“Any idea where the teapot might be?”
“First thing I found.” She pulled herself upright by an effort of will, took the snazzy imported electric pot out of the cabinet, filled it and plugged it in. “That’ll take five minutes to heat and another five to steep. Gives us ten minutes to find the mugs.”
Ten minutes later, she handed him his mug of tea, which, thank goodness, he said he drank with lemon, no sugar and no milk. She had lemon, but the only milk was for the babies, not their caregivers. The sugar was hidden somewhere.
“You said you were tired, too. I’m grateful you came, but you don’t have to stay,” she said, hoping he would. Between exhaustion and skunks, she was starting to feel panicky-lonely. She’d never been lonely, damn it, but then she’d lived in a city house with lights and neighbors and traffic. She could drive to her family’s place in Memphis for dinner with her father, her stepmother, Andrea, and both her brother and sister in twenty minutes. When she was there, she knew where she belonged and who she was.
Now, not so much. Sitting here in this living room she might as well be on the far side of Alpha Centauri.
“Nice sofa,” he said as he drank his tea and relaxed into its depths.
Well, yeah. It had cost a month’s salary; it should be comfortable.
“This doesn’t solve the problem,” he said and set his empty mug on the coffee table. “You cannot keep the skunks.”
“Now, wait...”
“Can’t foster bats either, because of possible rabies. If you’d discovered a cache of raccoons, I could hook you up with one of the local animal rehabilitators.”
“There is such a thing?”
“Absolutely. There are people who specialize in raptors or abandoned fawns. Sometimes a momma possum will get hit by a car and killed, but the babies in her pouch survive and have to be tended. There’s a lady outside Collierville who takes in orphan foxes...”
She felt the tears threaten to spill over. “You say there’s no rabies in our skunks, yet you’d just let them die?”
“Can’t take the chance.”
“Nonsense!” She slammed her mug down on the table so hard the edge of the cup cracked.
“You saw we wore gloves when you fed them?” he said. “And you’d better continue to do that. At the moment they have no teeth, but their little milk teeth will be sharp.”
“Fine. So vaccinate them against rabies. Heck, vaccinate me, too. Problem solved.” She sat down again.
“That’s not the way the rules read.”
That did it. “Then arrest me.” She got to her feet again and held out her wrists. “I’ll have a public relations campaign set up for ‘Save the Skunks’ before the cell door shuts on me. You and your rules will feel as if you’ve run into a buzz saw. Every animal rights organization in the Western Hemisphere will be knocking on your door and marching with signs. This is what I do—did—for a living. Coordinating the message to spread across all possible outlets. One picture of my babies snuggled up on Facebook, one podcast, and even the governor won’t call your name blessed.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Watch me.”
“Sit down before you fall down. I have no intention of arresting you, nor do I intend to starve, freeze or euthanize your trio of illegal aliens.”
“So I can keep them?”
“No, dammit! I’ve got to figure out how to handle this without getting me fired and you fined.” He ran a big hand down his face. “Right now I can’t think straight, and you’re starting to get on my last nerve.” He stood and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet for a moment. “Just for tonight I’ve never met you, I do not know that you have skunks, but that can’t go on. I’m going to get some sleep, assuming I can with all this hanging over my head. I’ll call you tomorrow. You do have a phone?”
She nodded, took a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans, wrote her cell number on it and passed it to him. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain.”
He reached into his pants pocket. “Here’s my card with both my numbers. If you need me, call.”
She followed him to the door, helped him on with the damp poncho, and watched him stuff his feet in their mismatched socks into his muckers and go back out in the rain, which showed no signs of letting up. She handed him his hat and watched him trudge out to the road and across until he disappeared into his own house.
Only then did she sit on the sofa and burst into tears. Why did he have to be gorgeous and kind? He was still her enemy, with the entire state of Tennessee backing him up.
SETH NOTICED WHEN he stripped off his wet clothes that his socks didn’t match. That woman—he’d better learn to call her Emma, since they were way beyond Ms. French—probably figured he was either color-blind or incompetent. Which was how he felt at the moment.
Emma was a nice old-fashioned name. Not that she was a nice old-fashioned girl. Far from it. Probably never bought a pair of jeans from a discount store in her life. Heck, the way hers fit, they were worth the investment.
He poured himself a small Scotch and sank onto his saggy leather sofa with his feet on the slab of hundred-year-old oak he’d salvaged from a downed tree. One of the few pieces Clare had left when she’d walked out. And which was now covered with dust like everything else in this house.
He leaned his head back and laid his hand on the sofa where he was used to feeling Rambler’s deep furry pelt. Now that Rambler had died of old age, Seth needed another dog. Dogs didn’t present insoluble problems with beautiful women. They didn’t care whether a woman was beautiful or a clone of the Wicked Witch as long as she petted and fed him.
Why did he invariably get involved with women who complicated his life and didn’t belong to his world? He’d tried to convert Clare to country living, but in the end she’d moved to Nashville and married a dentist. A rich dentist. She really had tried to put up with living in the back of beyond—her words—with a man who frequently stank of blood or fish and came home covered in mud or dirt. At least she’d tried for a while. He knew now that she’d assumed he’d quickly be promoted to a desk job so they could buy a suburban house and have a country club membership. Meanwhile, he’d assumed she’d loved the country as much as he did. Talk about a lack of communication.
Thinking back, the water moccasin marked the true end of their relationship. He’d tried to teach her about good snakes and bad snakes, but she never understood. Snake was snake to Clare. He wasn’t thrilled to meet copperheads or rattlers or water moccasins either, but he was fond of the king snakes. Keep a big king snake around, you never saw a poisonous snake. Well, mostly. Didn’t have to worry about rats or mice either. A good king snake would beat a barn cat every time when it came to killing mice. And a king snake sucked down the whole mouse—didn’t nibble the edges like a cat did and leave you to clean up the remains.
That moccasin she’d nearly stepped on wasn’t even coiled. Just stretched out across the front porch steps sunning itself. Couldn’t have struck Clare if it had tried—not without coiling first.
When he’d been with the department less than six months, he’d had to deliver a baby for a woman who couldn’t make it to Jackson to the hospital. He’d never heard screams like that before, and he’d prayed he never would again.
Clare’s screams when she saw that snake as she started up the porch step put that other woman to shame. Who was that comic book character that could move so fast? Clare would’ve beaten that