LITMIR.BIZ

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IT GOING with the skunks?” Seth stood on the front porch in clean jeans and a navy polo shirt. His short brown hair was damp, so he must have taken a shower after he came home from work.

      “Do you really want to know? Barbara Carew said she’d advised you to ignore them.”

      “Not easy to do. I worry.”

      Emma moved aside so he could come in. He stayed on the porch.

      “I brought you something that may help.” He slid a folded baby’s traveling playpen across the step.

      “I thought Barbara said you didn’t have any children.” Her heart had given a major lurch. Children meant wives. She did not want this man—this almost stranger—to have a wife. Go figure.

      “I don’t. I have it for raising puppies. I don’t need it, and I thought you could borrow it to use in place of a crate.”

      “Can’t skunks climb?”

      “They mostly don’t. Not at their age, at any rate.”

      “Then please bring it in.”

      He picked it up one-handed. He held a cardboard box in his other hand. He hauled both box and pen into the pantry, leaned the playpen against the wall and began to unfold it.

      “Will it fit in here?” Emma asked.

      “It’s a country pantry with enough storage area to get through a whole winter, Ms. French. Besides, this is a traveling playpen. Half-size. It’ll fit.” He didn’t even glance at the babies.

      “Out of sight, out of mind?” Emma said. “And when did I become Ms. French? I thought we were beyond that after last night.”

      He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been “out of mind” since he’d walked out of her house the night before. The skunks hadn’t been either—well, not much. He set up the playpen, took a fresh towel from a stack on the kitchen counter and made a nest at one end. From the cardboard box he pulled out a folded square. “Brought you a box of puppy pads, too,” he said. Unfolding one, he laid it in the other end of the pen. “Might help with cleanup.”

      “Oh, Seth, thank you! I didn’t think...”

      “Not my first rodeo, Ms.—Emma. I see you’ve got a water dish.”

      She sat on the floor beside him. “I found it on the top shelf of the pantry. I guess my last tenants must have had a dog. I know Aunt Martha had cats.”

      “The last tenants, the Mulligans, had two Australian cattle dogs. I’m surprised you didn’t bring a dog with you as protection out here in the wilderness.”

      She shook her head and sat on the floor beside him. “I’ve never had a dog or a cat. My stepmother is allergic to both.”

      “Well, you sure started out with a bang. Don’t know what I’d do without a dog.”

      “You have a dog? I didn’t hear one last night.”

      “I’m between dogs. Barbara’s looking for the right rescue for me. That’s why I could lend you the playpen.” He ran a hand down Sycamore’s back. “You’re going to have trouble with this one. Ought to have named him Columbus. He sees new worlds to conquer.”

      “He already made it to the kitchen this afternoon,” she said with a smile.

      “The playpen should keep them in for a while. Until you get them weaned and back in the wild.”

      “How long do I have?” she asked.

      “Maybe as little as a couple of weeks or as much as a couple of months. All depends.”

      “On what?”

      “How fast their scent glands develop.”

      “Oh, Lord!”

      “By that time they’ll be acclimated to you. They won’t spray you unless you really annoy them. Don’t. You’ll have to teach them to be afraid of human beings.”

      “But...”

      He heard the longing in that one word and understood it perfectly. He could always recognize someone who cared about animals, any animals. “It’s best for them.”

      One of the hardest choices he had to make was to let nature take its course and to free a wild creature back to the wild. He watched her fingers touch the soft fur between Peony’s ears. She had beautiful hands, even if that fancy manicure had pretty much bitten the dust in the past couple of days. He wondered what it would be like to be stroked by those gentle fingers... Uh-uh. Not a safe image. Certainly not when they were sitting on the pantry floor thigh to thigh.

      She leaned across him to pet Rose, and her sleek hair brushed his cheek. “How do I teach them to hate me?”

      “Not to hate you. Be wary of you.” He had no idea which flower her hair smelled like. Flowers weren’t his thing. Whatever shampoo she used, it was a darned sight more enticing than eau de skunk.

      “The playpen won’t work for long,” Seth told her. He held little Peony in the palm of his hand. She seemed perfectly content. “They need to get outside.”

      “But they’ll run away!”

      “They need a big outdoor cage that’s safely enclosed so they can get used to the outdoors. They’re going to live in it, after all. They have to learn to forage for food, identify smells... How to be skunks.”

      “Where on earth do I buy something like that? I’ve never seen one big enough for what you’re talking about.”

      “You don’t buy it. You build it. Should be tall enough so that you can move around inside without stooping, with a roof and a door and someplace they can use as a den. Needs to have a metal strip set below ground so they can’t dig under it.”

      “I have no idea how to do that,” Emma wailed. “My daddy tried to teach me carpentry, but I’ve never been able to drive a nail straight.” She looked down at her cracked manicure. Why bother redoing it? One day of hammering, and she wouldn’t have any fingernails left anyway.

      “If I tried to use a power saw, I’d cut off my hand,” she added. “How do I find someone I can hire to build it? Or even design it in the first place?”

      He leaned back against the pantry wall and let Peony snuggle against his chest. She made tiny puttering noises that were almost like a cat’s purr. “It’s not that hard.”

      “No, no, no, you don’t understand. I’m the original klutz. If this wasn’t during the school year, I might be able to con my half brother, Patrick, into driving up here to help, but he not only has school during the week, but lacrosse on the weekends. And baseball practice starts in two weeks.”

      “You have a half brother?”

      “And a half sister. Patrick is seventeen, Catherine is fifteen. Daddy remarried after my mother died.”

      “Then if you have a family in Memphis, why are you up here?”

      “I beg your pardon. Why is that your business?” She inched away from him and organized herself to stand up.

      He laid his free hand on her arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. You just don’t seem the type to go off to a house like this in the country alone. Rehabbers don’t usually admit to being unable to drive a nail.” He should’ve kept his mouth shut. Must be a bad situation at home—wicked stepmother, maybe, although he’d never visualized Cinderella as wearing designer jeans.

      “You assumed I came up here to rehab this place?” She shrugged. “I’m going to clean it up, get the yard in order and paint. Cosmetic stuff, but basically, I am up here to endure the place while I lick my wounds and get my résumés out. You might as well know. I got fired last week. The last thing I wanted was to run into all my old office buddies while I was pounding the pavement looking for another job.”

      He

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