Diamond in the Ruff (Matchmaking Mamas Book 13) (12 page)

“Oh, I don’t want to put you out any more than I already have—” She saw the puzzled expression on Christopher’s face, so she explained, “By leaving Jonathan here.”

“You’re not putting anyone out leaving Jonny here,” he assured her. He ruffled the dog’s head before pushing open the swinging door that led to the back of the clinic. “Rhonda’s back here,” Christopher told her.

He stood, holding the rear door open with his back, waiting for her to cross the threshold and come follow him.

Lily had no choice but to do as he asked. To do otherwise would have been rude.

Christopher led the way to where the Irish setter was recuperating from her second surgery. The dog was dozing and looked almost peaceful—except for the bandages wrapped around part of her hindquarters. The dog was in a large cage.

“Isn’t she cramped, staying in there?” Lily asked, looking at him. Her voice was filled with sympathy.

“Right now, I don’t want her moving around too much,” he explained. “If I think she’s responding properly to the surgery and her stitches are healing well, I’ll have her transferred to the run before I have my neighbor take her home with him.”

“The run?” Lily echoed.

Rather than explain verbally, Christopher quietly took her by the hand and drew her over to another area of the hospital.

There were three wide enclosures all next to one another. All three were sufficiently wide for a large animal to not just stretch out, but to literally run around if it so chose.

Christopher stood by silently, letting her absorb it all, then waved his hand at the enclosures. “Hence the term,” he explained.

It began making a little more sense, she thought, taking everything in. And then she looked at Christopher again.

“You sure you don’t mind my leaving Jonathan here all day?” she asked again.

“I’m sure,” he answered. And then he smiled. “Besides, it’ll give you a reason to come back.”

Why was it that the man could instantly make her heart flutter with just a glance. After all, she wasn’t some freshly minted teenager with stars in her eyes. She was an adult who’d endured death and lived life on her own. Heart palpitations over a good-looking man were definitely
not
in keeping with the way she envisioned herself.

There was no one to give her any answers.

Just then, the receptionist popped her head in. Lily noticed that Jonathan was no longer with the woman. “Doctor, Penelope is here for her shots. I put her in Room 3.”

“Tell Mrs. Olsen I’ll be right in, Erika,” he told his receptionist. And then he turned to Lily. “Penelope is a Chihuahua. Giving her injections is a challenge. The needle is almost bigger than she is. Poor thing shakes uncontrollably the minute I walk into the room and she sees me. I hate having any animal afraid of me,” he confided as they left the area.

He paused by the swinging door that led to the reception desk. “We’re open until six,” he told her. “If you need to leave Jonny here longer than that, I’ll just take him home with me,” he offered.

“Thank you, but that really won’t be necessary. I’ve got a very understanding boss and she’ll let me take off to pick up Jonathan,” she told him. “I’ll see you before six,” she promised.

And with that, Lily hurried out of the animal hospital, moving just a little faster than she might have under normal circumstances.

But even as she reached her vehicle and slid in behind the steering wheel, she had to come to terms with the very basic fact that no matter how quickly she moved, there was no way she was going to come close to outrunning her own thoughts.

Chapter Eleven

L
ily felt as if she had never been busier.

Theresa’s catering company had not one but two catering events going on, with both taking place that evening.

One event was a fund-raiser for a local charity. It entailed a full seven-course meal and the guest list was for a hundred and fifty-eight people. The other was a celebration on a smaller scale. It was a bridal shower and the only things that were required were champagne and a cake that could feed a group of thirty guests, give or take a few.

Lily worked almost nonstop from the moment she entered the shop until the last dessert was carefully boxed up and sent off on its way.

Without being fully aware of it, she breathed a long sigh of relief. It felt as if she’d been on her feet for at least eighteen hours straight and, although she loved to bake, it was really good to be finished,

“You outdid yourself today,” Theresa told her as she oversaw the last of the food being placed in the catering van. Turning from the vehicle, she took a closer look at her pastry chef. “You look really tired, Lily.”

Concern elbowed its way to the surface. No matter what else she did or accomplished with her life, Theresa was first and foremost a mother with a mother’s sense of priorities. “Do you need someone to drive you home, dear? I don’t want you falling asleep behind the wheel. I’d drive you myself but I already have to figure out how to be in two places at once. Three is completely beyond my limit—for now,” the older woman added with a twinkle in her eye.

“I’m fine, Theresa,” Lily assured the older woman. She didn’t want Theresa worrying about her. “Besides, I’m not going straight home.”

Halfway out the front door, ready to drive over to the fund-raiser first to make sure that all would go well there, Theresa turned back to her. It was obvious that her interest was piqued.

“Oh?” Her bright eyes pinned Lily in place. “Do you have a date?”

“With the dog,” Lily quickly informed her boss with a laugh. “I left Jonathan at the animal hospital before coming here this morning.”

“Oh, is he sick?” Since this was partially her idea, to unite Lily with the puppy, she couldn’t help feeling responsible for this turn of events.

Lily immediately set her straight. “Oh, no, nothing like that. Christopher, um, Dr. Whitman,” she quickly amended, “said I could drop Jonathan off at his office so that he’d be properly looked after while I was gone. Otherwise, he might cause havoc in the house and I really didn’t have the heart to stick him into one of those crates.”

Theresa cocked her head, still regarding her intently. “You
are
talking about the dog and not the veterinarian, right?” the catering company owner wanted to verify.

Lily couldn’t help laughing. Thanks to that, she felt close to rejuvenated as she answered, “Yes, but just for the record, I wouldn’t want to put Dr. Whitman into a crate, either.”

Theresa inclined her head, agreeing. “I’m sure that he’ll be happy to hear that. And now,” she announced as the catering van’s driver honked to remind her that she had to get going, “I’m overdue getting out of here and have to fly. Enjoy yourself.”

Lily felt the instruction was completely misplaced. “I’m only picking up my dog.”

A rather ambiguous, mysterious smile graced Theresa’s lips. “No reason you can’t enjoy that,” the older woman tossed over her shoulder just before she finally hurried out the door.

That was definitely a very odd thing to say, Lily thought, staring at the closed door.

But she didn’t have any time to puzzle it out. She had a dog to pick up and—Lily glanced at her watch—only half an hour to do it in. The animal hospital closed at six o’clock.

She could make it there in twenty, Lily thought confidently.

* * *

She didn’t.

Under ordinary circumstances, she could have easily made it to the animal hospital in the allotted amount of time left. However, ordinary circumstances did
not
involve a three-car collision that caused several blocks to be shut down to through traffic as two ambulances and three tow trucks were dispatched and made their way through the completely clogged area.

Utterly stressed out, the last of her patience all but stripped from her, Lily finally arrived at the Bedford Animal Hospital sixteen minutes after its doors had closed for the evening.

Even so, ever hopeful, Lily parked in the first space she could find, jumped out of her vehicle and ran to the animal hospital’s front door. Lily tried turning the knob, but it was securely locked and the lights inside the office were turned off.

Everything was dark.

Now what? Christopher was going to think that she deliberately left the dog with him and wasn’t coming back for Jonathan.

That was when she finally saw it.

There was a business envelope with the hospital’s return address in the corner taped to the side of the doorjamb. Her name was written across the front in bold block letters.

She lost no time in pulling off the tape and opening the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper.

It read: “Lily, had to close up. Couldn’t reach you by phone so I’m taking Jonny home with me. If you want to pick him up tonight, here’s the address.”

Just like the rest of the note, the address on the bottom was printed in block letters, but even bigger than the previous part so that there was no chance that she would have trouble reading it.

Staring at it, she realized that the address was close to her own house. If she wasn’t mistaken, the veterinarian’s house was just two developments away.

It really was a small world.

With her GPS turned on and engaged to make sure she didn’t accidentally go off in the wrong direction, Lily lost no time in driving over to the address in Christopher’s note.

She didn’t know why, maybe because of his practice, but she had just naturally assumed that Christopher would be living in one of the newer homes that had recently gone up in the area. Once a homey small town built around a state university, Bedford had grown and was still continuing to grow. A thriving city now, it still managed to maintain its small-town feel.

Her GPS brought her to one of the older, more mature neighborhoods. Looking at the address that matched the one in the note, she judged that the house had to be around the same age as the one she lived in. That made the building approximately thirty years old.

After her mother had died, Lily found that she couldn’t bear to sell the house. The thought of having another family move in and change everything around had just been too hard for her to cope with at the time. There were just too many memories there for her to part with so easily.

As she slowed down and approached the house, she saw Christopher’s car in the driveway. Parking at the curb, Lily got out and made her way to the massive double front doors. The moment she rang the doorbell, she heard barking.

Jonathan.

But the very next moment Lily thought she made out two distinct barks—or was that three? There was definitely another dog there besides Jonathan. Had her dog learned to play with other dogs? The thought raised other questions in her mind, all having to do with the energetic puppy’s safety.

Worried, Lily was about to ring the doorbell a second time when the door suddenly swung open. Christopher was standing inside, one hand on the door, the other holding off not one dog, but three.

The second he realized it was her, he grinned. “So you made it.” The way he said it sounded as though congratulations were implied. “I wasn’t sure if you’d see the note.”

He shouldn’t have had to post the note, Lily thought, feeling guilty that he’d had to go to extra trouble on her account. She should have been at the hospital to collect her pet before he’d ever left the place.

Her apology came out in a rush. “I’m sorry. We had two big events going on at the same time then there was a three-car collision and—”

Somewhat overwhelmed by the words and her speed in offering them, Christopher held his hand up as if to physically stop the flow of explanation.

“That’s okay, no harm. I would have kept him here overnight if you couldn’t come to pick him up for some reason. I did try reaching you before we closed up,” he told her. All three attempts went directly to voice mail. Usually there was only one reason for that. “Is your phone off?”

She would have been the first to admit that this had not been her best day. “My cell phone battery died,” she said, chagrinned but owning up to her oversight. “I left it on overnight and forgot to charge it.”

Christopher looked amused rather than fazed. “I do the same thing,” he told her.

Lily doubted it. She had a feeling the man was only saying that to make her feel better, and he had a tiny bit.

“Jonathan’s been making friends with Leopold and Max,” he told her, gesturing toward the two Great Danes that were on either side of her puppy like two huge, somewhat messy bookends. “I think they think he’s a toy I brought home for them.”

“As long as they don’t think he’s a chew toy or try to bury him in the backyard,” Lily quipped, then became serious. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she began. “Except to just grab his leash and get out of your way.”

“No need to hurry off,” he countered. His eyes swept over her, backing up his statement. “I’m having pizza delivered. You can stay and have some if you like. There’s more than enough to share.”

“Pizza?” Lily repeated.

He wasn’t quite sure why she looked at him uncertainly. “Yes. You know, that round thing with sauce and cheese. People usually have more things put on top of it.”

“I know what pizza is.” She looked around at the towering boxes that seemed to be just about everywhere. “Are you having that for dinner because you’re busy packing up to move?”

“I’m not packing up,” he told her, then asked, “What makes you think I’m moving?”

“There are boxes stacked up all over the place,” she said, gesturing toward the nearest cardboard tower. “You’re not moving?” she questioned. Then why were all these boxes here?

“I’m not moving
out,
” he corrected. “I’m moving
in.
This is—was,” he amended, “my mother’s house. I thought I’d stay here instead of renting an apartment until I decide if I want to sell the place or not.”

She could more than understand how he felt. “So you lost your mother recently.” It wasn’t a question so much as a conclusion, one voiced with all due sympathy since she vividly recalled how she had felt at the time of her mother’s death.

“Feels like it,” he admitted. Still, he didn’t want the facts getting lost. “But it’s been close to five months.”

Her eyes swept around the area. The boxes almost made her claustrophobic. In his place, she didn’t think she could rest until she got everything put away and the boxes stashed in some recycling bin.

“When did you move in?” she asked him, curious.

“Close to three months,” he answered.

He was kidding, she thought. But one look at his chiseled face told her that he was being serious. How could he
stand
it like this?

“Three months? And you haven’t unpacked?” she questioned, staring at him.

“Not all of it,” he answered vaguely, hoping she didn’t want any more details than that.

The truth was, except for some of his clothes, he hadn’t unpacked at all. A reluctance had taken hold of him. If he didn’t actually unpack his things, he could pretend that somewhere, on some plane, his old life was still intact, maybe also that his mother was still alive. He knew that was far-fetched but the mind didn’t always work in a logical, linear fashion.

“I’m doing it slowly. I’m really not much on unpacking,” he admitted.

Lily ventured into the next room, which looked a great deal like the room she had initially entered.

“Really? I would have never guessed,” she told him, raising her voice so that he could hear her. Coming out again, she made him an offer. “How would you like some help? It goes faster if there’re two people unpacking instead of one.”

He didn’t want to put her out and, if he read that look in her eyes correctly, he definitely didn’t want her pity.

“Thanks, but I can handle it.”

“No offense, Christopher, but I don’t think you can. Besides, it would make me feel that in a way, I’m paying you back for taking care of Jonathan.”

The doorbell rang. “Hold that thought,” he instructed as he went to answer the door. “Does that mean you’ll have some pizza with me?” he asked as he reached for the doorknob.

“Okay, if that’s the package deal, then yes, I’ll have a slice of pizza—and then get to work,” she specified.

Christopher paid the delivery boy, handing him a twenty and telling him to keep the change. Closing the door with his back, he held on to the oversize box with both hands. The pizza inside was still very warm and the aroma that wafted out was mouthwatering.

Lily couldn’t take her eyes off the box he was holding.

“That box is huge,” she couldn’t help commenting.

He glanced down as if seeing it for the first time. It
was
rather large at that. “I thought while I was at it, I might as well get enough to last until tomorrow night, too.”

Lily shook her head. “Oh, no, tomorrow night you’re having a hot meal,” she contradicted.

“This is hot,” he told her.

“A
real
hot meal,” she emphasized. Since he seemed to be resisting her suggestion, one she was making for the purest of reasons, she further said, “You don’t even have to go out of your way to get it. I’ll bring it here to you.” Once out of her mouth, she found she liked what she’d just come up with. “That way, we can eat as we unpack.”

He didn’t remember this becoming a two-day joint project. And while he liked the idea of having her come over and sharing another meal with him, he didn’t want her to feel that this was some sort of a two-for-one deal. “You don’t have to do that,” he insisted.

“You didn’t have to offer to watch Jonathan for me, or teach him—and me—a few of the basic commands,” she countered.

Christopher could see that arguing with her was futile. She certainly didn’t look stubborn, but she obviously was.