All Loved Up

by Skylar Hill

  “But you have feelings for him,” Renee said gently.

  “I love him as a friend, of course,” Nat said.

  “You have more feelings than that,” Renee said.

  “I can control those,” Nat said, not bothering to deny it with Renee, of all people, who literally went to school for this stuff. “I’ve been controlling them forever. Signing a little piece of paper isn’t going to change anything.”

  “You might be surprised,” Renee said, as Liberty came bursting back into the bar, her cheeks bright red with anger.

  “I cannot believe him!” she fumed, throwing herself back into her chair and downing her martini, then reaching for Renee’s drink. “Kingston is a jerk,” she muttered, refusing to elaborate when they pressed her.

  “I’ll start looking at the other properties you viewed tonight,” Nat promised. “I know we loved that building, but we’ll find something else.”

  “That location, though,” Liberty moaned. “Stupid British jerk and his stupid perfect hair.”

  “Three more, please,” Renee said, waving down the server. “After all, we are celebrating Nat becoming a married woman.”

  Nat rolled her eyes, but she was grateful for Renee’s gesture. As they clinked their glasses together, she felt like something like hope sprout in her chest, and instead of stamping it down, she let it blossom.

  Fourteen

  Rhett

  He woke up that morning and the first thing he thought was, I’m marrying Nat today.

  For a moment, he entertained the thought of what it would be like to wake up and think that and feel nothing but satisfied contentment instead of sheer terror and a faint feeling of unease, because this wasn’t supposed to be how it went.

  That’s what he couldn’t stop thinking: This wasn’t supposed to be how it went.

  Because if he was really being honest, there was a place in the back of his head that had laid out how it was supposed to go. How they would finally give in to that tension between them again, how they would kiss and touch and fall into bed together, how they would fight and make up and fight some more, and how finally they would find some sort of balance, some sort of life that they both wanted, that they both could share.

  How one day, he would take her to the very top of the mountain, where the clouds touched the trees and the valley below stretched out into something beautiful and secret, and he would get down on one knee and put a ring on her hand and swear he’d always protect her, always love her, always fight for her.

  Instead, he found himself doing his normal morning routine, checking his phone from time to time to see if she was on her way.

  Zeke, the pit bull, was bouncing back fast and proving a good distraction. He was still severely underweight, but after two days, he was responding well to the meds, with no sign of the infection returning. He was sweet as hell, and had taken to wanting to follow Rhett everywhere in the clinic. He was keeping him inside for a bit longer until his wound had healed, but he was pretty sure he’d be bringing the dog home to stay with him. He hadn’t had a dog of his own for a few years, since his golden retriever, Lassen, had died at thirteen. He hadn’t been ready for a new dog, but Zeke was winning him over.

  The dog was sitting under his desk in his office, chewing on the brand-new rope toy that Molly had bought for him, when Rhett’s phone dinged. A text from Nat.

  Just got to the lodge. I’m going to check in and then we can go to the courthouse.

  He knew he should text back, but he didn’t know what to say. He was half afraid that when he saw her again, he was going to freeze, the words clogging in his throat.

  It’s just Nat.

  But that, of course, was the problem.

  Rhett drummed his fingers on his desk, listening to the sounds of Zeke gnawing on his toy. His phone dinged again, but this time, it wasn’t a text, it was a call. His screen lit up with the name Crawford Ayles and he frowned.

  “Crawford? What’s up?” he asked.

  “Rhett, hi,” said the detective. “I hate to bother you, but I’m about eighty miles from your place in Galveston. My guys just took down a heroin operation. There’s a shed in the back.”

  “Let me guess,” Rhett said, “Wild animals in the shed.”

  “Yep,” Crawford said. “I don’t want to call animal control. There’s some apparent injuries.”

  “Text me the address and the rest of the information, and I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Rhett said.

  “I appreciate it,” Crawford said.

  “Anytime, man,” Rhett said. “See you in a bit.”

  He hung up, took a deep breath, and then, giving up the attempt at any kind of serenity, pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes for a second.

  “We’ve got this, don’t we, boy?” he asked Zeke, who was lying at his feet under his desk. The pit didn’t even look up from his rope. Rhett smiled. “Time to face the music,” he said, bending down and picking the dog up gently to carry him back to his kennel. “Dad’s gotta go rescue some more animals,” he cooed at the dog, who pawed at the kennel gate as he closed it, giving him the worst puppy-dog eyes. “He’s gotta go rescue some…” he glanced down at the text Crawford sent him, his stomach jolting a little as he read the details of the crime scene for the first time. “Well, shit,” he said, and Zeke whined. “Sorry,” he told the dog. “Be good, okay?” He locked the kennel door, tossed him a treat and hurried out of the clinic, leaving instructions and the address of where he was going with the receptionist.

  He hopped in his truck drove over to the lodge, and parked up front since he was just going to be a few minutes. To his surprise, Nat was already waiting for him. Even more surprising, her usual carefully chosen black-and-white clothing had been discarded in favor of a light blue dress that fluttered teasingly around her knees.

  “You look like you’ve never seen a girl in a dress before, Oakes,” she drawled.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, unable to tell her anything but the truth.

  She smiled, that soft smile of hers, the one she seemed to shoot toward him more than anyone else. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. We just need to take a little detour before we go to the courthouse.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you want to take my car or…”

  “We’re going to need my truck,” he said, gesturing to it behind him. “And an eight-foot steel cage.”

  “Um, ohhh-kay,” Nat said, following after him as he walked off the porch, toward his own mud-covered F-350. “What’s the cage for?” she asked.

  “The bear cubs we’re going to pick up,” Rhett said.

  Fifteen

  Rhett

  They pulled up in front of a ramshackle house, with police tape strung around the front yard, barring it off, and police cars parked at the curb.

  “I want you stay in the truck,” he ordered Nat, whose eyes widened at the seriousness in his voice.

  “Are you afraid a bear is going to eat me?” she asked dryly, like she was trying to cut the tension.

  But he remained tense. When he got the call, he was half ready to tell Crawford to let animal control take care of it. The last time he’d taken on a busted drug dealer’s animals there had been trouble. He’d taken care of it because his Granddaddy didn’t raise no fool, but it had put him on edge.

  But he also knew that their little animal control department was nowhere near equipped to rehabilitate a bear cub, let alone more than one, and fish and game were more than likely to euthanize them.

  Greater good, he thought to himself as he extracted a promise from Nat to stay in the car and got out.

  He strode across the street, ignoring the neighbors’ curious stares as he walked up to the beat cop manning the caution tape border.

  “Police only, sir,” he said. “I’m going to have to ask you to step back.”

  “He’s okay, Smitty,” called a dark-haired man who had come around from the back yard through the heavy woo
d fence. “He’s here for the bears.”

  “Hey, Crawford.” Rhett ducked underneath the police tape and followed his friend across the front yard toward the back. “Big bust?”

  “Big bust,” Detective Crawford Ayles confirmed. “Heroin and opium.”

  “What is this, the Victorian age?” Rhett asked, shaking his head. “How bad are the bears?”

  “Not as bad as the lion last year,” he said. “But I guess that’s not saying much, is it? ”

  Rhett shook his head soberly. The cops had recovered an emaciated lion from an exotic animal “breeder” last year. It had taken nearly six months of rehabilitation at River Run before they could even consider looking into moving him to a lion-specific refuge. They’d found a great place for him, luckily. He’d just gotten pictures of Simba—again, the juvie kid’s naming/doing, not his—the other day. He had thrived, growing into a magnificent beast.

  “I think they were gonna sell them. Black market, you know that how that bullshit goes. It looks like they were being fed fine, but their feet…” Crawford shook his head. “Come and see.”

  He led Rhett to the shed in the run down backyard, the weeds were knee-deep in places, prickly burrs sticking to his jeans as they waded through the mess. Crawford opened it and Rhett squinted in the poor light.

  “Shit,” he muttered when he got a good look at them.

  The bear cubs couldn’t be more than a couple months old. They were penned up together in a chain link cage that had nowhere near enough room for both of them. The cubs cringed together, clearly terrified, and Rhett’s stomach clenched when he looked down at their feet.

  “Those fuckers,” he swore. “They tried to declaw them.”

  “Shit,” Crawford said. “What do we do?”

  “Get your guys to unload the cage in my truck,” Rhett said. “I’ll transport them back to River Run’s facilities so I can assess them better.”

  “They’re gonna survive, right?” Crawford asked. “Poor little guys.”

  Rhett looked down at the cubs, fury simmering in his chest. “They’ll make it,” he said. What he didn’t say was that who had done this to the cubs had destroyed their chances at being able to hunt—and therefore live wild and free.

  Fuckers, he thought again, grateful that the police had already taken the dealers into custody. Otherwise he’d be tempted to tear them apart.

  “Hey, Johnson, Blaise, come help me get the cage out of Rhett’s truck,” Crawford yelled, heading off to get it while Rhett crouched down on the ground, putting his vet’s bag down on the ground.

  The cubs’ paws were raw wounds still, and that was the first thing he needed to take care of. These little guys didn’t need any infections on top of all they were dealing with.

  “Hi, buddies,” he said, setting down on the ground next to them. The shuffled around in their corner of the cage, trying to put as much distance between them and him. The two of them almost moved as one, they were huddled so close together.

  Bonded through trauma, likely. “It’s gonna be okay,” he told them.

  “Oh my God, what happened?”

  He looked over his shoulder, to see the cops—and Nat—lugging the cage across the yard. She set it down next to the open door of the shed before coming inside and crouching down next to him.

  “What happened to their paws?” she asked, her dark eyes horrified.

  “Nat, maybe you should go in the car—“ he started to say, but she was standing up and whirling around and looking at Crawford. “Who did this to them?” she demanded.

  Crawford’s placid face didn’t even ripple in the face of Nat’s burning anger. Rhett would’ve cracked a grin if the animal abuse in front of him wasn’t so fucking awful. “We’ve got it under control, ma’am.”

  “I can’t, like, get alone in a room with them with some pliers so I can pull out their toenails?” Nat asked.

  Rhett snorted. “Can’t declaw all of ’em, Banks.”

  “But this one we could,” she said.

  “Rhett and the River Run staff will be called on to testify when the animal abuse charges are laid against them,” Crawford said, raising an eyebrow at Rhett like, Your woman’s a little scary, Oakes. “Trust me, they’re not going to be getting out for a long time.”

  “Banks, I’m going to have to take these guys into surgery immediately,” Rhett said. “We’re going to have to reschedule our thing.”

  She waved him off as the officers began to ready the steel cage for the transfer of the cubs. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Concentrate on this. I’ve got everything else under control.”

  What a concept, he couldn’t help but think. He’d been on his own—with River Run, with his life—for as long as he could really remember. Losing his mom when he was three had left a hole in his family that had never quite filled in. His brothers and his father had muddled through together, but he’d always been on the outskirts. First with Gramps, then, after Gramps was gone…

  It was just him and the land he had been left. No participating in the dynasty that the Oakes name was known for. Just a simple country vet.

  But here and now, she was just standing there and saying I’ve got everything else under control and he believed it. He believed he could let her shoulder all the burdens—and she would, gladly. And when he finally was able to look up again, look away from the importance of his work, from fixing the cubs’ mangled paws, he knew she’d be there, having taken care of business, everything running smoothly.

  When did you become the person I trust the most? he thought, staring at her for a moment, trying not to let the knowledge warm him.

  “Can you go back to the truck and make sure I have enough rope to tie down the cage?” he asked.

  She nodded. “On it.”

  She hurried out of the yard, and he breathed a sigh of relief, because he was pretty sure her heart—which was gentle, even though she tried hard not to let it show—would break if one of the bears cried out during transport.

  He pulled thick quilted elbow-length leather gloves out of his bag and put them on. “Make sure the transport cage is open,” he directed, waiting until he heard the unmistakable creak before nodded at Crawford, who had moved forward with the wire clippers. He cut the chain and padlock that was keeping the crude enclosure closed, and the cubs, their dark little eyes both curious and frightened, scuttled backward as Rhett swung the chain-link fence gate open.

  “Hey buddy,” he said softly, reaching out for the smaller one. “I know it’s scary,” he cooed at the cub, grabbing him gingerly, not knowing the extent of his injuries. “We’re gonna take a ride.” He carefully deposited the cub into the new cage, and he flopped to his side, nosing at the fresh layer of hay spread across the floor.

  “Oh, watch out,” Crawford said. Rhett turned back, and the cub’s brother was trying to make his way out, his eyes fixed on his brother in the new cage. “Looks like he’s got a bodyguard.”

  Rhett scooped the cub up and deposit him in the cage with his brother. He closed the cage door, locked it firmly, and looked up at Crawford.

  “I’ll have an initial report for you to give the D.A. by tomorrow,” he said as he removed the gloves and put them in his jacket pocket. “I’m going to take them into surgery, make sure there’s no infection, clean up the wounds, dress them, and then we’ll go on from there.”

  “Thanks for coming out, Rhett,” Crawford said, holding out his hand. “I always appreciate it.”

  “Anytime,” Rhett said. “I’ll keep you updated.”

  “Likewise,” Crawford said. “Let’s get these critters in the truck so they can get fixed up. Boys?”

  The officers hefted the cage up and headed towards the truck, where Nat was leaning against the bed, the tailgate already pulled down for them. Rhett noticed she’d already attached one end of the rope to the hooks welded to the truck bed. Maybe it said something about him that he found the idea of Nat’s fingers, so capable and clever and perfectly manicured, knotting
the rope so expertly more than a little hot.

  The officers loaded the cubs gently into the truck bed, and Rhett covered the cage and grabbed the rope, looping the length methodically around and over it several times before he finally was pleased. There was still a bit of rope left over after he made the final knot, and he was about to go into the cab to get his knife when that perfectly manicured hand of hers was extended, holding a knife. A knife she had plucked out of that handbag from a designer he couldn’t even pronounce. A knife that, when he glanced down at it, he realized had a scrimshaw-carved handle, the delicate design a ship floating on the sea.

  It was sharp and beautiful and shining, just like her. Of course she carried a knife in her expensive-as-hell purse. Of course it was perfectly sharpened and high-quality steel and pretty.

  He wanted to say, You never do anything in half measures, Nat, do you? But instead he said “Thanks,” and took it from her. It sliced through the rope like butter, and he tried not to get turned on at the idea of Nat sharpening the knife each week, steel against stone. Any good rancher’s daughter would’ve been taught to keep her weapons in the best shape possible.

  You’re acting like a fool, he told himself, flipping the knife shut and getting into the truck.

  He handed the knife back to her after she hopped in the shotgun seat. “That’s nice,” he said, nodding to it as he pulled off the curb and down the street.

  She looked down, a fond smile tugging at her full lips. “Oh, thanks. It was a gift.”

  The flash of jealousy he felt wasn’t new, but it was stronger than ever. “Old boyfriend?” he suggested.

  She shot him a look. “From Big Stan.” When he didn’t register, she clarified, “My father.”

  Well, now he felt like an asshole. “You call your father Big Stan?” he asked as he turned right, heading toward the highway.