That Runaway Summer
“We won’t drop that part of our practice entirely,” Stanley said. “Bob will handle the bulk of calls for farm animals and horses, but he’ll occasionally need backup.”
“Why don’t we split the work fifty-fifty?”
The young waitress appeared at their table, wisps of hair escaping her ponytail. She set one plate of bruschetta and another of mozzarella sticks on the table. “Your appetizers.”
“They look great,” Dan said, then added gently, “except we didn’t order appetizers.”
Her face blanching, she immediately scooped up the plates. “I’m so sorry. I guess you can tell it’s my first day.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Dan rushed to reassure her. “You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”
“You really think so?” Her voice sounded small.
“I do,” Dan said. “You already have the tableside manner down.”
The waitress was smiling when she left them.
Stanley pointed his index finger at Dan and declared, “That’s why a fifty-fifty split won’t work.”
“Come again?”
“That charm of yours. Why do you think Verducci has been losing business? People want you to take care of their pets. You enjoy that kind of work, too, don’t you?”
“I do,” Dan confirmed.
“Then there’s no problem,” Stanley said. “You can take the occasional call when Verducci needs help. The rest of the time, you won’t have to work so late.”
“I don’t mind working late.” Just last week Dan had been up half the night helping a cow through a difficult birth.
“All you’ve done since you got here is work,” Stanley said. “Look at it this way. It’ll free up your time so you can ask out Jill over there.”
“What makes you think I want to do that?”
Stanley’s laugh rumbled forth. “Besides the way you’re staring at her?”
“She’s pretty,” Dan said lamely.
“So go for it,” Stanley said. “Stop working so hard and have some fun.”
The young waitress made another pass by their table, presenting Dan with a calzone and setting an individual pepperoni pizza in front of Stanley.
“Wrong again, sweetheart,” Stanley said. “We both ordered fettuccine Alfredo.”
Her lower lip quivered and she appeared to fight tears as she picked up the plates. “These must belong to that couple over there. Forgive me. Please.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” Dan said, but she was already moving away.
Nothing but linoleum floor stretched between the waitress and the table where Jill dined with the pharmacist. There was absolutely no reason the girl should stumble, but she did. The calzone, the pizza and the plates went momentarily airborne, then clattered to the floor.
Dan leaped up from his chair, reaching the scene of the calamity in seconds. Jill was already there, her hand supporting the young girl’s elbow. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the waitress wailed, “but the food’s ruined!”
“Don’t you worry about that.” Jill patted her arm soothingly. Today she was dressed in another eye-catching outfit: pink, turquoise and white madras shorts that skimmed her knees, a lacy turquoise camisole blouse and dangling earrings. “Everyone makes mistakes when they start out waitressing. If they say they don’t, they’re lying.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Jill said.
Dan bent, retrieved the tray, an overturned plate and the calzone. Jill crouched beside him, picking up the other plate and the pizza, which had miraculously landed tomato-sauce side up.
“If it isn’t my matchmaker’s choice.” Jill’s smile was impish, the light reaching eyes he now realized were green.
“But not yours,” he said.
“Ditto.” She kept smiling at him, appearing genuinely glad to run into him. If he’d learned one thing about her in their short acquaintance, though, it was that she was unfailingly friendly. “Where did you come from?”
He gestured behind them. “I’m having lunch with my boss. I would have waved, but your back was to me.”
“Likely story.” She winked at him. “Oops. Shouldn’t have done that. Don’t worry. I stand by what I said the other night. You’re safe from my attentions.”
Yet she obviously welcomed the pharmacist’s interest.
“Thanks so much for helping me pick this up,” the waitress said to them both, taking the tray from Dan. “You two are the best.”
“Hang in there.” Jill got to her feet and Dan followed suit. “Once you get over the opening-day jitters, you’ll make a fabulous waitress.”
The girl beamed at her. Dan found himself smiling at Jill, too, and curiously reluctant to part from her once the waitress headed back to the kitchen.
“One more thing before I go.” Jill’s eyes opened so wide that white was visible all around the green irises. “Beware the matchmaker. We’ve got some breathing room because she’s leaving for Hawaii soon, but she’s not convinced we aren’t perfect for each other. She might try another ambush.”
She grinned and turned back to her table before Dan could say anything. That was probably a good thing, because he should keep the response that came to mind to himself until he figured out what to do about it.
Because if Penelope made another stab at setting him up with Jill, he’d be all for it.
“SO WHAT DID YOU WANT to talk to me about?” Jill kept her attention fixed on Chad, fighting the temptation to turn around and sneak another look at Dan.
So far, Jill had done most of the talking. She didn’t mind. Chad was a quiet sort. If she didn’t press him on the reason he’d asked her to lunch, however, the bill might arrive before he got around to discussing the subject.
He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. Was he stalling for time? Could Penelope have been right? Was Chad screwing up his courage to tell her he was interested, that he viewed their lunch as a first date?
She breathed in sharply as she belatedly realized Dan could have sized up the lunch that way. It explained his comment about being her matchmaker’s choice but not hers.
She’d informed Dan after the barbecue that it wasn’t the right time for her to get involved with anyone. Yet less than a week later she was on what could appear to be a date.
She didn’t owe Dan an explanation, yet suddenly she had an overwhelming desire to rush to his table and clarify that she and Chad were just friends.
“Mountain bikes,” Chad said.
His answer didn’t compute. “Come again?”
“I want to talk about mountain bikes.”
“Do you ride?” She hit the trails three of four times a week, but had never bumped into him.
“My friend does.” His voice softened, hinting at his feelings for the friend. “We went to pharmacy school together. I ran into her at a reunion last weekend and she told me about the ride she’s helping to organize across the Poconos.”
“I heard about that.” Jill no longer belonged to any bike organizations, as she had when she’d managed the shop in Atlanta, but she still checked Web sites for news. “Aren’t they calling it the Poconos Challenge?”
“Yes.” Chad nodded. “Towns are invited to turn in proposals to host stops along the way. You could make that happen for Indigo Springs.”
“Me?” Jill gestured to herself. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“You ride and you enjoyed working on the spring festival. You’re a logical choice to help put together a bid.”
She couldn’t dispute either of those facts. Neither could she explain why having her old life intersect with her new one would be risky. She hadn’t managed to elude the private eye on her tail up to this point by luck alone. She was smart enough not to fall into her old habits.
“It seems to me this is something the mayor’s office should act on,” Jill remarked.
“Definitely,” Chad said. “I just thought you’d put yourself in an advantageous position if you proposed the idea.”
“An advantageous position for what?”
“Borough council.”
She started. “What makes you think I want to run for the council?”
“When we worked on the festival, you were the one who went to the mayor with ideas about how to improve downtown parking and attract more tourists,” he said. “You’d be a natural.”
She couldn’t refute him. The idea of community politics held surprising appeal. She’d discovered during her civic volunteer work that she had a knack for seeing the big picture, a quality that would serve a council member well.
“Well?” Chad asked. The word was a temptation.
If she spearheaded an effort to bring the bike race to Indigo Springs in conjunction with the community work she’d already done, she’d be in a great position to run for council.
She let herself envision it for a moment. Her name on the ballot. The opportunity to do some good for the fine people of Indigo Springs. The questions the local newspaper would ask in order to print her bio in a special election section.
Who was she kidding? She could no more run for community politics than compete in a Miss Universe pageant.
“Thanks for thinking of me.” She was surprised it was hard to smile. “But I’m not going to run for office. You can let the mayor’s office know about the bike race yourself.”
“Okay. If that’s what you want,” he said, then grew quiet at the arrival of the rookie waitress and the second coming of their order.
A few moments later Chad reached for a piece of his individually sized pizza, biting into a slice as though nothing notable had happened.
It had, though.
Jill had gotten another reminder that she’d surrendered her chance to lead a normal life by going on the run with her brother.
She felt a prickly sensation on the back of her neck and turned, her gaze locking with Dan’s.
A thrill traveled through her, which was starting to be par for the course. She’d experienced it when they talked over the broken plates and had felt it more strongly during their kiss.
The sensation provided enough incentive for her to break the connection. The reasons she couldn’t get involved with Dan hadn’t changed, providing ample cause for her to keep her mouth shut about why she was lunching with Chad.
Dan would eventually discover she and the pharmacist weren’t an item. She’d be smart to use the time until he did to devise a way to stop the thrill.
CHAPTER THREE
DAN WAVED OFF THE GNATS swirling around his face. He took his time as he hoisted his sturdy mountain bike from the bed of his Jeep to the packed earth of the parking area.
The morning sun highlighted a streak of dust on the handlebars he must have missed when he wiped down the bike. He’d regularly hit the trails back in Ohio. Here in Indigo Springs he’d waited so long to take his inaugural ride he’d had to dig the bike out from a pile of stuff in his garage.
Funny how life worked. If Penelope Pollock hadn’t mentioned mountain biking when he ran into her before she left for her second honeymoon, he might not have gotten the notion to take up riding again.
It had all started when Dan made an offhand remark about seeing Jill lunching with Chad Armstrong. Penelope emphatically maintained the two were not dating, a piece of information that fit. Somebody as honest and upfront as Jill wouldn’t have fed him a line about her resolve not to get involved with anyone.
Penelope was sketchy on the details but did know the lunch had somehow involved cycling. Chad didn’t ride, but Jill did. In fact, on Sunday mornings when she wasn’t on the water Jill biked the very trail Dan was about to take.
Dan had parked his Jeep in a small lot near the entrance to the trail, which happened to be among the most popular in the region. A sensible choice for a cyclist aiming to get back into the sport.
He swatted at the pesky gnats again, which only seemed to make more of them appear. The sun beat down, getting warmer by the minute. A bead of sweat trickled down his face.
He really should get moving.
When he didn’t budge, he finally had to admit to himself he’d been hoping Jill’s ride would coincide with his. Although, come to think of it, the woman was a bartender. His chances of being in the same place at the same time she was would have been infinitely better at the Blue Haven.
Brother, was he out of practice when it came to male-female relations.
He blew out a breath, then sucked in a bigger one, along with what must have been a half dozen gnats. He coughed, trying to clear his throat. He doubled over to spit out the insects, peripherally aware of a soft crunching noise.
He straightened in time to see the back of a mountain bike entering the trail. Jill’s black curly hair stuck out from under her bike helmet, while her strong, lithe legs pumped at the pedals.
“Damn,” Dan said aloud.
The trail entrance was a few miles from the town center, most of the route uphill, all of it on a narrow, twisting road. It hadn’t occurred to him to bike to the trail entrance.
He swung one leg over the crossbar before remembering bike safety and disembarking. Snatching his helmet from the bed of the pickup, he shoved it on his head. Jill had been traveling at a pretty good clip. With her head start, it was possible he wouldn’t catch up to her.
The trail appeared to follow a wide loop to the right before bending back around. To his left was a forest consisting mostly of tall oaks interspersed with evergreens.
He took off for the forest, steering his bike between an uneven row of spindly tree trunks. The bike’s thick tires flattened the underbrush. Branches and twigs slapped at him. He shielded his face with one hand, navigating the shortcut with relative ease.
The path soon came into view, and he gave himself a mental high five. The going was bumpy, but he and the bike had held up beautifully. They were both made of sturdy stuff, able to withstand a rugged ride.
The thick, low-lying branch came out of nowhere. Dan jerked the handlebars to the left. The wheels stopped spinning, propelling his body weight forward. He squeezed the hand brakes, desperately trying to keep his balance as the bike skidded through the leaves and the dirt.
Then, just shy of the path, it came to a jarring stop.
His heart hammered faster than the beak of a woodpecker against a tree. It seemed incredible that he was upright and in one piece. The bike, though, had taken a hit. Lodged in the spokes of the back wheel was a stick of wood. The chain had come loose.
Sighing, he got off and dislodged the stick. To better assess the damage, he needed to move the bike out of the brush. Before he reached the trail, Jill Jacobi came into view, dressed in black mountain bike shorts, a purple sleeveless shirt and a black helmet decorated with red lightning bolts. She slowed, then stopped, planting her feet on either side of her bike.
“Dan!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing over there?”
Not exactly the scenario he’d envisioned when he’d taken off through the woods to catch up to her.
He slowly wheeled his bike onto the path. “I was about to put the chain back on.”
“But how did you…” Her voice trailed off and she tilted her head. Her pretty face scrunched up. “Did you just ride through the woods?”
“Isn’t that what we’re both doing?”
“I’m on a path,” she pointed out.
“I, um, took a shortcut.”
“Why?”
Great question.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said.
Her gaze dropped to the dislodged chain. “Not your best move. You haven’t done much mountain biking, have you?”
“Can’t imagine why you’d think that,” he deadpanned. Her laugh was a pleasant rumble. “Believe it or not, I used to ride all the time in Ohio. Looks like we have something in common.”
“Don’t tell Penelope,” she said in a teasing voice.
“Actually, I ran into her a few days ago and your name came up,” he said.
“Did you mention me or did she?”
“I did,” he admitted. “I said I’d run into you at lunch with the pharmacist and she assured me you weren’t dating.”
“That explains why she was trying to reach me before she and Johnny left on their trip.” She didn’t contradict her friend about Chad Armstrong. “Her message said it was a matter of my dating life or death. I’m telling you, you have to watch what you say around her.”
“We could give in and become friends.”
That was what he wanted. A friendship that could slowly build into something deeper and richer. Maggie had hurt him badly by keeping secrets behind his back. Jill was the perfect counterpart: open, honest, uncomplicated.
He was finally ready to move on.
“Penelope would never accept there was only friendship between us. No. Better to play it safe.” She kept smiling at him, her cheerful expression at odds with her firm rejection. She nodded to his bicycle. “You need any help with that?”
He hadn’t required assistance in putting on a bicycle chain in probably twenty years. “If I said yes, you might figure out it was a ploy to keep you around.”
“If I didn’t know better,” she countered, “I’d think you were flirting with me.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
She stayed perfectly still, her expression frozen somewhere between shock and an emotion he couldn’t identify. A squirrel scampered up a nearby tree, chattering as it went. A bird chirped. The gnats found him again. None of those things could pull his attention from Jill.
A sliver of sunlight was shining on her through a break in the trees, but her light seemed to come from within. Why hadn’t he realized until this moment how truly lovely she was?
The moment lengthened until he thought he could hear her breathing. Or maybe those shallow breaths were his own.
“I should get going,” she said, shattering the silence.
She balanced one foot on the ground and stepped on a pedal with the other, propelling the bike forward. She shot past him faster than a competitor in the Tour de France.
Now that he’d decided to change her mind about dating him, he needed to figure out how to get her to give him a chance.
Unfortunately that didn’t look as if it would happen any time soon.
“JILL! JILL! WHERE ARE YOU?” Chris barreled into a kitchen that smelled of the pot roast and mashed potatoes Felicia had served for dinner that evening.
He skidded to a stop beside the table, interrupting Jill’s latest stab at convincing Felicia Feldman she had no intention of seeing Dan Maguire again, kiss or no kiss.
Both Jill and Felicia set down their coffee mugs.
“Come quick!” Her brother’s thin chest heaved up and down. His breathing was ragged, his face red.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Chris.” Jill’s heartbeat accelerated, her mind conjuring up all sorts of reasons for his behavior.
Foremost among them was the fear that the private eye had found them.
“Just come.” He grabbed her hand and gave a tug that was surprisingly effective given he was only three or four inches over four feet tall and weighed about sixty pounds. He headed for the back door, practically dragging her with him.
Felicia followed, the landlady’s complexion almost as gray as her hair.
“Are you okay, Chris?” Felicia’s voice trailed them down the back porch’s wooden steps and past the row of azaleas to the patch of woods behind the house. Dusk had fallen, muting the colors of the flowers and lending the early evening a murky quality.
“I’m okay,” Chris answered, then said in a voice only loud enough for Jill to hear. “He’s not.”
“Who’s not okay?” Jill demanded.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Chris muttered, then broke into a run before Jill could refute him. Not that she didn’t realize Chris had a habit of stretching the truth. She just didn’t believe he lied about important things.
His desperation told her this was something important.
Imagining someone in distress, Jill kept up with him even as the muscles in her legs protested. She felt every inch of the twenty-mile mountain-bike trek she’d taken that morning, but she kept going. At least she’d had the presence of mind to grab her cell phone. She could dial 911.
Chris took a shortcut through some tall pines to reach one of the walking trails a local hiking group maintained. She allowed Chris to venture into the woods as long as it was light out and he stayed close to home.
The past few nights he’d been eager to go outside after dinner, hoping to catch a glimpse of the family of deer that sometimes appeared at dusk. He’d vowed to find out where they lived.
Had he stumbled across something while following the deer?
“There!” He broke into a run down the narrow trail, his thin arms and legs moving faster than she’d ever seen them.
Jill squinted, and her breath clogged her throat. Something small that she couldn’t quite make out was lying just off the path. Oh please, she prayed, don’t let it be a child.
She increased her pace, getting a clearer view as she came nearer. No. It definitely wasn’t human. Chris crouched next to an animal of some sort. Light caramel in color, it had four legs, yet its body was too thick to be a fawn.
Was it a stray dog? She immediately thought rabies and had opened her mouth to shout a warning when she heard a…bleat?
The sound came again. Yes, it was definitely a bleat.
“Why, that’s not a dog.” Jill reached her brother’s side and examined the animal’s long droopy ears and short, wide face. “It’s a goat.”
“A baby goat.” Chris smoothed his hand over the animal’s coat in a rhythmic, calming motion. “That’s why I said you wouldn’t believe me. Something’s wrong with him.”
The goat was injured, not sick. Blood matted its coat and it held one of its legs stiffly. She heard the faint roar of a motorcycle engine, a reminder that this section of woods adjoined the two-lane thoroughfare leading to and from downtown Indigo Springs.
“The poor thing. It looks like he might’ve been hit by a car.” The goat could have limped into the woods before it collapsed. But where had it come from? Farms dotted the countryside, but she didn’t know of one nearby. “I think his back leg is broken.”
“We need to take him to a vet!” Chris cried.
Although the goat measured about two and a half feet from head to hooves, it had a thick, muscular body and probably weighed thirty pounds.
“He’s too big to carry,” she said.
The animal made a soft, keening sound that tore at Jill.
“Somebody has to help him!” Chris sounded close to tears, stabbing at Jill’s heart. On the other hand, she wasn’t surprised. Her brother cried while watching lions attack their prey on the National Geographic channel.
Jill placed her hand on her brother’s back, feeling his body trembling. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t help him, honey. Only that we can’t move him.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Chris wailed.
Jill quickly ran over options in her mind. She could phone a veterinarian, except nightfall was quickly approaching and she didn’t know how late vets worked or whether they took after-hour calls.
Or she could fetch one.
“I know of someone who can help.” She handed her brother her cell phone. “Stay here and I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
She took off at a trot, hardly noticing the leaves and small twigs that slapped at her arms and legs. She did, however, recognize the irony in the situation.
She was running toward the one man from whom she should stay far away.
DAN’S FIRST INDICATION that this wouldn’t be an ordinary Tuesday night came when the dogs who’d settled in to watch him fix the kitchen cabinet leaped to their feet and broke into loud barking.
Starsky and Hutch raced for the door, their paws sliding over the hardwood floor.
Dan rose slowly, reluctant to abandon the job he’d finally gotten around to tackling. Almost a year after he’d moved into the small, two-bedroom house, the cabinet was still coming off its hinges.
“Starsky! Hutch! Quiet!” he commanded.
The two mixed-breed dogs kept barking, completely in disregard of the fact that he was a vet with a reputation to uphold.