Watching a family of ducks walk across River Road to the river, Turk would never understand how his parents understood him so little. There was no question that his father was successful when it came to making money—but he often passed patients on the street and didn’t have a clue who they were. Turk’s grandfather, on the other hand, not only knew his patients, he knew their children, their hopes and fears, their birthdays and anniversaries and where they planned to be buried.
That was what Turk wanted, what he intended to have.
Even though he’d told his parents he was settling in Hunter’s Ridge, they hadn’t really believed he’d leave Dallas and turn his back on the kind of career he could have there. That, however, is exactly what he’d done. He’d found office space in the town’s newest—and only—strip mall, spent the last two weeks hiring staff and advertising the fact that Hunter’s Ridge had a new doctor in town. The clinic opened for business tomorrow, and it was only three blocks from his house. He’d be able to walk to work every day.
“You’re not in Dallas anymore, Doc,” he told himself with a grin. And that was never more apparent than when he strolled up the front walk to his house.
There was no doubt that it was a fixer-upper. A block off Main Street, it was a hundred years old and looked it. It hadn’t been painted in years, the gutters were drooping, and there was more than one rotting eave that needed to be replaced. The wiring was iffy, the plumbing hadn’t been updated in fifty years, and the pier-and-beam foundation obviously needed some major adjustments—windows and doors throughout the house didn’t shut properly. But the place had good bones. It had ten-foot ceilings, crown molding and stained glass, and it reminded him of his grandparents’ house. He’d taken one look at it and bought it on the spot.
His friends and family thought he was crazy, but he was doing much of the work himself. He enjoyed the physical labor and liked the idea of putting his own stamp on the place. He’d been tearing out Sheetrock almost from the moment he’d moved in two days ago. Once he had it all out, he’d have to bring in an electrician and plumber and a foundation repairman, but in the meantime, he was having a hell of a good time.
Unlocking the front door, he stepped inside and grinned. His mother would have had a stroke if she could see the way he was living. It would be months before the house was no longer a construction zone, so he’d placed all his furniture in storage, then bought a few secondhand pieces to use in the house during the remodeling. He had an old wooden straight chair and a TV tray that he used in the kitchen, a scarred bed and dresser in the huge master bedroom, and an ancient recliner in the living room. And everywhere he looked, there was a fine coating of Sheetrock dust. And he’d just started tearing it out. He could just imagine what the place was going to look like in a few weeks.
From the backyard, Daisy, his yellow Lab, knew the instant he walked into the kitchen. She gave a sharp bark at the back door, but he only laughed. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he called through the door. “I want to work on the Sheetrock, and if I let you in, I won’t get a thing done. Wait a second. I’ve got a treat for you.”
He found a steak bone in the refrigerator from last night’s dinner and opened the back door to offer it to Daisy. She wasn’t a pig when it came to snacks—taking the bone very delicately, she turned and trotted into her doghouse. Turk knew she wouldn’t come out again until the bone was history. Grinning, he grabbed his hammer and nail puller and went to work.
Five hours later, he had a mess on his hands. The floor in the master bedroom was a foot deep with broken pieces of Sheetrock and enough dust to choke a horse. And that was just from the demolition of one wall. Pleased, he attacked the debris on the floor with a commercial broom and dustpan, then spent the next thirty minutes carting it all out to the Dumpster. When he finished, one wall was bare of Sheetrock, and the floor was broom-clean.
Planning to start on the west wall of the bedroom next, he’d just walked into the kitchen to see about making a sandwich for a late lunch when he heard Daisy barking angrily in the backyard. Surprised—she was usually pretty mild-mannered—he glanced out the kitchen window just in time to see her chase a cat across the backyard. A split second later, the cat—and Daisy—sailed over the back fence without ever breaking stride.
“What the hell!” Jerking open the back door, he yelled “Daisy! Get your butt back in this yard right this minute!”
He might as well have told the wind not to blow. Daisy never looked back.
“Damn!” Swearing, he took off after her.
Later, he couldn’t have said how many streets he ran down, how many times he came so close to catching her that he could see the mischief dancing in her eyes. Then she would take off again, barking in excitement at the game. Huffing and puffing, he had no choice but to follow. Hunter’s Ridge had a leash law, but that was the least of his worries. He loved the goofball and it’d break his heart if she darted into the road and got hit.
Ten minutes later, he came around a corner and spied her standing in the front yard of a house that was very much like his, but beautifully restored. At first, he thought Daisy had mistaken the place for home…then, as he drew closer, he realized that she was too busy eating something to notice the house—or the fact that he was quickly bearing down on her.
Relieved, he grabbed her collar. “Gotcha!” Only then did he realize that she hadn’t dug up a bone somewhere. She was eating a cherry pie!
“Daisy! Oh, my God! Where’d you get that?”
Glancing sharply around, he spied a table on the side porch of the house they stood right in front of. There were two other pies cooling there. Swearing, he gave Daisy a reproving look. “Shame on you! This isn’t the way to meet the neighbors! Or potential patients! Now what are we going to do?”
Totally unconcerned, Daisy licked her chops as she finished the rest of her pie.
“C’mon,” Turk growled, tightening his grip on her collar. “It’s time to fess up.”
Bracing for a tongue-lashing—Daisy hadn’t just snatched any pie; it was a homemade one!—he knocked on the door, then waited. Through the frosted oval glass of the front door, Turk could just make out the blurred figure of a woman approaching. “Wipe that smile off your face,” he told Daisy quickly. “At least try to look contrite.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the door was pulled open and he found himself facing an older, white-haired woman with rounded cheeks, a quick smile and faded blue eyes that seemed to have a perpetual twinkle.
Her gaze moving from him to Daisy and back again, she lifted a delicately arched brow. “Yes? May I help you?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said with a rueful smile, “but I seem to owe you an apology.”
Surprised, she blinked. “I don’t think so, young man. I don’t even know you.”
“I just moved to town this week,” he explained, and held out his hand. “I’m Turk Garrison. And this is Daisy,” he added, nodding to the Lab. “She owes you an apology, too. She just ate one of your pies.”
“What?” Startled, she glanced past him to the side porch, where an empty trivet spoke of the missing pie.
Watching the emotions flicker lightning quick across her face, Turk wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d given him a piece of her mind. Daisy had wolfed down in seconds something that had, no doubt, taken her hours to make. She had every right to be furious.
Instead, she laughed. “Well, this is a first.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she assured him. “Or Daisy’s.” Holding out her hand to the dog so she could sniff it, she grinned when Daisy licked her fingers. “I was the one who put the pies outside,” she told Turk, her blue eyes twinkling behind the lenses