by Jill Shalvis
“I can see what you’re thinking, and stop it. Stop it right now. It’s not true, any of it.” Rose kneeled before Melissa and took her hands in her own two frozen ones. Pale, eyes suspiciously damp, she squeezed until Melissa looked at her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, not now, not twenty-eight years ago, and not in any of the time in between.”
“Let’s stick with the now.”
“Okay.” Rose pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, wait. Not okay.” She took a deep breath. “I was eighteen when you were born. Old enough, yes, but—”
“Rose—”
“You’re going to hear this, Melissa. I’m sorry, but you have to.”
“No, I don’t. I—”
“I was in an abusive relationship.”
Mel let out a breath and stared at Rose as conflicting emotions swamped her. Fear for Rose, empathy…compassion. “My…father?”
“Yes. I was afraid for you,” her mother said quietly. “So afraid. My parents…they didn’t approve of me, of you, they didn’t understand. When they found out I was pregnant, all they wanted me to do was…fix it.” Her eyes went fierce, and as if thrown back to that time, she put a hand over her belly in a protective gesture that tore at Melissa. “I refused, and I kept you as long as I could, but…”
But by the time Melissa had been one year old, it’d been too much. Mel closed her eyes. “I didn’t know.” She opened her eyes now and let out a helpless sound. “I’m sorry for what you went through.”
“I don’t want your pity, I want you to let me into your life.”
Melissa rubbed her temples. “I need to think.”
“You can do that, but just understand something for the here and now. I wanted to find out about you. I wanted to know if you were happy, if you were lonely. I wanted to know if you could find it in your heart to ever want me in your life. But you wouldn’t open up, and yes, I thought maybe Jason could help me somehow. I admit it was a pathetic attempt, a desperate attempt, and quite stupid in hindsight.”
“I feel really stupid.”
“Oh, honey, no.” Rose stood up and wrapped her arms around Melissa. “I was so frantic that poor Jason didn’t have a choice but to help me.”
“He helped you.” Calmly as she could, she untangled herself from Rose. It was all sinking in. Jason had been helping Rose the whole time, including when she—
Seduced him.
That one hurt the most. He’d just been warming her up for Rose, and she’d slept with him.
“Melissa, please,” Rose said urgently. “Listen to me. Whatever’s going on in that head of yours, don’t blame Jason.”
But she did. It was easier than admitting she’d been fooled, lulled into a trust that had never existed. “I blame all of us.”
Rose nodded, misery pouring out of her. “I’d like to say I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m still so desperate I probably would. Oh Melissa, I just wanted a small, little piece of your world, just a small piece. Hell, I’d even take a crumb.”
The door to the clinic opened and a baby goat ambled in, followed by Mrs. Dot, who was at least eighty years old and the town librarian. “Dr. Anders, I have a goat emergency,” she said. “Sweetie Pie is eating all my flowers.”
How this was a medical emergency, Melissa didn’t have a clue. “Mrs. Dot,” she said, managing to sound completely normal by sheer will. “I need a few minutes before I open.”
“No problem.” The elderly woman sat in a chair a few feet away, folded her hands in her lap and smiled. “I have a few minutes.”
Sweetie Pie meandered over to the retail shelves across the room and started to eat the display poster for feline vitamins.
The door opened again, in came Walter McKnight, the owner of the Serendipity Café and also the mayor of Martis Hills. In his arms was his cat Jezebel, who happened to be the fattest cat Melissa had ever seen. “I think she blew her diet, Doc,” he said with a sigh, and sat next to Mrs. Dot. “You know I can repair just about anything, but…” With a helpless shrug, he settled in for the long haul.
Mel turned back to Rose. “I think you should leave. We can’t fix this, not right now.”
“You’re going to have a very full house. I really think I should stay and help—” Rose’s voice fell away at the look on Melissa’s face.
“Ah, now, Doc,” Walter said. “I’m sure whatever’s broken can be taken care of. What happened, did she jam your printer? Because I can fix it.”
Melissa rubbed her temples. “That’s not quite it, but thanks.”
“Did she get here late?” Mrs. Dot frowned. “The traffic out there is a son of a bitch this morning, isn’t it. There’s two cows on the highway, causing all sorts of havoc. Cut a gal some slack, Dr. Anders.”
Melissa glanced at Rose. Her eyes were still just a little wet but damn if that wasn’t a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. When she saw Melissa looking at her, she lifted her hands and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s this place—it’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Rose—”
“Please let me stay.”
“If you fire her,” Walter said. “You’ll up the unemployment rate in town back to five percent. I’m trying to get reelected, you know.”
Mrs. Dot patted him on the hand. “You have my vote, Walter. Oh, let her stay, Dr. Anders. A gal’s got to have work.”
“Yes,” Rose whispered. “Let me stay. I promise to never, ever, mess up again.”
But that wasn’t a promise she could keep, Melissa thought miserably. She just wanted to crawl back into bed and wallow in this, if only for a little while. She wanted to be alone.
She was used to being alone.
She was good at being alone.
At least she had been, until she’d come here.
Then the clinic door opened again, and everything within her went still as stone when Jason walked in the door. He took one glance at her and Rose, at the looks on their faces, and closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, Melissa saw regret in his eyes.
If she’d held out any hope at all that this was somehow one big mistake, it faded away right then.
“Hey, Jas.” Walter pumped his hand.
“Jason Lawrence,” said Mrs. Dot very sternly.
“I don’t have any overdue books,” Jason said, lifting his hands. “I swear.”
Mrs. Dot smiled. “Of course you don’t, you’re such a nice young man. I just wanted to say stand in line—the good doctor is booked.”
Jason let out a little breath and nodded. “I’d like to, Mrs. Dot, but I really have to speak to Melissa now.”
“But I got here first.” She smiled sweetly.
“Yes, I know.” Jason looked at Melissa, and she tried to turn away, honest to God, she did. She wanted to be furious but somehow the hurt kept getting in the way.
“You see, Mrs. Dot, if I don’t talk to Melissa right now,” he said quietly, still holding her gaze, “things are going to go very badly for me. So I’m going to ask you to let me go first.”
Mrs. Dot took a stubborn stance. “Let’s hear a really good reason for this, boy.”
“Yes, let’s,” Walter said.
Both looked at Jason expectantly.
Jason turned to Melissa, and she couldn’t help it, she gave him a brow raise and nothing else. He was on his own.
So on his damn own.
“You don’t even have an animal with you,” Walter noted.
“Nope,” Mrs. Dot agreed. “Not an animal in sight.”
Rose bit her lip. “Well—”
“Don’t you dare help him,” Melissa broke her silence to say.
Rose closed her mouth.
“I think we should talk in private,” Jason said to her in a low voice.
No. Talking in private would allow him to sweet-talk her, maybe even touch her, and she couldn’t let that happen because clearly she had no judgment when he did.
What she needed was simple. Him to go.
Rose to go.
Scratch that. She n
eeded to go. The timing was perfect. She’d seen a vet clinic for sale in the trade papers, located in Los Angeles. She’d have to double her current debt, but she’d do whatever it took to get out of Martis Hills. She could lose herself in the crowds of snooty cats and pedigreed dogs and never treat another animal of Rose’s again. She could convince herself that she was happy there.
Probably.
“Still waiting for your reason to cut in line,” Walter said to Jason.
Jason never took his eyes off Mel. “Dr. Anders is under the mistaken impression I’ve lied to her.”
Walter shook his head. “Women hate that. So did you? Lie?”
“Only by omission.”
Mrs. Dot tsked.
Rose bit her lip again.
And Jason, clearly realizing he was on the losing end of a jury, let out a disparaging sound and walked close. Too close. Mel couldn’t see anything or anyone but him.
Rose quickly rose to her feet, too, and Melissa knew a foreboding.
Her mother and Jason were going to gang up on her together, and God help her, she couldn’t take it. She’d underestimated the blood tie she had with Rose and what Rose’s story would do to her anger, which was dissolve it.
And she’d underestimated the deeper soul mate tie she’d started to develop with Jason.
Because just them looking at her with their hearts in their eyes made her burn. Before she could make her escape, Rose gently took her hand in a grip of steel, and then Jason’s, and led them to patient room one. “This is all my fault,” she said. “And somehow I’m going to fix it.”
“Hey,” Mrs. Dot called out. “I didn’t hear a good reason from Jason to cut in line—”
Rose shut the door on Mrs. Dot. And in fact, on Rose as well.
Leaving Mel alone with Jason.
CHAPTER NINE
JASON DREW in a deep breath, scrubbed his hands over his face and then looked at Melissa. How the hell to fix this?
“Rose said she used you to get me in her life,” Mel said, cold and distant, arms crossed. She stood right in front of him, and yet she might well have been a thousand miles away.
His fault, his own damn fault.
“She wanted me to be sure not to blame you.”
“But you do.”
“I’m pretty sure I do, yes.”
She looked relatively calm, for a woman who should be furious. Calm, and scarily removed. “You’ve already decided we’re not worth the trouble, is that it?” he asked.
“Oh, you were definitely worth the trouble.” Turning her back on him, she walked around the patient table, putting the long piece of steel between them. “Look, I’m going to be blunt. I’m too busy today for this.”
“So you’d rather talk tomorrow?”
“Well—”
“Don’t do this, Melissa.” He wanted to go around the table and get her, but she already had one hand on the handle of the second door, the one that led to the back of her clinic. She would have no problem locking him out, just as she’d clearly already done with her heart. “I wanted to tell you.”
“You wanted to help Rose.”
“Yes, that, too. Rose screwed up, she made some bad choices, and she’s paid the price of that by not having her daughter in her life. She wants to fix that.”
“Maybe I didn’t want it fixed.”
“Why? Because being alone is easier? Come on, Melissa, you don’t want to be alone, either, or you wouldn’t have come here. I just wanted to help.”
“Oh, you helped,” she said with only a dab of sarcasm.
He studied her bowed face, her crossed arms, her stiff shoulders. Oh yeah, she was good and hurt. He hated that, because all he’d wanted to do was make it right for her and Rose. The last thing he’d ever wanted was to hurt her. “To be honest, I hadn’t really thought of you with your own reasons and emotions for not wanting Rose in, not until after we started to get to know each other.”
“And yet you came again to the clinic with another animal. And then again. We ate together, we walked together, we—” She closed her mouth tight and shook her head. “I hate being your…your cause.”
He caught her just as she opened the door. Hands on her arms, he pulled her in close, where he could feel her body heat, could feel her shaking. Or maybe that was him. “My…cause? Is that what you think you were?”
“Yes. For Rose.”
His voice was hoarse. “No. Mel—”
“Last night—who was that for, Jason?”
“My God, are you kidding? Melissa, from the moment I first laid eyes on you, it was all for me. Your smile, your voice, your eyes, everything…you turn me completely upside down.”
Her eyes filled, and he cupped her face. “Yes, maybe it started out about Rose, but I promise you, it became something else very quickly.” He caught one of her tears on his thumb, his chest tightening. “Melissa, I love you.”
She put her hand over his mouth. “Please.” She swallowed hard. “If you care about me at all, I want to be alone right now. I want to think.”
What could he say? He had to give her time—he knew her enough to understand that. So when she left the patient room, shutting the door, leaving him alone in the very room they’d first spoken, he let her go.
He had to, and he had no one to blame but himself.
STARTING BEFORE DAWN the next morning, Melissa drove the four hours south until palm trees ruled and the heat suffocated. Until traffic was the norm. She got out of her car and looked at the For Sale sign. The vet clinic was on a very busy street in Burbank, just outside of Los Angeles, and the price was astronomical.
But she’d spoken to the current owner, who was willing to work with her on terms. He just wanted to retire to Florida. She’d figured she could speak to a few of her fellow veterinarian friends about a possible partnership so she wouldn’t have to do this alone, because suddenly, or maybe not so suddenly, alone didn’t seem nearly as freeing as it once had.
At least here she’d be far away from her past, far from Rose and…and her extremely welcome help in the office, not to mention her kindness, and the way she had of making Melissa feel…loved.
Even when she thought she didn’t want it.
Her throat burned but she blinked quickly. She hadn’t cried in years and years, and yet in recent days she’d turned into such a wimp. Well, she was over that, over letting it all get to her.
Here, she wouldn’t have to deal with Jason and the way he had of making her feel as if she was the only woman on the planet. He made her feel special, smart…sexy; he made her brain happy and made her body hum in anticipation.
Yep, boy was she glad that was over.
Damn it. A shaky sigh escape her, while all around her trucks and cars zoomed by, honking and jockeying for superior position on the road. Pedestrians walked past her, jostling her a little in their hurry to get to wherever they were going.
No one in Martis Hills was ever in a hurry.
She got back into her car. Twice she tried to talk herself out of it, but it all just made sense. She pulled out her cell phone and called Dr. Myers in Phoenix, who was thrilled to hear from her.
“I hear you’re doing wonderfully in Martis Hills,” he said.
“Better now, thank you. Dr. Myers, I no longer want to lease the clinic. I want to buy it.”
“Ah.” He sounded pleased. “You’re ready for roots.”
“Yes,” she whispered, liking the sound of that. Roots.
THE WAY HOME TOOK six hours instead of four, thanks to a jackknifed big rig just outside of Bakersfield. And a stop for a Big Mac.
She loved comfort food.
By the time she pulled back into Martis Hills, the sun had set. There was no traffic in town, no rude pedestrians ruling the streets. Her clinic looked dark and locked, just as she’d left it.
Heading past it, for the outskirts of town where Jason lived, she pulled into his driveway and walked up the porch where she’d only a few nights ago seduced him into taking her to his
bed.
The power of that moment had been incredible, and her heart ached. She wanted more of that.
But he wasn’t home. His truck was gone, his house dark.
Deflated, she drove by Rose’s. Stopped. Got out of her car.
Melissa watched Rose open her front door and stand on the porch, to see who’d driven up. She then let out a gasp of surprise, and ran down the steps to meet her.
She came to a stop just before Melissa, clearly fighting the urge to toss her arms around her.
Melissa had done that to the two of them. She’d pushed Rose away. She’d pushed everyone away, just pushed and pushed until they didn’t know what to do with her or how to treat her.
No more. She wanted this, she wanted these people in her life. So she smiled, and the knot in her chest loosened. “I went to Los Angeles to see a vet clinic that’s up for sale. I figured I belonged there.”
Rose clasped her fingers together, her smile fading. “I see. And did you? Belong there?”
“Once upon a time, I did, very much.”
“And now?”
“Now I belong where my heart leads me. And…and it’s led me here. I was drawn here, drawn by being born here…by the fact I knew you’d come back here. I didn’t understand the need then, but I think I do now. Being here, allowing people in, you for example… I think that’s what I was looking for without even knowing it.”
Rose’s eyes filled. “So…you’ve forgiven then?”
At the hitch in Rose’s breath, her own throat went even tighter. She reached out for her mother’s hands. “My past made me, it molded me. My past is a part of who I am. But I’ve forgiven, if you’ll forgive me for taking so long to listen to your story.”
“Oh, honey.” She threw her arms around Melissa’s neck. “There’s nothing to forgive.” Her eyes wet, she cupped her daughter’s face. “From right this very minute we’re starting over.”
They hugged for a long moment before Rose pulled free. “What about Jason? I know you feel he betrayed you, but—”
“He’s not home.”
Rose tried to look indifferent, but it was clear this was not news to her.
Mel eyed her. “What are you up to now?”
