There were so many conflicting emotions in his head he didn’t know where to start. Business, he thought, and he grabbed his wallet and made a play of finding his credit card. For suddenly he couldn’t look at her. This woman with her arms full of pup. This woman whose life had been destroyed and was now starting again-while he went back to Manhattan. He need never see her again, he thought, and he felt suddenly, unutterably bleak.
Which was nonsense. He didn’t do relationships, and he surely didn’t do relationships with vets who lived on the far side of the world to him.
And he didn’t do relationships with women he might just end up falling in love with.
But he looked at the play of emotions on her face as Itsy licked and licked. He looked at the errant curl that had escaped the knot she’d tied. Last night those curls had been down. He’d run his fingers through them. Soft as silk…
He wanted her.
‘You want her or not?’ the breeder demanded.
The dog. She was talking about the dog.
‘I think we do,’ he said, still watching Tori. ‘Don’t you, love?’ She blinked. ‘Love?’
‘Figure of speech,’ he said hastily. ‘Don’t you, um…’
‘Tori,’ she said and smiled, and it was as if she could read his thoughts. ‘Dr. Nicholls.’ Her smile held the memory of the night before. It was the smile of a woman who’d taken her man, who knew what he was…
Her man?
He belonged in New York, he thought, trying desperately to ground himself.
Remember relationships, he told himself. They never last. His mother had drilled it into him over and over until it was almost a mantra. ‘Depend on yourself and only yourself. You fall in love and you start being stupid.’
Only his mother had lied. If she’d lied about his father, what else had she lied about?
But maybe in this she was right. Stupid would be taking Tori into his arms right now, and holding her, and…
And what? Carrying her back to New York? He surely couldn’t see Tori in his sleek Manhattan apartment. She’d have to walk Itsy in Central Park.
He’d known her for, what, two days? So maybe in this at least his mother was right. You fall in love and you start being stupid.
He concentrated on payment. He felt Tori look at him for a long moment, and then she turned her attention back to Itsy.
Bitsy was chewing his shoelaces. He glanced down at the little dog and he thought Bitsy was the stupid side of him as well.
The breeder scooped him up and put him back into the pen. Bitsy looked out through the bars as if he’d just been put in solitary confinement.
‘Will he sell?’ He couldn’t help asking.
‘Oh, yeah,’ the breeder said confidently. ‘He’s the best of the litter. I’m thinking, though, that I’ll keep him myself for stud. Look at those bones…’
Bones? All he could see was eyes, looking out through the bars as if he’d personally betrayed him.
He glanced at Tori, who was also looking wistfully at Bitsy-while clutching Itsy and Rusty.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered.
She couldn’t. He could see that. They had to get out of here before they had the whole litter.
‘Just Itsy,’ he said.
‘Just Itsy,’ Tori whispered. ‘Two is enough.’
Two dogs?
That was what she meant. She had her house now. She had her dogs. She’d start a new job, a new life…and he’d go back to New York.
What was wrong with that?
They made a fast visit to a pet shop to buy Itsy supplies. Then they headed back to the shoebox to drop off the flowers. They also did two medical consultations. It seemed that word had already spread that Dr. Nicholls had moved into Shoebox Mansions. They arrived back to find a border collie with a grass seed in its paw, and a corgi with flatulence, dogs and owners waiting patiently at her front door.
To Jake’s surprise Tori took it in her stride-in fact, she even seemed pleased. While Rusty and Itsy explored their miniscule backyard Tori sat on the doorstep and turned into a vet again. While Jake and the owner held the big, docile collie still, she carefully tweezed out a cruel-looking hayseed. She cleaned the paw and disinfected it.
She then told the corgi’s owner where to buy charcoal tablets, and to add a little yoghurt to her meals. Both owners went away happy.
‘You’ll be inundated,’ Jake said, thinking of his mother; of the way she’d hated patients’ demands.
‘I like it,’ she said simply. ‘It makes me feel like I belong.’
He thought of his work; of the careful distance he kept. He worked long hours, but to have someone approach him out of context, a neighbour, someone in his gym…
This wasn’t his world.
Tori wasn’t his world, he thought. But how could he leave her?
Maybe he couldn’t.
It was a bit after five before they arrived back at the hospital to pick up Rob and Glenda.
‘We’re a wee bit late,’ Tori said, starting to apologise, but then Glenda spotted Itsy and no apologies were necessary.
Glenda was beaming. The new painkillers were obviously working. The tight lines of pain around her eyes had eased and, even though she was still cradling her arm, there was a huge sense of relief about her. Doreen had gone through the surgery with flying colours. The cardiologist had spoken to her and had been completely reassuring and Rob had promised to take her to see her tonight.
‘And the hand therapist is wonderful,’ she told them. ‘He didn’t do very much-he says I need really good pain control first and he’s only going to work within the limits of what doesn’t hurt-but he massaged really gently and I did tiny exercises, and already it’s feeling better. He’s given me a sheet of exercises to do at home, but I’m to come here every day because he says if we hadn’t caught it now there might be long-term loss of function.’
There might already be a little, Jake thought, but he watched Glenda’s shining eyes and thought a little loss of function would be nothing now that the pain was relieved.
‘So we’re both going to be okay,’ Glenda said happily. ‘But Dr. Fulton says we have to persuade you to stay here. She says anaesthetists make great pain specialists, and this valley needs a pain specialist so badly and if you’re anything like your father you’d be wonderful. She says there’re so many burns victims with long-term problems, long-term pain, that we all need you.’
And suddenly they were all looking at him. Glenda, Rob, Tori…even Rusty and Itsy.
‘No,’ he said, really fast, and Glenda’s face fell. Tori’s face didn’t change, but he thought he saw the smallest quiver…
Don’t go there.
‘We need to get back to the lodge,’ he said, still too fast, and Glenda took the hint and turned her attention back to Itsy.
‘Is Itsy coming to stay?’
‘I’m only coming back to get my car,’ Tori told them. ‘I’ve moved into my new house. Itsy and Rusty and I need to go home.’
Home. There was that word again.
‘Oh, my dear, that’s a shame,’ Glenda said, throwing Jake a reproachful look-as if somehow he could have persuaded her to stay but had chosen not to. ‘Oh, and Itsy would have made the lodge much more fun.’
‘Where’s your cat?’ Tori asked her. ‘Pickles?’
‘In the cattery on James Street,’ Glenda said. ‘But-’
‘Then let’s go spring him and take him back with us.’ Tori grinned happily at them all. ‘Rob says the rule is no
