by Hope Ramsay
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Robin Lanier
Excerpt from The Cottage on Rose Lane copyright © 2018 by Robin Lanier
Bonus novel Then There Was You copyright © 2018 by Miranda Liasson
Cover illustration and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes.
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: August 2019
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ISBNs: 978-1-5387-3249-6 (mass market); 978-1-5387-3247-2 (ebook)
E3-20190603-DANF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Blurb
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Discover More
An excerpt from The Cottage on Rose Lane
Acknowledgments
Also by Hope Ramsay
Praise for Hope Ramsay
About the Author
Then There Was You
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Lia put on her best business voice.
“I put the résumés of the vet tech candidates on your desk. You’ve got interviews at ten, eleven, one, and two o’clock. The first patient is due here at nine. It’s a new kitten visit.”
“Okay.”
She waited for Noah to say something else. But he didn’t. Instead he took his coffee down the hall to his office.
Maybe she should go back to his office and tell him how much she had enjoyed his kiss.
Or maybe she should keep her mouth shut. After all, Noah wasn’t sticking around and she didn’t want to get involved with someone who was going to leave Magnolia Harbor. She was tired of people coming and going in her life. She wanted some permanency.
On the other hand, she wouldn’t mind being kissed like that again.
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Chapter One
Lia DiPalma stomped on the brakes. Her ten-year-old Chevy Trailblazer fishtailed as she yanked the wheel to avoid the obstacle in the middle of her lane. What the hell?
She screeched to a stop, spraying gravel on the road’s shoulder. That wasn’t a piece of rubber. It was a dog.
Oh my God. It was a dog, lying in the middle of the road. Dead?
“Shit, shit, shit, shit.” She pounded her fists on the steering wheel. Life was unfair and then you died. She didn’t need any more death in her life. And anyway, who hits a dog and doesn’t stop? Who the hell does a thing like that?
Unwanted tears filled her eyes.
“Please don’t be dead,” she whispered.
She pushed the car door open and hopped down onto the two-lane road that spooled through the middle of nowhere, South Carolina. Chaplain Micah St. Pierre, her former commanding officer, had told a lot of stories about his hometown on one of South Carolina’s Sea Islands. Lia had always pictured the place with white sand beaches and a pounding surf, not a forest of Spanish-moss-draped oaks on either side of a long, narrow road. Her GPS insisted this road would take her to Magnolia Harbor, a little tourist town on picturesque Moonlight Bay.
Instead it had led her right to death’s doorstep. Again.
She rounded the SUV’s back fender with her heart pounding in her ears, just as the dog whined and struggled to get up.
Thank you, God. The dog wasn’t dead in the middle of the road. But he was hurt. Real bad. Something was wrong with his left hind leg, or maybe his pelvis. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she approached the animal, even though it wasn’t her fault. But it felt that way.
The dog didn’t growl, although he should have. Oh God, the dog was only a puppy. A scrawny puppy.
She reached out her hand to let the dog sniff. He laid his head down on the pavement, his eyes sad and unfocused as another mournful whine escaped him. “Don’t die on me. Please. You’re just a baby.” She looked up at the bright blue June sky. “Please God. Not again. Okay?”
She got up, popped the tailgate, and rummaged through her stuff. She’d always been a rolling stone, so she’d never gathered much in the way of belongings. The SUV was just big enough to hold them.
She reached for her plywood footlocker. Painted navy blue with her name and one-time rank stenciled on the front in yellow, it was the perfect size for the puppy. She hauled it out of the back and into the middle of the road.
She pulled out a big bath towel and gently rolled the pup onto it, trying not to disturb the injured leg. The dog didn’t weigh all that much, but he whined when she used the towel as a sling to pick him up. His right hip was abraded where the bumper had connected with it but there wasn’t any blood on the pavement, thank God. Maybe it was just a broken bone. Maybe there weren’t massive internal injuries.
“You’re going to be okay,” she said, her voice trembling. If only she could believe it the way the dog seemed to. He gave her a soulful look out of his big brown eyes, and her heart lurched sideways. She’d always wanted a dog as a kid, but Mom moved around a lot and then Lia joined the navy, which had be
en her home for the last fifteen years.
But she wasn’t in the navy now. Every time that thought crossed her mind it made the bottom of her stomach drop. Without the navy she was homeless. Just a waif on the road, the way Mom had been. Or like this homeless, hurt dog.
Damn. She could take him to an animal hospital but she had no business adopting a dog. She didn’t have any home herself. And besides, she didn’t deserve a dog.
“You shouldn’t put your trust in me,” she said as her throat closed up. “I’m a screwup.”
The puppy continued to stare at her with trusting eyes.
She settled the pup into her sea chest, which contained a couple more towels and a GO NAVY fleece blanket she’d picked up at an Army-Navy game years ago, all of which made a nice bed for him.
She had to rearrange a few cardboard boxes to create a space for the open sea chest in the back. In the end, she unloaded a box containing miscellaneous kitchen items of no particular value. If she was lucky, she’d come back and pick up the box later. If not, she could always find what she needed at the local Salvation Army. She had thirty-three years of practice letting things go.
The poor dog was infested with fleas, and half-starved. His little ribs stood out from his chest, and he was missing the usual fat puppy belly. Was he a stray, or had some a-hole abandoned him out here in the middle of nowhere?
He was panting hard now, his little pink tongue hanging out of his mouth. She ground her teeth as she rolled down her window. The poor thing was already hot, and the damn AC had failed somewhere between Birmingham and Atlanta during her five-day, three-thousand-mile odyssey from the Naval Air Station in Lemoore, California—her last duty station. “Don’t worry, I’ll find a vet,” she said as if the dog understood. Then she gently closed the door.
She climbed into the Trailblazer and used her navigation system to search for animal hospitals. They were all at least thirty miles back the way she’d come.
“Damn.” She hadn’t updated the onboard GPS system in forever, so she fumbled with her phone. Her Google search produced an article from Magnolia Harbor’s local newspaper about the new Moonlight Bay Animal Hospital opening this month. Some rich lady had donated the money for it, and the paper said it was a big deal for year-round residents and tourists alike, because without the clinic everyone had to travel back to the mainland to find a vet. Best of all, the article provided an address, which she plugged into her GPS. The hospital was five miles down this road.
Thank you, Jesus and rich animal lovers everywhere. She fired up the engine.
She stepped on the gas and flew down the two-lane. A few minutes later, civilization reappeared in the form of several one-story brick ranch homes with sandy front yards shaded by pines and covered with golden-brown pine needles. The scent of pine wafted in through the Chevy’s open window. It was cooler here than it had been traveling down the interstates from Alabama. She glanced in the rearview. The puppy was still panting. Damn the broken AC.
A white sign on the right side of the road, sandwiched between two gigantic Magnolia trees dripping with fat, white blossoms announced the corporate limits of Magnolia Harbor. She hit the brake and slowed to the thirty-five-mile speed limit. The ranch houses gave way to older buildings with tin roofs and wide screened verandas, and on the right side of the street stood a fire department that looked practically brand new. There were palm trees here, which made up for the missing white sand beaches.
And then, right where Google said it would be stood a boxy, brick building that might have been a hardware store once, or some other retail establishment with a parking lot to one side. A sign above the storefront identified it as the MOONLIGHT BAY ANIMAL HOSPITAL. A yellow and black plastic GRAND OPENING banner hung over the front window.
She pulled the Trailblazer into the parking lot, which looked semi-abandoned. One other car—a silver Ford Focus—occupied the handicapped spot. But otherwise Lia had her pick of more than a dozen spaces. She pulled next to the Ford, killed the engine, and hopped out. The dog was still alive. Still panting. And still gazing up at her with the saddest brown eyes she’d ever seen in her life. Damn it. He couldn’t die on her. He wouldn’t die on her.
She pulled the footlocker out and rushed to the door.
Which was locked.
What the hell? How could the door be locked? The business hours listed on the front window said the clinic was open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. She checked her watch. It was precisely 2:38 p.m. on a Monday afternoon.
She put the sea chest down and started banging on the door like a crazy woman, punctuating every drumbeat with a profanity-laced plea for help. She might have once been a Religious Program Specialist in the United States Navy, but hanging around sailors for the last fifteen years had given her a wide range of profanity to choose from.
She only cursed when she was emotionally distraught, and never within hearing of any chaplain under her care and protection. Besides, she rarely became emotionally distraught, priding herself on her emotional control. But that control had sort of flown the coop the last few months. She really needed to find it again.
She was good and angry when an older woman wearing one of those tentlike shirts in a wild purple and fuchsia jungle print appeared at the glass door. She had a round, friendly face and green eyes nestled in laugh lines and crow’s feet. She gave Lia a sympathetic look and said, “I’m so sorry. We’re closed.”
“How can you be? This dog was just hit by a car. I need help.”
The woman shifted her gaze from Lia to the puppy and back again. Something changed in her gaze, and her shoulders sagged a little. “Poor thing,” she said, leaning over the puppy.
“Why aren’t you open? There was an article in the newspaper.”
The woman sighed. “Unfortunately, Dr. Westin, the vet we hired, reneged on his employment contract just a week before he was scheduled to show up. He got a better offer, it seems, so now we’re without a doctor or staff.”
The bottom fell out of Lia’s stomach. “I found him lying in the middle of the road. Someone just left him…” Her voice broke. “Isn’t there anyone who can help?”
The woman straightened. “Oh my word.”
Guilt like a hot poker lanced Lia’s insides. Maybe she wasn’t responsible for this dog, but damned if he would die on her. She would. Not. Allow. It. She couldn’t handle one more death.
“He can’t die on me. He just can’t. But…” Her throat closed up, and it became hard to breathe.
“Oh, honey, come on. Don’t cry. There might just be someone close by who can help him.”
“Really?” Hope blossomed in Lia’s tight chest
“There’s a vet in town visiting,” the woman said. “Bring the dog in and let me make a phone call to see if he’s available.”
* * *
Noah Cuthbert sat on his mother’s porch staring at the paint peeling away from the front railing. What was it about this house on Redbud Street that Momma clung to? It wasn’t as if the run-down cottage was her old homeplace or anything. She hadn’t grown up here. She’d moved here nineteen years ago, when she’d left Daddy.
But then she’d stayed with Daddy way longer than she should have, proving that Momma had a big problem with change. She clung to this old, run-down place as if it had been in her family forever, when, in reality, she didn’t even own the place. She’d been renting it from Arthur Moore all these years. Art had done a halfway decent job of maintaining his many rental properties on Jonquil Island until he’d died five years ago. Then his son had taken over the business, and things had gone downhill ever since.
Well, it was time for a change, and Momma would have to get used to it. Noah wanted her back on the mainland, in his modern, one-level, walker/wheelchair-friendly house, where he could take care of her.
She’d been battling MS for years, but the disease was winning. She refused to admit it, but as the years rolled by, she depended on his little sister, Abby, more than ever. And that h
ad to stop. Abby had a chance to go to college this September, and Noah aimed to make sure she had every opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.
His cell phone vibrated against his thigh. He pulled it out of the pocket of his board shorts.
Granny.
He stared at her picture for a long moment. Granny was Daddy’s mother but she and Momma were still pretty good friends despite the divorce. Unfortunately, that meant both of them believed they could solve the “Abby wants to go to college and Momma needs someone to look after her” problem by convincing him to stay here and take over the new animal hospital.
Not gonna happen.
Noah loved his job as chief surgeon at the Charleston Animal Referral Center. He might not run his own practice, but he got to do complex surgeries and apply state-of-the-art veterinary science. And besides, he’d made a vow when he was eighteen and left home for the first time.
He was never coming back here to live. Ever.
He’d kept that promise. He’d come back to visit on an annual basis, but never for more than a week at a time.
He let the call go to voice mail and put the phone back in his pocket. He didn’t feel like arguing with Granny again. She was a member of the nonprofit board that had set up the new clinic, and a true animal lover. He appreciated what she was trying to do. But he wasn’t about to get sucked into that trap.
His cell vibrated again.
Granny was persistent. He’d give her that.
He reluctantly pulled the phone from his pocket and punched the connect button. “Granny,” he said in his take-no-prisoners voice, “I told you before. I’m here for exactly one week packing up Momma to take her back to Charleston. I don’t have time to volunteer. And when I leave on Saturday, Momma and Abby are coming with me. So the answer is still no.”
“There’s a dog here that needs the kind of fancy surgery you do all the time. He was hit by a car. I’m no expert but it looks like a broken pelvis.”
Noah ground his teeth. It had been easy to ignore Granny the last few days when the cases she’d called about were non-emergencies. But a dog who’d had a run-in with a car could have internal injuries as well as broken bones.
