The Vixen and the Vet (5 page)

“No,” he
said, glancing at her hand and making a small groaning sound in the back of his throat.

“Please, look at me. We’re friends, remember?”

“Time’s up,” he said quietly, but firmly, turning completely away from her.

She swallowed, removing her hand and reaching for her bag. As she started to leave, he grabbed her wrist, forcefully, fiercely,
adjusting his fingers to a more gentle grip when she didn’t pull away.

“
You’ll come back on Friday?”

“Of course.”

His fingers relaxed a little as his thumb caressed the inside of her wrist with slow, hypnotic strokes.

“Good,” he
said, letting go of her.

Savannah didn’t realize
she was holding her breath until she was halfway down the stairs.

***

“So how’s it going?” asked Scarlet on Friday morning as she sat down across from her sister at the breakfast table. “With “Hermit” Lee?”

“Don’t call him that,”
said Savannah, giving her little sister a look.

“Touchy.”

“Not touchy. Just show some respect. He’s an injured war vet.”

“
Lookee, lookee. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone’s formin’ a crush.”

“Shut up, Scar
let.”

“
Vanna and Asher sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G …”

“You’re such a brat
.” Savannah reached for a piece of toast and knocked Scarlet’s silverware to the floor.

“
Oh my stars!” sighed Judy. “These can’t be my grown-up daughters bickering like schoolgirls.”

“She started it,” said Scarlet, sticking her tongue out at her big sister. “All touchy about her new beau.”

“Katie Scarlet, I could have sworn you had a big wedding order at the shop this morning.”

Scarlet looked up at the kitchen clock and burst out of her seat, grabbing Savannah’s toast out of her hands. “
Criminy, I’m late! Thanks, Mama!”

Judy and Savannah watched her go, then exchanged rolled eyes as Judy took her younger daughter’s vacated seat. “You know she’s just
teasin’.”

“I know. It’s just
… he’s a good man. This town hasn’t done right by him.”

“Well, if anyone can change that, I’d lay bets on my girl.” She pushed Savannah’s hair out of her face and cupped her cheek tenderly, before pushing up from the table to check on her batter. Lemon
ginger scones. Savannah’s mouth watered.

“You know, I knew his mother. Pamela Lee.”

Savannah started, slowly lowering her coffee cup to the table and staring at her mother’s back in surprise. “You did?”

“Not well, of course. She was Pamela Lee, and I was just Judy
Calhoun Carmichael, fresh from the sticks of Big Chimney, West Virginia.”

Savannah politely refrained from pointing out that Danvers was
also, in fact, the sticks to most people. “She was a snob?”

“Not at all. She was lovely. A real lady. We just didn’t move in the same circles,
button.”

“How’d you know her?”

Judy gestured to the wall that held her framed blue ribbons, to the space between 1995 and 1997 that held a simple white-painted wooden cross. “You ever wonder why 1996’s missing?”

“Sure. I’ve
wondered.”

“Yet you never asked.”

“Figured you had your reasons.”

“Pamela Lee and I competed for that ribbon every year, starting in 1987
, when your dad and I moved here. Fairgrounds were so close, and everyone always said I made the best baked goods they’d ever tasted. First year, I was informed by some of the other contestants that no one beats Pamela Lee. She sponsors the baking competition, they warned me. Make sure your muffins aren’t better than hers. But you know?” Judy smiled at Savannah. “They were. I couldn’t help it.”

She pointed to the very first blue ribbon on the far left corner of the wall. “It was the first year that anyone could remember that Pamela Lee won the red second
-place ribbon. But she was some lady, Savannah. The next morning, she sent me a dozen blue-dyed white roses, with a note that read simply, ‘The best baker won.’

“
She never gave up. Year after year, my scones beat her scones, my cookies beat her cookies, my muffins beat her muffins. And every year, without fail, those blue roses would arrive on my front porch with some little note of congratulations, so I could enjoy my win. She was all class, Pamela Lee.”

Ju
dy smiled affectionately at the blue ribbons, gingerly touching the frames.

“
Nineteen-ninety-six,” said Savannah softly, with tears in her eyes. “The year Pamela Lee died in a plane crash.”

Tears brightened her mother’s eyes as she
turned and nodded at her daughter. “I couldn’t bring myself to bake that year. I just couldn’t do it. That poor boy all by himself in that big house, his mama and daddy gone. I didn’t enter that year, and that little white cross is in honor of Pamela Lee, the loveliest lady I ever knew. She taught me how to be gracious in defeat. I’ll never forget her kindness to me, Savannah.” Judy wiped her face with the corner of her apron, as Savannah’s own vision blurred with tears.

“Oh,
Mama,” said Savannah, “all these years I’ve looked at that cross, and I never knew.”

Her mother scooped out a portion of batter and shaped it carefully into a triangle, then placed in on a well-worn
, greased baking sheet. “Well, now you do. You do right by that boy, button, you hear? You do right by him.”

“I will,
Mama.”

“And you bring him some of these scones today.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her mother
gave Savannah a knowing smile before returning to her scones.

“And when you’
re ready,” she said over her shoulder, “you bring that boy home for supper.”

***

A few hours later, Savannah had her notes in order and e-mailed the outline of the piece to Maddox McNabb at the
Phoenix Times
. She was surprised when her phone rang about fifteen minutes later.

“Hello? This is
Savann—”

“Carmichael.
Maddox McNabb. It won’t work.”

Savannah blinked, stepping outside and drop
ping despondently onto the porch swing.

“Won’t work?”

“I know you’re coming from investigative, so I’ll lay this out for you real quick. What you’ve sent me isn’t human interest.”

“It’s the story of how a town rejected a returning hero.”

“It’s a downer. It’ll make people feel bad remembering all the times they could’ve been kinder to a vet.”

Savannah
humphed quietly. And what was wrong with that?

“Nobody wants to read that on the Fourth of July. We want to feel good about our country, about ourselves. We want sexy, or at least all-American, not some expos
é about returning servicemen being treated like crap.”

Savannah’s sneakered toe pushed off, letting the swing sway her into further melancholy.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s an important angle.”

“For the beat? Yes. For Lifestyles? No.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Carmichael. I just don’t know if this is going to
—”

That was it.
Panic got her back up, and her mouth started working again. “I got you, Mr. McNabb. Sexy and all-American. I’m your girl. Just give me until tomorrow, sir. I’ll send you a whole new batch of notes. Same subject. Different angle.”

“You might be better off finding an investigative job, Carmichael. I just don’t know if
—”

“
I
do, sir. I know myself, and I want
this
job, so I’ll deliver. Whatever you need. Tomorrow. Look out for my notes.”

Then she hit the End button on her phone before he could say anything else.

***

Asher paced his study like a
caged bear, whiling away the long hours until Savannah Carmichael showed up at his door again. The problem was, he couldn’t concentrate on his beloved books anymore. Even Jennifer Crusie was failing him because every heroine was Savannah and every handsome leading man was, well, not him.

On Wednesday when she said
, “Look at me,” in that low, certain voice, he’d realized how close he was to considering her request. She was tricking him, in her floral sundresses and bright smiles, into believing that he was a man and she was a woman, and it had been far too long since he’d felt like a man.

Because
he wasn’t. Well, he was, but he wasn’t. He had all of the desires of a man, his body hardening and twitching at the very sight of her, living for her husky laugh and brilliant smiles, wanting the softness of her body beneath his while he touched her and stroked her and buried himself so deep inside her that Afghanistan and IEDs and dead parents and years of solitude never even existed.

But he wasn’t a
whole
man. He couldn’t leave his house. He still woke up screaming once in a while, drenched in a cold sweat as he felt his hand detach from his arm and Corporal Lagerty’s body explode beside him. In the safe bubble of two wingback chairs, bathed in the kind light of the day, he could talk to her, get to know her, even reach for her hand. But his life wasn’t
living
, and she was a person of the world. She lived in the sunshine, not shrouded in shadows.

And yet, despite all these thoughts, and perhaps because he hadn’t had a friend
—let alone a young, beautiful, female friend—in so many years, Savannah Carmichael was special to him. More than special, she was like a miracle. The beautiful maiden who showed up at the beast’s castle, only to find there was more man to the monster than she ever could have guessed.

Too bad I don’t have an enchanted rose that will change me back into a prince once we kiss. Too bad I will always look like this.

He opened the bathroom door and flicked on the light, staring at himself in the full-length mirror. She had asked why he didn’t cut his hair. He shoved it to the side, looking at the place where his ear used to be. Angry, gnarled skin jutted out from the side of his head.

“They’re doing amazing surgeries in Maryland now
,” said Miss Potts softly from behind, edging into the bathroom to hang two freshly-laundered hand towels on a bar beside the sink. “All it would take is a phone call to make an appointment.”

“You can’t
just fix this,” he said.

“Not completely. But you should look at some of the photos. They can make a new ear. They can graft skin from your
—”

“Enough.”

She knew better than to talk to Asher about this, and if she didn’t quit, they’d get into a scorcher. Few things bothered him more than discussing his injuries with someone who wanted him to go back under the knife
, be it a doctor, counselor or Matilda J. Potts. It was
his
decision. His alone.

Miss Potts put up her hands in surrender. “When you’re ready.”

“I won’t be.”

“I don’t believe that,”
she said, heading for the door. “Don’t look now, but whether you like it or not, you’ve reentered the land of the living. Can’t turn back now.”

He slammed the bathroom door, walking slowly back to his desk to control his limp, and slid into his desk chair.

On one hand:
Too bad I will always look like this.

On the other:
They’re doing amazing surgeries in Maryland now. You should look at the pictures.

He stared at the laptop that mocked him, then flipped it open, powering it up for the first time in ages.

The first time you look like hell and he couldn’t care less

The problem was, she couldn’t think of another angle, because her mind kept reverting to investigative thinking, no matter how hard she tried to think of another way to tell Asher’s story. As she walked up the driveway to his front door at 3:55 p.m., she mulled over some ideas. Okay, she wouldn’t concentrate on the way Danvers had ostracized him. Maybe she could tell the story of the explosion: How come they hadn’t swept for mines, like wire-triggered IEDs? How come a medic was put in that sort of harm’s way? And why …?

And then she caught herself. She was doing it again. Hard journalism, not human interest. Damn it.

Miss Potts answered the door with her usual cheer, her eyes taking in the foil-covered plate all but forgotten in Savannah’s hand.

“Oh my. What have you brought to tempt me today?”

“Lemon ginger scones,” Savannah said, looking up belatedly to give the older woman a tight smile of hello.

“Forgive me for saying so, dear, but you just don’t look like yourself today.”

Savannah watched Miss Potts’s eyes trail down her form before returning to her face. Oh crap! She’d been so distracted trying to think of an angle, she’d forgotten to doll herself up like Scarlet. She was wearing white Keds, denim cutoffs, badly frayed around the thighs, and a black scoop-neck T-shirt that had a smudge of mustard over the left boob. Her hair was in a loose, messy knot at the base of her neck. She looked like a wreck. She also looked like herself.

“This is me,” sh
e said, with a sheepish smile, pushing some flyaway strands of her brown hair back into the knot.

“Well, I did wonder when your sister was going to cut you off from
her supply of florals and pink.”

“Do you miss
anything
, Miss Potts?”

“Very little, dear. I’ve been alive for a hundred years or so.”

“Well, then, this won’t come as a shock: I don’t bake. Not unless I’m squinting at a cookbook the whole time and making a four-alarm mess in the kitchen. We’re lucky when my baking turns out edible. My mother, on the other hand, is a champion baker. My sister isn’t too shabby either. Me? I’m a disaster in the kitchen, so how about we lay off that ‘Isn’t Savannah an amazing little baker?’ stuff? It’s making me feel dishonest.”

Miss Potts’s eyes widened, but she
grinned before turning toward the kitchen, throwing “Whatever you say, dear” over her shoulder like an afterthought.

Savannah
turned to the mirror by the coatrack in the front hallway and looked at her face. Without any makeup, she looked plainer than usual. She took her hair out of the messy knot and smoothed it into a bun, then brought her shirt to her mouth and licked at the yellowish stain, which only served to make it wetter, darker, and more obvious. She rolled her eyes at herself and turned to trudge up the stairs, surprised to find Asher on the landing staring at her. With pressed khakis and a tucked-in oxford, he looked the picture of old-monied grace, whereas she …

“I heard the bell ring. Wondered if you’d gotten lost.
”

Savannah
paused at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for him to scan her appearance, find her completely lacking in florals and Southern charm, call her a fake, and ask her to leave.

“I don’t bake,” she
said.

“I heard.”

“Your mom did, though. I didn’t know that until today.”

Still standing on the landing, backlit by the glare of the afternoon sun, his eyes widen
ed in recognition. “You’re Judy Carmichael’s daughter.”

She nodded, suddenly feeling the insane urge to apologize for all those
blue ribbons her mother had won.

“No wonder everything you bring is so delicious.”

“My mother sends her regards. She liked your mother. Very much.”

“And my mother admired yours.”

“I don’t like floral sundresses.”

“Me either. The cut’s all wrong for my limp.” He started down the stairs haltingly, carefully, and she realized the limp wasn’t very noticeable if he moved slow
ly.

“This is
me,” she said as he got closer, holding her hands loosely by her sides as he took in her ratty ensemble.

“I like you,” he
said, “just the way you are.”

She scoffed.
“Cutoffs and a stained black T-shirt with my hair in a messy bun.”

“Works for me.”

“My sister—”

“I don’t know your sister,
but she can keep her sundresses if they’re not your style.”

“I look like hell.”

He stood before her, angling his body away so that the burned side of his face still faced the stairs and his good eye swept up and down her form slowly, lazily, almost … erotically.

“If this is hell, I need to review my definition of heaven.
I’ve clearly been lowballing paradise.”

She didn’t mean to do what she did next. She
didn’t think. She just acted. Reaching up, she gently placed her palm on the smooth skin of the cheek closest to her, searching his eyes.
You were just supposed to be a story
.

“
Thank you, Asher,” she said.

***

His world spun like crazy, and for just a moment, his eyes fluttered closed as he adjusted to the feeling of another human being touching him voluntarily with gentleness and affection. Aside from Miss Potts’s occasional hand on his shoulder or his increasingly infrequent doctor visits, he hadn’t been touched by another person in years. The heat of her hand, of her skin pressed tenderly against his, was so unexpected and so mind-bending, his cheek tingled with the electric sweetness of it.

His eyes opened when s
he moved her hand away.

“I—I’m sorry.
I had no right to—”

“I wasn’t complaining, Savannah.”

Her brows creased, and he perceived an internal battle. “It wasn’t professional.”

“I thought we
’d established that we were becoming friends. I may be out of practice, but I believe friends touch one another now and then.”

He saw her shoulders
unbunch from around her ears. “I’m a train wreck today.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I’m supposed to be interviewing
you
.”

“Friends first. Business second.”

He held out his hand, and she took it absentmindedly as he pulled her up the stairs toward his office. Did she realize she’d laced her fingers through his as soon as their hands found each other? Did it make her heart beat like crazy as it did his?

“They didn’t like my angle
,” she said.

“Your angle?”

“Maddox McNabb, the editor of the
Phoenix Times
. He didn’t like the story I pitched to him. I wanted to write a piece about the impact of an unwelcoming hometown on the psyche of a returning soldier.”

“Cheerful stuff,” he said, secretly glad they’d shot down such a pitiful story
line, despite its truth.

“They don’t think it’s sexy enough.”

He stopped in the gallery at the top of the stairs and faced her, two steps below, incredulous. “
Sexy
? Have you not mentioned …
me
?”

She rolled her eyes and grinned. “You
don’t have to be pretty to be sexy. You’re plenty sexy, Asher.”

For the second time in
two minutes, his world was utterly rocked. He searched her face for mockery but didn’t find any. She said it so matter-of-factly, like she might mean it, like it could possibly be true. His heart pounded mercilessly against his ribs, and he felt his skin flushing with pleasure. He turned back around, pulling her into his office where he reluctantly dropped her hand to close the door.

Sexy.
“Yeah, right.”

“Your legs go on forever,” she said
softly, turning to face him from the center of his study.

His gaze swept down her body, checking out
her
legs, tan and long in frayed shorts that reminded him of summer nights in high school, his once-perfect legs tangled together with some lovely, willing girl’s on a picnic blanket. “So do yours.”

He watched, immensely pleased, as she blushed, shaking her head at him.

“Have you read all these books?”

Changing the subject. Okay.

“Yes.”

“
All
of them?”

“You’re my first social visitor in eight years
, Savannah. Yes.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and walked over to
a shelf where the spines were especially colorful.
Romance. It figures.
It occurred to him to distract her by leading her over to his vast nonfiction collection and wow her with his knowledge of obscure world history, but it was too late. She had already figured out what she was looking at. He steeled himself for some teasing.

“You said
all
, right?” she asked, giving him a saucy look.

Oh man, she was something.

“What can I say? I have a soft spot for romance.”

“Well, that’s
… sexy,” she said, turning back to the books. “Maybe I should write my article about an injured war vet who returns home and reads nothing but romance.”

He shrugged. It wasn’t good, but it was better than the pity piece.

She noticed the ladder by the wall that gave him access to the upper shelves and climbed up a few stairs, pulling out an especially gaudy cover. She read the back, then turned the cover to him. “
The Moor’s Maiden
?”

He reached up to grab it away from her, but she raised her arm over her head, adopting the voice of a movie previewer
as she read the jacket copy. “‘A dark loner from a faraway land … a buxom beauty from the green shores of England …’”

“Give it,” he said, reaching again.

She giggled. “‘… conquer their warring passions’—warring passions, Asher!—‘as they—’”

He reached up again
to take the book away from her, and when she leaned away, she lost her balance. His arm went around her waist like a vise as she fell, slamming into his chest, and he held her tightly against him until her feet touched the ground. Even then, he didn’t let go.

She panted lightly, out of breath, her breasts pushing into his chest as her eyes searched his face.
“S-sorry.”

“I’m not,” he answered, trying to
ignore the way his blood all flooded to one place, leaving him light-headed. His chest heaved lightly, not from the exertion, but from having her so close, in his arms, pressed up against him. If he died right now, he’d die happy.

“Asher,” she breathed, licking her lips and pressing them together. “I’m okay now.”

He realized what she was saying and loosened his arm, taking a step back, giving her the book. She took it, fanning the pages distractedly, cocking her head to the side.

“When you grabbed me
, you used your good arm.”

He nodded.

“I’ve noticed that you barely ever use your other arm.”

“That’s because I don’t
… use it.”

“Then why have a prosthe
sis?”

“I only wear it when you come over,” he
said.

“Why?”

“To make you more comfortable.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Take it off.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I don’t bake or wear floral sundresses.”

Two things happened inside his body at the same time: his heart exploded, and his brain went on high alert. Show her his stump? It was a risk. It was such a big risk to show her the smooth oval stump just under his elbow where his lower arm once existed. He was even careful to conceal it from Miss Potts.

“It’s just me,” she said
, and then, echoing his words from the front hallway, “I like you just the way you are.”

***

Without taking his eyes off her face, Asher’s good hand moved to unbutton the cuff that clung snugly to the flesh-colored silicon wrist. The button opened with a pop.

“My mother calls me
button,” Savannah said nervously, without looking away.

Next, he moved his good hand to the neck of his oxford, flicking open the buttons one by one until his shirt was open and the broad muscles of his chest pushed aggressively against the white cotton of his T-shirt.
Savannah sucked in a breath, telling herself to behave.

“Help me with this one,” he said, extending his good arm to her.

She reached forward, unbuttoning the cuff, feeling the heat thrown off from his wrist, suddenly aware of how much man he was. Not just a wounded veteran. Not just a disfigured soldier. Not just a man who’d deliberately chosen to hide away from the world. But a living, breathing, warm, and totally available human being who was presently making her body hot with awareness.
What would it be like to be with him?