LITMIR.BIZ

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customer. A cocker. The owner only came to her because no one else in a three-county radius would handle the spoiled little snapper.

      “But it’s not that,” Poppy groused. “The dog has every right to snarl and growl when it’s miserable. It’s just that I don’t get why they insist on owning a cocker when both of them like to tromp through the woods. It’s just not fair. She always comes back full of prickers and burrs, and you know how cocker fur is to brush…”

      Web pretended to listen to this rant—he’d heard it all before—as he helped himself to his share of the cold pizza, the part with the mushrooms. Both dived for the stash of Dr. Pepper. Rain started dribbling down the windows. A serious storm was coming in fast, judging by the darkening sky. Poppy reached up behind her to flick on the overhead.

      The so-called break room was really the lab. Blood tests and X-rays and other tests were isolated in one section, but the sink and dishwasher functioned for both. A microwave made it easier to eat inside on bad-weather days, and the cot-bed was used for anyone who didn’t feel good—or for Web when he was spending the night for a favorite patient, which, of course, he’d never admit to on his deathbed. The closet had lab coats and at least one change of clothes for anybody who needed them—primarily Web and her. A critical drawer to the left of the sink was reserved for life essentials: Heath bars, jelly beans, butterscotch buttons.

      “So did you survive the soccer mom this morning with your virtue intact?”

      “The soccer mom?”

      “Don’t waste your breath playing innocent with me. You know I mean the one with the size-eight jeans squeezed on a size-twelve ass. The one with the retriever.” Poppy rose up yet again to reach for napkins, which neither of them ever seemed to remember before they dived into food.

      “Pauline. And, hey, you saw I needed help. How come you took off?”

      “Because she’s cute. And God knows she worships the ground you walk on. I thought you could use a little hero worship this morning. And it’s been a while since you’ve succumbed…I thought maybe you needed to get laid.”

      Web sighed. And chomped down on more pizza. “You know way, way too much about my private life. Or you think you do.”

      “What, was that a rash assumption? You don’t need to get laid?” she asked innocently.

      “Not to or by Pauline. No.” For an instant she caught the oddest glint of light in his eyes. But it was probably just a reflection. The window view of the Shenandoah Mountains in the distance suddenly showed a scissor of heavy-duty lightning. “I don’t need to be hooked up with any more divorcées—or nondivorcées, for that matter—who think I’ve got money.”

      “I hate to tell you this, cookie, but it was never your money drawing the girls. It’s your adorable butt.”

      Web wasn’t born yesterday. He put up with so much and then shoveled it back. “You have a cute butt, too, but I don’t see you running around getting either laid—or married—all the time.”

      She laughed, thinking that was just the thing about Web—why they worked together so well, why they talked together so easily. She’d been hurt in her relationships. He’d been hurt in his. The reasons for their respective disastrous personal lives were entirely different, but the point was that they could easily tease each other without fear of it being taken the wrong way.

      Web was too good-looking to notice a woman with her physical appearance, besides, making it even easier to banter from their respective sides of the gender fence. After two divorces, Web was so antimarriage he might as well wear a sign. And she’d had it with men who assumed it was okay to treat her ugly just because she physically was.

      “Hey.” That second piece of pizza had taken the edge off. Web was still diving in. A good time for her to bring up more serious subjects. “I need to ask you something.”

      “Sure. Shoot.” Although he glanced at her warily. “You want me to haul in wood for your fireplace this winter, right?”

      “No. Well, yes. But this is a little more serious. I need some time off.”

      “You’re telling me this why? Your schedule is totally up to you. You sure don’t need my permission.”

      “I know that, but…I need a little help.” Her tangle with the cocker had left her pale yellow sweatshirt fringed with cinnamon hair. Web’s theory was the same as hers, that a meal without animal hair would be like Thanksgiving without turkey—too unnatural to consider. But just once in a blue moon she’d like to stay clean for just a few hours. “I’m going to have a little surgery done. Nothing huge, but…I’m going to need a couple weeks off from work. And I’ll actually not be home for about three days. That’s the time when I’m worried about Edward—”

      “That damned rabbit?”

      “Edward is not a damned rabbit. He just has a little problem with anxiety attacks. You would, too, if a human had practically burned off your behind. But the problem is that no one can seem to feed him but me. And, I have to believe, you. And then there’s Snickers.”

      “You don’t still have that cat,” Web said positively.

      “Don’t you start on me, cookie. I couldn’t take him to the shelter. Who would ever adopt her? She’s blind in one eye and doesn’t have a nose. She’s almost beyond ugly.”

      “When she first came in after the accident, you could have listened to me. We could have made the intelligent choice and put her to sleep.”

      “You talk real big,” she said darkly, “but wasn’t it just last month you took in that scruffy, mangy, derelict-looking mutt—”

      “Now wait a minute. That’s completely different. I’ll find a home for Blue. He just needs to be more recovered…” Web seemed to shake himself. They’d been down this conversational road dozens of times. Which she knew, and which was why she’d started it, to distract him. “Let’s backtrack five miles. You know I’ll take care of your godforsaken rejects, just like you’d take care of mine. So forget that. What’s this surgery about?”

      “Just a minor procedure.” She glanced at the clock, then popped to her feet.

      “Don’t give me that shit. What are you having the surgery for? You need someone to be there?”

      “No, honestly. You know I have a dad and two brothers. They’d smother me with help if I needed it—and most of the time when I don’t.” She squished a little dish soap in the sink. There were only a handful of dishes to clean up, but too little for the dishwasher, and it was a sacred rule in the lab to leave no messes. “That’s why I asked you to help with the critters. I’d just as soon stay under my family’s radar. I don’t want them worried. Nothing to worry about.”

      He scooped up the napkins and paper plates, suddenly quiet, as if he were making his mind up whether to change subjects. “You haven’t said anything about your crazy inheritance in a few days.”

      “Well, I told you about meeting up with Bren Price. We’re night and day in personality, that’s for sure. But we’ll get along as far as figuring what to do with Maude Rose’s old place. And as far as the jewelry…”

      Web was the only person she’d told about the legacy. Initially she thought she’d go with Maude Rose’s advice, enjoy the privacy of no one knowing about her nest egg. But Web was the exception. She trusted him. After working together for four years, she knew she could.

      She trusted her brothers and dad, too, of course, but it wasn’t the same. Tell them anything, and for the next five hours she’d hear nothing but heated advice and orders and discussion. Web would just let her be. He was always good as a sounding block, but besides their mutual teasing, he never interfered in anything she did—any more than she would in his life.

      “Ruby still hasn’t come up with a written appraisal, but he must have called a half dozen times. It’s kind of funny, really. I think he’s shook

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