her chin with his fingers, he tipped her head. “This definitely looks more like cat claws than thorns. Did he get you anywhere else?”
She swallowed. Hard. He smelled of antiseptic soap and a decidedly male aftershave she couldn’t begin to identify. All she knew was that it was something masculine. And warm. Like the amazingly gentle feel of his fingers as he touched them to the side of her neck.
“It was. Is.” She breathed out. “And no.”
Dropping his hand, he reached for a small white packet. “What’s your name?”
“Rebecca. Peters,” she added, in case he needed it for his records or something.
“Okay, Rebecca Peters. This is going to sting.”
The scent of antiseptic had barely reached her nostrils when she felt something cold touch just under her ear and curve toward her collarbone. An instant later, the sensation turned to burning.
She sucked in a breath.
“Ow!”
“Sorry,” he murmured, only to quickly repeat the process. “But I warned you.”
“Barely.” The burning sensation suddenly didn’t seem so acute. Or, maybe, she was just more aware of his fingers on her neck as he narrowed his eyes at the three parallel scratches. “Isn’t that for animals?”
“Not necessarily.”
Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he tossed the pad to the table. Without another word, he picked up a tube of antibiotic cream and dabbed it over the five-inch-long scratch.
“Here,” he said, handing the tube to her when he was finished. The little lines at the corners of his eyes deepened with his smile. “Put that on a couple of times a day. I’m going to go save the Turners’ cat. You can either wait or come back in an hour.”
He didn’t stick around to see what she decided to do. Leaving her staring at the tube in her palm, he simply walked out the open door.
Rebecca dropped the tube into her purse. She would come back, she decided, partly because, if she stayed, she’d have to wait in the waiting room with a huge Saint Bernard and some sort of rodent in a cage. But mostly because she didn’t want to sit there thinking about Joe Hudson’s incredible gentleness, the heat she’d felt when he’d touched her and, now that she knew the cat wasn’t hurt all that badly, how helpless he must think her for panicking when panicking wasn’t really like her at all. At least, it hadn’t been.
Hating how inept she felt on top of everything else, she decided she needed a latte, anyway.
Exactly one hour and one tall, double, skinny, sugar-free vanilla latte later, she walked back into the clinic to find the previous occupants of the reception area no longer there. They had been replaced by an elderly gentleman with a cat who was conversing with a woman who bore a strong resemblance to the Pekingese in her lap.
The veterinarian’s assistants apparently doubled as receptionists. This one, a perky blonde wearing a wide wedding band and a scrub top sporting kittens stood behind the counter looking up something on the computer. The moment the woman saw Rebecca, her glance skimmed from her scarf to her boots. An instant later, she smiled.
Apparently, she already knew who she was.
“Columbus did fine,” she said, over the ring of the phone. “But Doctor is with another patient. It will be a few minutes.”
With her smile still in place, she answered the call, leaving Rebecca to turn to the small waiting room.
Sitting wasn’t something Rebecca did well when she felt anxious or uncertain. Caught between a vague unease at the prospect of seeing Joe Hudson again and a more pronounced uncertainty over what nursing skills would be required to tend the injured cat, she was feeling a little of both.
Having already let alarm get the better of her that day, she wasn’t about to let anyone around her know she now felt anything less than in total control. She couldn’t remember how old she’d been when her mom had first started pounding in the lesson, but having grown up in the city, she’d learned early on that the key to survival was to mask any sign of weakness.
That didn’t mean she never felt vulnerable. She just rarely let the world know it. Especially on the street. Or when it came to her work, cutthroat as the fashion business could be. Or to men. With her self-confidence with that particular species in the subbasement at the moment, she felt a particular need for guard where they were concerned.
Since pacing off her internal energy wasn’t practical in the small, occupied space, she hiked the strap of her oversize bag higher on her shoulder and wandered over to peruse a collection of photographs lining the far wall.
The photos had caught her attention mostly because the beautifully framed and photographed scenes seemed so out of place in a room with posters of cartoon pets on the walls and brochures about heartworm medication on the counter. The quality of the incredible pictures of waterfalls, canyons, sheer cliffs and meadows of deer rivaled what she’d seen at professional showings in New York.
“Doctor Hudson took those,” she heard his assistant say. “He’s quite the outdoorsman, you know.”
Rebecca’s response was a smile. She hadn’t known that, though she supposed she should have guessed as much. There was a ruggedness about the good doctor that the men she’d known couldn’t have achieved no matter how dark the facial shadow they grew or how much flannel and denim they wore. That ruggedness wasn’t overt, though. It wasn’t rough or harsh or hard. It was more a solid, sturdy sort of masculine strength that she wasn’t terribly familiar with at all.
She turned back to study the collection. Behind her, she could hear movement and voices as someone entered the reception area to pay his bill. Still marveling at Joe Hudson’s work, it was a moment before she became aware of another set of footsteps. Turning, she saw the man whose work she was admiring give her an easy smile.
He carried the cat in one arm. In his other hand was the carrier he sat at the far end of the reception counter, out of the way of the teenager stuffing his receipt into his back pocket. A white bandage had been wrapped around the cat’s head, leaving only his little face and his right ear exposed. He was clearly too drugged to care that he also wore a white plastic collar that vaguely resembled a funnel.
Concern joined the uncertainty she already felt about her nonexistent veterinary nursing skills.
“It looks worse than it is,” the doctor assured her. “The actual wound is only about an inch and a half long. The collar will keep him from pawing the bandage off and pulling out the stitches.”
She wasn’t particularly relieved by that news. If anything, she felt as if she were bracing herself as he held out the cat. Holding her breath, she gingerly took Columbus from him. When the infinitely more manageable animal did nothing but lie limply in her arms, she released that breath, gave the man curiously watching her a tentative smile and nodded toward the pictures behind her.
“You have real talent,” she told him, over the murmurs of the other conversations. “For photography,” she clarified, in case he thought she was referring to his healing skills, though he clearly had talent there, too. “Those are beautiful.”
Joe’s interest in her underwent a subtle shift.
