“The new vet.”

“Yes,” she said a little warily.

“Jess told me about you. Jess Kerrigan. She’s my sister. She said you were dating Joe.” Rebecca clapped her hand over her mouth. “And I was to pretend I don’t know,” she said sheepishly.

Teresa grinned. “He did mention the family grapevine.”

“More like a patch of blackberries. You know how fast they spread.”

Teresa’s laugh felt good. “Yes, we had dinner. Your brother seems nice. He took out some trees for me and gave me a good deal.”

“Oh, he’s nice.” Rebecca shook her head. “A little hard to get to know, but don’t let that stop you.”

She wanted badly to ask why he was so guarded, but refrained. This was, after all, a complete stranger. Her struggle must have showed, though.

His sister tilted her head to one side. “I’d love to tell you his life history, but I have a suspicion he’d be annoyed at me.” She thought about it for a moment. “Well, probably not annoyed. Mad as hell. I’d better let him tell you in his own good time.”

“You’re probably right,” Teresa said. “What I’m really here for is help picking out some tile. And window covers. And, heck, I even need a new kitchen sink. You don’t happen to sell those, do you?”

“Nope, but I keep some catalogs on hand, so you can match colors if you’re not planning to go with plain white or stainless steel. The hardware store sells Kohler and a couple of other brands. Shall I dig the catalogs out?”

Teresa spent a happy couple of hours poring over the tiles, carrying them to the vinyl, discussing how best to get the hardwood floors refinished.

“My daughter’s room first,” she said. “Nicole’s miserably unhappy about the move. She keeps bemoaning her old bedroom’s built-in vanity and window seat. Maybe I can shut her up by making her new one equally charming.”

“How old is she?” Rebecca asked.

“Fifteen.”

“You have my sympathy. My son, Alan, was barely sixteen when I met my current husband. Alan didn’t think he liked him, and you wouldn’t believe the stunts he pulled.”

“Oh, I’d believe them,” Teresa said grimly.

Rebecca tilted her head to one side again. “I don’t suppose your daughter is petite, dark-haired and takes French III?”

“That’s her.”

“Ah. Alan’s mentioned her.” Rebecca heaved a wallpaper book onto the counter. “He thinks she’s, uh, pretty.”

“I don’t suppose that’s the word he used.”

Joe’s sister gave her a wry look. “I don’t want to sully your ears with current teenage-boy terminology.”

“Probably no worse than ‘chick’ or ‘babe’ or ‘fox.’” Teresa contemplated briefly. “’Babe’ and ‘baby’ were always my personal pet peeves. They’re so…so…”

“Belittling?” Rebecca asked. “Sort of like going through life as ‘Becky’?”

“Exactly!” Teresa raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t start that way, did you?”

“No. Sam, my husband, asked once if I liked to be called Becky. I told him only if he wanted to be Sammy. That nipped it in the bud.”

“I can see why,” Teresa agreed, amused.

She borrowed samples of tiles, wallpaper and vinyl, then made an appointment for Rebecca to come to the house and take measurements. She’d let Nicole pick out her own wallpaper and window coverings—within reason.

Lugging the wallpaper books, she came in the back door to hear the phone ringing. Both the kids were upstairs. She dropped the books on the table and grabbed the receiver on the fifth ring.

“Hello?”

“Teresa, this is Joe. Joe Hughes.”

“You’re the only Joe I know,” she said. “Hey, a poem.”

He groaned. “Just don’t add another line, okay?”

“All right. I can’t think of anything that rhymes, anyway. Except toe. And no. Neither of which are fraught with possibilities. Unless you want to get kinky.”

Silence. Then, “I won’t answer that one.”

“Very wise.” She leaned against the counter. “So, uh, what can I do for you?”

His voice was low and amused. “Do you want to get kinky?”

She chuckled. “I set myself up for that one, didn’t I?”

“Yup.” She could hear his smile, which sent a flood of warmth through her. “Actually,” he went on, “what I called for was to ask if you’d like to have dinner again.”

“I’d love to,” she said promptly. “If we can make it Saturday night, I could even stay out later than nine o’clock. I don’t work Sunday. It’s Eric’s turn to be on call.”

“Saturday sounds good,” Joe agreed. “How about a movie, too?”

“As long as it’s not too gory.”

“You’re a vet. You’re used to blood and guts.”

“Not human blood.”

“You’d faint if I cut myself?”

“Probably,” she said cheerfully. “There’s a reason I didn’t become an M.D.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you?”

He only laughed. She loved his laugh, a husky rumble that sounded just a little rusty, as if he didn’t laugh often enough. Well, he lived alone, so he probably didn’t. To keep their sense of humor intact, adults required children. Or maybe it worked the other way around: you required a sense of humor to stand your children.

THE WEEK SEEMED LONG without seeing Joe. It was funny, considering she hardly knew him. She watched for him in the grocery store and at stoplights. Logging trucks, a common sight in a town with two lumber mills, reminded her of him. She did see his sister, Jess, once to wave to, and Rebecca came out and took measurements. Teresa craned her neck every time she drove past the auto-body-repair place on Third. She felt like a teenage girl with her first crush. It felt like a first crush; falling in love with Tom had happened an eternity ago. The first flush of romantic feelings were unfamiliar but absurdly sweet.

The saving grace was that she was busy at work. Not doing farm calls; of necessity, Eric handled all of them. Which meant that the clients who arrived with a sick cat or an injured dog had to accept her or go to the other animal hospital in town, where, Eric had told her, the vets seemed to rotate more often than a horse threw shoes. Teresa was accepted. She brought an epileptic spaniel out of a prolonged seizure with phenobarbital, stitched up a Lab that had argued with a car, catheterized a cat with a blocked urethra and removed a fish hook from a dog’s lip. He’d apparently tried to snap up the fly when the owner was practicing casting.

As she calmly handled one emergency after another, it seemed to her that the staff was warming to her. They’d been pleasant but distant thus far: she was their employer, but that didn’t mean they had to like or respect her. She began to hope that they’d decided to do both.

On Friday morning, she had to put down a puppy with parvo. She comforted the owner, thanked the technician who was disposing of the body, then walked into the office and started to cry.

“Dr. Burkett?” someone said uncertainly.

She snatched a tissue and looked up.

Marilyn, the younger of the two technicians on duty, stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry. There’s a phone call—”

“That’s okay.” Teresa gave a wavery smile. “I just hate doing that. I should be colder, shouldn’t I?”

“No.” Marilyn’s smile trembled, too. Her own eyes, now that Teresa looked, were red.

Teresa took the call and saw another client a few minutes later. The routine marched on. But something had changed; for the first time, Marilyn and Libby, the other veterinary technician working that day, invited her to join them for lunch. It felt like a victory.

When Saturday night finally rolled around, Nicole whined only halfheartedly about having to baby-sit her little brother, who made only the obligatory objection to the words “little” and “baby-sit.” Joe knocked on the door promptly at seven, Teresa called goodbye to her kids and whisked out onto the porch.

Joe’s smile was the deliciously slow lazy one that muddled her insides. “Cabin fever?” he asked.

“Kid fever.” She smiled back. “Actually, they’re being good. Amazingly good. I figure if I make a quick escape, it might stay that way.”