Call of the wild

Game ranger Seth Logan’s peaceful life is thrown into chaos the second Emma French bangs on his door. The fiery blonde clearly doesn’t know the first thing about country living...or its dangers. She’s illegally fostering baby skunks—and worse, she has Seth aiding and abetting her!

Never one to turn his back on a woman or an animal, Seth agrees to break the rules to help Emma—but only until the skunks are old enough to return to the wild and Emma goes back to her life in Memphis. Yet as they care for the babies, Seth finds himself breaking another rule, one that he knows will only lead to heartbreak: never fall for a woman who doesn’t want to stay.

RITA® Award nominee and Maggie Award winner CAROLYN McSPARREN has lived in Germany, France, Italy and “too many cities in the US to count.” She’s sailed boats, raised horses, rides dressage and drives a carriage with her Shire-cross mare. She teaches writing seminars to romance and mystery writers, and writes mystery and women’s fiction as well as romance books. Carolyn lives in the country outside Memphis, Tennessee, in an old house with three cats, three horses and one husband.

Also By Carolyn McSparren

The Wrong Wife

Safe at Home

The Money Man

The Payback Man

House of Strangers

Listen to the Child

Over His Head

His Only Defense

Bachelor Cop

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Tennessee Rescue

Carolyn McSparren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08466-6

TENNESSEE RESCUE

© 2018 Carolyn McSparren

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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“Aren’t you going to get in trouble over my skunks?”

“You shouldn’t think of them as your skunks, Emma, or you’ll hate letting them go even more. Yes, I can get into trouble, but I can ask forgiveness.”

“As opposed to permission?”

He rinsed out the sink and hung the dish towel on its hook. And yawned. “Sorry.”

“Go home. Go to bed.”

She followed him to the front door.

He turned, took one step, swung back and reached for her.

It might have started out as a meet-the-new-neighbor kiss, but it got out of hand—fast. She wasn’t used to being lifted off her feet. When he wrapped his arms around her, she felt as if she was being hugged by that bear in the honey tree.

He set her down, let her go, wheeled around and almost ran across the street.

Dear Reader,

City girl Emma French gets fired from her job and dumps her unfaithful fiancé the same day. She moves to the country to recover, but instead, she finds herself rearing three orphaned baby skunks. Although it is illegal in Tennessee to foster skunks, she persuades her neighbor, Seth Logan—a tough, by-the-book game warden—to help her.

Emma knows nothing about animals, and she doesn’t plan to stay in Tennessee—and certainly not with a game warden, even one as sexy as Seth. Although she rocks his world the first time he meets her, Seth realizes she absolutely cannot fit into his life.

They’ve both suffered pain and loss, but with the help of three cuddly baby skunks, they may find their way to one another and to the love that is waiting for them.

I hope you enjoy Emma and Seth’s story and will look for the next book in the series. This is a work of fiction. I hope I got things right, but if I made mistakes, they are my fault.

Carolyn

This book is dedicated to that remarkable group of volunteers called animal rehabilitators who spend a lot of time and money looking after wounded, abandoned and displaced animals. There is even a specially trained group that works with wounded raptors—eagles, owls and hawks.

Each state has its own licensing requirements, but all require that these hardworking folks know what they are doing. The animal doesn’t have to be cute. Turkey buzzard or baby bunny—if it’s in trouble, they help.

Good for them!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Dedication

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

“I HAVE SKUNKS in my pantry,” Emma French said.

The man who opened his front door to her wore the green uniform of a Tennessee Wildlife officer. At least according to the emblem on his mailbox down by the road. Skunks were wildlife, so he should be able to deal with the three in her pantry. She had no intention of touching them. He, on the other hand, looked as though he wrestled moose on weekends—not that there were moose in Tennessee. Skunks should be only a small distraction.

She had obviously interrupted him in the middle of his dinner. He still held a napkin. But this was an emergency, drat it. She expected him to grab a cage or gloves or a net and follow her out into the downpour at once. Instead, he lifted one eyebrow and said, “Interesting. And you are?”

“I’m Emma French, the one who inherited Martha’s house across the street. I just moved in this afternoon and found them.”

He stuck out a hand. “I’m Seth Logan. Moved in here after Miss Martha had to go into assisted living, so I never knew her, but I’ve heard good things about her. Since the last renters left six months ago, everyone in the neighborhood figured the property was up for sale.”

“My rental agent hasn’t located any new renters for me way out here. Can you come get the skunks? Isn’t that your job?”

“Not precisely, no. How big are the skunks? How old?”

“I have no idea how old they are.” She held her thumb and middle fingers apart. “They’re about this size, I guess. Little bitty.”

“Excellent. At that age, they can’t ‘skunk’ you. Their scent glands don’t function.”

“Great. Then you’ll be safe when you pick them up.”

He didn’t move or even ask her in out of the rain. Good grief! The last thing she needed was a useless muscle-bound stud in a snappy uniform living across the road. Judging by that lifted eyebrow and the quirk at the corner of his mouth, she’d bet he had to beat women off with a stick. Assuming he wanted to.

The man was laughing at her! “Sir, I am formally requesting your assistance in getting the wildlife—” she pointed to the insignia on his khaki shirt “—out of my house and back into the wild. Thank you in advance for your assistance.”

Then he really did laugh. Well, more of a snort, but he obviously considered her amusing. She was not amusing. She was a serious executive—okay, a currently unemployed executive—moving into the shambles of a house she’d inherited in the middle of nowhere. She’d expected grime and peeling paint. She hadn’t expected live creatures inside. Definitely not skunks.

As long as they were in residence, she didn’t plan to be. Either they’d have to go or she would. But where? She couldn’t afford to live in a motel for very long, even the rent-by-the-hour place close to the interstate. She had to shepherd her savings and severance pay, in case she didn’t get a new job right away. She’d rather die than ask her father and stepmother for money to tide her over, although they’d gladly help her out if she was desperate. She didn’t plan to ask them unless or until she was desperate.

She’d expected that after three years of renters and six months standing empty, Aunt Martha’s house—her house now—would have problems, but skunks? Ridiculous.

It might take months to find another job as good as the one she’d just been fired from. Until then, she needed to live as frugally as possible. It made no sense to live in a motel while she owned a three-bedroom house on five acres; she’d inherited the place from her aunt Martha with taxes paid and no mortgage. It was empty and urgently needed renovation, but it had a roof and working plumbing. Good enough. She was a stranger here. She wouldn’t have to deal with personal questions.

Aunt Martha’s inheritance was the only thing that did belong to her free and clear at the moment. She still owed money on her SUV, and her little town house in Memphis still carried a hefty mortgage. She didn’t want to sell it. She’d told her agent to try to rent it furnished on a short-term lease.

Okay, so she was escaping. She simply had to get away from all the damned sympathy! Who loses both a job and a fiancé in twenty-four hours?

Living in the boondocks near the Tennessee River was strictly a stopgap. She was a city girl. Period. She’d loved her childhood summers up here with her aunt, but Martha was gone and Emma wasn’t a child anymore. In those long-ago summers she’d come here to a place and a person she loved, someone who’d cared about her, too. Now she wanted sanctuary. She was lucky she had this sanctuary.

“Does your pantry have a door?” Mr. Wildlife asked. Finally, he stood aside to let her in.

She stayed under the porch overhang. No sense in dripping all over his living room floor. “Yes, why?”

“Shut the door on the skunks and forget them. Either they have a way out and will leave on their own, or you can let them out tomorrow morning in the daylight.”

“With all this rain? They’ll freeze.”

“Probably not.”

“Then they’ll starve! Will they find their mother?”

He sighed. “Wish I could say yes, but skunk mothers don’t abandon kits. I suspect she’s roadkill.”

“Oh, no! Then I’ll have to look after them!”

He shook his head. “Not in Tennessee you don’t. It’s illegal to foster abandoned skunks.”

“Why on earth?”

“In east Tennessee they can be rabid. Here in west Tennessee we haven’t had a rabid skunk in a hundred and fifty years.”

“But the law still applies throughout the whole state? So you’re just going to let them starve or get eaten by coyotes? No way!” She turned on her heel. “Thank you, Mr. Officer, sir. Go enjoy your dinner. I’ve got this.”

She could feel his eyes on her back as she stalked down his front path, across the road and through her front door. She didn’t exactly slam it behind her, but she gave it a hard shove. She’d left all the lights on, so she could see her way among the boxes she’d brought with her. She brushed the rain off her short hair, tiptoed through the kitchen and stuck her head in the pantry.

Toss them out to die? Not in this lifetime! The heck with the laws of Tennessee. She’d find a vet to give them rabies shots, then she’d hide them from Mr. Big Lawman if she had to. But what on earth did baby skunks eat?

Inside the pantry, she found the three babies cuddled on the fluffy towel she’d folded up for them and stuffed in a corner. For a second they were so still she was terrified they’d died. Then she saw three furry little tummies rise and fall gently and blew out a breath in relief.

She got a shallow bowl from a kitchen cupboard, half filled it with water and set it carefully beside the towel. One tiny paw waggled at her, almost like a greeting. She had to admit they were about the cutest babies she’d ever seen. Skunks. Who knew?

How long had they been without their mother? Was she dead or trying desperately to get into the house to to reach them? How had they gotten inside in the first place? And, more important, as their foster parent, how was she going to keep them alive and teach them to live in the wild?

She had no intention of living with three skunks with functioning scent glands, but they seemed to have no scent yet. When she finally turned them loose, she wanted to release three skunks proficient in survival skills. Not pets. She’d never owned a pet, and she wasn’t about to start with skunks.

* * *

SETH LOGAN STOOD by his front door and watched his new neighbor march from his house back to hers, then disappear inside. The last thing he needed was a crazy city neighbor with a do-gooder mentality and the practical knowledge of a newt.

At least she wasn’t beautiful. Shoot. On reflection, he decided that when she dried off she might well be beautiful. Not many women reached his six-foot-four-inch height, but she didn’t miss six feet by much, and he suspected she spent hours of city time in a fancy gym to keep what, even in jeans, he could tell was a sleek body.

She might find some yoga classes at one of the churches in the neighborhood, but the closest gym was twenty miles away.

She’d probably brought a treadmill or a stair-climber in the back of that big SUV. Clare had filled his guest room with expensive exercise equipment, but she’d taken it all with her when she walked out on him. He certainly didn’t need it. He got plenty of exercise chasing down poachers and rescuing lost hikers.

He had a sudden vision of his new neighbor in bicycle shorts and a tank top. He felt his face flush and an immediate reaction from other parts of his body that had been underutilized lately.

It had been too long. Much too long. He’d worried last week that Wanda Joe at the DQ was starting to look good to him, even though he and Earl had gone to high school with her children.

What had possessed him to be borderline rude to his new neighbor? She was right to be annoyed. She had no way of knowing that her skunk problem had capped a god-awful day that began at three in the morning with a couple of idiots jacklighting deer on posted property. He’d caught one of them after the guy put a couple of slugs into the stuffed decoy deer, but he’d lost the second one.

Not the woman’s fault, and yet he’d still taken it out on her.

She had no way of knowing what a can of worms she’d stepped into with the skunks. He didn’t want to toss the orphaned kits into the wide world any more than she did. He could stretch the rules for a bit, but rules were made for a reason and he obeyed them. Rules saved lives.

“Heck,” he said, sliding his dishes into the dishwasher. He changed into old jeans and an even older sweatshirt, filled a clean jelly jar with milk, found a couple of cans of dog food left over from before Rambler died, and headed across the road to do what he should’ve done in the first place. Help the woman. He’d worry about a practical solution to her skunk problem tomorrow.

He felt instinctively that having her as a neighbor meant his peaceful life was sliding back down into chaos. Shoot, he was just getting used to peace.

CHAPTER TWO

EMMA JUMPED A foot when she heard the knock. She turned on her front porch light and peered through the antique oval glass set in the door. Ah, Mr. Wildlife himself. He swept off his wide-brimmed hat and shook streams of water off it. So she’d recognize him? Not necessary. She didn’t know anyone else within a hundred miles in any direction, much less a giant in a dripping poncho.

Had he come to arrest her for harboring her three orphans? Just let him try. She opened the door and said, “Yes?” in her coolest executive-of-the-month voice.

“You wanted help.” He held out a small jar full of white stuff that sloshed. “I have an old kitten syringe. You can squirt some milk down their throats. How many, by the way?”

This was more like it. She morphed from uppity to Scarlet O’Hara helpless in one breath, flashed him what she hoped was a killer smile and stood aside so he could come in. “Three. Two girls and a boy.”

“Tell me you haven’t named them.” He hung his dripping poncho and hat on the old hat rack and slipped out of his sodden muckers. He was wearing a khaki sock and a red one.

Big, tough government official couldn’t even match his socks. Probably meant there was no woman living with him. If there was, she didn’t take very good care of him. Trip would no more wear mismatched socks than he’d wear bunny ears to an international conference.

But it was kind of endearing in a goofy way. She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. “I had to call them something to tell them apart.”

He sighed. “Not a good idea. Keep them depersonalized. Makes it easier afterward. So what did you call them?”

“I thought maybe Chanel, Arpege and Brut, but then I decided that might get me in trouble with copyrights,” she joked. “So at this point they’re Rose, Peony and Sycamore.”

He just shut his eyes and shook his head. “Okay, let me see them.”

He handed her the jar of milk and the syringe, followed her to the pantry and dropped onto his haunches beside their makeshift bed. “They’re cold. You got a heating pad?”

“No, I don’t.”

He glanced up at her. “Well, I do. Let’s get them fed and I’ll go get it. Give me the stuff.”

She handed the jar to him carefully. She didn’t want it to slip out of her hands and break on the pantry floor. No worry there. He enveloped the jar with a paw that would make Bigfoot feel inadequate.

For a moment he simply gazed down at the babies. “Cute little buggers,” he said. He went up a good ten points in her estimation.

He took two pairs of rubber gloves from his pocket, handed the second set to her.

“Come here, critter,” he whispered and picked up the nearest baby. There was a comic strip in her local newspaper in which one of the characters was so huge that he could hold his baby in the palm of his hand. This little one was cradled just as effectively.

“Here, fill the syringe with milk,” he said, “then lift the corner of its mouth and slip it in. Do not, I repeat not, jab it in and shoot it down the throat. The milk’ll wind up going into the lungs. They’ve got enough troubles without pneumonia.”

She gulped. Great way to make her feel competent. She lifted the corner of the tiny mouth with her index finger, then with her other hand inserted the syringe and pushed the plunger so that a drop of milk went into the baby’s mouth.

Wonder of wonders, its little throat moved and the milk disappeared. After a dozen further drops, the baby seemed to get the idea.

“Okay, now try the center of the mouth. Easy!” he said. A moment later she actually held a suckling baby—a very hungry baby. The others were stirring, making mewling noises and swimming toward her the way puppies supposedly did when they were just born. They must smell the milk.

“Whoa,” he said and took the syringe. “Don’t you have any brothers or sisters? You can’t let the baby drink down to the last drop. It’ll get a stomach full of air. Besides, it’s had enough.” He set the complaining baby back on the towel and picked up the second. “Okay, this is one of your girls.”

“That’s Rose. She’s the one with the two broad stripes on her head. Peony’s are narrower. Sycamore has two all the way down his back.” This time the nursing went better, and Emma felt she was getting the hang of it. The third baby had problems, but eventually managed a few sips. When she set her down, the towel had begun to smell and felt damp. “I thought they didn’t have any scent yet,” she said.

He grinned up at her. “They don’t. That’s baby poop. In the wild, Momma would take care of it. Since you’ve elected yourself their foster mother, it’s your responsibility. Incidentally, they’ll have to be fed every four hours around the clock and stimulated to go to the bathroom.”

“How do I do that?”

“I’ll show you. Welcome to the world of foster parenthood.” He surged to his feet in one easy motion.

He reached down and offered a hand to pull her up.

She took it and found herself lifted against him as though she’d been shot out of a cannon. He smelled male—no fancy aftershave, just good, basic male.

Oh, boy, talk about pheromones! The hair on her arms stood straight up. She stepped back to get out of his zone, which, at this point, felt as though it might extend all the way to Memphis. “Um,” she said. “Heating pad?”

He dropped her hand. “Be right back. In the meantime, find a clean towel to replace this one, then soak the dirty one in the sink with some bleach if you have it.”

“I have it, but I don’t know where it is.” She waved a hand at the boxes on the kitchen floor. “I’ll wash it by hand. The washer and dryer are hooked up, but I’m not about to do a load to wash one poopy towel.”

After the front door closed behind him, she sank into the closest dining room chair. Some introduction to her new home. Her new lifestyle. Quite a comedown from assistant marketing manager for one of the largest public relations firms in Tennessee. From a town house in Mud Island on the Mississippi River to a hovel in the middle of nowhere, complete with skunks. From having her picture taken at the symphony ball to scrubbing skunk poop.

She’d never really cared how often she and Trip made the society pages of The Commercial Appeal for attending some party or concert or art exhibit in Memphis or Nashville. Trip cared, though. He wanted them to be the Golden Couple, and their upcoming marriage to be the event of the season. She wondered how long it would take him to replace her with another princess bride. And how long before he’d betray his new fiancée the way he’d betrayed Emma.

This time Seth Logan didn’t bother to ring the bell or knock, but opened the door and came in. Again he shed his dripping poncho and slipped his feet out of his muckers before he stepped from the tiled area to the wooden floor. Somebody had taught him manners. Or maybe that was standard procedure in the country when it rained.

“Here you go,” he said and handed her a plush-covered heating pad. “You’ll have to wrap it in a towel and keep it on the lowest setting...” He glanced at the boxes. “You find the other towels yet?”

“I just sat down for a second.” Suddenly she felt as though she couldn’t get up again.

“Always take care of your animals first.” He peered at the boxes. “Here we go. This box says ‘towels.’” He set the heating pad on the kitchen counter and opened one of the boxes.

She clambered to her feet when she caught sight of the brocade edging on the coral towels. “Not those! Those are for company.”

“Then find me some for skunks.”

She wanted to yell that he should find them himself. Wrong. He was probably as tired as she was, but at least he was here. That counted for a lot.

She had to tear open only two other boxes to find the everyday towels. She arranged one under the babies, which were now fast asleep.

He wrapped the heating pad in another towel, plugged it in and set it up under the makeshift nest. “We don’t want them to overheat.”

“I should keep them at mother temperature, right?”

He actually smiled. “You got it. Happen to know what skunk-mother temperature is? I don’t, so just keep it on the lowest setting. The next time you feed them, kick it up a notch if they’re shaking. Otherwise, I think we’re good to go.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Look, have you had anything to eat?”

Glory, she must look really terrible. “I vaguely remember a cheeseburger sometime around the year 2003. I’m not hungry, which is a miracle. But I could murder a cup of tea.”

“Any idea where the teapot might be?”

“First thing I found.” She pulled herself upright by an effort of will, took the snazzy imported electric pot out of the cabinet, filled it and plugged it in. “That’ll take five minutes to heat and another five to steep. Gives us ten minutes to find the mugs.”

Ten minutes later, she handed him his mug of tea, which, thank goodness, he said he drank with lemon, no sugar and no milk. She had lemon, but the only milk was for the babies, not their caregivers. The sugar was hidden somewhere.

“You said you were tired, too. I’m grateful you came, but you don’t have to stay,” she said, hoping he would. Between exhaustion and skunks, she was starting to feel panicky-lonely. She’d never been lonely, damn it, but then she’d lived in a city house with lights and neighbors and traffic. She could drive to her family’s place in Memphis for dinner with her father, her stepmother, Andrea, and both her brother and sister in twenty minutes. When she was there, she knew where she belonged and who she was.

Now, not so much. Sitting here in this living room she might as well be on the far side of Alpha Centauri.

“Nice sofa,” he said as he drank his tea and relaxed into its depths.

Well, yeah. It had cost a month’s salary; it should be comfortable.

“This doesn’t solve the problem,” he said and set his empty mug on the coffee table. “You cannot keep the skunks.”

“Now, wait...”

“Can’t foster bats either, because of possible rabies. If you’d discovered a cache of raccoons, I could hook you up with one of the local animal rehabilitators.”

“There is such a thing?”

“Absolutely. There are people who specialize in raptors or abandoned fawns. Sometimes a momma possum will get hit by a car and killed, but the babies in her pouch survive and have to be tended. There’s a lady outside Collierville who takes in orphan foxes...”

She felt the tears threaten to spill over. “You say there’s no rabies in our skunks, yet you’d just let them die?”

“Can’t take the chance.”

“Nonsense!” She slammed her mug down on the table so hard the edge of the cup cracked.

“You saw we wore gloves when you fed them?” he said. “And you’d better continue to do that. At the moment they have no teeth, but their little milk teeth will be sharp.”

“Fine. So vaccinate them against rabies. Heck, vaccinate me, too. Problem solved.” She sat down again.

“That’s not the way the rules read.”

That did it. “Then arrest me.” She got to her feet again and held out her wrists. “I’ll have a public relations campaign set up for ‘Save the Skunks’ before the cell door shuts on me. You and your rules will feel as if you’ve run into a buzz saw. Every animal rights organization in the Western Hemisphere will be knocking on your door and marching with signs. This is what I do—did—for a living. Coordinating the message to spread across all possible outlets. One picture of my babies snuggled up on Facebook, one podcast, and even the governor won’t call your name blessed.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Watch me.”

“Sit down before you fall down. I have no intention of arresting you, nor do I intend to starve, freeze or euthanize your trio of illegal aliens.”

“So I can keep them?”

“No, dammit! I’ve got to figure out how to handle this without getting me fired and you fined.” He ran a big hand down his face. “Right now I can’t think straight, and you’re starting to get on my last nerve.” He stood and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet for a moment. “Just for tonight I’ve never met you, I do not know that you have skunks, but that can’t go on. I’m going to get some sleep, assuming I can with all this hanging over my head. I’ll call you tomorrow. You do have a phone?”

She nodded, took a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans, wrote her cell number on it and passed it to him. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain.”

He reached into his pants pocket. “Here’s my card with both my numbers. If you need me, call.”

She followed him to the door, helped him on with the damp poncho, and watched him stuff his feet in their mismatched socks into his muckers and go back out in the rain, which showed no signs of letting up. She handed him his hat and watched him trudge out to the road and across until he disappeared into his own house.

Only then did she sit on the sofa and burst into tears. Why did he have to be gorgeous and kind? He was still her enemy, with the entire state of Tennessee backing him up.

CHAPTER THREE

SETH NOTICED WHEN he stripped off his wet clothes that his socks didn’t match. That woman—he’d better learn to call her Emma, since they were way beyond Ms. French—probably figured he was either color-blind or incompetent. Which was how he felt at the moment.

Emma was a nice old-fashioned name. Not that she was a nice old-fashioned girl. Far from it. Probably never bought a pair of jeans from a discount store in her life. Heck, the way hers fit, they were worth the investment.

He poured himself a small Scotch and sank onto his saggy leather sofa with his feet on the slab of hundred-year-old oak he’d salvaged from a downed tree. One of the few pieces Clare had left when she’d walked out. And which was now covered with dust like everything else in this house.

He leaned his head back and laid his hand on the sofa where he was used to feeling Rambler’s deep furry pelt. Now that Rambler had died of old age, Seth needed another dog. Dogs didn’t present insoluble problems with beautiful women. They didn’t care whether a woman was beautiful or a clone of the Wicked Witch as long as she petted and fed him.

Why did he invariably get involved with women who complicated his life and didn’t belong to his world? He’d tried to convert Clare to country living, but in the end she’d moved to Nashville and married a dentist. A rich dentist. She really had tried to put up with living in the back of beyond—her words—with a man who frequently stank of blood or fish and came home covered in mud or dirt. At least she’d tried for a while. He knew now that she’d assumed he’d quickly be promoted to a desk job so they could buy a suburban house and have a country club membership. Meanwhile, he’d assumed she’d loved the country as much as he did. Talk about a lack of communication.

Thinking back, the water moccasin marked the true end of their relationship. He’d tried to teach her about good snakes and bad snakes, but she never understood. Snake was snake to Clare. He wasn’t thrilled to meet copperheads or rattlers or water moccasins either, but he was fond of the king snakes. Keep a big king snake around, you never saw a poisonous snake. Well, mostly. Didn’t have to worry about rats or mice either. A good king snake would beat a barn cat every time when it came to killing mice. And a king snake sucked down the whole mouse—didn’t nibble the edges like a cat did and leave you to clean up the remains.

That moccasin she’d nearly stepped on wasn’t even coiled. Just stretched out across the front porch steps sunning itself. Couldn’t have struck Clare if it had tried—not without coiling first.

When he’d been with the department less than six months, he’d had to deliver a baby for a woman who couldn’t make it to Jackson to the hospital. He’d never heard screams like that before, and he’d prayed he never would again.

Clare’s screams when she saw that snake as she started up the porch step put that other woman to shame. Who was that comic book character that could move so fast? Clare would’ve beaten that guy back to the car. She dived in the passenger side, screaming, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

When he explained to her that snakes are protected in Tennessee, she hit him so hard he’d had a bruised shoulder for a week. He’d walked over and checked, then reported back that the snake had removed itself from the porch, no doubt annoyed that its nap was interrupted. She refused to get out of the car. Ever.

They’d spent that night in the local motel. Not exactly the Peabody. She’d been upset about that, as well. It was clean, and the Patels were nice people, but the towels were thin. Clare hated thin towels. He’d finally convinced her to come back to the house, after he spent a couple of hours patrolling the yard and shed for the snake, but that was the beginning of the end. A week later, she moved out. A week after that, she served him with divorce papers. He never saw the snake again; Mother Nature might say that snake had done its job by getting rid of her. Took him a long time to admit that, even to himself.

He’d give Emma French about three days before she moved out and back to the city. At that point, the skunks would become his problem. Hell, they already were.

He checked his watch and was surprised it was only a little after nine. He dug out his cell phone and hit his speed dial.

He got the clinic’s voice mail. “This is Dr. Barbara Carew. The clinic office hours are eight thirty till six, Monday through Friday. Saturday eight thirty till one. If this is an emergency, please call our emergency service at...”

He waited to leave a message, then said, “Barbara, it’s me, Seth. I need some advice. Please meet me at seven tomorrow morning at the café. I’ll buy you breakfast. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’ll be there. This is important.” He hung up. She’d pick up her messages before she went to bed. If she wasn’t out working on a colicky horse or birthing a calf, she’d meet him. He let his head fall back against the sofa. He could feel that Scotch down to his toenails. Or maybe he was feeling simple exhaustion. He was too damned tired to feel lust.

Whom was he kidding? A man would have to be dead and buried not to lust after Emma French. But in his present state of weariness, he might not be capable of doing much about it.

* * *

ACROSS THE STREET Emma called her father to tell him she had a roof over her head that didn’t leak and a dry, if lumpy, bed to sleep in. She got his answering machine. Of course. She could call her stepmother Andrea’s cell phone instead, but decided she was too tired for explanations.

She didn’t mention her invaders on her message to her father. He would be horrified. He was already haranguing her about moving to the country instead of coming home to stay until she found a new job. Which he would no doubt find for her with one of his cronies regardless of whether they needed her.

Not happening. At least, not yet. She had enough savings to survive for a bit. If she rented out her town house, she’d be able to hold out quite a while.

She got ready for bed, set her alarm for midnight—four hours since the babies were last fed.

She hadn’t answered any of Trip’s calls on her cell phone. Sooner or later she’d talk to him, but not yet. He’d sworn he still loved her, wanted to make things right between them. As if. He’d even fooled David French. Her father had welcomed him as her fiancé. Although in this case his usual mantra—that the man wasn’t good enough for her—was accurate.

She was always afraid men would realize she wasn’t good enough for them.

* * *

THE MIDNIGHT FEEDING went okay, but at four, Emma hated slipping out of her warm bed and into the cold house to heat up...whoa, she should’ve asked Seth how warm the jar of milk that presently resided in her refrigerator should be. She put her hand on her cell phone to call him, then set it back on the kitchen counter. The man was exhausted. She couldn’t repay his kindness by waking him from a sleep he obviously needed.

She ran the jar under hot water in the sink to take the chill off, but not enough to heat it up. That should be safe.

As she cradled Sycamore, who already had this nursing business down pat, she wondered whether her semiconscious state was what human mothers felt during the late-night feedings. Remembering her half brother and half sister as newborns, she decided that these skunk babies were a bunch cuter than their human counterparts and didn’t scream blue murder between feedings.

Would she ever have that mother feeling with her own newborn? Didn’t look like it at the moment. She wanted a man she could count on, who believed in fidelity. Trip obviously did not. If he could cheat on his fiancée, what would he do to his wife?

The whole situation had looked so perfect at the start. Even her father had finally agreed that marrying Trip would be a good choice. Well—goodish. Daddy’s take was that no man who’d ever lived was good enough for his Emma, but Trip would keep her safe and happy.

Now, she’d come to the realization that even if Trip wanted her back, she did not now or ever want to marry him. Whatever she’d thought she felt for him, she knew it was never love. Convenience? Appropriateness? Timing? She wasn’t sure she’d recognize real love if she ran into it like a brick wall.

Maybe she’d move to Montana or Alaska or somewhere there were more men than women. The pool of eligible bachelors in west Tennessee that she hadn’t already crossed off her list was getting smaller and smaller.

Okay, she’d been raised to be picky. Even in high school her father had second-guessed her crushes.

He’d guessed wrong on Trip. Daddy simply couldn’t understand why she’d broken her engagement. If she had her way, he’d never know.

Actually, losing her job working for Nathan was worse than losing Trip. Maybe she should take up fostering abandoned baby scapegoats. She’d be right at home being the mother of that herd. Accepting blame for something that was her fault was one thing. Being fired because of someone else’s screwup made her angry. She hadn’t even had a chance to plead her case before Nathan fired her.

She settled Rose next to Sycamore and picked up Peony. She could already tell them apart not by their looks—although their stripes were different—but by their personalities. Sycamore was a bit of a bully and certainly greedy. Rose was gentle and liked to be cuddled. Peony was sweet, but Emma decided she didn’t have a brain in her soft little head. The poor baby tried to figure out the nursing thing, but the practical aspects simply eluded her.

Eventually Emma managed to get enough milk down Peony’s throat, rather than on her fur, that she felt comfortable returning her to the nest. She put the remaining milk back in the refrigerator and realized she’d have to make a run to the grocery for another gallon or so come morning. She had enough for only one more feeding.

Seth had left a couple of cans of dog food on the kitchen counter, but she’d better do some internet research on how to feed her charges before she offered them dog food. She’d ask Seth tomorrow, as well. Maybe just a tiny bit mashed up in the milk. But how would she get the solid food into their mouths through that syringe?

Relishing the still-warm bed, she snuggled down again. This time sleep eluded her. The whole country-life thing had turned into a major fiasco. She ought to pack her duffel bag and go home. What did she know about living in the country? Rehabbing a run-down house? Feeding skunks?

A niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered, “But Seth knows how to help me.”

Another niggling voice followed. “Yeah, but I’ll bet he won’t.”

* * *

BARBARA CAREW’S MOBILE vet van was already sitting in the parking lot at the Forked Deer Café when Seth pulled in beside it. She was reading the Marquette County Gazette in the back booth of the café and cradling a giant mug of coffee.

“You ever sleep?” he asked as he slid into the banquette across from her.

“When the animals let me,” she said. She folded the paper, put it down on the patched leatherette bench and took a swig of her coffee. “This helps. Good morning, Seth.”

A brawny arm and hand carrying a mug of coffee the size of Barbara’s reached across his shoulder and set the cup on the table in front of him. “Hey, Seth,” a gravelly voice said. “The usual?”

“Thanks, Velma.”

“You have bags under your eyes,” Barbara told him.

“Those bags probably have bags,” Seth muttered.

“Rough day yesterday?”

“No worse than usual. At least not until last night. Then things got complicated.” He laid out the entire scenario, from Emma’s knock on his front door until he left her with her black-and-white invaders.

“Here ya go, sweet thing.” Velma set the plate with sausage, hash browns, eggs and grits on the table, then added a large glass of orange juice.

“If I ate like that, I’d be even fatter than I am,” Barbara said. “Here I’ve got one country ham biscuit. Life is not fair.”

“You are not fat,” Seth said. “Just not skeletal.”

“Way I work, I should be—skeletal, that is.”

Seth cut into his eggs. “So, what should I do?”

“About what? The woman or the skunks?”

“Take your pick. I doubt the woman will stick around for long, but if she does, what should I do about the rules on skunks?”

Barbara got up, went behind the counter and brought back the coffee carafe. She refilled both their cups, then returned the carafe to the hot plate. “Okay. I’m going to give you a bit of motherly advice.” She scowled at him. “I am a mother, you know, even if mine are both semigrown. This, however, is advice from my mother. When Patrick hit the terrible twos, John and I had just taken over my practice and were trying to keep from throttling him. Seemed he was into something every minute. River otters are said to have two states—asleep or in trouble. I swear that kid has river otter genes instead of human. Anyway, one day when I was absolutely at my wit’s end, and my mother was visiting, she said, ‘Barbara, dear, do not see so much.’”

“What if he’s hanging off a precipice by his fingernails?” Seth asked.

“That, of course, you do see. But if it’s nondangerous stuff that you don’t know how to handle, simply don’t see it. In most instances, the problem resolves itself without you or the kid going to jail for first-degree murder. If this Emma is doing something that’s against the rules—rules you say you don’t believe are appropriate in the first place—is she doing it under your nose? Can you see or hear those skunks from inside your house or your car?”

“No, but I know they’re there.”

“Can you see them?”

“Of course not. But I need to check on her, make sure she’s managing.”

“Can you see the skunks from her living room?”

“They’re in the pantry.”

“Stay out of the pantry.”

“I’m sworn to uphold the regulations.”

“You are sworn to protect wildlife.” Barbara reached across the table and laid her hand on his. “If you get caught, I had nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, thanks, I appreciate that.”

“We need to get those babies up and weaned as quickly and quietly as possible. Return them to the wild far enough away so they can’t show up back on this woman’s doorstep, and in the meantime, you forget they exist.”

“I can’t do that.”

“The alternative is to come down on her like a ton of bricks, take those babies away from her and abandon them to the coyotes and the foxes before they even have their scent glands functioning. Can you do that?”

“No, but—”

“I’ll stop by her place on my way back to the clinic to introduce myself. I’m the only vet in her neighborhood, and she’s a new neighbor. Does she have any pets?”

He shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”

“Okay, then I’ll do the neighborly thing. I’ll help her with those babies. First of all, rabies shots all around. It’s early, but not dangerously early to give them the shot. You go on to work and put it all out of your mind.” She shoved her plate away. “I’ll go check on Skunk Lady. Velma, honey, fix me a couple of sausage biscuits and a small orange juice to go, please.” She turned to Seth. “Vets bearing gifts. Good ploy. You pay for breakfast.”

As he watched her van drive out of the parking lot, Seth thought, The skunks are one thing, but no way can I put Emma French out of my mind. I’m already stuck with her. Heck, I may be stuck with her for the rest of my life. I can’t get her out of my head. I don’t even know whether that’s good or bad.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HOVEL—EMMA’S new nickname for her house—had a good hot water heater and plenty of water pressure from her well, so as soon as she’d finished the eight o’clock feeding, she was able to stay under the shower until she turned pruney. She washed her hair, threw on clean clothes and actually put on some makeup. Once the babies were settled, she picked up her purse and started for the front door, only to see someone looming outside the glass.

The babies! That man had set the cops on her! She’d never felt like a fugitive before. Should she try to hide them? Would they search?

“Hey!” called a female voice. “I’m Barbara Carew, the local veterinarian. Seth sent me to give you a hand.”

Emma didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she let it out in an explosive gasp. She opened the door to her visitor.

The vet stood only about five feet three, wore bright blue scrubs with a beige hoodie cardigan and had the widest, bluest eyes Emma had ever seen outside of a contact lens store. She swept past Emma and handed her a paper sack in passing.

“Here. Breakfast. Figured you hadn’t had time to eat or go out for anything. Where are they?”

“Uh—the pantry. Are you supposed to know about them?”

“Too late now. Sit.” She pointed to one of the bar stools at the breakfast counter between the kitchen and living room. “Eat. You get any sleep? Food is an excellent alternative to sleep. Trust me. I know.”

Too stunned to disobey, and suddenly ravenously hungry, Emma sat, opened the sack and inhaled. Then she began to devour.

Barbara swept past her, opened the door to the pantry, cooed, “Oooooh,” and fell to her knees beside the skunks’ nest. “The precious!”

“We have to save them,” Emma said around a large bite.

Barbara picked up Peony, who whimpered before she curled into a ball against Barbara’s chest. “Honey, you have convinced the toughest, by-the-book, hardnosed ranger in the state of Tennessee to break the rules for you and your babies. It’s up to us to protect him from the dire results of his actions. I don’t know what kind of hold you’ve got on him, but unless it’s blackmail material, it has to be pure sex appeal.”

“I don’t...”

“He’s my dearest friend. You be good to him, I’ll love you like a sister. You hurt him, honey, and you’re toast.”

* * *

SETH SPENT THE morning in his office. For a job that concerned itself with the great outdoors, much of his time was spent staring at a computer screen filling out paperwork. Today he wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to it. Emma French’s face kept intruding. Didn’t matter what program he was officially accessing. He picked up his desk phone a dozen times to call her and see how the babies were doing. Each time he put the phone back in its cradle without dialing. He’d stop by on his way home to see if he could give her a hand moving some of those boxes. He didn’t even have to look at the skunks or mention that they were there.

Just before noon Earl Matthews stuck his head in the door of Seth’s miniscule office. “Lunch? The café?”

“I had breakfast there this morning. Oh, shoot, doesn’t mean I’m not hungry. Let me shut this computer down first. How about we pick up some sandwiches and head on over to the lake to check fishing licenses?”

“You got a deal.”

Sitting in the official cruiser beside the dock on the oxbow lake that fed into the Tennessee River some five miles to the south, they checked to see how many bass boats were out fishing. This late in the morning, there were none in view, although that didn’t mean there weren’t a few latecomers around the bend, close to the downed trees. Bass, crappie and catfish loved to hide among the branches of trees long submerged.

Seth let Earl run the launch down to the bend while he leaned back against the leather seats, slid his Smokey hat over his eyes and allowed his mind to drift. Emma French probably wouldn’t stay long enough for him to get to know her. Obviously she was a city slickeress. Way above his pay grade. He’d generally gone for what his father called pocket Venuses. Like Clare. Five foot three and practically boneless.

Emma’s flesh covered strong bones. She’d fight him over those blasted skunks or anything else she didn’t agree with. If they ever made love—unlikely—it would be like igniting a thermonuclear device.

“Heads up,” Earl said. “Party boat eleven o’clock.”

Almost hidden where the high weeds drooped in the water, and under tree leaves that weren’t fully open, a large, fancy pontoon party boat carrying a pair of powerful outboard motors was getting ready to hightail it away from them. There were half a dozen people spooling in fishing lines as fast as they could, and one man hunkered over the two motors attached to the stern. The engines sputtered, then kicked into action.

“Oh, goodie!” Earl said. “Blow the horn, please, Mr. Policeman. I do believe they plan to evade inspection.”

“Not if they don’t get their anchor up first,” Seth said. He shouted into the loud hailer, “Cut your engines now before you swamp!” At the moment that appeared to be an immediate threat. The party boat was built to run perilously close to the water on its pontoons with little freeboard. Normally, in calm waters, that was no problem. In wind and waves, however, the big boat was difficult to handle and swamped easily.

At the moment the two engines were attempting to back the boat against the anchor chain at the bow, but it showed no sign of lifting free of the mud bottom.

The louder the engines growled, the more the boat buried its engines deeper in the lake, lifting the bow perilously high. The people on board had run toward the stern—the opposite of what they should be doing—and now stood ankle-deep in water. The two women in the group were squealing and jumping around trying to keep their feet dry.

“Move forward toward the bow!” Seth yelled. “And somebody cut those engines! Earl, get me over there.”

“Be careful. Don’t get trapped between boats, and do not fall into those propellers. They’ll cut you to pieces.” Earl, calm as always, steered his boat until it gently tapped the left pontoon amidships. Seth said a fast prayer, leaped, slipped, then righted himself safely on the deck.

He was afraid his weight would sink the boat before he could cut the engines. He moved a woman who outweighed him by a good hundred pounds toward the bow. “Get up there! You, too, ma’am,” he snapped at her companion, as thin as she was fat.

He reached past one of the men and shut off both engines. Instantly the boat settled back on its pontoons. “The rest of you, go sit down amidships and don’t move until I say so.”

“You can’t tell me what to do on my own boat!” said a grizzled man close to Seth’s size, but flabby with age and unsteady on what Seth suspected were drunken legs.

“Yes, sir, I can. Sit down. All of you.” Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the smaller of the two women surreptitiously trying to kick what looked like a bottle of Jack Daniel’s under the edge of her seat.

“Hey, ma’am, don’t try that,” Earl called from the launch. She froze.

“Fishing licenses and boat registration,” Seth said. Now that the initial disaster was averted, he was starting to seethe. “Earl, can you tie up to us and come on over here?”

“Sure thing.”

Seth stepped back. “So, this is your boat, sir?” he asked the grizzled man who’d gone suddenly silent.

“Hell, yeah, it’s mine, and you all like to have caused an accident running up on us like that.”

“Uh-huh. How many passengers do you have on board this morning?”

“Can’t you count? Five. We got five. We was just taking us a little ride...”

“Looked to me like you were doing a little fishing along the way,” Seth said.

“Without fishing licenses,” Earl said. He shrugged. “That’s what he said.” He pointed at a small man huddled in the seat across from the large woman. “More drinking than fishing, I think.”

“Now, y’all lookee here...” The big man puffed himself up and huffed out what he must’ve felt was an intimidating breath. It didn’t work. And it stank of alcohol.

“No, sir, you lookee here,” Earl said. “There are signs all over this lake. No fishing without a license.”

“May I see your current boat registration?” Seth asked. So far he’d managed to sound cool and polite, but underneath, his temper was going from simmer to boil.

The man deflated slightly. “Uh, musta left it back at the marina.”

“We’ll check it when we get back to the dock.”

“Well...could be I left it back at the house.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” Earl said. “We can check the number and expiration date on our computer over there in our boat. By law you’re supposed to carry it on board at all times...”

“Lordy, young man,” the giant lady said from her seat, “ain’t nobody does that. This ain’t no big houseboat.”

“Shut up, Phoebe,” the grizzled man snapped.

“No one seems to be wearing a life jacket, sir,” Seth said.

“They in the lockers over there,” the big woman said. “Right close, where we can get ’em if we need ’em.” She sounded satisfied. “But you don’t need life jackets on party boats, do you? Not like they sink or anything. Can’t get drownd-ed off one of these things, now, can you?”

“Uh-oh,” Earl whispered. “Seth...” He touched Seth’s forearm in warning.

Seth thought he sounded calm, but when he saw the sudden fear in the woman’s eyes he realized that something in his demeanor had telegraphed his annoyance. He opened the life jacket locker and tossed a jacket to each of the passengers. “Ma’am, you all nearly capsized ten minutes ago. A party boat doesn’t care if it floats on its roof, and it doesn’t turn back over on its own. You could’ve been trapped underneath or caught in the weeds. Please put these on. We are now going to give you a tow back to the marina, at which point we’ll write up the offenses you’re being arrested for...”

“Arrested?” The gray man inflated again. “You jackasses, write me a damn ticket, and we’ll get our own self back to the marina when we feel like it.”

Earl reached down and pulled the half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s out from under the seat and held it up.

“That’s not mine!” the man swore.

“It’s your boat,” Earl said mildly.

Seth never thought of Earl as a big man. Compared with Seth he was just normal. Still, when the boat owner took a swing at him, the man wound up sitting on his rear end. Earl hadn’t even disturbed the equilibrium of the boat.

“Your name, sir?” Earl asked just as calmly as before.

“Grady Pulliam, not that it’s any of y’all’s business. And I’m gonna sue your asses for harassment. I know the governor.”

“So do I,” Earl said. “He’s my first cousin once removed.”

CHAPTER FIVE

AN HOUR LATER, Seth and Earl left the party boat locked in its slip. The keys were with the marina master. He had instructions not to allow anyone to have them, especially Mr. Pulliam, until further notice. The owner would not be partying on his boat for a while. He’d signed off on an expensive ticket and a summons to show cause why he shouldn’t lose his boat for drinking on board, plus a long list of other offenses. His wife was crying, and everyone else was shaking with embarrassment.

Earl and Seth could hear the burgeoning squabble behind them as they loaded their own boat on the trailer.

Earl said as they drove out of the parking lot, “Think old Grady will lose his boat?”

“If we were the Coast Guard, maybe, but you and I are small fry. He’ll have fines to pay, probably some community service. We didn’t actually see any of them taking a drink from that bottle of bourbon, and we don’t have the Breathalyzer, so we can’t get him on DUI just for having an open container aboard.”

“We both know they were drinking. The man’s breath stank like a still.”

“He’s lucky they didn’t capsize or pitch pole, dragging against the anchor chain like that. I suspect that one lady would either float like a whale or sink like a stone. No idea which. With the exception of Pulliam, they were nice enough people, but they don’t believe the rules apply to them.”

“Or why we have rules in the first place,” Earl said. “I gotta say, I was right proud of you about those life jackets. I know how you feel about wearing life jackets at all times, and I know how you get when a bunch of idiots stick them away so they can’t reach ’em.”

“Mrs. Pulliam could tell I was mad. I came close to punching everybody’s lights out and tossing them overboard. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“Wish you’d stop scaring the stew out of me jumping from boat to boat like that. One of these days you’re gonna miss and get yourself hurt.”

“Next time, you can do it.”

“Nunh-uh. Forget I said anything.”

As they drove off, Seth asked, “Is the governor really your cousin?”

“Turns out he is, but I doubt he knows it, much less knows me.”

* * *

“HAVE YOU DECIDED to come home where you belong?” David French’s baritone rolled smoothly down the phone line. No greeting.

“Hello to you, too, Daddy. How lovely to hear from you.” Emma let the honey roll off her tongue. He’d pick up on the sarcasm. He seldom missed nuances where she was concerned.

“Have you and Trip made up yet?” he asked.

“Not happening.”

“Now, honey. Newly engaged couples invariably hit a few bumps on their way to the altar. Prenuptial nerves. I talked to Andrea about it. She says it’s not unusual for a bride to be scared to make the final commitment.”

“She say whether she was scared to make a final commitment to you, before she married you?”

“Shoot, yeah! But she got over it and not only took me on, but my twelve-year-old motherless daughter, as well. Believe me, you were no picnic.” He laughed his professionally warm laugh.

Emma had wondered years ago if he practiced it in front of the mirror while he shaved in the morning.

“Sit down and talk to the man, at least, honey. He’s been calling me a dozen times a day. Says you won’t answer his calls or his emails.”

“He’s right. I haven’t and I don’t intend to. I’ve said all I’m going to say. Both of you need to get over it.”

“It’s all because you got laid off, isn’t it? You feel you’re letting him down. You shouldn’t be embarrassed, Emma. It happens to everyone sooner or later.”

“First of all, I didn’t get laid off. I got fired. F-I-R-E-D. By Nathan Savage, the boss of bosses. And I did not deserve it. Darn right I’m embarrassed. I had to pack up my stuff and drag my pitiful little box out to the car all by myself while the security guard loomed over me. A man I’ve known for three years. He didn’t lift a finger to help me, just glared, as though I planned to steal the office computer. He didn’t even want me to take my own Rolodex until I proved it was mine. Letting Trip down was the last thing on my mind. I was concentrating on holding my head high and stalking out while everybody slunk into their offices and didn’t even tell me goodbye. It was horrible, Dad.” She felt her eyes begin to tear up, gulped and refused to allow the tears to slide down her cheeks.

“I’m sure Trip doesn’t blame you, sweetheart. He knows that frankly you got screwed. And if we can manage, it’s not going to be long before Nathan Savage knows it, too.”

“Dad, Geoff Harrington is the one who signed off on all the contracts, not Nathan and not me. I advised against them. I told Geoff they were a bad idea, that we’d wind up with egg on our faces. I knew we couldn’t possibly meet the deadline to implement a complete new marketing plan. He said he took full responsibility, and my job was to do what he told me. Period.

“I should’ve gone over his head straight to Nathan, but Nathan was in Switzerland and Geoff was supposedly in charge. By the time Nathan got back, the whole thing was a done deal, and all my memos to Geoff warning against the completion schedule for the new website and ad campaign had somehow disappeared from the original file as well as mine. Geoff convinced Nathan that I talked him into signing off on all of it. But, please don’t try to intervene. You’ll embarrass Nathan so badly, he’ll never talk to me again. He hates anyone’s catching on when he’s wrong.”

“How long do you intend to stay out there in the country? You can’t possibly find another job working from Martha’s old house sixty miles east of Memphis. At least here you’d have the support of your friends and family. You can lick your wounds in comfort. We all miss you. If you don’t want to stay in your town house, you can always have your old room back here. Andrea will feed you properly. She told me she’d love to have you back. You could do with some spoiling.”

Andrea was an excellent stepmother. She and Emma were fond of each other. Andrea already had her hands full with her committees and her charities and Emma’s half brother and half sister. “Thank Andrea, but tell her having a grown child move home is too darned big a cliché.”

Emma jumped as something touched her foot. She looked down to see Sycamore patting her toes and mewing like a hungry kitten. “You little devil!” she whispered, scooped him up and held him in the crook of the arm not holding the phone.

“I beg your pardon,” David French said.

She giggled. “Not you, Dad. I can’t come home, I have responsibilities.”

“What kind of responsibilities?”

“Look, don’t worry. I’m starting to send out résumés today and signing up with some headhunters. Tell Trip to get on with his life. Thank God we didn’t have an official engagement party. Give my love to Andrea and the monsters. I really am all right, Dad. I promise I’ll call every day from here on. Love ya. Bye.” She hung up the phone, lifted Sycamore up and butted noses with him. “Mr. Hungry, huh? Where are your baby sisters?”

Neither Peony nor Rose had made it across the threshold from pantry to kitchen, but they were gallantly trying to follow their brother. She scooped them up, as well, and deposited them back on their towel. “Okay, you guys obviously need a barricade.” She grabbed the big laundry basket, picked up babies and towel, and laid them in the bottom of the basket. Then she carried it into the kitchen, setting it where she could keep an eye on them while she warmed her syringe under the hot water. “Okay, guys. Four hours from now we’re going to try mashing a tad of dog food into the milk. We’ll see if you can figure out how to handle that. Peony, sweetie, I’ll help you, I promise.”

CHAPTER SIX

“HOW’S IT GOING with the skunks?” Seth stood on the front porch in clean jeans and a navy polo shirt. His short brown hair was damp, so he must have taken a shower after he came home from work.

“Do you really want to know? Barbara Carew said she’d advised you to ignore them.”

“Not easy to do. I worry.”

Emma moved aside so he could come in. He stayed on the porch.

“I brought you something that may help.” He slid a folded baby’s traveling playpen across the step.

“I thought Barbara said you didn’t have any children.” Her heart had given a major lurch. Children meant wives. She did not want this man—this almost stranger—to have a wife. Go figure.

“I don’t. I have it for raising puppies. I don’t need it, and I thought you could borrow it to use in place of a crate.”

“Can’t skunks climb?”

“They mostly don’t. Not at their age, at any rate.”

“Then please bring it in.”

He picked it up one-handed. He held a cardboard box in his other hand. He hauled both box and pen into the pantry, leaned the playpen against the wall and began to unfold it.

“Will it fit in here?” Emma asked.

“It’s a country pantry with enough storage area to get through a whole winter, Ms. French. Besides, this is a traveling playpen. Half-size. It’ll fit.” He didn’t even glance at the babies.

“Out of sight, out of mind?” Emma said. “And when did I become Ms. French? I thought we were beyond that after last night.”

He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been “out of mind” since he’d walked out of her house the night before. The skunks hadn’t been either—well, not much. He set up the playpen, took a fresh towel from a stack on the kitchen counter and made a nest at one end. From the cardboard box he pulled out a folded square. “Brought you a box of puppy pads, too,” he said. Unfolding one, he laid it in the other end of the pen. “Might help with cleanup.”

“Oh, Seth, thank you! I didn’t think...”

“Not my first rodeo, Ms.—Emma. I see you’ve got a water dish.”

She sat on the floor beside him. “I found it on the top shelf of the pantry. I guess my last tenants must have had a dog. I know Aunt Martha had cats.”

“The last tenants, the Mulligans, had two Australian cattle dogs. I’m surprised you didn’t bring a dog with you as protection out here in the wilderness.”

She shook her head and sat on the floor beside him. “I’ve never had a dog or a cat. My stepmother is allergic to both.”

“Well, you sure started out with a bang. Don’t know what I’d do without a dog.”

“You have a dog? I didn’t hear one last night.”

“I’m between dogs. Barbara’s looking for the right rescue for me. That’s why I could lend you the playpen.” He ran a hand down Sycamore’s back. “You’re going to have trouble with this one. Ought to have named him Columbus. He sees new worlds to conquer.”

“He already made it to the kitchen this afternoon,” she said with a smile.

“The playpen should keep them in for a while. Until you get them weaned and back in the wild.”

“How long do I have?” she asked.

“Maybe as little as a couple of weeks or as much as a couple of months. All depends.”

“On what?”

“How fast their scent glands develop.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“By that time they’ll be acclimated to you. They won’t spray you unless you really annoy them. Don’t. You’ll have to teach them to be afraid of human beings.”

“But...”

He heard the longing in that one word and understood it perfectly. He could always recognize someone who cared about animals, any animals. “It’s best for them.”

One of the hardest choices he had to make was to let nature take its course and to free a wild creature back to the wild. He watched her fingers touch the soft fur between Peony’s ears. She had beautiful hands, even if that fancy manicure had pretty much bitten the dust in the past couple of days. He wondered what it would be like to be stroked by those gentle fingers... Uh-uh. Not a safe image. Certainly not when they were sitting on the pantry floor thigh to thigh.

She leaned across him to pet Rose, and her sleek hair brushed his cheek. “How do I teach them to hate me?”

“Not to hate you. Be wary of you.” He had no idea which flower her hair smelled like. Flowers weren’t his thing. Whatever shampoo she used, it was a darned sight more enticing than eau de skunk.

“The playpen won’t work for long,” Seth told her. He held little Peony in the palm of his hand. She seemed perfectly content. “They need to get outside.”

“But they’ll run away!”

“They need a big outdoor cage that’s safely enclosed so they can get used to the outdoors. They’re going to live in it, after all. They have to learn to forage for food, identify smells... How to be skunks.”

“Where on earth do I buy something like that? I’ve never seen one big enough for what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t buy it. You build it. Should be tall enough so that you can move around inside without stooping, with a roof and a door and someplace they can use as a den. Needs to have a metal strip set below ground so they can’t dig under it.”

“I have no idea how to do that,” Emma wailed. “My daddy tried to teach me carpentry, but I’ve never been able to drive a nail straight.” She looked down at her cracked manicure. Why bother redoing it? One day of hammering, and she wouldn’t have any fingernails left anyway.

“If I tried to use a power saw, I’d cut off my hand,” she added. “How do I find someone I can hire to build it? Or even design it in the first place?”

He leaned back against the pantry wall and let Peony snuggle against his chest. She made tiny puttering noises that were almost like a cat’s purr. “It’s not that hard.”

“No, no, no, you don’t understand. I’m the original klutz. If this wasn’t during the school year, I might be able to con my half brother, Patrick, into driving up here to help, but he not only has school during the week, but lacrosse on the weekends. And baseball practice starts in two weeks.”

“You have a half brother?”

“And a half sister. Patrick is seventeen, Catherine is fifteen. Daddy remarried after my mother died.”

“Then if you have a family in Memphis, why are you up here?”

“I beg your pardon. Why is that your business?” She inched away from him and organized herself to stand up.

He laid his free hand on her arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. You just don’t seem the type to go off to a house like this in the country alone. Rehabbers don’t usually admit to being unable to drive a nail.” He should’ve kept his mouth shut. Must be a bad situation at home—wicked stepmother, maybe, although he’d never visualized Cinderella as wearing designer jeans.

“You assumed I came up here to rehab this place?” She shrugged. “I’m going to clean it up, get the yard in order and paint. Cosmetic stuff, but basically, I am up here to endure the place while I lick my wounds and get my résumés out. You might as well know. I got fired last week. The last thing I wanted was to run into all my old office buddies while I was pounding the pavement looking for another job.”

He had no idea what to say to her. He figured she would hate being subjected to sympathy.

* * *

NO WAY WOULD she tell him about Trip. Losing her job and her fiancé in the same week seemed like an ultimate case of bad Karma.

It was probably a case of one thing being responsible for the other. Trip surrounded himself with successful people. Once she was fired and therefore no longer successful, he no doubt went looking for some eye candy to commiserate with him—straight into bed.

Emma did not consider herself a total loser, dammit. It suddenly seemed terribly important that Seth Logan didn’t think she was, either.

He set Peony back in the playpen. “How about if I help?”

“They don’t get fed for another hour. I thought I’d put a tiny bit of dog food in the milk this time. I was going to check with you first, but since you left the cans, I figured it couldn’t do any harm.”

“As long as you’re starting with a little bit. I didn’t mean I’d help with the feeding, although I will. I meant building the outside cage.”

She stammered, “I—I can’t ask you to do that. According to Dr. Barbara, you already work all the hours of the day and night until you drop.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered. I’ve built several of these cages. I’ve even built a couple of big flight cages for raptors that were recuperating from head-on collisions with cars.”

“I keep telling you. I’ll be worse than useless if I try to help with the cage. I don’t even know where to buy the raw materials.” Or how much they were going to cost. In any case, she hadn’t planned to include them in her budget. “I don’t own any tools, power or otherwise.”

“That’s all right. I do. I’ll meet you at the Farmers’ Co-op in Williamston tomorrow at eight,” he said. “By then I’ll have worked up some specs. My partner, Earl, will be happy to help, too. Provide pizza and you’ll have half the county out here.”

“I don’t know half the county.”

“That’s okay. Barbara and I do.”

Seth had brought a small baby bottle, and Emma stirred a little of the dog food into the milk. While she held the kits, he attempted to get them to suck even a tiny bit from the larger nipple. As usual, Rose and Sycamore caught on fast. Peony, not so much.

“She’ll starve if she doesn’t eat!” Emma wailed as another tablespoon full of milk dribbled into Seth’s lap. He dipped his finger in the remaining mush and rubbed it across her gums.

“Yeah, baby, that’s it,” he whispered as Peony licked his finger. “She won’t starve. Not on my watch.”

Emma’s landline rang. She ignored it. After half a dozen rings, he looked up. “You ever going to answer that?”

“Hadn’t planned to.”

“Whoever it is knows when to hang up before it switches to voice mail.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Might be important. Your family?” He dipped his finger once more and held it to Peony’s lips.

“I can guess who it is. Oh, hell.” She grabbed the handset from the shelf behind her and answered. She didn’t realize it was set on speakerphone until she heard Trip’s voice.

“Emma! Thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you for days. I’ve been going nuts. Are you all right? I finally convinced your father to give me your landline number, since you won’t answer your cell phone.”

She glanced at Seth. He was watching her while he seemed to be watching the baby.

“Ow!” He scowled down at Peony. “You imp. You bit me.”

Emma laughed at his wounded expression.

“What’s happening? Who’s there? Is it your father? He said he might drive up there if he didn’t hear from you. Let me speak to him.”

Holding the phone in her right hand, she braced her left against Seth’s shoulder, stood and turned away. A second later she turned back and saw that he was grinning at her. She’d touched him so casually. Her hand on his shoulder felt natural; he was no longer a stranger.

She flipped off the speaker and walked across to the fireplace before she answered again. “Trip, nothing is going on that concerns you in any way. No, my father is not here and he doesn’t plan to come. He would prefer, however, that you stopped calling him at the office.”

“He’s damn near my father-in-law! Who else should I call when you disappear and won’t take my calls? I had to beg to get him to give me this phone number.”

“He is not nor will he ever be your father-in-law. I asked him not to give anyone this number.”

“I am not anyone. I’m your fiancé.”

“No, you aren’t. We broke up, remember? I did not run off. I came up here to look for a new job...”

“You don’t need a new job. You don’t need any job. You need to marry me so I can take care of you. I screwed up...”

“You might say that.”

“You must hate me now, but...”

She sat on the arm of the sofa. Seth was hearing every word she said, but hiding in her bedroom was ridiculous. Better get it over and done with once and for all. “I don’t hate you, Trip. Although I’ll admit I did when I found out about you and Susan. I thought she was my friend.”

“It was a one-night stand. You and I had that fight because you didn’t want to go to the ball after I bought the tickets. Damn things cost a fortune.”

“I told you to find another date.”

“I didn’t want another date. I wanted my fiancée on my arm. You know how tongues would’ve wagged if I’d shown up with someone else. I would’ve spent the night explaining why you weren’t with me. So I had to go stag.”

“Unfortunately, you didn’t feel you had to remain stag.”

“If you’d gone, I wouldn’t have run into Susan once I got there. Hell, she came on to me. I was mad and I was drunk. That’s no excuse, but I swear it’ll never happen again.”

So it was Emma’s fault for not doing what he wanted? “Until the next time you want to schmooze with a room full of VIPs and I am just getting over a hundred and one degrees of fever. Not only did I feel rotten, I was trying to avoid giving everyone there what I had. I didn’t blow you off.”

“I’m not blaming you.”

“Really? Sure sounds like it.”

“Anyway, what’s the big deal? You break off our engagement a week before we’re scheduled to announce it. How’s that going to look?”

He’d gone from contrition to recrimination in three sentences. How on earth had she ever considered marrying him? Had she been blind? No, just stupid. You couldn’t fix stupid, but she was going to try.

“When we decided to get married, you agreed that infidelity was a deal breaker. I guess that’s why you lied to me. It wasn’t a one-night stand, Trip. Susan told me she’d been seeing you for the past month.”

“That didn’t have anything to do with us, you and me!”

How many times had Emma heard that?

“Call it a crazy last fling. Now I know for sure you’re the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with. Together we can own the world. I miss you. On Saturday I’ll drive up there, take you to lunch.” He hesitated, then whispered, “Make up afterward.”

When she heard his tone she felt her stomach flip, and not in a good way. She knew what he meant, but making up with Trip no longer sounded appealing.

She slid over the arm of the sofa and swung her legs around to sit. “Trip, I don’t hate you. It’s worse than that. Hate implies passion. Passion is one step away from love.”

“Take that step again, baby, I’m begging you. I’ll prove you can trust me.”

“Trip, I’ve realized I don’t like you. I don’t want to have your babies, but I’m sure there are a bunch of women who do. Go marry one of them. Heck, marry Susan. Oh, sorry. I forgot she’s already married.” She laid the handset gently back into its cradle.

Seth had heard all of that—at least her side of it—but when she turned to look at him he was bent over Peony with his back to her. Trying to act innocent. Discreet. Pretty silly for a guy his size, but she appreciated his attempt.

She’d managed to sound calm—well, calmish—with Trip, although she felt anything but. Her heart was beating like Carlos Santana’s rhythm section, sweat slid down her back between her shoulder blades, and when she looked at her fingers, her whole hand was shaking. Her face was probably the color of cherry cough drops.

God, she hated confrontations. She wouldn’t recover for a week. Everybody thought she was so tough, when inside she was made of pure marshmallow. By the time Trip got his story straight, the whole breakup would’ve been his idea. Because she’d failed to live up to his exacting specifications. Because she’d abandoned him when he needed her.

She could hear her father’s voice in her head. “I warned you he wasn’t good enough for you.” Actually, he’d mostly been on Trip’s side.

Her father had started denigrating her boyfriends in high school and kept on until she dreaded introducing him to her dates. Her real worry was that she wasn’t good enough for them. They’d catch on. Better be the dumper rather than the dumpee. So she usually dumped first.

How come one woman was never enough for one man? How come she wasn’t enough for Trip?

The answer came roaring back in her head. Because I couldn’t take the chance of letting him know the real me. The one who’s scared to fail.

Trip was supposed to be different. This time she’d planned to marry for all the sensible reasons. On paper she and Trip were perfect for each other. She didn’t have a clue whether love even existed, and lots of doubts that it would ever exist for her. She’d convinced herself she was in love with Trip. Obviously, she didn’t break his heart. He was probably already setting up a date with her successor.

She went back to the pantry floor beside Seth. “You’re a mess.”

“More on me than in them,” he said. “I’m sticky as a bear in a honey tree. I think you can drop the feedings to every six hours with the food we added to the milk.”

“Really? Does that mean I can sleep?”

“Sleep? I’ve heard that word a time or two. Not sure what it means.” He stood up and slipped Peony back into her nest.

Emma didn’t take his proffered hand to stand up this time. “There’s another word I’ve heard, but not recently. Food? You ever hear of that?” She grinned up at him. “I went to the grocery store between feedings this afternoon. I have lots of bacon, plenty of eggs and enough onions for a Western omelet. Plus I bought some artisan bread. And beer. I don’t drink it, but I thought you might.”

He followed her into what passed for a kitchen. “At this point I’d fight Peony for her dog food. Don’t tell me you can cook. Girl like you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I grew up with hot and cold running servants? Here.” She tossed him a big Vidalia onion. “Peel and chop this. You do the crying for a change.”

An hour later as he finished his fourth piece of buttered toast, he said, “Okay, so you can cook.”

“Very limited menu. And you can eat.”

“Big engines require a lot of fuel. So, who’s this guy Trip you don’t like?”

She took a deep breath. To tell him or not? Oh, why not? It wasn’t a secret. Not at home, in any case. “A rich, handsome corporate lawyer on the fast track to being named partner. Just not mine. He’s got political aspirations, too. Going to put his name in the race for State senator, maybe eventually governor. Let’s drop it, okay? I cook, you clean.”

“What? No dessert?”

“You’re kidding, right? All you have to do is rinse and load the dishwasher. It may be the world’s smallest and oldest, but it works.”

As she was scrubbing the kitchen table, she said, “I wish you’d known my aunt Martha. I used to spend my summers up here with her. I loved this place.”

“From what I hear, I wish I’d known her, too. Barbara said she was a great gal. After she died, how come you didn’t come up here before now?”

“My stepmother and I came up to deal with the estate and the papers and things right after. She left me everything, but there wasn’t much actual income to fix the place up, and I didn’t have any disposable income myself. Plus I was at a place in my life where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the house. She already rented it out, so that’s what I did. I hired an agent who handles it all. When the last tenants—the Mulligans—left six months ago, I missed the little bit of income they brought me, but I figured sooner or later I’d get a new tenant. I was looking for somebody who might want to barter upkeep for rent. Karma, I guess. It hit me when I got fired and unengaged practically the same day that I needed a sanctuary. And thanks to Aunt Martha’s kindness, I had one.” She glanced around the shabby room. “This, however, needs help.”

“Not to mention the skunks.”

She leaned back against the table. “I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, but aren’t you going to get in trouble over my skunks?”

“You shouldn’t think of them as your skunks, or you’ll hate letting them go even more. Yes, I can get into trouble, but if we return them to the wild before somebody reports them, I can ask forgiveness.”

“As opposed to permission?”

He rinsed out the sink and hung the dish towel on its hook. And yawned. “Sorry.”

“Go home. Go to bed.”

She followed him to the front door.

“Don’t forget. We meet in the morning at the Farmers’ Co-op.”

She nodded.

He turned, took one step, swung back and reached for her.

* * *

JUST A “meet the new neighbor kiss.”

Maybe it started that way, but it got out of hand—fast. She wasn’t used to being lifted off her feet. When he wrapped his arms around her, she felt as if she were being hugged by that bear in the honey tree.

He tasted of the fig preserves they’d used on their toast, and when their tongues met and teased, her head seemed to lift free of her body.

He set her down, let her go, wheeled around and almost ran across the street. Thank God there was no traffic, because he hadn’t checked either direction, just barreled on inside his house.

She leaned against the wall beside her front door and tried to catch her breath. One kiss, and she could feel her nipples harden.

She hoped he didn’t regret it. She didn’t. Or did she?

Talk about your rebound! The last thing she wanted in her life right now was another man—any man. Certainly not this big, powerful, difficult man who would not be manipulated. Even if she was any good at manipulation. Which she wasn’t.

She’d sworn off the entire sex for the foreseeable future. Maybe forever.

So far, she’d done all right convincing him to help keep her skunk babies safe, but that was only because he had a soft spot for small animals. He could always revert to being Mr. Regulation and take them away from her.

She needed to keep him on her side, but there were limits as to how far she’d go to manage that. On a lifestyle compatibility scale of one to ten—ten being the most compatible—the two of them were about minus a thousand. If her father thought Trip was barely good enough for her, he’d flip out the first time he laid eyes on Seth.

She didn’t truly believe Seth was expecting some sort of sexual quid pro quo for helping with the skunks. If he was, he’d made a big mistake.

But what did she know? If some other halfway stranger had swept her into his arms and kissed the stew out of her like Seth had, she’d have sent him flying with a big red handprint on his cheek.

And possibly found herself facing a stalker who wore a uniform and carried a gun.

She sank onto the front step of her porch and leaned against one of the columns that held it up. The guy had majorly overstepped his boundaries.

Even if it was the best kiss she’d ever experienced in her entire life. Not that she’d kissed that many males, but she hadn’t been a nun either.

It was just a kiss! she reminded herself.

Emma looked across the street. She could see him pacing back and forth, silhouetted against the front window of his house. She went back into her hall, turned off the lights and shut the front door with its big oval pier glass. He wasn’t going to watch her pace up and down or keep track of her by the lights that went on throughout the house, from living room to bedroom. She’d undress in the dark.

Tomorrow when she met him at the co-op—assuming he showed up—she would be completely casual, never mention the kiss and dial them back to square one. Acquaintances. Period. She needed him for the skunks. She definitely did not need him as a male person who raised her blood pressure.

* * *

HE HAD LOST his mind.

In two days this woman had put him in the position of breaking rules he was pledged to adhere to. Not just adhere to, but enforce.

And grabbing her up and kissing her like that? She’d be well within her rights to call the police and have him arrested for assault by an authority figure.

Not that she’d left him much authority. She hadn’t asked him to help her build an outdoor run for the skunks. He’d come up with the idea himself. Now he was committed to a fairly complicated project, one she’d already told him she either couldn’t or wouldn’t participate in.

She’d intimated that she’d sworn off the entire sex for the foreseeable future. As if he had all the time in the world outside his job to play nursemaid to skunks. Why hadn’t she adopted a couple of baby squirrels? Or even a raccoon? He could justify helping her in that case.

Tomorrow morning, he had to meet her as though they’d never shared that blockbuster of a kiss. Casual. Professional. Acquaintances. Neighbors. Nothing more.

He could handle that.

In his dreams.

Then again, what was the use? How long before her fancy, rich lawyer fiancé showed up in a brand-new Mercedes, gave her a big diamond and swept her off to marry him? From her phone conversation with The Jerk—he thought of him in capital letters—the guy was having an affair with a married woman while he was engaged to Emma. Talk about nuts! But with his fortune and social position... No woman would choose Seth Logan over him. If, as Emma said, he was aiming to go into politics at some point, she’d make a smashing senator’s wife. Or governor’s, for that matter.

Seth had enough experience with domestic disputes to know that in almost every case infidelity was not a deal breaker. All too often, women kept going back to the guy who gave them a broken jaw or a broken heart. His mother had gone back to his alcoholic father again and again, offered him support and forgiveness and her belief that he would stay sober. She’d written him off and divorced him only after Sarah was drowned. She couldn’t go on living with Everett, her husband, knowing it was his fault Sarah had died.

She barely took her eyes off Seth in the months following Sarah’s drowning. She knew how deeply he blamed his father. Watching him was as much for Seth’s benefit as her own. She’d continued to look at Seth even when he couldn’t bear to look at himself. She was afraid of what he’d do if his father showed up drunk and maudlin, making excuses, casting blame...

She’d been right to worry. At fourteen Seth was taller, broader and stronger than his father. Besides, his liver was healthy. He doubted dear old Dad’s was. He’d had to avoid the bastard so he wouldn’t put him in the hospital. Or the morgue.

The only thing that saved Everett Logan from his son’s wrath was that Seth hated himself more than he did his father. If he hadn’t been able to hide out in the woods for days at a time, he might well have followed Sarah into the lake.

He couldn’t do that to his mother. So he’d nursed his anger and avoided his father. He could thank his father for forcing him to love the outdoors, not that the old man had intended to point him to his career path. Seth only knew he could breathe in the woods.

Poor Earl. He knew about Seth’s family and how close to the surface Seth’s temper ran when faced with dangerous jackasses like that party boat group. When Seth realized those people on the boat weren’t wearing life jackets, it was touch and go whether he could keep his temper or whether he’d tie the idiot captain to his anchor and toss him overboard.

Thank God he’d had Earl there to help him maintain control. He thought he’d managed to stay calm, but that big woman who’d caught his expression had looked scared.

Maybe the alternative was to force the entire party to stare at pictures of bodies pulled from that lake, the quiet little lake that could kick up whitecaps in a strong wind and upend half the boats in the water.

As he climbed into bed, he was sure he’d lie awake thinking about Emma with The Jerk. In reality he spent the night dreaming of her instead.

And dreaming of inventive ways to barbecue that Trip guy. Slowly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I WASN’T SURE you’d show up.” Seth opened the driver’s door of Emma’s SUV, then stood back. Sweet of him not to loom over her.

“I said I would.”

“Ever been to the co-op?” he asked. “It’s the farmer’s answer to the big-box hardware stores. Little bit of everything from two-by-fours to horse feed.”

She shook her head.

“Hey, Seth,” a voice from the shadowy depths of the store said. “And who’s this pretty lady?” The man who came to meet them wasn’t quite as tall as Seth but outweighed him by a factor of two or possibly three. Somewhere under the thick layers of fat could be glimpsed layers of muscle. He wore actual bib overalls that stuck out in front.

“Hey, hon.” He engulfed her hand in a rough sunburned paw as gently as though he was holding a butterfly. “Seth giving you the grand tour of our fair city?”

His grin was broad, gleaming, but with something of a mountain lion behind it. A man who could handle himself, Emma thought, and probably Seth, as well.

“Shoot, you’re the biggest tourist attraction we got,” Seth said. “Emma French, meet the mayor of Williamston, Sonny Prather. Sonny, this is Emma French. She’s Miss Martha’s niece. She just moved in across the street from me.”

“And you figured you’d introduce her to old Sonny. ’Cause you gonna need to buy out the store to get that place all fixed up after the last people. Friendly enough folks, but didn’t do much to take care of the place that I could see.”

“I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy more than a tiny piece of all this,” Emma said and waved a hand at the shelves around her.

“Sure you can. We gonna open an account for you like everybody else in the county. That way, you can send your contractor in to buy whatever you need.”

“As for the contractor, you’re looking at him,” Seth said. “This morning, all we need is stuff to build an outdoor run. Emma here is thinking about bringing her dog up from Memphis to stay. He’s a city dog.”

Emma gaped at Seth. She now knew that he could lie like a rug. Good information for the future. She had to admit, however, that he’d sounded plausible. And not a word about skunks either.

“Lord, yes. Miss Emma, you got to have a kennel for a city dog around here ’less you want him running off after the coyotes or getting hisself snakebit.” He turned to Seth. “You know what you want, or you want me to work it out for you? Is it a large dog?” he asked Emma.

“Uh...”

Seth stepped in. “Large enough. Long as we’re building, might as well do a decent job of it.”

“You got you a new dog yet, Seth?” Sonny asked over his shoulder as he walked off down the store and through a wide doorway at the back. “Know you miss Rambler. He was a good ol’ dog.”

A fine epitaph, Emma thought. Interesting that Sonny knew the particulars about Seth’s dog. But then he probably knew the names of the dogs and horses owned by all his customers. Maybe sheep and goats, too. Certainly bulls. Possibly even cats, although she doubted it. Men tended to ignore felines, but from where she stood, she could see a pair of yellow tabbies curled up in a ray of sunshine beside the front door. No doubt if she mentioned them, Sonny would blush and tell her they were good ratters.

“Barbara’s looking out for a rescue for me,” Seth said as he followed Sonny. Emma trailed along in their wake, feeling like a third wheel.

The same thing had happened when she first started working for Nathan Savage. Once a prospective older client sat down at their conference table, turned to her and said, “Get coffee.”

Not even a “please.” She didn’t hit him, but that was because Nathan intervened, explained that Emma was one of their top marketing executives and thus did not act as a waitress. The man never so much as looked at her throughout the meeting. But then he signed a contract for more money than anyone had expected. Guilt, probably. That worked. After she’d engineered the launch of his metal-roofing company with more media coverage than he’d expected for such a specialized top-of-the-line niche product, he became a friend. Who would work with him now that she no longer worked for Nathan?

She glanced over at Seth and Sonny. They weren’t cutting her out. They’d simply forgotten she was there. She left them to it.

By the time they’d worked out everything that would be needed for the so-called kennel, she had accumulated a wicker basket full of little cans of cat food, a bag of dry food and several small cat toys.

Sonny said, “Thought it was a big dog.”

“We’ve seen a couple of feral cats around,” Seth said. “If they have kittens, Emma may domesticate a few to keep down the mice.”

Saved again. She looked at the length of the invoice Sonny held and groaned. She might have to borrow money from her father, after all, if she didn’t get a job soon. When she reached for her credit card, however, Sonny waved her away.

“Don’t you know the old saying about farmers, hon? A farmer’s solvent one day a year.” He grinned up at Seth. “Tell her.”

Seth shrugged. “From the afternoon of the day he sells his crop until the next morning when he buys his seed.”

“The rest of the time, everybody keeps paying on their accounts,” Sonny said. “You gonna move up here, you got to do like everybody else.”

“Don’t I have to fill out some paperwork? Give you a credit card?”

“Shoot, I know where to find you if I need to. And Seth can track you down, can’t you?” He flashed that smile at Seth. “Not that you’ll be considered a native, except through Miss Martha. Have to live here a minimum of three generations for that. Now, since Seth has to go to work, and you don’t have a pickup, my boys’ll be up late this afternoon to deliver your stuff.”

“But where?”

“Sonny and I worked it out,” Seth told her.

“Got the perfect place up under that big water oak. Plenty of shade, good drainage, close to the house. Sonny, you can put the tools and concrete bags on the front porch.”

“Shouldn’t they be locked up?” Tools? Emma thought. Shades of enormous hammers and four-inch nails! And concrete? What were they building, the Brooklyn Bridge?

“Nobody’ll bother ’em,” Sonny said. “Now, Seth, when you gonna bring your riding lawn mower and your four-wheeler down for a checkup? You already need to be mowing that little place you got.”

Emma waved at them and started out of the store.

“Hey, sweet thing, wait up!” Sonny said. “We’re right glad you moved in. Don’t you worry. Anything you need, we’ll fix you up.”

“I’ll come by after work,” Seth said to her retreating back.

She climbed into her SUV. It was nearly nine o’clock. She’d had one cup of coffee, and she was absolutely starving. Two hours to go before she had to feed the skunks. Must be someplace around here she could get some breakfast. Someplace where she could be a stranger and not the absolute most worthless out-of-her-element female in this universe. She considered she had a fairly good skill set. For the city. Out here she didn’t understand the language, much less the customs.

It definitely was another universe. Oh, the endearments were the same as in town. She never minded being called “sugar” or “honey” or “sweet thing.” There was a wide gap between sexual harassment like the casual hand on her rear end—which she recognized instantly and took care of even faster—and the complimentary appellations from good ol’ boys of a certain age.

But it was all too obvious that she didn’t belong here. Sonny was right. She’d be a stranger for the next three generations, if it was possible to live that long.

She could make an attempt to slide into the culture, but it would never work. She knew where she belonged, and it wasn’t in Williamston. And definitely not across the street from Seth Logan.

* * *

“WHOO-EE!” SONNY SAID. He hooked his thumbs into his tarpaulin-size overalls and grinned at Seth. “Yum, yum! She lives right across the street from you?”

“Put your eyes back in your head, Mr. Mayor, before I blacken both of them for you.”

“Now, Seth, I didn’t mean a thing by it. I’m a happily married man. Besides, Nadine would tear my head off at the shoulders if I so much as looked at another woman. And no way would I give up Nadine’s beaten biscuits for a roll in the hay with somebody else. But you—” he pointed at Seth “—are no longer a married man and that—” he pointed to Emma’s SUV as it pulled out of the parking lot “—is therefore fair game.”

Seth didn’t feel like discussing Emma as though she were a side of beef with a man who looked as though he could eat one at a single sitting. “She’s in a committed relationship.” He very nearly bit his tongue. Committed relationship? Not if Emma stuck to her guns after that phone call last night, not to mention her response to that wholly inappropriate kiss he’d planted on her.

Still, she’d been clear that living in Aunt Martha’s house was a stopgap measure for a woman who was intended for mansions and French wine. All he knew about French wine was that he couldn’t afford it. Mansions? Out of the question.

“I’m late for work,” he said. “Thanks, Sonny.”

“No thanks needed.” Sonny clapped Seth on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. “You get that kennel up, and then you pay some attention to that young lady.”

Seth decided to stop by the café and pick up a couple of egg sandwiches and a large coffee. When he was close to the turn for the parking lot, however, he saw Emma’s SUV already there with no one in it. Darn! If he went inside now, she really would think he was stalking her. He drove by and stopped at the drive-in. The food wasn’t half as good as at the café, but the coffee was hot and the sausage biscuits sufficiently greasy. He should’ve felt good about this morning. Instead, he felt as though he was in way over his head, and not just with the construction.

* * *

THE MINUTE EMMA walked into the café, conversation stopped and every eye swiveled to stare at her. Oh, great. Apparently a stranger was sufficiently rare to count as a treat. She put on her coolest expression, noted the sign at the cash register that said, “Y’all seat yourself,” looked around and spotted Barbara, the vet, waving at her. She pasted on a smile and walked over.

“Join me, please,” Barbara said.

Emma couldn’t very well refuse. Besides, not only did she like Barbara, but the vet was a conduit to Seth Logan. Emma needed somebody to clue her in on the man. She couldn’t figure him out at all. He obviously had the education and the cultural skills to move up whatever career ladder he chose. Yet here he was, catching poachers and checking fishing licenses—or she supposed that was what he did. He didn’t seem to be lazy, not if he planned to help her build the kennel.

“The café’s about the only decent restaurant in Williamston,” Barbara said.

The waitress laid a menu on the table and, without asking, set down a mug of coffee. “You want cream?” It came out like an accusation.

Emma shook her head. “No, thanks. Just a couple of poached eggs, bacon and wheat toast, please.”

“Huh. We don’t do much egg poaching. Hard or soft?”

“Uh, medium?”

“Grits or hash browns?”

“No thank you.”

“Velma,” Barbara said, “this is Emma French. She’s Miss Martha’s niece and has moved into her old house.”

Emma felt her ears redden. She was certain everyone in the place had heard Barbara’s introduction. She might as well be wearing a sign on her back that said “outsider.”

“Nice to see somebody fixing up that place,” a man in a business suit said from the next table. “Welcome to Williamston.” He swung his chair around and held out his hand. “Doug Eldridge.”

“How do you do?”

“He’s the local doctor,” Barbara said.

“Yeah. Barbara heals the animals. I try to heal the humans. She’s better at her job than I am at mine. At least to hear her tell it. But if you need me, I’m in the book. And unless you want to drive to Memphis, I’m your best bet.”

“More like your only bet,” Velma said and walked behind the counter to hang the order for Emma’s breakfast on one of the clips by the kitchen.

“How are the you-know-whos?” Barbara asked Emma.

“Fine, I guess. Lively, at any rate. Seth says I need an outside cage for them. We came into town to get stuff to build it. He says he’s going to help, but I don’t see how he has the time. What does he actually do at his job? I don’t know a thing about him.”

Barbara held out her mug. Velma filled it on her way by the table.

“The first thing you want to know is whether or not he’s married. He’s divorced, and just as well. No children. Married to his job. Great guy as long as you stay on his good side.”

“And if you don’t?”

“He’ll make you wish you had.”

“How come it’s better that he’s divorced?”

“Clare was a rip-snorting spoiled brat who absolutely hated living in the country, where she had to drive thirty miles for a mani-pedi up to her high standards.” Barbara glanced down at Emma’s disintegrating fingernails. “She used to drive into Memphis to get her hair cut.”

Emma reddened. “I know my hands look awful. I need to at least take the polish off. I just haven’t had time what with the you-know-whos to find my polish remover. If Seth does build the cage, how do I pay him?”

“Don’t you dare! Talk about getting on his bad side! Fix him a good dinner. That’s assuming you can cook. This is the first time since Clare divorced him, moved to Nashville and remarried that he’s shown any interest in doing anything other than his job. He’s developing a reputation as a real hardnose. His dog, Rambler, died six months ago and he still doesn’t have another. I haven’t found the perfect one for him yet, but I will. Anyway, he’ll probably ask Earl—that’s his partner—and maybe a couple of the other guys to help him. So you’re really interested in this fostering animals thing?”

“I have no idea. I’m stuck with it now, but I don’t know how it works. Obviously I screwed up with my first attempt by picking the you-know-whos instead of a baby rabbit.”

“You had the right instincts. We don’t judge on a cuteness quotient. I’ve fostered baby turkey buzzards. Cute they are not, except to a mother turkey buzzard. But we need them. We’d be up to our ears in roadkill otherwise. I call ’em God’s garbagemen.”

Velma set Emma’s breakfast plate down just a little harder than necessary. Emma assumed she didn’t approve of poached eggs, although these looked perfect.

“You want to find out what fostering animal work is like,” Barbara said, “you go home, feed the you-knows and drive on down to my clinic. I’ve got a menagerie to oversee and no one to work with me, so I need to get back. You know where my clinic is? Just down the road a couple of miles past your house. Can’t miss it. There’s a big parking lot in front and one behind it, and four horse trailers on the side.”

Emma’s day was imploding fast. She’d intended to set up her workspace, start sending out résumés and make some telephone calls to friends and former colleagues. Networking always worked better than cold calls. At this point she wasn’t looking for a position that paid as well or carried as much prestige as her job with Nathan. Just some way to pay the bills without borrowing money from her dad.

Barbara slid out of the banquette, dropped a couple of dollars on the table for Velma and went off to pay her bill at the front.

Seeing Barbara’s clinic and her animals sounded like a bunch more fun than résumés. She’d work on those this afternoon while the babies were napping.

Several people nodded to her as they walked up to the cash register, but no one actually spoke. They obviously knew who she was...heck, they probably knew her shoe size. She didn’t dawdle over her breakfast. The babies were waiting for their breakfast, too.

At home, she was astonished by how fast they were gaining control of their legs. They marched around their playpen like animated stuffed toys and squeaked at her for not meeting their needs earlier. She fed them, cleaned them and their playpen, then went out to call on Barbara with a couple of pats on the head for each one before she left. Peony stood on her hind legs and begged to be picked up, but Emma hardened her heart. “Later, little child. I promise I’ll love on you.”

She’d been aware of the vet clinic, but she’d never had a reason to stop there.

The clinic building looked as though it had started life as a fancy pole barn and been converted to a business with real walls sometime later. Emma was surprised that the waiting room was empty, without even a receptionist behind the desk. Barbara had said she had no help at the moment, but Emma hadn’t realized that no help meant exactly that. Maybe her receptionist was off for some reason or worked only part-time. From down the hall Barbara’s voice called, “Emma, come on back, unless you faint at the sight of blood.”

Lovely. Just what she needed after a big breakfast. Still, she followed Barbara’s voice through an open door halfway down the hall.

Inside, in her signature electric-blue scrubs, Barbara stood over an unconscious tricolored hound with a four-inch gash along its flank. The flank had been shaved, and bits of hair stuck to the globs of blood that had run from the wound onto the table.

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