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Several office voicemails insisted I was responsible for making one.
It had to have been immaculate conception because I hadn’t fuckedanywoman in a long time. Yet I couldn’t tell Ang that. No way. I wasn’t sharing my sex life with a sixty-something who liked to remind me she used to change my diapers.
Who was this woman and why was she accusing me? Why was this mysterious and saintly Melly Harwood tellingmeI had to take care of my responsibilities?
Sure, I’d gotten a woman pregnant once. Accidentally. Over twenty years ago the summer after high school graduation. And I’d takenallthe responsibility for that. Why would I start over with a baby now? I was forty fucking years old. An empty nester. Retired business owner. A free man ready to get out of Montana for a while. In fact, my flight to Scotland left in four days.
I was supposed to be relaxed in my newfound retirement. I had money and free time and it was time to enjoy both.
Until I got those messages. I always took care of my responsibilities. Always. I couldn’t be laid back, relaxed or leaving the country until this one was resolved.
That was why I was pissed as I stomped out of the library and called Ang. No way were my plans being derailed because of this, of a woman accusing me of something I sure as hell didn’t do. If she wanted something from me, like money,thiswas the worst way to go about it with me.
“Pearson Tree and Landscape Service,” Ang said through the phone in her upbeat and cheerful voice.
“Where is she?” I snarled.
“Who?” she asked, used to my moods. “Melly Harwood?”
“Of course, Melly Harwood,” I countered, as if I went after crazy women every day. “You know well enough I left you at the office twenty minutes ago to track her down. You said she’s the librarian. I’m at the library. She’s not here. Find her.”
“How can I find her?”
“Don’t play dumb,” I countered. “Use your gossip network or tea spilling club or whatever you call it and find her.”
Ang humphed through the phone then put me on hold because she couldn’t argue with the fact that she could find someone better than a detective or a bloodhound. Horrible jazz saxophone music filled my ear and I winced. How had I made my customers suffer listening to that?
Not my problem any longer.
Waiting, I paced back and forth across the library’s front entry. A woman with one hand leading a toddler and carrying a baby seat with the other approached. I opened the door for her, then went over to the book drop box. I tugged the slot open, shut it. Opened it. Shut it.
A minute later, she was back. “She’s at the vet with her dog Fred and–”
“I don’t care about her dog. I’m more interested in her pussy,” I muttered, the one I never got in.
“What was that?”
I sighed. Hard. “Nothing. What’s the address?”
She told me.
“Thanks,” I said. “And tell Deek to replace that God-awful hold music.”
I hung up and cut across town to the Hunter Valley Veterinary Clinic. The landscape company and the hold music were my brothers’ problems now.
The bell above the door chimed as I went inside the clinic. The scent of cleaning products and wet dog made my nose twitch.
A twenty-something man in light blue scrubs stood from a chair behind the counter. As he saw me approach with all kinds of pent-up aggravation, his eyes widened. He took a slight step back as he tipped his chin back to keep my gaze. That happened all the time. The trouble with being the size of a lumberjack. And actually being one.
“May I help you?”
A dog barked somewhere in the building. An orange cat jumped on the counter and the guy hooked it with a hand and tucked him into the crook of his arm in a football hold.
“Melly Harwood?” I asked.
“Room number three.”
Finally. I headed down the hall with one mission in mind. Find out what the fuck was going on. I was leaving town and I didn’t need this kind of entanglement… or headache. It wasdéjà vuall over again. This time though, I wasn’t nineteen and I definitely hadn’t had sex with the woman.
