“Yeah, but I sure like the new models they had at the county fair.”
“You didn’t get to go to the fair this year. You told me that you were too busy at the clinic and missed it.” Rylie gripped his arm. “Uncle Roy, I love you for this, but I can’t let you do it.”
“Why not? You’re my only niece. Why shouldn’t I spoil you if I want to?”
“Because you love that truck. You were just saying as much to Jane.”
Her uncle shrugged and gave her a sheepish smile. “So I’ll love the new one even more. It’s not like I have anything else to spend my money on.”
Rylie hugged him fiercely. “What would I do without you? You’re the dearest uncle ever!”
“What does that make me, a grapefruit?” Warren complained, feigning a scowl.
Rylie quickly hugged him, as well. “No, sir! You are a darling, too.”
They were laughing as they exited the building and went to the truck. On the drive back to Sweet Springs, Warren couldn’t contain himself.
“So that seemingly clumsy trait every now and then is you still learning to adjust, huh?”
“Shucks, you did notice.” Rylie sighed, disappointed that apparently she hadn’t successfully fooled anyone. They’d all thought she was less than graceful, not the unfortunate victim of situations beyond her control. “Yes, sir. That was another reason I stayed with friends while I was getting through this. I didn’t want my parents panicking every time I misjudged spacing and bumped myself, or have them trying to do things for me that I needed to relearn how to do for myself. It’s been hard enough to get through the emotional and psychological aspect of this.”
“I can imagine,” Roy mused.
“Do you think Gage is going to let me stay?” Rylie asked, as some of her doubt returned.
“Why on earth wouldn’t he? You not only have helped business, but you make our jobs easier.”
All but confirming his words, as they pulled into the clinic’s parking lot, Rylie was astonished to see not only Warren’s vehicle still there, but everyone else’s, too, including Gage’s pickup truck. “Oh, my gosh,” Rylie whispered. “They stayed?”
“You are loved, sweetheart,” Warren told her. Once they entered, he was the one to announce amid the applause, “Everything is resolved and fine.” As cheers erupted, he added with glee, “I thought the sheriff was going to throw Prescott out of his office.”
At the mention of Noah, Rylie felt a deep pang. Granted, she was foolish to feel anything but loathing, but that was the human condition—sometimes illogical, especially where matters of the heart were involved. How much sweeter it would have been if he’d liked her, admired her or at least approved of her.
“Congratulations, honey!” the men said in near unison, drawing her out of her introspection.
Gage held out his arms and gave her a hug. “That’s from Brooke as well as me. I hope you don’t mind that I called her. I needed to explain why I was expecting to be ultralate getting home.”
“Of course not—and thank you.” Rylie looked at him with chagrin. “I know I should have been straight with you from the beginning—”
“I understand, believe me. And now that we know what’s going on, I’m doubly impressed with you. I wish we could clone you. Your dedication and determination are second to none.”
He made her feel as though this horrible experience had almost been worth it. “That’s so much nicer to hear than, ‘You’re fired.’”
“You say something as crazy as that again and I’ll let the air out of your RV’s tires.”
Everyone around her laughed.
“Now we’re definitely going to get your certification on the front burner,” he added. “And Monday, you take off and get that license business done. I don’t care if we have a clinic full of Manx cats snarling at me. Well, check that,” he said, as though having second thoughts.
This time Rylie joined in on the laughter.
“I’ll drive her so Roy can keep his truck here in case of an emergency,” Jerry said.
Warren snorted. “You’ll keep your lecherous self away from her. You’re still on probation after your last so-called helpfulness with you-know-who. Besides, Roy here is buying himself a new vehicle over the weekend, so she won’t have a problem in that department—and if she does, I’ll take her.”
“Jeez, guys,” Rylie said, once again pressing her hand to her heart, “my cup runneth over.”
* * *
Noah dreaded the drive home, knowing what awaited him. He would have to explain everything to his mother. She was going to be seriously upset with him, considering how she’d reacted to his fussing over having to take Bubbles to Sweet Springs. This was a dozen times worse; he’d almost been responsible for putting Rylie behind bars.
It’s not like you wanted it to go that far.
No? Then what?
To find something wrong with her so that you could stop thinking about her. To make her go away.
“Congratulations,” he told himself with disgust. “You almost succeeded.”
In the process, he’d also made himself the laughingstock of the county. It would be a miracle if the sheriff ever took him seriously again. But it was his mother he was most worried about. If she didn’t have a stroke—after she verbally disowned him—it would be a miracle.
After parking at the house, each step up the walkway left him feeling as though he was the one about to get ill. Thankfully, no one was around when he first walked into the old plantation-style dwelling. Most of the lights were off, and considering the hour, that was no surprise. His mother should already be in her bed, although if she was asleep, it was only to doze. She wouldn’t turn off her lights until he poked his head in to tell her that he was home. That was a habit she’d begun since the accident, now that he was all she had left in the world.
Setting his briefcase at the foot of the stairs, he went to the living room, where he intended to pour himself a stiff drink. He had the lead glass in his hand and the stopper off the crystal bourbon decanter, when he heard a scurrying, and then Bubbles ran into the room and barked at him.
“Same to you, dust mop,” he muttered. “Why aren’t you upstairs?”
“Why are you so late?”
Closing his eyes, Noah said, “Evening, Aubergine.”
“Phones not working at the office? Your mother’s been fretting herself sick.”
“I apologize. I’ll go up in a second.”
“Did you eat? If you did, you look like it isn’t agreeing with you.”
“It’s not that, and I don’t think I could keep anything down, but thank you for asking.”
Aubergine scowled. “You getting sick? Then you stay out of your mama’s room, hear?”
“I’m not sick, just—” He shook his head, unable to continue, and concentrated on putting several ice cubes into his glass. “Is Livie in her room?”
“That’s right. Waiting on you, so she can tuck your mother in for the night.”
Nodding, Noah poured the bourbon. “Good night, then.” As Aubergine left, he took a fortifying sip, and then another. The stoutness should have made him shudder, but it didn’t. Another bad sign. He was so numb with the bruising he’d taken that near-straight alcohol had almost no effect on his usually discerning taste buds.
“Let’s get this over with,” he told the little dog that stood by staring at him.
With a low growl, Bubbles hurled herself up the stairs ahead of him. Noah suspected that if the dog could talk, she would be ratting on him well before he reached his mother’s room.
“If it wasn’t for your high-maintenance self, I would never have met her, and this mess would never have happened,” he said, picking up his briefcase and following the animal.
At the top of the stairs, he set down the briefca
se again, since his rooms were on the west end of the house, while his mother’s were to the far end of the east wing. They were not his childhood rooms, but they provided the privacy and independence he’d insisted on to make this move back.
The moment he entered his mother’s bedroom, she asked, “Are you being ugly to my baby girl again, dear?”
As usual, too short-legged to jump onto the high bed without help, Bubbles had used the tiered method, leaping up onto the chaise longue at the foot of the bed, and then using pillows on it to make it the rest of the way. She now lay tucked comfortably at her mistress’s side and gave him a “What are you going to do about it?” look.
“She started it,” Noah said, before taking another sip of the potent drink.
The mauve, ivory and gold room smelled like gardenias—his mother’s favorite scent—and at sixty-seven, she still looked like the blonde actress in that old TV series about dynasties, with her ash-blond hair—a lovely gift from nature yielding to silver, but still styled in a perfect pageboy. As always, she was cocooned in silk, satin and enough pillows to stock a boutique. Not all of that was aesthetics; his mother’s body needed the support so her lungs could continue to work adequately.
Bending over to kiss her cheek, he marveled, as always, that she had almost no wrinkles; her skin was as smooth and soft as a child’s. She remained a beautiful woman, thanks to great bones in her triangular face and warm, cognac-colored eyes.
“When are you going to stop waiting up for me when I’m running late at the office?”
“When it’s a woman. Better yet, a woman you love making you late.” Audra frowned as she studied his face, and she touched the back of her hand to his forehead. “You look ghastly.”
“I feel worse, but then I deserve to.”
“Bad day at the office?”
“That’s the understatement of the year. Maybe since I passed the bar.”
Eyeing his drink, she said, “It sounds like I’m going to need a drink, too. If you were a good boy, you’d pour half of that in my water glass.”
“You’re on medication,” he reminded her, as he often had to, “and I’m not up for the joint retaliation by Olivia and Aubergine.”
“A half glass of white wine with lunch and dinner isn’t my idea of being fair. It’s practically European austerity.”
While taking another drink, Noah yanked his navy-blue-and-silver tie, then opened the top two buttons on his pastel-blue shirt.
Looking increasingly concerned, Audra closed the book she’d been reading on a white leather bookmark. “All right, you have my full attention.”
Instead, Noah frowned at the book. His mother read everything from romances to suspense, to sagas and history, with plenty of nonfiction in between. He thought her one of the best-read women he’d ever met and would claim so even if they weren’t related. “Why aren’t you using the tablet I gave you at Christmas?”
“Because this is a borrowed book, and because I still prefer a binding and paper to a screen. I’m on the computer enough. I can’t see how all of these screens can be healthy for one’s eyes.”
“Probably not.” Noah thought that he deserved to go blind for all of the problems and hurt that he’d caused via an electronic screen.
“Good grief, darling, you’re turning green. Sit down and talk to me.”
“Maybe I should get out your old riding whip first. You’re going to be tempted to use it on me in a minute.”
As expected, his mother’s eyebrows lifted as she grew intrigued—and worried. “That bad?”
“Mother—” unable to look at her as he said the awful words, he yielded to the need to pace “—I hurt and humiliated Rylie Quinn today. If there was any way to take back the last several hours, I would. I would do anything not to keep seeing her shock and pain in my mind, but I know it’s nothing less than what I deserve.”
“What have you done?” Audra whispered.
“That’s exactly what she said, how she sounded, when I brought the sheriff to the clinic to arrest her.”
“You what?”
Noah watched her cover her mouth with her right hand. Her diamond wedding and engagement rings twinkled in the lamplight. It had taken her an entire year before she’d had the heart to move her rings from her left hand to the symbolic widow designation on her right. Tonight it was just another reminder to Noah of how all she had known these last years had been grief and pain, and it devastated him to add to that.
“Noah, what on earth?”
“If I’d known it would trigger so much curiosity in California, I would have been more careful about how I probed into her background.”
“What right did you have to do that?”
That was the question that would yield the most condemning answer. “Because I wanted her out of my mind. Because she seemed too good to be true.” As soon as he spoke those words, he took another drink.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yes.”
“Ramon says she’s cheerful and like—what did he say?—a Fourth of July sparkler. What in heaven’s name is wrong with that?”
“I thought she was playing everyone, including me. I thought it was all pretense.” Of course, now he knew some of it had been, but for a totally noble reason.
“She’s a businesswoman,” Audra reminded him. “It’s important to remember to be polite to people, even people who may not be deserving of it, or whom we feel have wronged us.”
“I know, Mother.” Noah regretted his edgy tone, but what she was telling him wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. “I know,” he whispered again, his pained look beseeching her not to torment him more than he was already doing to himself.
“Tell me the rest,” she demanded, her expression already tightening with disappointment and disapproval.
Unable to bear that, he returned to his pacing. He was going to be blunt, but that would reflect only on him, not Rylie, as it should. “Long story short, the reason she’d gotten all the tickets that precipitated in an arrest warrant being put out on her was that she had a tumor and lost the vision in one eye. That was also why she dropped out of veterinary school.”
“Oh, Noah! That poor dear!”
“Yes.”
“To want something so challenging and admirable, only to have it snatched away. Her heart must be broken. Is there no way she could fulfill that dream?”
“Would you have let a one-handed surgeon operate on you?” he challenged, only to wish he could take back those words. Damn his survivalist legal training.
His mother gave him a reproving look. “If you remember correctly, I’d have been perfectly content not to have been operated on at all.”
Noah’s grip on the glass was so tight it should have shattered, but the damned thing was just too thick. “I was supposed to let you lie in E.R. screaming?” For days afterward, he’d wakened sweating, feverish as he remembered those sounds.
With a calming motion of her hand, Audra said, “I shouldn’t have said that. Go on.”
Noah explained the peripheral vision challenge, and how Gage had agreed with Rylie as she’d explained it to her uncle and the rest of them. “It’s my understanding that women are already professionally challenged by large animals anyway—it’s the whole size-and-weight thing factoring in with a woman’s inferior strength to that of a male vet. Add a high-strung horse or an ornery or downright mean cow or bull, or whatever creature they have to deal with, and you’re facing the threat of injury or even death. Gage did say that she could still be a vet, but with primarily smaller animals. She acted like that was a Miss Congeniality award to her.”
“Yes, I see,” Audra said, nodding slowly. “What an awful situation for her. I suspect she was also left with medical bills on top of her college expenses, so even the hope of the le
sser license wasn’t of much reassurance. Could her family not help?”
“She didn’t tell her parents in order to keep them from using their savings.”
“Oh, Rylie,” Audra whispered. “What a big, generous heart you have.” She looked at Noah, her expression incredulous, but also admiring. “So to stay near the animals she loves and honor her debts, she’s become a groomer. What an incredible but inspiring story. I’m so glad to have been told about her. Now more than ever I want her to keep caring for Bubbles.”
“Dr. Sullivan is assisting in getting her certification as a technician, as well. She’ll be able to do quite a bit—give shots and do some care, as long as the vet is on the premises.” Having heard some reference to that between Warren and Roy, he’d looked up the job description online.
“I haven’t met Gage Sullivan, but I already know I like a man who would try so hard to help an employee.”
What she’d left unsaid, Noah thought, enduring a new wave of shame, was that in comparison, he had acted in the exact opposite way.
“Now, about these tickets. You’ve covered them for her, I hope?”
“I tried to, but she ripped up the check.” However, Noah felt compelled to defend himself on at least one point. “Doesn’t it bother you that she could have caused a more serious accident being behind the wheel? You of all people have paid a high enough price for someone’s bad judgment. Good grief, she even tried to drive that big RV of hers from California to here.”
Rather than agree with him, Audra asked, “Why did she need to leave California? Did she know there was a warrant out for her?”
“I don’t know that there was one at the time. She just didn’t want her parents smothering her with good intentions and trying to make her dependent on them.”
“Well, I for one think we were blessed when she made her decision to come here, but Noah...I’m deeply ashamed of you.”
“I’m pretty sick of me, too.”
“What has happened to the brave and compassionate boy and man I used to know?”
What indeed? It was one thing to get chewed out by a boss, or a mentor, but his mother was the person he respected and loved most on earth. For her to find him morally and ethically wanting was another blow that had him downing most of what was left in his glass to where he thought about excusing himself to get a refill.
Groomed for Love Page 9
