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“It’s going to take at least three months to get started,” Maggie had explained. “But in the meantime, I’ll need help setting everything up, including fundraisers, a way to get memberships for donations and a website, all the good stuff.”
Now, sitting up in bed, letting Steve serve her, she contemplated all these things while he waited in the kitchen for the toast to pop. Forbiddingly, he thought of Maggie, attracted to her the moment she moved into the cottage and he’d gone there to install her Wi-Fi. But she let him know right away that she was already attracted to Justin.
Then, without missing a beat, Maggie had introduced him to Annie, and the first time they laid eyes on each other, it was lust at first sight. She got pregnant right away. Steve loved Annie the way you love your first car. And being a kind and gentle soul, he knew that it was up to him to make the decision to stay in love with her, through unemployment, gas, and foot-in-mouth disease.
He wasn’t especially close to his sister, Kelly, but he didn’t want her to be disappointed, either, and it sounded like she was totally unprepared to hear that Ted had gone to Maggie’s house.
***
Throwing an empty cat carrier into the utility sink, Kelly turned the water on full blast, squirting detergent all over it. Then she went at it with a scrub brush like she was trying to kill Satan. Her baby daddy had finally taken their kid for a holiday and wasn’t going to return with him until Sunday night. It should have been an opportunity to spend quality time with Ted.
But nooooo. Instead, after their night of passion, she found out that he had shown up at Maggie’s cottage, unannounced and uninvited, and not only was Maggie annoyed, Justin and his sheriff brother were livid.
“Is that why you came over to my place last night? She rejected you, so I was the consolation prize?”
With the phone stuck to his ear while he examined a baby rabbit who had been bitten by a dog, Ted peeked at the owner from the corner of his eye.
“I’m with a patient right now. Can I talk to you later?”
Kelly hung up on him. What was she doing? Being with Ted was like being with your best friend’s younger brother; there was an air of forbidden pleasure about it, but you knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, and you were a little ashamed you’d started it in the first place.
“What’s wrong with you, jackass?” she cried, to her distorted reflection in the metal paper-towel dispenser.
She banged around some more, wondering why everything in her life was going to shit. The rescue that she’d put her heart and soul into had gone down the tubes with one withdrawal of a lease. Was life really that tenuous that a landlord held the power between success and failure? It was at that second that the phone rang. She grabbed it, wiping her arm across her nose.
“What!”
Taken aback, it was Maggie, preparing to ask for information about how to start a rescue. But the greeting was unexpected, and she deliberated hanging up. Obviously, Kelly was upset, maybe about Ted’s visit.
“Kelly? I guess I’m calling at a bad time.”
“Maggie?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Kelly said, trying not to whine in spite of the sob that escaped. “It’s not a bad time at all for me, but it might be for you. I’m having a pity party right now. Why? Why did this rescue have to tank just when everything was coming together? Why? After all the years we’ve been here, I have over three hundred subscribers! They were sending me money every month like clockwork. All the bills were paid. I could finally pay for some of the surgeries I had begged Ted or Justin to do free. That dog with the torn ACL? Three grand to a specialist in New Orleans. Paid!”
She sniffed, suddenly ashamed and so defeated. Why was she burdening a stranger with her problems? Then, words from the mouth of a literal angel.
“Kelly, I want to open a rescue here. That’s why I’m calling you. I never thought about just moving your operation here, but why don’t we do that? Why am I going to reinvent the wheel?”
“Wait. You want to run a rescue? Why didn’t you say anything when we were together?”
“I got inspired for real when we were at Ted’s and I saw the RV. I can get a trailer here so we don’t have to build a barn. What do you say? I’m so mad at myself for not thinking of this sooner!”
Pulling a bucket over, Kelly sat down, staring off into space. Could they really pull it off?
“You mean, just move everything over by you?”
“That’s what I mean. I already have the zoning. You know I have wild horses here, right?”
“I know. I think that’s great. Yeah, by the way, my brother’s wife spilled the beans about Ted. In the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, I find out my boyfriend, quote unquote, is running for the creepiest-guy-of-the-year contest.”
“It’s not your fault,” Maggie said, embarrassed.
“It is, sort of. I’m so sorry. He’s not right in the head, you know that, don’t you? He wouldn’t hurt you. He’d just become a pest. Evidently, Grace Breaux had hired Ted right out of vet school to work at her clinic, and he became such a nuisance that she fired him.”
“Well, that’s not your fault, either. Do you love him?”
