Animal Instincts [The Andersons 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

“Yep, guess you won’t be needing this anymore.”

If he hadn’t made a quick getaway downstairs, Ramona would have quite happily shoved a horse tranquilizer up her brother’s ass. She went over and pulled a suitcase out from under the bed. After packing half her clothing and toiletries, she loaded the case into her truck, ready to take to the practice the next morning. She decided against taking it there and then. She wanted Dr. Rex Latimer to get comfortable before she put “Operation Accommodating” into effect.

The only problem Ramona could foresee with “Operation Accommodating,” indeed with anything else that life chucked her way, was that her face had a tendency to flame whenever she wanted to keep something to herself. It wasn’t that she told outright lies, because she didn’t. It was just that some feelings, thoughts, and opinions were private and should remain…well, private.

Oh, well, what the hell,
she thought as she entered the house, she could always blame the current climate. There had been unbroken sunny, sultry, and sweaty days. Though if she wasn’t mistaken, with the heavy air and one final glance at the darkening sky before closing the front door, the mother of all storms was about to take center stage and sing soprano.

“You get a brain transplant, too, huh?” His eyes glued to a baseball game on the television, Matt lay stretched out on the sofa, his socked feet on the armrest, one arm behind his head, the other hanging down. He had removed his tie and freed half of the buttons of his shirt. His police badge and holstered gun belt were on the floor within touching distance of his fingers.

“At least I have a brain,” she tossed back, hiding her smile at her brother’s chilled, yet ready for action position. If some scumbag robber were to burst in, she had no doubts that Matt would have them arrested, cuffed, and Miranda’d before they had the chance to open their mouth and threaten them with bodily harm if they didn’t hand over their valuables. “Where’s Sammy?”

“Gone clothes shopping with Mom and Dad.” He grimaced, but his attention never strayed from the action on the screen. “They called in at the station before I finished. Asked me if I wanted to go, too. Pigs might fly. I’d rather cut off my left nut!”

This time, Ramona didn’t hide her smile. She’d often wondered if they were related at all. Matt was the only member of the Anderson family who didn’t like shopping, especially for clothes. Sports and fishing equipment, yes. But anything else… Well, it was as he’d said.

Matt even considered one thirty-minute trip, once a year, to be too much. She doubted any of his girlfriends had even persuaded him to accompany them to a lingerie store, and that was saying something. She knew her brother had an insatiable interest with women and their underwear, or rather getting inside them. “She say when she’d be back?” Ramona asked.

“Nope. You really moving out?” he asked, his eyes still glued to the screen, which had begun to flicker.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’m not going far. Just to the vet’s house. I’m not planning on staying long, either. Rex Latimer should be gone within the week, if not a couple of days.”

“Who’s Rex Latimer?”

“Stephens hired him. He’s a vet. My business partner, too. Unless I put a stop to it…” Her reflection in the mirror above the stone fireplace showed her sly expression was worthy of a fox when another tactic to “Operation Accommodating” sprang to mind. If she wanted a partner, she would do it on her terms, not Stephens’s. He should have consulted her face-to-face and not via a couple of impersonal e-mails. Just thinking about it pissed her off.

Finally, Matt’s attention focused on Ramona. A wary frown creased his brow. “And how do you intend to put a stop to it?”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing illegal. Unless leaving the toothpaste cap off or wiping the floor with Budweiser constitutes as against the law?”

Realization dawning on what his sly sister had in mind, Matt turned back to his baseball game. “Then the man has my sympathies.”

Ramona smirked as she entered the kitchen for something to eat. For the first time since Stephens’s e-mail informing her of the imminent arrival of Rex Latimer, her pissed mood turned buoyant. Playing the guy like a yo-yo was going to be fun, but the real fun would be to see what he did when meeting Bud Watson for the first time.

* * * *

“
So, this is Silver Creek,
”
Rex Latimer said to himself as he pulled the rental SUV off the road and surveyed the small town in front of him.

With a population just shy of eleven hundred residents, Silver Creek, halfway between Butte and Dillon in Montana, and awash with buntings and flags denoting a century since establishment, wasn
’
t exactly bright lights. But even he, New Orleans born and raised and citizen of Miami for the last five years, could sense it had spirit—community spirit—and that it had it in spades.

He glanced down at the hand-drawn map given to him by Greg Stephens, his new employer, and took his bearings. The main street, aptly called “Main Street,” was ahead of him, with, and from nearest to furthest away, Third, Second, and First Streets to his right, and Beaverhead and Silver Streets to his left.

There was a rather welcoming café on the corner of Third and Main. Though he was gasping for a coffee, it would have to wait until he’d checked out his new home and place of work. Re-starting the SUV, Rex turned left into Beaverhead Street, driving down until he came to the end, passing a nice-looking church and an even nicer looking park with children’s play area. He spared neither a second glance.

He pulled up outside a part-stone, part-timber constructed house with an adjoining red-bricked building, presumably the vet’s practice. Separate and just beyond, a sturdy yet weathered wooden stable block sat within an impressively large paddock, an equally weathered fence circling its perimeter.

Through the windshield, Rex stared at the house. He didn
’
t know why, but it felt like he had come home. He could actually visualize a wife kissing him by the front door and a brood of kids running around. He knocked a hand against his head to clear that image, grabbed his backpack, and alighted.

And stopped and stared.

If looking at the house made Rex feel like he
’
d come home, then the views before him told him he
had
come home. He walked over to the paddock fence, rested one boot on the bottom rail, folded both arms on the top, and took it all in.

Dusk was falling, casting the vast swathes of prairies, woodland, and the purple smudge of the Pioneer Mountains in the distance with a soft golden glow. With its scent of grass, wildflowers, and pine trees, the still, hot air hummed with electricity. He turned around. His back to one impressive view, he looked toward the town and took in another. The dark, dense, and forbidding cumulonimbus clouds that had practically followed him from Salt Lake City were way past the brewing stage.

The imminent arrival of what would no doubt be a menacing thunderstorm didn’t concern Rex in the slightest. He just didn
’
t think it would be a good idea to stand outside. He hurried over to the house and had only just crossed the threshold when there was a resounding crack and the heavens opened.

“
What a welcome,
”
he said as he planted the slab of solid oak that was the front door between himself and the teeming sheets of moisture and searched for a light switch to illuminate the dim hallway. Not finding one, he stumbled down the narrow passage and entered an equally dim room. A timely flash of lightning showed it was a living room. Feeling around the doorjamb, he located a light switch and flicked it on. The bulb flickered and then blinked out.

Another flash of lightning made it possible for him to see there was a lamp behind the armchair in the far right hand corner. He waited for another flash and then went over. Nothing happened when he turned it on.

“
Oh, this just keeps getting better. Look, I want to explore my new home, so cut us some slack here, will you?
”
he said to the heavens above. His reply was a boom of thunder that literally shook the house.

Obviously, the storm was not in a slack-cutting mood, so using the lightning to find his way about, Rex left the living room and entered the kitchen, situated at the rear of the house. A subsequent search through the various buttermilk-colored Shaker-style cupboards and drawers produced candles and matches. Sitting smack-dab in the middle of the worktop beside the sink was a jar of coffee, almost as though it was waiting for him. And he was in luck with boiling water for that coffee as the stove was gas and not electric.

After drinking the best-tasting coffee he
’
d ever had, which he noticed from the label came from CC
’
s Coffee Shop, the welcoming café in the town, he took a candle and went upstairs, the worn yet lovingly polished boards creaking all the way.

There were six bedrooms. Six! What on earth was he going to do with six bedrooms, all of which were comfortably furnished with more than a touch of Western charm? Once he had dispensed with Stetsons, spurs, chaps and John Wayne, and along with a flash of lightning, the image of the wife and brood of kids again entered his head.

This time, Rex banged his forehead against the light switch of the master bedroom he was standing in to clear it. And hey presto, the lights came on. However, the image of the wife and kids remained.

Grimacing, Rex threw his backpack on the plain blue comforter covering the king-sized, black-metal bed and started to unpack. With regards to the wife, he
’
d been there and done that. The kids, on the other hand, were something else entirely, and he was still coming to terms with the fallout that ended with divorce, yet had started out with such happiness. Well, happiness wasn
’
t exactly how it started, more like panic when Stacey, his wife of five years, discovered she was pregnant despite being on the pill. However, after he had managed to calm her down and talk her round that a baby was wonderful, she was happy.

He was happy.

They were happy.

It was short-lived.

Their joy turned to heartache when Stacey suffered a miscarriage. That heartache then turned into arguments, which subsequently turned into bitter accusations and blame, blame that Stacey solely laid at his door.

“
The incident” as it came to be referred was flung in his face every time they argued. No amount of reasoning or counseling sessions convinced Stacey that neither of them was to blame for the loss of their baby, and a year to the day after it happened, rightly or wrongly, he
’
d walked out of the matrimonial home and his marriage.

That was six months ago. He now had a new life and a new home. He also had a new job, hopefully one that would ultimately lead to buying a sizable share in the well-established and profitable vet’s practice.

After unpacking, and because the lights were still on, Rex decided to check out the adjoining practice. However, he hadn
’
t even crossed the threshold when another deafening thunderbolt threw the place into darkness once more.

He sighed as he relit the candle.
“
This just isn
’
t my night. All I need now is a bolt of lightning to hit the house and raze it to the ground.
”
That remark reminded him he
’
d left lit candles downstairs. Never mind about a bolt of lightning, he could quite possibly do the deed himself.

Muttering and cursing, Rex went downstairs and blew the candles out. He returned to the bedroom. Deciding to watch the storm, he sat on the loveseat by the window. Storms fascinated him. There was something awe-inspiring about Mother Nature at her worst. Whenever work allowed, he would visit a meteorologist friend of his in Kansas and they’d go storm chasing.

This storm, though not a tornado, rated a five on his scale. The house vibrated from the deafening thunderclaps, the landscape illuminated and split in two by the jagged lightning spikes, and the rain lashing at the windowpane
…
Well, in spite of everything, all the pain, all the hurt, he’d never considered embracing celibacy. He was still a romantic at heart, who liked making love with a woman to the drumming sound of rain.

Rex sighed as he glanced toward the black-metal bedstead, wondering if he would share that bed with the woman who might become his wife. He frowned. Since his less-than-amicable divorce from Stacey, a wife was the last thing he needed. One-night stands he could do. He could even stretch to a fling. But marriage? No way.

The knife that Stacey had twisted would also ensure, whether it was a one-night stand or a fling, he would never forget to use protection. He doubted he would ever fully trust a woman who said she was on the pill.

The storm rumbled on for a further three hours. The electricity, however, remained off. Not really in the mood to read the science fiction novel he was in the middle of by candlelight, Rex set the old-fashioned bell and fortunately battery-operated alarm clock on the nightstand and went to sleep, his head still full of images of that damned wife and brood of kids.