LITMIR.BIZ

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kind of Satanic nightmare.”

      “You’re exaggerating. What’s the father like?”

      She took a deep breath. The father was pheromone central. His ability to arouse her dormant sex drive, however, was not something she could share with Mac. “He’s almost as tall as you are, has a nice smile and seems fairly normal except that he’s raised a brood of alien monsters and doesn’t seem to care.” She shook her head. “And he’s a professional educator.”

      Mac finished his soda, crushed the can flat and tossed it into the trash can across the room. “He’s a teacher?”

      “He is now. Helen Halliburton told me he has a Ph.D. and an Ed.D. from the University of Chicago. He’s been some sort of administrator at some school in Chicago, but he’s going to be a plain, old English teacher at MaybreeAcademy starting this fall.”

      Mac sat up. “Maybree? That’s where Emma goes.”

      “Ah-ha,” Nancy said. “Got your attention at last.” Mac adored his stepdaughter, who in turn thought he hung not only the moon but the planets. Her biological father, a cop, was never there for her. Mac never missed a school play or a PTA meeting or a teacher’s conference unless he was up to his armpits in some dog’s stomach. He’d moved Emma from her less-than-adequate public school to Maybree Academy, despite the tuition, which ranked right up there with Harvard.

      “How’d she do last year?” Nancy asked.

      “Child belongs in Overachievers Anonymous,” he said with pride. “Wants to follow in her old man’s footsteps. Loves science.”

      Nancy didn’t think he was talking about Emma’s biological father.

      “Take a warning from someone who grew up with three truly rotten siblings,” Nancy said. “Watch out for puberty, drugs and bad company, not necessarily in that order.” She put her palms on the table and levered herself upright. One good thing. Her headache was gone. Adrenaline tended to do that.

      “So go home to your happy household, and pray that we don’t get any more messes tonight.” She turned toward the door at the back of the clinic proper that separated the small animal area from the large. “I’ll check on the Jack Russell. What’s his name?”

      Mac snorted. “Miracle.”

      “If not before, then definitely now.”

      “I sent the owners home. I’ll tell Mabel to call and update them.”

      The recovery area and ICU were dimly lit. Big had laid the terrier on a thick rubber mattress in the middle of the room, and sat on the floor beside the little dog, stroking its small head and crooning softly.

      “He’s coming around,” Big whispered. “You go on home, Miss Nancy.”

      She smiled. “Thanks. How’s the mastiff?”

      Big shrugged his massive shoulders. “He ain’t dead. That’s something.”

      She was halfway down the hallway that led to the front reception area when she stopped. “I hope I’ve got a ride home.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      NANCY TOOK LANCELOT out in her backyard on a leash at about eleven that evening to do his business. He kept pulling her toward her front yard and the lane, grumbling with annoyance. “Lancelot,” she commanded. “I know you want to go home, but Helen and Bill don’t live across the street any longer. You’re staying with me for the foreseeable future.”

      He peered up at her in the light from her porch as though he didn’t believe her for one minute.

      “Why do I get the feeling you’re smarter than I am?”

      Eventually he finished, waddled up her back stairs, waited at the refrigerator until she gave him a bite of cheese—his evening treat was important to him, Helen had said—and settled into his basket. As she climbed into bed, she realized Poddy and Otto weren’t waiting for her. She peered around the corner of her bedroom door and saw them curled up against Lancelot’s belly. “Deserters,” she said, then grabbed her pillow, beat it into submission and propped it under her head.

      As tired as she was, she should have slept instantly. No such luck. She felt guilty, as she always did when she was bad-tempered.

      Tim Wainwright must think she was the world’s biggest bitch. She’d certainly snarled at him like a junkyard dog. She rolled over on her stomach and pulled her pillow over the back of her head. Then she rolled over on her other side. She couldn’t get comfortable. Finally she lay on her back, stared up at the ceiling and let herself actually contemplate Tim Wainwright as a male being, something she’d been consciously avoiding.

      She still carried the scent of him in her nostrils. She hadn’t been that close to a sweaty male in much too long. Time was when she and Peter used to shower together every night after the horses had been bedded down. She could still remember the feel of his strong hands kneading the kinks out of her shoulders, sliding down her body…

      She hit her pillow with a couple of vicious blows. Peter was long gone out of her life. Lord knew how many other women he’d scrubbed since she’d divorced him. She still read about him in the horse magazines as his newly developed riders won trophies and awards.

      “I have to thank my trainer, Peter Lombardi, for finding—insert horse’s name—for me and training us. We owe this win to him.” Or variations on that theme. The riders in question were always young, frequently blonde, invariably rich, occasionally talented. She still felt smug that he’d never found another rider who was as talented and fearless as she’d been, who could ride his green horses over fences and make them look like champions. Someone who could ride his crazy jumpers over fences that made the average rider sick with fear.

      He’d never married any of the rest of them, either. Well, not so far.

      She sat up and leaned against her headboard. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy. She crawled out of bed, padded into the kitchen and pulled out the milk jug. Even in summer, a cup of hot chocolate was a guaranteed soporific. After all, she lived in an air-conditioned cottage.

      She mixed herself a mug and slid it into the microwave. Two percent milk, nonfat chocolate powder. Unfortunately she’d never discovered a nonfat, nonsugar marshmallow. As she took out her steaming cup, she turned and saw Lancelot’s little eyes watching her. “Oh, nuts,” she said and poured a little chocolate into a saucer, blew on it, then set it down in front of him. The cats weren’t allowed to have chocolate, but they didn’t like it anyway, and Lancelot wouldn’t be caught dead sharing. He set to with pleasure.

      She took the hot chocolate out onto her front porch, sat in one of the old white cane rockers and pulled her feet up under her. The temperature had dropped to a respectable eighty degrees, and there was a fresh breeze blowing through the leaves of the big oak that shaded her roof. She blessed her mother’s genes that kept the mosquitoes from biting her.

      The house across the street was dark. She wondered where Tim slept. She hoped he didn’t wear pajamas. She’d always thought men who slept in both top and bottoms were kind of wimpy and old-fashioned, but then she thought of male teachers as pretty wimpy on the whole. Hers certainly had been. Teaching high school must be a real comedown for somebody like that. She wondered if he was running away from some sort of scandal.

      The kind of strong muscles she’d felt when he’d wrapped his arms around her didn’t come from sitting behind a desk all day talking about Shakespeare and Tennyson. He must run, swim, lift weights—something to keep in shape. That kind of man probably slept nude.

      The rocking chair seemed to have increased its speed. She shuddered and throttled it back. When the vision of an attractive man laying naked in bed brought her nipples to full attention and darned near tossed her out of the rocking chair on her nose, she knew she’d been alone in her own bed far too long.

      One of the few good memories from her marriage was sleeping curled against Peter’s naked back. Peter

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