Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set

by Amber Leigh Williams

  When he didn’t answer, she turned to stare at him. His face looked frozen, his eyes empty. Finally, he shook himself and said, “That came later. I was a hellion growing up. I had to learn.”

  “Come on, let’s go check out my barn! I want to see it.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. “It’s behind a thicket of locust trees with three-inch thorns that can puncture a femoral artery. It’s covered with wisteria and poison ivy. The pond is overgrown with so much duckweed you could fall in before you knew there was water.”

  “It’s mine and I need to see it.” She knew she sounded petulant, but she did need to see it. Why hadn’t anyone ever told her about it? After she grew up, why hadn’t Aunt Martha?

  He breathed deeply and ran his hand down his face. “Yeah, okay. Tomorrow afternoon, if I can get off a little early. You do not go alone. This time of year the water moccasins and copperheads are too slow to avoid you.”

  “Why couldn’t we fix it up to use for rehabilitating animals?”

  “Too far away and completely overgrown. You’d have to traipse out there in the middle of the night to feed. You’d fall in the pond.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Besides, my babies are not staying outside at night.”

  He didn’t bother responding. When the cage was done, the skunks would go outside the house. They had to learn to live in the wild. They needed to be released as soon as they were relatively safe on their own. Once the cage was finished, he and Emma could have what promised to be an unpleasant confrontation about where the skunks spent their nights. No sense borrowing trouble.

  “Last but not least,” he said and suspected this would be the capper, “not only are there snakes in the barn and the pond, but some great, big snapping turtles, too. They pretty much stay around the pond, where there are plenty of frogs to eat, but occasionally one of them will wander up in the yard looking for birds’ eggs that’ve fallen out of the nest. I’ll enlist Earl on Saturday after we put up the kennel, to try to net the big ones and transplant them to the river bottoms ten miles away. It’ll take two of us. Some of them weigh over a hundred pounds.”

  “I’ll never walk into the yard again!”

  He laid his hand on her arm and glared at her. “You are living in the country. Not the city. Not the suburbs. This fall you’ll have deer on the lawn, and I’ve spotted both fox and beaver. Oh, and coyote. Then there’s the occasional bobcat. Saw a puma once, but I suspect he was just trekking east. Haven’t seen him for a couple of years.”

  She jerked her arm away. “My God! What else? Grizzly bears?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “No grizzlies. Spotted a black bear in the bottoms a couple of years ago. The only one I’ve ever seen around here. They’re generally east and north of the Kentucky border, and they’re rare even there. Our bear was simply lost. We followed it north out of our territory, where it became another ranger’s problem. It was a young male bear. No cubs to worry about.”

  “Would you have? Worried?”

  “If we’d had to. If they’d been abandoned or orphaned. Barbara would’ve taken them on until we could get them to the zoo in Memphis.”

  “So bears are fine to foster, but skunks aren’t? That’s nuts.”

  “It’s the rules, and for good reason. That’s why we bait the bottoms with rabies protection. So far we’ve never had a single case of rabies from any animal around here, not even bats. The few cases in Tennessee are in the hills east of here and in North Carolina. No incidences anywhere in west Tennessee for many years. The regulation about bats and skunks may be outdated, but it’s better to err on the side of safety. We warn the public to stay the hell away from all wild animals. If any of the critters become a nuisance, we’ll trap them, vaccinate them, and if they are clean, we’ll move them.”

  “What else am I likely to run into around here?” she asked.

  “The ubiquitous raccoons. Once a year we try to move them back to the river, but they come back when they start to wean their young in the spring.”

  “Baby raccoons are so cute.”

  “But a full-grown raccoon can tear you up. The males can weigh over fifty pounds. Actually, Memphis has more of a problem than we do. People leave dog food outside, and raccoons love dog food. Then we see the occasional possum. They really do roll up in a ball when they’re scared. You don’t want them around horses. They carry EPM, which can kill a horse. There are armadillos, of course. They can carry leprosy.”

  “Leprosy? Good grief! How about bubonic plague?”

  “Not yet. No hantavirus either.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mostly in Arizona and New Mexico. From mice.” He grinned at her again. “Don’t worry. The only armadillos you’re likely to see are dead on the road. We get weasels, beavers and marmots around the lakes. They eat the insulation off wires on people’s boats. Woodchucks. Mice and rats. And the hawks and owls that eat them. Turkey buzzards, too. The occasional eagle strays down from Reelfoot Lake. So far, no alligators this far north, but with global warming, who knows when they’ll show up? I’m sure I’m forgetting some critter or other. Like your skunks.”

  “And massive turtles to chew your foot off and eat your fingers. Please stop! I don’t want to know. All we’re missing is your friendly neighborhood Tyrannosaurus Rex.” She pushed her chair back, picked up the plates and set them in the kitchen sink. “I may never leave the house again. No wonder I have skunks! What on earth is lurking under my bed? One of your king snakes?”

  “You shouldn’t get so much as a dirt dobber inside. Miss Martha had this house buttoned up so critters can’t crawl in.”

  “Like skunks?”

  “The Mulligans must not have latched the back door properly, so it didn’t close all the way when they left. The rainstorm could’ve blown it open enough for the momma skunk to squeeze in with her kits. She needed some safe place for them while she went off foraging.”

  “And never came back.”

  “She would have if she could have, I promise you,” Seth said.

  “Could a snake have slithered in after the skunks?”

  “Your pantry door was shut, so nothing got into the main part of the house. And if there’d been a snake in the pantry, those skunks would not have been sleeping peacefully. Little as they are, their instincts would’ve kicked in. They’d have tried to kill it. Your house is safe. No snakes, no varmints. No basement for anything to hide in, and no way for critters to sneak into the attic. The vents are all stuffed with steel wool.”

  “What about outside motion sensor lights? Don’t I need them?”

  “You need new bulbs for the ones you already have. I’ll pick some up tomorrow. Earl and I can put them in for you. He said that, barring the unforeseen, if we get the posts in and set, he’ll bring his wife over on Saturday morning for a couple of hours to help attach the wire and watch us net turtles. Probably some of the others guys will come by to help, too.”

  “I can’t ask them to do that!”

  “Earl wants to meet you. So does his wife. She was raised in town, so she knows the local gossip. They may even bring the kids if that’s okay.”

  “Of course. I’ll get some hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch. If they’re going to help, they deserve to be fed.”

  “Not necessary, but a great idea.” Seth got to his feet. “Now that I’ve frightened you half to death, I’d better get on home,” he said.

  She followed him to the front door, expecting him to reach for another kiss. This time she forestalled him by shoving him away—just barely. “I dumped a perfectly good fiancé less than a week ago,” Emma said. “Well, Trip wasn’t so good, but I thought he was, until the last minute.”

  “I am not this Trip person.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re much more dangerous than Trip ever was. You look right at me and you listen to me and you scare the
living daylights out of me.”

  “Scare?”

  “And I’m not going to fall into bed with you or anyone else a week after I became unaffianced. Can you say rebound, boys and girls?”

  “I don’t think unaffianced is a word.”

  She considered smacking him on the shoulder, but decided that would be counterproductive. “If it’s not a word, it should be, even if I just made it up.”

  “Am I asking you to fall into bed?”

  “You’re not?”

  “I won’t deny I’d be delighted if you did. Any male who’s attained puberty would be. But I’m not some Viking warlord raiding the neighboring villages to capture Valkyries to carry off to Valhalla.”

  She tried to stay serious, but she wound up snickering. “You’ve got your metaphors mixed up, not to mention your Norse mythology.”

  “The heck with my metaphors and my mythology, too.” He reached for her shoulders, pulled her against him.

  She was expecting another of those blowout kisses. Instead, he stopped short of her lips, then brushed them gently, teased them with the tip of his tongue. She opened to him, met his tongue with hers and sank against his chest while little spurts of fire ran up her spine. When at last he broke the kiss, her head fell back and, eyes still closed, she whispered, “Oh, my.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered back.

  “Go home. Please. Now.”

  “If I have to.” This time the kiss was indeed one of the blowout ones that made her knees go weak. She eventually—but not too quickly—moved back. “Git!” she said. “This is not fair.”

  “By whose rules?”

  “Mine, damn it!” She fled inside and shut the door firmly against him.

  * * *

  WHEN EMMA GOT her breathing under control, she considered that, for all intents and purposes, she was having a party on Saturday. That meant another trip to the grocery store. Who knew how many others would show up to help and stay to be fed? Emma sighed. She’d never done much impromptu entertaining in the city.

  She’d have to make a stab at cleaning up the house for company. Fresh towels in the bathroom. Cold beer. Sodas. She had a yard that needed cutting and no lawn mower available. She wanted a used one she could afford. Another unforeseen expense. Whoever came would have to put up with uncut grass. She couldn’t even borrow Seth’s. She didn’t know how to drive a riding lawn mower, and the mayor had said Seth’s wasn’t working properly. She wasn’t familiar with any landscaping services out here, never mind the cost.

  On top of that little problem, she apparently had an entire zoo wandering around her property. A phantom barn choked like Sleeping Beauty’s castle in wisteria and thorny locust trees. A pond filled with poisonous snakes and vicious snapping turtles. Seth inviting people first and asking later. Seth planning and building the cage. Seth getting the lightbulbs and putting them up. Okay, he was trying to be helpful, because she was obviously a greenhorn, even if she had spent summers here as a child.

  She wasn’t a child now. She’d kicked a man to the curb for trying to run her life and groom her to play his own little Galatea to his Pygmalion.

  There was a definite divide between being helpful and taking control of her life. No matter how sexy and competent and handsome and knowledgeable Seth was, and as much as she needed his help, if he tried to run her life for her… She’d see about that.

  Tonight he’d kissed her again, but a totally different kind of kiss. She should’ve been clearer that she was not looking for a replacement for Trip. If she responded as she had tonight, it was no wonder if he thought she was beddable. Which she wasn’t. Not at all.

  Pheromones were the darnedest things. She should be so devastated by her breakup with Trip that she wouldn’t notice Brad Pitt if he walked into her kitchen. As a matter of fact, she’d never had such an immediate reaction to a male. She’d thought she was invested in Trip—after all, she’d agreed to marry him—but this ka-blam reaction she had to Seth was outside the scope of anything she’d ever felt before.

  But that was simply rebound. All that adrenaline had to go somewhere, and he’d appeared at the optimum moment.

  She fed the kits, who barely woke up long enough to take their gruel before they went back to sleep.

  It wasn’t too late to call her father. She had promised.

  Neither of her siblings ever answered the landline at home. They were too busy texting and talking on their cells. If a tornado destroyed their cell towers, teenagers across the nation would have a meltdown.

  Andrea, not Daddy, answered the landline. “Ah, so this is Green Acres reporting in?” she asked.

  “I’ll have you know I do not have a thousand-pound pig in my living room like on the TV show.”

  “Good thing, too. The idea of cleaning up pig poo on the carpets does not bear thinking about. How are you really? Any job offers yet?”

  Emma felt a surge of guilt roll over her. She couldn’t get a job of any sort if she spent her time playing nursemaid to small animals. Better not mention the skunks. Andrea would definitely not understand the need for secrecy. She’d have to talk about them at her golf foursome. They’d make such a good story. “Nope. Trying to get the house in order and the boxes unpacked. I thought I just brought the bare essentials.”

  “Met your neighbors yet?”

  Another wave of guilt. “The only close neighbor I have is a game warden who lives across the street.” Emma had no intention of telling Andrea anything else about him. “And I’ve met the local veterinarian and a couple of people in town, including the mayor.”

  “Great. Is the mayor married?”

  “He’s bald and weighs close to four hundred pounds. I think he has a wife and a passel of children.”

  “Then are there any handsome, rich, unmarried farmers around?” Andrea’s voice dropped to that throaty whiskey baritone she always used when playing around in Emma’s love life. “Oh, Lord, Em, honey. That was inappropriate. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m realizing I had a narrow escape from Trip.”

  “Trip has called your father a dozen times a day. Tonight, he got me instead. I thought he was going to burst into tears. What did you do to him?”

  She doubted Andrea would have broken up with David French because of a casual infidelity. But then Andrea put up with a lot from him at one point in their marriage. He started working what sometimes seemed like 24/7, and playing golf the few hours he had left over. With three children at difficult stages, Andrea told Emma later that she felt as though David had opted out of the family, and left her to deal with them single-handedly. He stopped coming to their games or Emma’s horse shows. At Andrea’s insistence, they went to marriage counseling. It worked. Emma felt certain that was because even when the situation was at its worst, they never doubted their love for each other.

  “Trip and I didn’t want the same things anymore,” Emma said.

  “Better to find out now. Even when we were going through that rough patch with you three hellions, David wasn’t unfaithful. Not sexually, anyway. One of the things I’ve always loved about him is that he can see a problem and change to fix it. Most men either can’t or won’t.

  “That’s when I went back to working part-time with my decorating. I love you all, but I needed to get away from you to do my own thing, too. Better to have no man than the wrong one. That’s what I tell Catherine, but at this point she falls for a different boy every day or so.”

  Actually, that surprised Emma. She’d always figured that Andrea would take the best available man as opposed to none.

  “Your father is off playing poker at the club,” Andrea said. “His usual once-a-week game.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Lord, no! The dynamics have changed now that you children are more grown up. I don’t feel abandoned when everyone’s gone. In fact, I’m grateful for the peace and qui
et. Call him on his cell, why don’t you?”

  “And interrupt a royal flush? I promised to check in, so you can count this. Tell him I really am fine. Tell the brats I miss them. You, too.”

  “I love you, kiddo,” Andrea said. “Get yourself together and come home where you belong. Mrs. Miller from next door to you is checking on your town house. I hope you’re back before somebody offers to rent it.”

  Emma hung up and leaned against the couch. She hated the idea of renting her town house, even on a short term lease, but it was the sensible thing to do. The mortgage was expensive. She regarded moving back to her parents’ house as failure, even if it was only for a short term. At least she had options. So many people didn’t.

  She was also lucky to have landed a stepmother she’d come to love. That had taken a while on both their parts. Andrea was considerably younger than Emma’s dad and had not signed on to marry a widower with a motherless child. Still, she was game. After the other two were born, the nanny costs skyrocketed, but like so many second wives much younger than their husbands, she’d been expected to pick up and travel with him at a moment’s notice. Not quite a trophy wife, because Emma’s mother had died and not divorced, but a trophy nonetheless. And she was good at her role. She had been a top interior designer when she met David French, and only started working part-time after the children stopped needing her so much. Emma could thank Andrea for teaching her how to raise funds for everything from the symphony to the ASPCA. She could charm big bucks from Scrooge.

  Now, there was a thought. How did the local rescuers interact with the other animal rescue organizations? She’d have to ask Barbara. She hoped she’d be back in Memphis soon with an interesting job like the one she’d had, but until she was, she might as well do some work with the animal people. She’d talk to Barbara about it tomorrow.

  The alternative was to sit on her broadening rump and feel sorry for herself. Even Trip might start to look good. Nah.

  As for his calls to her father… She felt certain Trip wanted to win her back so he could dump her. His sense of his own worth had taken a hit, and he obviously didn’t like it. How had she not known what he was? How could she have agreed to marry him? The next guy she liked, she’d plumb the depths of his history and his character before she took any irrevocable step.