Chapter Six #2
“I set it up kind of like a shelter,” she told him, seeming not to notice the din. “But I hate shelters, so when it’s possible, I try to create pack experiences for the dogs. Some of them can’t handle that, but the ones who can get a little companionship.”
It looked at first glance like more chaos. But Tennessee was learning. He looked closer.
And he could see then that there was an infrastructure here.
She had kennels set up along the far wall with larger runs in between, but the bulk of the space was where the pack experience, as she’d called it, was set up.
It was all fenced in. Inside, there were about seven or eight dogs—one of them a magnificent creature who had to be part husky, with eyes that blue.
He stood apart from the pack and stared at Tennessee, like he was sizing up the intruder and implementing a plan of action. Tennessee liked him immediately.
But there was more. Here inside the small building, it was warm and clean. He saw cats in some of the kennels in back and what looked like a fox in one of the runs, though it only peered at him suspiciously and stayed mostly hidden.
“I think you came to me under false pretenses,” he drawled. And he could swear she jumped a little, and her eyes were a bit too wide when she looked his way, but she didn’t say anything. He nodded at her operation. “Seems like you already have a rescue.”
She grinned at him, and now that he was no longer blind to how pretty she was—willfully blind, he had to think—that grin packed a serious punch.
“I need more space.” She said that matter-of-factly.
Like it was obvious. “Ideally, I’d like to have separate dog and cat spaces, not to mention a wildlife rehabilitation area.
And, of course, an adoption space where folks can come and play with their new best friends before they take them home.
And I might be a crazy animal person, or whatever they like to call me around Paradise Valley, but even I know I should probably separate that kind of enterprise from my house. ”
She started pointing out things she thought should be upgraded if there was more space available, but he couldn’t track it. Tennessee felt as if something seismic had ripped him in half, maybe into quarters, and then slammed him back together in the next breath.
It was like every blinder he’d had in place had been torn away. Like he had suddenly seen every possible timeline and they all led here. To this moment.
He hadn’t meant to come here at all. Or maybe he’d been plotting excuses to come up the hill since she’d left his house that night with her cleaning supplies and that patchwork blanket he’d half hoped she’d leave behind.
So she’d have an excuse to show up again and he wouldn’t have to do something like this.
Something he shouldn’t have wanted to do in the first place.
He felt that earthquake rumble inside of him again, no matter how he tried to resist it. Because he had to resist it. Because he should have known better than to come find her like this.
Because he understood that there were consequences to what he was doing here.
Even if he managed to convince himself that finding her this pretty all of a sudden was an anomaly, and even if he woke up tomorrow blind to her all over again, he’d involved himself in this passion of hers.
And he knew that Matilda was stubborn. She was the woman who had somehow convinced him to lose a night’s sleep taking care of a few puppies, when he’d never allowed a pet in his house in all the years he’d lived there as an adult.
But he knew himself. And he knew full well that if he didn’t turn back the clock on his awareness of her, that meant other things. Things he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with at all.
Things he should have thought about before he’d climbed in his truck tonight and headed up this way.
Because Tennessee wasn’t the kind of man who messed around with women. And even if he had been, Matilda was most certainly not the kind of woman anyone was likely to mess around with. She might as well have had forever stamped across her nose like those ridiculously cute freckles.
He had never heard of her being with anyone, but there was something about the directness of her gaze. There was something about her unflappable practicality.
There was the way she blushed at the sight of him.
All of those things told him things he’d be a lot safer not knowing. Because if he followed that blush, he knew he had to be prepared for where it would lead.
“You have a whole lot of animals in your personal zoo, Matilda,” he pointed out. “Does everyone know how many you’re taking care of back here?”
If he expected her to look chastened, well. He should have known better. Matilda laughed.
Then she looked back towards the animals and propped her hands on her hips.
“I think they’re mostly happy here. I try to make sure of it.
” She blew out a breath. “But it’s hard to convince anyone to come up the hill to meet them.
Most of them would be great family pets.
A few of them would be better off as working dogs and such.
And I think rescues do a better job about that kind of thing than shelters, because you have more time to really get to know the animals in question and you’re better able to place them in good homes where they’ll thrive.
Theoretically, I mean. If I could get people here. ”
He was thinking about the flush on her cheeks and wondering if that would be something that happened all over her body.
And then, once he was thinking about her body, he couldn’t seem to stop looking at the shape of her.
All of the bright colors and the exuberant clash of fabric and pattern couldn’t disguise the fact that she was built.
She was curvy and looked strong. He’d watched her carry heavy bags of dog food and the like out of the feed store, tossing them into the back of her truck as if they weighed nothing. Matilda was no fragile, wilting flower.
She was the kind of woman that a man conquered the West with.
And even as he thought that, Tennessee could feel something seem to chime deep inside of him, like fate.
But he refused to be governed by anything but cool rationality, and nothing even remotely like passion. Because Tennessee was nothing like his father.
He would never be anything like his father.
So when his hands itched to touch her, he shoved them into his pockets instead.
“How did you become so passionate about this?” he asked her. “Rural folks tend to be less sentimental when it comes to animals.”
“I didn’t grow up on a farm or a ranch,” she said dryly.
“I did grow up around folks I thought were maybe a little too callous about the fate of their barn cats, but the truth is, I grew up in a sad house. My mother was mostly absent, both before and after my father died, and we pretty much had to fend for ourselves. Jack had to act like a father too young and I took it upon myself to act like it was my job to raise Rosie, whether she liked that or not.”
Matilda said all of that without a shred of self-pity. Like she was simply stating facts, and they had nothing attached to them.
But then she smiled. “Animals were what made me happy. And the happier they made me, the sadder the way they were treated made me.” She shrugged.
“You could probably draw some lines between my childhood and my feelings about the treatment of defenseless creatures, sure. Somehow it all led to rescuing them whenever I could, making myself a nuisance at the Crawford County Animal Shelter as well as the vet. And then, you know. Also my career.”
“I think it’s a good thing,” Tennessee said gruffly. “An honorable thing.”
Her eyes darted to him, gray again. Then she looked away. “Some people think that you should spend more time rescuing humans and let animals fend for themselves.”
“That sounds like the sort of thing someone who doesn’t spend much time rescuing anything might say,” Tennessee replied.
This time, she didn’t grin so much as smile. And her smile changed her whole face—which was to say, it made her so bright that he was tempted to forget it was winter. He could feel that brightness inside of him, flooding through his body, like gold in his veins.
“There are still a whole lot of empty buildings down on the main road,” he found himself saying. “Some of them have land attached. I bet one of them would work for the kind of rescue you’re talking about.”
In fact, he was astonished to discover, he had one in mind.
“Sure,” she said, and she laughed. And that, too, was almost unbearably sweet. “I don’t know if you know this, but vet techs aren’t exactly Montana millionaires like those Flint brothers.”
“You’re a Stark and I’m a Lisle.” Tennessee thought maybe he was grinning himself, or maybe she was just looking at his mouth. That worked too. “I’m sure we could work something out.”
Besides, Tennessee kind of thought it would suit him to have more Matilda Stark in town.
She turned around and headed back out of the barn, and he followed after her—with one last look at his blue-eyed husky friend in the pen, silent and still. Like he had high expectations of Tennessee and would be following up.
How a dog made Tennessee feel called out was a mystery.
Outside, it was dark in her yard. The stars were a bright mess up above them, a lot like her and her house and her dogs barking out a symphony from inside the house.
“Look,” Matilda said, as they stood there in the cold, “I realize I did, in fact, roll on into your extremely orderly life with puppies, which you were kind enough to handle beautifully. And I would love to figure out this rescue thing with you. But we don’t have to do this.”
Tennessee frowned down at her because it was that or put his hands on her, and he wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t ready to do that. “I like animals, Matilda,” he said, reprovingly.
“I don’t know if it’s true.” He stared at her and she shrugged. “If I had to guess, losing your childhood dog broke your heart and you have no intention of ever repairing it. Or something like that.”
The accuracy of that was a little bit breathtaking. He cleared his throat. “Why would you say that?”
Matilda scrunched up her nose as she peered up at him. “You’re that sort, aren’t you? Growly, brooding, stoic, and alone. If I had to guess, I would say that the broken heart thing was pretty much your whole personality. Like the mysterious high school girlfriend. Right?”
That was such an unexpected sucker punch that he was surprised it didn’t lay him out flat. Or maybe it did, because she started looking abashed as she gazed up at him, like her own words were playing back in her head.
“My high school girlfriend?” he heard himself ask, still reeling. Still trying to understand how she could have struck him so hard and in exactly the place he’d stopped even considering a wound anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have said that. I forget that not everyone lives in my head, and might not enjoy how direct I am or the conclusions I draw with absolutely no evidence, or the things I decide I ought to be able to talk about with impunity. Really. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, though it seemed to him it was aimed at herself, and then she turned and started toward the house.
And he felt…
Tennessee couldn’t have said what he felt, but that was the thing, wasn’t it? That he felt at all. When he thought he’d turned that shit off in another lifetime, when he was another man entirely.
Or really, as he looked back on it now, just a boy. Trying so hard to be the man his own father never was.
“Hey,” he said, and maybe he sounded more stern than he meant to. He watched her stiffen, even as she stopped dead.
She didn’t turn around. Her head seemed to drop a bit and he thought her shoulders tensed, but she didn’t turn back to face him.
And maybe that made it easier, here beneath the tapestry of cold stars.
He found himself rubbing at his chest with the heel of his hand, as if that could make the pain dissipate. Or the memory of pain. Or whatever this was.
“Her name was Kacey,” he said. “Still is.”