The Big 5-Oh! (7 page)

She didn’t like the way her blood pumped harder, or the way her eyes popped open so round that she could hardly blink. And she especially didn’t like the way her whole donkey body froze with solid, rusted fear.

But when her steady friend Horatio was taken by surprise right before her, well, Prudence found out that was the scariest thing of all.

A
t the back of her groggy mind, Liv recalled the vow she’d made when crawling into bed the previous night. After so many years of rising early for work in the O.R., and then months of 6:45 a.m. wake-up calls to make it to the center in time for her daily eight o’clock radiation treatments, Olivia was bound and determined to sleep until nine or ten o’clock on this vacation of hers.

So why was the alarm screaming at her?

She peeled open one eye and blinked several times.

7:12 a. m.

She reached over and smacked the snooze button on the top of the alarm clock, but nothing happened. The racket just continued.

Opening the other eye took considerably more effort, but she managed, and then propped up on one elbow and groaned. It wasn’t the alarm clock going off, it was the
Lhasa Apso
.

Boofer was on a tirade in the other room, going off like a storm siren. As she tossed her legs over the side of the bed, Liv wondered if the aforementioned typhoon had found her and this was Boofer's way of warning her to run for safety.

“Boofer!” she exclaimed as she hurried down the hall, tugging at the belt of her robe. “Quiet! Boofer!”

If Liv spoke dog, she was quite certain that the indecipherable diatribe would add up to something with quite a few expletives. When she reached the dining room, the ball of multi-colored fur stood on her back legs, her front ones pressed against the slider, her little Princess T-shirt cocked sideways, and her lampshade collar scraping against the glass as she growled and snarled at something on the other side of the window.

“Boo-fer! Please!”

When the dog turned back toward her, the collar caught her off balance, and she toppled over to the floor with a whimper. The long brown-on-black-on-white fur around the dog's face was blown back in a way that made her look as if she’d been riding with her head poked out the window of a fast-moving car. Her bright pink tongue hung off to one side, and her brown eyes were as wide and round as disks.

“What is wrong with you?” Liv asked as she placed Boofer back on her feet again.

Movement beyond the window drew Liv's attention, and she squinted as she watched something large and white skim the surface of the water across the length of the pool. She made sure her robe was securely shut as she threw open the slider. Before she could even take a step out onto the patio, Boofer barreled past her, barking at a pitch that Liv thought might just succeed in shattering glass.

Her front paws were planted so close to the edge that Liv worried the dog might fall in, and she lifted Boofer into her arms and took the dog's place at the edge.

“Hey!” she called out to the elderly man as he reached the far end of the pool. “Excuse me? Hello!”

He was eighty if he was a day, with pasty white skin and yellow-silver hair. He raised the small blue goggles to his forehead and squinted at her.

“Josie?” he said in a raspy Grandpa McCoy voice. “That you?”

“No, it's not,” Liv replied. “Josie is—”

“Hah?” he snapped. “Whadja say? Hearing aids are out. Speak up, woman.”

Liv saw the realization stain his face as she walked along the edge of the pool toward him.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m Josie's houseguest,” she returned. “Who are you?”

“Houseguest. Where's Josie?”

Liv groaned and turned her head away as the old man climbed out of the pool, his lime green and yellow swim trunks dipping low as he did. She hurried to grab the towel thrown across the patio table and tossed it toward him, but she was a little disappointed when he merely tied it around his waist, facing her with a sagging bare chest. Boofer growled at the man, and Liv inwardly acknowledged that she shared the dog's point of view.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

“Clayton Clydesdale,” he answered as he poked his index finger into his ear and plunged it like a stopped-up drain. “Like the horses.”

“And what are you doing here, Mr. Clydesdale?”

“I’m swimming. What's it look like? Josie lets me swim laps in her pool a couple times a week. Now who are
you
, and what are
you
doing here?”

“Olivia Wallace. Josie's daughter Hallie is my best friend.”

“Hallie with you?”

“No. Josie's gone to visit her in Ohio, and she invited me to stay here while she was gone.”

“What happened to that fool dog? Got the mange?”

Liv didn’t like all the questions, especially before eight in the morning. She eyed Clayton with caution as he fetched his hearing aids from a nearby table and twisted them into his ears.

“Mr. Clydesdale, I’m going to be here for the next two weeks, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t just let yourself into the pool while I’m here.”

“Gotta do my laps,” the old man grunted as he adjusted one of the aids in his ear. “Don’t know how to do that without letting myself into the pool.”

“Maybe you could use the community pool,” she suggested. “I saw that there's a very nice one just a block over. Only while I’m here, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if—”

“Maybe not.”

Without another word, the old guy slipped into rainbow-colored rubber flip-flops, tightened the towel around his waist, and headed straight for the screen door.

“What's your name again?” he called from the open doorway.

“Olivia. Wallace.”

“See you later, Olivia Wallace.”

“Not if I can help it,” Liv muttered, scampering toward the screen door and locking it behind him once he was gone.

She padded back to the house and once inside set Boofer down on the floor, and then flicked the lock on that door too.

“How about some breakfast?” she asked the dog. Boofer trotted happily behind her into the kitchen. “None of that special wet dog food for you, either, my friend. There's lots of doggie nutrition in the dry stuff, without the whole digestive … situation.”

She filled the pink bowl with kibbles and set it on the floor. Boofer sniffed at it, and then looked up at Liv and barked once.

“I know. This isn’t what you’re used to. But you know what? You won’t starve. And I won’t have to deal with finding a store where Floridians buy their gas masks.”

Boofer slumped with disappointment and ignored the kibbles.

“I don’t think you understand, Boofer. That special dog food of yours is lethal.” Boofer tilted her head. “Well, I know. Not to you. But certainly to me. And you don’t want that, do you?”

The dog apparently had to think that one over before delivering her final conclusion.

After breakfast, Liv pulled on a pair of denim capris and the short-sleeved white T-shirt with a glitter palm tree on the front that Hallie had given her with the necklace.

“To put you in the mood for a Florida vacation,” she’d said.

She strolled into what appeared to be Josie's home office and stood before the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that occupied one entire side of the room. There were at least a dozen
different Bibles on the top shelf. The others were dotted with the names of the classics, mingled with contemporary thrillers, whodunits, and flowery romances. Liv pulled a cozy mystery off the shelf and read the back cover while Boofer made herself at home resting against Liv's leg.

“Who would have guessed Josie had such eclectic tastes,” she said out loud, casting Boofer a smile as she replaced the book and selected a romance novel from the next shelf down.

She hadn’t even finished skimming the three short paragraphs on the back cover before Jared Hunt bounced into her thoughts, transporting her back to a moonlight stroll and warm brown eyes that seemed to lay into her like some sort of branding iron.

“Maybe not a romance today,” she said, placing the novel back into its spot.

She continued to scan the bookshelves, landing on a colorful section of books, all with different titles but the same recognizable font style. The first one was
A Brand New Pru
by Josephine Parish, and Liv tugged it out and looked at the cover. She’d been hearing from Hallie for years about the series of
Prudence
books Josie had written, but she’d never seen one before, and she recalled Hallie comparing her to the downtrodden donkey in the stories.

Liv stepped out of her sandals, curled into the corner of the settee, folded her legs beneath her, and started to read. Only a few pages later, a
thud-thud-thud
! at the front door sent Boofer into a barking frenzy, and Liv set down the book and hurried out to answer it.

“Good morning, beautiful!”

“Rand. How are you?”

He passed right by her, tapped Boofer on the top of the head, and stepped into the foyer. With his sun-kissed hair and
skin and gleaming white teeth, he looked a lot like someone who might pose for the cover of a Florida travel magazine.

“You have your father's smile,” she told him.

“I also have his twenty-eight-foot Sun Runner.”

“Which, in English, means what exactly?”

“It's a boat,” he announced. “What do you say we pack a picnic lunch and motor around the island for some sun and surf? Maybe go snorkeling.”

Liv folded her arms and smiled. “Rand, how old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Do you know how old I am?”

“I don’t know. Forty?”

“No,” she replied, and then stopped herself. “Thank you, by the way. But no. I am not forty. I’m not even forty-five.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So do you want to go?”

“Are you asking me on a date, Rand?”

“I’m inviting you out for some lunch,” he corrected. “If we happen to fall in love while we’re eating, then so be it.”

Liv grinned in spite of herself. “You are a very charming young man, Rand.”

“If you think this is charming, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

“But I am not going to date you.”

He regarded her strangely, and then took a step back. “You’re not?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you hung up on the age thing?”

“Extremely.”

“And if I were forty?”

“I’d be grabbing my shoes and running toward the marina with you.”

“That's so wrong, Liv.”

“I think so too. But it's just how wrong I’m going to be. And you need to respect it.”

Rand shrugged and pulled the door open. Turning back to her, he smiled. “So it's definitely no.”

“It's no.”

His hand flew to his chest and he sank back against the door jamb as if he’d been wounded. “You’re harshing my mellow, Liv.”

“Am I?”

He shrugged again and stepped outside. Just as he turned back toward her for one last objection, Liv grinned at him.

“Good-bye, Rand.”

And she closed the door.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hennessy. How are you doing today?”

Doris Hennessy was one of Jared's longest standing patients. Meaning she was ninety-three years old, and she was
still standing
.

“My bursitis is acting up, Jared, and my grandkids are coming to visit.”

“Mary Kate or Mary Grace?”

“Mary Grace. She's just had her third baby, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” he told her, lifting her arm with caution until she winced. “Congratulations. That makes you a great-grandmother. Quite an accomplishment.”

“Well, I’d like to be able to hold the baby. But my arms are aching so badly.”

“Have you been taking your anti-inflammatories?”

“Yes.”

“And have you iced your shoulder?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up on her nose and thought about it. “It didn’t help last time, Jared.”

“All right. Then let's try some heat therapy. Okay with you?”

“Sure.”

“Can I have a listen?” he asked her, holding up the stethoscope draped around his neck. She nodded, and he pressed it to her back. “Big deep breath now. Good, you sound nice and clear. I think you’re going to live longer than anyone on this island.”