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“Can’t skunks climb?”
“They mostly don’t. Not at their age, at any rate.”
“Then please bring it in.”
He picked it up one-handed. He held a cardboard box in his other hand. He hauled both box and pen into the pantry, leaned the playpen against the wall and began to unfold it.
“Will it fit in here?” Emma asked.
“It’s a country pantry with enough storage area to get through a whole winter, Ms. French. Besides, this is a traveling playpen. Half-size. It’ll fit.” He didn’t even glance at the babies.
“Out of sight, out of mind?” Emma said. “And when did I become Ms. French? I thought we were beyond that after last night.”
He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t been “out of mind” since he’d walked out of her house the night before. The skunks hadn’t been either—well, not much. He set up the playpen, took a fresh towel from a stack on the kitchen counter and made a nest at one end. From the cardboard box he pulled out a folded square. “Brought you a box of puppy pads, too,” he said. Unfolding one, he laid it in the other end of the pen. “Might help with cleanup.”
“Oh, Seth, thank you! I didn’t think...”
“Not my first rodeo, Ms.—Emma. I see you’ve got a water dish.”
She sat on the floor beside him. “I found it on the top shelf of the pantry. I guess my last tenants must have had a dog. I know Aunt Martha had cats.”
“The last tenants, the Mulligans, had two Australian cattle dogs. I’m surprised you didn’t bring a dog with you as protection out here in the wilderness.”
She shook her head and sat on the floor beside him. “I’ve never had a dog or a cat. My stepmother is allergic to both.”
“Well, you sure started out with a bang. Don’t know what I’d do without a dog.”
“You have a dog? I didn’t hear one last night.”
“I’m between dogs. Barbara’s looking for the right rescue for me. That’s why I could lend you the playpen.” He ran a hand down Sycamore’s back. “You’re going to have trouble with this one. Ought to have named him Columbus. He sees new worlds to conquer.”
“He already made it to the kitchen this afternoon,” she said with a smile.
“The playpen should keep them in for a while. Until you get them weaned and back in the wild.”
“How long do I have?” she asked.
“Maybe as little as a couple of weeks or as much as a couple of months. All depends.”
“On what?”
“How fast their scent glands develop.”
“Oh, Lord!”
“By that time they’ll be acclimated to you. They won’t spray you unless you really annoy them. Don’t. You’ll have to teach them to be afraid of human beings.”
“But...”
He heard the longing in that one word and understood it perfectly. He could always recognize someone who cared about animals, any animals. “It’s best for them.”
One of the hardest choices he had to make was to let nature take its course and to free a wild creature back to the wild. He watched her fingers touch the soft fur between Peony’s ears. She had beautiful hands, even if that fancy manicure had pretty much bitten the dust in the past couple of days. He wondered what it would be like to be stroked by those gentle fingers... Uh-uh. Not a safe image. Certainly not when they were sitting on the pantry floor thigh to thigh.
She leaned across him to pet Rose, and her sleek hair brushed his cheek. “How do I teach them to hate me?”
“Not to hate you. Be wary of you.” He had no idea which flower her hair smelled like. Flowers weren’t his thing. Whatever shampoo she used, it was a darned sight more enticing than eau de skunk.
“The playpen won’t work for long,” Seth told her. He held little Peony in the palm of his hand. She seemed perfectly content. “They need to get outside.”
“But they’ll run away!”
“They need a big outdoor cage that’s safely enclosed so they can get used to the outdoors. They’re going to live in it, after all. They have to learn to forage for food, identify smells... How to be skunks.”
“Where on earth do I buy something like that? I’ve never seen one big enough for what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t buy it. You build it. Should be tall enough so that you can move around inside without stooping, with a roof and a door and someplace they can use as a den. Needs to have a metal strip set below ground so they can’t dig under it.”
“I have no idea how to do that,” Emma wailed. “My daddy tried to teach me carpentry, but I’ve never been able to drive a nail straight.” She looked down at her cracked manicure. Why bother redoing it? One day of hammering, and she wouldn’t have any fingernails left anyway.
“If I tried to use a power saw, I’d cut off my hand,” she added. “How do I find someone I can hire to build it? Or even design it in the first place?”
He leaned back against the pantry wall and let Peony snuggle against his chest. She made tiny puttering noises that were almost like a cat’s purr. “It’s not that hard.”
“No, no, no, you don’t understand. I’m the original klutz. If this wasn’t during the school year, I might be able to con my half brother, Patrick, into driving up here to help, but he not only has school during the week, but lacrosse on the weekends. And baseball practice starts in two weeks.”
“You have a half brother?”
“And a half sister. Patrick is seventeen, Catherine is fifteen. Daddy remarried after my mother died.”
“Then if you have a family in Memphis, why are you up here?”
“I beg your pardon. Why is that your business?” She inched away from him and organized herself to stand up.
He laid his free hand on her arm. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you. You just don’t seem the type to go off to a house like this in the country alone. Rehabbers don’t usually admit to being unable to drive a nail.” He should’ve kept his mouth shut. Must be a bad situation at home—wicked stepmother, maybe, although he’d never visualized Cinderella as wearing designer jeans.
“You assumed I came up here to rehab this place?” She shrugged. “I’m going to clean it up, get the yard in order and paint. Cosmetic stuff, but basically, I am up here to endure the place while I lick my wounds and get my résumés out. You might as well know. I got fired last week. The last thing I wanted was to run into all my old office buddies while I was pounding the pavement looking for another job.”
He had no idea what to say to her. He figured she would hate being subjected to sympathy.
* * *
NO WAY WOULD she tell him about Trip. Losing her job and her fiancé in the same week seemed like an ultimate case of bad Karma.
It was probably a case of one thing being responsible for the other. Trip surrounded himself with successful people. Once she was fired and therefore no longer successful, he no doubt went looking for some eye candy to commiserate with him—straight into bed.
Emma did not consider herself a total loser, dammit. It suddenly seemed terribly important that Seth Logan didn’t think she was, either.
He set Peony back in the playpen. “How about if I help?”
“They don’t get fed for another hour. I thought I’d put a tiny bit of dog food in the milk this time. I was going to check with you first, but since you left the cans, I figured it couldn’t do any harm.”
“As long as you’re starting with a little bit. I didn’t mean I’d help with the feeding, although I will. I meant building the outside cage.”
She stammered, “I—I can’t ask you to do that. According to Dr. Barbara, you already work all the hours of the day and night until you drop.”
“You didn’t ask. I offered. I’ve built several of these cages. I’ve even built a couple of big flight cages for raptors that were recuperating from head-on collisions with cars.”
“I keep telling you. I’ll be worse than useless if I try to help with the cage. I don’t even know where to buy the raw materials.” Or how much they were going to cost. In any case, she hadn’t planned to include them in her budget.“I don’t own any tools, power or otherwise.”
“That’s all right. I do. I’ll meet you at the Farmers’ Co-op in Williamston tomorrow at eight,” he said. “By then I’ll have worked up some specs. My partner, Earl, will be happy to help, too. Provide pizza and you’ll have half the county out here.”
“I don’t know half the county.”
“That’s okay. Barbara and I do.”
Seth had brought a small baby bottle, and Emma stirred a little of the dog food into the milk. While she held the kits, he attempted to get them to suck even a tiny bit from the larger nipple. As usual, Rose and Sycamore caught on fast. Peony, not so much.
“She’ll starve if she doesn’t eat!” Emma wailed as another tablespoon full of milk dribbled into Seth’s lap. He dipped his finger in the remaining mush and rubbed it across her gums.
“Yeah, baby, that’s it,” he whispered as Peony licked his finger. “She won’t starve. Not on my watch.”
Emma’s landline rang. She ignored it. After half a dozen rings, he looked up. “You ever going to answer that?”
“Hadn’t planned to.”
“Whoever it is knows when to hang up before it switches to voice mail.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Might be important. Your family?” He dipped his finger once more and held it to Peony’s lips.
“I can guess who it is. Oh, hell.” She grabbed the handset from the shelf behind her and answered. She didn’t realize it was set on speakerphone until she heard Trip’s voice.
“Emma! Thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you for days. I’ve been going nuts. Are you all right? I finally convinced your father to give me your landline number, since you won’t answer your cell phone.”
She glanced at Seth. He was watching her while he seemed to be watching the baby.
“Ow!” He scowled down at Peony. “You imp. You bit me.”
Emma laughed at his wounded expression.
“What’s happening? Who’s there? Is it your father? He said he might drive up there if he didn’t hear from you. Let me speak to him.”
Holding the phone in her right hand, she braced her left against Seth’s shoulder, stood and turned away. A second later she turned back and saw that he was grinning at her. She’d touched him so casually. Her hand on his shoulder felt natural; he was no longer a stranger.
She flipped off the speaker and walked across to the fireplace before she answered again. “Trip, nothing is going on that concerns you in any way. No, my father is not here and he doesn’t plan to come. He would prefer, however, that you stopped calling him at the office.”
“He’s damn near my father-in-law! Who else should I call when you disappear and won’t take my calls? I had to beg to get him to give me this phone number.”
“He is not nor will he ever be your father-in-law. I asked him not to give anyone this number.”
“I am not anyone. I’m your fiancé.”
“No, you aren’t. We broke up, remember? I did not run off. I came up here to look for a new job...”
“You don’t need a new job. You don’t need any job. You need to marry me so I can take care of you. I screwed up...”
“You might say that.”
“You must hate me now, but...”
She sat on the arm of the sofa. Seth was hearing every word she said, but hiding in her bedroom was ridiculous. Better get it over and done with once and for all. “I don’t hate you, Trip. Although I’ll admit I did when I found out about you and Susan. I thought she was my friend.”
“It was a one-night stand. You and I had that fight because you didn’t want to go to the ball after I bought the tickets. Damn things cost a fortune.”
“I told you to find another date.”
“I didn’t want another date. I wanted my fiancée on my arm. You know how tongues would’ve wagged if I’d shown up with someone else. I would’ve spent the night explaining why you weren’t with me. So I had to go stag.”
“Unfortunately, you didn’t feel you had to remain stag.”
“If you’d gone, I wouldn’t have run into Susan once I got there. Hell, she came on to me. I was mad and I was drunk. That’s no excuse, but I swear it’ll never happen again.”
So it was Emma’s fault for not doing what he wanted? “Until the next time you want to schmooze with a room full of VIPs and I am just getting over a hundred and one degrees of fever. Not only did I feel rotten, I was trying to avoid giving everyone there what I had. I didn’t blow you off.”
“I’m not blaming you.”
“Really? Sure sounds like it.”
“Anyway, what’s the big deal? You break off our engagement a week before we’re scheduled to announce it. How’s that going to look?”
He’d gone from contrition to recrimination in three sentences. How on earth had she ever considered marrying him? Had she been blind? No, just stupid. You couldn’t fix stupid, but she was going to try.
“When we decided to get married, you agreed that infidelity was a deal breaker. I guess that’s why you lied to me. It wasn’t a one-night stand, Trip. Susan told me she’d been seeing you for the past month.”
“That didn’t have anything to do with us, you and me!”
How many times had Emma heard that?
“Call it a crazy last fling. Now I know for sure you’re the woman I intend to spend the rest of my life with. Together we can own the world. I miss you. On Saturday I’ll drive up there, take you to lunch.” He hesitated, then whispered, “Make up afterward.”
When she heard his tone she felt her stomach flip, and not in a good way. She knew what he meant, but making up with Trip no longer sounded appealing.
She slid over the arm of the sofa and swung her legs around to sit. “Trip, I don’t hate you. It’s worse than that. Hate implies passion. Passion is one step away from love.”
“Take that step again, baby, I’m begging you. I’ll prove you can trust me.”
“Trip, I’ve realized I don’t like you. I don’t want to have your babies, but I’m sure there are a bunch of women who do. Go marry one of them. Heck, marry Susan. Oh, sorry. I forgot she’s already married.” She laid the handset gently back into its cradle.
