“I kind of, you know, backed into your car.”

“You what?” Nancy pushed past the teen and his father and down her front steps. Her Durango had been shoved four feet closer to her porch by the hippo-sized Suburban hard up against its rump. Her rear bumper was dented, the right taillight in shards and her right rear tire was flat. “What on earth happened?”

“My son, here, decided to move the Suburban into our driveway.”

“Yeah, I guess I hit Reverse,” the kid said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“It was the fault of a malevolent universe?” his father snapped. “This unfortunate creature is Jason Wainwright, my son.”

“Look, you. I need my car right now—I have an emergency. I’ve got to help save a dog that was mauled by a pit bull.” She grabbed Jason by the sleeve. “Come on. You and your daddy are going to drive me to the clinic, wait for me if it takes all night and drive me home, or I swear to God I’ll have you locked up for driving without a valid Tennessee driver’s license.”

“I can’t leave my two younger children alone,” Wainwright said.

“Can’t your wife look after them?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

Dear Reader,

Since I began writing about Creature Comfort Veterinary Clinic, readers have been asking me to tell Nancy Mayfield’s story. Well, here it is.

Nancy was a professional equestrian until a terrible accident put an end to both her career and marriage. Now after years of struggle, she has a job she loves as a veterinary technician, good friends and neighbors, and her own quiet cottage in a tranquil village.

Until Tim Wainwright moves in across the street with his three strange children.

Suddenly she’s fighting desperately to avoid getting caught up in the family’s problems at the same time she’s drawn to Tim. She was an awful stepmother, and never intends to take on that role again.

Meanwhile, Tim is struggling to be a good father at the same time as he’s falling in love with a woman who doesn’t want any family, and definitely not one as dysfunctional as his.

Can they get together? Read and find out.

Enjoy!

Carolyn McSparren

Over His Head
Carolyn McSparren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“I LOVED WILLIAMSTON when I was a kid. So will you.”

Tim Wainwright turned his Suburban from the highway onto a narrow county road. A small sign said, Williamston, Tennessee, Population 123. He accelerated past it and hoped the kids hadn’t noticed that number.

Sometime in the ten years since his grandfather’s funeral cortege had wound along this road to the cemetery, the county had paved it. Thank God. After the horrors of the drive from Chicago, even in an air-conditioned Surburban, Tim didn’t think he could have faced the last leg of his trip on rutted gravel in a cloud of hot July dust.

His children would mount a full-scale rebellion at the thought of living down a gravel road. He took a deep breath and willed his shoulders to relax. He glanced over at Jason, who stared mulishly out the side window. He’d refused to say a word since they crossed the bridge over the Mississippi River, driving straight through Memphis and out the other side.

Jason’s buzz cut would have time to grow so that he wouldn’t start school totally bald. He’d fight losing the two earrings in his right ear, but they’d have to go as well. Maybree Academy had a strict dress code. That meant buying him clothes sized for a teenager rather than an African bull elephant.

From what he’d seen of the student body when he came down to interview, Maybree students preferred the preppy look. He prayed Jason would knuckle under to peer pressure and go preppy as well.

He could see Eddy in his rearview mirror, slumped against the armrest, either sleeping or pretending to. As glad as Tim was that Jason had stopped complaining, he wished Eddy would say something, anything more than to ask for orange juice at breakfast. If only he’d cry. Just once. Stoicism might be okay for Marcus Aurelius, but it was damned unhealthy for a seven-year-old kid.

At least he was no problem to dress. Tim could probably drape a tarpaulin over him without his noticing. He hadn’t even played his Game Boy on the drive down. Just sat and stared.

Angie’s black hair bounced in and out of his field of vision in the mirror. Usually he forbade headphones. He’d prefer that his children not go deaf before they reached twenty. Today, however, the headphones and portable CD player had been a blessing. She had zoned out on her latest techno-rock band.

“You must admit,” Tim said to Jason, the only one who’d be able to hear him, “This is beautiful country. Look at all the trees, the fields, the open space.”

“Yeah,” Jason said with a wave of his hand. “Look at all the malls, the pizza places, the movie theaters. Yeah, we’re gonna love it.”

“Look, Jason, I realize this is culture shock, but once you get used to the freedom…”

Tim saw his son actually turn his head to look—no, sneer—at him.

“Freedom. Right. Freedom is not riding to school in the morning with my father, spending all day with him spying on me and riding home with him in the afternoon. Freedom is a new Mustang.”

“In your dreams. We’ll be lucky if we can afford a thirdhand VW for you. Besides, the legal age for a license is sixteen in Tennessee, not fifteen, and then it’s restricted.”

“It would be,” Jason whispered. “Goddamn prison.”

“Watch your language.”

“Sure, like you watch yours.”

Tim let that pass. There was a certain amount of truth in it. Since Solange’s death he didn’t watch his language as much when the kids were around.

This was what she had wanted. Maybe not to move to the middle of nowhere in West Tennessee, but to move out of Chicago, find someplace to live with open spaces, a bigger house in a small town. No crime. Kids free to ride their bicycles or skateboards without fear.

Away from Solange’s mother.

He hadn’t listened. And so she’d died.

Now he was taking control of his family’s destiny. Time to haul on the reins and stop the runaway stagecoach before it turned over and killed everybody. He grinned. Even his clichés were turning country. “I’ve told you how great my summers were down here when I was a kid. You used to think they sounded pretty cool.”

“I used to think storks brought babies,” Jason said.

“You mean they don’t? Okay, I promise you there will be occasional access to malls and movies and maybe even pizza. But you’ll have to earn your privileges. Get an after-school job. Earn that VW. Pay for your own gas once you get it. Money’s going to be tight. And no more running wild because your grandmother can’t keep up with you.”

Jason held out his wrists. “Yeah. Freedom, just like you said. Just put the cuffs on now, Mr. Policeman, sir.”

“Jason, I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired. It’s hot, we’ve driven all the way from Chicago, and I’ve had enough of the sarcasm.”

“Shouldn’t you call that creative interaction, Mr. Vice Principal, sir?”

“I’m just a lowly English teacher now, Jason.” He longed to stop the car, lean across the console separating them and slap the kid silly. He’d always believed in nonviolent alternatives to physical punishment for children and had never raised a hand to his three. He knew their grandmother did from time to time, and he suspected Solange had swatted a behind or two.

Every day Tim worked with abusive parents and abused children. He knew the damage abuse caused both.

Today, however, he was discovering how kids could drive a seemingly rational adult crazy. He took a deep breath. He needed to calm down and chill out before he started yelling. That never did any good and left him feeling guilty afterward.

He took another deep breath, then several more before he said, “Granddad taught me to fish for crappie and catfish in the creek that runs through the farm, and during the summer we took picnics down to the pond and swam. He taught me to paddle a canoe. We can rebuild the dock, buy a new canoe—”

“Skinny-dip with the local milkmaids.”

Tim could hear the leer in Jason’s voice. Doggedly he kept going. “I had a great bag swing by the pond. You could swing way out over the water and drop. Can’t do that in a swimming pool.”

“Who’d want to?”

“I have to pee.” Angie had taken off the earphones and was leaning against the back of his seat. “Stop at a gas station.”

“No gas stations between here and Williamston,” Tim said. He didn’t remember a gas station within twenty miles of Williamston. Better not tell Angie that. “If you’re in real trouble, we’ll pull off to the side of the road and you can go behind a tree.”

“Eeeew! No way! Gross.”

“Then hold on. We’re nearly there.” He checked her face in the mirror. It was powdered dead-white, made even more dramatic by her hair, dyed so black it looked like a wig. Unfortunately it wasn’t. She had bought the dye one afternoon after school, and greeted him looking like an underaged vampire when he got home from school.

“Dad was just telling us about how great it’s going to be to swim in some scummy old pond,” Jason said. “Water moccasins love little girls. One bite and you swell up and turn green and die.”

“Jason!” It was a wail. “Daddy, make him stop. I hate snakes. Are there really snakes?”

Sure there were, but he wasn’t about to tell Angie about them right this minute. “Most snakes are harmless. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

“Want to bet?” Jason breathed.

“Don’t think about snakes. Think about how big the house is. After Chicago, it’s going to seem like a palace. You’ll have a big room all to yourself. And some of the people in the area have horses.”

Magic word. Before she had been taken over by the Children of the Night, Angie’s one great desire had been for a horse of her own. Not possible in Chicago. Rich people who lived in the suburbs owned horses. Overworked vice principals of inner-city schools did not.

In his new job as an English teacher in a small private school, Tim still wouldn’t be able to afford a horse for Angie, but he might be able to give her riding lessons. Maybe he’d offer her a trade. She could have riding lessons if she took off the clown makeup and went back to brown hair.

In any case, the black hair and kohl eyeliner wouldn’t be any more acceptable at Maybree than Jason’s bald head. He’d have to find out how to remove the dye.

Solange would have known all about that kind of thing. But then if his wife were still alive, Angie probably wouldn’t have turned Goth on him.

The only one of his kids who looked halfway normal was Eddy, and he was the most screwed up of the bunch, at least to hear the psychologist tell it.

How could Tim ever teach his children to love Williamston the way he did? He’d regaled them time after time with stories of the wonderful summers he’d spent there. Maybe now that they were here, the stories would take on new meaning for them. They’d never paid much attention before.

The important thing was that he wouldn’t be working eighty hours a week as he had in Chicago. He could devote himself to their needs. He’d sacrificed his career, the potential of a principalship—all the additional money and prestige—for them. He owed them for the years he’d let Solange raise them practically on her own.

He swung the SUV off the highway and onto a narrow lane lined with big old trees that transformed the road into a sun-dappled tunnel.

He drove past the small rectangular common in the center of the village. The Bermuda grass lawn had turned brown in the heat, and the white fence needed a coat of paint.

The only place to eat in Williamston was a log cabin on the corner of the green. Today a big sign outside read Closed. Tim hoped that meant for dinner and not for good.

One more left, up a hill and past the big moving van. He pulled onto the grass verge at the far side of his grandfather’s house and cut the engine.

“Home at last.”

“No way,” said Jason.

“Way.”

“There’s supposed to be a town. Where is it?”

“You just drove through it.”

“A field and a log cabin?”

“Yuck, some palace,” whined Angie, who leaned across Eddy to stare out the window. “No one could possibly expect a human being to live in that—that hovel.” She frequently vacillated between teenage colloquial and Victorian supercilious in the same sentence.

Eddy had woken up and was rubbing his eyes.

“Well, Eddy? Care to add your comments?”

Eddy ignored him.

“Gross, gross, gross!” Angie’s hands fluttered. “I’ll bet you can’t even buy a CD for a hundred miles.”

“CD, huh! Try a loaf of bread. You said it was a town.”

“Williamston is a town. Just a very small one. More like a village.”

“More like a big fat nothing.”

“Looks like an old barn,” Jason said as he stared up at the house. “At least I won’t have to share a room with Ratso any longer.”

“Don’t call your brother names,” Tim said. Now that he had done this insane thing, had committed his whole family to this change, he was scared to get out of the car. “The house has five bedrooms. One downstairs for me, one for each of you, and one left over for guests.”

“For Gran’mere,” Eddy whispered from the back seat.

“Yes, Eddy. Your grandmother will come to visit as soon as we get settled.”

“No, she won’t,” Jason said with finality. “Not after we tell her what this place is like.” He leered over his shoulder at his brother. “We’ll never, ever see her again.”

“We will, too!”

“Jason, stop teasing your brother. Eddy, your grandmother will come to visit. She just can’t move down here with us. I’ve explained all that.” His voice said he’d explained it until he was blue in the face and wasn’t about to try again.

“If she loved us, she’d move.”

“Eddy, it’s okay, she does love us,” Angie said. “Jason, stop being a butthole.”

“Angie,” her father said, but without much heat. He was too tired of driving and refereeing to be upset by much less than ax murder.

“It’s a prison.”

“I want to go back to Chicago.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I want a soda.”

“Can’t we stay in a motel?”

“I hate this place.”

“I have to pee.”

He’d decided to feed them a catfish dinner at the Log Cabin. Now he’d have to find someplace else nearby, assuming there was another restaurant this side of Memphis, fifty miles away. They’d be a captive audience. He’d tell them some more stories of his wonderful summers. Tomorrow maybe they’d all go for a long walk. He really wanted his children to love this place, too.

But he was willing to have them hate it if it kept them safe from crime and gangs and drugs and alcohol and drive-by shootings.

He would even fight his own children to get them to twenty-one sound of mind and body.

CHAPTER TWO

“OH, NUTS. That’s all I need,” Nancy Mayfield muttered as she turned the corner by the village green into her lane. A huge moving van blocked not only the lane itself, but her driveway. There was no way to reach her garage except by driving across her lawn. Even though the ground was July hard, she preferred not to smash what little grass had survived the drought.

She pulled to a stop a couple of feet from the rear of the van. A large man who seemed to be dripping wet stood on of the tailgate with a psychedelically painted chest of drawers balanced precariously on a dolly.

“Hey, lady, move it!”

She glared at him.

“What’re ya, deaf? Back it up. Move it.” He waved her back with one hand.

Slowly and carefully she climbed out of her Durango, shut the door softly so as not to wake up Lancelot, snoring softly in the passenger seat, and turned to the man with a sweet smile. “No, you move it, buddy. You’re blocking my driveway and I would like to park my car.”

“Aw, jeez.” He yelled toward the house, “Hey, Mac, lady out here wants us to move the van.” He laughed. “Lady, ya got to be kiddin’.”

“Not at all. Blocking access to a private driveway is a crime in the state of Tennessee. If you remain where you are, I will have a sheriff’s deputy here to give you a nice, big citation before you can get that thing down the ramp.”

“It’s a chest of drawers,” said a baritone voice from behind her.

“It looks as if it’s been trapped in a riot in a paint store.” She tamped down her temper and turned slowly to look at the newcomer. This must be the “Mac” the mover had been calling. No doubt the driver of the van.

This Mac certainly looked as though he could move refrigerators without much effort. He was wearing dirty jeans, equally dirty sneakers and a soggy Chicago Cubs T-shirt that needed a good bleaching. He wasn’t quite as tall as Dr. Mac, but he was probably at least six-two.

He might be even brawnier than Dr. Mac. Moving refrigerators no doubt built muscles. His light brown hair was soaked with sweat, and his eyes were concealed behind fancy mirrored sunglasses. Nancy hated not being able to see people’s eyes.

He strode up to her as if to make her back down. After everything that had gone wrong today, she was spoiling for a fight. Just let Mr. No-Eyes dare to invade her space and see how far those muscles got him. Heck, she could always sic Lancelot on him.

Behind her she heard the wheels of the dolly begin to roll down the ramp.

“Hey! Heads up! I can’t hold her!” shouted the voice behind her.

As she started to turn, the brawny guy with no eyes grabbed Nancy around the waist and swept her to the side. The chest of drawers trundled to a halt on the road where she had been standing seconds before.

The man held her against his chest. She could hear his heart beat. Hers sounded like a trip-hammer. He smelled of male sweat and felt as though he was built of concrete. She struggled out of the circle of his arms.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Fine, thank you.” She wriggled her shoulders and realized the beating of her heart came not so much from the near miss with the furniture, but from the feel of this male body against her. Damn, when a semiliterate roustabout could raise her pulses, she really had been entirely too long without a man. “Now, move your van.” She pointed to the gravel driveway across the lane that led up to her small cottage. The heck with please. Time to start issuing orders.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize that was a driveway.”

“Well, it is, and I want access to it.”

“Look, miss—um—we’re almost finished unloading. If you could see your way clear to park your car where it is for an hour or so, the van will be gone.”

Reasonable. Only she didn’t feel like being reasonable. She was hot, she was tired, before morning she and Dr. Thorne would probably lose the mastiff they’d operated on this afternoon. She had a blinding headache over her right eye, her neck ached, and she was so sick over losing her dear old neighbors to that nasty man from Chicago that she felt like crying.

On top of all that, she was foster mother to Lancelot for the foreseeable future until the Halliburtons found a place to live that had room for him. And now this truck driver had disturbed her equilibrium in a way she didn’t like. It was the final straw.

“Please find the man who hired you,” she said as imperiously as she could. Not easy when she had to look up at Mr. No-Eyes.

He smiled. It was a nice smile, no doubt he practiced it frequently on irritated customers. This time it wouldn’t work. “I’m afraid I’m the culprit. I’m Tim Wainwright. My family and I are moving in. We’re going to be neighbors.” He pulled off his leather work glove and offered her his hand.

She felt a wash of heat even greater than the July afternoon. Great. Thank God she hadn’t actually called him a semiliterate roustabout. She’d considered it. He’d let her make a fool of herself. Suddenly it didn’t matter. Screw the moving van.

Without a word she climbed back into her car, reversed it and drove across her lawn to her driveway and pulled up beyond her dusty azaleas.

She went around to Lancelot’s door, grabbed his leash and helped him down. Alarmed by the irrational fear that that Tim person would follow her and try to apologize or explain, she hurried inside the back door.

She unhooked Lancelot’s harness, went straight to the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of white Zinfandel. As she raised the glass, her eyes lit on the huge yellow cat who sat on top of the refrigerator. “Sorry we woke you, Otto.”

The cat leaped down and padded over to welcome Lancelot. Thank God her cats had known him since he was tiny. She felt fairly certain Lancelot thought he was a cat.

The two old friends trotted after her into her bedroom. A second cat, black and white and even larger, lay curled in the center of her pillow. She kicked off her running shoes and sat on the edge of the bed. The cat on the pillow watched her without moving its head. As she pulled her socks off, he reached out a long arm and swiped at one.

Obligingly she held it out for him. “Okay, Poddy, here you go.”

He grabbed the sock, mauled it for a second, then abandoned it and went back to sleep. Yellow Otto crept up on it, pounced and dragged it under the bed. Lancelot tried to follow, but couldn’t fit. “You bring that back, Otto,” Nancy said without much hope.

She set the glass on the side table and leaned back against her pillows with one arm across her eyes. She heard Lancelot thud onto the rag rug beside her bed. For six whole years this little house had meant peace and comfort, a place of her own, where nobody intruded on her privacy unless and until she wanted them to. The first house she’d ever owned.

The moving van was a symbol—a big monster that got in her way and disturbed her tranquility the way that monster man got in her face with his big sweaty forearms and his ingratiating grin.

And no eyes.

She sat up. His family? He’d said family. How many? Wife, undoubtedly. Children? Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents? The house was big enough to hold a small army. Just because the Halliburtons hadn’t used the upstairs didn’t mean it wasn’t there to be used. Williamston was going to be overrun by no-necked monsters, sure as shooting.

“I have enough drama in my life, guys, without coming home to more.”

Lancelot looked up at the sound of her voice. Poddy and Otto ignored her.

Then perhaps sensing her mood, Poddy climbed into her lap, walked around in a circle, collapsed and began to knead her thigh. She scratched his ears. “The Calhouns brought their mastiff in with a flipped gut after lunch. If they’d brought him in this morning, we’d have had a better chance to save him. Dr. Mac and I worked on him for two hours, but we had to remove so much necrotic tissue I doubt he’ll survive the night.”

Otto decided to get in on the act. He hopped up, rolled over beside her and lay on his back like a baby. She scratched his tummy. “Guess who got to tell the Calhouns? Moi, of course. God forbid we let Dr. Mac get near clients he thinks are negligent. If he slugged somebody, he might break his hands, not to mention getting arrested for assault.”

She heard Lancelot struggle to his feet. A moment later his nose butted her hand. “No, you cannot get up on the bed,” she said. But she scratched him nonetheless. “I only have two hands, guys. I can’t pet all three of you at once.”

Lancelot’s black nose disappeared once more as he sank onto the rug.

“We did do a successful cesarean on an English bulldog,” she said. “I got to give some good news. Four healthy pups.”

Poddy yawned. He undoubtedly saw no reason to celebrate the advent of more canines into the world.

She lay back on her pillows. Blessed, blessed silence.

The bang of metal crashing against metal brought her bolt upright.

A moment later the doorbell rang.

As she got up to answer it, the telephone beside her bed shrilled.

CHAPTER THREE

“JUST A MINUTE,” Nancy shouted at the door as she reached for the telephone. “Mayfield,” she answered.

“Nancy,” said Mabel, the evening receptionist at Creature Comfort, “we’ve got an emergency. Mac’s on his way. He asked me to call you.”

“What kind of emergency?” she stuck her finger in her other ear to block out the impatient ringing of the doorbell. “I just walked in the door.” She glanced down at the full glass of wine with longing. No alcohol if she had to go back to surgery. “Is it the mastiff?”

“Worse. The Marshall’s Jack Russell. Some idiot let a pit bull out. He got into the Marshall’s yard.”

“Oh, Lord.” The throbbing over Nancy’s right eye intensified. “How bad?”

“He’s alive, but he’s going to need emergency surgery.”

“I’ll be there in forty minutes unless I run into a Statie with his radar on.”

“Drive carefully. I’ll get things ready.”

“Thanks, Mabel.” Nancy hung up and turned to the door. “All right, all right, dammit, I’m coming!” She yanked it open. Mr. No-Eyes stood on the front porch behind a tall, skinny, teenage boy whose head was nearly bald. He looked half sulky, half terrified. “What?” she snapped.

The man thrust the boy forward. “Tell her.”

She heard Lancelot behind her, stepped out onto the front porch and slammed the door shut. “Tell me what?”

“I kind of, you know, backed into your car.”

“You what?” Nancy pushed past the pair and down her front steps. Her Durango had been shoved four feet closer to her front porch by the hippo-size Suburban hard up against its rump. Over its rump, actually. Nancy ran to her car. Her rear bumper was dented, the right taillight lay in shards, and her right rear tire was flat. “What on earth happened?”

“My son, here, decided to move the Surburban into our driveway.” His voice was quiet, but she could almost feel the man’s rage.

“Yeah, I guess I hit Reverse,” the kid said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“It was the fault of a malevolent universe?” his father growled. “Of course it was your fault.”

“Look,” Nancy said, “I don’t give two hoots if it was the fault of a parallel universe.”

“This unfortunate creature is Jason Wainwright, my son.”

“Big whoop,” Nancy said. “Look, you. I need my car now, right this minute. I have an emergency. I have to go back to the clinic right now.”

“You’re a nurse?”

“I’m a veterinary surgical assistant. I’ve got to get back to help save a dog that just got mauled by a pit bull. And I’m wasting time.” She grabbed Jason’s sleeve. “Come on. You and your daddy are going to drive me to the clinic, wait for me if it takes all night and drive me home, or I swear to God I’ll have you locked up for driving without a valid Tennessee driver’s license.”

Jason stared at her openmouthed. “Can you do that?”

“If you two don’t get your rear ends in gear, you bet I can.”

“I can’t leave my two younger children on their own,” Wainwright said.

“Can’t your wife look after them?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“Then bring them. Now!” She strode toward the Suburban.

“Jason, go get your brother and sister while I move the car.”

“Da-a-ad,” Jason whined.

“Do it now. Fast.” Then he shrugged. “Remember, pizza at a mall.”

WHILE JASON ROUNDED up his siblings, Tim carefully backed the Suburban out. It didn’t have a scratch. The damage to the Durango’s bumper didn’t look too bad, but until the light and tire were replaced, and until a mechanic checked the car out thoroughly, she couldn’t drive it.

“If it needs bodywork, I could be without a car for a couple of weeks,” Nancy said. She stood watching him with her hands on her hips.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I’m sure my insurance agent will pay for a rental. I’m truly sorry about this. Jason isn’t usually so mutton-headed.”

Nancy raised an eyebrow. She suspected she had yet to plumb the depths of Jason’s mutton-headedness. “Does he have any sort of driver’s license?”

“Illinois Learner’s permit. He’s fifteen. He’s not supposed to drive without an adult.”

God help the world’s drivers when this kid turned sixteen.

A pubescent vampiress slouched across the road toward them. She was trailed by what looked like a relatively normal small boy. With Nancy’s luck, he’d be a kleptomaniac or a Peeping-Tom.

Wainwright started to introduce her to his brood.

“Can we skip all that? Unless you want to be personally responsible for the death of a Jack Russell terrier.”

To his credit, Wainwright took her directions down the side roads without question and drove fast and competently. Not fast enough, of course, but then a supersonic jet wouldn’t have been fast enough. In the back seat, Jason sulked in a corner, and in front of him in the middle seat, his sister bobbed to the music in her headphones. Wainwright had introduced her as Angie. The blond kid was Eddy. He hadn’t said a word.

Nancy pulled the sun visor down to cut out the glare from the westering sun, and caught his image in the visor mirror. He was staring at her.

He doesn’t blink. Creepy.

“Down there,” she said. “Drive through the wrought-iron gate into the parking lot outside the front doors.”

TIM HAD BARELY BROUGHT the truck to a halt when Nancy jumped out, ran up the front stairs and shoved through the glass doors into the lighted reception area. He saw her speak to the woman behind a tall reception desk, then disappear through a side door.

“Can we go find some pizza now?” Angie asked. “I’m starving.”

“Stay here.” Tim started to climb out of the driver’s seat. With a glance at Jason, he reached down and took the keys out of the ignition.

“How do you know I can’t hot-wire it?” Jason asked.

“If you can, don’t.” He took the front stairs of the clinic two at a time.

“May I help you?” asked a motherly woman at the front desk. “We’re actually closed now, but if you have an emergency…”

“The woman who just came in is my emergency,” Tim said. “We’re her new neighbors, and I’m afraid my son put her car out of commission.”

The woman’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You’re…him?”

“I should have introduced myself.” He put out his hand. “I’m Timothy Wainwright.” He glanced at the name plate on the desk. “I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. Uh…”

She touched his hand for an instant. “Huh,” she said and turned back to her computer screen.

“Um, I realize hitting Miss Mayfield’s car isn’t likely to endear me and my family to you, but it was an accident. My son didn’t do it on purpose.”

The woman didn’t look at him. “The way you treated the Halliburtons was on purpose, though.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mabel turned back. “It’s your right, of course, but in my opinion it was a wicked thing to do, and I know Nancy agrees with me.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who are the Halliburtons?”

At that moment the telephone on the desk rang. Mabel picked it up. “Creature Comfort.”

Wainwright hadn’t even looked at the name on the front gate of the clinic’s parking lot. He was about to go back to his children before they bailed out of the car and fled into the night alone in search of pizza without him when Mabel finished answering a question and hung up. “Um, do you have any idea how long Miss Mayfield is likely to be?”

“Why?”

He gave Mabel his most endearing smile. It nearly always worked on distraught parents. Didn’t work on Mabel, however. “I’m her chauffeur until we can get her a rental car.”

“No idea. Could be an hour, could be six.”

“I’m going to go feed my children some pizza. Where do you recommend?”

Grudgingly she gave him the name and address of a chain pizza place, and directions to get there.

He pulled out a business card. “Here’s my card with my cell phone number. When Miss Mayfield needs me to pick her up, just have her call me. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

“Don’t bother,” Mabel said. “I will personally see that Nancy gets home safely, and I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning and take her to a car rental place.”

The place was air-conditioned, but the ice in Mabel’s voice dropped the temperature another twenty degrees. He nodded. “Thanks, but I’ll have to rent the car for her. My credit card, you know.”

“Fine. See that you do.”

He started out, then turned back. “Um, could you tell me who the Halliburtons are and what I did to them?”

The woman in front of him actually swelled up. Since she was no lightweight to start with, she looked formidable. “You don’t even know the names of your tenants?”

“I’m sorry?”

“They’ve lived in your house across from Nancy for ten years. They’ve tried time and time again to buy it from you, and every time you’ve refused. Then out of the blue, you toss them straight out onto the street like so much trash so you and your family can invade.” Her eyes narrowed. “What happened? Chicago get too hot for you?”

Oh, great. He’d only met two people so far and both of them hated him. He’d never even heard the Halliburtons’ name. “My agent has handled the property ever since Granddad died.” He tried to sound conciliatory and wound up sounding even more arrogant and uncaring. Surely these Halliburtons didn’t actually wind up on the street. He’d have to find out somehow. His agent might know. He didn’t think this woman was the proper person to ask. “I knew the tenants had tried to buy the house, but it’s been in my family for over a hundred years. I’d never sell it.”

“You sure as shootin’ haven’t cared about it for the past ten,” Mabel snapped and dismissed him.

He gave up and went back to the car. He hoped his children hadn’t ripped up the upholstery while he’d been gone.

Eddy was asleep with his head against the side of the car. Angie was still jouncing to her silent music, but Jason was nowhere to be found. Oh, great. “Where’s your brother?” he asked Angie. Twice.

She waved a hand. “He went off that way around the back.” She pointed to the edge of the parking lot.

“If you ever expect to eat another pizza, don’t move and keep an eye on Eddy.” He trotted off around the building.

This clinic stretched a long way back from the modern brick building in front into a large metal building like a warehouse. Lights under the eaves showed him to where more light poured out from open garage doors at the side. He started to call for Jason, then saw him inside the metal building—must be a barn for large animals. He was standing beside some kind of pipe enclosure.

“Jason?”

The boy jumped. “I’m not doing anything,” he said sulkily.

Tim walked into the light. In the stall a large gray-and-white sheep stood placidly chomping hay while two—what?—sheeplets? No, kids. Or was that for goats? Lambs. He must be losing his mind not to remember. God, he was an English professor—teacher—now. Words were his thing.

He was simply too tired to think straight. The nine-hour drive from Chicago would be enough to exhaust anyone. That same trip with his three children would have exhausted an entire platoon.

“Hey, folks, can I help you?”

Jason started at the voice. A tall young man in hospital greens walked out of the shadows at the far end of the building. Surely he was too young to be a veterinarian.

“Sorry,” Tim said. “My son Jason here saw the lights. I came hunting for him. Come on, Jason.”

“Dad,” Jason said plaintively, “do we have to? I mean, I’ve never seen a live sheep before.”

“Of course you have. At the petting zoo, don’t you remember?”

Jason sulked. “It’s not the same. And it didn’t have babies.” He looked up at the young man. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing now.” The guy grinned at Jason. “Momma had a tough time having those twins. Happens, sometimes. Had to do a cesarean. You know what that is?”

Jason nodded. “Knock her out, then cut across her belly and take the babies out that way. I didn’t know you did that with animals.”

“We do when we have to.”

Tim expected Jason to be grossed out.

“Cool. Is there a bunch of blood?”

“Not much.” He turned to Tim. “I’m Kenny Nichols. I work here between semesters.”

Tim introduced himself and they shook hands. “You going to vet school?”

“First year. Mississippi State.” Kenny smiled proudly.

From somewhere in the shadows a horse nickered. Jason’s head went up. “What’s that?”

“Sally, a cutting horse. She’s recuperating from eye surgery. Want to see?”

“Jason, I thought you were hungry.”

He tossed his father a nasty glance and stomped off behind Kenny.

Jason’s giant shorts drooped below the waistline of his underwear and almost reached the heavy socks he wore under his high-tops. All that would have to go along with the earrings, Tim thought. Good riddance.

By the time Tim managed to pry his son away from the horse’s stall and get him back to the car, Angie was fuming. Eddy was awake, but as usual, he sat without saying a word.

“Jason,” Tim said, “tell Eddy and Angie what you saw.”

But all Jason’s enthusiasm had vanished. He stared out the window.

A lesser man might’ve lost it by now.

His children certainly thought he’d made a mistake dragging them from Chicago, their friends, their grandmother, their schools, to this backwater.

Tim prayed they were wrong.

MACINTOSH THORN, D. V. M., partner in Creature Comfort Veterinary Clinic, and his surgical assistant, Nancy Mayfield, knew one another so well that they seldom communicated verbally during a procedure. He’d already stitched the Jack Russell’s torn throat, now he was working on the gashes along the little dog’s side.

“Irrigate, dammit!” he barked. Nancy had already begun to do just that, but she didn’t take offense.

“It’s a miracle the pit bull didn’t snap his spine like a chicken wing,” Mac growled.

“Mrs. Marshall told Mabel he managed to squeeze between a packing crate and the garage wall.”

“Hell, look at that. Two ribs broken. Got to get the muscle reconnected. Sponge. Sometime this week.”

Mac was fast but neat. Nancy slapped instruments into his hand, kept blood and sweat out of his way. Fifty-five minutes later by the big clock on the wall above the oxygen tanks, Mac said, “Gotcha.” He looked over at Nancy. “Want to close?”

She shook her head. “I’m so upset I’d probably stitch his ear to his nose.”

She saw his eyes widen and his eyebrows rise above the surgical mask.

“No problem.”

She always enjoyed watching him stitch. For such a big man, he worked with the delicacy of a silk weaver. After he finished, he touched the small dog’s head with his index finger. “You lucky dog, you.”

“He’ll live?”

“Depends on how tough he is. From what Mrs. Marshall told Mabel before you came, he should make it. Call Big. He’ll need intensive care for a couple of days.”

Nancy dialed a number on the telephone beside the door while Mac stripped off his surgical gear and tossed it into the bin in the corner of the room. As she was taking off her own greens, the door opened to admit an elephant of a man. He made Mac Thorn look like a child. His white-blond hair was cropped short, and he stared with pale blue eyes at the little dog. Nancy thought he was the gentlest man she’d ever met. He made a tsk sound, scooped the small dog softly into his mammoth arms and shook his head.

“I’ll look after him, Dr. Mac,” he whispered, as though the dog were not too deeply asleep to hear him. “I flat out hate this. Folks like them ain’t got a lick ’a sense, ownin’a pit bull around a baby.”

Bigelow Little, man of all work at Creature Comfort, himself owned a pit bull bitch rescued with a number of other wounded animals from a fighting ring. Daisy was the sweetest dog in the world and worshipped Big. Even so, she was never allowed into the area where the sick and wounded small animals were kept. Nancy wondered what Daisy would do if anyone—a total lunatic, it would have to be—tried to harm Big or any of the clinic personnel. She suspected Daisy would go down fighting.

Just as the overmatched little terrier had tried to do.

“What happened to the pit bull?” Nancy asked as she arranged instruments in the autoclave and tidied up the surgical area.

Mac shook his head. “Poor devil. The owners had their vet put him to sleep. Thank God I didn’t have to do it.”

Thank God indeed. Mac would more likely try to put the owners down. He would certainly feel they deserved it.

“Not his fault, but I can see their point. Mrs. Marshall says they have a two-year-old grandchild.”

Nancy shuddered. “The pit bull could just as easily have attacked the child as the terrier.” Some two-year-olds could even set off a basset hound.

Nancy followed Mac into the break room. He pulled a couple of diet sodas out of the small refrigerator kept for the staff and handed her one, then sank onto the leather sofa and propped his feet on the scarred coffee table.

“Okay, so how come you’re too nervous to stitch up a dog?” he asked. Dr. Mac had a thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Emma, and his wife, Kit, was heavily pregnant. He was much more aware of other people than he had ever been before he married. Not necessarily more sympathetic—just more aware.

Nancy dropped into one of the chairs at the conference table and took a long pull of her soda. “He’s arrived. My new neighbor, the man from Chicago. It’s worse than I thought.”

Mac raised his eyebrows.

She told him about the afternoon. “So, no car, no privacy, no Halliburtons any longer and three of the weirdest children I have ever seen in my life.”

“Weird how?”

“The one son is almost totally bald, that is, not naturally—and has what looks suspiciously like two holes in his ear where he might have worn studs.” She paused to consider that. “And may again. I didn’t inquire as to what other portions of his anatomy might be pierced. He also wears shorts that would be too big for Big.”

For a moment, Mac looked confused, then he laughed.

“The daughter, Angie, is no creature of light. More like the Angel of Darkness, if you ask me. Black fingernails and dyed black hair and eye makeup she’s entirely too young to wear, in my opinion.”

“Goth. Okay. You said three children.”

“The youngest is a towheaded boy about six or seven who looks perfectly normal, if you consider Damien looked perfectly normal. Mac, he doesn’t talk and he doesn’t blink. I’ve been plunged into some kind of Satanic nightmare.”

“You’re exaggerating. What’s the father like?”

She took a deep breath. The father was pheromone central. His ability to arouse her dormant sex drive, however, was not something she could share with Mac. “He’s almost as tall as you are, has a nice smile and seems fairly normal except that he’s raised a brood of alien monsters and doesn’t seem to care.” She shook her head. “And he’s a professional educator.”

Mac finished his soda, crushed the can flat and tossed it into the trash can across the room. “He’s a teacher?”

“He is now. Helen Halliburton told me he has a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. from the University of Chicago. He’s been some sort of administrator at some school in Chicago, but he’s going to be a plain, old English teacher at MaybreeAcademy starting this fall.”

Mac sat up. “Maybree? That’s where Emma goes.”

“Ah-ha,” Nancy said. “Got your attention at last.” Mac adored his stepdaughter, who in turn thought he hung not only the moon but the planets. Her biological father, a cop, was never there for her. Mac never missed a school play or a PTA meeting or a teacher’s conference unless he was up to his armpits in some dog’s stomach. He’d moved Emma from her less-than-adequate public school to Maybree Academy, despite the tuition, which ranked right up there with Harvard.

“How’d she do last year?” Nancy asked.

“Child belongs in Overachievers Anonymous,” he said with pride. “Wants to follow in her old man’s footsteps. Loves science.”

Nancy didn’t think he was talking about Emma’s biological father.

“Take a warning from someone who grew up with three truly rotten siblings,” Nancy said. “Watch out for puberty, drugs and bad company, not necessarily in that order.” She put her palms on the table and levered herself upright. One good thing. Her headache was gone. Adrenaline tended to do that.

“So go home to your happy household, and pray that we don’t get any more messes tonight.” She turned toward the door at the back of the clinic proper that separated the small animal area from the large. “I’ll check on the Jack Russell. What’s his name?”

Mac snorted. “Miracle.”

“If not before, then definitely now.”

“I sent the owners home. I’ll tell Mabel to call and update them.”

The recovery area and ICU were dimly lit. Big had laid the terrier on a thick rubber mattress in the middle of the room, and sat on the floor beside the little dog, stroking its small head and crooning softly.

“He’s coming around,” Big whispered. “You go on home, Miss Nancy.”

She smiled. “Thanks. How’s the mastiff?”

Big shrugged his massive shoulders. “He ain’t dead. That’s something.”

She was halfway down the hallway that led to the front reception area when she stopped. “I hope I’ve got a ride home.”

CHAPTER FOUR

NANCY TOOK LANCELOT out in her backyard on a leash at about eleven that evening to do his business. He kept pulling her toward her front yard and the lane, grumbling with annoyance. “Lancelot,” she commanded. “I know you want to go home, but Helen and Bill don’t live across the street any longer. You’re staying with me for the foreseeable future.”

He peered up at her in the light from her porch as though he didn’t believe her for one minute.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re smarter than I am?”

Eventually he finished, waddled up her back stairs, waited at the refrigerator until she gave him a bite of cheese—his evening treat was important to him, Helen had said—and settled into his basket. As she climbed into bed, she realized Poddy and Otto weren’t waiting for her. She peered around the corner of her bedroom door and saw them curled up against Lancelot’s belly. “Deserters,” she said, then grabbed her pillow, beat it into submission and propped it under her head.

As tired as she was, she should have slept instantly. No such luck. She felt guilty, as she always did when she was bad-tempered.

Tim Wainwright must think she was the world’s biggest bitch. She’d certainly snarled at him like a junkyard dog. She rolled over on her stomach and pulled her pillow over the back of her head. Then she rolled over on her other side. She couldn’t get comfortable. Finally she lay on her back, stared up at the ceiling and let herself actually contemplate Tim Wainwright as a male being, something she’d been consciously avoiding.

She still carried the scent of him in her nostrils. She hadn’t been that close to a sweaty male in much too long. Time was when she and Peter used to shower together every night after the horses had been bedded down. She could still remember the feel of his strong hands kneading the kinks out of her shoulders, sliding down her body…

She hit her pillow with a couple of vicious blows. Peter was long gone out of her life. Lord knew how many other women he’d scrubbed since she’d divorced him. She still read about him in the horse magazines as his newly developed riders won trophies and awards.

“I have to thank my trainer, Peter Lombardi, for finding—insert horse’s name—for me and training us. We owe this win to him.” Or variations on that theme. The riders in question were always young, frequently blonde, invariably rich, occasionally talented. She still felt smug that he’d never found another rider who was as talented and fearless as she’d been, who could ride his green horses over fences and make them look like champions. Someone who could ride his crazy jumpers over fences that made the average rider sick with fear.

He’d never married any of the rest of them, either. Well, not so far.

She sat up and leaned against her headboard. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy. She crawled out of bed, padded into the kitchen and pulled out the milk jug. Even in summer, a cup of hot chocolate was a guaranteed soporific. After all, she lived in an air-conditioned cottage.

She mixed herself a mug and slid it into the microwave. Two percent milk, nonfat chocolate powder. Unfortunately she’d never discovered a nonfat, nonsugar marshmallow. As she took out her steaming cup, she turned and saw Lancelot’s little eyes watching her. “Oh, nuts,” she said and poured a little chocolate into a saucer, blew on it, then set it down in front of him. The cats weren’t allowed to have chocolate, but they didn’t like it anyway, and Lancelot wouldn’t be caught dead sharing. He set to with pleasure.

She took the hot chocolate out onto her front porch, sat in one of the old white cane rockers and pulled her feet up under her. The temperature had dropped to a respectable eighty degrees, and there was a fresh breeze blowing through the leaves of the big oak that shaded her roof. She blessed her mother’s genes that kept the mosquitoes from biting her.

The house across the street was dark. She wondered where Tim slept. She hoped he didn’t wear pajamas. She’d always thought men who slept in both top and bottoms were kind of wimpy and old-fashioned, but then she thought of male teachers as pretty wimpy on the whole. Hers certainly had been. Teaching high school must be a real comedown for somebody like that. She wondered if he was running away from some sort of scandal.

The kind of strong muscles she’d felt when he’d wrapped his arms around her didn’t come from sitting behind a desk all day talking about Shakespeare and Tennyson. He must run, swim, lift weights—something to keep in shape. That kind of man probably slept nude.

The rocking chair seemed to have increased its speed. She shuddered and throttled it back. When the vision of an attractive man laying naked in bed brought her nipples to full attention and darned near tossed her out of the rocking chair on her nose, she knew she’d been alone in her own bed far too long.

One of the few good memories from her marriage was sleeping curled against Peter’s naked back. Peter only wore pajamas to bed when Poppy, her stepdaughter from hell, or as Nancy called her, “The Worst Seed,” stayed over.

Tim Wainwright apparently was raising at least two bad seeds of his own. Maybe three if Eddy was as weird as he seemed.

More reason to avoid the entire family. “If you’re lousy at something,” Dr. Mac always said, “quit doing it and take up something you’re good at.”

She felt incompetent to deal with other people’s children, and was absolutely, positively the world’s worst stepmother. She hoped she hadn’t scarred Poppy for life, although Poppy had inflicted some deep wounds of her own. Nancy swore she’d never give anyone a chance to slice and dice her again, nor did she intend to be responsible for even partially rearing anyone else’s kids.

She just had to arm her libido against Tim Wainwright and the heady way his touch had made her feel.

She’d slept alone too long. She’d almost forgotten how it felt to have a man inside her, driving both of them higher until the explosion of pleasure took them over the top.

Hoo, boy. Enough of that.

She sighed and went to open the front door. Before she could get inside, she felt a sharp little foot on her instep.

“No! Lancelot.” She shoved him back, slipped in and shut the door. “You’re staying here, understand? Helen and Bill will come over to visit, and you’ll be going to your new home with them before you realize it.” She set her cup down in the sink, picked up his dish and put it to soak, then went and climbed back into bed. This time she absolutely, positively must get some sleep. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be one god-awful day.

SHE WOKE UP AT DAWN as always, even on Saturday. When she started to sit, she realized her neck was giving her fits. She’d been too tense the day before. Now she’d pay for it. She pulled on a sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of threadbare low-rider cutoffs and padded into the kitchen barefoot to take Lancelot out for his morning potty break.

Poddy and Otto slept curled together in the pet bed, but Lancelot wasn’t in the kitchen. “Lancelot, if you’re in the living room making a mess, I swear I’ll barbecue you,” she called. The cats each opened one eye, then went back to sleep. She rounded the corner and saw at once that the front door was ajar. She must not have latched it properly when she’d come back in. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She grabbed Lancelot’s leash and harness and ran out onto the front porch. He was nowhere in sight.

“Damn! I’ll bet he’s gone back home.” She raced down the steps, taking care to slam the door behind her so that Otto and Poddy couldn’t wander. The asphalt of the lane already felt hot on the soles of her bare feet, but she ignored it, hopping a couple of times when she stepped on pebbles, as she ran across Tim’s lawn to his back door.

She nudged the pet door with her toe. It moved, so he hadn’t locked it, although she didn’t think the Wainwrights had a pet. She bent down, swung it open and tried to see into the kitchen. Next, she tried the back door. Locked.

Most of the people in Williamston left their doors open when they were home.

She peered through the window in the door, shading her eyes to see into the gloom. No sign of Lancelot. He must be inside somewhere. He’d probably scare those children into catatonia.

She raced around to the front of the house, tiptoed onto the front porch and tried to see into the room the Halliburtons had used for their master bedroom. The curtains were drawn. She could see only a sliver of a foot of the bed.

Okay, Okay, she thought, what do I do? Bang on the door, ring the doorbell, wake those city folks up at five on a Saturday morning to tell them they have an intruder? Somehow she didn’t think they’d be pleased. Besides, Lancelot was her responsibility, and this was her fault.

Only one thing to do.

She went to the back porch again. “Please, Helen,” she prayed. “Please have left the spare key over the door.” She stood on tiptoe and felt around. Her index finger touched something metallic.

She dislodged it, saw the key fall, made a grab for it in midair and missed.

It clinked on the porch steps. She dived after it and caught it before it could clink again. Now on her hands and knees bent over the step, she wondered whether she’d actually have the nerve to use it.

She and the Halliburtons had looked after each other’s property a million times. They knew where she hid her spare key, and where the spare keys to her storage shed and car were kept in the kitchen. She’d watered Helen’s house plants when they were out of town, and taken in their mail and newspapers. Helen and Bill had fed the cats when she was gone.

But this wasn’t Helen and Bill. New owners often changed locks. Maybe the key wouldn’t even fit.

Tentatively she slid the key into the lock. It went in. She began to twist it slowly. It turned. The lock clicked.

Now what? Barge in, call out, “Yoo-hoo, it’s Nancy!” and assume Tim hadn’t had time to get a handgun permit yet? Technically she wasn’t breaking in, but she was definitely entering.

She took a deep breath, put her hand along the jamb to keep the door from squeaking, opened it and stepped into the kitchen.

The refrigerator door stood ajar. On the floor in front of it was a bottle of Perrier. Intact, thank the Lord. So far as she knew, Lancelot had not yet learned to open screw caps. She put the sparkling water back. The refrigerator was empty except for several more bottles of Perrier and a couple of big bottles of soda—also screw-on tops. Lancelot must have been extremely disappointed. He could open any pop-top can he could reach.

She closed the refrigerator softly and looked around for evidence of destruction.

The kitchen looked clean. Cluttered, of course. At least a dozen cardboard boxes sat on the counters waiting to be unpacked, but Lancelot hadn’t been able to reach high enough to pull any of them off in his lifelong quest for treats.

She stood in the archway leading to the living room and listened. For a moment, there was nothing but silence, then she heard a soft snore from across the living room and down the hall. Tim must be sleeping in the Halliburtons’ master bedroom. She prayed Lancelot had gone in there and not up the stairs to join one of the children.

Slipping silently across the wood floor, she edged around the boxes and furniture in the living room and started down the hall. The door at the end was open and the snoring was louder now.

Five feet from that door she saw the figure in the bed. Wainwright.

He was not alone.

Beside him, spooned against his belly, head on a pillow, lay Lancelot.

He was the one snoring.

Wainwright lay under a single sheet, his naked shoulders exposed, his arm thrown casually across Lancelot’s back. He was breathing evenly.

She got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the room.

“Lancelot,” she whispered. “Get down here.”

No response. She crawled closer. “Lancelot!” It was hard to whisper with menace, but she tried. “Get down here this instant.”

Lancelot raised his head and stared at her unperturbed.

“Now!”

“Wha…?”

She froze. Please, God, don’t let him wake up.

Tim sighed.

She shut her eyes and began to back out on her hands and knees.

“What the hell!”

He sat straight up in bed. No pajama top. No pajama bottoms, either. Apparently, he saw her on her hands and knees two feet inside his bedroom at the same time he registered that his bed buddy was not the houri he’d no doubt been dreaming about.

He didn’t exactly shriek. The sound was too deep and male for that. He gave a sort of combined gurgle and yelp and lunged sideways off the bed.

His feet hit the floor. He grabbed the sheet and held it waist-high in front of him, but not before she had a glimpse of a well-muscled hairy stomach.

For a moment he simply gaped at her.

“Hi,” she said, and wiggled her fingers at him.

Lancelot, thoroughly awake now and aware that he was sleeping with a stranger, squealed, fell onto the floor and tried to wedge himself under the bed. Since the bed was low and modern, he only made it as far as his snout.

“That is a pig,” Tim said, pointing to the bristly butt sticking up on the far side of the bed. He sounded very, very calm.

“Uh-huh.” Nancy sat back on her heels. She held up Lancelot’s harness and leash.

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation why he was sharing my bed. Is it a he?”

She nodded. “His name is Lancelot.”

“And an equally simple explanation why you’re crouching at the foot of my bed at dawn.”

She nodded. “I was after Lancelot.”

“I see. Apart from the obvious question of how he wound up in my bed, it occurs to me to wonder if you’ve ever heard the term ‘doorbell.’”

Oh, boy. This guy was a good deal more annoying when he was in the right. She pushed herself up to a standing position and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Isn’t that kind of you.”

“Well, you’re the one who left the pet flap unlocked.”

“My mistake. I should have realized I’d wind up in bed with a pig. Sorry.”

“Listen, you. It could have been a possum or a raccoon or God forbid a skunk. Not to mention a copperhead or a water moccasin.”

“I’m curious. Did you also crawl in the dog door? Frankly you don’t look as though you’d fit.” He ran his gaze from her head to her toes.

She wished she’d taken the time to put on her sneakers, let alone a bra and underpants. She felt her face flame. She knew damned well her nipples were standing out to here, and her shorts not only bared her navel, but covered precious little below it.

“No, I did not crawl in the pet door,” she said with hauteur. “I used the spare key over the back door.”

“Ah. The spare key over the back door. My, I wish someone had mentioned that to me.”

“Here it is,” she said and tossed it onto the rumpled bed.

“Thank you.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll put Lancelot’s harness on and take him home.”

He waved a hand, nearly dropped the sheet and clutched it in front of him again. At that moment, she realized he was standing in front of a full-length mirror that had been propped against the wall beside the bed. The sheet might be concealing the family jewels, but she was learning a good deal more about Mr. Wainwright’s backside than she had thought she ever would. It was an extremely nice backside. Better than nice. Great. She felt her temperature rising just looking at him. If only he knew.

She gulped and grabbed Lancelot. She had to get away from that mirror before he caught her staring and turned around to see what had riveted her. “Lancelot belongs to the Halliburtons, the tenants you evicted,” she said. “The poor baby’s staying with me because they can’t have pets in the poky little apartment they’re stuck with in Collierville, while they try to find a house they can afford closer to Williamston. He just wanted to come home where his people loved him.” She hoped she was laying it on thick enough. Although she doubted he’d care.

She clipped the leash to Lancelot’s harness, stood and began to haul him toward the bedroom door. “It won’t happen again. I apologize for our intrusion.”

“No problem.”

Now she had to turn her back to him. She knew her shorts weren’t much less revealing of her backside than what she’d seen in the mirror of his.

“Do you always go barefoot?” he asked.

“In the summer, often. Seldom in January.” Better than bare-assed, she thought, and despite all her efforts, began to snicker. “Come on, Lancelot, bad pig,” she said and pulled on his leash. He squealed and yanked back.

She made it all the way to the back steps before uncontrollable laughter broke the surface. She sank onto the back steps, hugged Lancelot to her and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

At the same moment that Nancy began to laugh, Tim dropped his sheet and turned around. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing in the full-length mirror—and to realize what Nancy Mayfield had been looking at for the past five minutes.

That’s when he heard her laughing.

CHAPTER FIVE

NANCY HAD BARELY dragged Lancelot home and fed him and the cats when her doorbell rang. She froze. It had to be Tim Wainwright. No doubt infuriated. No doubt accusing her of burglary, being a Peeping Tom and assault with a deadly pig.

Might as well face him now. After all, he was supposed to drive her to the car rental agency. If he didn’t, she was stuck, and she needed to check on the mastiff and the Jack Russell at the clinic. Not to mention the usual Saturday grocery shopping. She opened the door prepared for a frontal assault, no pun intended.

The kid—Eddy, was it?—stood on the doorstep. He stared up at her with those blank, unblinking blue eyes. He was cradling something in his arms.

She caught her breath. All puppies looked pretty much alike at this age except in size, but this one had come from small parents and would probably stay small itself. Possibly some mixed variety that included Jack Russell terrier and dachshund.

Eddy held it out to her. “Please?” he said. His voice sounded rusty from disuse, deep and gravelly for a child his age.

She feared the pup was dead from the way it lay in the child’s arms, but when she took it, she felt the flutter of a small heart. And the warmth of blood on her palms. She turned and raced for her kitchen, as she called over her shoulder, “Come in, shut the door behind you tight so the animals don’t get out.”

She heard the sound of the lock clicking into place and then the patter of bare feet on her floorboards.

She grabbed a dry dish towel off the rack beside the sink and laid the pup on it. Poor little thing, it was too traumatized or too hurt to fight. “Hit by a car, probably,” she said as she gently lifted the satiny brown baby hair away from the place she had felt blood.

She gasped. The flesh was raw, the burns so deep she could see blistered muscle tissue. The pup wriggled and mewed more like a small kitten than a dog. Instantly Poddy jumped onto the drain board. “Down, Poddy, go ’way. I’m not hurting it.”

She felt rather than saw Eddy beside her. “Please,” he whispered again.

“Did you do this?” she asked sharply without taking her eyes off the pup. She ran cold water over a dish towel and, folding it, placed it over the wound, then turned to glare down at him.

He shook his head. Those blue eyes stared into hers, and for the first time she saw expression in him. A single tear ran down his cheek, cutting a swatch through the dirt. “I found him.” He reached out and touched the brown pup’s little skull tentatively. “Please don’t let him die.” Without warning, he began to shake his head fiercely and backed away from the sink. “Mustn’t die, mustn’t die!”

She caught his shoulder. He was thin, but wiry. He was as tense as a crossbow. Probably just as ready to snap. “I won’t lie. He’s in shock. Otherwise you’d never have been able to carry him. He’d have bitten you.”

She turned back to the sink. “Somebody’s poured lighter fluid or kerosene on him and lit it, but they did a lousy job. He must have broken loose and put out the fire in the damp grass. He’s brown. He wouldn’t have been easy to spot in the dark once the fire was out.”

“Somebody hurt him? On purpose?”

As she talked, she gently cleaned the debris and grass away, then placed a dry towel over the pup to keep him warm. “It’s nasty and deep, but you did the right thing bringing him to me. Let’s see what I can do.”

Her voice had gentled frightened animals for years. Let’s see if I can gentle this little Eddy beast, she thought as she went to get the first-aid case she kept at home. She was used to opening the door to neighbors with baby squirrels or birds that had fallen from nests, hurt cats and dogs, momma possums hit by cars with their bellies still full of their young—everything including snakes and cows…even the occasional fawn. So her kit was extensive.

By the time she came back, Poddy was sitting on the counter beside the pup. Wonder of wonders, Eddy was stroking him, not a liberty he allowed many people. Lancelot watched them from his basket. She didn’t think Eddy had noticed him yet. “Okay,” she said, “let’s spray a bit of painkiller over that wound, so we can clean it up and see what we’ve got.” She looked down at Eddy. “Won’t your father wonder where you are?”

He shook his head without taking his eyes off the pup or his grubby, small hand off Poddy. “He’s asleep.”

“I don’t think he is.” Probably calling the cops. “You sure you want to watch?” she asked. “Then we’ll call your father so he won’t worry.”

“Not watch. Help.”

She dealt frequently with people who didn’t want to watch or even to help when their animals were in pain, and many parents who felt junior’s tender sensibilities couldn’t take watching the birth of the kittens or the excision of a sarcoid tumor on a horse’s flank. As far as Nancy was concerned, if a child was old enough to ask to watch, he was old enough to know the truth about the event. She didn’t particularly enjoy children, considered herself hopeless with them, so she treated them like adults. It was all she knew to do.

“Okay,” she said. “Hold his jaws together gently. He’s warming up and really starting to hurt. He’s small, but he can still bite.” The pup had begun to whine and scrabble. She was afraid to give him a shot—any amount of sedative could kill him. She pulled on latex gloves and sprayed the wound with a solution that would deaden the tissue at once.

Eddy stood beside her with his fingers around the pup’s jaw. Without asking, he took the pup’s four legs in his other hand to keep the pup still, as Nancy clipped what remained of singed fur and trimmed off the seared skin around the deepest part of the burn.

Give the kid credit. He didn’t back off from the blood or the stench of burned hair and skin. On closer look, the blisters weren’t as deep as she’d thought. The actual muscles hadn’t been attacked, nor had any of the major blood vessels. She finished cleaning and treating the pup with antiburn salve, antibiotics and more painkiller, then bound the wound around the pup’s belly. “Okay, kid, that’s got it for the moment,” she said as she peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket.

“Will he be all right?”

“No idea, but I think so. He’s going to need care. He’s probably eating on his own, but his mother may still suckle him as well. Did you find any others like this?”

Eddy shook his head.

Nancy shuddered. Please God let’s hope this was the only victim. The mother and other pups might not have been so lucky. “Where’d you find him? And what are you doing up so early anyway?” She slipped her hands under the pup, towel and all. “Go into my bathroom. Linen closet’s the little door on the left. Bring me a couple of towels. We’ll make him a bed.”

Eddy didn’t ask questions. He stiffened for a moment when he spotted Lancelot, and edged warily around his bed, but he got the towels. Together they settled the pup on top of a folded blue bath towel, and covered him with another to keep him warm.

“Ever nurse a puppy?”

Eddy shook his head.

“Then it’s time you learned.” She fetched one of the small nursing bottles and a box of dry puppy milk formula from her case, mixed up the formula with warm water and put the nipple on. She handed the bottle to the child, who immediately hunkered down beside the pup.

“Snuggle him in your lap, towel and all.”

Eddy did as he was told, and within seconds the puppy was suckling contentedly.

She was certain Lancelot would intrude the moment he smelled the milk. Amazingly he seemed to understand that this was one time he shouldn’t. He didn’t take his eyes off Eddy, but he stayed in his bed and confined his comments to the occasional snuffle.

She sat on the floor beside the boy. “Now, where’d you find him? Do you know who did this?”

He shook his head. “I went out in the yard. You fix animals, so I brought him.”

He must have been outside while she’d been trying to spring Lancelot from Tim’s bed. She wondered how he planned to get back into the house. The back door locked automatically when it was on the latch as she had left it. He probably hadn’t thought that far ahead.

The Halliburtons’ yard—she had to stop thinking of it as the Halliburtons’—was surrounded by thick woods that went down to the lake. Hers, across the lane, had a ten-acre pasture behind it with an old barn. The rest of the fifty acres she owned was covered in equally dense woods.

The nearest house directly behind Eddy’s was probably a couple of miles south of the village on the side road. She’d have to go over to those woods to see if she could find any other wounded animals and the scene of the crime, because it was a crime. She’d call Mike O’Hara, the sheriff, and notify him they had a mutilator in the neighborhood. He could alert the rest of the community.

“Do you know what happened to it?”

Eddy looked up at her. “Why would somebody burn it?”

She had to admit the possibility that he’d done it himself, then become frightened of what he’d done and tried to save the animal.

Nancy didn’t think so though. She’d seen kids and adults who mutilated animals for what they considered fun. They felt nothing except annoyance that they’d been caught. Animal cruelty was one of the first symptoms of a psychopathic personality—a Ted Bundy in the making. She couldn’t remember the other symptoms—that spelled trouble.

That Wainwright guy ought to know. “Eddy, do you know if either Jason or Angie went out of the house last night?”

His head jerked up. “They like animals.”

Smart kid. Knew precisely why she was asking.

“Angie’s horse-crazy. Jason even liked the sheep.”

Nancy had no idea what sheep, but for the moment, at least, she respected Eddy’s take on his siblings.

“He’s finished,” Eddy said. “See?” He held the empty bottle up.

“Okay, rub his tummy until he piddles and poops.” She reached under the sink for a new roll of paper towels, took a couple and handed them to Eddy.

He didn’t hesitate. He simply set to work until the pup had evacuated satisfactorily. Nancy took the neatly folded paper towels from him. They’d go outside in the trash.

“Do you have any idea who he belongs to?” she asked. Stupid question. If she didn’t recognize the pup or its parents after six years in the neighborhood, he couldn’t be expected to know after one night.

Eddy shook his head and laid the sleeping pup and his nest back into the corner.

“That presents a problem. If I take him to the clinic, it costs money, and I suspect he’s a stray.”

“Can’t he stay here? I’ll look after him.”

She knew absolutely, positively that she shouldn’t even consider agreeing. “At his age he needs to be fed every four to six hours, and his bandage changed morning and night. We’ll get him onto puppy food soaked in milk, and after he starts getting better he’ll need to go outside to the bathroom.”

“School doesn’t start for a while,” Eddy said with what passed for enthusiasm with this child. “I can do it.”

“I’m sure your father won’t want you spending all your time looking after the pup.”

“Sure he will.” Then he ducked his head and all enthusiasm vanished. “He said we couldn’t have a dog yet. I could keep him here.” He stroked the pup’s head. “And I can pay you. My Gran’mere will send me some money if I ask her.”

When he looked up at her, she wondered how she could ever have thought he was expressionless. Such longing, such sadness, such hope! What had happened to this child to make him close down? She’d have to find out. And if that Wainwright fellow had anything to do with it, she’d see him rot in hell.

As if in answer to her summons, the doorbell rang again. Eddy jumped. “That’s my daddy,” he whispered.

“Stay here.”

“Do we have to tell him?”

“Don’t worry, Eddy, I’ll handle it.”

When she opened her front door, Wainwright stepped in without asking. “Have you seen my son? I can’t find him.”

“He’s here,” she said, and turned back to the kitchen.

“Eddy,” Tim rushed past her.

Eddy hunched over the puppy’s nest.

Tim squatted beside his son. “Eddy, don’t you ever do that again, you hear me?” Then he hugged the boy.

If he was an abuser, he was good at concealing it. Nancy saw tears in his eyes.

He held Eddy at arm’s length. “Son, you’re filthy. And no shoes. Where’ve you been?”

“I went out. I thought I’d be back before you woke up.” Then, as if realizing he’d actually spoken more than a few words at a time, he seemed to shrink into himself. “I’m sorry.”

She saw Tim gulp convulsively.

“It’s okay, son. It’s good that you wanted to go out and explore. Just don’t go out alone again without telling me. Even if I’m still in bed, I’ll get up and go with you. Maybe we’ll all go. We definitely need to explore our land, but this is the country. There’s a whole bunch of new stuff you’re not used to—snakes and fast trucks and woods and streams. You could have gotten lost.” He drew back and glanced over his shoulder. “And what are you doing over here bothering Miss Mayfield?”

No mention of their previous meeting. Thank God he chose to ignore it.

Eddy looked down at the nest. The only visible portion of the pup was an inch of charred brown ear.

“How about I make some coffee,” Nancy said. “I’ve also got OJ and a coffee cake. Sit down and let Eddy tell you about it. He’s a real hero.”

Eddy gave her a grateful look. She winked at him. Whether Tim Wainwright liked it or not, his son had a dog. If she had anything to say about it, he’d keep it.

CHAPTER SIX

TIM SIPPED HIS COFFEE and watched with wonder as his son wolfed down his third piece of coffee cake. He was on his second glass of orange juice, as well. In the past year, Eddy had grown thinner and thinner. Tim gave him vitamins, made certain his mother-in-law kept the house filled with fruit and lunch meat as well as pastry and tried to believe the doctors who told him his son was perfectly healthy. Physically, maybe he was.

Didn’t stop Tim from worrying. On the one hand, he had to watch his mother-in-law to keep her from stuffing Angie, already verging on pudgy, with French pastry. Jason could eat Chicago without gaining an ounce. Every calorie went straight up. Eddy seemed to have lost his sense of self-preservation when he lost his mother.

Now, here he was swigging orange juice and actually kicking the rungs of the kitchen chair like a normal kid. He opened his mouth to admonish his son, then clapped it shut. If it didn’t bother her, it shouldn’t bother him.

“So you see, he’s a hero,” Miss Mayfield said.

“I’m going to look after him while Nancy’s at work,” Eddy said. He met his father’s eyes as though daring him to object.

“The lady’s name is Miss Mayfield,” Tim said automatically.

“Nancy,” she said, “I hate being called Miss Mayfield. Makes me feel as old as my grandmother.” She smiled at Eddy, who actually smiled back. “Nobody in Williamston stands much on ceremony. We all live too close to one another.” He saw her give a convulsive gulp as though she realized what she’d just said. She quickly poured Tim another cup of coffee without being asked and turned her back on the table.

Lancelot had managed to stay on his good behavior until he smelled the coffee cake. He sat at Eddy’s feet and gave an occasional soft oink. Tim saw that Eddy was sneaking him bits of coffee cake under the table. He seemed to accept Lancelot as casually as he did the cats.

Lancelot pushed his snout against Tim’s leg. One look into those eyes and Tim was forced to give him a bit of coffee cake himself.

So far the only eyes he’d managed to avoid were Nancy’s. She seemed to be cooperating by avoiding his as well. Good. Better to forget the entire incident with the pig and the mirror. God that sounded like a fairy tale. Despite his previous resolution to stay aloof, he found himself grinning down at Lancelot.

Besides, he couldn’t stay aloof when he was so elated that Eddy had found something worth fighting for.

“Wonderful coffee,” he said. “Chicago coffee tends to be dark auburn unless you spend a fortune for it at Starbucks.” Actually the coffee could probably strip the bristles off Lancelot’s back, but at the moment, that was what he needed. He wasn’t used to 5:00 a.m. crises.

“Thanks,” she said. “Be back in a minute.”

He watched her go into what must be her bedroom. He could see the corner of a high, unmade bed through the doorway.

She still wore her cutoffs and a T-shirt. Even seminaked and embarrassed in his bedroom, Tim had appreciated the sight of his new neighbor as she dragged that blasted pig down his hallway. A man who didn’t enjoy looking at her long legs and tight rear end would have to be dead. Tim wasn’t quite dead. He was, however, turning into a randy old man. Celibacy tended to do that to the male of the species.

He realized he was getting hard, took an almighty gulp of coffee, scalded the roof of his mouth and drank half of Eddy’s orange juice.

“Hey!” Eddy protested.

Tim laughed. In the past eighteen months Eddy hadn’t cared enough about anything to feel proprietary. Even a little thing like begrudging his father a swig of orange juice was a major victory. He put down his son’s glass and topped it up from the pitcher on the table. “You realize you’ve drunk an entire orange grove there, son.”

“Oh.” Eddy looked away and set his glass down untouched.

Tim wanted to kick himself. “Joke,” he said. “Tell you what. We’ll bring Miss Mayfield—”

“Nancy,” Eddy corrected.

“—Nancy a gallon of OJ from the grocery.”

At that moment Nancy came back into the kitchen. She had combed her short, brown hair, but those delectable nipples were still very visible under the thin cotton of her T-shirt.

“I called Mike O’Hara,” she said. “He’s the sheriff. Lives a couple of miles outside town. He’s going to stop by on his way into the office. He wants to talk to you, Eddy, find out exactly where you found your pup.”

Eddy’s terrified eyes went straight to his father’s face. “Do I have to?”

“He’s a great guy,” Nancy explained. “He’s proud of you, too.” The look on Eddy’s face didn’t change. “Say, I thought I heard a whimper. You better go check on your puppy. Why don’t you move his bed into my bedroom?”

Eddy slipped off his chair, went over to the corner, scooped up pup and towels, and disappeared through Nancy’s bedroom door without a word.

“Of course what was done to the dog is a crime,” Tim said. “I should have realized.”

“A felony. There may be more hurt dogs out there that weren’t so lucky as Eddy’s puppy. He needs a name, by the way.”

Tim started to say that the dog wasn’t actually Eddy’s, but stopped. Of course the puppy was Eddy’s. It would remain Eddy’s even if he had to fight half of Williamston for possession. “Eddy will come up with something.”

Nancy took the chair across from Tim. “Okay, what gives with Eddy?”

Tim sat up. “That’s hardly your business.”

“The minute he dragged that burned puppy into my house, it became my business. At first I thought he must have burned the puppy himself—”

“Eddy loves animals! He’d never—”

“Calm down. I said at first. Nothing like this has happened in Williamston in the six years I’ve lived here.”

Tim felt his temperature rising. “Then the first night we’re here, somebody burns a puppy in my yard?”

“You do have two other children.”

Tim wanted to snatch Eddy, stalk out and slam the door after him.

“I’m not accusing you,” Nancy said.

“The hell you’re not.”

“You think Mike’s not going to ask these questions? You’re supposed to be this hotshot educator with degrees up the wazoo. You must know about kids who like to torture animals.”

“Not my children.” Suddenly he felt his anger evaporate. She was right, although he didn’t like to admit it. He walked over and looked into Nancy’s bedroom. Eddy slept on the rag rug beside her bed with the puppy’s bed in the crook of his arm. Lancelot had moved to snuggle into the crook behind his knees and was fast asleep as well. The two cats, he noted, were curled up together on the foot of the bed where they could oversee everything. Tim closed the door softly and went back to his place at Nancy’s table.

“A year ago my wife was killed in a drive-by shooting.”

Nancy caught her breath. “Oh, I am so sorry!”

“It’s been hard on all of us, but especially Eddy. He was the youngest and the closest to Solange, I think.”

“Solange? Is that Angie’s real name?”

He nodded. “Her father brought his family to Chicago from St. Nazaire in the fifties. He was a chemical engineer. Solange was born in Chicago.”

“Of course I hear about drive-by shootings, but I guess nobody ever thinks it will happen to them.”

Tim took a deep breath. “After she was killed, we did grief counseling, went a couple of times to groups for people who’ve lost loved ones to violence. The kids hated it. You can see how Angie reacted.” He laughed ruefully. “The day she dyed her hair jet-black, I thought her grandmother would have a stroke.” He glanced at Nancy. “Solange’s mother has been babysitter and substitute parent since Solange was killed.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring her down with you.”

“She wouldn’t have come. She thinks Chicago is barbaric. God only knows what she’d make of Williamston.” He wondered whether Nancy would notice his tense. He hadn’t actually asked Madame to join them. One of his reasons for leaving Chicago was to get away from her.

“Anyway, Jason seemed to be doing okay bar the oversize clothes. Then his grades started falling, I caught him smoking—only tobacco, thank God—and he started hanging around with some local gang wannabes. Then he took up skateboarding. You’ve already seen the hair and the earring holes. The next step would have been tattoos. He’s basically sound, but I was afraid he wouldn’t stay sound if I didn’t get him away.”

“And Eddy?”

“Eddy shut down. He’s been a little ghost. Never speaks unless he’s spoken to, does what he’s told, makes A’s in school. A Stepford kid.” He ran his hand over his short hair. “Even the psychologists couldn’t get through to him. I certainly couldn’t.” He nodded at her. “But you did.”

“Not me.” She nodded toward the bedroom door. “What’s the fancy academic phrase for therapy dog?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHERIFF MIKE O’HARA loved being sheriff nearly as much as he loved his fine herd of Red Brahman cattle. He liked to tell everyone who would listen, he either had to run cows or take bribes to keep his kid in private school. “So far I prefer cows,” he’d say. “Nobody’s offered me a good enough bribe yet.”

He looked like one of the bulls he raised. He was only about five foot ten, but red hair covered his head, arms, knuckles and probably his back. Nancy had never seen his back and didn’t want to. He was built like his bulls as well. Big neck, big shoulders, thick chest, which was only beginning its inevitable slide south of his beltline, the thighs of a football lineman and huge feet in highly polished ostrich boots. Since today was Saturday, he wore a tan polo shirt stretched tight across his chest and cowboy cut jeans worn extra long and crumpled over the ankles of his boots.

Nancy caught Tim’s dismay when Mike walked into her cottage. The heels of his boots cracked against her hardwood floors. Even though he was shorter than Tim, he looked formidable. Tim was no doubt afraid that the sight of this wide man with a gun on his belt would terrify his fragile son.

“Hey, Dr. Wainwright,” Mike said as he extended his hand. “Glad to have you in Williamston.”

Nancy grinned at Tim’s surprise. Mike O’Hara’s voice was a sweet, gentle light baritone that made listening to the choir at the Williamston Baptist Church on Sunday a real pleasure. Still, to be on the safe side, she warned him again about Eddy. She did not, however, mention the death of Tim’s wife. That was up to Tim.

Tim started to follow him as he went toward Nancy’s bedroom, but Mike shook his head. “Don’t worry, Doc. I won’t scare him.”

They watched him hunker down beside the child, who was already stirring from his nap. When Mike spoke to him, he rubbed his eyes, then sat up quickly the moment he glimpsed the sheriff looming over him. Nancy saw Eddy’s startled expression, watched him shrink closer to the bundled puppy, then relax as Mike’s voice flowed over him. Mike scratched behind Lancelot’s ears as he talked.

Five minutes later, Mike came back with his arm draped across Eddy’s shoulders. “Boy here’s a real hero, Doc. Got yourself a good young’un. He’s gonna show me right where he found the pup.”

“I’ll come with you, if you don’t mind,” Tim said. Nancy could tell he didn’t give a damn whether Mike minded or not.

“Me, too,” she said. “Soon as I get some shoes on. Eddy, how’s your pup doing?”

“He was whimpering a little, but I calmed him down.” He nodded. “He’s breathing real good.”

“I’ll check on him first,” Nancy said. “By the time we’re finished he’ll probably need another bottle. You game?”

“He’s my puppy.”

Eddy was right. He was breathing well. She sprayed some more pain killer on the gauze that covered his burns, stroked his small, brown velvet head, pulled on a pair of deck shoes and ran across the street to find the men.

Mike was saying, “Probably some teenage idiot and his drunken buddies.” He turned to her. “Nancy, looks like the pup may have been tossed out of a car.” He shook his head. “Somebody’s idea of a Roman candle. Rolling in the grass probably saved his life, and the high grass and those soft baby bones probably kept him from breaking up when he hit.”

“You can’t find any others?”

Mike shrugged. “Let’s hope he’s all there were.” He glanced at Eddy, then at Nancy and raised an eyebrow. She got the message.

“Eddy, you know where the puppy formula is,” Nancy said. “Wash out the bottle really well and rinse it a lot before you mix up the formula. You okay with that?”

“Uh-huh.” He started to run across the lane, but his father grabbed him.

“Eddy, this may not be Chicago, but cars do drive this road. You know better. Look both ways and don’t run.”

“Yes, sir.” Eddy looked both ways, then dashed full tilt across the street and into Nancy’s house.

“Is it all right for him to be in your house by himself?” Tim asked.

“Unless he’s a budding burglar. Not that I have much to steal.”

“I wanted to look some more, Doc,” Mike explained. “If we do find something bad, I didn’t want the boy around.”

“Thanks. What do we do? Quarter the area?”

“You got it. Work front to back. Nancy, you and Doc take the yard on the north side. We’ll meet in the back.”

Fifteen minutes later they had worked their way to the edge of the woods at the back of Tim’s property without finding anything.

“I’ll fill out a report and tell my boys to keep a lookout on patrol,” Mike said. “Probably kids from town drunk on beer and stupid. You hear any hoo-rawing outside last night?”

Both Nancy and Tim shook their heads.

“Well, let’s hope it’s an isolated incident. Nice to meet you, Doc. Bye, Nancy. Come see us.” He walked across the street to where his squad car sat behind Nancy’s car. He gave no indication that he noticed Nancy’s flat tire and dented bumper, although he must have seen the damage.

As he pulled away, a bright red tow truck turned the corner from the village common and pulled up in front of Nancy’s house.

“Nuts,” she whispered. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth, much less taken a shower. Can you see to getting the car onto the tow truck?” She started across the street. Tim followed.

“My bad. My responsibility. I talked to my insurance agent last night. He should have made arrangements with your dealer to have it fixed by now. He said they’d furnish a loaner.”

“Fast work.”

“He’s an old friend.” He grimaced. “Actually I told him the accident occurred on private property, and that I intended to pay the tab personally. I’m not making a claim.”

Nancy’s eyebrows went up.

“Cheaper than skyrocketing insurance rates.”

“It’s going to cost you.”

“It’s going to cost Jason in the long run,” Tim said grimly. “By the time he finishes paying me back, he’ll be the safest driver in Tennessee.”

BECAUSE EDDY REFUSED to leave his puppy to go with Nancy and Tim to get her car fixed and pick up a rental, Nancy suggested they take the pup and Eddy with them.

“We can stop by the clinic,” she said. “If you’re going to keep him, then you really need a doctor to check him out. I’m good, but I’m a vet tech, not a veterinarian.” She turned to Tim. “A dog, even a healthy one, is a big responsibility. He needs shots, heart worm tests and medication, the right sort of food, vitamins, toys and when he’s better he’ll need exercise and a safe place to play. Dogs run loose around here, but it’s a bad idea, especially for a small one.” She didn’t want to add that despite her best efforts, the puppy might not make it.

Tim put his hand on Eddy’s fair hair. “We can afford a little dog like this, can’t we, son? He’ll be mostly your responsibility, you know.”

“I’ll take good care of him,” Eddy said, his pale eyes gleaming. He went into Nancy’s bedroom and came back a moment later with the pup in his arms. After she settled child and dog in the back seat of Tim’s SUV, she turned to Tim. “He’s too little to take full responsibility for a pet, Dr. Wainwright. The responsibility will be yours. Are you willing to accept that?”

Tim grinned and shrugged. “My mission, should I choose to accept it? Yeah, I choose.”

As they drove the twenty miles to Collierville, Tim said, “Jason and Angie are old enough to stay alone in the daytime. Frankly I doubt they’ll wake up before we get home, but I left a note for them. On weekends they can sleep around the clock. They have my cell phone number. At your clinic last night, I found Jason staring at a ewe and a couple of lambs. He actually seemed interested. That young man—Kevin, I think he said his name was—took him to see a horse under treatment.”

“It’s Kenny. He’s our very own rescue project,” Nancy said. “He’s a rich kid from the neighborhood. We caught him in the act of vandalizing and put him to work after school. Complete turnaround.”

“Hmm.”

At the car dealership, Nancy was horrified to learn the cost of her repairs. She was glad she wasn’t paying for them. She had little enough extra money, and she was already culling some of her old growth trees to pay for a kitchen update on her cottage.

The good news was that the car didn’t require as much work as she’d feared. She suspected the cost would be a shock to Tim as well. He couldn’t be making much as a high school teacher at Maybree. She almost considered splitting the cost, but gave up the idea. Let Jason pay his father back.

“Should be done by Tuesday afternoon, Nancy,” said Ralph Simmons, the service manager, who’d looked after her last three cars. “Here.” He handed her a set of keys. “It’s not what you’re used to, but it’s the only loaner they could get today. They brought it over first thing this morning.” He pointed to a small, black two-door sedan. It looked as though it might hold two bags of groceries tops. Still, it was transportation. She wouldn’t have to rely on Tim and his brood to get her around anymore.

“Follow me to Creature Comfort,” she said to Tim. “One of the good things about being on staff is that we can go in the back door and not have to wait. Dr. Hazard’s on duty this morning. He doesn’t generally work Saturdays.”

Later, as he went over the pup, Dr. Hazard said, “Nice job, Nancy.”

“Can you stitch up his wound?” Tim asked.

Hazard shook his head. “Needs to heal from the inside out slowly. We’ll treat it with antibiotic ointment, painkiller and, after it starts to heal, hydrocortisone ointment. I’d like to keep him here until Monday in our intensive care. The biggest threat at the moment is infection. And pups his age can simply fade.” He glanced down at Eddy.

So did Nancy. From Eddy’s narrow eyes and set jaw, she could tell he had no intention of relinquishing his charge without a fight.

“I can look after him,” Eddy said. “He’s my dog.”

“Obviously you can,” Dr. Hazard said. “He wouldn’t have gotten this far without you. You can visit him tomorrow. By then he may actually feel like moving around a little. But doing the best for our animals is not always the happiest thing for us humans.”

Nancy thought Eddy would keep fighting. Instead he deflated. Her heart went out to him. One look at the concern in Tim’s face and her heart went out to him as well. “Tell you what. You and I will go settle him down in intensive care. I’ll introduce you to the people who’ll be looking after him. Your dad has to go fill out some papers anyway, so we can sit with him until he meets us. Okay?”

Eddy shrugged and turned away, all the fight gone out of him.

“Hey, you’re forgetting somebody.” Nancy pointed to the pup, who was scrabbling around on the slick table like a small brown seal.

Eddy looked at her. “Can I carry him?”

“Your dog, remember? Just because he’s here doesn’t mean you can let other people take over completely.” She handed him a clean towel. “Pick him up with this.”

Eddy lifted the pup to his shoulder. He leaned his cheek against the little dog’s silky head while the pup snuggled tight under his chin.

Nancy left Tim with Dr. Hazard as they walked down the hall toward the ICU area. “He’s got to have a name. We can’t just keep calling him pup.”

At that moment Big Little opened the door to the ICU and stepped out into the hall. Eddy stopped so quickly that Nancy ran into him. He must also have gripped the pup, because the little dog let out a tiny yelp.

“Hey, Miss Nancy,” Big said, flashing her and Eddy his brilliant smile. “Hey, young’un.”

Eddy’s gulp was audible.

“Hey, Big,” Nancy said. “Eddy, Big here is our nursemaid. He’ll take really good care of your pup.”

“But…” Eddy looked back at Nancy over his shoulder. She could see the fear and consternation in his face.

“Y’all just come on in here,” Big said. “Y’all can help ole—what’s his name, boy?”

“Just Pup,” Eddy whispered.

“Okay, now you give me JustPup here and we’ll fix him up a nice soft bed.”

“Can I pet him some?”

“Lordy, yes.” Big opened the door to the ICU area and ushered Eddy, JustPup and Nancy through.

“He’s shy,” she whispered.

Big nodded. “Yes’m.” He looked down at his gigantic feet a little sadly. “Guess he’s sceert ’cause I’m so big.”

Nancy patted his arm. “He won’t be once he gets to know you.”

Big set up the ICU cage, sat on the air mattress in the center of the room and invited Eddy and the pup to sit beside him. Big held the little dog as though it were a baby bird while Eddy stroked it. With each stroke he inched closer to Big until he was leaning against his massive thigh.

Nancy checked the large cages first. Wonder of wonders, the mastiff was sitting up on his own. In the small cages, the Jack Russell was already standing, wagging his tail and yapping. Bless Mac Thorn! He truly could work miracles.

“What say we put JustPup here in his house and let him have a nap?” Big asked Eddy. “I got to let out my dog, Daisy, for a little run. Can you throw a ball? Ole Daisy, she does love to chase her ball.” He looked at Nancy and winked.

She backed out. “I’ll come get you in a few minutes, Eddy.”

He didn’t raise his head.

She checked the charts for both the mastiff and terrier, saw that neither had a temperature and that they were receiving their antibiotics. She’d change dressings after she sent Eddy and Tim away.

She met Tim in the reception area where he was still filling out forms.

“Where’s Eddy?” he asked.

“He’s fine. Big’s looking after him. If you’d like to get back to Williamston, I can bring Eddy home in a little while.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“It’s hardly out of my way.”

He handed the papers to Alva Jean, the day receptionist and Big’s current girlfriend, then followed Nancy through the door to the examining rooms and down the hall toward the cavernous large animal area and the staff parking.

In the pasture behind the building, Nancy saw Big with his back to them and his hands on his hips. She realized that Eddy stood in front of him only when she saw his thin arm lob a yellow tennis ball down the pasture. A sturdy beige dog caught it in midair and trotted toward the pair in triumph. Eddy clapped as Daisy dropped the ball at his feet and sat waiting for him to throw it again.

“My God,” Tim breathed. “Who’s that? And isn’t that a pit bull?”

“That’s Mr. Bigelow Little, kennel man, security guard and general associate, and his dog, Daisy. Yes, she’s a pit bull. She adores children. Don’t worry, she won’t attack Eddy.”

“I—they have such a bad reputation.”

“Any dog that’s abused and not properly trained can get a bad reputation.”

At that moment Eddy spotted his father and called to him, “Daddy! Watch, Daddy!” He threw the ball. Daisy chased it, retrieved it and deposited it once more at Eddy’s feet. He dropped to his knees and cradled her head in his arms, then buried his face in her neck.

Nancy heard Tim catch his breath, but all he said was, “Great, son.”

“Eddy looks like he’s set for a while,” Nancy said to him before calling out again. “Eddy, you want to ride home with me? You can feed your pup again before you leave.”

“Can I, Big?” Eddy looked up at the big man with the same trust Nancy had seen in the eyes of everything from wild deer to newborn kittens.

“Sure. How ’bout we put Daisy back in my house and go do that little thing?”

“Okay.” Eddy scooped up the ball, then did what Nancy was sure was a miraculous thing in Tim’s eyes. He grabbed Big’s huge hand and walked off toward the small bungalow at the back of the parking lot without a backward glance at his father.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IS THAT ALL it would have taken? Tim wondered. One puppy and Eddy was fixed?

Obviously not. But for the first time since Solange had been killed Eddy was showing signs of behaving like a normal boy. Once the novelty wore off the puppy, Eddy might well fall back into his silent misery. Tim prayed that wouldn’t happen. He doubted the puppy would work the same magic with Angie and Jason, although they both loved animals. They wouldn’t get to meet it until it came home anyway. If it survived.

Tim wasn’t surprised they hadn’t come downstairs earlier when they could have met the puppy. Like most teenagers, they could sleep through a riot. Even in their small Chicago apartment, nothing woke them on Saturdays before noon—not even police sirens.

Maybe Nancy Mayfield would find the key to unlock the normal parts of Jason and Angie. For the first time since he pulled away from his city apartment, he felt absolutely certain he’d done the right thing moving his family down to Williamston.

If he’d listened to Solange and gotten them out of Chicago earlier, she might still be alive.

His pigheadedness had destroyed their marriage and killed her. He’d live with his guilt for the rest of his life, not only for her death, but also for the life he’d forced on her, the choices she’d made.

No matter how much she’d demanded they all rely on her since Solange’s death, he knew he’d been right to get his children and himself away from his mother-in-law, too. He’d certainly used her, but then she’d used him as well. She’d tried to submerge them all in permanent mourning. Solange would have been furious.

Tim had never called her anything except Madame, nor had she asked him to. The French term for mother-in-law was Belle Mere—Beautiful Mother.

And Madame was still a beautiful woman, small, reed-slim, with that innate chic that French women seemed to possess as a birthright. Solange had been even more beautiful than her mother. She was also clever and funny—at least in the old days.

Madame didn’t hesitate to tell him she thought Solange could have done better for herself than a workaholic high school vice principal and adjunct professor. He might never even become a full principal or a full professor.

Solange had been three months pregnant with Jason when they’d married, so Madame considered her damaged goods. Madame had never forgiven Tim for that, either.

Actually Solange had seduced him, not that he needed much seducing. She saw him as an up-and-coming graduate assistant with a Ph.D. and a prestigious academic career ahead of him. He saw nothing except her beauty and charm.

“You never appreciated her,” Madame railed at him. “You have no passion. You work all the time for no money and no prestige. Why else do you think she went back to graduate school? Why else did she take a lover?”

He’d endured her tirades and her guilt trips. The children needed her, and she had lost a beloved daughter.

Had he lost a beloved wife? He’d been furious when he let Solange out of the car to go to her French class, where her professor lover waited for her. She’d been just as furious with him.

Yet when the police came to tell him she was dead, he’d felt as though his heart had been torn out of his body. He grieved for what they had been to each other, for the love they had shared. The love they might have found again had she lived. A marriage, even a marriage gone bad, must be grieved.

The children missed her, loved her, but they also hated her for abandoning them. Jason and Angie’s rebellions were a form of acting out the unhappiness they felt. Didn’t make them any easier to endure.

Nobody expected to be touched by sudden violence. No, not touched—struck, bashed, torn apart. His children had been secure in a stable environment. Then, suddenly, that security was ripped away.

Tim pulled into the parking lot of the Collierville supermarket, took a parking space, turned off his ignition and simply sat.

He’d been so certain his goals were Solange’s goals, too. Work long hours to gain a more prestigious position to make more money.

Looking back, he saw that she needed him then, and not at some future date when he could afford to relax a little.

But he’d never had the chance to tell her.

He climbed out of the SUV, went into the grocery, took a cart and wandered through the unfamiliar aisles trying to remember what he said he’d buy for the house. What was the only kind of shampoo Angie would use? What kind of cereal did Eddy want? He should have made a list.

Tim picked up two dozen eggs. The kids were getting pretty sick of pizza, and he could make a great omelet.

His basket overflowed with microwave meals.

He checked his watch at the checkout line. He’d been gone three hours. It was after eleven. But in an unfamiliar house, Angie and Jason might be up and causing God-knows-what havoc.

He had remembered the extra half-gallon of orange juice for Nancy to replace the one he and Eddy had downed.

The orange juice gave him an excuse to see Nancy again. Among other things, he wanted to speak to her about those Halliburton people, to find out what he could do to make amends for kicking them out.

Before yesterday, when he’d literally run into her, he would have sworn he didn’t have any libido left. He’d almost forgotten how soft a woman felt.

He turned into the driveway of his new house. From the outside, all seemed serene. The inside looked serene, too. Apparently Jason and Angie weren’t even aware that he and Eddy had been gone, that the Sheriff had visited. His note lay untouched on the kitchen counter. He made half a dozen trips to carry in the groceries and found a place for them. He tried to recreate Solange’s system, but this kitchen was gigantic compared to the galley kitchen in their Chicago apartment.

To get to the pantry, he had to edge between the boxes still to be unpacked. He’d tried to label each one, but after a while, he’d run out of steam, so at the moment he wasn’t certain where the coffeemaker was hidden. He definitely needed caffeine.

He settled for a glass of milk.

He’d forgotten to pick up a Saturday newspaper. He’d have to call the subscription desk to arrange service, assuming they delivered this far out in the country. He took his milk into the empty living room—well, empty of everything except the randomly arranged furniture—and sank into the love seat in front of the bow window overlooking the porch.

He believed in writing To-Do lists, but at the moment his day-planner was buried somewhere among the boxes. He’d have to rely on his memory. Never a good idea, but he didn’t even know where he could find a pen and a piece of scrap paper.

First, call his rental agent and find out about the Halliburtons. Then call them himself, and see if he could do anything to mend fences.

Next, check in at Maybree. With only a few weeks until school started, the office staff might be working on Saturday. His first staff meeting was scheduled for eight-thirty Monday morning, but it wouldn’t hurt to seem eager.

He’d already sent the Maybree secretary a notice asking how he should go about hiring a housekeeper. She’d posted it on the staff bulletin board, but he didn’t know yet if she’d had any queries. He’d check on Monday.

If the school couldn’t help, then he’d insert the ad he’d already written into the local papers. He wanted someone who knew the area. He also doubted anyone would be willing to make the commute from Memphis five days a week.

At some point, he’d wake his two older children and get them to help unpack.

He was reaching for the phone when out the window he saw a big crew cab pickup that had seen better days—much better days, as a matter of fact—roll up across the lane. It was towing a large open-sided stock trailer. Behind it another truck—this one a big professional hauler—pulled up towing a flatbed trailer.

One man climbed out of each truck. They moved so precisely in unison they seemed to be performing a well-rehearsed dance.

Each wore a pristine white T-shirt under equally pristine and well-pressed bib overalls. Each wore a broad-brimmed straw Stetson on top and a pair of shiny brown work boots on the bottom. Still in unison they pulled on heavy work gloves.

They were probably in their early sixties, although they might be anywhere from fifty to eighty. From the way their biceps stretched the cotton fabric of their T-shirts, he suspected they’d be able to handle a herd of buffalo.

As they turned their brown and craggy faces toward his house, he noticed they both wore perfectly trimmed white beards. Tim laughed. Twins. Tweedledum and Tweedledee grown middle-aged and transplanted from Wonderland to West Tennessee.

He wondered what they were doing across the street, so he kept watching.

One walked around to the back of the stock trailer, opened the double doors and stepped back.

Two immense gray draft horses backed out of the trailer and stood quietly. Both wore heavy work harnesses. Even at this distance Tim could see each harness was shiny with fresh oil.

The twins each took a horse and attached some sort of pulling apparatus. Then they walked up Nancy’s lawn and disappeared around her house. The horses followed without lead line or direction.

Tim had never seen horses that big. When he was a kid visiting in the summer, his grandfather had kept a couple of mules to plow his garden, but they looked like miniature donkeys compared to these big guys. The twins must be nearly as tall as he was, but their horses dwarfed them.

He was considering whether to trail along after them to find out what they were doing, when he heard a clatter from the staircase to the second floor.

“Daddy! Did you see?” Angie slid on the wood floor and caught herself on the back of the sofa. “Horses!” She raced to stand at his shoulder. “Where’d they go? Can we follow them?”

“Is your brother up?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled. “Jason? No way. Come on!”

He looked at the light in her eyes, a light he hadn’t seen in much too long. Taking her outstretched hand, he let her pull him up from the window seat and followed her gallop at a more sedate pace.

Before he reached the lane, she was pelting across Nancy’s lawn like an ordinary kid. “Angie, wait up!” he called after her. If she heard him, she didn’t slow down to wait for him. He jogged after her and saw her reach the men and their rigs halfway across Nancy’s back pasture.

“Hey, young’un,” said one of the men. “Whoa-up, Henry, Herb.” The two horses stopped and stood quietly.

Angie froze. He saw her mouth gape in awe as she realized for the first time that what she’d thought were ordinary horses were in reality gray giants larger than any she’d ever seen in her life.

Tim put his hand on her shoulder. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Tim Wainright and this is my daughter, Angie. Sorry to have bothered you, but Angie saw the horses and…”

The man nodded gravely at Angie. “Girls and horses.” He pulled off his glove and stuck out his hand. “I’m Phil Cobb. This here’s my brother, Phineas.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Them’s Henry and Herb. Best pair of loggin’ horses in four states.”

“Logging? With horses?”

“Yessiree.” At that point Phineas stepped up, pulled off his glove and shook hands not only with Tim but with Angie. He nodded and stepped back without saying a word.

“Us Cobbs been logging with draft horses four generations I know about. You want to cut and sell a few hardwoods out of the middle of your woods to buy you some seed for spring, call on Cobbs. We’ll bring in ole Henry and Herb here. Once we’re finished cutting and moving the logs out, you won’t never know we’d been in your woods, ’cept maybe the boys’ll leave you some piles of fertilizer.” He chortled. “Course you got to get in line. Me and Phineas, here, we’re pretty well booked up into next spring.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.