A Temporary Arrangement Page 7

  When she returned home Sunday, Crazy Hubert had come out onto his front porch to remind her that she'd been evicted, just in case she'd forgotten. As if. And this morning, he'd glared at her through his curtains when she'd left for work.

  Of all the landlords in this town, she'd certainly found a dandy.

  Her heart lifted when her phone rang. Good news. This has to be good news.

  "I'm, uh, sorry to bother you." Beth, the hospital's young receptionist, cleared her throat. "There's... someone here to see you. She says it's, like, an emergency, but she won't give her name."

  Mystified, Abby drummed her fingers on her desk. A person with a health emergency would have gone to the ER. So far she'd hadn't had to deal with any disgruntled patients or angry family members, but a public place would be safer than the privacy of her office. "I'll be there in a moment."

  Locking her door behind her, she hurried to the

  lobby. Beth sat at the reception desk and nodded toward a woman who stood looking out the windows.

  Abby fixed a welcoming smile on her face as she approached. "Can I help you?"

  "I hope so," the woman whispered. She turned, her hands knotted. It was Rae, the attendant from the animal shelter. The one who'd let Belle die. "Can you come outside for a minute?"

  Abby hesitated, then followed her out the front door. The woman glanced around before walking to a cluster of bushes at the corner of the building.

  Belle lay cowering beneath them, tied to a branch with a piece of twine.

  "I—I knew you wanted Belle, but you didn't call or come on Sunday like you said. I told the vet about you, though. He said he just couldn't put Belle down if she had a chance for a good home—even if we didn't have the paperwork done. He said you could make a donation to cover the usual adoption fee."

  Overwhelmed, Abby felt her eyes burn. "What a nice man."

  "He said he'd clear it with my boss on Monday, but I begged him not to." Rae swallowed hard. "Thing is, she makes us follow all the county regulations to the letter. New owners have to be interviewed. Then there's a contract, and pet-care videos everyone has to watch. I saved another dog once and gave it away, and she nearly fired me. She said it was like stealing. So this time..."

  "You could get fired?"

  Casting a quick glance over her shoulder, Rae nodded. "I've got a baby, so I really need my job." Her voice broke. "If you don't take Belle, I don't know what I'll do. I sure can't take her back.. .since she was supposed to be euthanized."

  Abby crouched next to the fearful dog and offered her hand. Belle belly-crawled a few inches forward to sniff her fingertips.

  Hubert would never let her bring a dog into his house. Not even on a temporary basis.

  She had no other place to live.

  But this caring girl had risked everything to save this dog, at Abby's request. How could she refuse? "I'll take her. But do you know of any place that could keep her for just a while? A day or two?"

  "I snuck her into my apartment last night, but no dogs are allowed. I could get evicted if someone heard her bark. And right now I gotta get to work." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small tube of some sort of cream. "The vet gave me this for her sores."

  "One last question—any ideas on where Belle and I can find a place to live?"

  given this dog today, and she desperately needs an exam, shots—whatever you do. Is there any chance she could be seen today?"

  The woman's accusing expression cleared. "Dr. Foster won't be back until three, and then she's booked solid until six. We might be able to fit you in before her appointments start, though."

  In the meantime, Belle would have to ride around in Abby's car. Travel seemed to make her nervous, and right now she'd provide an all too vivid image of neglect that might alienate a potential landlord. "What about the grooming place next door," Abby said in a rush. "Do you recommend them? Perhaps she could have a bath and a flea dip there?" Time — I just need a few hours of time.

  Yvonne smiled. "Delia is Dr. Foster's aunt, and she's quite an animal lover. Let me call her for you."

  Abby fought the urge to bite her fingernails as the woman dialed then launched into a long conversation that appeared to cover every last bit of local gossip from the past five years. Belle whined and edged closer until she sat plastered against Abby's leg, clearly sensing that something was up.

  "She can," Yvonne announced as she hung up. "She had a cancelation this morning. You could leave your dog and pick her up in a couple hours."

  A couple hours. Abby bit her lower lip. "Do you board dogs here? I'm house hunting today, and I'm not sure what I'll find."

  Yvonne shook her head. "We have a handful of runs, but we're full. Sorry."

  "Anything else in town?"

  There was Rowley's, a private facility outside town." She frowned. "But that awful place was shut down last winter."

  "What if..." Abby said a quick, silent prayer ".. .1 take Belle over to Delia's and leave my credit card number with you. Then, if 1 can't get back right at three, the doctor could do the exam and whatever else is needed? I'd leave my cell phone number, of course."

  "Not a problem." Yvonne went to the desk and quoted an approximate fee for the exam, labs and vaccinations, and took down Abby's credit card number. "Just be back here by six sharp at the very latest."

  Abby suppressed the impulse to kiss her feet. "You can bet on it."

  If Yvonne had been perturbed by Belle's appearance, her reaction didn't hold a candle to Delia's outrage at the obvious mistreatment the dog had suffered.

  The woman was nearly as wide as she was tall, but she fluttered this way and that, fingering the dog's unkempt coat.

  She muttered under her breath when she found wads of hair tangled at the base of Belle's ears, and darted an anguished glance at Abby when she discovered open sores beneath several of the biggest mats of hair. "This poor, poor baby!"

  For all her wariness, Belle seemed to soak up the attention, and even licked the woman's plump hand.

  "She's a beauty," Delia said at last. "You won't see it today, but she's a fine dog. And if I could find the person who did this to her, I'd grab my shotgun and let him have what-for."

  Relieved that the dog was in loving hands, Abby wrote out a check and hurried back to her car. There had to be an empty apartment somewhere in a town this size—or perhaps nearby.

  She got the map from the glovebox and unfolded it on the hood of her car, then found a small notebook in her purse. She'd simply make a list of every neighboring town, and drive until she found something.

  The weight lifted from her shoulders as she began to write.

  Ethan awkwardly lifted the last sack of groceries into the back of his pickup and cursed under his breath. The docs in Green Bay had warned him about taking it easy.

  He hadn't realized how right they'd been until he'd gotten behind the wheel of his truck this morning to drive to the hospital. Just climbing up into the cab had been tricky without his right arm. Releasing the hand brake and shifting gears had been hell.

  And now he needed to figure out something for supper, do chores and get back to his computer.. .before his evening trek out into the woods.

  Ethan settled behind the wheel, pulled his door

  shut, and managed to fasten his seat belt one-handed on the third try.

  "You should call Abby," Keifer said for at least the fifteenth time today. "She could help."

  "She has a full-time job in town and we're a good forty-five minutes out."

  "She could drive back and forth."

  "Abby certainly seemed eager to leave yesterday, so I doubt very much she'd want to come back. And she'd be gone all day, anyway. So how much help would that be?"

  "In the daytime, I could go along if you had to go fishing."

  "But—"

  "I'd be real quiet. Honest." Keifer's voice rose. "And what about all the times you need to study the wolves at night? Or early in the morning? If Abby was here, then she could stay w
ith me. You can't just leave me alone!"

  Arguing with his persistent ten-year-old son was eerily similar to arguing with his ex-wife. "I certainly won't leave you alone. I've put an ad in the newspaper for someone to stay with you. And I don't just 4 go fishing.' I work as a fly-fishing guide in the summer. The guys I take pay a great deal for that service."

  "Why look for someone else, when we could have Abby?"

  "Drop it, Keif." Instantly regretting his sharp tone, Ethan reached for his cell phone. "I'll call home to

  check my answering machine. I'll bet someone has already answered my ad, anyway."

  The ad—"fun, adventuresome college student for part-time summer child care"—had come out in Sunday's paper. So far he'd gotten three calls: a semi-literate woman who wanted to know how old the "kid" was and if he knew how to behave; a fragile-sounding grandma-type who didn't drive; and a college student who sounded as if he was high.

  The only messages on the machine now were from his editor in New York and Keifer's mother, who'd breezily announced that she'd settled into her hotel room and would probably be too busy to call again for the next few days.

  "So?" Keifer asked. "Any good news?"

  Only that your mom is too busy to bother talking to you. It wasn't any surprise, but it still irritated the hell out of him. Barbara's career meant everything...and he'd caught a glimpse of that same attitude in that nurse from the hospital, even if she'd been a good sport about coming out to his farm.

  Maybe the similarity between Abby and his mother made Keifer comfortable, and that's why he kept defending her.

  "Your mom called. She'll call again in a few days."

  "Oh." Expressionless, Keifer hoisted one ankle across the opposite thigh and picked at the trim on the Nikes they'd just bought.

  "I know she wants to talk to you. Hey, maybe you could e-mail her."

  Keifer shrugged and looked out his window as Ethan wrestled the truck into first gear. "I want to go home."

  "That's where we're headed."

  "No, I mean I want to go home."

  "You know that's not possible. Your mom's out of the country." Ethan glanced over and saw a tear trickle down the boy's cheek. "But we're going to make this work, okay? And you'll be back with her by mid-August."

  Keifer hunched closer to the door.

  Just three days and Vm already a failure. Guilt settled over Ethan as he drove. He'd promised the boy an exciting summer.

  If Abby could make Keifer happy, then maybe it was time to contact her despite every inner warning telling him it would be a big, big mistake.

  "I could give Abby a call," he said cautiously. "Though I'm sure she's made other arrangements."

  "Maybe not."

  "She won't want to commute that far."

  "It isn't that far." Keifer twisted in his seat to face Ethan. "You won't even try to talk her into it, 'cause Mom says you never do anything you don't want to do."

  Ouch. "Well, I can't make Abby agree. All I can do is ask." And pray she says no. "Deal?"

  Keifer picked up the cell phone and held it out.

  With a long, drawn-out sigh, Ethan pulled the truck to the side of the road and awkwardly reached over to fish through the glove box for Abby's cell number.

  He punched it in on his phone. "But don't get your hopes up too high, son. Because I really don't think this will work out."

  Abby resolutely climbed out of her car and started for the motel office. The owner leered at her through the open doorway as she approached. "So, you decided to stay here after all?"

  It was five-thirty.

  The vet clinic closed in thirty minutes.

  "I guess so." From inside her purse came the sound of her cell phone's musical ring.

  Despite the fact that this guy smelled of beer and desperation, the shabby motel—a town away from Blackberry Hill—was the only place she had found that allowed dogs.

  "You got the deposit?"

  "Am I going to get it back? Those carpets aren't in the best shape as it is."

  He drew back, clearly offended. "If the rooms here aren't good enough, you can go somewhere else, lady."

  Which would be a park bench, if she didn't take this place right now. "They're fine," she muttered through clenched teeth. "Just give me the registration. I've got to get back to Blackberry Hill by six."

  Her phone stopped ringing. Then its persistent, escalating ring started up again.

  He opened a drawer, shuffled through papers and pulled out a registration form and a ballpoint with the

  cap end chewed off. "Be my guest." He eyed her ringing purse with disgust. "Can't you answer that thing?"

  Impatient to get back on the road, she jerked it out of her purse and glanced at the Caller ID. Ethan Matthews?

  Eyeing the clock on the wall above the motel guy's head, she huffed out an impatient breath and answered it.

  "Look, I know you aren't interested," Ethan said immediately.

  In the background, she could hear Keifer groan. "Is everything all right? Is your son okay?"

  "Fine. Everything is fine." Oddly enough, he sounded as impatient and edgy as she felt right now, watching the seconds tick by on that fly-specked clock on the wall. "I know we're a good forty-five minutes out of town, but Keifer tells me you don't have a place to live right now. He...er, we've got a deal for you."

  The man across the counter shoved the registration form under her upraised pen. "Lady, I gotta get busy here. You staying, or not?"

  Abby waved at him to stay quiet so she could hear Ethan.

  "I'm a little laid up right now, but I need to be out several nights a week, at least, and it usually ends up being too late to bring Keifer along. What do you say—room and board in exchange for a couple months of help?"

  At a sudden image of that rambling house, piles

  of dishes and scullery duty, she started to fill in the motel registration form. "I don't think so. I've just found a very nice place to stay."

  "I figured as much. No problem."

  In the background, she heard Keifer urgently saying something to his dad.

  "Uh.. .we don't expect much. Just having an adult here when I'm gone would be a great help. Maybe you could share some of the cooking and help with a few odds and ends, now and then "

  The guy behind the motel desk scratched the stubble on his cheek and winked at her. Revulsion pooled in the pit of her stomach. "You do understand that I do work full-time?"

  "Understood."

  "And that I'm not a maid? I wouldn't be doing housework. And, honestly, I'm not a very good cook."

  Ethan sighed. "Understood."

  "And you know I'm leaving Wisconsin the last week of August?"

  "You've already made it pretty clear. But that's fine, because I only need help for the summer."

  "I have a dog."

  "And I've got hundreds of acres out here. That shouldn't be a problem."

  "And..." She paused delicately, thinking of that remote, lonely place, without a neighbor for miles, and the fact that he was a strikingly attractive man who'd probably had women falling at his feet since he hit puberty. Not, of course, that she was that sort

  of woman. "Just to make things clear, I'm not looking for any sort of.. .relationship."

  He coughed sharply. "Believe me, you'd be perfectly safe."

  The hint of laughter in his voice might have been insulting under other circumstances—like, from someone she was actually attracted to—but in this case it reassured her more than any number of words could have. 'Then, Mr. Matthews, I believe we have a deal."

  and reached for a leash dangling over the edge of the seat.

  She tugged. Coaxed.

  A nose appeared. Then two front paws, scrabbling backward against the car seat. After more coaxing, followed by another tug, the dog gave up.

  It took a high, wide leap straight for her chest, a frothy vision in pink with bows at each ear and an extra big bow at its neck.

  Abby staggered, her arms wrapped
around the dog's middle. "Easy, Belle. It's okay."

  She managed to put the dog down, its leash wrapped tightly around one hand. The animal cowered against her and seemed intent on crawling right back up into her arms.

  With gold-and-white spots, freckles and the coat of a golden retriever, it looked like a springer mix. It was the thinnest dog he'd ever seen, though Abby had obviously spent considerable time bathing and brushing it, and the scent of flowery shampoo wafted clear over to the porch.

  Abby blew a stray curl out of her eyes. 'This is Belle."

  He eyed the bows, which would have been over the top even on a poodle. "Fancy."

  "The groomer got a bit carried away trying to boost her self-esteem." Abby studied the dog with an expression of devotion. "Belle's a little shy."

  Embarrassed over the explosion of pink she wore and longing to roll in roadkill to mute the perfume

  112 A TEMPORARY ARRANGEMENT

  was probably more like it, but Ethan just smiled. "I put Rufus in the toolshed with her pups so your dog could settle in. Bring her up in the yard and close the gate so she can explore."

  The dog wound around Abby's legs as she headed for the gate. Once inside the yard, she unsnapped the leash and bent to give the dog a reassuring hug. "Go play, Belle," she murmured. "Check the place out."

  Belle quivered, one foreleg raised. A moment later she took off around the corner of the house with her tail between her legs.

  Abby bit her lip as she watched for her to return, twisting the leash around her hand. "You're sure she can't get out?"

  "Absolutely." Ethan stepped off the porch and crossed the lawn to the gate. "Need any help with your things?"

  "Not with that arm of yours." She reached out to take his right hand and lifted it to look at the bandage. "Looks like you're keeping it cleaner, now," she said with a note of approval. "I hope you aren't trying to do too much, yet."

  "No, ma'am."

  "Good. Now, tell me where I should go."

  The farther away, the better. The more he'd thought about it, the more awkward this deal seemed. She wasn't an employee, wasn't a guest. Having a woman out here night and day—especially this one—would disrupt the balance he'd established in his life after Barbara left.