by Jane Graves
“I can’t talk right now,” he said.
“Now, I kinda doubt that, honey, seeing as how you’re laid up the way you are. Couldn’t believe it when I saw you on the injury list, and you weren’t even riding when it happened.”
“Minor injury. Just twisted my knee a little.”
“I hear you canceled out of both Albuquerque and Carson City in addition to Phoenix. How much longer are we talking?”
“You’ll see me again soon enough.”
“Better make it quick. Carter Hanson’s telling everybody he’s going to pass you up in prize money and then take the world title.”
Just the mention of that name made Luke grit his teeth. “He’s got a ways to go before he’ll ever overtake me.”
“He seems to think it’s a done deal.”
“That’s because Carter’s full of crap.”
“He does like to talk big, that’s for sure. But he also has a shot at the title, depending on how long you’re out.”
It was going to be longer than Luke was letting on, but that was nobody’s business but his. He just prayed that in the meantime he could hold on to a spot in the top ten. The very idea that a self-important little bastard like Carter Hanson could take the title instead of him made his blood boil.
“So where are you staying?” Mary Lou asked.
“I’d just as soon keep that to myself.”
“I could visit. Help you recuperate.” Her voice dropped an octave. “I could do all kinds of things for you.”
“No, thanks,” Luke said. “But I do appreciate the offer.”
“I could give the term ‘physical therapy’ an entirely new meaning.”
“Sorry. Can’t.”
“Come on, Luke,” she said, her voice slipping from sexy right down into carnal. “You and me…we go way back.”
“I said I can’t. Not right now.”
“Then you just say when, honey, and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
“Actually, Mary Lou, by ‘not right now,’ I mean ‘not ever.’”
There was silence on the line, and when she spoke again, her tone was icy. “Well, then. Maybe I’ll give Carter a call instead. After all, I hate losers. If you don’t get your ass back on the circuit, that’s exactly what you’re going to be.”
When the line went dead, Luke tossed his phone aside, trying not to let Mary Lou’s call affect him. And it might not have, if only she hadn’t spoken Carter Hanson’s name.
Luke flipped on the TV. Watched a little sports news. His mind drifted, and pretty soon his gaze went back to that newspaper. A week ago he hadn’t even wanted to stay overnight in Rainbow Valley, and now he was considering staying for months?
No. No way.
He ignored the issue through the whole Rangers game, but by the time it was over, he was thinking about the caretaker job all over again. He’d be getting paid just enough to put food on his table and gas in his truck to get to and from Austin for physical therapy. And he’d have a place to stay that didn’t cost him a dime. It could keep him afloat until the World Championship, at which time he intended to beat the crap out of Carter Hanson and then laugh all the way to the bank. It was the perfect solution.
Except for the fact that Shannon was in the mix.
But he had no feelings for her anymore. None at all. Eleven years had passed. Water under the bridge. This would be a business arrangement, nothing more. And the shelter was big enough that he could probably steer clear of her most of the time.
But Shannon wasn’t the only resident of Rainbow Valley he wanted to avoid.
He did a Google search. In what passed as the society section of the online version of the Rainbow Valley Voice, he found an article about a recent charity event. Apparently Shannon’s mother, Loucinda North, was still fulfilling her role as a warm, sympathetic, philanthropic pillar of the community.
Funny how deceiving looks could be.
The odds of Shannon wanting to hire him were exactly zero, but he had no intention of letting that stand in his way. The longer he thought about it, the more certain he became that it was his best option. Maybe even his only option.
He decided when he was able to drive again in a few days, he was going back to Rainbow Valley. And one way or another, that job was going to be his.
Dr. Russell Morgensen finished examining Vernon Taylor’s teeth, thankful he didn’t have more patients like him. Vern was in his sixties, but he had the teeth of a twenty-year-old. Fortunately, the rest of Rainbow Valley didn’t have Vern’s devotion to dental health, so Russell’s practice had a profitable future ahead.
He walked out of the exam room and went to his office, leaving Velma to clean Vern’s teeth. At first Russell hadn’t been too sure about hiring a sixty-year-old woman, but that turned out to be a nonissue where her ability was concerned. What he hadn’t counted on, though, was the fact that she was virtually mute. If he’d hired a mime he’d have gotten more verbal interaction. But in the end, she got the job done, and that was all he cared about.
His office manager, Cynthia, was another story.
She’d come from Waco to be near her grandmother, who’d just moved to a nursing home in Rainbow Valley, and she had experience in a medical office. She might have been five feet tall if she stood up really straight, but she had the kind of curves a woman her height rarely did. He’d been so distracted by her Kewpie-doll lips and Betty Boop eyes that before he knew it, he’d offered her the job. Then she came to work, and he wondered if he hadn’t made a big mistake.
Things started showing up on her desk. A small stuffed rabbit. A ceramic frog. A wooden pencil cup from Sea World. A big bowl of Starlight mints. Swirly metal frames filled with photos of people and animals he would never meet, but there they were in his clinic, looking at him every day of his life. And plants. Everywhere there were plants.
And, as it turned out, she wasn’t quite as sweet and compliant as he’d originally thought. In fact, sometimes she was borderline insubordinate. She did what he asked, but usually in her own time, and differently than he would have done it. But his patients seemed to love her, and if she contributed to his bottom line he could put up with damn near anything.
Velma disappeared every day at lunch, and he still had no idea where she went. Cynthia, on the other hand, microwaved the lunch she brought from home every day, then sat at the tiny table for two in the kitchen, her nose buried in a book. Russell felt weird about sitting down next to her. So on days he didn’t go out for lunch, he waited until he heard her talking to a patient on the phone. Then he nuked a frozen dinner and took it into his office to eat it.
But none of that mattered. What did matter was that he was finally running his own practice in a place where he wouldn’t be shown up by other guys, where he wasn’t the last man on the totem pole. It sure as hell hadn’t been that way at Vantage Dental, a group practice in Dallas where every other dentist there was a high flyer who seemed to attract more patients than he ever could. But now he was building a life in Rainbow Valley where there wasn’t all that competition. His practice was thriving. People looked up to him there.
And he was finally dating a woman who would do him justice.
Shannon thought the first time he saw her was at the shelter when he came to adopt a cat, but he’d noticed her long before that. Fortunately for him, he had his dental practice, so the cat he adopted could be a shop cat and not a house cat. If Shannon had liked hot cars, he’d have gotten one of those instead. He looked at the cat sometimes and thought, Barf up one more hairball, and I’m replacing you with a convertible.
Why Shannon had come back there after her successful job in Houston as a CPA, he’d never know. But at least in this town, being director of the shelter was respected in a way other jobs weren’t. And she was from a good family, with a father who was a retired lawyer who clearly pulled down some serious bucks, and a mother who was the town social director, philanthropist, and fashion plate for the over-fifty crowd.
Yes, Shannon wa
s definitely his future. And he had all the patience in the world to wait for her to decide he was her future. They weren’t dating exclusively yet, but that would happen soon enough. In this little town, did she really have another choice?
Russell thought about Jessie, the fluffy orange tabby he’d adopted, who’d taken to lounging on the sofa in his office most of the day. For some reason she’d decided she liked it there, even though she’d shown no signs of actually liking him. She shed all over his furniture. She meowed for no reason. She got underfoot at least a dozen times a day. But she was part of the big picture, so he had to be patient about that, too.
Then he reached for his phone to make a call, and that was when he felt it. Right there under his foot.
And the last of his patience disappeared.
Shannon left Lola’s Pet Emporium and hurried along the sidewalk that bordered the town square, the noontime sun beating down on her shoulders. Tourists were everywhere today, having lunch at Rosie’s, picnicking in the gazebo, or just moving in and out of the shops along the square.
She passed Sweet Dreams bakery, Lone Star Gallery, and the Cordero Vineyards wine shop. When she reached Tasha’s Hair Boutique, she looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw Tasha hard at work. She was tall and thin as a Popsicle stick, and she wore her hair dyed inky black and spiked it with handfuls of gel. Her wardrobe consisted of a bizarre mash-up of whatever she’d seen in Elle or Glamour that month. She was a graduate of Trendsetter Beauty School in Waco, and now she and her two stylists cut just about every head of hair in Rainbow Valley. She lived in the apartment above Shannon, but her funky fashion sense made her look totally out of place in the sedate 1950s fourplex.
Tasha looked over just in time to see Shannon walk by. She stopped what she was doing and pointed at her, then to her own hair. Emphatically. You need a haircut ASAP! Shannon shook her head and pointed to her watch. No time these days. I’ll call you!
Shannon rounded the corner and headed for Russell’s dental office, hoping the product in the plastic sack she held would do the trick. Cynthia said Russell was starting to get a little miffed about his newly acquired cat, and there wasn’t much Shannon wouldn’t do to make sure an adoption stuck.
When Shannon entered the waiting room, music wafted through the sound system, filling the waiting room with soft jazz. Issues of Architectural Digest, Southern Living, and Golf Illustrated lay fanned out on the coffee table. On Cynthia’s desk was a lamp with a beaded fringe shade, and her dark, pixie-cut hair shone in the warm light. Shannon doubted that particular lamp had been Russell’s choice. In fact, nothing on Cynthia’s desk could possibly have been Russell’s choice, but somehow it had survived anyway.
Cynthia put her finger to her lips, then motioned Shannon over. As she came around the desk, she saw a furry butterscotch-colored cat lying on the top of the copy machine, upside down with all four paws in the air, sound asleep.
“I have things to copy,” Cynthia whispered, “but I’ll wait until she finishes her nap.”
Shannon smiled. Cynthia hadn’t lived there long, but she’d already become a friend, and her love of animals was a big reason why.
“Okay,” Shannon whispered back, holding up the sack. “Here’s one more thing to try. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what we’re going to—”
“Cynthia!”
All at once Jessie jerked her head up, flipped over, and came to attention. The two women looked at each other.
“Uh-oh,” Cynthia said, and rose from her desk. Shannon followed her down the hall. They walked into Russell’s office, where Shannon saw him on his knees behind the desk, peering under it.
“What’s the matter?” Cynthia said.
“She did it again.”
“She?”
“The cat! Right there under my desk!”
Cynthia peered beneath the desk. “Oh. Hairball.”
“Yes, hairball!”
Russell came to his feet, saw Shannon, and froze. “Oh. Shannon. I didn’t know you were here.”
Cynthia saw Jessie sitting near the door. She scooped her up, cradling her in one arm and scratching behind her ears with her other hand. “Shame on you! Mustn’t barf on Dr. Morgensen’s rug. You’re such a bad, bad kitty!”
But Jessie was more interested in Cynthia’s magic fingernails than she was the halfhearted admonition. She raised her chin to allow better access, cat body language for You’re wonderful. I love you. Do that some more.
Shannon handed the sack to Russell. “Here. Lola says a hairball inside a wooly mammoth wouldn’t stand a chance with this stuff.”
Russell immediately handed the sack to Cynthia. Cynthia raised an eyebrow in Russell’s direction, then turned to Shannon. “My job description gets longer all the time.”
“Use the carpet cleaner with the pine scent his time,” Russell said.
Cynthia crinkled her nose. “The lavender smells better.”
“Pine,” he said, and looked at Jessie. “Maybe I should just keep my door shut.”
“No!” Cynthia said. “Don’t lock her out. She loves the morning sun in your office. And she’ll only scratch on your door, anyway.”
Russell looked glumly at the cat, as if trying to decide which would be harder—cleaning the carpet or repairing the door.
Cynthia carried Jessie out of Russell’s office, and he leaned over to brush invisible carpet fibers from the knees of his slacks.
“I did warn you about her being a long-haired cat,” Shannon said. “They’re more prone to hairballs.”
“No. It’s fine. Cats will be cats, right?” He put a smile with his words, but the whole presentation was just a tad too cheerful. “Thanks for the medicine.”
“Thanks for adopting Jessie. She really is a sweet cat.”
“Yes. She is.”
But Shannon wasn’t entirely convinced that Russell was convinced of that. But with Cynthia there to spoil her, Shannon didn’t worry.
“I’m looking forward to dinner on Thursday,” Russell said.
Oh, God. Please don’t remind me.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend the evening with Russell. It was the fact that they were doing it at her parents’ house that made Shannon a little apprehensive. Her mother was angling for a son-in-law with “Dr.” in front of his name, which meant she’d insisted Shannon invite Russell to dinner. Eve, Shannon’s sister, would be there, too. Eve always kept the conversation moving, which was a good thing. It was what she chose to talk about that could make the evening go downhill in a hurry.
“I’m looking forward to it, too,” Shannon said.
“Well then,” Russell said, “I’ll pick you up at six o’clock on Thursday.”
“Sounds good,” she said, even though it didn’t. But as long as her mother didn’t invite Father Andrews, his Bible, and “the power vested in him by the State of Texas” to join them, maybe Shannon could escape the evening a single woman.
Late Thursday afternoon, Shannon opened the back door of the barn, hoping for some cross ventilation. But August in Texas could be hell on earth. Even at four thirty it was pushing a hundred degrees, and the air was so still it was as if not a molecule moved. The whole day had felt thick and sluggish, complete with dust and horseflies and the maddening buzz of cicadas. She wiped her forehead on the shoulder of her T-shirt, swiping strands of sweat-soaked hair away from her face.
She dipped the scoop into the grain bin and dumped it through the opening of one of the horse’s stalls and into his bucket. With the exception of Clancy, a paint gelding with a nasty cut on his foreleg who needed to be confined, she would turn out the rest of them as soon as they finished eating. They’d congregate near the hackberry trees on the eastern perimeter of the property, where they’d drop their heads, let their eyes drift closed, and switch their tails to chase away flies.
Then she heard footsteps outside. Freddie Jo’s voice behind her. “Shannon? Somebody’s here to see you.”
Shannon turned ar
ound and was stunned into silence. No. It couldn’t be.
Luke?
Chapter 5
Heat rushed to Shannon’s face, flooding her with an unnerving sense of being caught off-guard. The brim of Luke’s hat shadowed his face, but what she could see of his expression gave away nothing about why he might be there. He wore a brace on his knee, evidence that he’d probably had surgery, but the physical limitation did little to detract from the strength he radiated with every breath.
She never walked away after feeding the horses in the summer without stalks of hay in her hair and a sweat-soaked shirt, so she didn’t need a mirror to know what she looked like right then. She shoved a strand of hair away from her forehead, then turned back to dip the scoop into the grain bin again.
“Luke,” she said nonchalantly. “Thought you were long gone.”
“I was. Change of plans.” He pulled a folded-up section of newspaper from his hip pocket and tossed it onto a nearby bale of hay. “I’m here about the caretaker’s job.”
Shannon dropped the scoop, spilling the grain back into the bin again. She stared at the newspaper, then back at Luke. “You’re what?”
“Have you filled the job?”
“Uh, no, but—”
“Then I want it.”
“Hallelujah!” Freddie Jo said, looking heavenward. “This is our lucky day!” She gave Luke a big smile. “It’s about time somebody came to our rescue. A few more weeks of this, and—”
“Now, hold on a minute!” Shannon said.
Freddie Jo’s face fell. “What’s the matter?”
Shannon couldn’t believe this. Of all the things she might have expected Luke to do, this was absolutely last on the list.
“You can’t work here,” she told him.
