Read Summer Rose Online

Authors: Elizabeth Sinclair

Summer Rose (7 page)

BOOK: Summer Rose
9.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“He’s in there.” Hunter motioned over his shoulder in the direction of the building behind them.

Just then, a fierce growl emanated from inside, followed by Davy’s high-pitched scream.

Chapter 4
 

Rose beat both Sheriff Ainsley and Hunter to the door of the building where Davy and the wolf were. She rushed through the door and stopped dead, her breath trapped in her throat.

“Oh, my God!”

Seated in a corner, Davy had plastered his body against the side of the cage, his arms crossed over his chest in a defensive posture. His face had taken on an ashen cast, his eyes large and terrified. Sadie stood over him. Saliva dripped from her mouth. Her low, threatening growl seemed to echo off the cement block walls.

“Lord have mercy,” Sheriff Ainsley muttered.

“Stay here.” Hunter eased past Rose and the sheriff and started toward the cabinet at the side of the room.

Rose grabbed his arm. “You’ll frighten her.”

“Not if I move slowly. I need to get to the tranquilizer gun I keep in the drawer over there.” He pointed to a cabinet almost even with where the wolf held Davy captive.

Hunter pulled his arm from Rose’s grasp. She watched in terror as, never taking his gaze off the occupants of the cage, he inched toward the cabinet.

Rose held her breath. She could hear her heart thumping wildly in her ears. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, including Hunter’s progress toward the cabinet. As he neared the cabinet, the wolf shifted her body, blocking Rose’s view of the little boy.

“Don’t move, Davy,” Hunter told the boy, his voice low and calm.

“It’s okay, Doc.” Davy’s voice, though weak and subdued, held no fear. “Sadie was protecting me.”

Hunter stopped. “Protecting you from what?”

“Show him, girl. Show the doc what you caught.”

Obediently Sadie swung her big head toward Hunter. A three-foot snake dangled from the wolf’s mouth.

“Well, I’ll be. Sadie killed a snake.”

Rose couldn’t believe her ears, but then the wolf walked to the side of the cage and with a jerk of her head, threw the dead snake out of the open cage door. It landed at Hunter’s feet. Gingerly, he picked up the lifeless reptile. Sadie turned away, lay down beside Davy and rested her head in his lap.

Holding it up so Rose and the sheriff could see it, Hunter announced, “It’s a copperhead.”

Rose fought off the chill creeping down her back. Not wanting to get close to it even though it was obviously dead, she kept her distance. “Is it dangerous?”

“Not anymore, but alive it’s very dangerous,” Hunter said, carrying the reptile to her. “Although they are not usually aggressive. They’re normally more interested in mice and lizards. My guess is she chased a rodent in here and came face to face with Sadie.”

Still maintaining a safe distance, Rose inspected the snake. Its coppery-orange coloring and the hourglass-shaped markings on its back made it almost attractive. If any snake could be thought of in those terms.

The sheriff, who had been stunned into openmouthed awe at the sight of a huge timber wolf acting like a pet dog with Davy, shook himself free of the fear that had immobilized him. “The boy said the wolf protected him.”

“She did.” Davy exited Sadie’s cage. Sadie followed like a faithful puppy. Rose and the sheriff took a couple of steps back. “She won’t hurt you.” Davy turned to the wolf and hugged her enormous neck. “Will ya, girl?” The wolf licked his face.

Sheriff Ainsley removed his hat and scratched his head. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”

Rose finally relaxed enough to speak. “What happened, Davy?”

He grinned at Rose like a proud parent. “I was sitting there petting Sadie, when all of a sudden she jumped up and started growling at the corner of the cage. Then I saw that snake sliding across the floor. It came straight for me, and the next thing I knew, Sadie had it in her mouth.”

Hunter laughed. “Well, Sheriff, you still want to haul Davy out of here?”

Rose again held her breath. If the sheriff took Davy away, what would Sadie’s reaction be to being separated from the boy?

Davy looked from one to the other. “Haul me off where?”

“Never mind, Davy. I don’t think you could be anywhere safer than right here.” The sheriff tipped his hat. “I’ll be seeing you folks.”

“But what about—” Rose started.

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’ll tell him I couldn’t find the boy.” The sheriff winked at Davy and then left.

Rose leaned against the wall, too drained emotionally by the events of the past half hour to stand on her own. “Well, I don’t know about you two, but I’ve had enough excitement for today.”

Davy and Hunter laughed.

Hunter put his arm around the boy. “I think you need to put Sadie back in her cage and then get on home.”

Reluctantly, Davy led Sadie back to her cage, hugged her neck and then shooed her inside and latched the door. The wolf obeyed the boy as if she were a big old dog. “Night, Sadie. See ya tomorrow.” The wolf threw back her head and howled plaintively. Davy looked imploringly at Hunter. “I can’t go yet. I didn’t finish feeding the other animals.”

“Rose and I will make sure they get fed. It’s late, and we don’t want to worry your mom.” Hunter steered the boy toward the door. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Davy threw one last glance at Sadie, said goodnight and left.

“That’s some relationship he’s got going with that wolf.” Rose had regained her footing and managed to move away from the support of the wall.

“Yes, it is.” Hunter stared at the wolf. “I’ve heard of wolves befriending humans, but I don’t recall one quite as unique as this one before.” Then he laughed. “Maybe his mother is right. Maybe he is a Dr. Littledo in more ways than just not cleaning his room. He certainly is something else with animals, that’s for sure.”

Silence fell between them. Without a word, they went about feeding the animals. Not until they were finished did Rose suddenly become acutely aware of being alone with the man who seemed to have a strange pull on her emotions.

She put away the feed bags, washed her hands and wiped them on a towel, then turned to Hunter. “Well, I better get home.” As though
home
were miles away and not just across the courtyard.

“I’ll walk with you.” Hunter placed a hand in the middle of her back and guided her to the door.

The spot where his hand rested felt like someone had applied a heating pad turned on high
to her skin. She walked faster to sever the contact. “Thanks, but I can find my way on my own,” she said and hurried off, her breath coming and going as fast as her feet ate up the distance to her new garage apartment. “See you tomorrow,” she called back over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
Hunter watched her until she disappeared up the flight of stairs to her apartment. He might be wrong, but it appeared as if Ms. Hamilton couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

Behind him, Sadie howled plaintively, obviously still protesting the departure of the most important human in her life.

“I know just how you feel, Sadie.” What Hunter didn’t know was why he was allowing his emotions to get all tangled up with a woman, something he’d sworn would never happen. Emotional attachments meant relationships, and relationships grew into marriage, then family and a ton of responsibilities he didn’t want.

He thought back to the time when, after his parents’ accident, he’d been saddled with raising his two younger teenage siblings and what the demands on him as the oldest, the father figure, entailed. He’d had no time for himself and even had to wait until they were both in college before he could fulfill his dream of becoming a vet. Thankfully, one of them had won a scholarship, and the other had insisted on paying his own way through university, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any money left over for Hunter. As it turned out, what money they had only put him through two semesters, and he had to pay for the rest with a couple of part-time jobs, one at a local fast-food joint and the other working weekends on a garbage truck.

Not that he didn’t love his sister and brother, he did. And not that he wouldn’t have used the money to pay for their education if it had come down to that. He would have walked over hot coals for them. He was just bone-tired of being their parent. Repairing broken household appliances, cleaning out the gutters of a house, refereeing battles between them, rushing off to the ER when one of them got hurt, and then trying to figure out where the money would come from to pay for it were definitely
not
on his must-do-to-be-happy list. He’d been there and found nothing to be happy about.

After the chaos of raising them, he found he liked his quiet life among creatures that didn’t demand anything from him except food, water and an occasional pat on the head, and he wanted to keep it that way.

With this unprecedented attraction he felt for Rose, he could easily see himself getting involved with her and then slipping back into that smothering family lifestyle before he could blink. In the future, he’d stop playing with fire and keep a tighter rein on his emotions. He’d treat Rose as an employee, nothing more.

Several weeks later,
Hunter realized that George Collins hadn’t called in days. The patient list had been full, but not overly demanding. Rose seemed to be settling into running a vet’s office with an amazing efficiency. Most of all, with his resolve to stay away from Rose except for work related times still firmly in place, things at the Paws and Claws Clinic had settled into a smooth routine.

Or so Hunter thought until he decided that a lull in appointments would give him time to do the long put off spaying of Pansy, the once-stray office cat. Though Pansy had only been around the office for the past couple of weeks, she seemed to have a sixth sense about when she was up for some medical procedure, be it her rabies shots or her flea prevention treatment, and made herself scarce.

Today proved different. Pansy, who had, until today, not been an affectionate cat, had spent the day winding in and out of Hunter’s legs to the point that he’d been afraid of stepping on her. At the moment, she sat between his feet, purring like a motorboat and seemingly without a care in the world or any indication that she was about to become an
it
.

Slipping his hands around her belly, he chuckled, shook his head and then hoisted her into his arms. As he carried her toward the examination table, he scratched her tummy. “I know you’re not gonna like—What the heck?” He could feel knobs in her tummy. Lumps, as if she’d swallowed a bunch of small rocks.

He didn’t have to guess twice about what it could be. Pansy was pregnant, but it didn’t make sense. She couldn’t be pregnant. Due to the danger the wild animals presented if she should wander into their cages, she hadn’t been outside the office since she first came in. She was the only cat in the place, except for some patients who’d been here. But they were always in cages.

He placed Pansy on the examination table and rolled her to her back. Carefully he inspected her nipples. Bright pink and enlarged. Then he felt for the lumps he’d detected in her tummy. They were small, but under his skilled fingers, he couldn’t mistake what they were . . . the heads of several tiny kittens. He estimated a litter of about four, perhaps five.

For a moment he stared at the cat. Bad enough that this had happened to Pansy. What if it had been a customer’s pet? There had better be a very good explanation for this.

Anger barely in check, he left Pansy on the examination table and hurried to the front office. Rose had her head bent over the keyboard, entering data into a patient’s file.

“How did Pansy get pregnant?”

Rose jumped and jerked around to face him. “Excuse me?”

“How did Pansy get pregnant?”

The corner of Rose’s mouth twitched in a half smile. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain to you how that works, Dr. Mackenzie.”

Her addressing him as
Dr. Mackenzie
only increased his anger. She’d taken to calling him that in the past weeks, and while he was certain it was a by-product of his businesslike attitude of late, the formality grated on his nerves. Nor did he like the fact that she seemed to be making light of Pansy’s condition.

“I know how she got pregnant. What I want to know is . . .
how
she got pregnant.” He sounded like an idiot.

Rose looked puzzled.

“How did it happen?” He took a deep breath. “Who did it happen with? She never goes out and no males are in here except for treatments and then they’re either receiving treatment or always in cages. So who’s the daddy? Have you let her outside?”

Rose frowned and shook her head. Then suddenly her eyes got large, and she clamped her hand over her mouth. It reminded him of the first day she’d stepped into the clinic. Was she going to be sick?

Just as quickly, she removed her hand. “I think I’m to blame.”

“What?”

Rose held up her hand. “No, not for her pregnancy, just for making it . . . possible.”

His frustration level about at the breaking point, Hunter ran a hand through his hair and took the seat at the desk beside Rose.

Modulating his tone, he asked, “What exactly do you mean by
possible
?”

Straightening her shoulders, Rose swiveled her chair to face him squarely. She scooped a lock of hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear, then folded her hands in her lap. “Well . . . I . . . uh . . . You see, Thomas, Molly Goodwin’s tabby cat . . . Well, he was meowing, and Pansy was meowing. I thought they might be lonely, so I kind of put them in the same cage to play for a while.” She spit out the last few words as if the faster she said them the less trouble she’d be in.

BOOK: Summer Rose
9.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Wintertide by Linnea Sinclair
The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Seahorse by Michael Aye
Fangs Out by David Freed
Still Mine by Amy Stuart
Hex and the Single Witch by Saranna Dewylde