“DADDY, WHAT DID you do?” Emma held her hand across her nose and mouth. Not that it did much good. The entire yard, porch and kennel smelled like skunk.
“Nothing, I swear. Stay away from me. They only got my bottom half, but I have to get out of these trousers right now.” He wrinkled his nose. “And burn them. But I can’t drive back to Memphis in my undershorts.”
Seth pulled into her driveway, jammed on his brakes and flew over to her father. “Sir, are you all right? Do you need an ambulance?”
“Young man,” he asked Seth, “do you have any sweats you could lend me? I don’t guarantee to return them in wearable condition.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back. How about some socks? Can you drive in socks? I don’t think you’ll want to spend a couple of hours in your car wearing those tennis shoes. My shoes would be too big. Your clothes need to be double-wrapped in garbage bags and stuffed into your trunk until you can dispose of them somewhere they won’t stink up the neighborhood.”
“My leather upholstery will never be the same.”
Seth started across the street. “Emma, I’ll call Barbara, tell her we need all the de-skunk shampoo she has. I’ll bring some sweats, then I’ll go pick up the shampoo from the clinic.” As he ran across the road, he was dialing his cell phone.
“Those little devils,” David French said. “Look at them over there. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.”
Emma walked around the house and sat on the porch step. When her father started to join her, she warned him off. “No, you don’t. You stay out in the yard. Daddy, what did you do to annoy them?”
“It was only the one with the two stripes down its back,” he said.
“That’s Sycamore, the male.”
“I was just kind of chatting to them when I saw an apple slice on the ground outside the cage door. I picked it up and started pushing it through the mesh. All of a sudden the one with two stripes was bouncing up and down on his front paws. I thought he was thrilled to get an extra treat. And then he swings around, up comes his tail and pow! He lets fly. I thought I was going to suffocate.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t give you a direct shot to the eyes.”
“I never thought I’d be grateful for bifocals. I dropped the apple slice, of course, on my side of the fence. I don’t think that made him any happier. By that time the other two were headed in my direction with their tails in the air, so I slid back on my butt.”
“Daddy, that bouncing thing they do on their front feet—that’s skunk talk for ‘go away or I’ll l get you.’ You didn’t, so he did. Poor Daddy.” She snickered.
“Will I be able to go home tonight? How long will I smell like this?”
“The shampoo should take care of it. Maybe not a hundred percent, but close enough so Andrea won’t make you move into a motel. I have a guest room. It’s not much, but it’s yours if you want to stay tonight and go home tomorrow.”
“Let’s see how this skunk shampoo works before I decide. Thank heaven you were able to get Seth back. Look, can I please sit down? Bring me that chair from the porch. Phew! I can smell it in my hair. The little dickens didn’t even get my hair. How come I can smell it?”
Emma brought him the chair, and he sank into it. He stayed six feet away from her.
“It’s pervasive,” Emma said.
“I would certainly agree. No doubt handy to have a man like that available.”
“A man like that?”
“I see the way he looks at you. Be careful, Emma. You’ve had a bad few weeks, losing your job and Trip all at the same time. You may see Seth as a stopgap, someone to salve your wounded ego. I doubt he sees you that way.”
“Please back off, Daddy. I don’t run from someone like Trip to someone like Seth simply because he’s close. He is a very, very good man. I could do a lot worse.”
“Than this?” Her father sounded incredulous. He waved his hand to take in everything from Seth’s house to Martha’s. “This is not your world, Emma. You might as well move to Alaska and live in an igloo.”
“I could never eat whale blubber. Don’t get so uptight, Daddy. I like this life, but I’m not tied to it. This is the first vacation I’ve had since I graduated from college.”
“It’s not supposed to be a vacation, and I hardly think those stinky little hooligans add to the ambience. Now Andrea tells me you have some part-time minimum-wage job at a veterinary clinic. How could you tell Andrea that and not me?”
“Because I knew you’d go ballistic. I was right. Here you are, trying to save me from myself. I am sending out résumés.” Thinking about how few she’d actually sent, Emma crossed her fingers and swore to do better. “It’s not you. I didn’t want to talk to anyone but Andrea.”
“Obviously.”
Seth came trotting across the street and stopped beside her father. “These are the smallest sweats and socks I have. They’ll still be too big, but they shouldn’t fall off on your way home. Don’t go running into some convenience store without holding them up.”
“He stinks. Don’t give them to him!” Emma said. “I’ll take them until you get back with the shampoo. Thanks, Seth.”
“All part of the service. See you in a few.” He trotted back across the road to his SUV, then off toward Barbara’s clinic.
By the time Seth delivered the shampoo and Mr. French was totally fumigated and scrubbed, Emma’s whole house carried a mild scent of skunk.
“I’ve called Andrea to warn her,” Mr. French said. “So I think I will attempt to drive home. May I take a bottle of that shampoo with me to use again after I get home? My garage can pick up my car at the house tomorrow to detail it. Assuming it can be done. Emma, Seth, I’ve had an…interesting afternoon.”
The minute he drove around the corner of the road, Emma clung to Seth.
“Right here in the front yard?” he said and propped his chin on top of her head.
“Daddy was planning to go commando if you hadn’t gotten back from Barbara’s with the shampoo fast enough.”
“You do realize what this means, don’t you?”
She took a deep breath. “Their scent glands are functional.”
“And they know how to use them. That means we can release them tomorrow before you go to work at the clinic.”
“Do we have to?”
“You know we do. It’ll be all right. I promise.”
“Do you have someplace to let them go?”
He nodded. “All scoped out.”