Buch lesen: «Tennessee Rescue»

CHAPTER TWO

EMMA JUMPED A foot when she heard the knock. She turned on her front porch light and peered through the antique oval glass set in the door. Ah, Mr. Wildlife himself. He swept off his wide-brimmed hat and shook streams of water off it. So she’d recognize him? Not necessary. She didn’t know anyone else within a hundred miles in any direction, much less a giant in a dripping poncho.

Had he come to arrest her for harboring her three orphans? Just let him try. She opened the door and said, “Yes?” in her coolest executive-of-the-month voice.

“You wanted help.” He held out a small jar full of white stuff that sloshed. “I have an old kitten syringe. You can squirt some milk down their throats. How many, by the way?”

This was more like it. She morphed from uppity to Scarlet O’Hara helpless in one breath, flashed him what she hoped was a killer smile and stood aside so he could come in. “Three. Two girls and a boy.”

“Tell me you haven’t named them.” He hung his dripping poncho and hat on the old hat rack and slipped out of his sodden muckers. He was wearing a khaki sock and a red one.

Big, tough government official couldn’t even match his socks. Probably meant there was no woman living with him. If there was, she didn’t take very good care of him. Trip would no more wear mismatched socks than he’d wear bunny ears to an international conference.

But it was kind of endearing in a goofy way. She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. “I had to call them something to tell them apart.”

He sighed. “Not a good idea. Keep them depersonalized. Makes it easier afterward. So what did you call them?”

“I thought maybe Chanel, Arpege and Brut, but then I decided that might get me in trouble with copyrights,” she joked. “So at this point they’re Rose, Peony and Sycamore.”

He just shut his eyes and shook his head. “Okay, let me see them.”

He handed her the jar of milk and the syringe, followed her to the pantry and dropped onto his haunches beside their makeshift bed. “They’re cold. You got a heating pad?”

“No, I don’t.”

He glanced up at her. “Well, I do. Let’s get them fed and I’ll go get it. Give me the stuff.”

She handed the jar to him carefully. She didn’t want it to slip out of her hands and break on the pantry floor. No worry there. He enveloped the jar with a paw that would make Bigfoot feel inadequate.

For a moment he simply gazed down at the babies. “Cute little buggers,” he said. He went up a good ten points in her estimation.

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?”