The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) (11 page)

“Stubborn? Gee, wonder where he got that trait?” Pauline put the Caddy in gear, then shot Greta a grin. “And I mean that in the nicest way, Greta.”

Esther’s stomach growled and she pressed a hand to her gut. “Ladies, before we change the world, can we stop for muffins?”

Greta sighed, cast her gaze heavenward, and prayed for patience. God’s response sounded a lot like laughter.

Six

Olivia sat in one of the hard plastic chairs of the waiting room and drew in a deep breath. The air-conditioned cool air filled her lungs, expanded her chest, but didn’t slow her stuttering heart. She kept a hand on her knee to keep her leg from tapping her nerves against the tile floor.

Her sister. She was about to meet her sister.

Of course, Diana Tuttle, DVM, didn’t know that. Probably didn’t even know Olivia existed. Or if she had known, and she hadn’t looked her up, maybe she didn’t want anything to do with a long-lost sister.

Maybe if Olivia had pushed harder for information, she would have learned about her sister by now. But every time Olivia started to ask about Bridget, the questions lodged in her throat. After the disappointment of the house and the lack of any kind of note or letter or explanation, Olivia hadn’t had the heart to dig for more information.

It didn’t take a Mensa applicant to figure out why Olivia wasn’t asking questions. She was merely doing what she did best—avoiding hurt and disappointment. She’d had enough of that to last a long time.

Now she sat in the waiting room, nervous energy bubbling inside her, and envied a woman she had never met the relationship she’d had with a woman who was already gone.

Olivia glanced around the room, taking in the bright yellow and orange plastic chairs, the butter-yellow tiled floor, the parade of animals painted above the wainscoting. The waiting area of Diana Tuttle, DVM, was cheery, happy, pretty. The staff who had greeted Olivia had been friendly, warm, all boding for a good experience at the vet.

A couple sat across from Olivia, taking turns trying to calm a yowling cat inside a carrier, while a heavyset man in the corner kept a tight hold on the leash of a curious chihuahua nosing around the chairs and end tables. Olivia glanced at the six-panel oak door that led to the exam rooms, then again at the clock, then back again at the door. The nerves tightened her throat, and in her arms, the golden lifted his head, brown eyes wary. Olivia exhaled and forced herself to relax. “Sorry, buddy.” She stroked one long golden ear, and the dog settled with a sigh.

The door opened again and a short blond vet tech in animal-print scrubs held up a folder. “Chance?”

It took a second for Olivia to recognize the name she’d impulsively given to the stray dog when she’d checked in. She got to her feet, holding the too-thin golden close to her chest. All this time, the dog hadn’t complained, hadn’t done much more than just lie in Olivia’s arms, trusting the human.

“That’s us,” Olivia said, then headed through the door, following the bubbly tech to a floor scale. Olivia laid the dog on the rubber mat, then stepped back. The digital numbers flickered, then stayed at a very low forty-two pounds.

A healthy golden would weigh at least twenty or thirty pounds more than that.

Olivia wanted to just drop a bag of Purina at Chance’s feet, but she knew too much food too fast could be as deadly as too little. She’d given Chance a scoop of dog food before bringing him in today, but she was willing to bet the dog was still hungry. The tech tut-tutted as she wrote down the weight, then led the way to room number two. The young blonde chatted the whole way: small talk about the weather, the goofy St. Bernard due in at one, and the litter of kittens born last night.

Olivia barely heard. All she could think about was the sister she was about to meet. The only biological family Olivia had. Was she ready for this?

Ready to meet the sole tie to Bridget? To Olivia’s heritage?

“In here,” the tech said. “Do you need some help with him?”

“No, I’ve got it. He doesn’t weigh much.” Olivia laid the golden on the stainless steel exam table. He let out a sigh and dropped his head to his front paws. In a few minutes, Olivia had gone through the preliminary information with the tech, who took a few notes and readied a couple of syringes on the counter. “That’s it. The doctor will be in soon and we’ll get this big guy fixed right up,” the tech said, giving Chance a quick, gentle pat before stepping out the back door of the room.

Olivia shifted from foot to foot. Chance lifted his head and glanced at her, as if telling her to calm down, that he was the one who should be nervous. “You’re right, boy,” she said to the dog, giving him a tender rub behind the ears. “Okay, let’s just worry about you for now.”

The door to the room opened again and a tall, thin blonde in a white lab coat entered the room. She could have been Olivia’s twin, with the same frame, same hair color, but most of all, the same wide, forest-green eyes. Was that what their mother had looked like too? There’d been no pictures at the house, and the Google searches Olivia had done had turned up a few grainy black-and-white newspaper images of a tall woman in a floppy hat, usually holding a rescued dog.

“Hi, I’m Diana Tuttle,” Diana said, putting out her hand. Her voice was peppy, friendly. Her eyes soft and warm, her features animated. “And who do we have here?”

DIANA TUTTLE, DVM
was embroidered on one side of her lab coat and would have made her look official, maybe even clinical, except for the bright pink T-shirt she wore underneath. On the shirt, a cartoon drawing of a dog and cat in wedding attire was emblazoned above the words
SHAKESPEARE’S LOST MANUSCRIPT: WOOFEO AND MEOWIET.

Olivia liked her on the spot.

“I’m Olivia. And this is Chance.” Olivia shook hands with Diana—the words
my sister
rocketing inside her. Her only sibling, well, that she knew of. But more, the only living tie to Bridget Tuttle and the answers Olivia had searched for all her life. Except that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing one blurted out, especially with the dog between them.

On the way over, Olivia had debated whether to tell Diana the truth, but now that the moment was here, she faltered. What if Diana didn’t know about Bridget’s other daughter? What if she didn’t want to know? What if she kicked Olivia out, the interloper who had inherited Bridget’s house? So instead, Olivia shook hands, noting Diana’s firm, warm grip, then released her sister’s hand and waved toward the dog.
Take care of him first
, she reminded herself. The rest could wait. It had waited this long, after all. “I found Chance in my backyard a few days ago, but it took some time to entice him to come close enough to catch him. He’s definitely hurt, and underweight.”

“Poor baby,” Diana cooed, leaning down to examine the dog with a gentle, practiced touch. “Let’s see what we have here. Okay, honey? Don’t worry, Chance. It’ll all be fine. I promise.”

Her sister had the same light blond hair that Olivia had, but styled in a shoulder-length, no-nonsense blunt cut. She was about the same height, and a similar build, but a little younger. Olivia guessed her to be twenty-nine, maybe thirty. She had a wide smile that reached her green eyes, and a tendency to tuck her hair behind her right ear, something Olivia did, too. An inherited trait? Or just a habit?

Or was Olivia looking for a connection that wasn’t really there? After all, they’d grown up half a country apart, with different parents. There was no reason to think they had anything in common besides some DNA.

And one wounded dog. Not exactly enough to build a family reunion on. Olivia worked a smile to her face and told herself it didn’t matter. But deep down inside, it did.

A lot.

* * *

For all practical purposes, the dog before Diana should have been dead. Underweight, malnourished, dehydrated, and cut from shoulder to belly with a deep, infected laceration that had crusted over and healed poorly. Chance looked up at her from the exam table with wary eyes that quivered with hope.

Save me
, he seemed to say.
Please.

Diana worked fast, inserting an IV into a vein in the dog’s foreleg, taking his pulse and temp, drawing blood for a heartworm test. The laceration would need to be opened up, cleaned, then stitched, but overall, Chance had lived up to his name. Thank God he’d been brought in before things got much worse.

“He’s had a bad time of it,” Diana said, running a hand down the dog’s fur. He barely stirred, save for a couple of friendly flicks of his tail against the table. Poor puppy. “I’m not sure what happened here, but it looks like he got caught under a fence or something that tore open his belly and it didn’t heal well, so now it’s infected. I’m going to shave it down, clean it up, and stitch it up again. He’ll need a round of antibiotics, for sure. But most of all, he needs rest, food, and water, and a lot of TLC from Mother Nature.”

Olivia let out a sigh. Relief showed in her eyes, in the way her shoulders eased. “You’re sure?”

“Yup.” Diana picked up the white plastic test package she’d set on the counter a few minutes earlier. “And he’s lucky. The heartworm is negative. Though I’d recommend getting him on some preventatives today. Since we don’t know where he’s been, we should also test for parasites at the next visit and get his shots up to date.”

“Will do. Thank you.”

Diana smiled. “Just doing my job.” She leaned back against the counter, and picked up the dog’s chart. “If you don’t want to take on all this by yourself, I can help you rehome him. Though he’s on the mend, he’s far from out of the woods, and he’s going to need a lot of care in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, our local animal shelter closed down a”—the words still caught in her throat, the grief hitting her anew—“while ago, but I can give you the addresses of a couple in nearby towns.”

“No, I’m good. I think I’ll adopt him.” Olivia smiled and gave the dog’s muzzle a gentle touch. “Do you, uh, know why the shelter closed down?”

“The owner got sick.” Four words, not nearly enough words to encompass the slow, painful decline of Bridget Tuttle. For the first time in her life, Diana had found herself wishing she’d gone into people medicine instead of animal medicine, because she’d sat by Bridget’s bedside, doing nothing but feeling helpless and trying to ease the pain of her mother’s decline and her losing battle against pancreatic cancer.

But in the end, her mother had cut Diana out of the will, leaving what few possessions Bridget had to a stranger up in Boston, some woman by the last name of MacDonald or something. That after-death slap had stung. Still did. Diana, a veterinarian, should have inherited the shelter. She’d tried, a hundred times, to talk her mother into resurrecting it, promising to help get it running again, maybe even moving her practice over there. But Bridget had always refused, saying she had other plans for the property.

Plans that didn’t include her daughter. Her child. Why would her mother do that?

Diana had thought she and her mother had no secrets. Turned out she’d been naïve about that, too.

Diana fiddled with the pen and wondered when it would get easier to accept what her mother had done. How she had, in the very end of her life, turned her back on her child. Diana cleared her throat. “The, uh, shelter was shut down a few months ago and no one has reopened it yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said.

I’m sorry?
An odd response. Diana studied the woman across from her, then the notes on the chart. Olivia Linscott. A new transplant to Florida, she’d said, who had found the dog in her backyard. Something about Olivia looked familiar, though, but Diana couldn’t put her finger on the connection.

Diana refocused on the chart, the dog before her. “I’ll need to keep Chance here for a couple of days, but then he should be good to go home.”

“Okay.” Olivia made no move to leave.

“You can pay at the counter on your way out. Linda will have your bill.”

“Okay, thanks.” Olivia shifted her feet but still didn’t turn away.

“He’ll be fine.” Diana gave the dog a gentle pat. “We’ll take good care of him, and I’ll call you if anything changes.”