Big-Bucks Bachelor. Leah Vale
was one of those days, Pete. I think even you would have stayed in bed.”
He sneezed as if to pshaw her, then hopped away into the kitchen.
“Fine. Cats know how to pity.” Melinda followed him, washed up, then made herself some soup, turning the TV on to the news while her dinner heated.
With her soup in a great big mug painted black and white like a Holstein dairy cow—a gift from her mother—Melinda went into the living room to eat. She cozied up on her dark brown, overstuffed couch and allowed the cats to settle in close enough to comfort but far enough away to keep their hair out of her soup.
She’d only taken two sips of the rich broth when the logo the local press, with the mayor’s help, had come up with for Jester since the lottery win—Millionaire, Montana—flashed on the screen next to the anchor’s head. Melinda rolled her eyes. Not again. She knew there had to be more important things going on in the world than whatever piddling dirt they’d managed to dig up on the lottery winners.
Then a picture of the Jester Veterinary Clinic came up on the screen and gained Melinda’s complete attention. The anchor started talking about Jack—or more accurately, the Big-Bucks Bachelor—and how he wasn’t going to be a bachelor for long. Melinda gaped at the TV, stunned by what she was hearing.
Then they went to commercial.
Her heart stalled in her chest despite her brain’s immediate attempt to scoff it off. But the panic hovering in the wings was unquestionable and terrifyingly intense. Could it have happened again? Could she have again fallen for a man who had eyes for someone else without her knowledge?
No. Jack couldn’t be secretly involved with someone.
Mary Kay Thompson, sitting coyly on the exam table, came to mind. Melinda tried to reject the notion, but Mary Kay had managed to get rid of Melinda for a while. But why not just close the door if they wanted to fool around?
Melinda shook her head, sloshing her soup. No. Not Mary Kay. Not anyone. It couldn’t be.
Still, she’d never experienced a more agonizing commercial break in her life.
The news came back on.
According to an unnamed source, the anchor continued, Jack Hartman—and they put up a picture of him so there was no doubt it was her Jack Hartman—was engaged to be married.
With the conversation of earlier today still ringing in her ears, Melinda’s brain won out. Jack hurt too much to have moved on. A guilty relief rushed through her so fast it almost made her dizzy. How embarrassing for that reporter.
Then Melinda’s picture, obviously taken from a distance then enlarged, showing her hair flying in a mess and a fierce look on her face, flashed on the screen. And the news anchor, sounding extremely certain, announced that fellow veterinarian Melinda Woods was the lucky gal to finally rope Jack.
Jaw slack, Melinda stared at the screen, oblivious to the soup running onto her surprisingly absorbent robe.
JACK STARED UNSEEING at the barbecue sauce he stirred, thinking about the thieving stray dog he’d capped his day off by failing yet again to trap. After he had escorted the bucket-head billy goat from Ruby’s back room, freed it from its five-gallon hat by docking its horns and turned it over to the kid who owned it with a lecture on proper fencing, he’d gone to check the trap that he and Luke had set for the dog in the scrub bushes behind The Mercantile.
An awful lot of the townsfolk would simply prefer the sheriff shot the dog, fearing it was a wolf. But Luke, either because of his Native American heritage or just the plain fact he liked animals, had come to Jack instead. They’d managed to get close enough to the animal to clearly see that it was actually a German shepherd-husky mix whose thick, grayish-brown coat made it look like a wolf at first glance.
Jack also had been able to see—as it hightailed away from them—that the dog, a male, had been neutered, so Jack knew it was simply a stray rather than a true feral dog. It had undoubtedly been abandoned by someone along the highway, because Jack knew that no one in or around town had ever owned a dog like that.
The mutt didn’t deserve to be shot, especially since the worst it had done so far was tear into garbage bags and make a mess. And though he’d never admit it, deep down, he felt a strange kinship with the dog. They were both just a couple of strays.
So he and Luke had set up and baited a trap, but the dog hadn’t fallen for it yet.
Jack glanced outside through the kitchen window, the view of the snow falling gently within the reach of his back porch light framed by the frilly white-and-blue checked curtains Caroline had sewn. If the weather continued to be this nasty, though, he was sure the poor dog would eventually have to take the bait.
He sighed and checked his watch, wishing he’d been on the ball enough to have thought to go back into his office and grab some paperwork that needed to be done before he’d slipped out on the news crew. But he hadn’t imagined that they would camp out at the clinic waiting for him to show again.
Either way, Melinda would have taken care of what had needed to be done in the office. Good thing, too. Those vaccines and medical supplies weren’t going to reorder themselves.
The sauce bubbled up at him and brought him back to the task of making dinner. He normally didn’t take the time to make himself a regular meal, but he’d been forced to come home early today, and he’d certainly had the time. Heck, he might as well go as far as to fix a salad. He ducked outside to check the chicken breast he was grilling on the back porch, turning the heat up to combat the freezing air temperature, then came back inside and went to the fridge to get salad makings.
A knocking—make that a pounding—on his front door stopped him. Annoyance flared to anger in his gut. He’d figured that if the news crew really wanted to talk with him they would eventually come to his house when he failed to show his mug on Main Street today. He’d just figured they’d be more polite about it.
He strode from the kitchen through the dining room to get to the front door of the house he and Caroline had bought when they moved to Jester. A lecture on manners poised on the tip of his tongue, he yanked open the door, then blinked in surprise when he found Melinda standing on the raised wooden porch that ran the length of the front of the house.
Her hair hung in long, dark ringlets, clearly damp, and while she had on her usual heavy coat, underneath she wore what looked like dark pink satin pajamas tucked into knee-high rubber barn boots. Her getup, coupled with the glitter of worry in her big brown eyes and the way she’d clamped her full bottom lip between her teeth sent Jack’s heart straight into his empty stomach. Oh, no, what now?
“Mel, what—”
“Jack. Thank goodness you’re here. I looked for you at the clinic, since your truck is still there, but it was empty and locked up, and I hadn’t seen you anywhere on Main Street—”
Understanding dawned on him, along with a hefty dose of guilt. She’d thought something had happened to him. “Ah, Mel, I’m sorry to have worried you. Come on in out of the cold.” He tried to usher her inside, but she took the time to step out of her barn boots, leaving them on the porch. He was momentarily distracted by the thick, fuzzy gray socks she wore. No wonder she’d had to wear those great big boots. Those socks wouldn’t fit into anything else.
Once inside, he automatically reached to take her coat.
She unbuttoned the heavy coat and started to pull it off, but her attention was on the turned-off TV in the living room. “I’m guessing you didn’t watch the news.”
“No. I haven’t had…it…on…” He trailed off when he caught sight of what was under her coat. He’d been right, she did have pajamas on. The top wasn’t the slightest bit risqué—it had long sleeves and was buttoned all the way up to the collar, only slightly veed neckline—but the fluid satin skimmed her breasts, breasts Jack had noticed but had never given a second thought to. Now he was giving them so much thought he couldn’t think about anything else. And he couldn’t quit staring.