Hometown Hearts

Tomasina? He racked his brain for any information associated with that name. No children, no neighbors, no neighborhood pets that he could think of. He pried the lid off the bottle. “Time to explain, young lady.”

“She could be dying, Daddy.” Julianna sniffled. Her feelings were so tender and drove up the high notes in her voice. “I had to bring her here.”

The picture came clear. A dog barked in the background again, harmonized by an cat’s howl and a woman’s voice telling Grover to sit like a good boy. No mystery where the girl was.

“Haven’t I told you not to go across town to the vet’s office without clearing it with me?” He shook out two aspirin and popped them into his mouth, not even bothering with water.

“Y-yes.” Julianna’s tone went to a near whisper. His guess, she was kneeling on the floor, holding herself in, contrite and wounded. She’d been fragile since the divorce. “Daddy, are you mad?”

“Very.” He didn’t know how to begin to explain it all. “Tell me about Tomasina.”

“I couldn’t let her get gobbled up.” Misery quivered in her voice. “She was bleeding, so I held her while Jenny made up a shoe box like a nest and we hurried to the vet, except we had to walk careful so we wouldn’t shake Tomasina.”

Still no idea who or what Tomasina was, but it didn’t matter. His daughter felt it was her duty to save everything and everyone. He was at a loss how to make her understand. She couldn’t save the world. Why wasn’t she like other kids, busy playing with their toys, wanting the latest video game and trying to listen to unacceptable music on their MP3 players?

She was too much like the boy he’d once been, thinking God cared for every creature great and small.

“Dr. Stone?” Mildred tapped on his open door. “Your four o’clock canceled. Just thought you should know.”

“Thanks. Why don’t we call it a day?”

Mildred nodded, bustling off to close up shop and forward the calls to his cell because there was no answering service to hire in this town.

“Stay right where you are, Julianna.” He rubbed at his right temple. The pain in his skull drilled like a jackhammer. “I’ll be over in five minutes.”

“Am I gr-ounded?”

He winced at how little and young she sounded. He shrugged off his white coat. “We’ll see. Is Jenny with you?”

“Yes, but don’t punish her. Please? It’s not her fault. I made her come with me.”

That was Julianna, caring about everyone ahead of herself.

“I’ll take that into consideration.” He pushed out of the chair, hung his coat over the back of it and grabbed his keys off his desk. “I’m on my way.”

“O-kay.” She gulped audibly, fearing her punishment to come.

Grounding her was not working. He hung up the phone and marched to the door, remembering his patient. Mrs. Tipple had said her children had been a full-time job in and of themselves. He wished he had that kind of time to give to them. He’d wanted to hire a babysitter but Jenny had raised an earsplitting argument, pointing out that she was old enough to be a babysitter so she did not need one.

Life was changing and it was getting more complicated. But the girls were prospering here, where the pain of their mother’s abandonment wasn’t a constant reminder. That was the reason he’d locked up his town house, put his practice on hold and moved to Wyoming for the rest of the summer.

All this change, as temporary as it was, was tough on him. He called a goodbye to Mildred and pushed out the back door of the practice the town doctor had asked him to join. He breathed in the scent of freshly mown grass on the warm breeze and felt calmer. Overhead, leaves whispered from the old maples marching on both sides of the narrow street.

“Howdy, Doc!” Chip Baker shouted over the sound of his lawn mower and touched the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Hi.” He beeped the remote to his BMW.

“Your girls wandered by here a little bit ago,” Chip called out, always a friendly sort. “They looked in a real hurry. Something about a sick bird.”

The mystery of Tomasina solved. Someone from the house next door came out to complain to Chip about the noise, so Adam slid into his car, started the engine and was more than happy to drive away from the scene.

Dappled shade tumbled over him as he headed down the street. Folks sat on front porches sipping tea. He spotted more than half a dozen women out working in their flower beds as he drove past and two people waved him to a stop on his way to Main Street to tell him about his daughters.

People were definitely friendly here, and it made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t unfriendly as much as private, and the fact that everyone knew what his girls were up to besides him didn’t sit well. What kind of father was he? He pulled into one of the parking spots in the vet clinic lot, his head still pounding. Frustrated, he tossed his sunglasses on the console and felt a brush against the side of his face, something as soft and rare as an angel’s wing.

He looked up, inexorably drawn to the front window. There in the lobby speaking with his daughters was the loveliest woman with red-brown hair, big blue eyes and a sweetheart’s face. Amazingly lovely. She made the world disappear when she smiled at his girls.

The infamous Dr. Granger. The gorgeous Dr. Granger. He watched as she smoothed a lock of flyaway hair out of Julianna’s eyes. The woman wasn’t only stunning, but kind. His palms broke into a sweat just like last time he’d spotted her from afar. His heart skipped a beat. He forgot to breathe. He felt a little unsteady.

She moved out of sight, bending down as if to kneel before his daughters and became lost in the glare of the sun on the glass. Although she vanished from his view, his heart smarted as if stung.

It wasn’t a good sign. Not good, at all.

Chapter Two

Somehow his feet carried him to the door as if he were in a daze. Maybe it was the heat wave sucking the moisture from his body and dehydrating his brain. That had to be it. His sweaty palms gripped the door handle with a slight slide. Embarrassing. Maybe he could attribute that to dehydration, too.

“Uh-oh. Dad’s here.”

He recognized the dour tone in his oldest’s voice. She was, after all, practicing to be a teenager.

Air-conditioning breezed over him as he released hold of the door. It swooshed shut behind him and an angry yowling protest rose from a cat carrier on the floor nearby. A dog bounced up from his sprawl on the floor to bark a ringing welcome while a frizzy-haired woman tried to gently shush him, to no avail. His gaze shot to Cheyenne against his will like an arrow to a target.

He’d never seen her up close. Even more striking. She had a sloping nose, a wide smile that would make movie actresses envious. With her high cheekbones, golden sunny complexion and a willowy grace, she made a breathtaking picture as she rose from kneeling before Julianna’s chair. The vet’s white jacket might make her look professional, but she glowed with a cheerful joy that had a beauty all its own.

He wasn’t captivated, really. He could look away if he wanted to, except his eyes didn’t seem to be cooperating.

“Daddy!” Julianna bopped to her feet, bounded across the tile and wrapped her arms around his waist. The four dogs in the waiting room barked in excitement, eager to join in. The cacophony was deafening. His daughter’s big brown eyes peered up at him, fringed by long dark lashes and her thick, flyaway bangs. “Please don’t be mad anymore. I’ll stay in my room every evening after supper with no toys. I p-promise.”

His heart caved. “I don’t see the use in sending you to your room if it doesn’t change your behavior.” He tweaked her nose, at a loss what to do with the girl. “I’ll have to think of something more effective.”

“I could give up desserts?”

Hard to stay mad at that little face. He steeled his resolve, trying not to be too lenient and also not to give in to his anger from the worry she’d caused him.

“She shouldn’t be deciding her own punishment, Dad.” Jenny sauntered up. Her dark eyes hadn’t lost the look of pain and anger at her mother, but the stay in Wyoming had helped to ease it. She gave an I-so-don’t-care scowl and flipped a lock of her hair. “I don’t get to decide my punishments.”

“I’ll think of something fair.” It was all he could promise. His neurotransmitters weren’t firing correctly because of the woman walking toward him. She had the power to suck the oxygen from the atmosphere and all rational thought from his brain. It only got worse with each step she took closer.

He couldn’t tear his attention away from her. He noticed things about her he’d tried not to see before. Her hair was lighter than he’d thought, full of russets and golds and strawberry-blond shades as it fell in soft tendrils from her French braid. Gently swooping bangs framed the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. From a distance, she’d been beautiful. Up close, she was stunning in a gentle, natural girl-next-door way.

“Dr. Stone.” She plunged her hands into her jacket pockets and offered him a professional smile. “At last we meet.”

“There was no way to avoid it.” He heard his voice boom low as if with dislike and internally he winced. He wasn’t proud of the tone. After his divorce, he had put up so many walls, and he didn’t like that about himself. He automatically wanted women to keep their distance so he wouldn’t be duped like that again.

She didn’t seem to know what to say. She opened her mouth, hesitated, bit her bottom lip for a moment. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You have the most wonderful girls.”

“You don’t know them like I do.” Those words had sounded lighter in his head, but on his voice they seemed to weigh down like iron. Unlikable, remote, unfeeling iron.