Tennessee Rescue Read online

  He took two pairs of rubber gloves from his pocket, handed the second set to her.

  “Come here, critter,” he whispered and picked up the nearest baby. There was a comic strip in her local newspaper in which one of the characters was so huge that he could hold his baby in the palm of his hand. This little one was cradled just as effectively.

  “Here, fill the syringe with milk,” he said, “then lift the corner of its mouth and slip it in. Do not, I repeat not, jab it in and shoot it down the throat. The milk’ll wind up going into the lungs. They’ve got enough troubles without pneumonia.”

  She gulped. Great way to make her feel competent. She lifted the corner of the tiny mouth with her index finger, then with her other hand inserted the syringe and pushed the plunger so that a drop of milk went into the baby’s mouth.

  Wonder of wonders, its little throat moved and the milk disappeared. After a dozen further drops, the baby seemed to get the idea.

  “Okay, now try the center of the mouth. Easy!” he said. A moment later she actually held a suckling baby—a very hungry baby. The others were stirring, making mewling noises and swimming toward her the way puppies supposedly did when they were just born. They must smell the milk.

  “Whoa,” he said and took the syringe. “Don’t you have any brothers or sisters? You can’t let the baby drink down to the last drop. It’ll get a stomach full of air. Besides, it’s had enough.” He set the complaining baby back on the towel and picked up the second. “Okay, this is one of your girls.”

  “That’s Rose. She’s the one with the two broad stripes on her head. Peony’s are narrower. Sycamore has two all the way down his back.” This time the nursing went better, and Emma felt she was getting the hang of it. The third baby had problems, but eventually managed a few sips. When she set her down, the towel had begun to smell and felt damp. “I thought they didn’t have any scent yet,” she said.

  He grinned up at her. “They don’t. That’s baby poop. In the wild, Momma would take care of it. Since you’ve elected yourself their foster mother, it’s your responsibility. Incidentally, they’ll have to be fed every four hours around the clock and stimulated to go to the bathroom.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “I’ll show you. Welcome to the world of foster parenthood.” He surged to his feet in one easy motion.

  He reached down and offered a hand to pull her up.

  She took it and found herself lifted against him as though she’d been shot out of a cannon. He smelled male—no fancy aftershave, just good, basic male.

  Oh, boy, talk about pheromones! The hair on her arms stood straight up. She stepped back to get out of his zone, which, at this point, felt as though it might extend all the way to Memphis. “Um,” she said. “Heating pad?”

  He dropped her hand. “Be right back. In the meantime, find a clean towel to replace this one, then soak the dirty one in the sink with some bleach if you have it.”

  “I have it, but I don’t know where it is.” She waved a hand at the boxes on the kitchen floor. “I’ll wash it by hand. The washer and dryer are hooked up, but I’m not about to do a load to wash one poopy towel.”

  After the front door closed behind him, she sank into the closest dining room chair. Some introduction to her new home. Her new lifestyle. Quite a comedown from assistant marketing manager for one of the largest public relations firms in Tennessee. From a town house in Mud Island on the Mississippi River to a hovel in the middle of nowhere, complete with skunks. From having her picture taken at the symphony ball to scrubbing skunk poop.

  She’d never really cared how often she and Trip made the society pages of The Commercial Appeal for attending some party or concert or art exhibit in Memphis or Nashville. Trip cared, though. He wanted them to be the Golden Couple, and their upcoming marriage to be the event of the season. She wondered how long it would take him to replace her with another princess bride. And how long before he’d betray his new fiancée the way he’d betrayed Emma.

  This time Seth Logan didn’t bother to ring the bell or knock, but opened the door and came in. Again he shed his dripping poncho and slipped his feet out of his muckers before he stepped from the tiled area to the wooden floor. Somebody had taught him manners. Or maybe that was standard procedure in the country when it rained.

  “Here you go,” he said and handed her a plush-covered heating pad. “You’ll have to wrap it in a towel and keep it on the lowest setting...” He glanced at the boxes. “You find the other towels yet?”

  “I just sat down for a second.” Suddenly she felt as though she couldn’t get up again.

  “Always take care of your animals first.” He peered at the boxes. “Here we go. This box says ‘towels.’” He set the heating pad on the kitchen counter and opened one of the boxes.

  She clambered to her feet when she caught sight of the brocade edging on the coral towels. “Not those! Those are for company.”

  “Then find me some for skunks.”

  She wanted to yell that he should find them himself. Wrong. He was probably as tired as she was, but at least he was here. That counted for a lot.

  She had to tear open only two other boxes to find the everyday towels. She arranged one under the babies, which were now fast asleep.

  He wrapped the heating pad in another towel, plugged it in and set it up under the makeshift nest. “We don’t want them to overheat.”

  “I should keep them at mother temperature, right?”

  He actually smiled. “You got it. Happen to know what skunk-mother temperature is? I don’t, so just keep it on the lowest setting. The next time you feed them, kick it up a notch if they’re shaking. Otherwise, I think we’re good to go.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Look, have you had anything to eat?”

  Glory, she must look really terrible. “I vaguely remember a cheeseburger sometime around the year 2003. I’m not hungry, which is a miracle. But I could murder a cup of tea.”

  “Any idea where the teapot might be?”

  “First thing I found.” She pulled herself upright by an effort of will, took the snazzy imported electric pot out of the cabinet, filled it and plugged it in. “That’ll take five minutes to heat and another five to steep. Gives us ten minutes to find the mugs.”

  Ten minutes later, she handed him his mug of tea, which, thank goodness, he said he drank with lemon, no sugar and no milk. She had lemon, but the only milk was for the babies, not their caregivers. The sugar was hidden somewhere.

  “You said you were tired, too. I’m grateful you came, but you don’t have to stay,” she said, hoping he would. Between exhaustion and skunks, she was starting to feel panicky-lonely. She’d never been lonely, damn it, but then she’d lived in a city house with lights and neighbors and traffic. She could drive to her family’s place in Memphis for dinner with her father, her stepmother, Andrea, and both her brother and sister in twenty minutes. When she was there, she knew where she belonged and who she was.

  Now, not so much. Sitting here in this living room she might as well be on the far side of Alpha Centauri.

  “Nice sofa,” he said as he drank his tea and relaxed into its depths.

  Well, yeah. It had cost a month’s salary; it should be comfortable.

  “This doesn’t solve the problem,” he said and set his empty mug on the coffee table. “You cannot keep the skunks.”

  “Now, wait...”

  “Can’t foster bats either, because of possible rabies. If you’d discovered a cache of raccoons, I could hook you up with one of the local animal rehabilitators.”

  “There is such a thing?”

  “Absolutely. There are people who specialize in raptors or abandoned fawns. Sometimes a momma possum will get hit by a car and killed, but the babies in her pouch survive and have to be tended. There’s a lady outside Collierville who takes in orphan foxes...”

  She felt the
tears threaten to spill over. “You say there’s no rabies in our skunks, yet you’d just let them die?”

  “Can’t take the chance.”

  “Nonsense!” She slammed her mug down on the table so hard the edge of the cup cracked.

  “You saw we wore gloves when you fed them?” he said. “And you’d better continue to do that. At the moment they have no teeth, but their little milk teeth will be sharp.”

  “Fine. So vaccinate them against rabies. Heck, vaccinate me, too. Problem solved.” She sat down again.

  “That’s not the way the rules read.”

  That did it. “Then arrest me.” She got to her feet again and held out her wrists. “I’ll have a public relations campaign set up for ‘Save the Skunks’ before the cell door shuts on me. You and your rules will feel as if you’ve run into a buzz saw. Every animal rights organization in the Western Hemisphere will be knocking on your door and marching with signs. This is what I do—did—for a living. Coordinating the message to spread across all possible outlets. One picture of my babies snuggled up on Facebook, one podcast, and even the governor won’t call your name blessed.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Sit down before you fall down. I have no intention of arresting you, nor do I intend to starve, freeze or euthanize your trio of illegal aliens.”

  “So I can keep them?”

  “No, dammit! I’ve got to figure out how to handle this without getting me fired and you fined.” He ran a big hand down his face. “Right now I can’t think straight, and you’re starting to get on my last nerve.” He stood and closed his eyes, swaying on his feet for a moment. “Just for tonight I’ve never met you, I do not know that you have skunks, but that can’t go on. I’m going to get some sleep, assuming I can with all this hanging over my head. I’ll call you tomorrow. You do have a phone?”

  She nodded, took a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jeans, wrote her cell number on it and passed it to him. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain.”

  He reached into his pants pocket. “Here’s my card with both my numbers. If you need me, call.”

  She followed him to the door, helped him on with the damp poncho, and watched him stuff his feet in their mismatched socks into his muckers and go back out in the rain, which showed no signs of letting up. She handed him his hat and watched him trudge out to the road and across until he disappeared into his own house.

  Only then did she sit on the sofa and burst into tears. Why did he have to be gorgeous and kind? He was still her enemy, with the entire state of Tennessee backing him up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SETH NOTICED WHEN he stripped off his wet clothes that his socks didn’t match. That woman—he’d better learn to call her Emma, since they were way beyond Ms. French—probably figured he was either color-blind or incompetent. Which was how he felt at the moment.

  Emma was a nice old-fashioned name. Not that she was a nice old-fashioned girl. Far from it. Probably never bought a pair of jeans from a discount store in her life. Heck, the way hers fit, they were worth the investment.

  He poured himself a small Scotch and sank onto his saggy leather sofa with his feet on the slab of hundred-year-old oak he’d salvaged from a downed tree. One of the few pieces Clare had left when she’d walked out. And which was now covered with dust like everything else in this house.

  He leaned his head back and laid his hand on the sofa where he was used to feeling Rambler’s deep furry pelt. Now that Rambler had died of old age, Seth needed another dog. Dogs didn’t present insoluble problems with beautiful women. They didn’t care whether a woman was beautiful or a clone of the Wicked Witch as long as she petted and fed him.

  Why did he invariably get involved with women who complicated his life and didn’t belong to his world? He’d tried to convert Clare to country living, but in the end she’d moved to Nashville and married a dentist. A rich dentist. She really had tried to put up with living in the back of beyond—her words—with a man who frequently stank of blood or fish and came home covered in mud or dirt. At least she’d tried for a while. He knew now that she’d assumed he’d quickly be promoted to a desk job so they could buy a suburban house and have a country club membership. Meanwhile, he’d assumed she’d loved the country as much as he did. Talk about a lack of communication.

  Thinking back, the water moccasin marked the true end of their relationship. He’d tried to teach her about good snakes and bad snakes, but she never understood. Snake was snake to Clare. He wasn’t thrilled to meet copperheads or rattlers or water moccasins either, but he was fond of the king snakes. Keep a big king snake around, you never saw a poisonous snake. Well, mostly. Didn’t have to worry about rats or mice either. A good king snake would beat a barn cat every time when it came to killing mice. And a king snake sucked down the whole mouse—didn’t nibble the edges like a cat did and leave you to clean up the remains.

  That moccasin she’d nearly stepped on wasn’t even coiled. Just stretched out across the front porch steps sunning itself. Couldn’t have struck Clare if it had tried—not without coiling first.

  When he’d been with the department less than six months, he’d had to deliver a baby for a woman who couldn’t make it to Jackson to the hospital. He’d never heard screams like that before, and he’d prayed he never would again.

  Clare’s screams when she saw that snake as she started up the porch step put that other woman to shame. Who was that comic book character that could move so fast? Clare would’ve beaten that guy back to the car. She dived in the passenger side, screaming, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

  When he explained to her that snakes are protected in Tennessee, she hit him so hard he’d had a bruised shoulder for a week. He’d walked over and checked, then reported back that the snake had removed itself from the porch, no doubt annoyed that its nap was interrupted. She refused to get out of the car. Ever.

  They’d spent that night in the local motel. Not exactly the Peabody. She’d been upset about that, as well. It was clean, and the Patels were nice people, but the towels were thin. Clare hated thin towels. He’d finally convinced her to come back to the house, after he spent a couple of hours patrolling the yard and shed for the snake, but that was the beginning of the end. A week later, she moved out. A week after that, she served him with divorce papers. He never saw the snake again; Mother Nature might say that snake had done its job by getting rid of her. Took him a long time to admit that, even to himself.

  He’d give Emma French about three days before she moved out and back to the city. At that point, the skunks would become his problem. Hell, they already were.

  He checked his watch and was surprised it was only a little after nine. He dug out his cell phone and hit his speed dial.

  He got the clinic’s voice mail. “This is Dr. Barbara Carew. The clinic office hours are eight thirty till six, Monday through Friday. Saturday eight thirty till one. If this is an emergency, please call our emergency service at...”

  He waited to leave a message, then said, “Barbara, it’s me, Seth. I need some advice. Please meet me at seven tomorrow morning at the café. I’ll buy you breakfast. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you’ll be there. This is important.” He hung up. She’d pick up her messages before she went to bed. If she wasn’t out working on a colicky horse or birthing a calf, she’d meet him. He let his head fall back against the sofa. He could feel that Scotch down to his toenails. Or maybe he was feeling simple exhaustion. He was too damned tired to feel lust.

  Whom was he kidding? A man would have to be dead and buried not to lust after Emma French. But in his present state of weariness, he might not be capable of doing much about it.

  * * *

  ACROSS THE STREET Emma called her father to tell him she had a roof over her head that didn’t leak and a dry, if lumpy, bed to sleep in. She got his answering machine. Of
course. She could call her stepmother Andrea’s cell phone instead, but decided she was too tired for explanations.

  She didn’t mention her invaders on her message to her father. He would be horrified. He was already haranguing her about moving to the country instead of coming home to stay until she found a new job. Which he would no doubt find for her with one of his cronies regardless of whether they needed her.

  Not happening. At least, not yet. She had enough savings to survive for a bit. If she rented out her town house, she’d be able to hold out quite a while.

  She got ready for bed, set her alarm for midnight—four hours since the babies were last fed.

  She hadn’t answered any of Trip’s calls on her cell phone. Sooner or later she’d talk to him, but not yet. He’d sworn he still loved her, wanted to make things right between them. As if. He’d even fooled David French. Her father had welcomed him as her fiancé. Although in this case his usual mantra—that the man wasn’t good enough for her—was accurate.

  She was always afraid men would realize she wasn’t good enough for them.

  * * *

  THE MIDNIGHT FEEDING went okay, but at four, Emma hated slipping out of her warm bed and into the cold house to heat up...whoa, she should’ve asked Seth how warm the jar of milk that presently resided in her refrigerator should be. She put her hand on her cell phone to call him, then set it back on the kitchen counter. The man was exhausted. She couldn’t repay his kindness by waking him from a sleep he obviously needed.

  She ran the jar under hot water in the sink to take the chill off, but not enough to heat it up. That should be safe.

  As she cradled Sycamore, who already had this nursing business down pat, she wondered whether her semiconscious state was what human mothers felt during the late-night feedings. Remembering her half brother and half sister as newborns, she decided that these skunk babies were a bunch cuter than their human counterparts and didn’t scream blue murder between feedings.