by Leela Ash
“Alcacia. Strange name. Lovely too, huh?” she returned.
Bo was feeling very uncomfortable and he wasn’t even sure why. He felt a little like he used to in the old days when Joshua wanted to know who had left the mud prints on the carpets.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he grumbled because Jeanine seemed to be waiting for a response with ill-concealed glee.
“So, if she’s not your girlfriend, what is she? Some random girl you roll around with in the forests?”
“She’s a witch,” he said tiredly, to end the barrage of questions. And then as soon as he’d said it, Bo wished he could have bitten off his tongue.
But Jeanine didn’t take him literally. Why would she? She nodded in understanding, adopting a Zen tone as she agreed, “I can see why it must seem that way. You’re a young, virile man, out minding his business in the forest and here comes whatsherface. And then boom, before you know what hit you, you’re getting all kissy-face with a stranger in the woods. Do I have it right so far?”
She was so shockingly accurate that he slowed in his tracks and stared at her in mute admiration.
Jeanine didn’t notice; she was barreling onwards towards a scooter parked on the road in front of his truck. She clamped her helmet onto her head and threw him a jaunty grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She was such a mass of contradictions, and quite unlike any other female he had ever encountered.
“So long, Beaufort.”
He grit his teeth. Her persistence in calling him by his full name was so annoying. Who did she think she was? He refused to dwell too much on why he liked the sound of his name rolling off her tongue.
As her scooter disappeared around the bend, Bo turned around and walked back into the forest. He still had to find a solution to the strays and he sure as hell wasn’t going to find it by staring after some female — and a human at that.
He needed a solution fast. Maybe he could get the local vets to help out.
6.
“Someone is rounding up stray animals by the dozen —practically at the speed of light — and depositing them in an animal shelter three states from here. What do you have to say to that?” Megan Delaney demanded.
Jeanine paused, arrested in the act of shoving a bite of chocolate into her already full mouth. “Huh?”
Megan slapped a green file folder down onto the tabletop. “Are you even at work Lourdes, or are you going to spend the whole day stuffing your face?”
Jeanine defiantly licked bits of chocolate off her fingers, shoved the remaining bar of chocolate into her drawer and then stood to face her nemesis, who was also her boss, in a manner of speaking. AniVets, where they both worked, was a very large veterinary clinic. While there were other supervisors and higher-ups, Jeanine reported to Megan who was a level above her in the pecking order. But that tiny difference seemed to give Megan the impression that she could lord it over Jeanine.
Megan Delaney was an exotic blonde with straight long hair, classic baby-blues and a tight, firm body that completed her Mean Girls ensemble. And Jeanine loathed her even more than she loathed Bo.
Megan was an accomplished veterinarian but she tended to throw her weight around a lot. She was bossy, hateful, and somewhat megalomaniac.
“First of all, it’s my lunch hour,” Jeanine informed her with thinly veiled contempt, “Which means I get to stuff my face or any other part of my body I might wish. Second, there’s been an alarming increase in the number of strays so if someone out there is taking the initiative, I say more power to them!”
“Is it? Do you mean to tell me you think it’s just dandy that a few of those cats have turned up dead in some kind of occult nonsense, their abused dead bodies strewn right across the streets?”
Jeanine felt ill. “W-What?”
“Get to the bottom of this!” Megan barked before turning and stalking towards her office her eyes gleaming with triumph.
Jeanine looked down at the green file Megan had left behind and she felt her heart clench in her chest. Green was such a beautiful color and she just knew if she opened that file and saw dead animal pictures she would hate green for a long time.
She loved animals. She always had, she couldn’t bear to think of anything happening to them. She thought of her pet, Mr. Puffins VI. He was a large, furry cat with mean, beady eyes, sleek brown fur, and a disposition at odds with his cold watchful eyes.
The original, Mr. Puffins the First, had gotten her through the childhood trauma of her parents constant quarreling and their eventual, inevitable separation. All through the entire journey to adulthood, she had had a revolving door of Mr. Puffins, until she had arrived at the current Mr. Puffins. He was the sixth in line, hence his name the Sixth and she loved the sly bastard as much as she had loved every single Mr. Puffins before him.
She loved animals; she needed to be around them as much as some people needed to be around… well, oxygen. The comparison made her chuckle under her breath and she sank onto her seat and reached for the file.
Her smile died when she beheld the first picture in the file. It was of a small grey cat. It was badly mangled, lying on its side on Route 90, and surrounded by burnt out red candles. Its small face was bloodied and told its own tale of torture. It was clear that it had been an unwilling participant in some ritual.
Her choice of veterinary medicine in college hadn’t been much of a surprise to anyone. She had a soft spot for animals and seeing this one all tortured made her feel angry.
She could feel the chocolate she had just eaten coming back up. She forced it down with a drink of water. Her hands trembled as she returned the plastic bottle to her desk.
Someone was killing poor defenseless animals and it was up to her to find and stop that person. What kind of human being decapitated innocent animals for fun or for the sake of some ritual? It couldn’t be the same someone who was rounding them up and taking them three states away, could it? That didn’t make much sense.
She grabbed her phone and dialed without looking at the keypad. The Sheriff picked up at once and barked into the phone, “Anderson.”
Raymond Anderson was an interesting man. He was short and pudgy with a crew cut, thick neck, thick eyebrows and a customary bark. He was also short-tempered and impatient.
“Hello Sheriff. Jeanine Lourdes here. I would like to make a report. Some animals have been tortured and strewn around in some sort of ritual, sir.”
“Yes, Ms. Lourdes. We already have the full details from Ms. Megan Delaney. If you have additional information that would be most helpful. Otherwise, I’m in the middle of an investigation and I would like to get back to it!”
Without another word, Jeanine hung up. Megan was very irritating. If she had already made a report, why didn’t she just say so?
Well, if the police were already on the case, she would still have to do some fact-finding herself.
She grabbed her jacket and headed out the door. She would drive around town and take a look. Those strays had to be coming from somewhere. Maybe whoever was attracting them was also killing them, the question was, how?
The first street she took, she bumped into Bo just coming out of Tommy’s Hardware. He was slapping a pair of rubber gloves against his muscled thighs and directing some men as they loaded supplies onto the bed of a huge truck. She dimly recalled he had once said something about being in the construction business.
Jeanine’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she looked away, her heartbeat accelerating. The last thing she needed was for him to see her or talk to her. She still hadn’t recovered from the last time, when she had seen him with that woman in the woods. For some strange reason she had felt something that seemed a lot like jealousy and she didn’t like it one bit. Why would she be jealous that he was shoving his tongue down some woman’s throat?
Better whatsherface than her, she thought with a sniff. So why did she feel hurt rather than satisfied, she wondered?
With a flick of her head, she shook off the disquieti
ng thought and stepped harder on the accelerator, eager to be away from him.
She didn’t see the dog until it was a little too late. The squealing sound that followed was like a thousand whips landing on her back.
Every head whipped her way, including the men carrying supplies and Bo. Her hands shook a little as she parked her car by the side of the road and alighted at a run.
Bo got there first, his large hands cradling the small dog as carefully as though it were fragile china. Tears welled unbidden in Jeanine’s eyes. She had run a small animal over. She wasn’t the sort to cry at the drop of a hat, but this was twice in two days and it was all Bo’s fault, she thought glaring at him. He was the common denominator.
“Give him to me,” she ordered with biting fury.
Bo continued to hold the tiny dog in his arms, ignoring her, for all the world, as though she hadn’t spoken at all. The dog, little more than a puppy, opened sad, pain-filled eyes and looked up at Bo. It gave a small sound and sort of cuddled against him.
“He’s a she,” Bo said smiling down at the dog as though it had just run and won the Olympics.
Jeanine rolled her eyes in disgust, “Of course it is.” Only a female would respond to his caresses like that.
Bo looked up, his dark eyes blazing with more heat than any man had any right to carry as he asked, “What do you mean?”
She bit her tongue. “Listen, we don’t have all day cowboy. We have to get this dog to a hospital.”
“I’ll take care of it. You carry on,” he ordered with typical male arrogance.
Yeah right. Like she would knock a dog over and then stroll on home for dinner. She reached for the dog again and this time managed to grab it from his hands. It yelped in protest. She held onto it with firm, practiced hands to keep it from wriggling off.
Jeanine hurried over to her car and placed the small, bloodied animal in the backseat of the car.
“Hey,” he called.
“Listen, I don’t have all day. To save this dog, I have to move fast.”
“How do I know you’re actually going to save it, rather than just toss it into the first bush you come across the minute you’re out of sight?” he demanded, coming to hold onto her door to keep her from shutting it.
Jeanine blanched. Did he really see her in such a poor light?
“Wow. Your opinion of me is very heartwarming, Beaufort. Well, I hate to disappoint you but I’m not as evil as you like to think. Are you coming or are you just going to stand there?” she demanded as she leapt into the driver’s side. That was all the urging Bo needed. He opened her car door and entered the front passenger side of the car.
As she drove towards her office, she probably broke all speed limits and more than a few traffic laws, but she didn’t care. A ticket was a small price to pay for saving the little dog. Finally, she drew up in front of the familiar structure of AniVet and Bo cast her a look she couldn’t read.
“What?” she asked, arrested by the faint bemusement on his features.
“I’ve been planning to find a vet in town or drive all the way to the next county, if I had to. And you just solved my problem. How did you know about these vets?”
“I work here,” she informed him.
Bo did a double take.
7.
“Quick, get me gloves,” Jeanine barked as she hurried into the clinic with the dog in her arms.
The nurses dashed forward with a stretcher. “OR 1 is ready, Jeanine.”
She carefully placed the dog onto the stretcher and hurriedly grabbed a scrub cap and shoved it onto her head with her curls beneath the cap.
“What are you doing?” Bo asked.
“Just get out of my way,” she ordered. The gurney was rolled around a bend and she disappeared from sight.
Bo sank onto the chair thinking about what had just happened. Jeanine was a vet of all things. And she seemed to care about animals a lot. She was just the person he needed to help him understand and curtail the increase of strays in Weirna.
He picked a paper from the coffee table and flipped through it. It was a local paper and he stared in surprise at a picture of Jeanine, staring back at him. She had won an award for discovering the treatment for some rare bone disease in dogs a few months ago. As she smiled back at the camera, she looked fresh, innocent and unspoiled. Her lips were pink and inviting and her eyes were full of life and promise... and some inexplicable hesitancy. It almost seemed as though she was afraid to let the camera capture a part of herself.
Jeanine was a mystery. She exuded a tough, mouthy exterior but when it came to animals she could be all mushy one minute, and coldly professional the next.
He settled down to peruse the article. The article had so many nice things to say about Jeanine. She was professional, smart and driven, but then he had already noticed all of that himself.
“You may please have a seat, sir. Your dog was in an accident, so it might take a while,” the receptionist chirped.
“I want to speak to uh…Dr Lourdes,” he maintained.
She shook her dark head, “It would take a while. Please have a seat.”
After what seemed like hours but was just several minutes, Jeanine emerged from what he presumed was the OR, her stride confident and almost masculine. The slim, taut length of her legs was emphasized by the tailored cut of her trousers. She was something of a tomboy, he realized. He could just picture her climbing a tree to rescue a squirrel.
To his surprise, the mental image made his blood heat and with a sigh of disgust he thrust the paper away and rose to his full height of 6”2.
“So?”
“The dog will be fine,” she announced with a brilliant smile, right before she collapsed into his arms and gave him the tightest bear hug he had ever received.
“That’s great news. Thank you, Jeanine,” he said smiling at her.
“We should celebrate,” she declared, looking around.
“Have lunch with me,” he offered.
She froze in shock, staring up at him.
“Uh…N-Not like a date,” he stammered, uncharacteristically. “I uh… I have a proposal for you.”
“A proposal?” she repeated with enough incredulity stamped into the words to make him feel as though he had offered her the plague and she wasn’t buying.
“A business proposal,” he emphasized, feeling ridiculous. “It’s not something we should discuss standing in the hallway.”
“Fine. Sit down,” she directed.
“Don’t tell me you’re scared of me, Jeanine. I don’t bite,” he intoned with wry humor.
Something flashed in his eyes, animal and dangerous and her breath caught in her throat. Goosebumps rose on her hands and she moved away from him, taking several steps back for self-preservation.
“Fine. Tomorrow then.”
Bo looked at his watch, “No. It’s lunch hour right now. I say we go now.”
“I don’t like eating out,” she tried.
“Then we can go to my home,” he said, so smoothly that it took her a second to realize what he had said.
“Whoa, slow down. I can recognize your moves from a thousand miles away.”
“Get over yourself, Lourdes. You’re not my type, in addition to which, I stay with my family,” he growled.
Jeanine relaxed. He wasn’t planning on ravishing her then. But why did she feel a niggle of unease at the thought of meeting his family? And was that a slight tinge of disappointment that he didn’t intend to ravish her?
Great, just great! Where had that traitorous thought come from?
She fixed a beady stare on his handsome features, “Lead the way, Beaufort.”
He assessed her angry expression with unperturbed, laughing eyes and then he said, “You sound as enthusiastic as though you were heading for the torture chamber. Cheer up. My family’s not that bad.”
Jeanine forced a smile of agreement and followed him in her own car. Her mouth was agape as he led her to a part of The Angle she never even kne
w existed. She had lived here for a while and had never seen this part of the little town she had fallen in love with.
There were sprawling fields of vibrant colored flowers which grew as far as her eyes could see on all sides, rolling hills that made her think of the famous Australian landscapes. lThere was a little, charming well in one corner of the community that gave it a storybook feel and gave her a feeling in the pit of her stomach that made her feel like… well, like she was coming home!
As soon as she climbed out of her car, Jeanine paused to take a deep inhale of the balmy air that made it seem as though a beach were close by.
She swung her questioning gaze to Bo, but before she could ask the question on her mind, he interrupted, “Yes, there is a beach close by.”
Jeanine’s mouth shut with an audible snap, and she stared at him in surprise now.
“What? You think I’m psychic?” he demanded with a grin that made mockery of that theory.
Jeanine shook her head mutely. What could she say to that? He had read her mind twice in one minute! She had never believed in coincidences and something told her he was hiding something.
“I don’t think you’re psychic, I think you just had a lucky guess.”
Bo grinned, and came closer to her, his dark eyes smiling into hers. She could have sworn she heard a roar and in that split second, something moved behind his pupils, something huge. It was gone in an instant, leaving dark, piercing pupils staring down at her.
“Do you really think I had a lucky guess?” he demanded, coming closer to her. He stretched out a hand, lifted her as though she were a Barbie doll and brought her closer to him.
A frisson of excitement shot through her. He was so strong. There was just something about that kind of strength in a man that was so exciting. He let her slide down his body to stand on her own feet; but she was still plastered all over him.
What was wrong with Bo? Why was he acting this way? She wondered breathlessly, even as he crowded her.
Jeanine took a quick step back for self-preservation. “I don’t know what you had, but I know you can’t read minds. No one can.”
