Page 55 of The Coyote's Veterinarian Omega

Between a couple of the bedrooms, he glanced up to meet my gaze, and I said, “So when do we get to move in?”

Whatever he was going to say next died on his lips, and excitement bloomed in his eyes. “Uh—well. I … I kinda wanted to get the bathroom and the kitchen remodeled before, but …”

He scratched at the back of his neck. “We could move in any time, as long as you don’t mind sawdust and paint fumes.”

I chuckled. “It can’t be worse than the smell of cow,” I told him. “How about the twenty-first?”

“Of June?” he blurted.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s my birthday.”

“Your …” His eyes—no, his entire expression—lit up. “Your birthday!”

I nodded minutely, and I swore, I could see his coyote ears pricking up and his tail thumping. “I gotta get you a present!” he cried.

I pointed to the house on the screen, slowly fading to black. “You did.”

He glanced at the phone, then back at me. “Abetterpresent,” he declared, and I flushed, curling my toes in my shoes.

Slowly, I got to my feet. “I gotta get back to work,” I told him. “Next patient will be here in five.”

He stood, pocketing his phone. “I gotta go sign some papers,” he said. He reached for my hand, squeezing it tight. “Let’s dodinner?”

I shook my head. “I’m working late tonight.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Saturday,” I said, knowing tomorrow was likely to run late too.

“Saturday,” he agreed. “I’ll take you someplace nice.”

“Sally’s is fine,” I said.

“Someplace with champagne,” he was saying as we stepped back out of the house.

I shut and locked the door, then rocked up on my toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Sounds nice,” I told him. “I’ll see you later.”

With that, I headed back to the clinic.

Cam

The next month flew by. wyatt had told me not to bother getting him anything for his birthday. he insisted the house was enough, but i wanted to spoil my mate.

The way he’d reacted to me buying the house told me a lot. First, that Wyatt, even though he had a good job and an education, didn’t have a lot of money. Which, to be fair, was something I might have guessed. Cal had bitched about Chip’s tuition, even though it was nothing compared to buying a house, and it was coming out of Chip’s trust fund, not Cal’s pocket. Still.

So I might have guessed that someone like Wyatt, who didn’t have generations of family money backing him up, would have had to go into debt to finish his education. His car spoke to that too, and the fact he was living at Vern’s only consolidated it. I knew he was paying rent, but Burt had been bellyaching to Cal that Vern was too nice—that he should have been charging asteeper rate for rent.

Although, that might have simply been because our ranch foreman was a bit shy and didn’t like that his partner had a roommate.

That was about to change. I’d spent the last week carefully arranging new furniture in our space, plus packing up my worldly possessions and moving them into the house.

I was just putting the finishing touches on the kitchen when Cal barged in, the back door banging into the kitchen wall. It groaned on its hinges, and I knew I was going to have to replace it sooner rather than later.

The place wasn’t anything spectacular. Nan Stevens had lived in the place probably since the 1950s or ’60s, and she hadn’t done a damn thing to update it. I didn’t blame her; her husband had died young, and she’d been disabled in a car accident and had to leave the workforce early. She’d lived frugally, but she’d really let the place go. Now that she was in her nineties, some well-meaning niece or nephew had moved her to a home in the city, and they’d sold the place. It hadn’t been cheap exactly—it sat on a solid few acres of prime farmland—but the house itself wasn’t much.

That was fine, I figured. I could fix it up; I was handy enough. And I hadn’t told anyone yet, but I’d enrolled in some online courses to finish my high school and start an apprenticeship as a carpenter. I’d already approached Freddy Turcotte about joining his construction crew to get some hands-on experience. Not that Freddy cared much about “paper qualifications,” as he called them; he figured the best education a guy could have was a hands-on one. After all, that was how Freddy had learned his trade.

Still, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do the book-learning side of things. Freddy was pretty much the only construction outfit in town, but if I ever wanted to go solo or maybe Wyatt would wantto move to the city or something …