“My dear girl, what have you been up to?” He laughed. “You can’t seriously consider trying to live on the salary from this Joe job at a veterinary clinic and raising skunks. I’m sure it’s fascinating, but…”
Emma loved her father and knew he loved her. She knew he wanted what was best for her. The difficulty arose when what he thought was best wasn’t what Emma thought was best. If she’d been a different sort of person she’d have accepted his suggestions. She wanted to live up to his expectations, but she couldn’t. The time since she’d come to The Hovel was the happiest and freest of her life. And now there was Seth, the most wonderful, caring man she’d ever known.
As she poured the coffee, she heard Seth’s SUV pull into her driveway. The car door slammed and a moment later he was at the front door.
“God, he’s immense,” her father whispered.
Actually, the two men seemed to take to one another. Daddy was seriously interested in what Seth did. They shared golfing and fishing and boating and basketball. Emma was reduced to waitressing, keeping the coffee topped up and filling Seth with shortbread cookies. He handled Mr. French’s questions with aplomb.
When Seth left to go check out a problem at one of the marinas, the two men shook hands.
“He seems like a nice young man,” he said as they watched Seth drive away.
“Don’t patronize either of us, Daddy.”
He draped his arm around her shoulder. “Emma, are you pregnant? If that’s what all this is about, you have choices. You do not have to marry this man.”
She blinked. “Pregnant?” She burst out laughing. “No, Daddy, I am not pregnant. And who said anything about marriage?”
“He’s crazy about you. You are certainly a catch in every respect. If he doesn’t want to marry you, he’s a fool, and I don’t think he’s any kind of a fool.”
“So what would happen if we were to get married? You’d disown me?”
“Don’t be silly, Emma, of course not. I would do everything in my power to move him into a career that was worthy of him. He wanted to become a veterinarian, didn’t he? Or there’s always law school.”
“A job worthy of you, you mean. Watch it, Daddy, I’m getting close to tossing you out of my house.”
“Be sensible. What sort of life would you have with him? He seems like a decent, competent man. He obviously cares for you. I like him. But liking a man doesn’t make him right for my daughter. You can do better. I know Trip disappointed you…”
“You might say that.”
“But he offered you the life you’re used to with people you’ve known for years. If you marry Seth, you’re looking at maybe fifty years or more of living in the middle of nowhere with a man who may or may not come home on time or at all. A man who’s in danger a good deal of the time. What do you share when he’s at home? Great sex? You’ve heard the old story about the jar of beans.”
“One of your lawyer jokes?” Emma asked.
He patted her arm. “The day you get married, you start putting a bean in the jar for every time you make love throughout the year. The next year and forever after, you remove one bean from the jar for every time you make love. Most people die without ever emptying the jar.”
“Who do you think would be right for me, Daddy? The CEO of a Fortune 500 company? We marry, he cheats during our honeymoon, then six months later the company goes bankrupt and he has a stroke that leaves him paralyzed. And impotent.”
“Hardly likely. CEOs have good doctors.”
“That isn’t funny, Daddy. I want to marry a man I’d still love and want to be with if all those things happened. After Momma died, did you think, ‘I wish I’d never met her’?”
“Of course not! I’m grateful for every moment we had together, just as I’m grateful for every moment Andrea and I have. Nobody knows what’s coming down the pike. All I’m saying is that you have to play the odds. Start as you mean to go on. This—” he waved a hand at the little farmhouse “—is no way to start.”
“I don’t think I’ve been truly happy since Momma died. I kept feeling it was my fault that she left us, Daddy.”
“I have heard that’s a fairly standard reaction among children who lose a parent early either to death or divorce. You know now that isn’t true, don’t you?”
“That was then. I couldn’t figure out who I was without her. I wanted to be who you wanted me to be so you wouldn’t miss her so much. I was scared all the time that I wasn’t good enough, that I was letting you down. I kept going because I was afraid not to. When I’m with Seth, I do know who I am. I’m not scared I have to be somebody else. He sees me and loves me anyway, just as I love him.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, began to speak, but she shook her head to stop him.
“I can’t be that person I was, not anymore. I’m happy living where I’m living, doing what I’m doing, and doing it with Seth.”
“What about money?”
“If we need money, I’ll go make some. I still can, you know. That skill hasn’t gone away because I fell in love with Seth. I’m happy with my small life with my small animals and my large lover. Whose babies I really do want to have. I’ve lived my life scared. For the first time in what seems like forever, I’m not scared.”
“And if something happens to your pipe dream?”
“Then we’ll do something else. Together.”
He enfolded her in a hug. “Let me go say goodbye to your funny little babies and I’ll go home to Memphis. Whatever happens, I love you.”
“I’ll put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and then I’ll join you. Here, toss them some grapes. They love grapes.”
She finished wiping the kitchen counter and hung the dish towel up to dry when her father yelled, “Emma! Help!”
Oh, Lord, he’s had a heart attack. I knew I shouldn’t have upset him.
She jumped off the porch and raced around the house. And into a miasma of skunk scent so powerful her eyes closed of their own volition. She wadded up her shirt and covered her mouth and nose. “Oh, God! You’ve been skunked!”
He had fallen back on the grass. Emma grabbed him under the arms and dragged him out of the odor zone. Their eyes were streaming. Emma got the garden hose, turned it on and held the spray so she could wash her eyes, then gave it to her father. He coughed, pulled his immaculate linen handkerchief from the pocket of his chinos, wet it and held it against his eyes and nose.
“Get farther back in the yard.” Emma flew into the house, picked her cell phone off the kitchen counter and called Seth. “I don’t know how it happened, but Daddy’s been skunked. We need help.”
“Ambulance?”
“He’s not hurt, he’s skunked. What on earth should I do?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“DADDY, WHAT DID you do?” Emma held her hand across her nose and mouth. Not that it did much good. The entire yard, porch and kennel smelled like skunk.
“Nothing, I swear. Stay away from me. They only got my bottom half, but I have to get out of these trousers right now.” He wrinkled his nose. “And burn them. But I can’t drive back to Memphis in my undershorts.”
Seth pulled into her driveway, jammed on his brakes and flew over to her father. “Sir, are you all right? Do you need an ambulance?”
“Young man,” he asked Seth, “do you have any sweats you could lend me? I don’t guarantee to return them in wearable condition.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back. How about some socks? Can you drive in socks? I don’t think you’ll want to spend a couple of hours in your car wearing those tennis shoes. My shoes would be too big. Your clothes need to be double-wrapped in garbage bags and stuffed into your trunk until you can dispose of them somewhere they won’t stink up the neighborhood.”
“My leather upholstery will never be the s
ame.”
Seth started across the street. “Emma, I’ll call Barbara, tell her we need all the de-skunk shampoo she has. I’ll bring some sweats, then I’ll go pick up the shampoo from the clinic.” As he ran across the road, he was dialing his cell phone.
“Those little devils,” David French said. “Look at them over there. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.”
Emma walked around the house and sat on the porch step. When her father started to join her, she warned him off. “No, you don’t. You stay out in the yard. Daddy, what did you do to annoy them?”
“It was only the one with the two stripes down its back,” he said.
“That’s Sycamore, the male.”
“I was just kind of chatting to them when I saw an apple slice on the ground outside the cage door. I picked it up and started pushing it through the mesh. All of a sudden the one with two stripes was bouncing up and down on his front paws. I thought he was thrilled to get an extra treat. And then he swings around, up comes his tail and pow! He lets fly. I thought I was going to suffocate.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t give you a direct shot to the eyes.”
“I never thought I’d be grateful for bifocals. I dropped the apple slice, of course, on my side of the fence. I don’t think that made him any happier. By that time the other two were headed in my direction with their tails in the air, so I slid back on my butt.”
“Daddy, that bouncing thing they do on their front feet—that’s skunk talk for ‘go away or I’ll l get you.’ You didn’t, so he did. Poor Daddy.” She snickered.
“Will I be able to go home tonight? How long will I smell like this?”
“The shampoo should take care of it. Maybe not a hundred percent, but close enough so Andrea won’t make you move into a motel. I have a guest room. It’s not much, but it’s yours if you want to stay tonight and go home tomorrow.”
“Let’s see how this skunk shampoo works before I decide. Thank heaven you were able to get Seth back. Look, can I please sit down? Bring me that chair from the porch. Phew! I can smell it in my hair. The little dickens didn’t even get my hair. How come I can smell it?”
Emma brought him the chair, and he sank into it. He stayed six feet away from her.
“It’s pervasive,” Emma said.
“I would certainly agree. No doubt handy to have a man like that available.”
“A man like that?”
“I see the way he looks at you. Be careful, Emma. You’ve had a bad few weeks, losing your job and Trip all at the same time. You may see Seth as a stopgap, someone to salve your wounded ego. I doubt he sees you that way.”
“Please back off, Daddy. I don’t run from someone like Trip to someone like Seth simply because he’s close. He is a very, very good man. I could do a lot worse.”
“Than this?” Her father sounded incredulous. He waved his hand to take in everything from Seth’s house to Martha’s. “This is not your world, Emma. You might as well move to Alaska and live in an igloo.”
“I could never eat whale blubber. Don’t get so uptight, Daddy. I like this life, but I’m not tied to it. This is the first vacation I’ve had since I graduated from college.”
“It’s not supposed to be a vacation, and I hardly think those stinky little hooligans add to the ambience. Now Andrea tells me you have some part-time minimum-wage job at a veterinary clinic. How could you tell Andrea that and not me?”
“Because I knew you’d go ballistic. I was right. Here you are, trying to save me from myself. I am sending out résumés.” Thinking about how few she’d actually sent, Emma crossed her fingers and swore to do better. “It’s not you. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but Andrea.”
“Obviously.”
Seth came trotting across the street and stopped beside her father. “These are the smallest sweats and socks I have. They’ll still be too big, but they shouldn’t fall off on your way home. Don’t go running into some convenience store without holding them up.”
“He stinks. Don’t give them to him!” Emma said. “I’ll take them until you get back with the shampoo. Thanks, Seth.”
“All part of the service. See you in a few.” He trotted back across the road to his SUV, then off toward Barbara’s clinic.
By the time Seth delivered the shampoo and Mr. French was totally fumigated and scrubbed, Emma’s whole house carried a mild scent of skunk.
“I’ve called Andrea to warn her,” Mr. French said. “So I think I will attempt to drive home. May I take a bottle of that shampoo with me to use again after I get home? My garage can pick up my car at the house tomorrow to detail it. Assuming it can be done. Emma, Seth, I’ve had an…interesting afternoon.”
The minute he drove around the corner of the road, Emma clung to Seth.
“Right here in the front yard?” he said and propped his chin on top of her head.
“Daddy was planning to go commando if you hadn’t gotten back from Barbara’s with the shampoo fast enough.”
“You do realize what this means, don’t you?”
She took a deep breath. “Their scent glands are functional.”
“And they know how to use them. That means we can release them tomorrow before you go to work at the clinic.”
“Do we have to?”
“You know we do. It’ll be all right. I promise.”
“Do you have someplace to let them go?”
He nodded. “All scoped out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FOR THE FIRST TIME, Emma spent the night in Seth’s bed in Seth’s house. He was pretty neat for a male living alone, and his house didn’t smell even vaguely of skunk.
The morning dawned misty and foggy. Seth kissed Emma awake. She groaned. “Before you ask,” Seth said, “this is good weather for the release. Plenty of smells close to the ground, plenty of edible creatures wandering around easy to catch.”
“I don’t think I can stand it,” she said. “Let’s do it far away, so there’s no chance they’ll find their way back home.”
“I promise. You take a shower first.”
“How big is your shower?”
“Big enough for two, but you’re not going to con me. Go take your shower alone. I’ll make coffee and toast a couple of English muffins so we’ll have something in our stomachs.”
“Which I may throw up,” Emma said.
“If you do, you do. I know this is hard, but it has to be done.”
“I know. Showering first.”
* * *
CONVINCING THE THREE skunks to leave their familiar kennel for the big wire crate Seth had prepared for them took some doing. But sliced apples, their favorite treat, finally convinced Peony, the least adventurous, to climb into the crate. Sycamore and Rose followed.
None of them even patted a toe, much less raised a threatening tail.
“What if they get upset in your SUV?” Emma asked.
“It’s smelled worse. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“Are we going to the same place we released Barbara’s deer?” Emma asked.
“Closer to Mother’s cabin, but not so close that they’ll make a nest under the front porch or the deck. I promise you, they won’t look back, and if they do, they won’t recognize us.”
“You guarantee?”
“Absolutely.”
Seth drove farther down the road, past the drive to the little A-frame. Emma had a lovely sense of nostalgia. What a beautiful night to remember. Maybe they could return in the summer and make love on the tiny beach.
Seth drove what seemed to Emma like a long distance before he turned off on another dirt road that led deep into a stand of mixed hardwoods and pines. When he pulled over, Emma’s heart sank. This was it.
Seth carried the crate to the edge of the woods, a place where a small stream meandered toward the lake. “See? Ple
nty of water, lots of rotten logs. A good place.”
“I suppose.”
“You do the honors. They’re your babies.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, Emma, I think you do. Don’t you?” He aimed the front of the crate toward the small stream.
Fighting tears, Emma undid the latch on the cage and opened the door. Just like the fawns, at first the skunks seemed not to want to leave home, and it was Peony, the one Emma thought was slow, who took the first tentative steps out of the crate and into the grass.
Rose and Sycamore rushed the door and followed Peony. At first they turned toward Emma. She climbed into the truck and shut the door—possibly the hardest thing she’d ever done.
Seth joined her. They sat in the truck while the little skunks gamboled and rolled around in the grass. Then, as if at a signal too high-pitched for humans to hear, they trotted off into the woods.
“They’re gone,” she said. “Will they come back looking for us?”
“Probably not, but if they do, we don’t need to be here.” Seth climbed out of the truck, shut the carrier and stashed it in the back.
He drove one-handed while he held Emma’s hand. “You did fine,” he said.
“Then why am I leaking all these tears?”
“Because you’re human. Human beings are self-aware. We understand loss and remember to grieve. Most animals accept loss. The skunks do. I hate to say this, but what you need is a new foundling.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m no rehabilitator and I have no idea how to become one.”
“You take classes, work with licensed rehabilitators like Barbara, and eventually you get your own license.” He didn’t say, That’s if you stay around long enough for it to matter. “Earl and I are teaching an orientation class on Thursday evening. You’ll have to drive your own car. Earl and I will have to stay afterward to go through the paperwork. Then I guess I’d better come by your house and check your letters of recommendation.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 50
