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 guy back to the car. She dived in the passenger side, screaming, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”
When he explained to her that snakes are protected in Tennessee, she hit him so hard he’d had a bruised shoulder for a week. He’d walked over and checked, then reported back that the snake had removed itself from the porch, no doubt annoyed that its nap was interrupted. She refused to get out of the car. Ever.
They’d spent that night in the local motel. Not exactly the Peabody. She’d been upset about that, as well. It was clean, and the Patels were nice people, but the towels were thin. Clare hated thin towels. He’d finally convinced her to come back to the house, after he spent a couple of hours patrolling the yard and shed for the snake, but that was the beginning of the end. A week later, she moved out. A week after that, she served him with divorce papers. He never saw the snake again; Mother Nature might say that snake had done its job by getting rid of her. Took him a long time to admit that, even to himself.
He’d give Emma French about three days before she moved out and back to the city. At that point, the skunks would become his problem. Hell, they already were.
He checked his watch and was surprised it was only a little after nine. He dug out his cell phone and hit his speed dial.
He got the clinic’s voice mail. “This is Dr. Barbara Carew. The clinic office hours are eight thirty till six, Monday through Friday. Saturday eight thirty till one. If this is an emergency, please call our emergency service at...”
He waited to leave a message, then said, “Barbara, it’s me, Seth. I need some advice. Please meet me at seven tomorrow morning at the café. I’ll buy you breakfast. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’ll be there. This is important.” He hung up. She’d pick up her messages before she went to bed. If she wasn’t out working on a colicky horse or birthing a calf, she’d meet him. He let his head fall back against the sofa. He could feel that Scotch down to his toenails. Or maybe he was feeling simple exhaustion. He was too damned tired to feel lust.
Whom was he kidding? A man would have to be dead and buried not to lust after Emma French. But in his present state of weariness, he might not be capable of doing much about it.
* * *
ACROSS THE STREET Emma called her father to tell him she had a roof over her head that didn’t leak and a dry, if lumpy, bed to sleep in. She got his answering machine. Of course. She could call her stepmother Andrea’s cell phone instead, but decided she was too tired for explanations.
She didn’t mention her invaders on her message to her father. He would be horrified. He was already haranguing her about moving to the country instead of coming home to stay until she found a new job. Which he would no doubt find for her with one of his cronies regardless of whether they needed her.
Not happening. At least, not yet. She had enough savings to survive for a bit. If she rented out her town house, she’d be able to hold out quite a while.
She got ready for bed, set her alarm for midnight—four hours since the babies were last fed.
She hadn’t answered any of Trip’s calls on her cell phone. Sooner or later she’d talk to him, but not yet. He’d sworn he still loved her, wanted to make things right between them. As if. He’d even fooled David French. Her father had welcomed him as her fiancé. Although in this case his usual mantra—that the man wasn’t good enough for her—was accurate.
She
