by Low, Gennita
Willow stroked the dog. “Hi, Mama. You did good today. Good girl.”
The dog’s tail thumped weakly but she didn’t raise her head. Willow didn’t blame her; she’d been through a lot. And she still had a long way to go.
Flynn waited for a solid week, seven days exactly, before he allowed himself to stop at the vet’s office to check on the dog.
The plump, gray-haired receptionist smiled at him when he walked in the door.
“Where’s the vet?”
Sue, he thought her name was, blinked behind her owlish glasses, looking beyond his shoulder. “Not another already?”
Flynn shook his head once. “No.”
Pushing to her feet, she went through the door at the back of the office, behind her desk. She spoke to someone on the other side, then returned to her chair. “She’ll be in in a minute.”
Flynn paced the almost-empty waiting room, tempted to walk out through that door. Now that he’d committed to seeing the dog, he wanted to see the dog.
Assuming she was still alive. He didn’t want to think about what he would do if she weren’t. Her eyes had haunted him all week.
Dr. James stepped in from the back door then and grinned when she saw him, her white teeth flashing. She looked a little excited to see him.
“Come on back, Flynn.”
He walked around the end of the counter, behind the receptionist and through the door at the back. Outside there was a concrete patio with a large kennel at one end. It was roofed and had been sectioned into several smaller kennels. In a fenced-in area off to the right, the dog he had brought in wandered the edge of the fence. Her blondish-brown colored coat was shaved down to the skin on her neck, but even from a distance he could tell she had already gained weight. Hell, she was on her feet. That was an incredible change from last week.
The dog spotted him when he walked out and stopped in an alert pose, ears pricked, then started toward him. Her face was darker than the rest of her body, but her eyes were bright. The way she walked highlighted the roundness of her belly. As she drew near, she whined, then sat patiently in the grass.
Flynn wanted to lean down and ruffle her fur, but he forced himself to stay away from her, his feet rooted to the patio.
“You can pet her.”
He glanced at the vet. Her arms were crossed over her plump breasts, and she was smiling at him a little oddly. The bright summer sun shone down on her glossy hair and pinkened her round cheeks. His behavior probably seemed strange, but it was as much as he could do right now.
“No, I just wanted to check on her.”
The doctor’s too-knowing eyes watched him for a moment, then she smiled slightly. “She’ll recover fine. The cable came out of her neck easier than I expected and amazingly she hasn’t gotten any more infection in it. I’ll take the drains out next week and she should be good to go. Once she bulks up a little bit, she’ll be a good-looking dog. She looks like she has Belgian Malinois in her, so I may be able to adopt her out to a local PD or something. I think whoever had her before realized she would be a handful. Even pregnant, she loves playing ball. We’ve named her Maya for now, till someone takes her.”
Flynn clenched his jaw as an automatic argument filled his throat, but he did not give it voice. His chest tightened to the point that he couldn’t breathe, and whispers of smoke burned his eyes.
No. It’s not real. It’s a dream. It’s not real.
For the first time, the flashback let him go without dazing him. Maybe it was the sun shining down, or the fact that he knew he had an audience. Either way, awareness returned quickly.
Two pairs of eyes, whiskey gold and chocolate-dark, stared at him hard. Dr. James had moved just a couple of feet in front of him, and her hand was held out above his arm as if she’d been about to touch him. Turning sharply away from her concerned face, he walked to the back door of the office.
“She looks good. Thanks, Doc.”
He stopped at Sue’s desk long enough to drop a few hundred dollar bills on the surface, then walked out the front door.
Willow had to keep her feet planted so that she wouldn’t chase the enigmatic man down.
What the hell had that been?
One minute he’d been looking at the dog, and the next his face had tightened as if he expected pain. She’d stepped forward but had hesitated to touch him. Something about the way he’d clenched, as if he were prepared to fight, set her senses on edge. But his eyes had cleared seconds later.
If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was some kind of attack.
He’d made a reference that had sounded military before, but that had been months ago. They talked when he came in, but it tended to be short and to the point with him.
She looked at the dog on the inside of the fence. Maya stared at the door as if waiting for him to come back, a slight whine coming from her throat.
“I know, Maya. He’s intriguing, isn’t he?”
The dog looked at her as if she understood Willow’s words, and plopped her bottom into the grass.
Willow had had the dog for two weeks when she went into labor late one night. Every evening she did a final walk-through to make sure all of the animals were good before she headed home. She was especially glad she had that night, because the first oversized puppy would not have survived if she hadn’t been there to help.
Maya quivered and strained but couldn’t deliver. Running out of options, Willow had to sedate her and do an emergency C-section on the poor thing. She’d called Nicky back at the first sign of distress and the assistant arrived just in time to clean the three good-sized puppies. While Nicky dealt with them, Willow spayed the dog and sutured her closed. As soon as the anesthetic wore off the determined mama dog cleaned her puppies and made them her own. Willow grinned at the dog’s single-minded determination, so glad that her maltreatment didn’t seem to have affected the whelps at all.
Walking home that night through the exercise yard, Willow debated calling Flynn. He’d paged her answering service once to get in touch with her, so she had his number. Actually, it wasn’t the first time she’d thought about calling him. But her reasons weren’t necessarily professional. They were more along the lines of hurry-up-and-ask-him-out-so-you-can-get-shot-down-and-get-on-with-your-life reasons.
Hell, he probably had a skinny little wife at home. Not all men wore jewelry if they were married. And as good looking as he was, if he didn’t have a girlfriend or wife, he was either a player or gay. Neither of which she needed.
In the end, she erred on the side of safety and decided not to call him. If he wanted to know about the dogs, he could call or stop in like everyone else did.
Besides. If he couldn’t commit to a dog, she doubted he would be good dating material.
Chapter Two
‡
It was another three weeks before Willow saw Flynn again. She happened to be standing at the reception desk talking to the final patient of the evening when his big black truck pulled into the parking lot. He jogged around the back of the truck, and she knew whatever he’d brought her was in bad shape. She hurried outside to meet him.
More grim faced than normal, mouth clenched, he glanced at her as she neared but didn’t wait for her help. Hoisting a blanket-wrapped form into his arms, he turned from the truck.
“Get the doors,” he snapped.
Willow slammed his truck door shut then dodged around him to get the office door. “Room one.”
She followed his broad back into the room, not bothering to wash her hands. She had a feeling it wouldn’t matter with this patient.
Flynn placed the bundle on the stainless table, then began to unwrap it from the blanket. “I found her laying on the edge of a country road. I think she’d been there for a while.”
Willow forced back a cry as she saw the dog for the first time. Obviously, she’d been hit by a car. The long line of her broken jawbone was exposed and Willow could see through to her raw tongue. Ticks were on every spare inch of her
body, some so engorged with blood they’d fallen off onto the blanket. The dog’s chest lifted in a slow breath and Willow couldn’t believe the poor thing was still alive. Her dull eyes blinked slowly, glazed with pain.
“I think her back is broken.”
Willow reached for the dog’s spine. Not only was it broken, it was shattered. There were no complete vertebra from her diaphragm on. She reached for the dog’s rear foot and pinched her toes. They were cold to the touch and didn’t respond to the pressure.
Sadness made her throat tight as she looked up at Flynn. His gray eyes were hard, but she could see the desolation he tried to hide. He knew as well as she did there was no hope for the dog. It was why he’d brought her here.
Throat tight, Willow readied the shots to put the unfortunate dog to sleep. There was no flinch as the needle slipped into her skin, only a shallow sigh as she went quietly to sleep. The pain in the line of her body eased.
As Willow administered the second shot, she reaffirmed to herself why she’d become a vet. To help those that she could, and to ease the suffering of those she couldn’t.
Fitting the stethoscope to her ears, she pressed the paddle to the dog’s chest and listened to her heartbeats slow, then stop altogether. She listened for a few more seconds, then drew away, re-covering the dog with the blanket.
Flynn stared at the bundle, shaking his head slightly. “Why am I always the one to find them?”
Willow was surprised at the personal question and responded to the pain she heard in his heart. She circled the table and dared to reach for the man’s broad hand. He stiffened but didn’t pull away. When he looked up at her, she smiled at him. “Because they know that you will care for them like no one else ever has, in the most vulnerable time of their lives. I’m happy she found you, because nobody else brought her in. You did. And I was able to end her suffering. She’d been laying beside that road for a couple days at least, in incredible pain. Now there’s no more pain. As traumatic as this is, I look at it as a wonderful thing. We’ve eased her suffering.”
Willow let go of his hand, surprised he’d let her hold onto it as long as he had. She moved to the sink and scrubbed.
“Wash up, I need to show you something.”
Flynn blinked at her but moved to do as she instructed. Once he was done, Willow led him through the office, out the back door and down the paver path behind the dog run. She glanced at him once to make sure he followed.
When she’d been looking for space to open her office, she’d come across this piece. The office on the corner used to be to a human doctor’s office, and the adjoining house on the opposite street had been where he’d lived. It had suited her needs perfectly, and she’d paid a little more than she’d wanted to in order to have it.
Her stomach quivered a little as she opened the door to her screened in porch, on the other side of the exercise yard from the office. Bringing strange men into her home was not normal, but he needed to understand the good that he did.
Maya looked up when Willow entered and wagged her tail. But when Flynn stepped in behind her, the Belgian Malinois stood up from her nest, dislodging three wiggling bundles. The dog lunged at Flynn, crying, wagging her tail as fast as it would go and stood on her back legs to get closer to his face.
“Down,” he growled, but it seemed instinctual, and he followed the command with a ruffling of her shoulders when she obeyed. He knelt to the floor and was almost knocked over as she paced happy circles around him.
Willow moved to the floundering puppies, picking up the fattest. He curled into her chest, snuffling, and she walked him across to Flynn.
He took the pup from her hands with no argument, holding him up in front of his face to look at the little brown dog. “How many did she have?”
“Three. Two boys and a girl. All fat and healthy, thanks to you finding Maya here when you did.”
Flynn frowned, narrowing his eyes and started to shake his head.
“Don’t you dare deny it,” she broke in. “She had problems delivering. I had to do a C-section. If you hadn’t found her when you did and brought her to me, they all four would have died. And it would not have been quick.”
Maya licked at the pup in his hands and Willow could see the reluctant acceptance settle onto his face. Cradling the pup to his chest, he reached out to pet her.
She basked in his attention, pushing as close to him as she could.
The tension that Willow normally saw in Flynn’s face eased and she wondered if he had a pet at home. She hoped not, because it looked like Maya planned to adopt him. The dog leaned against him as he played with her three babies, looking up at him as if he hung the moon.
All too soon though, the shutter came down over his face. Though he didn’t say anything outright, she could feel him withdrawing and it made her heart ache for him.
He pushed to his feet. “They look good. You’re doing a good job with them.”
Willow drew her eyes away from his molded chest to focus on his face. “I didn’t bring you over here to tell me what a good job I’m doing. I brought you over to show you what you are doing. By helping these dogs.”
His mouth worked beneath his beard, as if he heard her words but didn’t want to say anything. With a final stroke, he handed over the puppy in his hands and gave Maya a final rub. Then he was gone.
Willow sat back on the floor, wondering if she’d ever see him again.
Flynn worked as much as Duncan would let him. When he’d rolled out of the SEALs, it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that sitting in his damn lonely apartment was a terrible way to live. Hell, even going to therapy was better than stewing in his own juices. The job at Lost and Found Investigative Service, working for and with other disabled vets, had come at a critical time for him. He’d found the camaraderie there he needed to work on his issues. No, his weren’t as obviously physical as the other guys that worked there, but they were just as crippling.
The therapists continued to tell him that his PTSD would ease. Someday. Three years after he’d left the Navy, he was still waiting for someday.
Mace was everywhere. When Flynn worked out, he saw him out of the corner of his eye, just sitting quietly and watching. When he slept in bed, he could feel the weight of the dog’s body curled against his feet, same as always. He found himself tossing treats over his shoulder that were never eaten.
The psych doctors told him it was all illusion, brought on by the guilt of the dog’s passing. They dosed him with stronger and stronger pills, but the dreams persisted. Until he finally called a halt to all the drugs. Being slightly delusional was better than being delusional and drugged out of his mind. He needed to stay alert.
The dreams had started to change a little in the last few months, though. Yes, he still saw the dog, but now the voluptuous vet was there as well. Sometimes she’d be working on Mace and she’d look up at him with that bright, beautiful smile she had, her golden eyes shining with pleasure. Other times she’d look up at him with tears rolling down her soft cheeks and he knew he’d lost him all over again. Those were the nights he woke with tears on his own cheeks.
Flynn wanted to go see the vet again, because he felt a little less crazy when he was with her. She was a woman who obviously loved and appreciated animals. He didn’t feel like he needed to hide that part of his personality with her. While he moved through life looking for stability, she seemed to walk through life creating stability. Frantic owners arrived at her doorstep every day, but she had the disposition to ease them into a better headspace. That was very appealing to him.
Maya tugged on his heart too. Flynn was kind of afraid to talk to the vet again, because he didn’t want her to tell him she’d found the dog a home. It was heading into fall now. The puppies were seven weeks old, surely old enough that she’d started to look for homes for them as well. If his life were different, he’d think about taking her in, but he didn’t feel like he’d be a good owner to her.
Every time he passed the vet’s of
fice on his way to work, he debated pulling in. But he forced himself to keep the steering wheel straight and steady, avoiding temptation.
Duncan swore up and down he needed another dog. Had even promised to adopt him a retired Military War Dog if he could find a way to use the dog. Flynn had turned him down, though. Several times. The disappointment in his boss’s face—the man who believed in him not to lose his shit on a daily basis—made Flynn feel like an even bigger loser.
Stepping out of the shower, he grabbed the towel from the bar and started to dry off. His hands slowed at his lower abdomen, fingers running over the puckered scar of the gunshot wound that had changed his life. He remembered the mind-numbing pain as if it were yesterday.
Forcing himself into motion, he tried to shake off the melancholy.
When he drove by Dr. James’ office just a little while later, the woman herself stood in the parking lot talking to an older gentleman. She wore dark blue scrubs and a lighter colored top. Her long black hair had been pulled up into a high ponytail and for a fraction of a second her eyes flashed up to his truck before he passed. Her hand raised in a wave before he lost sight of her, and a curl of warmth spread in his belly.
Willow looked up at the sound of the familiar truck, fear clutching her stomach at the thought of Flynn bringing another patient. But when she spotted the truck, it was driving past her office. Before she could stop herself, she waved.
There was no reaction from the man behind the wheel, and that was probably best. She didn’t want to break his heart if he stopped in to see Maya.
