The Best Man. Linda Turner

      “I told you why—” he began.

      “But you didn’t tell her,” Nick retorted. “And she’s the one who’s entitled to an explanation. Dammit, man, call her! She loves you, and I know if you just talked to her, the two of you could work this out.”

      For a moment, he thought he’d finally talked some sense into him. Thomas hesitated, obviously considering the suggestion, but then just when Nick thought he had convinced him to do the right thing, he said quickly, “No! I can’t handle talking to her right now. It’s too soon. I’m sorry, Nick. Maybe later.”

      “Dammit, I’m not the one you should be apologizing to!”

      That was as far as he got. Without another word, Thomas hung up. Swearing, Nick slammed down the phone. Jackass!

      Miserable, Merry never knew how she got through the next week. Friends made a point of calling her and asking her out so she wouldn’t have so much time to herself, but it didn’t help. Even surrounded by a crowd of friends, she’d never been so lonely in her life.

      But it was the nights—and the silence of her own thoughts—that nearly drove her over the edge. There was no one to talk to, no one to distract her from the hurt that wouldn’t go away. She would lie for hours, staring at the ceiling, her eyes burning from the tears she wouldn’t allow herself to shed. And when she finally did fall asleep, she dreamed again and again of a nightmare wedding at a gothic church, where the guests were all corpses and the groom was a skeleton that turned to dust and blew away before her very eyes.

      If she hadn’t had her work to throw herself into, she didn’t know what she would have done. Her clinic was located just next door to her house, which made it easy for her to go in early and stay late. Ruby, her receptionist, warned her she was going to collapse if she didn’t quit pushing herself so hard, but the only peace she found was at the clinic. When she worked, she could forget her own pain and concentrate instead on that of the sick and injured animals she treated and nursed back to health.

      Most days, she didn’t even take a lunch break, but just grabbed bites of a salad in between patients. Frowning in disapproval, Ruby, who never ate anything the color of grass, could only shake her head. “If all you’re going to eat are those weeds, at least sit down for a few minutes and give yourself time to digest them. You haven’t stopped moving since I got here this morning.”

      “Can’t,” she said as she swallowed a quick bite, then started mopping up the puddles left in examining room one by the litter of puppies she’d just examined. “Tawny James will be here any minute with Tiger and Sammy, and this time I plan to be ready for them.”

      The last time Tawny had brought her cat in for fur balls, her three-year-old son, Sammy, had opened every drawer and cabinet in the examining room and practically destroyed the place. Merry didn’t intend to let that happen again. Grabbing the keys, she started locking every cabinet and drawer in sight. “There,” she said in relief just as the bell on the front door jingled merrily. “Just in time!”

      But the new arrival wasn’t Tawny and her little terror but Nick. For the last week, he’d made it a practice to stop by whenever he was in the area. He’d claimed he was just taking a break and wanted to visit, but Merry knew better. He was keeping an eye on her, making sure she was all right, and she appreciated that. But when he walked in with a large cardboard box in his hands and a grim look on his angular face, she knew this wasn’t a social visit.

      “Whatever it is, bring it in here,” she said quickly, pushing open the door to the second examining room. “What happened?”

      “Harvey was on call out at Virginia Sawyer’s place when he was bit by a fox,” he said as he set the box on the examining table. “He had to kill it, but I thought you should take a look at it. He said it ran right at him.”

      In the process of pulling on gloves, Merry looked up at him sharply. That wasn’t normal behavior at all for usually shy foxes, and they both knew. But Nick’s deputy, Harvey, wasn’t the kind to embellish a story. “You think it’s rabid?”

      His expression somber, he shrugged. “I don’t know. Harvey said it wasn’t foaming at the mouth, but it was definitely aggressive. Apparently, it’s been hanging around Virginia’s place for a couple of days, and that poodle of hers—Boo-Boo—kept running it off. When she heard a noise in her garage, she called the office because she thought it was an intruder. When Harvey saw it was a fox, he gave it plenty of room and thought it would run into the woods, but it came right at him and the dog.”

      Merry didn’t like the sound of that at all. “If it had a den nearby—which it shouldn’t have—it might have taken on the dog, but not Harvey, too. Where did it bite him?”

      “On the hand. He tried to scare it off, but it just kept coming back at him. He didn’t have any choice but to shoot it. He said it was the craziest thing he’d ever seen in his life.”

      “What about Boo-Boo? Did he get bit, too?”

      He nodded. “He gave as good as he got, but the fox tore up his front leg pretty good. Harvey told Virginia she needed to bring him in so you could take a look at him, but she thought she could do it herself. She didn’t seem too concerned about rabies. Has Boo-Boo had his shots?”

      Merry swore softly. “No.”

      Every year, she pushed the local citizens to get their pets vaccinated, but since there hadn’t been a case of rabies in the county in years, most people didn’t see the need. She hadn’t been able to convince them that that could change in a heartbeat. If her hunch was right, Virginia Sawyer was about to find that out the hard way.

      “I hope he doesn’t have to be put down,” she said, “but it doesn’t look good. He’ll have to be quarantined, of course. You told her that, didn’t you?”

      Nick nodded. “You know how stubborn she is. I tried to convince her that it would be easier on her if she let you take care of that, but she insisted that Boo-Boo would be much more comfortable right there in his own home.”

      There was no question that the dog would be happier at home, but watching any pet develop signs of rabies was not something Merry would wish on anyone. “I can’t force her to bring him in, but I’ll call her and explain what she could be facing. In the meantime, I’ll send the fox to the state lab this afternoon. Harvey knows he can’t wait for the test results to come back to get shots, doesn’t he?”

      “He’s over at the hospital right now,” he replied. “The nurses are probably getting a earful. He doesn’t like needles.”

      The situation wasn’t funny, but Merry couldn’t help but smile at the thought of big, six-foot-four Harvey cringing at the sight of a little needle. “Has he asked for sick leave yet?”

      “A week,” Nick said with a chuckle. “You know Harvey—he never misses a chance to skip work and go fishing. He probably loaded his fishing gear into his camper before he went to the doctor.”

      His smile fading as he watched her fill out paperwork for the state lab, he frowned at the dark shadows under her eyes. “So how are you? Sleeping any better?”

      He asked her that just about every time he saw her, and her answer was always the same. “Some. And no, I haven’t heard from Thomas,” she added before he could ask. “I don’t expect to.”

      “You need to get out more. I heard Stella was having a psychic from Colorado Springs at her place tonight and inviting a bunch of women over. You’re going, aren’t you?”