My cell phone rang at a quarter to six.
Seeing Cayce’s phone number flash on the screen, I let it go to voicemail, which I intended to delete once my sleep-deprived brain was restored. Skipping voicemail, Cayce texted me immediately after the phone stopped ringing.
On my way to emergency surgery. I need to know you’re safe. Call me!
The hell I would. I never wanted to hear his voice again. I could have ignored the command and turned the phone off, but I thought about whatever animal was on the other end of the scalpel. I texted back, if only to get him to surgery sooner and so I could return to sleep.
No call. Am perfectly safe. Go fuck yourself.
My thumb hovered back and forth between the backspace and send button. I didn’t want to start a bigger argument by telling him to go fuck himself, but he really could go fuck himself—or Sammie or Amanda or Gillian.
Leaving the text as originally written, I hit send and shoved the phone under the pillow next to me.
I curled into a sleeping position. The ache from my swollen face irritated me, so did the early dawn light filtering through the bedroom window. With a growl, I threw the covers off and went into the bathroom down the hall where I put some drops in my cried-out eyes. Then I went downstairs to the kitchen, passing the first-floor bedroom my parents had used.
Grabbing a gel mask and a thin dishtowel, I returned to my room, settled on my bed on my back, folded the towel around the mask and covered my face. The next time I woke was at nine-thirty when Megan Till, a real estate agent, called to tell me she needed to push our meeting to one p.m.
I had hoped I would be able to cancel the appointment with the woman, one of six agents I’d talked to in the last few months. Of course, I’d also been planning on announcing my engagement to Howard Fowler, something I had hoped would mean I didn’t have to sell the house my great-grandfather had built and the land he had built it on.
Sighing, I rolled out of bed and walked with eyes half shut to the bathroom. I turned on the hot water for the shower, then went to pee while the water heater kicked in. I kept the shower short, dressed and went downstairs to begin prepping the place. I moved from kitchen to den to my parents’ bedroom, staging the place with a sense of doom.
I had inherited a house that was just a few thousand shy of being underwater on its mortgage. My savings account was nearly exhausted from keeping up with the massive payments. In less than two months, I either needed to have the place sold, borrow against my pension or let the lender foreclose.
Foreclosure was looking like the best option because the house was in a trust, which meant I wouldn’t get a hit to my credit score. Selling it would put me a few thousand dollars in the hole for my part of closing costs. But at least the drain would be gone.
All of the other real estate agents in the area weren’t interested in working with me because I couldn’t afford to fix anything up to increase the value. The place was well made and clean, but its age left it “shabby chic,” to put it politely.
The agent arrived at one fifteen. I showed her the outside first. The stables were empty and, more or less, in good working order. The small efficiency apartment for a live-in stable master needed work, some plumbing and patching of the walls, plus the window had a board over it from the last hail storm. Apparently, daddy had kept the house insured against damage, but not the stable.
Inside, I showed her the upstairs first with its two-point-five bedrooms and a full bath. Then we went downstairs, with its parlor, study, kitchen, and bedroom. Further eroding the value of the property, my parents’ room didn’t qualify as a master because of the small closet and the fact that the first floor only had one bathroom at the opposite side of the house.
The other agents who had come out all walked away with a derisive laugh. But Megan was about my age and newly licensed. She was looking for her first solo sale, so I wasn’t super surprised when she agreed to list the house at my asking price.
We sat down to a pitcher of Texas tea as I looked over all the paperwork she had brought.
“Now, once you sign these, I’ll take some pictures since everything is all tidy and the light is so gorgeous in here.”
I smiled, but she was going to have to deal with me reading every last word of every last page.
“I don’t understand the warranty—”
“That’s standard for this area,” she interrupted, her smile going from low to hi-beam. “Really can’t sell the place without it.”
I tried to blow out some of the anxiety filling my chest. All that came out was oxygen. The house was over a hundred years old. The newest kitchen appliance had been purchased a decade ago. The washer and dryer were fifteen years old. I checked the water heater the first of every month to make sure it didn’t have a new leak.
“I understand I cover the lump sum premium,” I pressed. “But it doesn’t say who covers the deductibles for the year the warranty is in effect.”
I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay them!
“This is just boilerplate,” she tried to assure me.
“It’s bad boiler—”
The porch screen slapped shut. I had left the front door open to allow more light in. This far out in the country, I didn’t bother latching the screen except when I went to bed at night.
Still, no one should have been waltzing in.
Startled, I tilted my chair back to see Cayce walking toward me. Anyone else looking at him would have seen a neutral expression, but the downward tilt of his chin, matched by an equivalent upward tilt of his gaze, told me he was pissed and trying to keep it under control since Megan’s big white van out front advertised that I had company.
Entering the kitchen, he looked at me for a second then offered Megan a swift nod before looking at me again, his expression clearly broadcasting his expectation that I would explain to him what the hell was going on.
He was dense if he needed an explanation. Megan had her face and the name of the agency she worked for slapped on her vehicle.
“Dr. Gerard,” Megan gushed after a few seconds of silence. “I’m Willow’s mom.”
I tilted my head and stared at the woman. Megan only had eyes for the “good doctor” towering in front of me.
“She was in last week for her vaccinations.”
Duh, okay. Willow was an animal.
People had talked to my dad like that, but I’d never been around Cayce when someone was discussing their pet. And, as weird as it sounds, we didn’t have our own pets at the farm. The place had always been too filled with other people’s animals recovering from one illness or another. By the time I was twelve, it was a regular occurrence for me to set an alarm for the middle of the night and dose an animal if my father had experienced a brutally long day. I think, in part, after seeing so many animals sick, some that never pulled through, I didn’t want to go through it with a dog or cat of my own.
Cayce’s mouth twitched, but he slid his attention back to the real estate agent and offered a professional smile. “Ginger tabby, how is she doing?”
“Oh, no problems,” Megan smiled and leaned forward with an unconscious offering of her breasts. “Of course, she was in your excellent hands. So that’s to be expected.”
My cheeks flushed with an old and often repeated frustration. Get a woman of breeding age around Cayce and all the feminine displays of fertility and availability start flashing right and left. Willow wasn’t the only pussy Megan wanted in the good doctor’s hands.
I began to gather the papers into a tidy pile. I couldn’t have an idiot trying to sell the house and Megan had already lost a large chunk of my confidence with her response to my questions on the warranty. It was time to face the facts and start putting the furniture in storage and let the bank foreclose. If I managed to sell the house, I would wind up a couple thousand in the hole, not to mention the mortgage payments between now and the closing date. Heck, I could stop the payments now and get free rent until the bank kicked me out.
“You know!” Megan said, her voice lifting to an excited squeal. “This would be a great place for a veterinarian!”
She said it like it was the most original idea in the world and she was its proud originator. Forget Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, forget Hawking with his black holes and all those other ne’er-do-wells. Megan Till had just proposed that a farm with stables would be a great place for an animal doctor to live.
“My father was a veterinarian,” I said, my smile as forced as it was deceptively sweet.
She nodded, oblivious to the point I was making.
Cayce’s gaze slid back to me. “Have you signed anything?”
I shook my head.
“Good,” he growled before replacing his scowl with a firm, professional smile and turning his attention to the agent once more. He swept his hand toward the front door. “Miss Sharpe will call you Monday if she’s still interested in putting the house up.”
He was kicking out a woman I didn’t want to do business with, one who had been all but trying to dry hump his leg while I blinked out of existence in her hormone-addled mind. The situation filled me with an odd mix of schadenfreude and fury.
A double dose of fury because I had to keep my mouth shut. I would have lashed out at his bossy behavior, but I had experienced enough humiliation with what had happened at Sarchi’s the night before and everything that came after it. I was not going to start a fight in my own home that I didn’t want to win and knew I would lose.
“Let me walk you to your vehicle,” Cayce added when Megan remained sitting in the chair, her expression that of a confused puppy that had just had its nose swatted for licking its master’s feet.