Entice Me Box Set: The Truth About Shoes and Men\Cover Me\My Favorite Mistake (21 page)

“Has Dr. Long heard anything?”

“No, but I had to scare off a reporter from the
National Keyhole
.”

“Those vermin! Good job, Kenzie. And you might think that Madame Blackworth is a hoax, but talk to me when you’re facing menopause—you’ll try anything to stay sane.”

I bit my tongue to keep from telling her that she wasn’t sounding very sane at the moment.

“And I happen to believe in Madame Blackworth’s visions. Which is why I want you to promise me you won’t let Dr. Long do Angel’s procedure today.”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

“And keep an extra close eye on the doctor today.”

“I will.”

“Oh, and you be careful, too. I don’t know how I’d ever replace you, Kenzie, if something happened to you.”

“Goodbye, Helena,” I said, half touched by her concern and half offended by its self-serving angle.

I hung up the phone, looked at Angel and cringed. “Let’s find you a pretty sweater to wear today.”

I brushed Angel’s face and dressed her in a red Polo silk-blend sweater and plaid hair bow. I took a shower and dressed myself in my new five-pocket jeans with double stitched inside seams for extra durability in case I needed to ride or wrangle something. I lamented the fact that my hair still stank, and pulled it back into a ponytail. Then I jammed two halves of a bagel into the toaster and threw in a small load of towels for the sheer pleasure of the convenience. From the window I saw Sam walking toward the clinic, his head bent over a manual.

My heart buoyed. I removed the stuffing from under the door and bounded downstairs to meet him. Angel trotted behind. He walked in the door and grinned when he saw me. “Look at you in your country duds.”

I smiled and puffed out my chest. “Ready for duty— what’s on the schedule today? Ropin’? Ridin’? Tromping through the mud? Birthin’ babies?”

“The high-school mascot has a bad case of lice.”

“Oh.”

He laughed. “Don’t look so deflated—treating lice can be exciting.”

“If you say so.”

He picked up Angel and scratched her head. “You haven’t fed Angel this morning, have you?”

“No.”

“Good, because I’d rather she fast before I do the procedure this afternoon. She can have water, though.”

My mind raced for a good way to ask him to postpone the procedure. “If you’re too busy and need to put it off for another day…”

He shook his head and patted Angel’s belly. “No, I’d rather do it today so she can have some recovery time before the car trip home.”

I bit into my lower lip. He was already thinking about us leaving.

Suddenly his expression folded into a frown.

“What’s wrong?”

He was smoothing his fingers over Angel’s exposed belly. “I need to examine her.”

Heart thudding, I followed them into an exam room that was furnished with a miniature version of the padded table one would find in a human’s examination room. Sam set Angel on the table, then eased her to her side and lifted the sweater to feel up and down her stomach.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

He looked up. “Nothing that shouldn’t resolve itself in a few weeks.”

I grabbed the back of a chair. “She only has a few weeks to live?”

“No,” he said with a half smile. “She’s pregnant.”

I gasped. “Pregnant?”

He nodded and pulled down her sweater. “Just barely,
I’d say maybe a couple of weeks along.” Angel sat up and barked.

“But Helena never lets her around other dogs—she’s terrified she’ll get fleas.”

His eyebrows rose. “Well, this wasn’t immaculate conception. Maybe she got away from Helena in the park—it only takes a few minutes.” He grinned. “That part of sex seems to be universal across all male species.”

I was too upset to laugh.

“Hey, didn’t you say that she disappeared at the groomer’s for a while?”

I closed my eyes briefly and nodded. The timing was right. Helena had entrusted me with her prize possession, and I had let her get knocked up.

Angel stood and barked again, this time more frantically—and at the door.

At the same moment, an alarm sounded, and I smelled smoke.

“Something’s on fire,” Sam said, bolting for the door.

My bagel
. My stomach bottomed out as I ran into the hall to see smoke billowing from the upstairs bedroom door.

“Call 911 and get out!” Sam shouted, then grabbed a fire extinguisher from a wall mount in the hall and ran upstairs.

I made the call with shaking hands and a wobbly voice. When I slammed down the phone, I scooted Angel out the front door and started to follow her, then remembered Sam’s menagerie.

I glanced up and heard the loud hissing of the fire extinguisher being released. Sam could take care of himself, but the least I could do was try to save his animals from smoke inhalation. I opened the door to the sound of frightened cries and rattling cages. Smoke filtered into the room via the air duct in the ceiling. I unbolted the door in the back of
the room that led to the outside and threw it open. It was a little-used back entrance that led almost directly into the woods. I found a rock to hold the door open, then ran back in for any cage I could lift. Again and again, I returned to carry out screeching cats and barking dogs and screaming birds. God help me, I left the rats and the snakes for last. I actually considered just throwing open the aquariums and letting them fend for themselves, but at the last minute, I picked up the rat aquarium and stumbled outside with it.

The snake aquarium took more courage—and strength. I could barely lift it, and being nose to nose with the creatures made me dizzy with fear. Then I spotted a hand dolly in the corner (I had moved enough times to recognize its usefulness). I turned my head, wrapped my arms around the aquarium, and lowered it to the dolly, then dragged it outside to set it next to the other cages lined up on the ground. I heard the distant sound of a fire truck wailing, and only then did I give in to the bone-bending thought that Sam might be in danger.

Because of me.

I heard his voice calling, and I almost ran back inside, until I realized that he was outside, calling
my
name.

“Sam, I’m here!” I ran around to the front where he stood with his hands cupped around his mouth. When he saw me, he briefly closed his eyes in apparent relief, and then jogged toward me.

“Are you okay?” we asked in unison.

“I’m fine,” I said, then started blubbering like a big, fat, firebug baby.

He pulled me against his chest. “It’s okay. The fire is out, and it looked worse than it was. There wasn’t much damage.” Then he pulled away and winced. “Except for your clothes.”

Clothes, schmothes. I sniffed. “Even my Dolce coat?”

He looked confused, then turned to wave at the fire truck that came into view. He walked over to confer with the men, shaking hands and pointing, obviously diffusing the panic.

I felt a nudge on my leg and looked down to see Angel staring up at me. I leaned over to pick her up, then stroked her head to calm both of us. I watched Sam, horrified to know that my carelessness could have cost him his clinic or his life.

“I’m the curse,” I murmured.

18

“Y
OU COULD
have been killed!” Jacki said.

“We all might have been,” I said miserably. “I’m a walking weapon.”

“It was an accident,” she soothed. “I’m sure Sam doesn’t blame you.”

“He says he doesn’t, but what’s he going to say? ‘Get away from me, you plague?’”

“I actually used that line once on a guy—it really works. Did you lose anything in the fire?”

“All of my clothes.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Even the Dolce coat?”

“Even the Dolce coat.”

Jacki moaned. “Well, at least you’re safe. Hey, if you set the apartment on fire, where are you sleeping?”

“In Sam’s guest room.” I laid my head back on the pillows of my new bed. Same woodsy furniture as the rest of the house, but with a camouflage and deer motif. “I offered to get a room in town, but he insisted that I stay here. Besides, it was so late by the time we cleaned up from the fire, I was too exhausted to walk any farther than across the road.”

“Well, I have to ask—did the dildo survive?”

“It did,” I said. “Do you think there’s some kind of message in that?”

“You mean, like ‘stop, drop and roll’?”

“No, like I should just be happy with the facsimile.”

“Okay, that’s just plain creepy. Since when have you been into signs?”

I hesitated, knowing how crazy I was going to sound. But if you couldn’t confess crazy things to your friends, that left only Internet chatrooms and daytime talk shows. “I talked to Helena yesterday morning, and she warned me that something bad was going to happen.”

“I’m not following.”

“Helena consults a psychic, and the lady told her something bad was going to happen here yesterday. I was suspicious because it’s the same lady who’s pushing the idea of this cover curse, but then again…”

“Kenzie, be serious. Something bad has happened every day you’ve been there—did she predict those things, too?”

Good point. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I think the country air is doing something to my mind.”

“Like oxygen overload?”

“Yeah, I need to get back to the smog and exhaust—apparently I operate better on fewer brain cells.”

“Are you still planning to come home Sunday?”

“If I live that long.”

“Chin up. And call me tomorrow.”

I hung up the phone and decided to get the call to Helena over with. If I was lucky, she’d have downed her first cup of coffee. If I was really lucky, she wouldn’t pull me through the phone line when I delivered the questionably good news about Angel.

I dialed and waited.

“
Personality
magazine, Helena Birch.”

“Helena, it’s Kenzie.”

“Where have you been? I called and called last night.”

“We’ve been really busy.” I cleared my throat. “Helena, there’s been a little development with Angel’s spaying.”

“You didn’t allow Dr. Long to perform the procedure yesterday, did you?”

“Urn, no—as it turned out, he couldn’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Angel is pregnant.”

“What? That’s impossible.”

I gave a nervous little laugh. “Actually, that’s not true. Remember when I took Angel to the groomer’s?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she sort of got away from me when I took her out of the carrier, and she was lost in the facility for a little while. It was only a few minutes, but Sam says that’s long enough to…er—”

“I get the picture,” Helena snapped. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t raise a litter of puppies in my flat. And God only knows what kind of beast compromised her— the offspring could be huge!”

“We’ll find homes for them.” I swallowed. “
I’ll
find homes for them. In fact, I’ll take one.” I squinted, trying to remember if my apartment building had a no-pets policy.

“So this was the bad thing that Madame Blackworth predicted,” she said.

“It must have been,” I said to pacify her. She sounded so forlorn I saw no need to tell her about the fire.

Helena heaved a queenly sigh. “Well, I suppose you can’t change destiny. How is that article coming along?”

“Nicely,” I lied. Where had my ambition gone? I was blowing it.

“And Dr. Long is well?”

“Yes.” So far.

“Hmm, there’s my other line, Kenzie, I’m expecting a
call from—well, I’d better go. I’ll call later to talk with Angel. I can’t believe I’m going to be a grandma!”

I hung up the phone and considered pulling the covers over my head. But I had to face Sam sooner or later, so I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. Getting dressed was easy—my choices were smoky orange overalls or smoky dark coveralls, all of which had been spared from the fire by virtue of me having taken them into the bathroom to cut off the tags. I chose the overalls and a long-sleeve navy T-shirt from the stack of pullovers that Sam had lent me. Under the T-shirt, however, I was shocked to find my pink Lejaby panties, the ones I’d left for Sam on the bed in the hotel room. Sam must have realized I would need undergarments. Interesting that he’d kept them. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but I was happy to have a clean pair of my own underwear to put on.

My hair—I sniffed and faced the reality: between the skunk and the smoke, it had to go. Where I would find a stylist in Jar Hollow, I didn’t know, but I’d have to take my chances when I went into town later to look for underwear and socks. Meanwhile, I skimmed it back into a ponytail.

I dressed Angel in a black chenille sweater and put a festive silver bow in her hair, then I carried her out into the hall lest she be assaulted by Sam’s pack of hounds, but all was quiet, except for clinking noises coming from the kitchen, so I set her down. I followed my nose down, then through the den and into the place where I’d doled out our fried chicken dinner just—had it only been four days ago?

Sam stood at the stove with his back to me, wearing low-slung Levi’s jeans and a gray T-shirt (Banana Republic, I thought, although I’d have to see it from the front to be sure). He was barefoot and his hair was uncombed and I thought I would die from wanting to touch him. He was
nodding his head to the beat of the song on the radio, using a spatula to move sausage around in a cast-iron skillet. He seemed relatively unburdened for someone saddled with me.

My chest tightened and I felt downright miserable in my skin—helpless that I had all these feelings for this man and had made such a mess out of things. I’d given up on the fantasy that Sam would fall in love with me—now I was simply hoping he wouldn’t have me incarcerated.

“Good morning,” I said.

He turned and flashed a heartbreaking smile. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

I nodded, then burst into tears.

He looked alarmed, then abandoned the sausage to steer me into a knotty pine chair. “What’s wrong?”

“I almost burned down your clinic,” I bawled.

He made soothing noises. “I told you, it was an accident. I have good insurance, and besides, the damage was superficial. And you made sure all the animals were safe.” He winked. “Even the snakes. Forget about it, okay? Let’s eat, I’m starving.”