Is he ready to soar like an eagle...

and live again?

When Stephen MacDonald brings Barbara Carew an injured bald eagle, the widowed veterinarian doesn’t expect to heal two wounded males! Although he came to rural Tennessee to recover from his own accident, Stephen seems invested in Orville’s future...and Barbara’s. But even as their connection grows, Barbara isn’t sure she’s ready. Or has she already started to teach Stephen—and herself—to soar again?

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 of 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

Williamston Wildlife Rescue

Tennessee Rescue

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Tennessee Vet

Carolyn McSparren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08611-0

TENNESSEE VET

© 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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The eagle let forth with one of his horrendous screeches.

Startled, Barbara slipped and braced her hand against the front of Orville’s cage.

Stephen grabbed her wrist and pulled it away from the cage a second before Orville’s beak struck the wire. He kept her wrist and spun her to face him. “You okay?”

Her eyes were wide with fear and he heard her breathing speed up. He held her close. Those flecks in her eyes drew him to her as though he were a miner who’d discovered a seam of gold a foot wide.

A moment later they were closer still. The kiss came without thought or even volition. It started out as a friendly peck. A moment later it changed into something deeper.

It was one heck of a kiss before breakfast!

Dear Reader,

Losing a beloved spouse, the person with whom we share memories no one else shares, can feel as though we are stuck with a leftover life to live. The very idea that we could find another love feels like a betrayal. Yet, even when we turn our backs on love, it can sneak back into our hearts and our minds.

Barbara Carew, a veterinarian with a small practice by the Tennessee River, is too busy to think about love. The sudden death of her husband left her with complete responsibility for herself, their two children and all the animals that desperately need her help.

Stephen MacDonald, a history professor, not only lost his wife to cancer, but nearly lost his leg in an automobile accident. After a year in rehab, he still uses a cane. He seems to be functioning, but in reality he’s forgotten what it’s like to laugh, to love, to take chances.

Barbara and Stephen are brought together by a shrieking, angry, desperately wounded bird that Stephen names Orville. And through Orville’s journey of healing, Barbara and Stephen find their own hope.

This second book in the animal rehabilitator series Williamston Wildlife Rescue is also in praise of the wonderful people who take in and care for wild animals, raptors included. These people devote their lives and frequently their money to help the wild creatures that so often are in trouble because of human beings in the first place.

Watch for the third book in the Williamston Wildlife Rescue series, available in 2019.

Carolyn

This book is dedicated to the US Fish and Wildlife Service at Reelfoot Lake State Park in Tennessee, who watch over and protect our bald eagles. Thanks to them, the number of breeding pairs is increasing every year.

You go, guys!

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

“THE CLOSEST SERVICE station that has snacks and drinks is eight miles away in that direction,” Emma Logan said and pointed out the window down the two-lane road to her left. “And it’s twelve miles in the other if you want to drive into Williamston. Can you stand to be so isolated? Seth and I live right across the road, but I’m either helping out down at the veterinary clinic or looking after whatever animals we’ve rescued. And in this condition—” she pointed down at her sizable belly “—I can’t pick you up if you fall.”

Stephen MacDonald thumped his Malacca cane with the silver wolf’s head against the floor between his knees. “I do not fall, Emma. I limp. I am not an invalid.”

“Then why hide out here? I’ve known you and your daughters since you all moved into the neighborhood years ago. I know you’re hiding. Takes one to know one. I came out here to hole up and lick my wounds when I lost my job and my fiancé, and look what happened.” She waved her hand at the living room of the farmhouse. From behind the back wall came the thud of nail guns and shouts of men. “It’s already nearly October. With Kicks almost here, we have to finish the nursery and the kitchen and the new bathroom fast before he, she or it arrives.”

“Kicks?” He gave her the barest flicker of a smile. “I remember my Nina nicknamed our Elaine Salsa when she was carrying her. Anne was quieter. I can’t remember Nina’s name for her.” He turned away quickly, but not before Emma caught the flash of pain in his eyes.

When Anne had called to make the appointment for her father to view Emma’s rental house, she’d warned her that she might not recognize Stephen.

“He looks even taller now that he’s lost so much weight—like Abraham Lincoln without the beard. He’s also angry,” Anne had told her. “It’s almost as though he blames Mother for dying on him.”

“I’m sure he does,” Emma had said. “She protected him from the world. I was terrified of him when I used to come to your house after school, until Nina showed me what a pushover he really is. And then his accident—it’s no wonder he’s bad-tempered. Pain makes everybody angry.”

“Not like this. I hope he does rent your cottage, Emma. He’s not teaching until spring, and he’s driving us all nuts. Maybe writing his new textbook will pull him back into life.”

Sitting across from him now in her living room, Emma saw what Anne meant. Stephen was perfectly polite, but he wasn’t quite there.

“I assume you are calling him, her or it Kicks because it does?” Stephen asked as he nodded toward her midsection.

“Does it ever. The doctor assures me it is not twins, which is all I cared about. Seth and I decided not to find out, which means the nursery will be your basic buttercup-yellow. Okay, enough about me. Why are you coming up here to hide out? I thought you were still in rehab. And you have a perfectly good house in Memphis. You could lock the door and turn off your phone if you want to write, couldn’t you?”

“I do not intend to spend a day longer in rehab, Emma, even if our government would pay for it—which they wouldn’t. And I refuse to allow either of my children to become caregivers. If I were where they could get to me, I’d be up to my ears in casseroles and being ‘checked on’ a dozen times a day. I would get nothing done. Anne usually calls ahead when she comes to see me. Elaine always ‘just happens to be in the neighborhood.’ Nina...” His voice caught. He took a deep breath before he was able to continue. “Nina was my guard dog at the gate. No one disturbed me when I was working. Or if I was simply feeling curmudgeonly.

“The official story is that I am moving to your cabin in the wilderness to work on my new textbook. You know, publish or perish? I already have tenure, but it doesn’t hurt to keep one’s name out there.”

“Be careful. This place will suck you in. You’ll discover all sorts of interesting ways to take up your time that are not academic.”

“Fine. I need a quiet place where I am totally alone or surrounded by strangers. I am fed up with everyone I know commiserating with me over the accident. Nobody mentions Nina any longer. After three years, it is assumed I have gotten over my wife’s death. I have not. I’ll never be fully alive again without her, but that’s nobody else’s business.”

“I suspect she would have kicked your butt if she thought you used her death as an excuse to stop living yourself.”

“No doubt. Up to now I could hide in rehab and in hospitals. Since that is no longer an option, I am hiding in your rental cottage. At least I can avoid being checked out to see whether my limp is any better as I walk across campus.”

“What do you expect?” Emma said. “You nearly lost your leg, Stephen.”

“I know. I was there.”

“If that truck had been any bigger, you probably wouldn’t be here to complain about your leg.”

“No doubt. But I am here and I do complain on a regular basis, and I intend to finish my rehab out here in what my daughters call the middle of nowhere. My dean says ‘write, write, write that blasted textbook.’ The doctor says ‘walk, walk, walk on that leg.’ I’ll probably always have to use a cane, he says. No way, say I. I’ve already missed teaching the spring semester, I dropped my classes for summer school and I’m being allowed to take the fall semester as a sabbatical to write. By next spring I expect to be back a hundred percent.

“Now, about the rent on— What do you call it? The Hovel?” He pointed across the street toward an old-fashioned Tennessee farmhouse sporting a fresh coat of pale gray paint and dark red shutters. “Doesn’t look very hovel-like to me.”

“Not now, maybe, but you should have seen it before my stepmother, Andrea, came up and redecorated.”

“I’m sure Andrea did a good job. She always does. So, how much rent? I may only be here for a couple of months full-time, but I will probably continue to use it on weekends, so I’ll be happy to sign a lease for six months with automatic renewal for another six.”

“I wouldn’t dream of charging you rent.”

Stephen cut her off by raising his hand. “No. Unless I pay the going rate, I cannot come. I am hardly destitute, Emma, and Andrea said you had redone the place to rent. So, how much per month?”

“What do you think of this for rent?” She gave him a figure.

“Much less than it would be in Memphis or Nashville. I accept. I’ll drive back up this evening with the rest of my stuff and move in, if that’s all right,” he said.

“And I’ll feed you dinner.”

“Give me a rain check for tonight. I’ll be back much too late. How close to the stove can you stand?”

“Now, was that a nice thing to say?” Emma patted her belly and chuckled. “Close enough. In a sense we’re both invalids.”

The smile he gave her was real. Fleeting, but real.

“Your problem will disappear in a few months,” he said, still smiling. “Mine will last a good bit longer. My doctor says the knee will never be perfect. Maybe not, but I refuse to dodder into old age with a cane in my hand. I’d have to grow a beard and wear glasses with a little chain attaching them to my jacket so I don’t lose them. I don’t think so.”

“Do you need to go look at the house again?” Emma asked.

“I have to drive an hour and a half back to Memphis to pack.” He set the ferrule of his cane on the floor between his feet, then began to lever himself up.

Across the coffee table, Emma grabbed the arm of the sofa and began to hoist her heavy body to a standing position.

Halfway up, they caught sight of each other’s predicaments.

And fell back grinning at one another.

Five minutes later, as she waved him down her gravel driveway to the road in the Triumph Spitfire sports car he had owned as long as she had known him, she wondered how on earth to drag him back into life.

Well, it might be kicking and screaming, but she’d manage somehow. She owed it to Nina and his daughters. Nina would have wanted him to find someone else wonderful to spend the rest of his life with. Emma knew a dozen women who would jump at the chance.

CHAPTER TWO

DR. BARBARA CAREW, DVM, large and small animals, finished stitching the torn ear of Hubert, a French lop rabbit that had played too rough with his housemate, Louis, the Belgian mastiff. According to Louis’s owner, the big dog was miserable and missing his buddy. Usually Hubert—pronounced you-bear—ran Louis ragged. This was an unfortunate accident, but Hubert was going to have to be guarded from that sort of rough-and-tumble play for a couple of weeks, at least until the stitches were removed. Then the pair would have to be supervised, because unfortunately Hubert thought he was more than mastiff-size and a whole lot tougher.

“All right, my little French friend,” Barbara said as she scooped up the giant bunny. “Off you go to your cage and nighty-night.” She settled the rabbit down, checked to be certain that everything was in order in the clinic’s office and reception area, walked out the back door and across the parking lot. Outside, Mabel the lame goose was securely caged with her current crop of goslings.

“No foxes tonight,” Barbara said and tossed the big goose a handful of grain. Not that Mabel wasn’t a match for most creatures that wanted to devour her. But she couldn’t protect her goslings if she was busy protecting herself.

Mabel snapped up the grain but didn’t even chuckle a response. The goslings snuggled deeper under her. Actually, no fox in his right mind would challenge Mabel, although it might make an attempt to snatch a gosling.

Barbara walked across the grass to the barn and through it to her apartment, built at the far end. She was so tired, she was not certain she could bend down to take off her boots without falling over. She prayed the clinic answering service could handle any calls until morning.

She needed sleep more than she needed food, but she tossed a frozen diet meat-loaf dinner into her microwave and started the timer. She’d still be hungry afterward, but she’d try to endure without ice cream or cookies. She tossed her scrubs into the laundry hamper and slipped into her largest, oldest, softest T-shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts, then poured herself a diet soda.

“I would kill for a glass of wine,” she said aloud. “But sure as I do, I’ll get called out to some cow that can’t calve.”

She stayed on her feet until the microwave dinged. “If I sit down, I will wake up in my chair tomorrow morning. And why am I talking to myself?”

Because there’s no one else to talk to.

The dinner was anything but delicious. The meat loaf tasted like cardboard and the mashed potatoes were one congealed lump. Still, it was food. Not enough, but food.

She jumped a foot when the gate alarm at the road sounded as the gate opened, and the motion-sensor lights flashed on in the clinic parking lot as someone drove around the building and stopped at the back door. “What the heck?” She yanked on her boots back over her bare feet, grabbed her big flashlight and went to see who in Sam Hill was coming in this late without calling ahead.

* * *

“IS DR. CAREW AVAILABLE?” A male voice, deep baritone. He was standing at the back door of the clinic, silhouetted against the lights. All she could tell about him was that he was tall and sounded as though he had some education.

“I’m available,” Barbara said. “And the only Dr. Carew there is.”

“I’ve got an emergency. Emma Logan told me your clinic was down this way but didn’t give me your phone number. I couldn’t think of anything to do but search you out.” Behind him the very bright lights of some kind of fancy sports car shone directly into Barbara’s eyes. “It may be too late to help him, but he was moving, and this is all I could think of.”

“You hit something on the road.” Probably a deer.

“It hit me,” he said. “Flew smack into the front of my car.”

“So you squashed an owl?”

“Not quite. Take a look.”

He stood aside. Barbara turned on her powerful flashlight and walked up to the front of the car. “You mind turning your lights off? I can’t see squat.”

A moment later the headlights went out. Barbara allowed her eyes to adjust to the lower light of the motion sensors under the eaves before she looked at the damage to whatever it was. She fully expected it to be dead.

It shrieked. A hair-raising, enraged and I’m-alive-here-people shriek.

“That’s no owl,” Barbara whispered.

She dropped to her haunches two feet from the grille of the car and shone the light on... “Lord save us,” she whispered. “You hit a bald eagle.”

“Indeed I did not. It hit me. I wasn’t driving fast, not on these roads, when I’ve barely moved in to The Hovel after driving up here this morning, then back to Memphis to pick up my stuff and right back here. I thought some kind of pterodactyl was about to yank me out of the car. One minute nothing, the next this thing appears in front of me and whomp!”

“Take off the grille,” Barbara said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“These cars carry fancy toolkits, don’t they? Let’s see if we can keep him alive long enough to get him out of there.” She stood and walked back toward the barn.

“Where are you going?”

“To get some towels and heavy gloves. If we do get him loose, we’ll have to wrap him up tight. He’s going to come out of there fighting like a dragon, no matter how badly he’s hurt. You have any heavy driving gloves?”

“In the glove compartment.”

“Get ’em.” She pointed at the car. “Unscrew that grille, please. Carefully. Stay out of talon or beak range. He’ll take your head off as soon as he looks at you. He’s certain this is your fault. Eagles aren’t noted for forgiveness. They prefer punishment, preferably death by devouring.”

Wearing leather gauntlets, Barbara returned with an armload of heavy towels. “Whoa!” she snapped as the eagle screamed again. “Calm down, you. We’re trying to help.”

The eagle stared at her with insane black eyes, but stopped thrashing momentarily, almost as though it understood. Barbara knew it did not. More likely, it was gathering itself to try to break free and savage the people who were attempting to save it.

“I think the left wing is broken—see how twisted it is hanging between the struts on the grille?” she asked.

“There is no way I can unscrew this grille. The grille has not been off since it came from the showroom years ago. This car is a genuine antique. It’s as rusted as I am.”

“Can you actually cut those struts? Ease it off him?” She expected horror. In the lights, she could tell the car was a classic, beautifully maintained.

That grille would cost a fortune and probably take weeks to replace.

Instead, the man said, “Do you have some heavy-duty bolt cutters?”

“Be right back.”

Not one howl of complaint from him. Hmm. Even if he did drive a silly car and hit birds with it. She handed him her largest bolt cutters.

“Show me where to cut,” he said.

“I’m not altogether certain. Need to get him loose but keep hold of him so he doesn’t flap himself to death.” For a long minute vet and eagle stared one another in the eye, then Barbara nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to try something that should work for the short haul.” She took a small towel and tossed it over the eagle’s head, covering its eyes. Instantly it stopped fighting. “Now, cut here and here. Fast. It’ll take him less than a minute to realize he isn’t actually hooded. Can you manage alone?”

The man actually growled at her, as if she’d impugned his masculinity. “Hang in there, big guy,” he whispered. “We’re trying to help you.” He grunted with the effort of snapping the grille. “We’re not about to let you die on us.”

The grille snapped and snapped again. Possibly all to the good that it was old.

Man’s got muscles, I’ll say that for him. And it almost sounded as though he was commanding the bird to survive. “Hold the feet, avoid the talons,” Barbara said. “I don’t want to have to sew you up, too. With luck I’ll get him out fast and swaddle him tight.”

Getting him actually loose didn’t prove to be as difficult as Barbara had thought. “I wish I had a real raptors’ hood,” she said as she held the bird, snugly, under one arm, while she kept the towel taut over the eagle’s head. “If I can keep his head covered until we get him on the table, I can give him a little gas. Then we’ll see what’s going on. Come on. We need to move fast.”

CHAPTER THREE

STEPHEN MACDONALD GLANCED at the pieces of his grille lying on the tarmac of the parking lot. Small price to pay to save this living creature. He now understood what an eagle eye was. The bird had glared at him as though to say, “This is your fault. Fix it!” He was already too involved, as though his life had become intertwined with the eagle’s. He’d been helpless to save Nina, watching her fade away. And he hadn’t been able to heal his own injuries, either. Somehow, he had to help this wounded creature. That was nuts, but it was the way he felt.

He followed Barbara toward the back door of the clinic.

He’d managed to hold the eagle’s feet until the doctor had the bird free. He gave thanks for his fancy driving gloves. The thing’s talons looked as long as a grizzly bear’s and twice as sharp.

The motion-sensor lights stayed on, so they could see where they were walking.

“Hey,” Dr. Carew called, “I need a hand here. Open the back door of the clinic, turn on the lights on the left, open the door to exam room one and help me get this sucker on the table. Now! Before he kills me.”

And he thought his daughters were bossy. He hobbled as fast as he could and opened the back door of the clinic, then realized he’d left his cane in the car. He felt for the light switch, found himself in a hall with doors on either side, opened the first one, turned on that light and got out of the vet’s way.

“I had no idea they were this big,” Stephen said. The eagle wasn’t fighting at the moment. It was, however, dripping blood from a gash in one of its legs—what would have been the drumstick in a turkey.

“Here, hold him still.” Barbara brought up some sort of plastic mask and stuck the eagle’s beak into it. Amazingly enough, it had not dislodged the towel covering its eyes, so it was lying quietly.

“These guys are not as tough as you’d think,” Barbara said. “When people talk about bird bones, they aren’t kidding. We need to x-ray that wing and see if anything else is busted. Internal injuries, fractured skull. I’m amazed he made it this long. Come on. Help me carry him to the X-ray room. He’s heavier than he looks.”

Together, they managed to get the bird situated on the X-ray table. Barbara pulled an X-ray shield over her shoulders and handed one to him.

“Do we have to wait while you develop the pictures?” Stephen asked as he settled the shield in front of his chest.

“Comes up on the screen right here. Animals don’t wait while you develop anything. Want to see what you did?”

“I keep telling you it hit me.”

“I know. You’re the innocent victim. Hold him down. I have to stretch that wing out far enough to see the bones. We don’t dare let him go. See that?” she said and pointed to the screen. “Looks like a clean break to that left wing. I’m not seeing any other breaks, but that cut on the thigh needs to be cleaned and stitched. He needs antibiotics. Too soon to talk about internal injuries, but I don’t see anything obvious. Maybe a concussion, but apparently not a fractured skull. You, sir—” she nodded to the eagle “—are one lucky bird.”

“How do you fix the wing?”

“I’ll straighten it as much as I dare, try to line the bones up, fold it correctly and tape it tight to his body for tonight. Then tomorrow, if he makes it, we’ll see whether he can get by with a splint or whether we’ll need to pin it. Come on, he’s waking up. We need a trifle more happy gas, then we stitch, give him antibiotics, strap that wing in place, put him down in a nice tight cage so he doesn’t flail and worry about him all night.”

“Isn’t there anything else you can do to stabilize the wing right now? You have the X-rays. Can’t you at least splint it?”

She glanced at him from under her eyebrows. “Ever hear of swelling, doctor? Birds are notorious for going into shock and dying on you. I’m not about to put more pressure on him until we’re sure he’s going to survive the night. How many eagles have you worked on?”

“None. But...”

Barbara turned to him. “I would suggest you say a few earnest prayers he survives, because, if we lose this eagle, you owe the United States a big fat fine for hitting him.” He started to speak, but she held up her hands to forestall him. “Who are you, anyway? And how do you know Emma?”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M STEPHEN MACDONALD,” he said. “Emma and Seth’s new tenant. And why should I owe the government anything? It hit me.”

“It’s a bird. And you’re a human being—the one with the big brain and the opposable thumbs. Heck of an introduction to the neighborhood.”

Stephen watched Barbara clean and close the eagle’s cut with small, neat stitches. He’d never been fond of the sight of blood, but then usually it came from a scrape or a bloody nose on one of his daughters. This was different. This woman was obviously good at what she did. His own blood hadn’t bothered him after the accident that had nearly cost him a leg, but then, he’d been in shock and unconscious for the worst part—the part when the surgeons had worked to keep him alive and with both legs attached to his body.

He realized that he didn’t even know what this vet looked like. At first, she’d been behind her flashlight, then he’d been paying so much attention to the eagle he hadn’t even glanced at her, and now she was wearing a surgical mask.

She finished her stitching, and between them they moved the eagle—already stirring—into a cage. “I have to clean up the mess,” she said. She pulled off her mask and tossed it into the trash receptacle, then turned to look at him.

He felt a jolt go through his solar plexus. She was probably five foot five and not model-thin. He guessed in her thirties. Chestnut-brown hair was pulled back in a scrunchie, but escaping in tendrils around her face.

Those eyes. Extraordinary. The color of Barbados rum with flecks of what looked like 24-carat gold in them. They were wide eyes, as though she could take in the whole world without turning her head the way that eagle could. Wise, aware eyes, as though she’d seen it all and knew she could handle it. He had a feeling that she didn’t simply look, she saw. Not a beautiful face, exactly, but he didn’t think he’d forget those high cheekbones or that broad forehead. His first impression was that she was a person of value. Worth knowing. He also noted that she had great legs.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m spitting cotton and hungry as a coyote,” she said. “You do with some sweet tea and a pimento cheese sandwich? It’s homemade.”

“I could probably eat the coyote. I was headed to the overnight gas station to get some snacks when I hit our friend in there. I didn’t have sense enough to go to the grocery before I drove back up here from Memphis this afternoon. I’m not used to having to think about those things ahead of time. In town I’m five minutes away from a supermarket. Here, the closest place is eight miles away.”

“You get used to planning ahead.” As she chatted, she straightened, cleaned, put instruments into the sterilizer, scrubbed down the table and tossed her trash. “I can go over all this again and scrub the floors tomorrow morning. Come on.”

“Shouldn’t we stay with him tonight?” Stephen asked.

Barbara shook her head. “We’ve done all we can do before morning. He needs to rest.” She turned out the lights, locked the clinic and flashed her light on Stephen’s mauled grill. “Sorry about your car. I think you can drive it, though. He doesn’t seem to have punctured the radiator or slashed any hoses. After I feed us, I’ll follow you home to be sure you get there.”

“You don’t...”

“All part of the service. Sorry, my apartment’s off the back of the barn.”

He followed her out of the clinic, across the parking lot, through the barn and to a door at the end. With all but a couple of lights off, he couldn’t see much of the animals in the stalls, but he heard a couple of horses snoring. “I’ll be glad to stay with him and let you get some sleep. I can call you if—”

“If what? You don’t know what you’re looking at. I promise you there is nothing more I can do tonight. It’s up to him. He’s alive, which is amazing. ’Course, he may never be able to be released back into the wild...”

“After you fix his wing and he convalesces, of course you can release him.”

“Not necessarily. Come in.” She turned on lights in her apartment. He followed her in.

“Bathroom’s down that hall past the bedroom,” she said and pointed. “Look, I have no idea at this point whether I can fix his wing or not. It may not knit properly or at all. It may have to be amputated.”

He was halfway down the hall, but he spun to look at her. “No! You can’t do that. He has to fly again. Be whole again.”

“Don’t freak, Mr. MacDonald. Even if he can’t fly, he’ll live a comfortable life in one of the zoo’s animal training programs. He’ll be well fed and possibly even find another mate.”

“Another mate?”

“Bird his age will almost certainly have a mate. I assume he belongs up at Reelfoot Lake. No idea how he got down here. He and his family are probably nesting in the same nest they’ve used for fifty years or longer.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. Eagles keep their nests. There’s a nest on a river in the Grand Tetons that they think has been there a couple of hundred years.”

“He’s hurt, broken, possibly disabled, not knowing where his mate is or whether his eaglets are surviving, unable to care for them and he may spend his life in a cage. Being stared at and pitied, unable to fly free. What kind of life is that for him? I should have let him die.” A wave of depression washed over him. He’d learned to fight it most of the time by refusing to feel anything at all, but this depression was for another creature, one whose situation was too close to his own. How did he guard against that?

“You do know what anthropomorphism means, don’t you?” she asked.

“Of course I do. It’s giving human characteristics to animals. The more research is done, however, the more we find there is precious little difference between us and them. He has to fly again. Find his way back.”

“So he can land and say, ‘Honey, I’m home?’ All I can do is my best, Mr. MacDonald. Now, about that sandwich.”

* * *

OF ALL THE crazy ways to spend an evening, Barbara thought as she spread mayonnaise on slices of the French baguette she’d picked up at the bakery in Williamston. She was always as ravenous after a difficult surgery as if she’d bicycled twenty miles or run a marathon. Her body had long since used up whatever energy she’d gained from that second-rate diet meat loaf.

She glanced up from the kitchen island where she was working. MacDonald was pacing around her living room staring at the books on the shelves. Lots of shelves, lots of books. Not in matching leather bindings. Not alphabetized. Her books and John’s were as intermingled as they had been the day he died.

Barbara had a simple filing system. Total recall.

When she and John had built the barn and created their apartment, they’d planned to give themselves plenty of room for books. Originally, they’d planned a big deck off the back, but after John had died she’d never gotten around to it. Or to anything else domestic for that matter. Who had the time? Or the interest when there was no one to share it with.

She saw the room as Stephen saw it. It was squeaky clean, but all it needed was a thick layer of dust and a bunch of hanging cobwebs to turn it into Miss Havisham’s wedding feast in Dickens’s Great Expectations. And she acknowledged the truth—that she hadn’t yet built the deck because finishing a project alone that she and John had planned together seemed like a betrayal. She’d never admit to a soul that she felt that way. Her friends, her clients and even her children talked about how well she had coped with John’s loss, how she had kept growing and changing. She knew better. Emotionally, she was as empty as she had been the day John died. She told herself she was happy being alone with no one to answer to except her children and her clients.

But sometimes in the night, when she reached for the place beside her where once she had felt John’s chest rise and fall, she hated knowing that she’d never love again.

Her fallback position was physical and mental exhaustion. She considered herself meticulous when it came to keeping the clinic immaculate. But when half the time she fell into bed after working flat out for twelve or more hours, it really didn’t matter when the coffee table had last been dusted. She managed to keep the kitchen and bathroom clean and the papers and magazines at least in separate piles, but that was as far as it went.

She wasn’t exactly embarrassed to have Stephen MacDonald scrub up in her bathroom, but this MacDonald guy in his vintage Triumph and polo shirt with the proper logo on it did not belong either in Emma’s rental cottage or Barbara’s apartment.

When he came back from the bathroom, she saw he had run water over his face and hair as well as scrubbed his hands and forearms.

She took her first good look at him. Oh, boy. Talk about the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood! Grandmother, what big eyes you have. And how bright blue. She didn’t think his eyes were the result of those fake colored contacts, but you never knew.

Further perpetuating the wolfish image was his short gray hair and what Shakespeare would have called a “lean and hungry” look. Actually, she seemed to recall Shakespeare was talking about an assassin. He stood a bit over six feet tall and had kept his stomach flat. Golf, maybe. Barbara sucked in her own stomach on a big breath, but she couldn’t hold it in for long.

“Sorry, I made kind of a mess,” he said. “I tried to get the blood out of my khakis. Unsuccessfully.”

“When you get back to The Hovel, put everything into the washer on cold. If there is anything I know about, it’s how to get blood out of cloth.”

“Does it ever bother you?” He propped himself up on the wall beside the refrigerator and stuck his hands into his damp pockets.

“Blood?” She picked up a wicked kitchen knife and sliced the sandwiches crossways, then slid two halves apiece onto plates and added pickles and potato chips. “I grew up on a farm. I was pulling piglets out of sows when I was five or six years old. Gangrene bothers me... Sorry, not the proper social chitchat over snacks. Death bothers me. Creatures in pain bother me. Damage I can’t fix bothers me. If it can live a happy life, then whatever I have to do to get the animal to that point is merely repair work. The same thing your mechanic will have to do with your radiator grille—I just do it with flesh and bone instead of metal.”

“Did you always want to be a vet?”

She laid out silverware and napkins and handed him a plate. “I wanted to be an Olympic three-day event rider. Jumping incredibly large and athletic horses over humongous fences at death-defying speeds.” She looked down at herself and let out a rueful sigh. “That was twenty pounds ago when I was seventeen. I was a good enough rider for local over-fences horse shows, but even if my pop had been able to afford a million-dollar jumper or the training and travel to go along with it, I wouldn’t have been good enough.”

“Why not?”

“Most three-day eventers at the Olympic level are certifiably insane. I have too much imagination. I could always visualize what would happen to the horse if I crashed.”

“The horse? Not you?”

This time she laughed. “Human doctors say ‘First, do no harm.’ We say ‘The animal always comes first.’”

“So my eagle took precedence over my antique automobile grille?”

“Of course it did, as you knew at the time. A lot of people would have sliced up the bird to avoid nicking their chrome. You didn’t.”

“As dearly as I love and baby that car, it is not alive. That bird, as he told us in no uncertain terms, is. No contest.”

“I have to keep warning you. He may not make it.”

“I did. He will, too.”

At the back of the kitchen was a banquette breakfast nook. He took his sandwich, slid in to one of the seats and stretched his right leg out to the side. “Be careful of my bum leg. I can be a hazard to navigation.”

“Beer, wine, water, soda?”

* * *

“I WOULD KILL for a beer.” What Stephen really wanted was a handful of opioids to cut the ache in his right leg and knee. That was what he got for being macho. He’d left his cane on the front seat of the car. And he didn’t take opioids. It would have been too easy to get hooked on them in rehab. Even if reality sucked, he preferred it to living in cloud-cuckoo-land.

“What’s with the leg?” Barbara said as she started on her sandwich.

“Hey, you’re not kidding. I know Southerners and their pimento cheese. This is exceptional.”

“Thank you. All my own work, as the street artists say in London. So, do we not mention the leg?”

“Most people don’t. They avoid staring, but I can tell they’re dying to ask about it. That’s part of the reason I’m at Emma’s. Sometimes I feel as if I am one gigantic leg with tiny little arms, legs and head sewed on around the edges.”

“I’m sorry...”

“No! Please. I don’t mind talking about it, if you don’t start every conversation from here on out with ‘And how are you today, Stephen?’”

She chuckled. “Promise.”

“Okay. I was headed home from a faculty dinner. I had not touched a drop of alcohol. I was driving a small SUV that had belonged to my wife, and a guy in a gigantic diesel pickup truck T-boned me when he ran a light. He, by the way, had three DUIs pending already. They used the Jaws of Life and several miracles to get me as far as the trauma center at the Med Hospital Trauma Center. Very much the way we got our eagle disentangled from my grille. I spent the next year getting operated on, going through rehab, getting operated on some more, more rehab, lots of titanium pins in my bones, skin grafts, yada, yada, yada. In the end, I kept my bionic leg and knee, and I’m down to a cane after a wheelchair and a walker. But I still limp, more when I’m tired.”

“And you hurt.”

He nodded. “They say that more exercises like walking and swimming will help diminish the pain. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

“Good luck with finding a public swimming pool this side of Jackson. Even this late in September, it’s still warm enough to take a dip in the little lake where Seth and Emma have their cabin, but not for much longer. And if you walk on our road out there—” she pointed toward the front of the clinic “—watch out for crazy drivers, and the occasional deer in your face.”

“Boy, are you Miss Comfort!”

“Just sayin’. I have nothing to offer you for dessert,” she said.

He took a final swig of his beer. “That was wonderful. I can make it to morning without hunger pangs.”

“I can front you breakfast stuff—eggs, bacon, bread for toast, even coffee.”

“Not necessary. Emma is taking me to Williamston so that she can introduce me to the denizens of the café. I feel as though I’m being presented at court.”

“Around here, you’re pretty much right. What are you planning to do about your poor car?”

“Call my mechanical genius in Memphis to come get it and try to locate a grille for it. In the meantime, I’ll have to rent a car. I assume there is some place to do that in town?”

Barbara waggled a hand. “If you’re lucky, our esteemed mayor, Sonny Prather, will rent you a baby truck. I assume you can’t borrow one from your wife. Obviously, her SUV didn’t survive your accident.”

He caught his breath. “Slight miscommunication. Nina, my wife, died several years ago of cancer. The night of my accident I was driving her SUV because the Triumph was in the shop. It often is. I just kept her old car as a backup for me and my daughters to use in case one of our cars was out of commission. I decided to drive my Triumph up here today instead of the sedan I bought to replace the SUV. At the moment, my younger daughter, Anne, is driving that while her car is being worked on.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, I am so sorry! I thought your wife was in Memphis.”

He reached out and laid his hand on her other arm. “Don’t be. You had no way of knowing from the way I talked. Took me a couple of years to be able even to say ‘cancer.’ Now, I think I’ve turned that last year into a kind of myth. It’s as though every time I mention it I add one more layer of scar tissue I can use to protect myself.”

“I know exactly what you mean. John—my vet partner in the clinic as well as my husband and the father of our two children—died several years ago. One of those young heart attacks, unsuspected and nearly always fatal. I felt as though someone had turned off the sun like flipping a light switch. The only thing that saved me was that I had to take over the clinic alone to support the family or starve. I had good friends who helped keep me sane. Apparently, I did a decent job, but I have almost no recollection of the first two years after John’s death. The children helped. I have a son and a daughter, Mark and Caitlyn. Those are their pictures on the mantelpiece. Suddenly, I was the sole support of the family.”

“Must have been tough. I managed to act sane until my accident, then I was doped up until I was aware enough to refuse anymore opioids, and being rehabilitated—a synonym for attempted murder. Anyway, I’ve been planning to buy a new car. This may be a good time to go ahead and do it. Let’s face it, the Triumph is my toy, but it’s not practical. I had to have the entire transmission replaced with an automatic so I could drive it safely with one completely functional foot and leg. I’ve about made up my mind to buy a small truck, except I have no idea what to buy or where to buy it.”

“You are deep in the land of the pickup. After breakfast, get Emma to take you shopping and introduce you around. Tomorrow is not one of her days doing receptionist duty here, so she’ll be free.”

“I can’t drag Emma around, the shape she’s in.”

“Don’t tell her that. Now, how about we see if you can drive your car to your house. I’ll follow you.”

“You don’t have to do that. It’s only a couple of miles. If I get stuck on the side of the road I can walk home.”

“This is the country. You do not want to be walking down this road in the middle of the night or you’ll be the one stuck on somebody’s grille.”

“Let me at least help you clean up the dishes.”

“That’s what God gave us dishwashers for.”

“May I check on our patient before we leave?”

Barbara sighed. “I’d rather check him myself after I come back from following you home. I want him kept as quiet as possible. Hey—my clinic, my rules.”

Stephen drew himself up but did not actually protest. He was not used to being questioned about his decisions. No doubt she knew her business, but she hadn’t a clue how invested he already was in the eagle. It was obvious she wanted him out of the way.

Climbing into the Triumph always took some doing. Before he attempted it, Stephen checked to see that there was no coolant leakage behind his radiator and collected a couple of small pieces of grille he’d missed earlier. The little car started and ran smoothly. The headlights of Barbara’s truck came on, and their small convoy eased out of the parking lot onto the road.

Accompanied by worrying clinks, he drove slowly and carefully, but the car ran smoothly. He pulled into the driveway in front of his new abode, shut off the engine, levered himself out from behind the wheel, grabbed his cane from the passenger’s seat and limped up to Barbara’s truck. “Thank you for everything. I’ll come by to check on him as soon as I can after breakfast.”

She leaned out her open window. “Here’s my card. Numbers for me, the clinic, my cell and my email. I’ll let you know if something changes. Mr. MacDonald—”

“Stephen, please.”

“And I’m Barbara. Try to get some sleep, and don’t worry. He obviously wants to live. Now we have to hope his will is as strong as his bones.” She pulled away and waved through her window as she drove back onto the road and turned toward the clinic.

He stood in the dark and watched her taillights until she turned the bend and disappeared. Heck of an introduction to the country, he thought. And a heck of an introduction to the most interesting woman he’d met since Nina died.

Though she was a bit too sure of herself...

CHAPTER FIVE

“AN EAGLE? REALLY?” Emma Logan swiveled as much as she could to look at Stephen in the passenger seat of her SUV. It was clearly a challenge to get the distance she needed between her stomach and the steering wheel while still being able to keep her feet on the pedals. “Have you talked to Barbara this morning? How is he?”

“I called at six thirty this morning. That was as late as I could wait. She told me she’s calling in one of her colleagues from the raptor center in Memphis to give her a hand in case she has to pin the wing. I’m glad she decided to bring in another vet. She seemed excellent, but it never hurts to have a second opinion.”

“She’s a gem, but she’s going to kill herself unless she can hire another vet to take some of the pressure off her. There is a vet south of Williamston, but he’s only interested in small animals. The closest large animal vet is in Somerville, twenty-five miles away. Seth says she and John picked this location because nobody else was practicing here. And now the locals love her, so everybody calls or just shows up when they have a problem. Some days when I’m working for her I can barely find a place to park.”

“I suspect you need earplugs.”

She laughed. “The big fancy kind. The dogs and cats aren’t the worst. It’s the pigs. Ever hear a pig squeal when it’s being restrained?”

“Probably the way that eagle screamed last night.”

“Oh, I’ll bet Little Oinky can top that eagle’s decibel level. Pigs have no defense mechanisms except flight and noise.”

“Not Olympic sprint speed, right?”

“Right, although under pressure even a full-grown domestic pig can put on a surprising turn of speed for a short distance. When anything or anyone tries to restrain them, their instinct is to squeal and run. Preferably knocking you down and stomping on you in the process.”

“I thought they ate people.”

“I think that’s an old wives’ tale. I do know, however, that hogs keep growing until they die. I rode along with Barbara to see a pig with an abscessed hoof the other day. I swear the hog, Arnold, was the size of a camping tent—and not for one person, either.’’ She looked down at her belly and sighed. “I know how he feels.”

“I didn’t ask last night,” Stephen said, “but if it’s not a rude question...”

“When am I due? First week in December. Perfect time. After Thanksgiving and before Christmas. Assuming good ol’ Kicks here can read schedules.” She patted her tummy. “Actually, I have tons of energy, unlike the first three months, when all I wanted to do was sleep and eat. Barbara says all mammals tend to do that. She’s warned me that when I start rearranging the linen closet and cleaning out the kitchen cabinets I need to watch out for labor. Sometimes I wish I was a sea horse. The daddy has full responsibility for the offspring.

“Here we are at the café. Prepare to be checked out.” She turned into the parking lot of the brick building. A small sign over the door read Café, and a sign on the window said Open. Other than that and the large number of cars in the lot at seven thirty in the morning, nothing shouted that this was the place everyone in town came for meals, if they ate out at all.

The minute Stephen opened the glass front door for Emma the noise poured out. People noise. Not jukebox or even radio. “Ah,” he said with a grin. “Nothing but conversation and cutlery.”

“Oooh,” Emma said. “I’ll have to remember that the next time my sometime boss Nathan wants me to come up with a title for a new restaurant.”

“You’re still working for Nathan? I assumed you quit when you married Seth and moved up here from Memphis.”

“Long distance via computer and cell phone. I’m not leaving the county again until Kicks is a separate entity. Between doing special projects for Nathan and running the appointment scheduling for Barbara three half days a week and supervising the addition to the house and—”

“Having a baby.”

“It’s crazy, but what would I do if I stayed home? Play video games? Listen to the men who are working on the addition to the house? They all speak Spanish, so our conversations consist mostly of smiles and charades. I’ll be glad when they are finished, so I can have my house back. Hey, my word! Here’s Barbara.”

Stephen felt his heart stop for a moment as he swiveled to look at her. He assumed she’d come to tell him the bird had not survived the night. Well, she’d warned him his rescue was unlikely to survive. He grabbed a deep breath and prepared for some new psychic pain.

She waved at them and wound her way through the restaurant to their table, speaking to nearly everyone she passed. She slipped into the seat across from him and said, “Morning, Emma, Stephen. Mind if I join you?”

“You already have,” Emma said, though she nodded and smiled. She raised a hand to catch the eye of Velma, the waitress.

“I had to come tell you personally,” Barbara said to Stephen.

“You don’t have to tell me. He didn’t make it, did he?”

Her eyes opened wide. “No, no. I should have realized you’d think... He made it through the night and swallowed a mouse whole an hour ago. Tried to devour my fingers, too. He hated the mouse, because we had to give him one of the frozen ones we keep for emergencies. I did thaw it. He grumped a bit, but he ate it eventually. At the moment, he’s trying to figure out how to remove his neck collar so he can tear off his bandages.”

“But he’s alive?”

“So far. One of my best vet buds from Land Between the Lakes park is driving over his morning. We may have to pin the wing, although checking the X-rays, I don’t think we’ll need to. If he survives that, we start the healing. Then, if that works, we start rehabilitating him—if we can figure out where to do it.”

“How can you do that without a flight cage?” Emma asked.

“We can’t. We may have to move him up to Reelfoot Lake before he heals. It’s crazy that we can’t have one closer than that. We desperately need it for all the birds we rehabilitate. In the meantime, Stephen, since he’s your responsibility...”

“I should have mentioned that last night. I’ll be totally responsible for your charges. I do have a book to write. I intend, however, to monitor his progress closely. Anything you need, I will attempt to provide for him. I plan to see him fly away without a backward glance.”

“No charges. He’s part of my work with the animal rehabilitators group. If we could clean up the outdoor cage Seth and his team built for Emma at The Hovel when she first moved here and was raising her abandoned skunk babies, we could move the bird down there once he’s out of the woods and ready to rehabilitate... It’s not adequate for a flight cage, but it will do to start off with once we dare to give him that much space. But as to responsibilities, if you want to avoid a big fine for hitting him...”

Stephen started to protest.

“I know, I know. He hit you. Tough to prove it. If you work with me on him, the law will probably cut you some slack. Killing an eagle could mean not only incurring a massive fine, but—if it could be proved it was done on purpose—you could get jail time as well. There are even restrictions about possessing an eagle feather.”

“I would hope you could testify on my behalf.”

She cut her eyes at him. “I believe you, but I did not actually witness the accident. Let’s hope the eagle heals completely and is released back into the wild. We’ll give him the best possible care.”

He hastened to assure her that he appreciated her professional skills. Although, he had only last night’s experience to rely on. He had the feeling she was not used to being questioned.

“Emma’s cage won’t be adequate for long, but we have time before a larger cage is a necessity. You could look after him between writing chapters of your book.” She turned a beatific smile on Stephen.

He felt himself being dragged into her aura. Then he caught Emma staring at him.

He stopped short of agreeing to babysit the eagle 24/7 and picked up on Barbara’s remark. “Emma has a cage? Where?”

“Quite a nice one. Didn’t you see it around the corner of your porch under the trees? Seth and his buds built it for the baby skunks Emma raised.”

“I heard about those in Memphis. The tale of Emma and her baby skunks was a seven-day wonder. Her old boss Nathan is still disgruntled because she wouldn’t allow him to bring them to town for a photo shoot for one of his public-relations projects. Why can’t it be used as a flight cage?”

“It’s tall enough, but not nearly long enough. It would have to be extended twenty feet at least.”

“Isn’t there enough room to extend it?”

“Oh, there’s enough room, but somebody has to do the work. Nobody has time or money or interest.”

Stephen realized he had all three—money, time and interest. With the eagle right around the edge of the porch from where he lived, he actually could watch out for him most of the time.

What he did not have was the physical capability to build a cage. With his leg, he would be unlikely ever to climb a ladder again and could hardly drive a nail with one hand if he held on to his cane with the other.

Velma laid down heaping breakfast plates before them, then hovered, obviously waiting for an introduction.

“Velma, this is Dr. Stephen MacDonald. Stephen, this is Velma. She will remember your breakfast order and give it to you whether you order it or not, so don’t try to change it.” She turned to Velma. “He’s moving into The Hovel for six months.”

Stephen stood and shook her hand. Hers felt rough and strong, although her nails were nearly as long as the eagle’s talons and painted bright turquoise. Her smile, however, was nearly as brilliant as Barbara’s. “I will too let you change your order. Just tell me when you come in. Otherwise you’re stuck with your usual, whatever you decide that is. I’m glad you’re gonna be across the street from Emma and Seth, Doctor. Half the time Seth’s gone way into the night and out of cell-phone range. Emma needs somebody close by to get her to the hospital.”

“Not that kind of doctor, I’m afraid,” Stephen told her. “I teach history at the university.”

“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself,” Emma said with a grin. “I’m just having a baby. My OB-GYN says first babies take a long time to come.”

“Huh. I got three, Miss Emma. Didn’t none of ’em take but a little minute. Near about didn’t get to the hospital with any of ’em.” Velma turned to Stephen. “You give her your cell-phone number, and don’t go wandering off anywhere without it, you hear.”

She whirled toward the back of the café. “All right, Darrell, hold your horses. I’ve got the coffeepot in my hand.”

Turning back to their table, she said, “Nice to meet you, Stephen. Next time I might even be willing to give you an actual menu, but don’t count on it.” She wended her way through the tables and back to the counter.

“I’d never try to go on a diet with Velma around,” Barbara said.

“The way you work,” Emma said as she buttered a piece of toast, “you need the calories or you’d pass out.”

“Velma,” Barbara called, “has the mayor been in yet this morning?”

Velma nodded toward the wide front window. “That’s his truck pulling in now. He’s late.”

“Here comes the purveyor of rental cars and everything automotive in Williamston,” Barbara said.

The man who toddled in was a couple of inches shorter than Stephen and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. The bib overalls he wore were immaculate and looked as though they had been tailored for him, then starched and ironed. Stephen glanced at his boots. A marine in boot camp would be proud of the spit shine on the cordovan leather. He’d be willing to bet they also had been made for him.

“Mornin’, you all,” the mayor boomed from the doorway. “Velma, honey...”

“I got it, Mayor,” she said and reached a gigantic coffee mug across the counter to him.

“Mayor,” Barbara called to him. “Come meet Emma’s new tenant. This is Dr. Stephen MacDonald.”

Again, Stephen stood and shook hands, then sat down again.

“Another doctor?”

“Not that kind. I teach at the university.”

Stephen saw him eye the cane beside his seat, but he didn’t comment.

“Stephen pretty much murdered his car last night,” Barbara said.

“You want us to fix it?”

“It’s a vintage Triumph,” Stephen said. “The parts will have to come off the internet or out of some salvage yard. I have a guy in Memphis who can do it. He’s going to tow it in this afternoon and try to find everything he needs. In the meantime, I can’t keep catching rides with Emma.”

“I can’t rent you a car, but a truck—sure. Little bitty or big honkin’?”

“I’ve never owned a truck. I have no idea.”

“Well, Steve, how ’bout you come on down to the place after breakfast, and I will flat out sell you one? You can’t make do with a sports car up here.” He clapped a hand on Stephen’s shoulder and came close to knocking him out of his chair.

Steve? Nobody called him Steve, Stephen thought. Not even Nina when she was furious with him. It suddenly hit him that he had crossed the threshold into another universe. He didn’t know the language or the customs. Thank God for Barbara—and Emma, of course. Why had he put Barbara first? He’d known her less than twenty-four hours. But then maybe wallowing in blood together, or something approximating wallowing, gave them a kind of kinship he didn’t have with his daughter’s friends or even his academic friends.

“Join us, Mr. Mayor?” Emma asked.

“No, darlin’, I got to get on down to the showroom. Just came in to pick up my coffee and a couple of sweet rolls.” He turned to Stephen. “You let Emma drop you down at the showroom. I’ll rent or sell you wheels. And if I don’t, I’ll have one of my people run you back to your house.”

“Thank you.”

Sonny took the sack Velma handed him in one hand and his mug in the other, did a 360-degree wave to the patrons and staff with the sack hand, then toddled back out the door.

Interested to see what the major drove, Stephen stood, then nearly fell over again at the decibel level of the horn that blasted as the man drove out of the parking lot.

“That thing has more chrome on it than an eighteen-wheeler,” Stephen said. “And it’s nearly as big.”

“He owns the dealership,” Emma said.

“As well as the feed store, most of the rental property in Williamston and heaven knows how much more,” Barbara added. “In the country, Stephen, a man’s truck is a symbol of his place in the community.”

“Like a knight’s armor or the caparison of his warhorse?” Stephen asked.

“Pretty much. I’ve got to get back to open the clinic,” Barbara said. She reached for her check, but Stephen got there first.

“This is for the pimento cheese last night and for keeping Orville alive.”

“Orville?”

“Better than Wilbur.”

Barbara said over her shoulder, “Emma, explain to him about naming rescues, will you? Don’t do it, Stephen. If you don’t keep your distance, keep your objectivity about your rescues, it’s a disservice both to the animals and yourself. Besides, it can break your heart.”

He felt as though Barbara had taken a tiny bit of peace with her when the door shut behind her. Ridiculous. But he made a mental note to call her in the afternoon and offer to drive back to Williamston in whatever new vehicle he would be driving to pick up a pizza for their dinner. After all, he needed to check on Orville. Orville? When had the blasted bird become Orville? Just happened. But Orville he was, for better or worse alive or, heaven forbid, dead. So much for not naming your rescues. Please, let Orville not break his heart.

“Stephen,” Emma said and laid a hand on his sleeve. “Everybody hates advice, but I’m going to give you some anyway. Barbara is a wonderful person and a great veterinarian. She is also a one-man woman, and that man died five years ago.”

He felt as though she’d slapped him. “And that has to do with me how?”

“Come on. I saw the way you looked at her. If you’d been a puppy, you’d have rolled over to have your tummy scratched.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was impressed at the way she handled Orville.”

“There is not an unattached—or in some cases attached—male in the county or beyond who has not tried to court Barbara since John died. She ignores them. She works too hard, and when she relaxes, it’s with friends like Seth and me. She’s never moved on from John and has never shown the slightest interest in doing it. She says she’s comfortable with the life she has and hasn’t room for any complications.”

“Fine. We should do well together, then. She has her John. I have my Nina. Never the twain shall meet. Shall we go? I need wheels. Then I need to go check on Orville.”

As he climbed into Emma’s SUV, he admitted that he didn’t want to lose touch with Barbara even if Orville died. She didn’t want to move on from her John, just as he wouldn’t ever move on from Nina. Nothing wrong with a friendship.

Maybe offering to build an extension to Emma’s cage, making it suitable for Orville’s flight training, might lift his credit with Barbara a hair.

Two hours later, he drove out of the mayor’s automobile dealership in a bright red crew cab pickup with every bell and whistle the mayor could cram into it. Remembering their discussion about status and trucks at breakfast, he figured this particular truck would qualify as “honkin’” and give him the status of a knight in the good-ol’-boy hierarchy.

He was used to sitting in the confined quarters of his Triumph, freezing in the winter and roasting in the summer. This particular truck could no doubt reverse that—it was capable of freezing him in the summer and roasting him in the winter. For the first time since his accident, however, he could actually stretch out his bum leg and not have to stop every twenty miles or so to rub the pain out of it.

Silly to pay so much attention to a truck, but he felt as though he’d stepped through a portal into a weird new era in his life. How Nina would have laughed! She’d have presented him with a straw farmer’s hat and a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

God, how he missed her! All those years she had kept him on an even keel whenever he was exasperated about his students’ lack of interest or annoyed at the frequent idiocy of his colleagues. His former dean had once warned him that the smaller the academic fiefdom, the harder the faculty fought for control of it.

Until Nina had died he’d been right up there on the front lines, battling as hard as his colleagues for the optimum teaching schedule, the best teaching assistants, the most lucrative contracts for writing textbooks. Even the closest parking space to his office.

Since she’d died, none of it meant anything. He understood for the first time what it meant to want to swap places to save a loved one. He’d always thought Sydney Carton in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities was an idiot to go to the guillotine to save someone else. To save Nina, however, he’d have chased that tumbrel down the Champs-Élysées and jumped on board.

Rather than drive straight back home, he decided to wander along the back roads. He and Nina used to enjoy driving out and getting hopelessly lost on Sunday afternoons. Not so easy to do in the familiar environs around his house in Memphis. Here, however, every road was new to him. And beautiful. In southern fall, the trees were finally changing colors. He drove past his new house without turning into the driveway and on down past Barbara’s clinic. He hadn’t seen it in daylight and had not expected to see the parking lot filled with trucks and vans.

The mayor’s advice had been right on. The Triumph would have stood out like a Roman chariot. He wanted to turn in and told himself it was to check on Orville, but Barbara would be working, possibly saving some other animal’s life. Without Emma’s holding down the phones, he had no idea how Barbara coped. From the number of vehicles in the lot he could see her need for an additional vet.

He would certainly need a break from his writing. Maybe he could offer to walk down—emphasis on the walk part—to add his volunteer efforts to Emma’s.

Down the road a bit farther he caught the sparkle of water off to his left. Seth had said there was a good-sized lake over there that emptied into the Tennessee River. Maybe he should see if he could rent a canoe.

He drove for over an hour without crossing the same path twice. For him driving was a method of getting from one place to another, but in this behemoth he was actually having a pleasant time.

He stopped at the convenience store that he’d been headed to last evening and discovered it also served takeout. Not what he was used to in the drive-throughs in town, but fried chicken, barbecue, fried catfish and steamed vegetables. Heavy on the fried, but it all looked delicious. He left with enough supplies to provide lunch, dinner and tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Dinner for Barbara as well, if she’d agree to join him. It would be better than pizza. If Emma was correct, Barbara probably would not agree to have dinner with him unless he could convince her that he wasn’t intruding on her solitary lifestyle. Both of them had to eat. Why not together?

He turned off the main road by a sign that read Marina, found the lake and ate lunch at a picnic bench in the trees.

How many meals had he eaten alone since Nina’s death? How much of it had been tasteless hospital food, eaten while staring at blank walls in rehab?

Here he didn’t feel alone. A cheeky crow landed two feet from him and, after alerting every creature in the vicinity that there was a human being around, stalked back and forth demanding that Stephen share.

He did.

He was preparing to toss his last morsel of biscuit to the raven when he heard a voice behind him.

“Better watch it. He’ll mug you for that biscuit.”

“He’s getting up his nerve to attack,” Stephen said as he turned. “Well, Seth Logan. Won’t you join me? I have an extra ham-and-cheese sandwich, some potato chips and a couple of sodas.”

“Already had lunch, thanks,” Seth said as he took the seat along the other side of the picnic table. “I’ll take one of those sodas, however. Diet, if you have one.”

“Yep, diet, and no longer terribly cold. My fancy new truck has a built-in cooler, but I have no idea how it works. I may actually have to read the manual—something I avoid doing if possible.”

“There speaks a college professor,” Seth said as he popped the top on his soda. He took a long swig. “So, this is your replacement for the Triumph? Rented or bought? And before you tell me, remember I know our esteemed mayor.”

“If you guessed bought, you’d be correct. Isn’t it outrageous? I do not have an ‘ooga’ horn like the mayor’s, although he lobbied long and hard to add one. My next stop is the local boot shop. These very expensive trainers don’t seem appropriate.”

“You can’t do all that walking you’re supposed to do in cowboy boots, my friend. You’ll be back in rehab in a week.”

“Ah, but there is method in my madness. The boots will live in the truck for when I want to show off the new good-ol’-boy Stephen. Or, according to the mayor, ‘Steve.’ I will break them in slowly.”

“Don’t use neat’s-foot compound, use the oil.”

“Amazingly enough, I know that. My youngest daughter, Anne, is a horse trainer. I have scrubbed my share of tack.

“Anne reminds me of Barbara. She has the same sort of connection with animals. They are more important to her than people. She can get annoyed when anyone interferes in her relationship with them. I suspect that’s why there are no current men in her life. Not that I am aware of, at any rate.”

“Speaking of relationships, how’s your eagle?”

“Alive. In a permanent state of fury at his confinement. Last night when I saw him, he had already perfected the guilt-inducing glare. I never considered that human doctors have one set of anatomy to learn, while Barbara treats everything from a bald eagle to somebody’s pet Gila monster with dermatitis.”

Seth laughed. “Somebody around here owns a Gila monster?”

“I have no idea. The example is sound, however. She seems to have constructed a way of life that only works if nothing except an animal emergency interferes and throws off her schedule.”

“Nothing?” Seth asked. “Or no one?” Seth tossed his empty drink can at an open trash container some distance away. The can landed precisely in the center without touching the sides. “Three points,” he said and stood. “Back to work.”

“What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Never-ending checking. Sam, who runs this marina, keeps an eye out for suspicious characters. Couple of the big marinas down on Kentucky Lake have had some break-ins lately. I need to see if he’s had any trouble or noticed anything suspicious.” He picked up his clipboard. “Thanks for the soda. Emma says you’re coming for dinner this evening, correct?”

He’d completely forgotten. So much for asking Barbara to join him for dinner. He considered asking Seth whether Emma had invited Barbara, but he didn’t want to show untoward interest in someone else’s guest list.

“Barbara’s supposed to show up if she gets finished at the clinic and doesn’t get called out on an emergency. She doesn’t often go out except to our house,” Seth said. “She’s usually worn out at the end of the day.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Stephen said, with a shiver of pleasure that he tried to ignore. No big deal. Just friends. “Should I bring something?”

“Not a thing. Emma is a great arranger. Just show up.” He walked down toward the marina office at the end of the small pier.

Stephen collected, bagged and deposited his trash into the bin. Interesting that Seth had not said his wife was a great cook.

The crow flew off with a final caw that expressed its disappointment at not being given more treats.

Stephen watched the main and jib sails being raised on a small cruising sailboat in the cove. It was late afternoon. The wind was almost nonexistent, but the boat managed to glide through the water toward the exit from the inlet and out into the lake beyond. A man stood at the helm while a woman lounged beside him.

He and Nina had owned and sailed a twenty-four-foot boat when the girls were young, but they’d sold it once the girls grew to the age where they resented being away from their friends and their preferred activities on the weekends. Maybe he should invest in a small day sailer while he stayed up here close to the water. Compared to ski boats, day sailers were relatively inexpensive and didn’t need a slip at a marina. They could be towed back and forth to a house.

As he watched the pair on their small boat relaxing together, content with one another, he felt one of those sudden pangs of grief that hit him like a boxer’s jab in the gut. What did any of it matter without Nina?

He would hate sailing alone. How could he thrill to a coral-and-peach Southern sunset without being able to share the experience with her? He’d always considered himself a loner, a man who enjoyed his own company. His writing and research were a solitary occupation. He’d been surprised to discover how lonely he was.

Working alone in his study while Nina read a book in the den—when he could share some arcane factoid he had just discovered simply by calling out to her—was different from working alone and knowing that no one would answer or care.

Did everyone who had lost a partner find that the little things brought his loss home to him most poignantly? The odor of peaches from her shampoo in the shower; knowing that the special orange marmalade for his toast would be sitting on the breakfast-room table; reaching for a clean shirt and feeling the extra starch she always had the cleaners iron into his collars; the way she rolled his socks—a million small things she did for him he’d taken for granted as a part of his life. The small things he’d done for her in return, he’d often griped about. When he was forced to drive her car, he invariably had to fill up the gas tank or risk running out of gas on his way to the college. Every morning he continued to make their king-size bed because a made-up bed had been important to her. How he wished she was still around to fuss at him if he left it a tangle of sheets.

This was no way to live.

Is that the way Barbara felt about the loss of her husband? Was she as lonely as he was?

He loved his children, but they were building their own memories. He wasn’t building any new ones with anyone at all. Well, he supposed he had built a new memory last night with Barbara.

But for her, professional challenges seemed sufficient. Clients, not friends—except for Emma and Seth. But was that enough to base a life on? There was more to life than work. More than being alone at the end of the day.

Deep within him something stirred.

“Enough with the pity party,” he said as he climbed into his new truck. “I’ve got a life to live, and by God, it is not going to be made up of leftovers.

* * *

BARBARA STRIPPED, DROPPED her bloody overalls into the hamper, jumped into the shower and scrubbed her whole body with the face soap with the exfoliator in it. It scratched a little, but it would remove the lingering scent of cow’s blood she’d gotten covered with when she’d pulled out that doggone oversize Brahman calf. He would have killed himself and his mother if he’d stayed in her womb much longer.

She could live on a diet of miracles like this. It was enough fulfillment for one lifetime. It had to be.

She badly needed a big miracle to get Orville up in the air again. Orville? At least it was better than Wilbur. And the Wright brothers did finally get up in the air.

She leaned against the wall of the shower and realized she was sobbing. Miracles were no longer enough. She was desperately lonely for someone to share a high five with after a win, like she’d had with that healthy calf. And just as lonely for someone to share the grief and pain of losing against her old enemy, death.

She told herself she was simply exhausted. Pure release of tension. But it was more than that. The way the cow had licked her wet, new baby so gently, she could nearly touch the love. She couldn’t go on making do with secondhand love. But could there ever be anything else for her? Did she dare to reach for it?

She had never been as frightened in her life. Staying the same, protecting the borders of her life and her heart was safe. Did she even know how to change? Did she want to?

This was Stephen’s fault. Before he strode into her life, she’d thought she was content with the status quo.

She finished drying off and ran a comb through her wet hair. Then she raced into her bedroom to don clean underwear, a red polo shirt and ironed jeans. No time for makeup—just moisturizer and lipstick. She had to go to dinner with wet hair. She ran a comb through it again, plumped it up with her fingers, put on clean sneakers, grabbed her handbag and ran down the barn aisle to the parking lot. She refused to think. She hardened her heart against the soft, pleading eyes of the latest crop of abandoned fawns she was fostering. They hung their heads over the stall door. Hard to resist, but she knew they’d already been fed.

“You have been fed, knock it off,” she said as she ran by. “You, too, Mabel. Don’t you hiss at me, you goose. I’ll smoke you for Christmas, see if I don’t.”

Mabel, used to empty threats, hissed and flapped her wings but retreated. Her goslings fluttered back under their mother.

* * *

SHE PULLED INTO Seth’s driveway only twenty minutes late. An animal emergency always trumped dinner plans, but she tried to keep to a polite schedule. Across the street, in front of the house Stephen MacDonald was renting, sat a shiny red truck. Even from here, she could tell it was an outrageously overdressed monster. So, Mayor Sonny had seduced the good professor into a sale. He’d never allow anyone to rent that chariot.

Seth opened the door to her. She was surprised to hear two voices from the living room—Emma’s voice and a baritone male.

Her heart gave a lurch. Stephen MacDonald. And here she looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet. Which she had. He would probably be dressed as though he’d helicoptered in from Savile Row in London, where the bespoke tailors hung out. No woman liked looking like a rag doll with a strange man around. All that emotion that had hit her so unexpectedly while she was in the shower did not mean she wanted to open the gates and let him or anyone else into her life. She had no intention of taking so much as a baby step outside her comfort zone.

Face it—she was scared. Better not to care than to care and lose again, the way she’d lost John. But she was finding it difficult to remain cool and detached around Stephen. He definitely made her heart speed up.

What on earth could interest a man like Stephen in a woman like her? Okay, so they had shared a life-and-death moment with the eagle. They had a connection, but only as doctor and client.

Her defenses were thin at the moment. High time she beefed them up.

When she came in to the living room, Emma turned to smile at her, but made no attempt to climb out of the leather recliner where she sat with her feet up. Twisting even that far didn’t look easy.

Stephen stood. He was nearly as tall as Seth, but thinner. He wore pristine chinos, a gray polo shirt and a pair of cordovan loafers that looked downright burnished. Not Savile Row, but not from a discount store, either. A dark wood cane topped by a wolf’s head leaned against the arm of the sofa. Not the plain aluminum cane he’d used at the café. A formal cane? Maybe he had one to go with every outfit.

“White or red?” Seth called from the kitchen.

“White, thanks,” Barbara said as she came forward to shake Stephen’s hand. It felt smooth, unlike her hands, eternally rough from too much soaking in horse liniment and antiseptic. “Remember I warned you about naming him, but I find myself calling him Orville, too, so I guess Orville he is. He’s settling down, although he is still irate and blaming you,” she said to Stephen.

“I am innocent, Your Honor,” he said. “How come you escape the blame?”

“Oh, he’d probably tear a strip off me, too, if he could reach me. But maybe he’s smart enough to know who hit him.”

“I keep telling you...”

She grinned.

After a second, he grinned back at her. “Is he doing all right? I’ve been worried, but I hesitated to keep calling your office for updates.”

“He’s holding his own. Thank you for not calling back every five minutes the way some of my clients do. We’re just too busy to field all the calls. Things do slow down a bit in the fall and winter. Breeding season is over for many species, like horses, and dogs and cats seem to stick closer to home, so they don’t get hit by cars quite as often.”

“How is the search for Mr. Right coming?” Emma asked. She turned to Stephen. “Barbara is finally on the hunt for another vet to help share the load. She’s needed one for donkey’s years.”

“Dr. Right, please. I’m open to somebody fresh out of vet school, to either a male or female associate veterinarian. And, yes, I’ve had several inquiries, but I haven’t scheduled any interviews yet. This is quite a ways to drive for an interview, so I’m trying to take care on the front end. I don’t want to interview somebody that doesn’t look good on paper.” She held up a hand. “But—and this is a good but—I’ve had a promising answer to my ad for an office assistant. I’m seeing her tomorrow morning. You can help interview and choose if she’ll do.”

“Yeah!” Emma said. “I don’t know how long I can keep working without having someone trundle me around in a wheelbarrow. I really can’t manage anything but paperwork without help. I’m so ready to have this baby I’m considering driving down bumpy roads to hurry things up a tad.”

“You still have two months left, tiger,” Seth said.

“And first babies frequently come late,” Stephen added.

“The bumpy-road thing is an old wives’ tale,” Barbara said. “My first was three weeks late, and I hit all the potholes I could find. They come when they want to. You will never be more out of control. Relax and put up with it.”

“Ooh, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine,” Emma said with a grin. “No more baby talk. Tell us about Orville. How’s he doing?”

“As well as can be expected. Maybe a little better,” Barbara answered. “We ended up not having to pin his break, just immobilize it.”

“At some point I have to take a statement from you, Stephen. It’s the responsibility of us fish-and-wildlife game wardens,” Seth said. “I have to write up the incident and fill out a bunch of forms. It’s a good thing you drove straight to Barbara’s and got help.”

“I’m willing to stipulate in my professional opinion it was an unavoidable accident, in which Dr. MacDonald was in no way at fault,” Barbara said. She lifted her glass to Stephen and took a sip, then winked at him.

* * *

SO SHE HAD decided to back him up. Stephen would thank her later when they were alone.

“Good. Otherwise, Stephen, you might wind up before a judge. The fine can be up to five thousand dollars with possible jail time.”

“But wouldn’t that be if you shot it?” Emma asked.

“I’ve already volunteered to pay any vet charges associated with the incident,” Stephen said.

“And he’s going to help with the rehabilitation,” Barbara said.

“I am?” Stephen glanced at her quizzically. “I haven’t any idea how to do something like that.”

“You’ll learn. There really isn’t anyone else available without interfering with the work at the clinic. Write that as part of your report, Seth. And you, Stephen, smile and say ‘of course I am.’”

Seth laughed. “My friend, I think you have just been expertly sandbagged.”

“The main problem is that I don’t have a flight cage,” Barbara said. “The closest one is in Kentucky, and I don’t want to move Orville out of Tennessee.”

“Then you shouldn’t,” Stephen said. “We’d have no way of tracking his progress, knowing if he was getting the proper care...”

“It may be the only solution to the lack of a flight cage. In my professional opinion, he’s better off where he is for the moment, but that could change. Dealing with the federal government over an accident involving a protected species and dealing with the state of Tennessee, too—I do not even want to think about adding another state’s regulations and bureaucrats. More red tape that might interfere with Orville’s healing, not good for Orville’s recovery. I know what I’m dealing with in Tennessee, and I trust myself.”

“With you he’s getting the best possible care,” Stephen said. “Why would anyone purposely hurt a bald eagle?”

“Men and their trophies,” Barbara said.

“I have a theory that the only reason we have survived to evolve this far is because we taste bad.” The others began to laugh. She held up her hands. “No, listen. Most young, healthy predators avoid killing human beings in favor of yummier meals for themselves and their young. When the hunters take out a man-eater, they generally find that it’s old or diseased and too slow to run away.”

“How about grizzlies?” Stephen asked.

“Animals basically want to assure their DNA is passed on to the next generation,” Stephen said. “The same thing Orville wants.”

“Orville probably has mated for life,” Barbara said. “For tough birds, they can seem to be extremely romantic. When they mate, they lock their talons together high up in the atmosphere and fall and fall until you think they’re going to plummet to the ground, before they break apart and soar again.”

“We’re going to send Orville soaring again to find his lady,” Stephen said and patted her hand.

She withdrew it quickly. “Talk about counting chickens! Don’t say things like that—it’s bad luck.”

“Then let’s talk about you instead.” He grinned at her. “Why did you become a veterinarian? And don’t most women gravitate to small-animal practices? Dogs and cats?”

Barbara looked away and shrugged. She seemed casual, but Stephen had noticed that when she talked about something important to her, her earlobes turned pink. He thought it endearing and wondered what she’d do if he nibbled one.

Smack him, probably, or give him a what-on-earth? stare. Even the way she sat slightly turned away from him said “Keep your distance.”

Fine. He intended to, but he rather enjoyed looking at her pink earlobes.

“I like animals,” she said simply. “Even when I was little, if it breathed, I wanted to keep it.” She turned the palm of her hand toward him. “See that little scar?” She pointed to a raised place beside the thumb. “When I was about five I tried to catch a baby raccoon. Its mother was opposed and bit me.”

“Did you have to take rabies shots?” Emma asked.

“The old-fashioned kind in the stomach,” Barbara said. “That should have cured me, but it didn’t. More and more women are going in for large-animal practices. I met John at orientation the first day of classes. Neither of us ever looked at anyone else again.” She stared into the fireplace, took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.

Stephen caught the glint of tears in the firelight. He’d done his crying where no one could see or hear him, but he knew what she felt. That big open hole that seemed unfillable. He would’ve liked to put his arms around her and let her cry on his shoulder.

If he no longer wanted a leftover life to live, maybe he could convince her she didn’t want one, either. He knew Nina would have been furious at him for wallowing in grief for so long. From the little he had heard about the man, he strongly suspected John would have been just as annoyed at Barbara.

From the kitchen came a ding. Emma rocked her chair back into place. “Seth, darling, where have you hidden the forklift?”

The dinner was simple but tasty. Spaghetti Bolognese, a big salad, French bread and cheesecake. “The cheesecake is from the café in Williamston,” Emma admitted. “Seth knows I am no great shakes as a cook. But I’m trying.”

They all made appropriate complimentary noises. Without being asked, Barbara took over cleaning duties so that Emma could enjoy the company.

“May I help?” Stephen asked.

Emma shook her head. “I count as family. You still count as company. Go sit.”

“Are you sure?”

“Go. How’s the addition coming?” she called to the living room. “From here the kitchen looks pretty much finished.”

“Nearly,” Emma called back. “Seth’s mother, Laila, is going to try to come over this weekend to help get it all put back in order. Seth, why don’t you give them the grand tour?”

* * *

STEPHEN WAS SURPRISED how much of the construction had been finished fast. The nursery—buttercup-yellow, as Emma had said—was finished, complete with a crib and a roomy, plush rocking chair.

Barbara joined them as soon as she put the dishes into the dishwasher and scrubbed the counters.

“I never had a rocking chair that luxurious when John and I had our two,” Barbara said. “There was no way I could breast-feed and set up a new practice at the same time, let alone build the clinic and the barn with our apartment. John and I split feeding duties, and our old rocking chair felt comforting to the babies whoever was on bottle duty.”

“Where are your kids now?” Stephen asked. They clearly didn’t live with her. He would have noticed the signs during their shared meal.

“They both live in Nashville,” she said. “Mark works part-time as a sound engineer for some of the smaller groups that play there. It’s a crazy job, but he loves it. He wants to travel before he thinks about settling down, though. My daughter is in sales at a boutique hotel in Nashville and very much one of the young social set. She shows no sign of settling down, either.”

“Then we have something in common,” Stephen said. “My elder daughter, Elaine, worked in sales at The Peabody until she married. My younger daughter, Anne, works as a waitress and bartender to make enough money to support her horse. She’d love to make a full-time career as a horse trainer eventually...”

“But very few people can,” Barbara said. “My condolences. Horse-crazy daughters generally have fewer problems in adolescence, but speaking from experience, anything to do with horses is hard, expensive and time-consuming, and isolates you from the non-horse-crazy.”

When they came back from the short house tour, Barbara took one look at Emma and whispered, “She’s sound asleep. Time for us to go, Seth. Come on, Stephen.” Seth followed them out onto the front porch. Barbara stood on tiptoes and gave him a kiss. “I hope this new girl will work out for me. It’s time for Emma to cut her hours. And how about your hours?” she asked Seth. “Are you taking any more time off?”

“As much as I can, and I’m giving Earl most of the tough jobs that require traveling all over the county. Stephen, Earl’s my partner,” Seth explained. “We’re heading into black-powder season for deer hunting. That means more, rather than less, work. I’m like you, Barbara, pretty much on call all the time.”

Stephen waited on the porch while Seth helped Emma to move from the recliner to the bedroom, then walked across the street to his own little house. He’d considered inviting Barbara in for a final cup of coffee. But he assumed she’d decline.

He climbed into his truck and backed out of his driveway to follow her home. He’d never allowed a woman to reach her door unaccompanied in his life. His mother would have killed him.

He’d forgotten the motion-sensor lights. The moment he pulled his truck behind the clinic, the area was flooded with enough light to curtail a prison break.

An instant later, Barbara’s door flew open.

“Stephen, what on earth?” she said as he climbed out.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. May I say good night to Orville?” And maybe garner an invitation to come in for a cup of coffee?

Unlikely.

“Fine. Now that he’s in a cage in the barn, you don’t have to go into the clinic to visit him. Thank you, Stephen, for following me home. If you don’t mind, I’m off to bed.”

And she was.

He found Orville, who waked instantly and made a sleepy attempt at a squeal before tucking his head under his sound wing and subsiding back into sleep.

“Good night, big guy. May you dream of field mice scampering around just waiting to be gobbled up. I, on the other hand, will dream about being invited to Barbara’s for coffee one day.”

CHAPTER SIX

IT WASN’T TOO late for Stephen to call Anne at home in Memphis. Although she would love to get an apartment, her horse was a drain on her income, and Stephen had never charged her any rent. She had a separate apartment on the third floor. He’d been grateful to have someone in the big old place with him, someone to have breakfast with once in a while. Between horses and her two jobs, she had very little free time.

He only saw Elaine on the occasional Sunday. Now that he could no longer play golf, his Sunday afternoons were free. But Elaine’s visits were pity calls—always short and usually boring. He and Elaine had never had anything in common. Nina swore that Elaine had been born judgmental, and he was most often in her crosshairs. He liked Roger, her husband, who was a lawyer for several large Memphis-based corporations, but again, they had very little in common. Roger tended to pontificate about ideas that Stephen considered to the right of Nero and spent as many hours of his weekend as Elaine allowed him playing golf.

His own two had taught him that most adults had no respect for children. They might love them but refused to admit that sometimes children had a right to be irate when parents did things like get divorces. He often did not agree with Anne and Elaine, but he had always respected their opinions, even when he thought they were boneheaded.

Sometimes, however, it was difficult to respect Elaine’s ideas. He had tried to teach both girls that they could set forth any opinion, but they must be willing to back it up. Anne could always give him a backup for her opinions, even if Stephen thought they were ludicrous. Elaine, on the other hand, was of the because-I-said-so school.

When Anne picked up her cell phone, he could hear the noise of the bar she tended in the background. “Are you too busy to talk?” he asked.

“Daddy? I have time. It’s quiet right now.”

“If what I am hearing is quiet, I dread to think what a crowd sounds like.”

“Give me a second to get back to the office.” A moment later the ambient crowd noise went away. “There, the door’s shut. Are you sick of the country and itching to come home yet? Or, considering the bugs, just itching?”

“I’m barely settled in. I thought you’d be enjoying having the house to yourself. You are alone, aren’t you?”

“You think I’m having wild parties?”

“I hope not. My homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover raves.”

“Well, I am not having any raves...or any dates, more’s the pity. You need to return your calls to all your lady friends. They keep leaving messages inviting you to everything from dinner to the theater.”

“Please do not tell them where I am or give them my new cell-phone number.”

“I can’t believe you changed your number when you got your new phone. Who does that? Members of a drug cartel?”

“I intend to keep the number when I go back into the classroom. In the meantime, a new number cuts down on nuisance calls. It’s the number the department will give out to students who are about to miss deadlines to turn in their essays and beg for more time.”

“Which you won’t give them.”

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