Читать книгу Heart of Stone - Diana Palmer - Страница 9

Boone stalked into the room where Keely and Bentley were standing together beside the recovery cage, which contained Bailey. He didn’t look very belligerent now, and his concern for the old dog was evident as he knelt beside the cage and touched the head of the sleeping animal gently with his fingertips.

“Will he live?” he asked without looking up.

“We’ll know that in the morning,” Bentley said curtly. “He came through the surgery very well, and I didn’t find anything that would complicate his recovery. For an animal his age, he’s in excellent shape.”

Boone stood up, facing the vet. “Thank you.”

“Thank Keely,” came the short reply. “She ignored your suggestion to leave the animal alone until morning. At which time,” the vet added with a glitter in his eyes, “you’d have found him dead.”

Boone’s own eyes flashed. “I thought he was trying to get attention. Like Keely,” he added with icy sarcasm.

Bentley’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you really think Keely needs to beg any man for attention?” he asked, as if the remark was incredible to him.

Boone stiffened. “Her social life is not my concern. I’m grateful to you for saving Bailey.”

“We’ll know how successful I was in the morning,” Bentley replied. “Keely, can you get my medical bag for me, please?”

“Yes, sir.” She left the room, glad for something that would take her out of Boone’s immediate presence.

Boone glanced again at the cage. “He and I have been through some hard times together,” he told the vet. “If I’d realized how dangerous his condition was, I’d never have left him.” He looked at Bentley. “I didn’t know that dogs got bloat.”

“Now you do,” the vet replied. “Most large dogs are at risk for it.”

“What causes it?”

Bentley shook his head. “We don’t know. There are half a dozen theories, but no definite answers.”

“What did you do?”

“I excised the dead tissue and tacked his stomach to his backbone,” Bentley replied quietly. “I’ll prescribe a special diet for him. For the next couple of days, of course, he’ll get fluids.”

“You’ll let me know?” Boone added slowly.

Bentley recognized the worry in those dark eyes. “Of course.”

Boone turned to Winnie. His eyes were accusing.

She grimaced. “Now, listen, Keely knows what she’s doing, whatever you think,” she began defensively. “I agreed with her and I’ll take full responsibility for bringing Bailey over here.”

“I’m not complaining,” he said. His stern expression lightened. He bent and brushed an affectionate kiss onto Winnie’s forehead. “Thanks.”

She smiled, relieved that he wasn’t angry. “I love old Bailey, too.”

Keely came back with the medical bag and handed it to Bentley. She was holding his old raincoat, as well.

“I hate raincoats,” he began angrily.

She just held it up. He grimaced, but he slid his long arms into it and pulled it up. “Worrywart,” he muttered.

“You got pneumonia the last time you went out into a cold rain,” she reminded him.

He turned and smiled down at her; actually, it was more of a faint turning up of one side of his mouth. Bentley Rydel never smiled. “Go home,” he said.

She shook her head. “I won’t leave Bailey until I’m sure he’s out from under the anesthesia,” she said, and she didn’t look at Boone. “Besides, you’re sure to have at least one emergency call waiting for you when you get back.”

“I don’t pay you enough for all this overtime,” he pointed out.

She shrugged. “So I’ll never get rich.” She grinned.

He sighed. “Okay. I’m on my cell phone, if you need me.”

“Drive carefully.”

He made a face at her. But his expression was staid and impassive as he nodded to the Sinclairs on his way out.

Boone was glaring at Keely. She averted her eyes and went back to Bailey’s cage to check on him.

“We should go,” Winnie told her brother. “See you later, Keely.”

Keely nodded. She didn’t look at them.

Boone hesitated uncharacteristically, but he didn’t speak. He took Winnie’s arm and led her out the door.

“You couldn’t even say thanks to Keely for saving Bailey’s life?” she chided as they paused beside their respective vehicles.

He looked down at her coldly in the misty rain. “I could sue her for bringing Bailey here without permission.”

Winnie was shocked. “She saved his life!”

He avoided her gaze. “That’s beside the point. Let’s go. We’re getting wet.”

“What about your concert?” Winnie asked, and there was a faint bite in her tone.

“It’s not over. I’m going back.”

She wanted to say that his ex-fiancée wasn’t going to be pleased that he’d deserted her, even for a few minutes. But she didn’t say it. He was obviously out of humor, and it was never wise to push him.

Keely stayed with Bailey until he came to and Bentley returned from his call. There was a new emergency, a woman whose champion English springer spaniel was whelping and one of the puppies wouldn’t emerge. Once again, they had to do an emergency surgery to save mother and child.

It was two in the morning before they finished and Keely cleaned up. “Now go home,” Bentley said gently.

“I’ll have to.” She laughed. “I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“No matter what Boone Sinclair says,” he told her, “you did the right thing.” He glanced at Bailey, who was now sleeping peacefully thanks to a painkiller. “I think he’ll do.”

She smiled. Even though Boone had been a pain in the neck, he did love the old dog. She was glad that he wouldn’t have to give up his companion just yet.

She went home, tiptoeing past her mother’s room, and went to bed.

The next day, she worked until noon and then went home to do all the housework that her mother never bothered with. She finished just in time to start supper. By then, her mother was finishing the second whiskey highball and her best friend, Carly, had shown up for supper. Keely, who’d prepared enough just for her mother and herself, had to add potatoes and carrots to her stew to stretch it out. The grocery budget was meager. It took second place to the liquor budget.

It was the same every Saturday night that she was home, Keely thought miserably, hiding her discomfort while she served up a light supper in the dining room. Her mother, Ella, already drunk, was making fun of Keely’s conservative clothing while her best friend, Carly, added her own sarcastic comments to the mix. Both women were in their forties, and highly unconventional. Carly was no beauty, but Ella was. Ella had a lovely face and a good figure, and she used both to good advantage. A list of her past lovers, despite her substance abuse problem, would fill a small notebook. The mischief she caused was one of her favorite sources of amusement. Next to ridiculing Keely, that was. She and Carly considered virtue obsolete. No man, they emphasized, wanted an innocent woman these days. Virginity was a liability to a single woman.

“All you need is a man, Keely.” Carly Blair giggled, hoisting a potent Turkish cigarette to her too-red lips. “A few nights in the sack with an experienced man would take that prudish pout out of your lips.”

“You need to wear makeup,” her mother added, in between sips of her third whiskey highball. “And buy some clothes that don’t look like they came out of a mission thrift shop.”

Keely would have reminded them that she worked with animals in a veterinary clinic, not in an exclusive boutique, and that men were thin on the ground. But it only amused them more if she fought back. She’d learned to keep her head down when she was under fire.

The beef stew she’d had cooking all day in her Crock-Pot was fragrant and thick. She’d made yeast rolls to go with it, and a simple pound cake for dessert. Her efforts were unappreciated. The women hardly noticed what they were eating as they gossiped about a woman they knew in town who was having an affair. Their comments were earthy and embarrassing to Keely.

They knew that, of course; it was why they did it. What the two women didn’t know was that Keely couldn’t sustain a relationship with a boyfriend, much less a lover. She had a secret that she’d never shared with anyone except the doctor who had treated her. It would keep her alone for the rest of her life. She’d made sure that her mother didn’t know what she was hiding. The older woman was bitter and miserable and she loved making a victim of her daughter. Keely’s secret would have been more fodder for her attacks. So Keely kept a good distance between herself and her coldhearted parent.

She wondered often what had become of her father. She’d loved him very much, and she’d thought that he loved her. But he hadn’t been the same since he’d lost his game park. He’d turned to alcohol and then drugs to numb the pain and disappointment. He’d had no way to support himself, much less an adolescent daughter. He’d had to leave her with her mother. She’d done her best to make him let her stay, offering to get a job after school, anything! But he’d said that she needed security while she was growing up, and he could no longer provide it. Her mother wasn’t such a bad person, he’d said. Keely knew better, but she couldn’t change her father’s mind, so she rationalized that he’d probably forgotten what a cruel woman Ella could be. Besides that, she was terrified of his new friends; especially one of them, who’d slapped her around.

Ella owned land that she’d inherited, along with a sizable amount of money from her late parents. She’d loaned her husband the money for his game park to get him out of her life, Ella said. She’d quickly gone through the money she’d inherited, spending it on luxurious vacations, fancy cars and a mansion while Keely was living in meager circumstances with her father. But her mother’s wealth or lack of it was no concern to Keely. As soon as she was settled comfortably in her job, she was going to get another part-time job so that she could afford to move into a boardinghouse. She’d had all she could take of living here.

Her father had just left her on Ella’s front porch, crying and still pleading to go with him. Ella hadn’t been happy to find the adolescent back in her life, but she took her in, at least. At the age of thirteen, Keely had settled down slowly with the mother she barely remembered from childhood, who proceeded to make her life a misery.

“Boone Sinclair is dating that ex-fiancée of his who threw him over when he got out of the Army,” Carly Blair drawled, with a quick glance at Keely.

“Is he?” Ella looked at Keely, too. “Have you seen her?” she asked, because she knew that her daughter was friendly with Clark and Winnie Sinclair. “What does the woman look like?”

“She’s very pretty,” Keely replied calmly between bites of stew. “Long black hair and dark blue eyes.”

“Very pretty.” Ella laughed. “Nothing like you, Keely, right? You look like your father. I wanted a beautiful little girl who looked like me.” She wrinkled her nose. “What a disappointment you turned out to be.”

“We can’t all be beautiful, Mother,” Keely replied. “I’d rather be smart.”

“If you were smart, you’d go to college and get a better job,” Ella retorted. “Working as a technician for a veterinarian,” she added haughtily. “What a vulgar sort of job.”

“The senior veterinarian where Keely works is very good-looking,” Carly interrupted, shifting in her chair. She chuckled. “I tried to get him to take me out, but he gave me an icy glare and went back into his office.” She shrugged. “I guess he’s got a girlfriend somewhere.”

Keely was surprised at the remark. Carly was in her mid-forties and Bentley Rydel was only thirty-two years old. Bentley had mentioned, only once, that he couldn’t stand Carly. He probably didn’t like Keely’s mother, either, but he was too polite to say so. Not that they had pets that would need his services. Ella hated animals.

“Keely’s boss is a cold fish, like Boone Sinclair,” Ella said. She leaned back in her chair and studied her daughter with a cold expression. “You’ll never get anywhere with that man, you know,” she added in a slow drawl. “He may take his ex-fiancée around with him, but he’s no passionate lover.”

“How would you know?” Keely returned, stung by the comment and the way her mother aimed it at her.

Ella smiled mockingly. “Because I tried to seduce him myself, on more than one occasion,” she said, enjoying the look of horror on her daughter’s face. “He’s ice-cold. He doesn’t respond normally to women, not even when they come on to him physically. No matter what people say about his hot relationship with his ex-fiancée, I can assure you that he isn’t all that responsive to women.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like older women,” Keely muttered icily, her eyes sparkling with temper as she pictured her mother using her wiles on Boone.

A cruel look passed over Ella’s face. “Well, he certainly doesn’t like you,” she retorted with deliberate sarcasm. “I told him you’re hot for your veterinarian boss and sleeping with him on the side.”

Keely was horrified. “What!” she burst out. “But, why?”

Ella laughed at her expression. “I wanted to see what he’d say,” she mused. “It was a disappointment. He didn’t react at all. So I asked him if he hadn’t noticed what a nice figure you’ve got, even if you aren’t pretty, and he said he didn’t feel attracted to children.”

Children. Keely was nineteen. That wasn’t childish. She didn’t think of herself as a child. But Boone did…

“Then I said that you might look like a child, but you knew what to do with a man, and he just walked away,” Ella continued. She saw Keely’s stricken expression. “So I suppose your little fantasy of love isn’t going to be fulfilled.” Her face took on a wicked cast. “I did mention in the course of conversation, before he left so rudely, that you had a crush on him and he could probably cut you out with your boss if he tried. He said that you were the last woman on earth he’d want.”

Keely wanted to sink through the floor. Some of Boone’s antagonistic behavior began to make sense. Her mother was feeding him lies about Keely, and he was swallowing them whole. She wondered how long Ella had been doing it, and if it was revenge because Boone wouldn’t touch her. Maybe she saw Keely as a rival and wanted to make sure there was no chance that Boone would weaken toward her daughter. Either way, it was devastating to the younger woman. She left the rest of her food untouched. She couldn’t choke down another bite.

“You might get somewhere with him if you stopped dressing out of thrift shops and wore a little makeup,” Ella chided.

“On my salary, all I can afford are clothes from thrift shops,” Keely said.

There was a hot silence. “Is that a dig at me?” Ella demanded, eyes flashing. “Because I give you a roof over your head and food to eat,” she added curtly. “You only have to do a little cooking and housework from time to time to earn your keep. That’s more than fair. I’m not obligated to dress you, as well!”

“I never said you were, Mother,” Keely replied.

“Don’t call me ‘Mother’!” Ella shot back, weaving a little in her chair. “I never wanted you in the first place. Your father was hot to have a son. He was disappointed when you turned out to be a girl, and I refused to get pregnant again. It ruined my waistline! It took me years to get my figure back!

“I wanted to give you up for adoption when you were eleven and your father divorced me, but he said he’d take you if I’d loan him enough money to open that game park. So I loaned him the money—which he never repaid, by the way—and he took you off my hands. He didn’t want you, either, Keely,” she added with a drunken smile. “Nobody wanted you. And nobody wants you now.”

“Ella,” Carly interrupted uneasily, “that’s harsh.” Keely’s face was as white as flour.

Ella blinked, as if she wasn’t quite aware of what she was saying. She stared blankly at Carly. “What’s harsh?”

Carly winced as Keely got to her feet and began clearing the table without saying a word.

She carried empty plates into the kitchen, trying desperately not to let the women see her cry. Behind her, she heard murmuring, which grew louder, and then her mother’s voice arguing. She went out into the cold night air in her shirtsleeves, tears pouring down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked to the front yard, stopping at the railing that looked out over Comanche Wells, at the rolling pastureland and little oasis of deciduous trees that shaded the fenced land where purebred cattle grazed. It was a beautiful sight, with the air crisp and the moon shining on the leaves on the big oak tree that stood in the front yard, making it look as if the leaves had been painted silver. But Keely was blind to the beauty of it. She was sick to her stomach.

She heard the phone ring in the house, but she ignored it. First Boone’s fierce antagonism and the argument over Bailey and the ex-fiancée’s taunts the night before, and then her mother’s horrible assertions tonight. It was the worst two days of Keely’s recent life. She didn’t want to go back in. She wanted to stay out in the cold until she froze to death and the pain stopped.

“Keely?” Carly called from the back door. “It’s Clark Sinclair. He wants to speak to you.”

Keely hesitated for a moment. She turned and went back inside without meeting Carly’s eyes or looking toward the dining room where her mother sat finishing her drink.

She picked up the phone and said “Hello?” in a subdued tone.

“The old girl’s giving you hell, is she?” Clark mused. “How about going out? I know it’s late notice, but I just got in from Jacksonville and I want to talk to somebody. Winnie’s working late at dispatch, and God knows where Boone’s off to. How about it?”

“Oh, I’d really like that,” Keely said fervently.

“Need an escape plan, do we? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be ready. I’ll wait for you on the front porch.”

“God, it must be bad over there tonight!” he exclaimed. “I’ll hurry, so you don’t catch cold.” He hung up. So did Keely.

“Got a date?” Ella drawled, coming to the doorway in a zigzag with her highball glass still in her hands. It was empty now. “Who’s taking you someplace?”

Keely didn’t answer her. She went down the hall to her room and closed and locked the door behind her.

“I told you it was a mistake to tell her that,” Carly said plaintively. “You’ll be sorry tomorrow when you sober up.”

“Mistake to tell her what?” Ella muttered. “I need another drink.”

“No. You need to go to bed and sleep it off. Come on.” Carly led her down the hall to her own bedroom, pushed her inside and closed the door behind them. “How could you tell her that, Ella?” she asked softly as she helped her friend down onto the big double bed with its expensive pink comforter.

“I don’t care,” Ella said defiantly. “She’s in my way. I don’t want her here. I never did.”

“She does all the housework and all the cooking,” Carly said in one of her rare moments of compassion. “She works all day and sometimes half the night for her boss, and then she comes home and works like a housekeeper. You don’t appreciate how much she does for you.”

“I could hire somebody to do all that.” Ella waved the idea away.

“Could you afford to pay them?” Carly retorted.

Ella frowned. She was hard put just to pay utilities and buy groceries. But she didn’t reply.

Carly eyed her quietly. “If you push her, she’ll leave. Then what will you do?”

“I’ll do my own housework and cooking,” Ella said grandly.

Carly shook her head. “Okay. It’s your life. But you’re missing out.”

“On what?” Ella muttered.

“On the only family you have,” Carly replied in a subdued tone. “I don’t have anybody,” she added. “My parents are dead. I had no siblings. I was married, but I was never able to have a child. My husband is dead, too. You have a child, and you don’t want her. I’d have given anything to have a child of my own.”

“You can have Keely,” Ella said, laughing. “I’ll give her to you.”

Carly moved toward the door. “You can’t give people away, Ella.” She looked back. “You don’t really have anybody, either.”

“I have men.” Ella laughed coldly. “I can have any man I want.”

“For a night,” her friend agreed. “Old age is coming up fast, for both of us. Do you really want to drive your only child away? She’ll marry someday and have children of her own. You won’t even be allowed to see your grandchildren.”

“I’m not having grandchildren,” Ella shot back. “I’m not going to be old. I’m only in my late thirties!”

Carly laughed. “You’re heading toward fifty, Ella,” she reminded her friend. “All the beauty treatments in the world aren’t going to change that.”

“I’ll have a face-lift,” the other woman returned. “I’ll sell more land to pay for it.”

That was unwise. Ella had already sold most of the land her family had left her. If she sold the rest, she was going to be hard-pressed just to pay bills. But Carly could see that it did no good to argue with her.

“Good night,” she told Ella.

Ella made a face at her, collapsed on the pillow and was asleep in seconds. Carly didn’t say anything else. She just closed the door.

Keely put on a pair of brown corduroy slacks and a beige turtleneck sweater and ran a brush through her thick, straight blond hair. She hoped Clark didn’t have an expensive date in mind. She couldn’t dress for it. She threw an old beige Berber coat over her clothes and grabbed her purse.

True to his word, Clark pulled up in the yard in exactly ten minutes, driving his sports car.

Carly came out of Ella’s bedroom just as Keely was leaving.

“Is she asleep?” Keely asked dully.

“Yes.” Carly was worried, and it showed. “She should never have said that to you,” she added. “She loved you when you were a baby. You wouldn’t remember, you were too little, but I do. She was so happy…”

“So happy that she now treats me this way?” Keely asked, hurt.

Carly sighed. “She was different after your father left. She started drinking then, and it’s just gotten worse year after year.” She saw that she wasn’t getting through to the younger woman. “There are things you don’t know about your parents, Keely,” she said gently.

“Such as?”

Carly shook her head. “That’s not my place to tell you.” She turned away. “I’m going home. She’ll sleep until morning.”

“Lock the door when you leave, please,” Keely said.

“I’m leaving now. You can lock it.” Carly got her purse and stopped just as the door closed behind the two women.

“I’m as bad as she is, sometimes,” the older woman confessed quietly. “I shouldn’t make fun of the way you are, and neither should she. But you don’t fight back, Keely. You must learn to do that. You’re nineteen. Don’t spend the rest of your life knuckling under, just to keep peace.”

Keely frowned. “I don’t.”

“You do, baby,” Carly said softly. She sighed. “Ella and I are a bad influence on you. What you need to do is get an apartment of your own and live your own life.”

Keely searched the other woman’s eyes. “I’ve thought about that….”

“Do it,” Carly advised. “Get out while you can.”

Keely frowned. “What do you mean?”

Carly hesitated. “I’ve said too much already. Enjoy your date. Good night.”

Carly walked off to her small import car. Keely watched her for a minute before she went down the steps to where Clark was waiting in his sleek Lincoln. He leaned across and opened the door for her.

He grinned. “I’d come around and open it, but I’m too lazy,” he teased.

She smiled back. He was like a kinder version of Boone. Clark had the same black hair and dark eyes, but he was a little shorter than his brother, and his hair was wavy—unlike Boone’s, which was straight.

“Neither one of you resemble your sister,” she remarked.

He shrugged. “Winnie got our mother’s coloring. She doesn’t like that. We hated our mother.”

“So Winnie said.”

He glanced at her as they pulled out of her mother’s yard. “We share the feeling, don’t we, Keely?” he probed. “Your mother is a walking headache.”

She nodded. “She was in high form tonight,” she said wearily. “Drunk and vicious.”

“What was Carly saying to you?”

“That I have to learn to stand up to her,” she said. “Surprising, isn’t it, coming from mother’s best friend? The two of them make fun of me all the time.”

Clark glanced at her, and he didn’t smile. “She’s right about that. You need to stand up to my brother, too. Boone walks all over people who won’t fight back.”

She shivered. “I’m not taking on your brother,” she said. “He’s scary.”

“Scary? Boone?”

She averted her gaze to the window. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

He was disconcerted by her remark, but he pulled himself together quickly. “Sure! I just heard that the Chinese are launching another probe toward the moon.”

She gave him a wry look.

“You don’t like astronautics,” he murmured. “Okay. Politics?”

She groaned out loud. “I’m so sick of presidential candidates that I’m thinking of moving to someplace where nobody runs for public office.”

“The Amazon jungle comes to mind.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If I went far enough in, I might escape television and the Internet.”

“I can see the headlines now,” he said with mock horror. “Local vet technician eaten by jaguar in darkest jungles of South America!”

“No self-respecting jaguar would want to eat a human being,” she retorted. “Especially one who eats anchovies on pizza.”

“I didn’t know you liked anchovies.”

She sighed. “I don’t. But when I was little, I discovered that if I ordered them, my dad would let me have more than two slices of pizza.”

He laughed. “Your father must have been a card.”

“He was.” She smiled reminiscently. “Animals loved him. I’ve seen him feed tigers right out of his hand without ever being bitten. Even snakes liked him.”

“That animal park must have been something else.”

“It was wonderful,” she replied. “We all loved it. But there was a tragic accident, and Dad lost everything.”

“Somebody got eaten?”

“Almost,” she replied, unwilling to say more. “There was a lawsuit.”

“And he lost,” he guessed.

She didn’t correct him. “It destroyed him.”

He frowned. “Did he commit suicide?”

She hesitated. This was Clark. He was her friend. She knew that he’d never tell Boone or even Winnie without asking her first. “He’s not dead,” she said quietly. “I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He developed a…a drinking problem.” She couldn’t tell him the whole truth. She glanced at him worriedly. “You won’t tell anybody?”

“Of course not.”

She studied her purse in her lap, turning it restlessly in her hands. “He left me with Mother and took off. That was six years ago, and I haven’t heard a word from him. For all I know, he could be dead.”

“You loved him.”

She nodded. “Very much.” She moved restlessly.

“What is it?”

She felt the pain of her mother’s words go right through her. “My mother said that she never wanted me. I ruined her figure,” she added with a hollow laugh.

“Good God! And I thought our mother was bad!” He stopped at a traffic light heading into Jacobsville and looked toward her. “Isn’t it a hell of a shame that we can’t choose our parents?”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “I was just sick when she said it. I should have guessed. She didn’t like me when I left, and she liked me even less when Dad dumped me on her, and now I think she hates me. I’ve tried to please her, keeping house and cooking and cleaning, but she doesn’t appreciate it. She grudges me the very food I eat.” She turned toward him. “I’ve got to get out of that house,” she said desperately. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Mrs. Brown runs a very respectable boardinghouse,” he began.

She grimaced. “Yes, and charges a respectable price for rooms. I can’t afford it on my salary.”

“Hit Bentley up for a raise,” he suggested.

“Oh, right, I’ll do that first thing tomorrow,” she drawled.

“You’re scared of Bentley. You’re scared of Boone.” He pulled out into traffic. “You’re even scared of your mother. You have to step up and claim your own life, Keely.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t go through life being afraid of people. Especially people like my brother and Bentley Rydel. Do you know why they’re scary?” he persisted. “It’s because it’s hard work to talk to them. They’re both basically introverts who find it difficult to relate to other people. Consequently they’re quiet and somber and they don’t go out of their way to join in activities. They’re loners.”

She sighed. “I’m a loner, too, in my own way. But I don’t stand on the sidelines and glare at people all the time—or, worse, pretend they’re not there.”

“Is that Boone’s latest tactic?” he mused, chuckling. “He ignores you, does he?”

“He did until I argued about Bailey’s condition.”

“Thank God you did,” he said fervently. “Bailey belongs to Boone, but we all love the old fellow. I’ll never understand why Boone didn’t realize what had happened to him. He’s a cattleman—he’s seen bloat before.”

“His girlfriend convinced him that I was trying to get attention, using Bailey to lure Boone to my place of work.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he burst out. “Boone’s not that stupid!”

“Well, apparently my mother’s been telling him that I have a crush on him, and now he thinks everything I do or say is an attempt to worm my way into his life,” she said bitterly.

“Ella told him that?” he exclaimed.

“Yes. And she told him that I’m sleeping with Bentley.”

“Does Bentley know that you’re sleeping with him?” he asked innocently.

She laughed. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him.”

He burst out laughing, too. “That’s more like it, kid,” he said. “You have to learn to roll with the punches and not take life so seriously.”

“It feels pretty serious to me lately,” she replied. “I feel like I’ve hit a wall tonight.”

“You should push your mother into one,” he told her. “Or better yet, tell her what a lousy mother she’s been.”

“She doesn’t listen when she’s drunk, and she’s mostly away from home when she’s sober.” She pursed her lips. “I work for veterinarians. I’ve been professionally taught to let sleeping dogs lie.”

He smiled. “Have you, now?”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked when he took a state highway instead of the Jacobsville road. “I thought we were going to a movie.”

“I’m not in the mood for a movie. I thought we might go to San Antonio for shrimp,” he replied. “I’m in the mood for some. What do you think?”

“We’ll be very late getting back,” she reminded him worriedly.

“What the hell,” he scoffed. “You can tell your mother you’re sleeping with me now instead of Bentley and she can mind her own business about when you come home.”

Her eyes almost popped.

He saw that and grinned. “Which brings to mind a matter I need a little help with. I think,” he added, “that you and I can be the solution for each others’ problems. If you’re game.”

All the way to San Antonio, she wondered what he meant, and how she would fit into his “solution.”