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Rob laughed again, and Sean found himself joining in. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad I’m here, okay? The last thing I need is for them to discover I’m a sitting duck.”
“Deal.”
They said their farewells and Sean hung up the call and looked around the room. His suit was still lying over the chair, his shirt a crumpled pile on the floor. Under the table, near the wall, was a scrap of black lace he was just betting was Jess’s thong.
“Home,” he muttered to himself. His home for six whole weeks. His stomach tightened, but the thought wasn’t nearly as scary as it should have been.
* * *
DEALING WITH a potential outbreak of Q fever for one of her regular clients—a breeder of Cavalier King Charles spaniels—was just the kind of Monday morning Jess needed to distract herself from the weekend. Following through to notify anyone who could have been exposed, reporting it to the department of health for further investigation and then moving on with her usual roster of patients—a couple of minor injuries, the usual canine and feline parasite infestations, an infected paw on a gorgeous Irish setter—it was easy to feel as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. While animals and their anxious owners were in front of her, she was focused.
But any moment of downtime, left to her own thoughts, her stomach would slowly turn flip-flops. Her cheeks still burned when she recalled the knowing look she was sure she’d seen in the car park attendant’s eyes yesterday when he’d processed her ticket, clearly time-stamped from the night before.
Ridiculous. In this day and age, it wasn’t as if a one-night stand was particularly remarkable or even that noteworthy. It wasn’t even the first she’d ever had—although the other one had been back in university days when life had been different. Before she’d grown more cautious, more careful. Before she’d been hurt enough to know to protect herself.
And she’d been much better at handling the situation without, as Sean had put it, “freaking out.” His words from last night were, much as she’d protested them at the time, a pretty accurate summation of her reaction. She’d totally embarrassed herself in front of him.
Thank God she’d never see him again. Not that she was ashamed of what she’d done—not really. She just wished she’d managed her exit more gracefully. Without betraying how much the whole thing had meant in the scheme of her life.
The milestone it had become.
She and Mark had been divorced for more than six months now, and had been separated a year longer than that. Jess didn’t want to change things, not at all. It had taken a while, but with the benefit of hindsight she could see just how destructive her marriage had become.
It was just... Sean was the first man she’d slept with since Mark, since the disastrous failure of her marriage.
Jess wasn’t used to failing—at anything. Not at school, at work or in life. Mark should have been the perfect partner. He came from a good family, had a good job, spent his leisure time sailing and had a group of friends at the yacht club. He also had a problem with controlling his temper, a perfectionist streak a mile wider even than Jess’s own and a vastly different understanding of what the word monogamy meant than most of the world.
“Jess? I’m going to pack up if that’s okay.”
Jess’s temporary vet nurse, Andrea, interrupted her train of thoughts and stirred her back into action. “Of course. What time is it?”
“Almost six.”
“Okay, sure. If you clean up in here, I’ll go out and finish up at the front desk.”
Jess straightened her navy tunic top, embroidered with the clinic’s logo on the top left pocket, and headed out to the reception area. She straightened up the display of cat food that sat on the desk and headed for the computer. It was going to be a busy few weeks until Margie returned from her cruise. Why she’d let her two staff members take leave at the same time was a mystery explained entirely by the fact that she was a complete soft touch as a boss.
At least once Margie was back the administration side of things would be out of Jess’s hands again—that had never been her strong suit. But it was going to be a long six weeks until Hailey returned from her honeymoon. Andrea was good, but Hailey was better. Besides, Hailey was a friend. Even if her only topic of conversation for the past few weeks had been the wedding, Jess was going to miss her.
It took half an hour to close out the register and the credit card machine—mostly because Jess wasn’t entirely sure whether she was doing it right. In that time Andrea had mopped the floors and packed away the surgery ready for the morning. A little too quick for Jess’s liking, and she made a mental note to come in early and check that it had been done to her satisfaction. Jess was used to Hailey’s level of perfection; she never left so much as a stray hair behind. Right now, though, Jess just wanted to get home—she was too tired to think straight. It hadn’t been an especially busy day workwise, but the emotional workout she’d been putting herself through had taken its toll.
“See you tomorrow?” Andrea appeared in front of her, purse already over her shoulder.
Jess gave a tight smile. “See you tomorrow. Can you lock the front door behind you when you leave? I’m going out the back.”
“Sure. Bye.”
The bell over the door jangled loudly as Andrea shut the door firmly behind her. She’d certainly made a fast exit tonight. Maybe she had something important to do. Maybe she had someone important to get home to. Jess wasn’t sure if she missed that feeling or not.
She had only just left reception when a loud knock at the front door drew her back. “Is that you, Andrea?” she called out. “Did you forget something?”
She unlocked the dead bolt in the door and opened it, expecting to see Andrea’s face.
What she found instead made her trip over her own feet.
If she hadn’t been holding the door, she’d have ended up on her ass...in front of him.
Sean Paterson.
Just as gorgeous as she remembered.
Only instead of his winning smile and twinkling eyes, today his brow was creased and his mouth tight. His hair was flat and mussed—no product in it to style it into the spikes he’d worn on Saturday.
But his harried appearance and worried expression didn’t stop her stomach from ending up somewhere near her throat.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted, shock getting the better of her. One-night-stand-Sean was supposed to be long gone by now. Moved on to a new city and a new conquest. That was the thought that had been sustaining her each time she relived how badly she’d handled things on Saturday night. At least I never have to see him again.
“Jess, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. Suzie chewed a pack of headache pills.”
Beside him, Hailey and Rob’s golden retriever woofed happily at Jess. The dog’s tail banged against the window as she tried to stuff herself inside the door, past the man blocking the way. She had to be the only dog in the world that actually wanted to go to the vet.
Jess stepped back and opened the door wider, ignoring the leap in her pulse. “Well, then, you’d better come in.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“HOW MANY PILLS did she swallow, do you know?” Jess led the way back into the surgery. If she focused on Suzie, she could forget the cold, sick mortification that was seeping into every inch of her body, making her shiver. Couldn’t she?
For her part, Suzie trotted along happily, comfortable in familiar surroundings.
“I don’t know for sure.” His voice was strained, such a difference from the charming, unshakably confident man from the wedding. “I brought the pack with me. There were only two missing when she got at it, otherwise it was full.”
Sean fished in his canvas jacket pocket and pulled out a well-chewed cardboard box and two blister packs.
Jess grimaced.
“Is it bad? It’s bad, isn’t it? Oh, God.”
“It’s not great, but let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.” It was easy to slip into her well-rehearsed pet-owner-reassuring tone. Thank goodness she’d had years of practice. “Okay, let’s take a look.”
“You want me to lift Suzie up on the table?”
“No, let’s take a look at the pack first, see if we can work out how many she might have ingested.” Jess refilled a bowl of water that had been cleaned and put away and set it down for the dog. “Here you go, Suzie. Have a big drink.”
Sean spread out the damaged pack and a crumpled paper towel on the stainless-steel table in the center of the room.
“These are what I managed to get out of her mouth.” He gestured to the paper towel and Jess leaned closer to see a couple of chewed capsules inside.
“Good,” she said. Not everyone was brave enough to reach into a dog’s mouth and pull out whatever it was chewing—even with a dog as placid as Suzie. She had to give him credit for that. “Okay, let’s see what the damage is.”
Together they carefully took apart the soggy packaging, counting the pierced blister pack, piecing together the chewed remains in the paper towel. By the time they’d finished their stock taking, it appeared the still-cheerful dog—now happily sniffing her way around the surgery—had likely only swallowed two full pills.
“You’re lucky,” Jess said with a genuine sigh of relief. “In a dog Suzie’s size, two isn’t likely to cause any serious effects. They should clear her system overnight.”
“Thank God,” Sean said. He blew out a breath and leaned heavily on the table before letting out a nasty expletive. “Stupid dog. What kind of animal thinks a green-and-white cardboard box is edible?”
Jess didn’t pay much attention to his anger—it was a pretty common response. “Most dogs will test out just about anything as food. And some medical capsules have a slightly sweet coating to help people swallow them, so I don’t know—maybe they tasted good to her. Suzie isn’t the first dog to give them a try, unfortunately.” Jess found Suzie thoroughly sniffing out a corner of the surgery. She crouched down to the dog’s level and checked her vitals, although Suzie was more interested in licking Jess’s face.
“Okay, okay,” Jess said with a laugh, backing away. “Thanks for the tongue-bath, Suzie. I think she’s going to be fine.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“Now what?” asked Sean.
“You just need to observe her closely for the next few hours.” Jess scratched Suzie behind the ears. “Keep an eye on her, and if she begins to show any signs of sluggishness, starts vomiting or seems wobbly on her legs, you’ll need to take her straight to the twenty-four-hour animal hospital in Caulfield. That’s the closest to Hailey and Rob’s place.”
“Oh.”
Something about the tone of his voice made her glance up. As she did, a memory from Saturday night washed over her—the naked bunch of muscle in Sean’s arm as he’d leaned over her, body poised to kiss her intimately. The scarlet heat of a blush started somewhere near her toes, but reached her hairline in mere seconds.
Thankfully he seemed too busy fiddling with getting his phone out of his pocket to notice.
“I don’t suppose,” he said, frowning at whatever his phone was telling him, “you could keep her here for observation?”
“What, do you have a date?”
Jess would have given anything to take the words back, to collect them from the air and stop them from ever being said. But no, they were out there, for better or worse.
“What?” He looked confused for a moment, but then that confident, slightly smug expression was back, complete with the almost smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth and had to make any mortal woman weak at the knees. “A date? Now, why would you ask that?”
Jess stood and moved to the other side of the table, putting distance between them as she fought to regain her composure. She didn’t want Suzie to be sick, but if the dog could fake a fainting spell right now, she’d be everlastingly grateful.
“I just meant, you must have plans. If you can’t look after Suzie.” Lame, lame, lame.
“I have things to do,” he said.
She knew he was being deliberately vague, just to taunt her. Frustration at his carefree nonchalance finally won out over her embarrassment. “Well, things will have to wait,” she said sharply. “I don’t have the facilities to keep animals here overnight.”
The smile was gone. Sean looked once again strained and unhappy. “I should have known this wouldn’t work,” he muttered.
“What wouldn’t work?”
“Me, dog-sitting.”
“Huh?” Sean dog-sitting? In fact, what was he even doing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be in Sydney by now? “Why are you dog-sitting? Why isn’t Hailey’s cousin looking after Suzie while she house-sits?”
“Ah, you missed the last-minute change of plans. The cousin dropped out. I’m the house sitter.”
“You’re looking after Hailey and Rob’s house? For six weeks?” Her voice rose and she heard the shrill note. What had happened to fly-by-night Sean, here and gone again before she knew it?
“I know.” His shoulders fell, and Jess would have sworn he looked somehow defeated. “I should have known it was a bad idea. I already had to get a plumber in to fix the dishwasher this morning.”
If Hailey and Rob had been stupid enough to leave him in charge of their home and their dog, they probably deserved to come home to a ruined house, women’s underwear scattered everywhere and a sick pet. But as much as the thought was satisfying, she also knew she couldn’t let it happen—she loved Suzie too much for a start.
“Well, then, you’re just going to have to put on your big-boy pants and adapt to the responsibility.” Jess put her hands on her hips, preparing herself for a lecture. “If Rob and Hailey trusted you to—”
“God, not you, too!” Sean threw his hands in the air. “Do you think I didn’t get enough of that shit at the wedding?”
Jess didn’t want to feel sorry for him. Between that sexy smile and those puppy-dog eyes, she was pretty sure Sean never had to try very hard to achieve anything in life. People must just cave to his wishes all the time. But right now? Right now he looked stressed and slightly panicked, like a cornered dog in an unfamiliar environment.
“Look, Sean,” she tried again, with a more conciliatory tone this time. “It’s not a big deal. All you have to do is stay home tonight and keep a close eye on Suzie for the next four hours or so. If she hasn’t shown any symptoms by then, you can rest easy.” She nearly said “go to bed easy” but stopped herself just in time. She didn’t want to put bed and Sean in the same sentence, even in her head.
Sean scrubbed his face with both hands, his palms against his stubble making a rasping noise. “It’s just...”
He looked at her then, his green-and-gold eyes piercing. “I have a meeting, a teleconference, that’s going to take a couple of hours. It’s a pretty important one and I need to concentrate. I can’t change it, but I don’t want to leave Suzie unsupervised. There’s no one else I can call on.... Help me out, please.”
Jess wasn’t sure if it was the pleading tone in his voice or the bewitching spell of his eyes, but she believed him. She was probably just a sucker. Mark had used similar tactics to protest his innocence and she’d believed him, too—the first couple of times, anyway. After that, the deception had been on both sides—Mark deceiving her, Jess deceiving herself.
She didn’t want to give in, but she already knew she was going to.
“I don’t... Okay,” she said finally with a sigh that she hoped communicated the fact that she wasn’t necessarily happy about it. “I’ll watch Suzie.”
The lines between his brows eased as his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You will?”
Jess rolled her eyes. As if he didn’t fully expect everyone to capitulate to his every whim. “Yes. I’m a chump, but I will. I’m only doing this for Suzie, though. You’d better—”
“Thank you!” Sean leaped around the table, grasped her face in both hands and planted a kiss right on her lips. Before Jess had even comprehended what he’d done, he’d pulled away again and was crouched down in front of where Suzie sat, rubbing her sides. “Oh, Suzie, Suzie, Suzie. You are a daft dog.”
Jess managed to stop herself from pressing her fingers to her tingling lips. But only just.
She knew she should say something, but for a moment all she could do was watch as Sean made funny faces at Suzie. He tickled her chin. “But even if you are dippy, I’m growing kinda fond of you.” Then he grabbed the dog’s head and pressed his lips to her cheek with a loud smacking noise.
That was how much his kiss meant.
“Don’t cause any trouble for the lovely Jess, will you?” He stood up and checked his watch—one of those oversize, expensive, diving kinds. “Crap, I’ll only just make it. Thanks, Jess, you’re a lifesaver. I’ll pick up Suzie as soon as I’m done. From your place?”
Jess nodded dumbly.
“Cool. Thanks again. See you later.”
The bell on the front door rang loudly as he made his exit, the building strangely silent for a beat afterward. As if he’d taken some kind of vital energy out the door with him.
Jess stood still, her brain taking a moment to catch up with everything.
“So, Suzie,” she finally said into the silent room, “I’m not sure which of us gets the medal for biggest idiot tonight.”
The dog banged her tail on the floor, recognizing her name. She looked up questioningly, as if asking for an explanation of what had just happened.
“Don’t look at me like that. He...he has superpowers of some kind.” He must—it was the only way to explain how she’d not only ended up taking on his responsibility for Suzie, but would also end up seeing him again. On the plus side, he hadn’t said anything about her embarrassing departure on Saturday night. Not that the opportunity to do so had really arisen.
“All right, come on then.” Suzie got up and followed obediently as Jess locked up the surgery again and headed out to the back alley behind the building where she parked her car. It was dark, but the security light she’d had installed clicked on as soon as she stepped away from the door.
“Don’t get too excited,” Jess warned as Suzie jumped into the backseat and settled down as if she’d been in there a hundred times. “If you start to look any less cheerful, I’m going to make you vomit.” She waggled a finger at the dog as she closed the door. “That’s what you get for indulging yourself without thinking first.”
Jess didn’t know what her own punishment was going to be for the same crime, but a perverse, contradictory part of her was almost looking forward to it.
* * *
IT WAS RAINING by the time Sean’s conference call was over, and he drove carefully to Jess’s place on the slick roads. The meeting had taken much longer than he’d thought and he hoped Jess wasn’t going to be too annoyed by the lateness of the hour.
His fingers tapped against the steering wheel as he recalled the discussion with his agent and the studio executives. Getting one of his books made into a movie was going to be a thrilling achievement. It would be solid, irrefutable evidence of his success—something that even his family couldn’t deny.
That was, of course, if it ever actually happened. So far, the whole experience had been one of the most frustrating and aggravating things he’d ever done in his life.
He sighed and backed off the accelerator a little. His annoyance wasn’t worth a speeding ticket or—God forbid—an accident. Dezzie was too precious.
It’s all going to be worth it.
Seeing Sebastian Douglas on the big screen was finally going to bring him a measure of peace. Topping the New York Times bestseller list hadn’t been enough to impress his family. But a movie with one of Hollywood’s most famous names starring? They couldn’t dismiss his success then.
It’s not quite there, Sean. Still a bit of work to be done. That was the weaselly language the studio exec had used during the meeting about the screenplay. What the hell did that mean, exactly?
We want to get this off the ground soon. So you’ve got to give us your best, or we’re going to take it out of your hands and call in the script doctors. The threat was clear. Sean was an author, not a screenwriter, but he’d wanted to maintain control over his creation. So he’d written the script himself in defiance of the studio’s wishes. And that was potentially going to be the death of the whole project.
That and whether or not some precious director was available to do the job.
His agent had hung on the line after the exec had disconnected to reassure him. But the ego boost was unnecessary. What Sean needed was space. Room to concentrate. Time to get his head back into the draft he’d written more than a year ago and do whatever it was that would finally get Sebastian Douglas, Demon Warrior the green light.
Perhaps this house-sitting thing was meant to be. Six weeks in one place would ground him enough to focus on the script. And it might even help him meet the deadline on his new book that was approaching far too quickly for his liking, especially since he was having troubles with the werewolf characters he’d decided to incorporate.
Sean pulled up in front of Jess’s building, but stayed a moment in his car to update his Twitter account. It had been a while since he’d given the crew a progress report.
Hi, crew! Staying put in Melb for a few weeks working on Sebastian stuff for you guys. It’s supersecret, but it’s gonna be good, I promise.
Within seconds there were multiple responses filling his phone’s screen.
You tease! Can’t wait. Sebastian is my dream.
Yippee! *Happy dancing*
Make Elvire give up on Roman and get with Sebastian, okay?
We love you, Sean!
He knew it was shallow, but the responses made him feel better, salving his bruised ego. In some ways, his readers—the crew, as he liked to call them—were a substitute family. A family that admired his success and appreciated his hard work.
Before he closed down the Twitter application, a direct message popped up.
Sean, if U R in Melb for a while can I organize a fan meet-up?
It was from Rachel, the self-appointed manager of his unofficial “fan club.” She called herself RachElvire on Twitter and her avatar online was a picture of herself in full Elvire costume hugging him at one of the comic conventions he’d attended last year. She seemed to turn up at every book signing, appear at every convention he attended and always seemed to know which hotel he was staying in.
But apart from a fondness for dressing like a vampire, she seemed pretty harmless, and her Sebastian Unauthorized Wiki website had been one of the first in an explosion of online fandom for Sebastian and his adventures. She’d even flown all the way to Sydney for the launch event of his latest book and had proudly presented him with a box full of cookies baked in the unique shape of Sebastian’s favorite dagger. They’d been delicious.
He typed back to Rachel:
I’ll let you know. I have a deadline, so it depends on how the work goes.
He enjoyed attending the occasional fan meet-up. But they were starting to get a little out of hand. The last one, in a café in Richmond, had the café’s owner calling a halt to everything when regular customers couldn’t get in the door for their coffees.
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