Читать книгу That Runaway Summer - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 11

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.

“You’re going to give me a bad name,” Dan told the dogs as he nudged past them to the door. Their tails wagged in double time while they panted with undisguised anticipation. “It’s also uncool to give the impression that nobody ever visits us.”

Starsky barked, almost as if to say they hardly ever did get visitors.

“Point taken, smart aleck,” Dan muttered, then swung open the door to a surprise.

“I’m sorry to stop by like this,” Jill said in a rush, “but I need you.”

The last three words could have been straight out of his fantasies if the delivery had been different. She was out of breath. A slight sheen of perspiration dampened her brow and her curly hair was disheveled.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s a goat in the woods. I think its leg is broken.”

“A goat?” The dogs were barking enthusiastically. Dan positioned his body so they couldn’t get out of the house and lick her to death.

“The poor thing could really use your help.” Her expression was pleading, as though she feared he might say no. Even if he were capable of turning away from an animal, no way could he refuse Jill.

“Sure.” He regained his equilibrium, his mind racing as he thought about what he needed to do. “Just give me a minute to gather some supplies. You can wait inside.”

The dogs erupted into a cacophony of even louder barks before he could move aside to allow her entrance. She stepped backward.

“They’re harmless, I promise you.” He grimaced, feeling a telltale flush of embarrassment start up his neck. “They’re just overly friendly.”

“It’ll be easier if I wait for you out here,” she said.

He swallowed the urge to tell her the only pets he had trouble getting to behave were his own. There was no time for that. He closed the door, careful to prevent the canines from escaping, then transferred supplies to his backpack from the bag he used for house calls. He added some PVC pipe and a high-powered flashlight and he was ready to go.

They reached the goat in minutes, with Jill setting a breakneck pace. Her haste was more in keeping with someone worried about an injured pet rather than a stray farm animal.

The reason soon became apparent.

The goat wasn’t alone.

A young boy of about nine or ten with wavy brown hair was cradling the animal’s head in his lap. He gazed up at Dan out of big eyes shaped like Jill’s.

Stanley was right, Dan thought. He really had been working too hard if he’d lived in Indigo Springs for nearly a year without realizing this boy existed.

Although with tourists swelling the population, the town wasn’t as small as it appeared. Up until a few weeks ago, Jill herself had barely been on Dan’s radar screen.

“Please help him,” the boy pleaded.

Was he Jill’s son? If so, she’d given birth as a teenager. Where, then, was the boy’s father? Was the father the reason Jill wasn’t in the market for a relationship?

“That’s why I’m here. By the way, it’s a her, not a him.” With the goat lying on its side, Dan could clearly define the sex. “She’s not a farm animal, either. She’s a pygmy goat.”

“You mean she’s not a baby?” Chris asked.

“I’d say she’s about a year old, so she won’t get a whole lot bigger than she already is,” he said. “My name’s Dan, by the way.”

“I’m sorry,” Jill cut in. She was standing a shoulder’s length from him, yet he was acutely aware of her every movement. “Dan, this is Chris, my brother.”

Her brother. Ah, that made more sense. The boy was probably visiting her.

The animal emitted a low noise that sounded almost like a moan. Dan focused on the goat, his need to alleviate the animal’s pain overriding everything else.

“Did either of you see what happened?” He did a visual exam, noting the matted blood on the goat’s coat. The scrape on its body, though, was superficial. More worrisome was the way the goat was holding her leg, which indicated a simple fracture.

“I found her right here,” the boy said. “Jill thinks she got hit by a car.”

“That’s a good guess,” Dan said. “Lots of people keep pygmies as pets. Either she got loose or someone dumped her on the side of the road.”

“No!” Chris cried.

Dan was about to point out dogs and cats were abandoned every day, but the boy needed reassurance more than enlightenment. He could also use a job to help him feel useful.

“I’m pretty sure her leg is broken, but she’ll be okay if we all work together,” Dan said. “Chris, can you follow directions?”

The boy appeared wary.

“You can be my assistant.” He turned the flashlight on and handed it to Chris. “Shine the light on us. This is very important. Be careful not to shine it in the goat’s eyes. Can you do that, Chris?”

“I’ll try.” He sounded unsure of himself, but stood up and did exactly as Dan instructed.

“That’s perfect. I’m going to give her a mild sedative and then put some antiseptic on this scrape.” Dan worked as he talked. When the goat was breathing more easily and he’d cleaned the abrasion, he looked at Jill. “I need your help, too, Jill. Place a little pressure on her neck with your elbow. That’ll keep her still.”

Jill’s face might have paled, but she nodded and lowered herself next to the goat. The animal bleated. She jerked backward, took a shaky breath, then in one quick movement placed her elbow in exactly the right spot. Her eyes were closed.

“Good.” He hid a smile. “After I wipe down the leg, I’ll get the bone back in alignment and put on a temporary splint until I can get her in the office. She won’t like this part, so keep the pressure steady.”

“Okay.” Jill’s voice cracked.

He took firm hold of the animal’s injured leg, digging his fingers into its flesh so he could gauge the severity of the break. A simple fracture, just as he’d expected.

He pulled on the leg as slowly and gently as he could, manipulating the bone until he had it in alignment.

“This next part’s going to be tricky. Chris, see my bag there. I need you to get me a roll of cotton. I’m going to use it for padding. Can you do that?”

Chris didn’t answer. A few seconds later, however, he handed Dan the cotton, then got back into position with the flashlight.

Working quickly, Dan wrapped cotton from the top of the goat’s hoof to about a half dozen inches above the break.

“Now I need that blue stretchy tape to hold the padding in place,” Dan said. Chris rummaged in the bag, came up with the tape, but dropped the flashlight in the process.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Chris bent and grabbed for the flashlight, then dropped it again. He sounded miserable.

“Relax, Chris.” Dan gentled his voice. “It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re doing fine,” Jill added in the same soothing tone.

Dan couldn’t take the time to puzzle over the boy’s reaction. When the light was back in place, he started the wrap, working as efficiently as he could. Despite the sedative, the goat twitched and keened. Without being told, Jill increased the pressure on the animal’s neck. Jill’s face was in shadows, but he thought her eyes might still be closed.

“Easy, girl,” he said.

Jill’s head rose. “She’s doing good.”

“I was talking to you.” He winked at Jill, just in case she could see him.

The rest of the job was easier. The final step involved creating a temporary splint, which he did by securing two halves of PVC pipe with duct tape. The goat tried to stand up as soon as Dan instructed Jill to stop applying pressure. Dan helped it to its feet. It was able to put weight on all four legs but wobbled, still feeling the effects of the sedative.

“How are we going to get her out of the woods?” Jill asked. “She looks pretty shaky.”

“I’ll carry her.” Dan talked while he was gathering his supplies. “Pygmy goats are good-natured, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Dan scooped up the goat, careful not to jostle its injured leg. It squirmed so much he nearly dropped it, then butted his shoulder with its nose and bleated.