by Elaine Fox
Sutter was sitting on the front stoop, absorbing as much sunlight as he could before the ceaseless thoughts of work drove him back to his computer, when a black Jaguar, much like his own, pulled up in front of his house.
Kristen Montgomery, his assistant VP who preferred to be called by her last name alone, would get out and he had no doubt she would be trussed up neatly in a suit, either beige or gray. Occasionally it was blue, but that seemed to be for important meetings and such. He used to think she’d surprise him one weekend—for she showed up every weekend with some work-related issue—and have a special pink or purple suit to denote the off-hours, but she never had.
She did not disappoint today. Gray.
Sutter watched her close her car door, hit the remote locks, and clip-clop in her low heels up the front walk. She was so absorbed in getting her suit straight and her briefcase situated that she didn’t notice him until she was practically on top of him. She gave a short squeal and stopped abruptly.
Perversely, her surprise pleased him. She was so tightly wound that any break in the businesslike façade was a welcome change. Even her hair never moved, cut into a short severe style that could not be reshaped if she’d wanted to do it. She was somewhere in her thirties, he happened to know, but by her looks could easily have been a well-preserved fifty or an overdressed minor.
“Hello, Montgomery,” he said, leaning back against a porch column and looking up at her with eyes that felt puffy with fatigue.
“Sutter,” she said, “what are you doing out here?”
She was used to seeing him in his weekend attire of jeans and natty shirt. Why did she never take the hint?
“Readjusting my circadian rhythms.” He tilted his face toward the sun.
“I see.” She stood stiffly before him. “I needed to talk to you about the accounting system package. Myers has totally screwed up the product overview and I wanted your input so I can set him straight first thing tomorrow morning.”
“You have a meeting with him first thing tomorrow?” Sutter asked, mentally comparing Montgomery’s tight form and stern demeanor with the jean-clad softness of his earlier visitor. The vet’s face was pretty, yes, and her worn jeans had fit her with admirable precision, but there was something else, a glow of some sort that made her seem ready to smile at any instant. It had been…nice.
“A breakfast meeting, before work. Don’t worry, it won’t cut into regular time.” She nodded once, curtly. She’d have saluted, he was sure, if it had been remotely appropriate.
Sutter blinked slowly, feeling fatigue wash over him. Maybe he should have Montgomery call him every night before bedtime; something about her seemed to wear him out.
“You do know he has a newborn, don’t you? I imagine it’s something of a hardship for him to schedule an early meeting.”
“On the contrary.” She shifted, her shoes obviously uncomfortable the longer she stood. “He said he never sleeps anymore, so being up early should be quite easy for him.”
This reasoning struck him as so funny he laughed, causing a look of consternation to cross her face. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I laughed, Montgomery. There’s nothing wrong.” Had he done this? Had he created this rigid imperative around himself? He feared he had. He motioned toward the stoop next to him. “Have a seat.”
She looked toward the step as reluctantly as if he’d asked her to lie in the bushes. But after a minute, when he did not elaborate, she clopped forward, turned, and folded herself down next to him.
“It’s quite a nice day, isn’t it?” he said, attempting a pleasantry to offset his irritation. A low breeze kicked up and rustled the leaves in the trees, carrying away an overhead cloud. Sutter looked up into the clear blue sky. The air felt good, the sun warm on his cheeks. Why did he never do anything outside anymore? How long had it been since he’d noticed the sky?
“Still not sleeping?” Montgomery’s voice exuded disapproval.
He sighed. “Not with my eyes closed.”
“You should call a doctor. They have drugs that can help you sleep.”
“I don’t need a doctor. All they’ll do is give me some narcotic I can certainly do without.”
“Yes, you’re obviously handling this quite well yourself.”
He shifted his eyes sideways and looked at her, surprised at the remark. She was positioned just as she’d been when she was standing, back straight, briefcase under one arm, head erect, except her legs were bent demurely together as she sat.
“Have you got a boyfriend, Montgomery?” he asked.
Her dark eyes, lined with an obvious but professional level of makeup, darted toward him. “No, sir, I don’t. What’s gotten into you? You haven’t gotten another email from your ex-wife, have you?”
Sutter straightened involuntarily. “No. Why do you ask?”
“Because you always get sleepless and preoccupied with odd things when you have.”
“Do I?” He thought back, but could find no reason for this conjecture.
“Listen, sir, I’ve got something else to talk to you about too. And you’re not going to like it.” She paused, looking at him with obvious misgiving.
He raised his brows. “All right, then. Spill it.”
“Not here.” She looked around them as if the very bushes might be inhabited by spies, here to hear what she had to say.
Sutter looked around too. Nobody was near. Hell, apart from a sunbathing college student a block down on the green there was nobody out.
“The trees aren’t bugged, Montgomery, tell me what you’ve got.”
She sighed. “Can’t we just go inside?”
“I’m afraid we can’t. There’s a savage beast in there that I am not sufficiently rested to deal with.”
She looked at him, blandly unamused.
“Charlie’s dog. It’s a bloody terror,” he elaborated.
“Where’s Charlie?” she asked.
“Gone. Sacked. Shown the door. Escorted from the premises.”
She began to nod, an oddly smug smile tugging at her lips. “So you know.”
“About the interview? Yes. I saw it.”
She shook her head. “Such disloyalty, it’s disgusting. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m glad you already knew. I hated to be the one to break it to you.”
She may have hated to but she looked strangely disappointed not to have been able to. “Berkley ‘broke it’ to me last night and I was furious. Didn’t handle the firing too well either, I’m afraid. Maybe that’s why he left the dog, as payback.”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked. “Is it vicious?”
“If you’re a squirrel.” He laughed dryly. “No, it’s just a puppy. An untrained one.”
“What on earth are you going to do with it?” She looked horrified at the prospect of having to deal with such a thing.
Sutter thought about the vet—what was her name? Rose…? How disappointed she’d looked when she’d told him to take it to the pound himself.
Then she’d made that ridiculous conjecture that the universe was trying to tell him something. He chuckled.
Montgomery looked at him sharply. “What is it?”
“Nothing, I just…thought for a moment about keeping the damn thing.”
She looked scandalized. “The dog?”
He lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Silly idea.”
“Have you any idea what your life would be like with a dog? You have to walk it and feed it and make sure it goes outside. They need to go outside all the time.”
“Yes, I understand it’s not a piece of furniture,” he said.
“And the vet bills! You have no idea how much that could cost.”
He slid her a look. “Money’s not exactly an issue, Montgomery.”
“Yes, but the time.” She exhaled the word time as if the very thought of it was exhausting. “You’d probably have to hire someone to take care of it. You can’t be taking time off work just to walk the dog or take
it to the vet. And some of them you have to take to the vet all the time, Sutter.”
“Really?” He thought about that, about having to go see the veterinarian who’d been on his porch this morning all the time. She was so…refreshing.
“God, yes. My mother has a cat with diabetes and that thing is always having to go in for checkups and blood work and insulin shots. It’s a nightmare. She says she spends more time with Dr. Prichard than she does with my father.”
Sutter looked at her, a half smile on his face. “Does she?” he asked, picturing it for himself. “How intriguing.”
After a second, Sutter stretched his legs and looked out over the grass. The urge to lie down in it was powerful. Clearly he was going to have to get some kind of sleep aid, but he was damn sure not going to any doctor. If he did, the next thing he knew it would be splashed all over the tabloids that he had the clap or something. For some reason, ever since his divorce a few years ago he’d become fodder for every gossip sheet around.
No, maybe after Montgomery left he’d go to the pharmacy himself and get something. Venture even farther outside of his sphere.
Monday morning Megan got dressed for the day in her “uniform” of khaki chinos and pink polo shirt with the words “Rose’s Animal Hospital” embroidered where the breast pocket might have been. She’d ordered shirts for all the staff in an effort to counteract any impression her father’s wrinkled, ill-fitting shirts and shapeless pants might have left on clients before he retired, but she hadn’t counted on the pink (a color she’d imagined as being closer to rose) being quite so electric.
Still, the fact that they were all wearing the same thing created a feeling of organization, she thought, and organization made people look competent. Not that her father hadn’t been a competent vet. He had been. It was just that as he got older—and his evenings got later and his beer steins got deeper—his actual ability to deal with reality got weaker and he was as likely to ask a client for a loan as what the problem was with his pet.
This had driven most of the better-heeled clients away. At least, those who weren’t already offended by his indiscriminate flirting and afternoon beer breath. The ones who were left were usually too poor to pay for their visits—or claimed to be—causing her father, who was actually quite soft-hearted when it came to animals, to neglect to charge them.
Megan had been aware that the books were a mess and the hospital a failing enterprise, financially, but she hadn’t quite realized why. She’d thought maybe they were charging too little, spending too much, or running inefficiently. But in the short week since she’d been a full-time resident of Fredericksburg, her father’s social reputation had revealed itself to be behind many of the animal hospital’s problems. In short, he was a tiresome philandering drunk around whom people did not generally want to be.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, that’s the reason her mother had left him—or he’d left her, it was never entirely clear—all those many years ago. In fact, Megan had grown up associating the smell of stale beer and cheap perfume with her father, whom she’d barely seen after the age of nine when she and her mother had moved to Connecticut.
Now, she had chosen to revisit that part of her past and here she was. A vet, just like dear old dad, taking over the business he had begun twenty-odd years ago.
For his part, her father seemed glad to have her here, cleaning up the house and taking over the animal hospital. But whether that was solely because he was now getting dinner every night and somebody else was worrying about the hospital’s accounts payable Megan wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter, really. The fact that she was here was her decision, not his. She was just glad he hadn’t told her he wasn’t interested in her taking over when he retired.
Still, it had been a bit of a surprise to find her father was so little respected in this town where he’d lived for so long. She’d even heard the receptionists joking about him one day, about how the bruises on their asses were nearly gone without “old Doc” there to pinch them and how they kind of missed discovering all the places a bumper of beer could be hidden—in the cooler with the blood samples, under a blanket in an unused cat crate, inside a carton of heartworm medicine in the storeroom. They even lamented the fact that their boyfriends now had to content themselves with being jealous of whistling construction workers and the like.
She just shook her head. It had nothing to do with her. She was completely independent from her father, so much so she felt as if she were living with a stranger. Watching a movie about a character the director had not quite made her care about yet.
Well, she cared, she thought. She just didn’t feel connected.
Megan slipped her watch on, checked that she’d tucked her shirt in smoothly in the full-length mirror behind her bedroom door and headed back toward the stairs, her footsteps hollow on the uncarpeted hallway of the old Victorian’s second floor. As she passed her father’s bedroom door she paused, just until she heard him snoring, then descended the steps, grabbed her purse from the hall table and Peyton’s leash from the new hook on the wall.
“Come on, Peyton, we’re going to the dog park. You remember the dog park, don’t you?”
Peyton scrambled up from the spot she’d been lying in, then sat, as she’d been trained to do, in front of Megan while she snapped on her leash. As usual, the dog’s eyes beamed up at Megan in apparent comprehension of everything she said, her tail sweeping slowly in good-natured response.
The dog park was about four city blocks away, on the corner of Kenmore and William streets, and Megan had vowed to go every work day, if only to advertise the hospital and the fact that there was new management and a new vet. That it was exercise for Peyton and a joy for Megan to watch the antics of the other dogs was an added benefit.
She arrived today to find the place teeming with dogs and their humans. The perfect June weather had brought them all out and Megan breathed deeply of the warm, grass-scented air. There was something about the Virginia soil that smelled dense and fertile when the sun shone after a rain, making her think of secret garden paths and honeysuckled trellises, illicit assignations under a moonlit sky. She pictured Sutter Foley for a second, but quickly banished the thought, as she did all thoughts of him since yesterday, as the ridiculous ramblings of a sex-starved mind.
She unsnapped Peyton’s leash and watched her lope across the grass toward a pack of dogs alternately sniffing each other and examining a Frisbee that seemed to be stuck in the mud.
A light breeze rustled the greening leaves in the trees and caressed her bare arms with its round balmy touch. Megan inhaled again, tilting her face to the sun.
“Excuse me,” a voice to her left said, in a southern accent so strong it sounded like “ex-key-use may.”
Megan turned to see a woman of indeterminate age (thirty-five? forty-five? it was hard to tell) approaching, wearing a white sweater appliquéd with dog heads. Her fluffy blond hair blew in the breeze, revealing a perfectly made-up face and large, startlingly direct blue eyes. Megan wasn’t sure, but she might have been wearing false eyelashes.
“Is that a Bernese mountain dog?” the woman asked, gesturing toward Peyton.
Megan smiled. She, like every dog owner, loved talking about her dog. “That’s right. You’re one of the few people who recognize the breed. Most people think she’s a Saint Bernard and rottweiler mix. Or border collie and something.”
“Oh, I recognize the breed all right. Dogs are my life,” she said without the trace of a smile. She held her hand out to shake. “My name’s Georgia Darling. That’s my Great Dane over there, Sage.”
Megan shook her hand and glanced over toward the fence, where a giant steel-blue Great Dane was standing like a muscular sentry carved out of marble.
“Oh my,” she said, taken aback by the dog’s size and beauty. He was one of the largest and most perfectly formed Great Danes she’d ever seen, and she’d seen her share. They—along with all the giant breeds—were not the healthiest dogs on the
planet.
“Isn’t he magnificent?” Georgia looked appreciatively at him herself. “A champion, of course. One of the most sought-after studs on the East Coast.”
“Just the East Coast?” Megan angled her head for a better look and frowned. “But…”
Georgia chuckled. “That’s right. He’s neutered. Just too damn big to let testosterone run free, but I’ve got his sperm on ice at the bank, and believe me, honey, it’s in demand.” De-may-and, it sounded like.
Megan smiled. She loved a strong accent, particularly southern, though the British accent she’d heard yesterday had been every bit as enticing as scones and clotted cream.
Megan tore her gaze from the dog—and her mind from the man—and turned back to Georgia. “I’m sorry, I never introduced myself. I’m Megan Rose. I’m the new vet at Rose’s Animal Hospital.”
“Nice to meet you, Megan.” Georgia’s eyes flicked from her face to the embroidery on her shirt and back. “Rose, huh? Any relation?” She started to laugh.
Megan smiled back, unsure what the joke was and afraid it was her father. “Actually, yes. I’m Dr. Rose’s daughter.”
Georgia’s smile faded. “Oh.” Her perfectly plucked brows rose. “Well, bless your heart. I wasn’t aware Doc Rose even had a daughter.”
“My parents split when I was nine. I grew up in Connecticut, where I’ve been living until I moved here a week ago.” Megan’s eyes moved toward the group Peyton was in, which was now chasing a small beagle in ever-widening circles. A boy of about twelve stood in the middle watching them go round and round. His sneakers created a twist of grass and mud beneath his feet as he turned.
“Well, welcome to town. Funny, I can’t recall Doc even mentioning an ex-wife,” Georgia said, then shrugged. “Isn’t that just like a man.”
“I suppose so. Are there always this many people here so early in the morning?” Megan asked. She didn’t want to start dissecting her father with everyone she met.
“No, I think it’s the warm weather. We’ve had a pretty cold, wet spring,” Georgia said. Megan could feel the other woman’s eyes still on her. “Anybody ever tell you you look like Ashley Judd?”
