its neck as she cuddled it spoke of nurturing instincts she apparently didn’t even know she had.
“I took those on hikes around here. Except for the cliff shot. That was a climb in New Hampshire,” he told her. “Are you into climbing?”
“I’m not much for dangling over cliffs,” she admitted, managing not to sound totally horrified at the thought. “Actually, I’m not much of a nature person at all. The closest I’ve come to the wilds was a rock concert in Central Park.”
“So you’re into photography, then?”
“Not that, either. Not me, personally, I mean. I’ve just worked with a lot of photographers and recognize quality when I see it.”
“You’re a model.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his conclusion. Feeling flattered, she also felt a funny flutter in her stomach when he smiled back. “No, but thank you. I worked at a fashion magazine in New York, so I’ve worked with a lot of photographers. Still do, actually. I’m just freelancing now.”
His glance fell to her mouth. Her own faltered as her heart bumped her ribs.
The ringing of the phone had stopped. So had the conversation taking place between the Pekingese lady and the elderly man with the cat.
It was only then that Rebecca realized how close she and the doctor were standing, and that everyone but the animals was staring at them.
Clearing her throat, she took a step back.
“You should put the cat in the carrier,” he said, sounding far less self-conscious than she felt having been so totally absorbed in their conversation. “Here.”
While he held open the flap of the soft-sided carrier for her, she slipped the decidedly docile cat inside. He was zipping it for her when his assistant held up two white plastic bags, one large, one small and each bearing the name of the clinic in royal blue.
“It’s your towel,” the clearly curious woman explained. “And Columbus’s antibiotic.”
“Give it to him twice a day in his food,” the doctor added, back to business. “Like I said, he has a couple of stitches. They’ll dissolve on their own, but I’d like to see him next week to make sure he’s healing all right. In the meantime, call if he won’t eat or drink or if you have any questions.”
Looking vaguely distracted, he gave her one last smile and headed for the hallway. Rebecca promptly turned back to the assistant, made an appointment for next week, thanked the woman and walked out wondering what on earth all that had been about.
Joe Hudson was definitely not the urbane and sophisticated sort of man she was usually drawn to. He made his living taking care of animals. He was into the outdoors. He actually climbed mountains, and apparently enjoyed it. He had also somehow calmed her heart rate with his touch—and accelerated it all over again with his smile.
She ran her fingers alongside the scratch he’d tended, then promptly dropped her hand. Considering that she was only six months from a major breakup and seventy-two hours out on a minor one, she had no business thinking about him at all. Or anyone else, for that matter. The only man she should spare any mental energy on was the one she’d come to Rosewood to find. Given that her access to personal information about her father had been cut off, thanks to Jack, she needed to focus on some other way to meet the man who was proving to be as elusive as the emotional security she feared she’d never know.
If there was anything Rebecca could do it was focus. Once she set her mind to a task, nothing short of the Second Coming could stop her.
Or so she’d thought until a little after nine o’clock that night.
Chapter Two
Rebecca sat in the middle of the blue toile print sofa in the family room of her leased house. Across from her, the television in the carved country French armoire was off. So was the overhead light. The only illumination came from the brass candlestick lamp on the end table beside her and the glow of the laptop computer screen on the long maple cocktail table.
On the wall behind her hung a huge replica of a European railroad station clock and, as in the entryway, several framed photos of the Turner family she’d left up to keep her company. The quiet tick of that clock merged with the soft purr of the bandaged cat she had nestled beside her on one of the sofa’s blue-and-cream-checked throw pillows.
Columbus had now stirred a time or two, but he’d yet to waken for long. Whatever the vet had given him still hadn’t completely worn off. Or, maybe, he was just exhausted from his ordeal. Whichever it was, as docile and dependent as he was on her at the moment, she actually found him rather sweet.
Absently stroking his soft fur so he would know he wasn’t alone, she told herself she should turn off the computer. Or, at least, sign off the Internet. As rejected as she felt, and the more she considered what little she’d learned from Jack about his stepfather, she no longer felt as certain about wanting to meet the man as she once had.
That unexpected realization left its own kind of emptiness.
She had wanted to know her father since she’d first noticed in kindergarten that, unlike her, most of the kids had a mom and a dad. She’d been fascinated by the sight of a couple walking down the street with a child, or a dad skating with his son or daughter at the rink at Rockefeller Center, or a man holding the hand of a child. Those kids always looked so happy to her, so protected, so…complete.
She’d wanted a dad of her own. She’d told her mom that, too, but her mom had said she didn’t need one. Her mom had also refused to talk about the man who’d fathered her, so after a couple of tries, Rebecca stopped asking who he was.
She hadn’t stopped daydreaming about him, though. Or about being part of his family. In her mind, that family was huge and happy and everyone welcomed her with open arms. Other than through the state’s birth records, which she’d checked, futilely, years ago, she’d had no hint of where to start looking for him—until just before her ten-year high school reunion last May.
She’d been in the recesses of her mom’s storage closet looking for her yearbooks so she’d be sure to recognize everyone when she’d come across an old diary of her mother’s. It hadn’t been the sort with a lock and, at first, she’d absently flipped through it, thinking to show it to her mom and ask if she even remembered having it.
Then, the dates had caught her attention. So had the names and initials entwined in hearts on some of the pages.
Quickly calculating back, she realized that her mom would have been nineteen and in college when she’d poured her heart onto the neatly written pages. She also realized that she’d been madly in love with a business major named Russell Lever—and that the entries had been made around the time she would have been conceived.
She’d put the diary back and never mentioned having found it. The next day, though, she’d been online to adoption sites checking to see if anyone named Russell Lever was looking for his daughter.
She’d found nothing, but the need to track him down had led her to hire an attorney who had located a Russell Lever in the appropriate age range and tracked him to Rosewood. All the attorney had been able to tell her at that point was that the man was married and that he had a stepson named Jack.
It was
