The Good Enough Husband (2 page)

Hannah pulled her smartphone from the car’s console and typed ‘veterinarian,’ into the search box. She waved the phone
through the air, and got a signal. Only one vet came up in nearby Garberville. She’d never heard of the place, but assumed it was a town of at least two people – the vet, and a guy with a cow, who needed the vet.

Cody, now slightly foul smelling, jumped into the SUV on shaky legs. She navigated over to the address of the vet, glad the car’s fancy computer at least worked this time. Pulling up in the parking lot, she was surprised how little the building differed from her vet in Newport Beach. The building was slightly more rustic, wood paneled instead of stuccoed, but it looked large, and well lit. Hannah took the first calming breath of the day. A vet who took pains with appearances would probably treat her dog well.

No receptionist stood behind the Formica and wood front desk. Not a lot of black granite here to impress pet lovers with open wallets. Hannah checked her watch against the hours posted on the door to make sure the clinic was still open. She hoped they didn’t close early.

“Hello?” she called out tentatively.

“Back here,” a deep male voice called back. “Just a second.”

Cody slumped under her legs, lethargic. Hannah looked in the dog’s miserable eyes. He couldn’t die on her on this trip. That would be too much.

A tall, broad shouldered, dark-haired man robed in a white lab coat emerged from an unseen side door.

“Doctor Cooper.” He extended his hand. Hannah thrust out her hand to shake his, her bangles jingling, but the doctor ignored her hand, instead leaning down to pet the dog. “How can I help you?” he asked
the dog,
raising his voice a few octaves. “What do we have here, buddy? You don’t look so great. Let’s get you into a room and get a closer look at you.”

At Dr. Cooper’s command, Cody, who could barely raise his head a minute before, roused himself and followed the doctor with a loyalty he usually reserved for those he knew well. Man and dog went through a door into a sterile looking examination room. With little choice but to follow, Hannah pulled her tired body from the wooden bench and brought up the rear.

When the vet finally looked at her, Hannah felt her butt hit the chair before she realized that she’d nearly lost her balance. Infinitely grateful the plastic bucket seat in the corner caught her, because she had landed hard enough for it to sting. Her stomach roiled, her hands shook, and her ears rang. Only one other time had an attraction so instant or intense shot through her like this. Twenty years ago she’d come undone when Lucas walked into freshman orientation.

Hannah hadn’t thought it was humanly possible to feel this way again. She would be hard pressed to explain it to anyone, but something about Dr. Cooper made her want to know him more—a lot more. Her hair bounced around her face as she shook the ina
ppropriate feelings away. Years of tamping down unwanted feelings finally did something more than give her an ulcer. After following her heart that first time with Lucas, she only used her head when it came to matters of the heart. Craving Dr. Cooper was not in the plan.

Oblivious to her discomfort, the vet guided Cody onto the stainless steel table, using a foot pedal to operate the hydraulic pump. The lift hissed as the dog glided to the doctor’s waist level.

He finally extended a hand to her. “I’m Dr. Ben Cooper.” She shook it dumbly, suddenly embarrassed by the jangling bracelets that had seemed so cool this morning. She and Johnny Depp were too old for so much wrist jewelry. “Sorry there was no one upfront. Doris left early to pick up her sick grandson from school.”

Dr. Cooper was too much to take in all at once. He had longish, brown wavy hair, broad shoulders, deep bass voice, and eyes blue gray like the winter ocean. If she could draw, this was the dream man she would have rendered. Until now, the idea of a soul mate had been a cliché. In a few seconds, that cliché had become a very real possibility. The sense that she needed to touch this man was spilling over her again like an ocean wave. Hannah tried shaking her head again like a dog with a flea, but it didn’t work a second time to clear her head. Maybe if she could think of something i
nconsequential to say, she would stop feeling so awkward.

“Um, the dog seems to be under the weather.” Forget Oregon, her next stop should be ‘Obvious Anonymous.’

Dr. Cooper looked at her like she was someone’s doddering old aunt. Sympathetic smile lines crinkled around his eyes. He started speaking while checking the dog’s ears, eyes, and gums. “Let me guess. This guy is Max? Jake?”

She shook her head, a small smile starting to crease her full lips. He could guess until the cows came home. He would never figure out the unique name she’d given her dog.

“Bailey?” She shook her head again, smiling broadly now. “Cody?”

Hannah gasped in surprise. “Fuck.” She clapped her hands over her potty mouth. “Sorry. How did you know?” She’d removed the
dog’s tags at the same time she’d stashed her rings. The constant clinking of metal against metal would have driven her crazy for two long days in the car.

Dr. Cooper paused in his examination of the dog, moving around the table to close the door behind her. Her whole body ti
ngled in the very small exam room. He gently touched her shoulder, directing her to look at the back of the door. Affixed to the wood door, with yellowing tape, was a ragged page, torn from a magazine. On it was a chart – one column pink, the other blue.

“The most popular dog names in the English speaking world,” he said. The deep timber of his voice seemed to vibrate in her own chest with his body mere inches from hers.

“Oh.”
Oh?
Was that the best she could come up with? It was rare that fate, or God, or the universe or whatever plopped a man like this right down in front of a woman—and the best she could come up with was, ‘Oh?’

He walked back around the table, pulling the stethoscope from his neck. Placing the metal disk against the dog’s chest, he li
stened.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked, suddenly finding her full speaking voice.

“Cody is going to be fine,” he pronounced, winding the stethoscope back around his neck, finished with his cursory examination. Surely, they had blood tests and x-ray machines up here.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, genuinely perplexed. “He’s always seemed so happy.”

“Motion sickness,” he said matter-of-factly.

Who knew? “Is there some kind of doggy Dramamine I can give him?”

He looked offended by the question. “Well, there are tranquilizers that we can prescribe for necessary travel. In your case, I’d recommend not driving long distances with the dog.”

“That’s going to be difficult,” she said, Oregon’s plains bec
koning.

“Are you from San Francisco or Marin?” he asked, giving her no time to answer. “You can turn around and take him home, ma
ybe fly to wherever you’re going,” he said as if she were driving the dog to the gallows, not the next state.

“I’ve driven all the way from the O.C. Turning around would probably take twice as long as getting to where I’m going.”

Something seemed to close in him. His open manner and friendliness vanished. “Figures. You have that kind of vibe,” he said.

What in the hell had happened? “What kind of vibe is that?” Did she sound as offended as she felt? Hannah wanted to be on Dr. Ben Cooper’s good side. “I was planning on heading to Oregon.” That had to be a more acceptable
vibe
than Newport Beach.

“What’s up there? If you don’t mind my asking.” His nice-guy tone was back, and she was pushed off kilter again. This was why relationships based on the head worked better than those based on the heart. She hated that damned push/pull feeling when a guy rea
lly got to her.

“Nothing, I hope. I need some time to reevaluate my life. Thought I’d head up to a ranch in Bly, maybe Ashland. See where things go from there.” Struck dumb one minute, diarrhea of the
mouth the next. Well, this was going badly on all counts. It was time to pay, leave, and figure it out for herself.

“So you’re not going to see anything or anyone in particular?”

“Does that make a difference?” Were his questions out of concern for the dog or had he gone stalker on her? That was one way to kill the romantic feeling.

“Well, since your dog is sick and all, have you considered stopping here for a while? This is a very nice, low-key resort area, you know.”

“And where is ‘here’ exactly?” This little hamlet did not scream tourist mecca by any means. On her quick drive along the main drag, it had looked any small town in California – dotted with wood frame and stucco buildings, a couple of cafes, a movie theater, and a lot of free parking. No spas. No luxury bed and breakfasts with smartly painted signs. Sausalito, it was not.

“
Here
is Garberville, population nine hundred, give or take. But twenty five miles to the west is Shelter Cove.” He paused as if she should know what that was. “Have you heard of The Lost Coast?” He paused again, and this time she shook her head with lack of recognition.

“No,” she finally said aloud, probably sounding full of southern California snobbery. “Do you think Cody will get better over the next couple of days?”

“As long as he stays put,” Ben said. “He’s going to get a little worse, before he gets better.”

“Why?”

“The road to the coast is a little windy,” he said.

She was vacillating. Perhaps a stay in Shelter Cove would i
nvolve a little more get to know Ben Cooper time. Making major life decisions
could
involve meeting a new man, right? Maybe her new path should be a little more heart centered. Relying on her head had landed her Michael, after all.

Sensing her indecision, he went in for the kill. “My parents rent their house for vacations. It happens to be vacant right now. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you staying. Plus, they’re one of only a few rentals that allow pets.”

Message received. If she were any kind of good dog owner, then she’d stop the driving, camp out in Shelter Cove, and get her shit together. She looked into those sweet brown eyes, and gave Cody the thumbs up. She’d do it.

“Okay, I’m in—for Cody’s sake.”

Ben Cooper looked at the large stainless steel watch on his wrist. “I’ll tell you what. I can close up shop here. Let me check on a couple of things, then you can follow me.”

“Do you need to give your parents a call?”

“Nah, I’ll do it later tonight. There’s no hurry. No one is beating down the door. Tourism slows down in September. Coastal winter trips aren’t very popular.”

Hannah watched Ben’s back as he retreated somewhere into the recesses of the clinic. She showed herself back to the waiting room, where a young blond girl had taken over counter duty. She paid the bill, glad they’d taken her platinum card, and grabbed a spot on a bench outside. Cody seemed happier out of the car. His nose was upturned taking in the scents moving on the air currents. She sighed, feeling more settled, knowing that she’d have a chance
to unpack and think about the decisions she had to make. She had to figure out how to tell Michael she was leaving, once and for all. And she needed to make a plan, sooner, rather than later.

***

Dr. Ben Cooper took off his lab coat and hung it on the hook on the back of his office door exchanging it for his favorite leather jacket. What in the hell was he doing? His parents had closed up their vacation house for the winter. They no longer bothered with the sporadic rentals they got late in the year. And pets? He didn’t know their pet policy. They liked dogs as much as the next person, but he wasn’t sure they wanted a fifty-pound puppy roaming around their house and yard. His key was for
emergencies
. A nauseated dog did not qualify as any kind of emergency.

Ben zipped the close-fitting jacket, and ran a hand through his too-long hair, then glanced in the large rectangular mirror a pr
evious vet, a rather vain southern California transplant, had affixed to the wall. He smoothed down the hair he’d ruffled. No reason for his hair to be standing on end when he went back to the waiting room.

Why was he doing this? He’d sworn off this kind of woman. Two long years with perpetual shopper Samara had weaned him from flashy women. O.C. Hannah was cut from the same mold. Her BMW, Louis Vuitton purse, Juicy sweats and gold bangles told him all he needed to know about her. It was no matter that her tall, lithe form had awakened his libido from hibernation.

Despite all the warning signs of her shallow, flighty nature, his heart sank when he came up front. One of his veterinary assistants, Joy, was behind the counter. Other than her female presence, the vast room was empty save for the smell of disinfectant layered over stale urine. He gave Joy instructions on the one cat who was going to be hospitalized overnight, and strode outside, relieved that Hannah had probably made the decision for him.

But there she was, sitting on the bench, long legs outstretched, frowning at her phone.

“So?” she asked, pursing her full lips. “Which car is yours?”

He pointed to the plain vanilla, none too clean, Ford Explorer in the lot. Ben looked at her, waiting for her look of disappoin
tment that he wasn’t driving something more her speed. It didn’t come.