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He automatically smiled in return. Stella was a real sweetheart. She lived over at Gwen Tanner’s boardinghouse, and was forever seeing to everyone’s happiness and the health of their love life, where warranted. But she never went there with him.
Not minding the interruption since it was Stella, he pushed his chair back and stood. “Well, hello, Stella.” He came around his desk and went to greet her. “How are you today?”
“Oh, I’m marvelous, Jack. Just marvelous.” Her pleasantly plump cheeks held more of a rosy glow than usual. And her blue eyes positively twinkled.
“Good. Good.”
She smiled at him.
Puzzled, Jack waited, but she didn’t explain her presence. To his knowledge, Stella didn’t own any pets.
She simply smiled at him some more.
Rocking back on his heels and burying his hands in the pockets of his lab coat that he’d forgotten to take off, he asked, “So, what can I do for you? Do you need help moving something…?”
“Oh, no. Nothing, really. I just thought I’d stop by and say hello. I noticed Dr. Wood’s truck isn’t out front. Is she on a call?” She reached up and patted at very curly hair through its protective barrier in a very feminine way.
A sizzling arc of panic went to ground right through the bottoms of his feet. No. Not Stella. She had to be in her mid- to late-fifties.
But she was also single.
Then the reminder of why she was still single cooled him in a rush of relief. She had loved and lost also, though she and her young man hadn’t had the chance to marry, their engagement ending tragically with his death. Stella, along with ol’ Henry Faulkner who had lost his wife ten years ago, understood why Jack didn’t feel the necessity to move on.
Still, her obvious delight made him nervous. “Yes. Melinda is out at Wyla’s, I believe. Vaccination time. Can I get you some coffee, tea…” He was pretty sure Melinda had heated some water before she left the first time this morning and had a decent selection of instant coffee and tea bags to warm them up after being out treating livestock in the freezing weather.
“You are a dear, but no, thank you.” She found an escaped blond curl and tucked it back undercover. “Oh, you know, Irene and I thought we’d do some baking. What sort of cake do you like best, Jack?”
“Cake?”
She smiled even more sweetly and nodded encouragingly.
He shrugged. “Chocolate, I guess.”
“Chocolate. Wonderful. With raspberry filling?”
He shrugged again, wondering what his opinion had to do with anything. “That’s always good.”
“Wonderful, wonderful.” Her pleasure was amazing. “Well, I better let you get back to work. Have a wonderful day, Jack.” She wiggled her fingers at him and was back out the door before he had a chance to respond.
Wonderfully bemused, he stared at the door for a moment, then went back to his desk. That was odd. Especially considering the fact it was Gwen who usually did the baking. She made the most incredible pastries. He made a mental note to stick his nose in at the bookstore across the street, Ex-Libris, where Amanda Bradley let Gwen sell her baked goodies, and snag a muffin or two before he headed home. Perhaps Stella and Irene Caldwell, who also lived at Gwen’s boardinghouse, were helping out in the kitchen. That was very likely, since Irene treated Gwen more like a granddaughter than a landlord. He shrugged and went back to work.
Not fifteen minutes passed before Irene blew into the clinic’s waiting room, a cheery yellow scarf tied over her gray hair and a puffy, quilted black coat bundled around her. In her early sixties, Irene had really found a place to belong when she moved into the boardinghouse six years ago. Her husband had passed away four years before that, and without any children of her own, she’d been too alone.
She spied Jack and headed for him before he had time to get up. “Jack, dear! I’m so glad you’re in. I have a quick question for you, if I may?”
He set his pen down. Clearly, this was going to be one of those days. “Of course, Irene. What can I do for you?”
“Not a thing. It’s only that Stella and I are making a tape of everyone’s favorite slow songs for, ah, for the Founder’s Day celebration dance, and we were wondering what your favorite is? To dance to? Ah, slow?”
“I thought you and Stella were baking today.”
“Are we?”
He raised his brows. Doddering was one thing these older ladies were not.
“Oh, yes.” She put a hand to her cheek and laughed. “Of course we are. But we’re also making a tape. Of music. To dance slow to.”
Jack immediately thought of the song he and Caroline had danced to for the first dance at their wedding. On the sly she’d arranged for the band to start out with a traditional love song, then switch to playing a punk rock song about a white wedding. She’d laughed so hard at the look on his face. If only they could have stayed in that moment. Happy. Safe.
His thoughts must have shown in his expression, because the smile lighting Irene’s softly lined face faltered. Not wanting to distress her, he threw out the first song that came to mind.
She smiled in obvious relief. “Ooh, that’s a good one, Jack. Thank you, dear.” She turned on her sensible heel and hurried out.
The door had barely shut behind her before it opened again. Only this time it wasn’t to what he considered a friendly face. Marina Andrews, the blond TV news reporter from a station in Great Falls, along with her cameraman, who’d made Jester their home away from home since the lottery win, came into the waiting room. He could understand their attention right after the win. What had happened had been newsworthy. To a point. And certainly for a limited amount of time. In Jack’s mind, that time was up. Their continued attempts to dig up a story where there wasn’t one anymore was wearing on him.
And that big-bucks bachelor routine definitely hadn’t earned them any points.
“Dr. Hartman, might we—”
The phone rang.
Saved by the bell. Jack held up a stilling hand and picked up the receiver with the other. “Jester Veterinary Clinic. Dr. Hartman speaking.” He put on the airs for the sake of his audience.
“Jack, it’s Ruby Cade.”
“Hey, Ru—”
“I need you, Jack. Right now.”
For the first time in nearly two months those words coming from a woman didn’t illicit dread from him. Not only was Ruby married, she was a fellow lottery winner. Though Jack couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen Ruby’s husband Sam around town. Since Sam was a military man of some sort, his absence shouldn’t be cause for note. But Ruby owned The Mercantile just down Main Street from the clinic with Honor Lassiter and lived in the apartment above the store.
And she didn’t have a pet.
He cleared his throat. “Ah, what can I do for—”
She cut him off. “It’s that damn goat, Jack. The one that’s been hanging around town.” Her upset was clear in the quaver of her voice. “It must have wandered into my back storeroom when we were unloading a delivery earlier. Now it’s got its head stuck inside a damn bucket and is crashing all over the place. It kicks when we try to get a hold of it. Please, can you come right over and help us before it destroys my stock?”
Ruby never swore, and it was strange to hear her so rattled. But she had been unusually emotional ever since the lottery win.
“I’ll be right there, Ruby.” Jack hung up, thankful he had an excuse to leave. He grabbed his bag from the floor next to his desk, checking quickly to make sure it contained his heavy-duty clippers. If he recalled, the little billy goat that made occasional forays into town from who-knew-where had horns long enough to keep its head stuck in a bucket.
He stood and went to the coatrack near his office door and pulled his heavy, dark brown canvas barn jacket off the rack. Slipping into it, he met the eyes of the eager reporter. The cameraman’s face was already buried behind his camera. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
“Can you just answer a couple of quick—”
He held up a hand again. “It’s an emergency. Sorry.”
Marina’s face glowed, clearly having picked up the scent of opportunity. “We’ll come along.”
Irritated and knowing that telling them no didn’t work—they simply followed along at a distance—Jack nodded. “Okay, just give me a sec.”
He turned and headed for the examination room, but realized he didn’t want to leave them inside with access to his office. He whirled and headed back toward them. “Why don’t you go ahead and wait for me in your van. Give you time to warm it up.”
Marina nodded in agreement. “Sure. Good idea.”
Her cameraman opened the door for her, and then Jack held it for him as he maneuvered the expensive video camera unit through the doorway. Jack closed the door, turning the lock as quietly as he could. He then headed straight for the examination room and out the other door that led out back, effectively ditching the news crew. His gut told him the last thing Ruby needed was to have her upset featured on the evening news. And it would be, because she was a fellow winner.
Besides, since he only had to pass Faulkner’s Hardware and The Brimming Cup, then cross the side street Mayor Bobby Larson had had the ballocks to rename Big Draw Drive to reach the back of The Mercantile, he’d be shortening the time it took him to get there.
As he made his way along the backside of the Main Street businesses, which looked much smaller than they did from the front with their old-west style facades, all Jack could think about was how nice it would be to move some place where he could do his job without having to slip out the back door of his own clinic.
A place where no one knew who he was, or could remind him of his pain.
Chapter Three
Melinda dragged her feet up the side porch steps to the little house she rented on Mega-Bucks Boulevard late that afternoon, weary to the bone. She should have been exhilarated after having her work praised as much as it had been by Wyla.
But when the thin, sour-faced woman wasn’t complimenting Melinda on her veterinary skills, she was griping. From afar, of course. With plenty of hired hands to do the work, Wyla no longer went anywhere near the animals that her last husband had been forced to “give” her after a nasty divorce. But she still stood in the pig barn door and griped and griped. About everything.
Though she’d been smart enough to keep her complaints about Jack, and the insinuations she’d been making around town that he stole her money by opting into the lottery after she’d opted out, to the minimum. She must have known Melinda wouldn’t stand for it. It was no secret he had her loyalty. Blessedly, the fact that he also had her heart remained a secret.
Wyla’s negativity had simply beaten Melinda down in a way wrestling several dozen pigs never could. She definitely couldn’t wait to seek comfort with her critters over this day, and had come straight home after finishing up at Wyla’s rather than stopping in at the office like normal. The paperwork, and Jack’s talk, could wait.
How was she going to talk him out of leaving without revealing too much? She shook her head at the seeming impossibility and let herself into the house. She’d been told when she first moved here that she needn’t worry about locking her doors. After the lottery win, however, the town sheriff, Luke McNeil, had advised everyone, even nonwinners, to take precautions. There were a lot more strangers in town now, thanks to its new notoriety.
The side door of her house opened right into a tiny laundry room. After she greeted her fat, notched-ear, half-blind, gray-and-black tabby cat and his timid, snow-white counterpart, per her routine, she stripped off her filthy and smelly work clothes—today the scent being eau de hog—and tossed them straight into the clothes washer. Down to her French-cut, cotton underwear and bra, she trudged through the little kitchen, the harvest-gold linoleum cold under her feet and the eager cats dangerous around her ankles.
She bought herself some safe-walking time by stopping to refill their food bowls, then went through the cozy living room to the short hall that the bathroom and her bedroom opened off from. Heading straight for the shower, she did her best to wash away the day behind a white with blue dog-paw print shower curtain.
The mud and manure were easy, requiring only a little soup and a nail brush. Wyla’s negativity succumbed under the force of the massage setting on the shower head. Bud Webster’s chauvinism required a few choice words that echoed nicely off the bathroom’s white and blue-flecked tile. But no matter how hot or hard she ran the water, Jack’s words, his pain, appeared to be with her to stay.
Turning pruney and needing to see to her other animals, Melinda gave up, turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub. She towel-dried her long curly hair as best she could, combed it out, then donned the pink satin pajamas and terry cloth, powder-blue robe with white clouds that she kept hanging from a ceramic cat’s paw on the back of the bathroom door. Out of the pockets of the robe she pulled thick woolen socks the cats assumed were some other weird creatures she’d taken in. She put them on, then went to tend to the rest of her menagerie.
The cats had already been seen to, but her parakeet with the broken beak needed water and her barbecue-singed guinea pig needed more pellets in the cages in a corner of the living room. In the laundry room she slipped her stocking feet into oversize rubber boots and went out into the fenced backyard.
She saw to her three rabbits in their hutch next to the house, added fresh straw to her two pigmy goats’ little shed to keep them warm through the very cold night, and coaxed her beloved, three-legged dog into the house. A mutt of some kind, mostly Australian shepherd she figured, he had been the first animal she’d rescued after moving out on her own, and his tenacity and good nature inspired her to keep at whatever she was doing no matter how tempted she was to give up. The silly thing loved to be outside in his doghouse, no matter how frigid the weather, but Melinda insisted he come in with her at night, as much for her and her need for company as for his health.
Kicking off her boots then reaching for an old towel to dry his white, black and brown coat, she met his warm, brown eyes as she rubbed the snow from him. “This was one of those days, Pete. I think even you would have stayed in bed.”
He sneezed as if to pshaw her, then hopped away into the kitchen.
“Fine. Cats know how to pity.” Melinda followed him, washed up, then made herself some soup, turning the TV on to the news while her dinner heated.
With her soup in a great big mug painted black and white like a Holstein dairy cow—a gift from her mother—Melinda went into the living room to eat. She cozied up on her dark brown, overstuffed couch and allowed the cats to settle in close enough to comfort but far enough away to keep their hair out of her soup.
She’d only taken two sips of the rich broth when the logo the local press, with the mayor’s help, had come up with for Jester since the lottery win—Millionaire, Montana—flashed on the screen next to the anchor’s head. Melinda rolled her eyes. Not again. She knew there had to be more important things going on in the world than whatever piddling dirt they’d managed to dig up on the lottery winners.
Then a picture of the Jester Veterinary Clinic came up on the screen and gained Melinda’s complete attention. The anchor started talking about Jack—or more accurately, the Big-Bucks Bachelor—and how he wasn’t going to be a bachelor for long. Melinda gaped at the TV, stunned by what she was hearing.
Then they went to commercial.
Her heart stalled in her chest despite her brain’s immediate attempt to scoff it off. But the panic hovering in the wings was unquestionable and terrifyingly intense. Could it have happened again? Could she have again fallen for a man who had eyes for someone else without her knowledge?
No. Jack couldn’t be secretly involved with someone.
Mary Kay Thompson, sitting coyly on the exam table, came to mind. Melinda tried to reject the notion, but Mary Kay had managed to get rid of Melinda for a while. But why not just close the door if they wanted to fool around?
Melinda shook her head, sloshing her soup. No. Not Mary Kay. Not anyone. It couldn’t be.
Still, she’d never experienced a more agonizing commercial break in her life.
The news came back on.
According to an unnamed source, the anchor continued, Jack Hartman—and they put up a picture of him so there was no doubt it was her Jack Hartman—was engaged to be married.
With the conversation of earlier today still ringing in her ears, Melinda’s brain won out. Jack hurt too much to have moved on. A guilty relief rushed through her so fast it almost made her dizzy. How embarrassing for that reporter.
Then Melinda’s picture, obviously taken from a distance then enlarged, showing her hair flying in a mess and a fierce look on her face, flashed on the screen. And the news anchor, sounding extremely certain, announced that fellow veterinarian Melinda Woods was the lucky gal to finally rope Jack.
Jaw slack, Melinda stared at the screen, oblivious to the soup running onto her surprisingly absorbent robe.
JACK STARED UNSEEING at the barbecue sauce he stirred, thinking about the thieving stray dog he’d capped his day off by failing yet again to trap. After he had escorted the bucket-head billy goat from Ruby’s back room, freed it from its five-gallon hat by docking its horns and turned it over to the kid who owned it with a lecture on proper fencing, he’d gone to check the trap that he and Luke had set for the dog in the scrub bushes behind The Mercantile.
An awful lot of the townsfolk would simply prefer the sheriff shot the dog, fearing it was a wolf. But Luke, either because of his Native American heritage or just the plain fact he liked animals, had come to Jack instead. They’d managed to get close enough to the animal to clearly see that it was actually a German shepherd-husky mix whose thick, grayish-brown coat made it look like a wolf at first glance.
Jack also had been able to see—as it hightailed away from them—that the dog, a male, had been neutered, so Jack knew it was simply a stray rather than a true feral dog. It had undoubtedly been abandoned by someone along the highway, because Jack knew that no one in or around town had ever owned a dog like that.
The mutt didn’t deserve to be shot, especially since the worst it had done so far was tear into garbage bags and make a mess. And though he’d never admit it, deep down, he felt a strange kinship with the dog. They were both just a couple of strays.
So he and Luke had set up and baited a trap, but the dog hadn’t fallen for it yet.
Jack glanced outside through the kitchen window, the view of the snow falling gently within the reach of his back porch light framed by the frilly white-and-blue checked curtains Caroline had sewn. If the weather continued to be this nasty, though, he was sure the poor dog would eventually have to take the bait.
He sighed and checked his watch, wishing he’d been on the ball enough to have thought to go back into his office and grab some paperwork that needed to be done before he’d slipped out on the news crew. But he hadn’t imagined that they would camp out at the clinic waiting for him to show again.
Either way, Melinda would have taken care of what had needed to be done in the office. Good thing, too. Those vaccines and medical supplies weren’t going to reorder themselves.
The sauce bubbled up at him and brought him back to the task of making dinner. He normally didn’t take the time to make himself a regular meal, but he’d been forced to come home early today, and he’d certainly had the time. Heck, he might as well go as far as to fix a salad. He ducked outside to check the chicken breast he was grilling on the back porch, turning the heat up to combat the freezing air temperature, then came back inside and went to the fridge to get salad makings.
A knocking—make that a pounding—on his front door stopped him. Annoyance flared to anger in his gut. He’d figured that if the news crew really wanted to talk with him they would eventually come to his house when he failed to show his mug on Main Street today. He’d just figured they’d be more polite about it.
He strode from the kitchen through the dining room to get to the front door of the house he and Caroline had bought when they moved to Jester. A lecture on manners poised on the tip of his tongue, he yanked open the door, then blinked in surprise when he found Melinda standing on the raised wooden porch that ran the length of the front of the house.
Her hair hung in long, dark ringlets, clearly damp, and while she had on her usual heavy coat, underneath she wore what looked like dark pink satin pajamas tucked into knee-high rubber barn boots. Her getup, coupled with the glitter of worry in her big brown eyes and the way she’d clamped her full bottom lip between her teeth sent Jack’s heart straight into his empty stomach. Oh, no, what now?
“Mel, what—”
“Jack. Thank goodness you’re here. I looked for you at the clinic, since your truck is still there, but it was empty and locked up, and I hadn’t seen you anywhere on Main Street—”
Understanding dawned on him, along with a hefty dose of guilt. She’d thought something had happened to him. “Ah, Mel, I’m sorry to have worried you. Come on in out of the cold.” He tried to usher her inside, but she took the time to step out of her barn boots, leaving them on the porch. He was momentarily distracted by the thick, fuzzy gray socks she wore. No wonder she’d had to wear those great big boots. Those socks wouldn’t fit into anything else.
Once inside, he automatically reached to take her coat.
She unbuttoned the heavy coat and started to pull it off, but her attention was on the turned-off TV in the living room. “I’m guessing you didn’t watch the news.”
“No. I haven’t had…it…on…” He trailed off when he caught sight of what was under her coat. He’d been right, she did have pajamas on. The top wasn’t the slightest bit risqué—it had long sleeves and was buttoned all the way up to the collar, only slightly veed neckline—but the fluid satin skimmed her breasts, breasts Jack had noticed but had never given a second thought to. Now he was giving them so much thought he couldn’t think about anything else. And he couldn’t quit staring. He made a blind grab for her coat.
Apparently not noticing where his attention lay, she delivered the coat into his hand. “Well, you should have been watching the news.”
That brought his gaze back to her face. Her expression was ominous.
“Why?”
“Because we were on it.”
He groaned and went to hang her coat up in the nearby closet tucked beneath the stairs. “Jeez. I should have known dodging that news reporter and her cameraman wouldn’t keep them from running some sort of story anyhow. That’s why I’m here, but my rig is still at work. I ducked out the back door to keep from having to talk to them.”
He should have at least found out what they wanted to talk to him about, rather than finding out about it after the fact.
“So you haven’t talked to the newspeople at all lately?” There was an odd, strained quality to her voice.
Before he could consider why, he caught the sound of the barbecue sauce he was making for the chicken bubbling. He started toward the kitchen. “No. Not since they dubbed me the Big-Bucks Bachelor. They pretty much blew their chances with me after that.”
He waved at her to follow him. “Come on into the kitchen. Because I came home so much earlier than normal, I’m grilling some chicken.”
She screwed up her face. “You’re barbecuing? In this weather?”
“Of course I am. I’m a guy.” He went to the stove and turned down the sauce, then glanced back at her pajamas, unfortunately noticing how her surprisingly full breasts moved beneath the satin. “Have—” his voice cracked and he jerked his gaze to her face. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Have you eaten?”