Chapter 4
Dillon took his time driving out to Fern's place. Not because the cat didn't need insulin—Chairman Meow was undoubtedly way overdue for his meds and that was no joke with a diabetic animal—but because he needed the entire twenty minutes of the drive to get the grin off his face before he arrived.
I need a veterinarian.
Four words. Delivered through what sounded like clenched teeth.
He was reasonably sure Tessa Lawrence would rather have chewed glass than make that call.
But fact that she'd done it anyway told him two things.
First, the cat was in bad shape. Second, and more importantly, it told him the woman actually did have more sense than pride.
He was not gonna lie. She'd surprised him by making that call. It took guts to pick up the phone and ask him for help after how rude she'd been to him at the funeral. Even if her rudeness had been delivered with devastating politeness in a voice as sweet as sugar.
She had to know he was going to richly enjoy making her eat crow today. But she'd called anyway. He had to admit It took a certain amount of character to put the welfare of animals ahead of herself and her pride. She might actually have a little class to go with those million-dollar looks of hers.
Which was more than he could say for himself, given that he was enjoying her discomfort way more than any decent person should.
He pulled up the gravel drive and parked behind her car. The geese were stationed by the porch steps, maintaining their perpetual vigil over the farm. Fern had named Bonnie and Clyde after the famous outlaws, and it was apt. Those two birds ran this property like a protection racket.
The geese charged him the way they always did, and he sidestepped them with the practiced ease of a man who'd been navigating cranky animals longer than those two miscreants had been alive.
Clyde continued to track him with one beady eye but let him pass.
They had an understanding, he and the geese.
They let him enter the barn, he brought out a treat for them when he exited it.
Tessa met him at the barn door. Her ridiculous high-heeled boots were muddy, and if he wasn't mistaken, one of the thin spiky heels was listing slightly to one side.
Her far-too-nice-for-a barn blouse had a smudge of something on the sleeve that he was fairly sure was chicken manure, and her hair, which had been in an immaculate French twist at the funeral, was escaping its bun in several directions.
She looked furious. Not at him, but at this whole situation. Of course, everyone in town had heard about Fern's will, and every single person in Cobbler Cove was laughing their head off at the idea of Tessa Lawrence living on a farm, let alone mucking stalls.
It wasn't that folks disliked Tessa. Far from it.
She was universally respected and liked in town.
Apparently, she went to Bozeman every August and brought back a whole carload of school clothes from a charity she worked with there.
Anyone in town could come into her store and choose outfits with "school clothes" tags on them.
Apparently, they were mixed in with the rest of the clothing so folks wouldn't have to go to a special charity rack and have other customers know they couldn't afford to buy their kids clothes.
The way he heard it, she even rang up the free clothes and bagged them as if families had paid for them so nobody would be embarrassed at taking charity if other customers were in the store. Which was a classy move.
The fact that she went to so much trouble to save other people embarrassment made the fact that she'd embarrassed herself to call him even more surprising.
"Thank you for coming," she said politely. Of course, he suspected she would be polite if a robber pointed a gun at her and told her to give him her purse.
But beneath the composed pleasantry, she sounded frustrated. And overwhelmed. Very, very overwhelmed.
She also looked, against every rational assessment, beautiful.
With no make-up, her hair a mess, and disheveled clothing, she stole his breath away.
Her skin was flawless and porcelain smooth.
Her brunette hair was silky, and her brown eyes framed by dark lashes were so gorgeous he wanted to just stand here and stare at them.
He shoved that whole bucket of thoughts into a locked box and mentally threw away the key.
He didn't do relationships. He didn't date women. And he definitely didn't date women like her. Been there, done that. Got the T-shirt and broken heart to show for it.
"Twenty-two minutes," she said lightly. "You said twenty."
He let her have the tiny win. She obviously needed a little something to lord over him and bolster her punctured pride. He shrugged and merely said, "The geese slowed me down."
He tipped his hat back and looked past her deeper into the barn. "Where's the Chairman?"
"On a beam above the third stall. He won't come down."
"He never does. That's his spot." Dillon walked past her and inhaled the familiar scent of barn and animals.
His shoulders relaxed the way they always did when he was surrounded by animals.
This was his world. Not to mention, he knew every stall, every feed bin, every creak of wood in this old barn.
He'd been Fern's vet since the week he arrived in Cobbler Cove, one of his first clients.
She'd called him because a friend of a friend had mentioned that the new vet in the valley didn't charge folks who couldn't pay.
Fern could pay—the farm was worth a fortune—but she'd wanted to test him.
She'd asked him the price of a farm call before she'd even told him what was wrong with the animal.
When he'd quoted his rate, she'd said, "That's highway robbery, but at least you're honest about it. "
They'd gotten along fine after that.
"There's a ladder outside the stall," she told him as they walked toward the cat's perch. "I found it in the hayloft and brought it down."
He eyed the ancient wood ladder skeptically. "You trusted that decrepit thing to hold your weight? You're braver than me."
She frowned, looking back and forth between cat and ladder. "What was I supposed to do? Knock the cat off the rafter with a broom?"
He burst out laughing. "Not if you plan to get near him ever again."
She crossed her arms expectantly, making it clear she couldn't wait to see how he got the cat down from its perch some ten feet overhead.
He set down his bag and went into the stall.
After a pause to scritch both of the ancient Belgian draft horses, he climbed onto the wooden hay rack in the horses' stall and from there, stepped up onto the stall's half wall directly beneath Chairman Meow.
Balancing on its narrow frame, he reached up for the cat with calm confidence.
After all, he'd been scratched by worse.
The cat flattened his ears and growled most threateningly.
"Yeah, I know," Dillon murmured. "You're tough. I'm terrified."
He took hold of the cat by the scruff of its neck and tucked him against his chest, pinning the cat against his torso with his forearm. He jumped down, causing both of the big horses Fern had rescued from an abusive farmer to throw up their heads. He murmured an apology to them.
Chairman Meow protested with a mighty yowl that echoed off the barn rafters but the cat didn't scratch him. He knew Dillon, and he knew the daily shot routine. He just wanted it on the record that he objected.
"How did you do that?" Tessa asked, staring. "I tried to get him down for twenty minutes. He drew blood."
She held up her right hand. Three parallel scratches ran across her palm.
"You grabbed for him," Dillon said, preparing the insulin syringe with his free hand.
"The chairman doesn't like to be grabbed.
You have to scruff him—hand on the back of the neck, firm but not tight.
Cats have a reflex of going limp when they get picked up by the back of their neck.
Comes from when their mothers carried them around as kittens. "
"I'll remember that."
"You'll need to. He gets this shot twice a day. Morning and evening. I'll show you how to load the syringe and give the shot before I leave."
She blinked. "You expect me to give a cat an injection?"
"I expect you to give this cat injections," he said, sliding the needle under Chairman Meow's skin with the gentleness and precision of having done it ten thousand times, "or you'll have to find someone else who can, twice a day, every day, for the foreseeable future."
He watched her process that. He could see her ticking through the list of everyone she knew.
But then, as if she abruptly remembered something terrible, her shoulders slumped.
Clearly, she was beginning to understand the scope of what she'd just inherited.
This wasn't just a farm. It was a full-time job.
One she was hopelessly, helplessly unqualified and unprepared to do.
"Fern really knew what she was doing, didn't she?" Tessa said soberly.
"Fern always knew what she was doing."
He set Chairman Meow down. Tail straight up in the air, the cat stalked away with offended dignity, making it clear his personal space had been violated, and worse, his schedule had been disrupted by amateurs. Dillon watched him go, then turned to assess the rest of the barn.
Captain, the three-legged dog, was sitting at the end of the aisle with Maple the blind goat pressed against his side.
Those two were a bonded pair—had been since Fern took them in.
Captain had lost his leg in a bear trap, and Maple had been born blind on the farm Captain came from.
The dog guided the goat and the goat gave the dog someone to protect.
Fern had called them her best love story.