking he wasn’t perfectly capable—of anything. “I assure you, your boys pose no threat to my continued recovery.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You obviously haven’t tried to get them all ready for church on Sunday morning.”

  Zack recognized the quip as an olive branch. He set aside his unreasonably bad temper and accepted it. “I can imagine.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “Anyway, I really hope they didn’t disturb you. I was preoccupied with Odelia, and they seized the moment.”

  “It’s what boys do. I used to be one. I remember.”

  “Yeah, well, boys can also wear you out.”

  “So can goats.”

  “All kinds,” she said, not missing his veiled reference to Odelia Keegan. Tucking a burnished curl behind her ear, she cast a glance in May Belle’s direction. “Some are just more stubborn than others.” She thrust her hands into the side pockets of her overalls.

  Close enough now to look his fill, he indulged the urge he’d been fighting for weeks. As he’d suspected, the baggy fit of her overalls did little to disguise the generous curves underneath. A little too much of everything to be strictly fashionable, it was true, but then, he’d always liked curves, and all the benefits that went with them. His eyes lingered for the barest of seconds on the full curve of her breasts, just visible beneath the front placket of her overalls and the worn fabric of her T-shirt. Belatedly he noticed that a tense silence had fallen between them, as if they’d progressed past the acceptable small talk, and both of them were weighing the ramifications of continuing the conversation. “I think—” he began at the same time she said “Would you—”

  Zack smiled the same smile that had reportedly charmed every judge in New York City. “Ladies first.”

  “Well, I have to get dinner ready, but I just wanted to thank you for putting up with my boys. Mr. Riley probably didn’t warn you that you were taking up residence next to the Little Rascals when he lent you the house for the summer.

  “He might have mentioned something about it.”

  “All the same, I’m certain he didn’t tell you that you wouldn’t get a day’s peace while you were here. I appreciate your patience.”

  “They really haven’t bothered me, Ms. Trent.”

  Her eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Not even the afternoon they tried to hook Boris and Karloff—” she jerked her head in the direction of the two dogs “—up to the wheelbarrow so they could use it for a wagon?”

  “Well,” he conceded, “I’ll confess Five noticed them a time or two.” And you, he mentally added. I’ve noticed you.

  “Is that so?” she asked.

  “The wheelbarrow incident was the worst.”

  “So far.”

  “So far,” he agreed.

  “Still, we have enough trouble with Odelia Keegan without having to deal with complaints from the neighbors.”

  He gave her a speculative look, and wondered if he simply imagined the way her flush heightened. “From what I’ve seen so far, I have no complaints.”

  He could tell from her slightly flustered expression that she didn’t miss his meaning.

  Chapter Two

  With a wary eye, August watched Fletcher Harrison unload twelve more goats into the pen behind her house. Admittedly, her mind wasn’t on the goats that morning. As it had been all night, her thoughts were on the man beyond the fence. To her immense discomfort, she’d been unable to forget the teasing look in his eyes when he wished her goodbye at the fence; nor had she managed to banish the image of dark hair and a silver gaze that made her shiver. She’d dreamed of pirates last night. Pirates who had the same dark, dangerous, determined look she’d seen in Zack Adriano’s gaze.

  Despite her best efforts, she’d been unable to put him from her mind, and try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself that she merely wanted to know what had passed between him and the boys.

  Pulling her thoughts back to Fletcher’s goats, she watched as he secured the pen. “I’m sorry about this, Fletcher. I wish we could have caught it sooner.”

  He shrugged. “Nothing you could have done, August.” Slapping his soiled work gloves against his trousers leg, he gave her a lopsided grin. “I reckon you hadn’t planned on a penful.”

  “It’s all right. It’ll be easier to make sure they all get injections this way.”

  “Do you need me to stay and help?” he asked.

  August thought it over. Injecting the goats wasn’t going to be an easy task, and she could use the extra set of hands, but she knew Fletcher wanted to get back to his farm and, more importantly, that he didn’t want Odelia Keegan to see him on her property. She gave him a slight smile. “Don’t worry about it, Fletch. I can handle it.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. If I run into any problems, I'll call you.”

  With a grateful smile, he clambered back into his truck. “All right, August. Thanks for doing this.”

  “That’s why I get paid the big bucks, Fletcher.”

  He drove away, leaving her to contemplate the thirteen bleating goats. At least, she thought, Mrs. Prentiss had taken the boys to the park for the morning. She didn’t have to watch them, too. A glance at her watch confirmed that she had five hours before she had to be at the courthouse for a council meeting. That should just give her enough time to do one round of injections before cleaning herself up so that she’d look more like a mayor and less like a goat.

  She was in the process of laying out syringes and medicine vials when she sensed the presence behind her. With a start, she turned to find Zack towering over her. “Oh.” She blinked several times, feeling more than a little off balance, and not liking it one bit. “You startled me.”

  “Sorry. I was curious.”

  His voice had the same velvet quality she remembered from the previous afternoon. It caused the same goose bumps to spread over her flesh, too. August gave him a skeptical look. “About the goats?” she asked, not believing for a minute that he was the least bit interested in the symptoms, or treatment, of goat pneumonia.

  “Among other things.”

  The drawl made her stomach flutter. She wasn’t precisely sure what Zack Adriano was after, but a strong sense of self-preservation prodded her toward caution. Still, when he leaned on the edge of the pen, she couldn’t help noticing the way worn blue jeans hugged lean hips and his blue shirt accented broad shoulders and a narrow waist. His bronzed skin seemed especially appealing where it disappeared into the open collar of his shirt. “What’s wrong with them?” he asked.

  “They’ve got pneumonia.” She turned her attention back to the vials. “May Belle got it first, and I had hoped to isolate the spread by bringing her here.”

  “Didn’t work?” he asked.

  “Nope. Fletcher lost two more goats this week. He doesn’t have the space to separate the sick goats from the healthy goats.” She pulled on a pair of latex gloves, then prepared the first syringe. “So he brought ’em here.”

  “Do you have room for them?”

  No, she thought. She didn’t have room for thirteen goats, and she certainly didn’t have room for Zack Adriano. “No, but I didn’t have much choice.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” he asked, and she wondered if they were still talking about the goats.

  Holding the syringe, she turned to face him. “I’m going to give them a buttful of antibiotics, and hope they’ll soon be ready to go back where they belong.”

  He studied her for a minute in the bright sunlight. “What will you do if they aren’t?”

  Panic. “Make do one day at a time and see where it gets me.”

  Zack’s smile was slow in coming, and perfect when it arrived. His teeth flashed white against the strong, tanned planes of his face. With a smile like that, she knew exactly why he’d developed a reputation for a
lethal charm that should be registered as a dangerous weapon. The man had enough sophisticated charisma to lube a chassis. Worse, he was easy to like. A lethal combination, August decided. He studied her with a knowing look in his eyes that sent shivers to her toes. He knew exactly what she was thinking, and was enjoying the hell out of it. “Need any help?” he asked her.

  She needed help, all right. She needed to be committed, that was what she needed. When she didn’t answer, he glanced at the goats, “Giving them their shots, I mean?”

  Something in the teasing note in his voice grated her. She might not have his sophistication, but she had ten times his common sense. She’d seen him watching her across the fence, felt the lazy way he observed her from the safe distance of Jansen Riley’s house. For two weeks, he’d kept her off balance. August couldn’t resist the opportunity to turn the tables. She figured Zack knew as much about goats as she knew about New York lawyers. It seemed like a fair trade. “Sure,” she told him. “If you’ll hold their heads, I’ll inject them.”

  Two hours later, she reluctantly admitted to herself that he’d fared better than she’d thought. The mess hadn’t seemed to faze him, despite the fact that his hundred-dollar running shoes were now ruined. To her surprise, he even managed to maintain a sense of humor while the goats howled, and coughed, and ran, and scuttled about the pen, making the job as difficult as possible. He held each one while she injected the medication, and didn’t even complain when May Belle kicked him in the rear in retaliation for the mistreatment.

  With his help, a five-hour job was cut in half, and despite herself, August found she enjoyed his company. A little more than she should have, maybe, but enjoyed it all the same. When the last goat had been treated, Zack secured the latch on the pen, then dropped down to rest his back against the outside of the chain fence. August watched him with an amused smile as she stripped off the latex gloves and secured her equipment in her black bag. “So,” she asked him, “still curious about goats?”

  He propped his forearms on his bent knees. “I think I’ve seen enough for a while. Don’t ever let anybody convince you that what you do isn’t hard work”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him with a smile. “People don’t usually try.”

  “I should hope not. What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?”

  “Done it myself,” she said. “It would have taken longer, but I’ve done it before.”

  “Can’t you get an assistant? Surely some young animal lover would agree to be your goatherder.”

  She shrugged, snapped her satchel shut, then sat down beside him. “It’s tough to get employees in this town when you’re on the wrong side of Odelia Keegan.”

  His eyebrows lifted slightly. “But you’re the mayor. You got elected, didn’t you?”

  “It’s a lot easier for people to cast a secret ballot than make a public stand. Odelia hasn’t made any secret of the fact that she wants me and the boys out of Keegan’s Bend.”

  “Do you know why?” he asked.

  A warning sounded in her mind at the innocent question. She couldn’t quite shake the suspicion that Zack wanted to know far more than he was asking. “Not really,” she added, hedging.

  “But you have a theory?”

  She didn’t like being interrogated, not even by a man who’d helped her inject a herd of goats. “They’re just suspicions, and nothing that I want to talk about.”

  He took the none-too-subtle hint with easy grace. “I’m glad I could be here to help. I hope you’ll let me help again.”

  She gave his sneakers an amused look. “You sure about that?”

  With a slight laugh, he waved one foot in the air. “There are worse fates than ruined shoes.”

  “You keep thinking like that, and I’ll let you tag along when I check on Jack Foltz’s turkeys.”

  “Turkeys? Do I want to know?”

  “Probably not. They have infectious sinusitis.”

  With a slight groan, Zack dropped his head back against the fence. “Is that as fowl as it sounds?”

  August laughed. “Absolutely.”

  “Look at me, I spend two hours with your goats, and I’m reduced to cracking bad puns about disgusting animal diseases.”

  “Just think what you could do with swine flu.”

  “No thank you.”

  A companionable silence fell between them, and August allowed herself to enjoy the rare pleasure of adult companionship. Since she came to Keegan’s Bend, since the day she took on Odelia in defense of her boys, she’d made the decision to more or less isolate herself.

  Odelia wanted control of Keegan’s Bend—she’d never even tried to disguise the fact. August suspected it had something to do with the automobile company executives who were trying to locate a manufacturing facility near the small community. As the area’s biggest landholder, Odelia stood to make a fortune if the plant gained approval in the state legislature. But the old woman’s dislike seemed to run deeper than greed. For two years, August had wondered just what Odelia Keegan found so distasteful about her houseful of boys, but she’d long since given up on worrying about it.

  It got lonely, though, being the enemy of the town matriarch. August had friends, of course, but all of them had made the decision to befriend August Trent to spite Odelia Keegan. She found it difficult to trust friends like that. Zack Adriano had come to her on his own terms, owing nothing to Odelia and, as far as August knew, wanting nothing from her, either. She felt an unfamiliar surge of gratitude as she contemplated the handsome man next to her. He’d closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun, affording August an ample view of his strong profile. She remembered her earlier thoughts, when she’d compared him to a pirate. In the early-morning light, the analogy seemed even more fitting. And she could definitely get used to looking at a face like that. “Zack,” she said, figuring she’d better have out with it before she lost her nerve.

  “Hmmmmm?” He sounded sleepy.

  “I…” She paused. “Well, I’ve got to get ready for a council meeting this afternoon, but I just wondered if you were doing okay over there by yourself.” He turned to look at her, so she indicated the large house with a brief wave of her hand. “I don’t know what kind of condition the last tenants left the place in, but it can’t have been very clean. Every time the boys play over there, they look like they’re returning from trench warfare.”

  “It’s livable,” he said. “George Pruitt has been taking care of it for Jansen.”

  “Is it lonely over there?” Even as she asked it, she wondered at the question. Nearly the same size as her own, the house seemed a quiet sanctuary in comparison. Still, she got lonely, even with four boys in the house and the usual accompaniment of Jeff, Sam and Josh. She wondered if he welcomed the change of pace after the life he’d led in New York.

  “A little. I’ve slept a lot since I got here. Doctor’s orders.”

  “I can understand that, although, professionally speaking, I’m not sure that’s the best possible advice.”

  “I’m not sure I want professional advice from a woman who treats infectious sinusitis in turkeys,” he quipped.

  “People are animals, too.”

  He slanted her a dry look. “Men especially?”

  “Men especially. And I think the best thing for you is some careful exercise, a good diet, and as little stress as possible. It takes the body a long time to recover from something as traumatic as a gunshot wound.”

  “I’m doing all right on the exercise,” he said. “I walk every morning.”

  She knew that much, she’d watched more than once as he limped down the long street. His gait seemed to be improving as he continued to work the muscles. “What about the diet?”

  “I don’t suppose peanut butter and jelly are what the doctor ordered?”

  She winced. “Probably not.”

  “I don’t cook,” he admitted. “When you live in New York, you don’t have to. You can send out for anything you can imagine. I guess maybe
I could branch out into frozen pizza or something.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Too much fat. Not only is it a nutritional nightmare, but you’ll probably die from a heart attack.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely.”

  He leaned closer, and she caught the scent of his musky cologne. “What do you normally do for your patients?”

  August inhaled deeply. The clean, masculine scent of him was doing unexpectedly pleasant things to her insides. “A little cod-liver oil added to their feed usually fixes them right up. Gets the arteries unclogged. For an injury like yours, I’d generally rub them down two or three times a day.”

  At the mention of a rubdown, Zack gave her a look that threatened to melt her toenails. “Damn. I just ran out of cod-liver oil this morning.”

  August cleared her throat. “I’ll tell you what. In exchange for helping with the goats, I’ll make you a deal.”

  “Does it involve a rubdown?”

  She had to fight the urge to blush. “Sorry. Horses and cows only.”

  “So what’s in it for me?”

  “Well, Saturday is the Fourth of July. We have an annual fair here in Keegan’s Bend.”

  “How small-town,” he quipped. “When you live in New York, you miss things like that.”

  “Everyone goes. It’ll give you a good chance to meet some people. If you think you can stand the noise, I’ll let you join the boys and me for the day.”

  “Are you serving cod-liver oil?”

  She shook her head. “Fried chicken. House specialty. The boys will probably even throw in a food fight, just for the fun of it.”

  “Is the rubdown included?”

  “Depends on how you act during the fireworks.” Even as she said the words, she felt a little feminine thrill trip down her spine. Dear Lord, how long had it been since she felt free to sit and flirt with a man? It felt good, right.

  His smile was slow and sexy, and made her insides quiver. “I’m very good at fireworks.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “How could a guy resist an offer like that?”

  “If you’d ever had lunch with my kids, you’d know it’s not exactly a generous invitation. I control ’em as best I can—” she shrugged “—but they are a mob of boys, after all.”