Big-Bucks Bachelor

Jack couldn’t leave.

She met his gorgeous green gaze, for once blocking from her mind how they exactly matched the sweetest grass in springtime, and dared to ask, “Why now? I sort of figured that when you didn’t leave two months ago after picking up your share of the lottery that you’d decided to stay.” He was such a part of Jester, she couldn’t imagine the town without him.

Just as she couldn’t imagine her life without him. She was such a fool, but she couldn’t help it. From their very first meeting she’d wanted Jack Hartman. He’d been so kind, dropping his feet from the desk and leaning his elbows on his knees to make his powerful body smaller. He’d coaxed her to talk about herself, about the kind of veterinary practice she wanted to make her life’s work.

All he’d wanted was a partner he could leave his practice to.

He shifted his gaze to the wall. “I didn’t leave after I got the money because the timing wasn’t right then.” He went back to the file cabinet and reached up to straighten the framed photo on it, his fingers lingering. It was something he usually did only when he thought no one was looking.

She usually was. He drew her gaze to him like a skittish creature is drawn to a soothing voice. She knew she shouldn’t be attracted to him, had heard all about his painful past. Jester was such a small town. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. Or at least thought they did.

Thank goodness no one knew how she felt about Jack. She’d already once had to publicly suffer for loving a man who hadn’t loved her back, ditching her ugly in front of a crowd of their friends at college when someone better came along. She could never face that sort of humiliation again. Though it was sheer torture, she was much safer loving Jack in secret.

Her romantic sufferings aside, she wouldn’t trade for anything the happiness she felt working with him, often going days without actually seeing him if one or the other of them was out on calls. But walking into the office after he’d been there, the faint smell of his no-nonsense aftershave lingering in the air and the wonderful scrawl of his handwriting on notes he’d leave her about where she was needed next never failed to make her smile. The notes were always about work, but their informality always warmed her heart, despite that he almost exclusively used his nickname for her, Mel.

That casual shortening of her name, while undoubtedly unconscious, drove home the fact that he didn’t see her as a woman. It was so stupid that the one man to have given her the thing she craved most—respect for what she did—pretty much from the start, was the one man she wanted to notice what she had to offer as a woman. She rubbed a hand over her face again. She really needed to pick a side and stick to it.

Dropping her hand to her lap, she asked, “But the timing is right now?”

Jack cleared his throat in a telling way then said, “I can’t stay.”

Melinda’s heart twisted and ached in her chest. For the millionth time she wished she could pull him to her and heal him. But all she would probably end up doing would be making a bigger fool of herself. Even if Jack were to notice what she could offer him as a woman, there was a very real chance that what they said about him around town was true—that he’d never get over the death of his wife and their unborn child. How could she compete with the memory of the kind of love she could only dream about?

She couldn’t.

Instead of risking embarrassment by trying to comfort him, she asked, “Why now, Jack? Hasn’t it been five years since…” she trailed off, unable to put to words what caused him such pain. He’d never spoken to her directly about the car accident. Though she knew from people like Dean Kenning, who thought the world of Jack, that he hadn’t been with his wife, five months pregnant, when the accident had happened. A fact that only deepened the wound to Jack’s psyche.

Jack finally nodded, running a finger down a clearly familiar course on the dark-wood frame. “It’s been five and a half years, actually.” He gave a half shrug. “But time isn’t going to make any difference. This town holds a lot of painful memories for me, and I don’t think one hundred years could make them go away.”

Melinda closed her eyes, Jack’s pain reverberating inside of her even with the desk separating them. She never could have withstood such a loss. The fact that Jack had weathered such an awful thing without becoming bitter and useless made Melinda love him all the more. Too bad that when it came to love, she simply didn’t measure up.

He surprised her by continuing. “Jester was Caroline’s town, you see. She was the one who’d grown up here. I’m from Yakima, over in Washington, but my parents have since moved to Florida to be near my older brother and his wife. Caroline and I met at Washington State University.” He waved a distracted hand at his framed diplomas on the back wall.

“Even though her family had moved to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, right before she started high school and are still there, she wanted to come back to Jester. A couple generations back, her family had settled the town.” He glanced up at Melinda, the color of his eyes deepened to moss by the memories. “You know that statue on the Town Hall lawn?”

“Of course.” She walked or drove past the moldering looking bronze statue of a woman on a bucking horse everyday. She rented a little house just down from it on the other side of the street. One of the first things she’d learned about the town was the legend of how Caroline Peterson—a mere slip of a woman, no less—had broken the seemingly unbreakable stallion, Jester. It was telling that the old geezers back then had named the town after the horse instead of the woman on him.

“Well, that woman is my Caroline’s ancestor and namesake. My wife felt she belonged in Jester. She loved the idea of being connected to a place. So after the wedding, we moved here.”

“But you don’t feel connected to Jester? Even after eight years?”

“It’s Caroline’s town.” He looked back at the framed photo of the pretty brunette with the glowing smile that Melinda hadn’t been able to keep from studying when alone in the office. How could a woman not smile that way with a man like Jack in her life? Then to have that life cut so short…the unfairness of it all had made Melinda weep inside.

She crossed her arms over her aching heart and faked a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Where will you go?”

Jack cleared his throat again and visibly pulled himself from his thoughts—probably memories of his beautiful wife and the future they’d planned together—by straightening his strong back and squaring his broad shoulders. “I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I haven’t decided…exactly…where…” He moved toward the map on the wall.

Relief flooded her, providing just enough hope to bolster her. “So you’re not leaving town soon.”

“I am.”

His simple statement, said with such conviction, slapped her hope down for good.

“I’ve only stayed this long because I couldn’t leave the town without a vet. But then you came. Now I just need to get you established before I leave.”

His mention of her being established brought back her anger in a rush, only now it was coupled with the bitter taste of yet another fantasy that would never become reality. “I don’t see how that’s ever going to happen when some people in town won’t let me treat their animals.”

“Given no choice, they’ll come around.”

While she had never disagreed with him in the entire six months she’d known him—never had cause to—Melinda shook her head adamantly. Even if she wasn’t crazy about him, she wanted—needed—the farmers to respect her because of her abilities as a vet, not because she’d be the only vet available to them. She needed more time to prove herself. To prove she was as good a vet as any man.

She had to convince Jack to stay longer.

Just as important, she needed to squelch her feelings for him completely so she could concentrate on earning the respect she craved more than anything else. Even more than love.

Chapter Two

“You can’t go, Jack.”

Melinda’s blurted declaration startled Jack from his musing about where he might move to, where he could go to outrun the past. He’d never seen this sort of assertiveness from her before. Melinda was normally very quiet yet affable.

He’d grown so comfortable with her gentle presence, her reliability, that he occasionally forgot whether she was in the office or out on a call when he was treating a small animal in the examination room.

She was also a damn good vet. She had a way of handling the most difficult of animals, large or small, seemingly reassuring them that she would make whatever pain they might have go away. He had no reason to worry about leaving the animals of Jester in her capable hands.

He’d never seen this side of her, though. He raised his brows at her.

Melinda’s cheeks reddened, but her determined stare didn’t waver.

Why didn’t she want him to go?

His mind drew a blank. He knew she could handle the practice. He tilted his head at her and asked, “Why not?”

Her jaw worked, but her full lips remained sealed and she looked away before he could figure out what emotion her big brown eyes held. Finally, she said, “Because…well, because…” she trailed off and started to fidget.

Alarm swelled in his gut. What if she’d decided she didn’t want to stay either?

He opened his mouth to coax her reasons out so he could convince her otherwise but the crash of blinds against the door to the clinic stopped him.

Jack looked over the top of Mel’s head in time to see Mary Kay Thompson complete her entrance into the clinic—twice as loudly as Mel had—with a flip of her shoulder-length, permed blond hair, no less, and clutching her obese orange tabby cat, Pumpkin, to her chest.

He would have gaped at Mary Kay’s outfit if he hadn’t grown so used to her outrageous—and downright foolish, considering the weather—getups. Today she’d put on open-toe, yellow shoes with low but spiky heels, bright orange-and-yellow flowered tight pants that only reached her sculpted calves—Mary Kay was the only person he knew of around Jester to have her very own stair-climbing machine. Instead of wearing a parka or heavy coat like a sane person, she’d pulled on a vinyl-looking, unlined, bright yellow slicker. He’d lay money on the guess that she had on a matching tank top beneath the slicker.

The woman routinely risked hypothermia in the name of fashion. Or more likely, in blatant attempts to attract a man. Since his lottery win, Jack had the unfortunate distinction of being that man.

She swiveled toward the office door. “Jack! Thank goodness you’re in.”

He suppressed a groan. It wasn’t that Mary Kay wasn’t a nice gal, it was just that she was so…ragingly single. Most eligible men—whom she should have realized by now he wasn’t one of—in these parts steered clear of her. Thanks to Pumpkin, a run-of-the-mill barn cat Mary Kay insisted was a rare type of Persian purebred that only he could treat, Jack had no choice but to weather Mary Kay’s determination head on.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, Mary Kay, I was just on my way out. But Dr. Woods, here, can take a look at Pumpkin—”

“Now Jack,” Mary Kay interrupted. “You know how delicate Pumpkin is.”

Jack looked skeptically at the rotund, very robust appearing cat hanging over Mary Kay’s arms. The only delicate thing about Pumpkin was the silly pink, rhinestone-studded collar and matching leash Mary Kay put on him. Didn’t the woman realize she was living in a very rustic part of Montana?

“I really don’t think he can bear the upset of being handled by a stranger. No offense, Melinda.” Mary Kay’s apology to Mel sounded genuine, despite her absurd reasoning.

It hit him that Mary Kay was yet another Jester resident to snub his partner for a ridiculous reason. He glanced at Mel. She had crossed her arms over her chest, and though she was smiling reassuringly at Mary Kay, her smile looked tight around the edges. Great.

“Please, Jack.” Mary Kay reclaimed his attention. “There must be something wrong with Pumpkee. He’s been coughing that awful cough again.”

The cough the cat had yet to cough in anyone’s presence other than Mary Kay’s.

And because she lugged the huge thing everywhere with her—probably for warmth—Jack had a hard time believing Pumpkin was anything but fat and spoiled. Still, he was duty-bound to check the cat out.

“All right, Mary Kay. I’ll take a quick look at him.” Jack gestured toward the clinic’s lone examining room.

Mary Kay smiled triumphantly and headed in.

Jack leveled a look at Mel. “I want to finish our discussion. This’ll only take a second. Okay?” If needed, he’d go blue in the face convincing her that she could handle the practice on her own.

She shrugged and looked away. He couldn’t tell if the fight had gone out of her, or if Mary Kay’s additional refusal to let Mel treat her animal had been the straw that broke Mel’s spirit. Lord, he hoped not.

The pestering he was getting from Mary Kay and some of the other ladies in the area, not all of them single, with supposedly sick animals and a shared fantasy of landing themselves a millionaire, was becoming too much to take. He needed Mel happy so he could leave. Soon. The constant reminder of his availability had made the memories of the reasons behind it that much harder to bear.

“I’ll be right back,” he assured her.

She waved him off and sat down, her attention on the paperwork stacked in once neat piles on his desk.

Jack blew out a breath and turned to leave the office. As he walked out he grabbed his seldom-used white lab coat off the rack next to the door and pulled it on. As armor went, it was a sorry thing, but as of late his professionalism was the only defense he had against women like Mary Kay. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that after one of the entertainment news crews that now routinely haunted Jester had followed him out on a call and caught on tape his attempts to calm a bucking horse, he’d been dubbed The Big-Bucks Bachelor by the press. As if he didn’t have reason enough to get out of town.

He made a point to leave the office door open as well as the door to the exam room after he went in. He didn’t want to give any sort of impression to anyone.

Mary Kay obviously felt the opposite. Rather than placing Pumpkin on the exam table, she’d set him on the ground and had hitched one of her hips on the table. She’d managed to strike a pose with the subtlety of an alpha female, with her jacket off her shoulders—he’d been right about the tank top, only it was white, and very thin. She’d catch pneumonia for sure this winter.

She eyed the open door, then surprised him by calling out, “Oh, Melinda, I almost forgot. I noticed on my way in that your truck is parked right under a huge icicle hanging off the clinic’s sign. While that truck of yours is already kind of beat-up, you might want to move it before that icicle drops and you end up with a great big dent in your hood.”

The sound of Melinda’s chair scraping on the vinyl floor reached them, and Jack turned in time to see her leave the office. With her coat dragging behind her and muttering in a very un-Melinda way under her breath, she stomped her way to the front door.

After Melinda left, Jack turned back to Mary Kay. Her smile would have made any feline proud.

“Everyone knows how much she loves that crummy old truck,” she said by way of explanation.

It was true. Melinda made no secret about her pride in her truck, willing to take the ribbing doled out to anyone who actually washed a work vehicle on a regular basis in the dead of winter. As a born and bred Montanan, she should know better. Although she’d once mentioned that the truck had been the only thing her father had ever given her. He’d thought there’d been a shadow of pain darkening her brown eyes after she’d said it. She’d had the chance to elaborate, but she hadn’t. And he hadn’t asked. It wasn’t his place to pry.

Flashing a saucy grin, Mary Kay returned her attention to Jack.

He pointedly shifted his attention to Pumpkin, who looked annoyed over having to actually touch the ground. “Okay, big fella, lets have a listen to those lungs.” He started to squat down in front of the cat, but Mary Kay grabbed hold of the lapels of his lab coat and hauled him against her.

Surprised and off balance, Jack had no choice but to flatten his hands on the polished metal table and lock his elbows to keep from toppling onto her. The strength of her mercantile-bought perfume made his eyes water.

Apparently oblivious to his distress, in a surprisingly accurate Marilyn Monroe-like breathlessness, Mary Kay said, “Let’s stop beating around the bush, Jack, and just do what animals like us are supposed to do.”

His gaze went instinctively to the other door out of the exam room, the one that they brought contagious or severely injured small animals through. But she had too good of a hold on him. “Mary Kay, please,” Jack demanded. He tried to straighten away from her, but she turned out to be remarkably strong.

“No, I’m the one willing to beg. I’m willing to do anything to be the one tamed by your great, big, strong hands,” she purred and once again tried to pull him down with her onto the table.

No way was he going to let that happen. But his worn-thin professionalism kept him from physically removing her from his person.

“Don’t fight it, Jack. We’d be so good together. Can’t you see that? Haven’t you felt it building over the years, darling?”

Positive he hadn’t exchanged more than the usual pleasantries and professional advice regarding Pumpkin, he adamantly shook his head. “Really, Mary Kay—”

“Shh.” She cut off what was going to be a fervent denial by placing the pads of her pink-polished fingertips of one hand over his mouth. “No. You’re right. This isn’t the time for words, it’s time for action. Let me show you just how lucky you really are, Jack.”

He tried to take a step back, but Pumpkin, undoubtedly looking for revenge against the usurper who’d taken his place on his mistress’s lap, had circled Jack’s legs and wound the leash that Mary Kay still had looped over her wrist around him. It was all Jack could do to keep from falling backward on his butt or forward onto Mary Kay.

If it came to it, he’d pick hitting vinyl in a heartbeat. He would have never dreamed Mary Kay would become so aggressive in her bid to land a millionaire. Though he shouldn’t be surprised. Even the mayor’s assistant, Paula Pratt, had suddenly shown up with a pet so she’d have an excuse to come to the clinic. The mayor, after all, hadn’t been one of the group he’d dubbed The Main Street Millionaires.

Mary Kay tugged again, her bright blue eyes glinting with determination. “Give me one good reason why not, Jack. Just one,” she huskily challenged, leaning yet closer in a clear invitation for a kiss.

Ten compelling reasons instantly came to mind, but none of them were particularly flattering to Mary Kay. While her pursuit of him, obviously fueled by his newfound wealth, was extremely annoying, it didn’t earn her his cruelty. But thanks to the effort involved in trying to keep his balance and avoid her puckered lips lined in a shade a heck of a lot darker than her coral lipstick, his brain had a hard time coming up with a nice reason.

The first and foremost truth popped from his mouth. “Because I’m already involved with someone.” He always would be.

Mary Kay froze, then frowned. His state of perpetual mourning had never been a secret in Jester, and was the main reason he’d been left alone by the women in town. But over a million in the bank apparently overrode their pity.

The skepticism plain on her meticulously made-up face, she pulled back and challenged, “Who?”

Now he’d stepped in it.

Figuring the rest of that particular truth wouldn’t buy him a respite but instead earn him the standard lecture on the benefits of moving on, he mentally scrambled for a name. He couldn’t just make a girlfriend up, even one who might live out of town. He was far too visible around Jester, and didn’t leave often enough to get a story like that to fly. Besides, in a town of 1,500 people, everyone generally knew everyone else’s business.

Just when Mary Kay’s frown was turning to exasperation, the clinic’s door opened and Melinda returned with a blast of cold air that matched her icy expression. With a glancing glare in their direction that let him know Mary Kay had sent Melinda on an unnecessary trip outside, Melinda stomped back into their office.

It dawned on Jack that the only woman he spent any amount of time with alone was his currently grumpy partner. He could easily be having a relationship with her that no one would know about.

Without further thought he announced, “Mel. I mean, Melinda. I’m currently involved with Melinda.” And just in case Mary Kay expected him to be willing to cheat, he threw in, “Seriously involved.” He took advantage of Mary Kay’s shock and extracted himself from her grip.

Looking down, he stepped out of the tangle Pumpkin had made of the leash. He started in on the explanation he was certain she would demand. “Since we work together, we’d prefer to keep it quiet, you understand—” He looked back at Mary Kay, and her expression stopped him.

She was softly saying, “Ah,” and nodding her head as if he’d just pointed out something obvious, like the fact chicken coops stink.

She slipped off the examination table. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place, Jack? Sheesh,” she muttered as she bent to pick up her rotund cat. “I could have spent all this time hanging at The Heartbreaker Saloon, working on Dev,” she groused on her way out of the room.

Jack’s brows went up. That had been easy. A little too easy. His luck couldn’t be that good. “So you don’t want me to take a look at Pumpkin?” he offered while following her into the small waiting area.

“Naa, that’s okay.” She waved him off as she continued toward the front door. “Pumpkee’s tougher than he looks.”

Considering that Pumpkee looked like the feline equivalent of a Sumo wrestler, that was saying something.

“Well, if you’re sure…” he trailed off, hoping his pleasure over his excuse working wasn’t too obvious.

“I’m sure. Catch you later, Jack.”

“’Bye, Mary Kay, Pumpkin.”

Jack closed the door behind her and whistled low through his teeth. That had been a close one. While lying wasn’t his thing, no matter how white the lie, in this instance it had certainly been the lesser of two evils. He doubted he could have convinced Mary Kay that the only woman he would ever want in any way was already gone from his life.

That fate had already decided he would spend his life alone.

Besides, he was leaving Jester.

He turned toward the office, intent on making sure Melinda was on board with his plan, but she was already heading out into the waiting area, her coat on and her vaccination kit in hand.

“Where are you going? I want to finish our discussion.”

She stepped around him and made for the door. “Sorry, Jack. But I’m due out at Wyla Thorne’s place in fifteen minutes. At least she doesn’t mind having a woman vaccinate her pigs.”

He pulled in a deep breath and followed her. “We’ll get everything straightened out, Mel. I promise.”

The look she gave him as he held the door open for her said, yeah, right.

But he meant it.

He had no choice.

JACK HAD ALL of an hour of peace, having finally forced himself to focus on the paperwork that needed to be done, before the blinds on the door rattled again. He braced himself, wondering which supposedly love-struck lady with a mysteriously ill pet would appear next.

He sent up a silent prayer that it wouldn’t be the mayor’s curvaceous, blond assistant, Paula Pratt. Her newly acquired, tiny beige Chihuahua, Angel—the dog’s original owners had called him Killer—was only happy snuggled up inside the front of the woman’s coat, and whenever she drew close to someone, the dog growled. It sounded eerily like her abundant breasts were snarling. And whatever it was that little dog had wrong with him, only a truly gifted animal psychologist could cure.