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“Every day.”
“Probably not every day. It’s long-distance and I’ll be paying my own phone bill. But I will definitely call as often as I can.”
Accepting that reluctantly, her mother continued. “And I want you to promise me you will be careful and not take risks of any nature.”
“No risks. You have my word. Trust me, if it was adventure I was looking for I wouldn’t be going to Danby.”
“And I also want your word that no matter what the final outcome of this, you will not, under any circumstances—”
“Shave my head? Trust me, Mom, do you think I’d have agreed to this if I thought there was the slightest possibility I could lose?”
Helen Ashfield searched her daughter’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have?”
Olivia shook her head, slipped on her sunglasses and grinned. “Not a chance. Think about it, Mom, all I have to do is find a job and support myself for eight weeks.”
The color seemed to drain from her mother’s face. “Oh, dear.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, hiding a trace of annoyance as she hugged her mother. “It’ll be a piece of cake.”
Maybe Brad was doing her a favor, she thought as she started down the brick steps to the wide circular drive. She was pretty tired of being the family “joke.” Good old Olivia, beautiful, but…basically useless. An intelligent woman but a pretty ornament. Well, they were all wrong. Just because she hadn’t discovered what she wanted to do with her life didn’t mean she was destined to do nothing. She was perfectly capable of doing anything she set her mind to, and she was about to prove it.
“Whoa. That’s not my car,” she told Brad as he swung her bag into the trunk of a white sedan parked behind her car.
“Of course it’s not,” he agreed cheerfully, closing the trunk. “You can’t use your car for the next eight weeks.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would violate the terms of our agreement.”
“There was no mention of cars in our agreement.”
“Sure there was,” he countered. “It falls under ‘trappings.’ We agreed you would not take with you any outward trappings of your true identity that might raise questions. That,” he continued, pointing at her beloved silver Jaguar, “is definitely an outward trapping.”
“And you,” retorted Olivia as she snatched the keys he was dangling before her, “are definitely a petty, devious jerk.”
Enduring the dents and scrapes and mismatched wheel covers, she slid behind the wheel of the used sedan and slammed the door. The seat felt too big for her. The whole car felt too big for her. Compared to her sleek, low-slung Jag it was like driving a bus. When the engine sputtered, she said a prayer that it wouldn’t start, but it did, and after only a few jerky stops as she experimented with the unfamiliar brakes, she was on her way…with Brad’s final words ringing in her ears.
“Don’t forget your weekly check-ins, sweetheart.”
Chapter Two
“I ’m so glad you called, Olivia. It’s a relief just to hear your voice.”
“Yours, too,” Olivia replied, surprised just how good it was to hear a familiar voice. Had it really been only a little more than a week?
“I can’t talk long,” she explained to her mother. “I splurged on one of those prepaid phone cards and I don’t want to use all thirty minutes on one call.”
Helen Ashfield sighed. “Really, Olivia. I can send you more phone cards. For that matter, why don’t I just drop a check in—”
“Mom…”
“Discreetly, of course.”
“Don’t you dare! I vowed to do this on my own and I intend to.” She kept the “or die trying” part to herself. “Which brings me to the other reason I can’t talk long. I’m calling you from work.”
“Work? Are you sure?”
“Oh ye of little faith,” she retorted, not entirely joking. “Of course I’m sure. You happen to be speaking with the receptionist for one of the busiest doctors in Danby.”
“A doctor.” Pause. “Do you really think that’s wise? With your limited experience, I mean.”
“Relax, Mom. Dr. Allison Black, better known around here as Doc Allison, is a vet. I’m working at the Danby Animal Hospital.”
“I suppose that’s not quite as risky,” her mother said. “Just the same, be careful in what have been your problem areas in the past, relaying messages, showing up on the right day, that sort of thing.”
“I’ll be sure to do that, Mother,” she said, drumming her fingers on the desktop calendar advertising heart worm medication. “But so far everything is going pretty smoothly.”
“Is today your first day?”
Her grip tightened on the receiver. “Actually I’ve worked nearly every day since I arrived.” That was almost true. Just not on the same job.
“I can’t wait to tell your father. He’ll be amazed.”
“Just don’t tell Brad. I want that pleasure so I can hear him start to sweat.”
Her mother chuckled. “All right. Not a word to your brother. Now tell me all about your job.”
“There’s not a lot to tell. I answer the phone, schedule appointments, check in patients, that sort of thing.”
“It sounds very…busy,” her mother said brightly.
“It’s busy, all right, but repetitive. If you don’t hear from me again you can assume I’ve died of boredom…or else run off with a veterinary pharmaceutical salesman. Don’t laugh. That’s what the last receptionist did and I’m beginning to understand why. It was a lucky break for me, though, since Doc Allison was desperate and I was the only applicant.”
“I see. Well, your father always says you have to start somewhere.”
“He also says things like ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’”
“True.” She paused a few seconds. “Olivia?”
“Yes?”
“Now that we have the forced good cheer out of the way, how are you really?”
Olivia sighed. “You’re good, you know, very, very good…even over long distances.”
“I know. I’ve had considerable practice. Let’s hear it.”
“Off the record?”
“Of course.”
“I’m miserable, that’s how I am. First I couldn’t find a job, then when I finally found one—waiting tables at the local diner—they made me wear this hideous uniform with a pink ruffled apron—you know how I feel about pink—and I ended up pouring a pot of hot coffee on some guy’s head and getting fired my very first day.”
“Why on earth did you pour coffee on the man?”
“Because he grabbed my butt, that’s why, and then all the other men at the table started hooting and laughing and I saw red. Before I knew it, I was standing there holding an empty pot. Actually it was only half-full to start with, and it wasn’t all that hot, either.”
“And those meanies fired you, anyway? Imagine that.”
“Very funny.”
“Olivia, sweetheart, I could have told you that you’re not cut out to be a waitress.”
“I wasn’t looking at it as a career move. Besides, when you don’t know what you are cut out for, one job looks as good as another.”
“Mmm. That must explain how someone who’s never been, shall we say, overly fond of animals finds herself working for a veterinarian.”
“I don’t dislike animals,” she protested. “Not completely anyway. Only the shedding, smelling, drooling stuff. I give to the SPCA and I wouldn’t be caught dead in real fur. Heck, I was even a vegetarian once. Remember the summer I turned fifteen?”
“Vividly. Did you tell them all that to get the job?”
“More or less.” Silence. “All right, I lied through my teeth and said I adored animals and that I have extensive office experience working for my dear departed veterinarian uncle whose records were destroyed in a fire.”
“Olivia, when are you going to learn…?”
“Soon. Word of honor. Right now I have to focus on surviving the next six and a half weeks.”
“Is this job really going smoothly or was that bravado, as well?”
“Half and half. Yesterday was pretty rough. I accidentally left this Doberman with an infected tear duct parked in the waiting room for more than an hour. Of course, I didn’t know it was infected, much less that it was so serious he had to be rushed to a veterinary ophthalmologist.”
“I gather your late uncle didn’t treat too many infected tear ducts,” her mother remarked in a dry tone.
“That’s not helpful, Mom. Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Of course.”
“Well, the good news is old Bozo isn’t going to lose his eye after all. That’s the dog’s name. Bozo.”
“I see. And the bad news?”
“Doc Allison was furious and made me promise to actually look at the patients at check-in and alert her to any glaring abnormalities. And she put me on notice that another incident will force her to let me go.”
“Oh, she did, did she?”
Olivia smiled, not surprised her mother was personally offended by the warning. It was perfectly fine for her to question her daughter’s ability, but even a hint of outside criticism elicited her maternal ire.
“A bit overbearing, isn’t she? This is your first week on the job, after all.”
“True, but at the time she was still pretty upset over the hedgehog.” She decided not to mention the mix-up with the fish tank, since in all fairness no one had bothered to tell her that the coral was living, not plastic, and had some sort of super sensitivity to sudden changes in its environment.
“Hedgehog?” her mother repeated warily, as if the word itself were dangerous.
“Yes. I sat on him. Not intentionally. He was the one curled up in my chair, after all. And I didn’t come down with my full weight…not once I felt those damned spikes. The little rodent totally lost it just the same. For all the noise and running around you would think it was my spikes that had punched holes in his favorite slacks…not to mention a pair of those silk panties I like so much—the ones I have to order from that little shop in Paris.”
“Olivia, this is so comical it’s tragic. I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. That was yesterday,” she reminded her, trying to sound reassuring as she absently swiveled her chair so she was gazing out the window, her back to the entrance. “So far today I haven’t slipped up once.”
“It isn’t even noon.”
Olivia sank back in her chair. “Don’t remind me.”
“You’re groaning because you know I’m right. I insist you stop this nonsense before you or one of those poor animals really gets hurt, and come home.”
“No.”
“Honey, I’m certain your brother will understand and—”
“No. Not a chance.”
Her mother huffed impatiently. “Really, Olivia. Why can’t you be reasonable just this once?”
“Because I’m not a wuss, that’s why, and because I don’t go back on my word, and,” she continued, her voice rising to match her irritation, “because I’d rather walk the plank—naked—than give that sneaky devil the satisfaction of seeing me shave my head in public.”
A snicker from behind was Olivia’s first clue someone had walked in without her hearing and was standing close enough to hear every word she said.
She whispered, “Love you. Gotta go,” and swiveled around to hang up the phone and grab the day’s schedule book.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, plastering her best receptionist smile in place as she looked up—way up—and straight into a pair of dark, deep-set gray eyes she’d seen only once before and would not soon forget.
“Because he grabbed my butt,” she’d told her mother. “Because the other men all laughed,” she’d told her. What she hadn’t told her was how the man hadn’t even flinched when she tossed the coffee at him, and how his dark, unsmiling gaze had caught and held hers for what seemed like forever, until it was somehow understood between them that he was good and ready to look away, and let her do the same. She also hadn’t mentioned how, with the front of his shirt and faded jeans soaked with coffee, he had paid for his breakfast, laid a five-dollar tip on the table and walked out…all without saying a word.
His absolute control had unsettled her in a way his insolence couldn’t possibly. She was an old hand at dealing with unwanted male attention. She was not, however, accustomed to allowing a man to throw her off balance. And she didn’t like it. The fact that he was some hick from Danby made it more maddening. As soon as she’d handed in her apron, she had put him out of her mind. Or tried to at least.
“Well, well,” he murmured finally, the sardonic slant of his mouth leaving no doubt he remembered their last meeting as vividly as she did.
How much of her phone conversation had he overheard? Probably too much, given her recent streak of things going from bad to worse. She waited for him to speak first, but he was preoccupied with studying her, his hooded gaze cool and utterly unfathomable. The rest of him, on the other hand, was easy to read.
He was a big man, not heavy, just big—tall and broad-shouldered and solidly muscled. His face was suntanned, suggesting he worked outdoors. His scraped knuckles and rough hands told Olivia he worked with those hands and worked hard. A glance at the dark-brown hair curling around his ears and collar and she knew there were lots of things he’d rather do with his time than sit in a barber’s chair. She had a hunch he didn’t like sitting around of any kind.
His mouth was generous enough to be intriguing, his cheekbones high, his jaw solid…and stubborn. She supposed the town’s female population considered him quite handsome, in that primitive, diamond-in-the-rough way some women found irresistible. Personally, she’d never understood the appeal of a “fixer-upper,” in houses or men.
What she found most revealing about him, however, was something more subtle than the rest. Actually, it was two things. The way he moved and the way he was still. This, she decided, was a man totally and unmistakably at ease in his own skin. It was the sort of intrinsic confidence you couldn’t buy. If you could, most of the men she knew would have it. It also wasn’t easily cultivated. Few people cared to turn over rocks inside themselves; fewer still could come to terms with what they were and were not.
Of course, the fact that this particular man was so self-accepting indicated he was also an appallingly bad judge of character.
While she was taking stock of him, he continued to look at her long and hard. Knock yourself out, thought Olivia, buoyed by her own rush of confidence. This was familiar ground. Stares and admiring male glances were a fact of life. Also a fact of life was her skill at keeping hormone-driven responses in check, even when the man had other ideas.
