Mother, Please! (11 page)

“It looks like an engagement ring,” she said.

“It is an engagement ring,” he replied, and it had to be the first time she’d ever heard any insecurity in his voice.

“It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. Where did you get it?”

“In town.”

“Tonight?”

“That’s why I missed dinner.” He touched her cheek. “What do you think, April? Do you want it?”

Of course she
wanted
it. But this was crazy. They were so different. “This is what you’re betting?”

He nodded and, taking her hands, kissed her fingertips. “That’s not all.”

“What else?” she breathed.

“My heart.”

She must have heard him wrong. He was one of
the most eligible bachelors in America. He couldn’t be offering his heart to
her.
“Is this a joke?”

“No.”

“But you’re not—I mean, we’ve known each other only a short time. And what about all those other women?” Women who were so much better suited to him!

He scowled. “I haven’t been a saint, April. But I haven’t been as bad as you seem to believe. I was kidding about the fifteen hundred notches in my bedpost. You know that, right? And I’ll always be true to you, I swear.”

She swallowed hard at the sincerity in his voice. “But…what’s the hurry? Shouldn’t we get to know each other better?”

“I already know you well enough.” He rose up on his knees, kissed her temple, her forehead, her mouth. “Come on, April. Take a risk,” he murmured. “Take a risk on me.”

She couldn’t find any words.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking. At least, I’m trying to think. My brain isn’t really cooperating.”

“I don’t want you to analyze this. Some decisions have to be based on pure gut instinct. This is one of them.”

“You know more about instinct than I do,” she
admitted. “Just tell me one thing, Gunner. Because…I have to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you love me?” She held her breath as she waited for his reply.

“I’ve never proposed to a woman before, April. Does that answer your question?”

April closed her eyes as she felt the most powerful emotion she’d ever experienced. “Okay,” she whispered, letting her lips curve in a smile. “I see your ring, and your heart, and will match it with my own.”

He grinned. “What kind of wedding do you want?”

“A family-only church affair in California, okay?”

“Perfect. You plan the wedding. I’ll plan the honeymoon.”

“What about my father’s business?”

“I’ll leave that up to you. We can buy it if you want. But I should probably warn you that I’m going to be busy for the next few years.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, different things. Buying you a vacation house down here, since you like it so well. Helping out with the kids, giving them racing lessons—”

“Did you say
racing
lessons?” she broke in. “As in
car
racing lessons?”

“Um, I meant I’ll be coaching their soccer teams.”

She laughed. “And to think I wanted out of my staid existence. Something tells me I just landed in the fast lane.”

“Maybe. But it’s going to be the ride of your life, sweet April,” he said, and slid the ring onto her finger.

C
LAIRE
A
SHTON FELT
as nervous as a new bride. There’d been times over the past decade when she’d worried that her bright, serious daughter would never step out of her lab long enough to find a man and get married. Yet here April was, on her wedding day, looking beautiful in her simple but elegant white satin gown and stylish veil. Part of her dark hair was pinned up with tiny pearls for accent and curls cascaded down her back. She was walking up the aisle on Walt’s arm, carrying a bouquet of pink roses that matched the healthy blush in her cheeks.

Gunner stood at the altar, wearing a traditional black tux. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. Which was perfectly understandable to Claire—April was special.

They make a good couple,
Claire thought as Gunner took April’s hands and they began to exchange vows.

“I, April Ashton, promise to love, honor and cherish…”

Feeling an overwhelming sense of pride, Claire glanced up at Walt, who’d come to sit next to her after leaving April’s side, and found him staring at her. He’d had his surgery nearly a month ago and had lost a good deal of weight. But the color was coming back into his face, and she could tell he was starting to feel better.

When their eyes met, he took her hand and brushed a kiss across her knuckles, and she knew she was back where she belonged, at the side of the man she’d married for better or worse thirty-three years ago. Somehow, despite everything, they’d found new, common ground and deeper commitment.

Turning her attention back to the ceremony, Claire watched Gunner kiss her daughter sweetly once the pastor had pronounced them husband and wife. She sniffed as tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn’t even try to hold them back. Today, happy tears went with the territory.

As April and Gunner broke apart, Claire stood so she could approach them. But Walt stopped her.

April threw her father a conspiratorial smile and guided Gunner to the left, where they sat in the front pew.

“What’s happening?” Claire whispered, confused. No wedding she’d ever attended had the bride and groom taking a seat in the audience. The
ceremony was over. It was time for the organ music to swell and the young couple to rush out of the church while being pelted with rice. “Why aren’t they leaving?”

“Because there’s still one thing left to do,” he said. Then he stood and led her to the altar.

“Most of you know that Claire and I have had some trouble this past year,” he announced to their small audience of family and friends. “We almost divorced, mostly because of my own foolishness. But because of Claire, and her ability to forgive, that’s behind us now. To show her how much she means to me, I’d like to exchange vows with her again, if she’ll speak them with me.”

As Claire glanced into the audience, more tears slipped down her cheeks. Her widowed mother, who was nearly eight-five, sat in the second row. Her sister and brother-in-law and their large, rambunctious family sat there, too. Gina Roper, April’s next-door neighbor, who’d been a friend to Claire throughout her darkest hour, was perched on the pew behind them, beaming at her. Gunner’s father and a couple of dozen relatives filled the pews on the other side.

“Will you marry me again, Claire?” Walt asked, his voice trembling with emotion.

Claire smiled at April and Gunner, then returned her gaze to her husband of thirty-three years. He
was watching her with a hopeful expression, his sincerity shining in his eyes. She’d almost lost him. But he was back, and the nightmare was over. “What else can I do?” she said simply. “I love you.”

Jill Shalvis

I
F ASKED
,
Melissa Anders would say her life was perfect. But when no one was looking, she sometimes took a deep breath, let it all out in a baffled sigh, and wondered how the hell she’d ended up here.

Here being out in the middle of California, in the small, quaint Martis Hills, treating various farm-animal ailments instead of the upscale, spoiled, snobby, pedigreed cats and dogs as she’d planned.

Sure, she loved being a veterinarian. But somehow during those long, exhausting college years, when she’d worked so hard to keep up her grades and scrape together enough cash to live at the same time, she’d never imagined living amongst rolling hills and farmland, where there were more cattle than people, running one of only two vet clinics for miles and miles.

The people in town—and having grown up in Los Angeles she used the word
town
loosely—were all a bit…
too friendly.
They popped in on her uninvited, asked nosy questions and basically talked
her ear off. Some even brought cookies, or amazingly delicious casseroles.

She’d waited to see what their angle was, but having been here for a few months now, no angle had materialized. Maybe she’d moved to Mayberry.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like people, but that she preferred animals. Animals accepted. Animals loved unconditionally. Animals never, ever, gave up their young because they wanted a career in the ballet and couldn’t be bothered to raise a baby.

Oops, a self-pity slip, she thought, as she got out of her car, smoothing down her plain black trousers and white blouse. She headed up the path to the large farmhouse that years ago had been converted into an animal clinic by Dr. Myers. He’d just retired to Phoenix to be with his elderly sister, and Melissa had leased it with an option to buy—not that she ever intended to do any such insane thing. But the place was cheap, at least to her LA standard, and with her college loan debt still hanging over her, she needed cheap.

That was what had brought her here, she told herself, curiosity about small-town living. The low cost of the lease. It had nothing, nothing at all, to do with the fact she’d been born here twenty-eight years ago.

And that her mother lived here.

She grimaced and shook her head. No. The truth
was, she’d come here because in some deep recess of her heart she’d wanted to be close to the only family she had. Which really pissed her off when she thought about it too hard, so she tried not to think about it at all.

She unlocked the front door to the clinic, flipped on the lights and took a deep breath, which never failed to make her smile. Nothing like the smell of disinfectant to get her going in the morning.

The converted living room made a nice waiting room. She had chairs lined up beneath the windows, a shelving unit on the opposite wall filled with retail supplies such as bovine toothbrushes and doggy breath mints. The reception desk was tiny, not really a problem since she couldn’t afford a receptionist anyway.

She’d just stepped behind the counter and slipped on her white overcoat when the front door opened, the bell above it chiming loud enough to awaken the dead. On her first day, she’d taken it down, only to have everyone tell her that Dr. Myers had brought that bell all the way from Europe forty-five years ago, so she’d put it back up. Tradition in Mayberry—er,
Martis Hills
apparently ran bone deep.

The man coming inside had his back to her while he shut the door. He was tall, lanky, and wore the town’s usual uniform of soft, faded Levi’s and a
white T-shirt. She repressed the sigh for days of old, when on any given day in Los Angeles she could feed her love for fashion by just looking around.

Then he turned and faced her, and oddly enough, every fond thought of the days of old fell right out of her head.

He looked to be thirtyish. His hair was light brown, almost blond. Probably sun-kissed by the hot summer sun, and given the sinewy, rangy look to his body, he probably worked hard farming his land like so many in the county did. He was slightly hunched over a towel-covered bundle that was me-owing loudly in protest.

“I’ve got something for you to fix up, Dr. Anders.” He let out a startlingly contagious smile.

That he knew her name didn’t surprise her. Just another product of living in a small place. Gossip ran wild here, and no one was safe from that. Especially a single city woman running a vet clinic. Often in the dark of the night, she’d lie awake and stress about money or a variety of other things including why she always managed to stick out like a sore thumb no matter where she was. But that was for the dark of the night.

Right now she had a patient, and she loved her patients, every one of them. When he handed the cat over to her, their arms brushed together, hers
covered by her long white coat, his bared and tanned and warm, and also sporting four long nasty scratches down one forearm. It’d been a tough morning, she’d guess.

With obvious relief, he slapped his hands together, ridding himself of the feline hair that was sticking to him. His own longish hair, brushing his collar, fell over his forehead as he lifted his head and smiled at her. “So, can you fix him up?”

His eyes were green, and full of an easy warmth and friendliness that she’d never mastered. Not with people, that is. Odd then, how her mouth actually quirked in a smile back. “Let’s see. Follow me.” She entered the first of three patient rooms and set the poor, shaking cat on the table, keeping firm but gentle hands on his body. “Shh,” she murmured, bending close. “I’ve got you. Name?” she asked.

“Oh.” Another quick flashing grin. “Terror.”

“What?”

He laughed. “That’s what he invokes in me, so I call him Terror. His real name is Bob.”

“Bob,” she said softly, and rubbed her cheek to the cat’s, saying the name again, just as quietly.

The caterwauling stopped at the sound of her crooning voice.

“Ah, blessed silence.” The man sighed with relief. He lifted his attention from the cat on the table and smiled at Melissa, another slow, easy one that
she was quite certain had set more than a few hearts pounding. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Now I’ll just wait way over here.” He backed to the wall, propped it up with his shoulder. “You go ahead and work your magic.”

Mel stroked the cat’s chin, and a loud rumble filled the room.

The man straightened. “What in the hell?”

“Haven’t you ever heard a cat purr before?”

“Well, sure, but that sounds more like an engine gone bad than a purr.” He appeared to be one-hundred-percent rough-and-tumble country guy, and yet he stared at the cat with mistrust, from all the way back at the wall.

Given the nasty scratches on his arm, she supposed she couldn’t blame him. In the waiting room, she hadn’t been able to see him in a good light, but now, under the harsh fluorescent glare of the bulbs above, she could see that on his extremely handsome face ran a jagged scar, starting at his forehead, along his temple, and then down his jaw to his chin. It was still red and shiny, indicating it wasn’t very old. “Symptoms?” she asked.

He put his hand to where her gaze had remained, his long fingers managing to cover only part of the scar. “What?”

She nodded to the cat, who’d sprawled out on
the table, belly up to be rubbed. “What’s the matter with Bob?”

“Oh…” Clearly feeling a little foolish, he dropped his hand from his face and returned to propping up the wall with his shoulder. “He’s doubled his food intake, for starters. And also he seems to have to go to the bathroom a lot.”

Mel felt the eight swollen nipples and the bulging tummy of the blissfully purring cat. “Well, for starters, he’s a she.”

He blinked once, then again, before slowly scratching his jaw. “Hmm. That would explain the PMS-y mood then. Bob’s been trying to bite a piece out of me ever since I first picked him… I mean, her up.”

What was the point of explaining that if a female got cranky around him, maybe it had something to do with his attitude rather than her gender? The man had probably been born and bred here in this place that apparently liked its women barefoot and pregnant.

And speaking of pregnant. “You should also know, she’s going to have kittens. In about two more weeks, I’d guess. Is this cat new to you? A stray perhaps?”

“Pregnant?” He stared at her for a moment, then shot her another of those slow, melting grins. In spite of herself, her pulse quickened.

“Isn’t that something,” he murmured. “Little kittens to play with.”

He was afraid of the cat but thrilled to know it was having kittens? Daft, she decided, and continued her examination of the perfectly healthy, perfectly happy cat. “You know, cats can tell when you don’t like them.”

He’d pushed away from the wall and now stood directly in front of her. So close, in fact, that she could see that his eyes weren’t just solid green, but had speckles of gold dancing in them. “If they sense you don’t like them, it’s all over for you.”

“Not so different from females of another species entirely.”

She rolled her eyes. “Hold out your arm.”

He thrust it out. When she ran cotton-soaked disinfectant along the four deep scratches on his forearm, he hissed out a breath.
“Ouch.”

“Baby,” she said, but bent over him to blow on the admittedly nasty scratches.

“Mmm.” This rumbled from his chest, and when she looked up at him, he smiled hopefully. “Are you going to kiss it, too?”

She straightened, a hand on her hip. “Are you flirting with me?”

His grin spread. “Well, now, that all depends. Did you like it?”

“I don’t flirt with clients,” she heard herself say
coolly, and wanted to wince because she sounded just as distant as her friends back in Los Angeles had always accused her of being.

“See, now there’s our loophole.” He lifted his hands in a surrendering gesture. “I’ve never been in here before, so I’m not really a client.”

The cat butted her head against Mel’s hand for more petting. Mel stroked her for another moment, then scooped her up against her chest. The cat rubbed the top of her furry head against Mel’s chin and kept purring. “Bob is going to be fine,” she said, cuddling for another moment. “But she should be checked again after the birth.” She plopped the purring mom-to-be back into his arms.

Because she needed some space, she headed out into the reception area and toward the desk. “I’ll just need you to fill out a form for billing. You can leave it when you’re finished.”

“But…”

She stopped and glanced back at him. He was trying without much success to juggle both the annoyed cat and the clipboard with the form attached to it. “Yes?”

Unhappy at being jostled, Bob dug her claws into his chest. The man yelped.

With a sigh, she bent behind the receptionist’s desk and brought out a cardboard kitty transport box. “Here. Use this.” She helped him get Bob into
it, again within extremely close proximity. She couldn’t help but notice how his T-shirt stretched across the muscles of his back when he moved, and how he smelled of citrus soap and wood, and man.

Not interested, she reminded herself. She was absolutely not going to be interested in a man who was nervous around cats and had a sinful smile. So she stepped back, laughing at herself. “Goodbye.”

He eyed the box with Bob in it as if it were a bomb ready to detonate. “Do you want to put disinfectant on my new scratch?” he asked, and rubbed his chest.

His T-shirt rose just a bit, revealing a strip of tanned, flat belly. She pictured herself lifting that shirt to treat his scratches and her mouth went dry. “I think you’ll live.”

He grinned a little knowingly.

“Goodbye.” Then, as she always did when someone got too close, Melissa walked away.