It Happened on Love Street Read online

  Pepper tried to be a de facto wife to Dad—cooking, cleaning, organizing appointments—and a surrogate mother to Tuesday—nagging her for homework, making lunches, styling her long blond hair before they hurried to catch the school bus.

  The more Mom faded from their life, the more Pepper stepped in as Superwoman, self-appointed guardian of the family, and good thing, too. These days Dad was one bad sciatica attack away from being unable to handle the farm’s rigorous physical demands, and how long before Tuesday’s dreams of Broadway stardom dimmed? Her father and sister were reality escape artists, but someday they’d need her and her pragmatism. Pepper was the third little pig, busily building a sensible future.

  Or do you need them to need you?

  She lengthened her stride, walking faster than the whisper of doubt. At the end of the hall, Human Resources waited, promising the answers to her prayers. She let out a huge breath, the smallest trace of a smile settling on her lips. Almost there. A little routine paperwork and she’d carpe the heck out of this diem.

  Chapter Two

  The hum from the fluorescent lights cut through the examination room’s silence. Rhett removed his stethoscope eartips with an inward groan.

  “Well? Is he gonna pull through, Doctor?” The redhead in the sunflower sundress hitched her breath. No one gave a performance like Kennedy Day. No wonder she’d done well in all those pageants back in high school.

  But the real kudos had to go to Muffin, the Bichon Frise valiantly playing dead on the stainless steel surgical table. Still, not even expert training could override a strong, healthy heartbeat.

  Proper Southern manners dictated a few words of comfort, but his growing migraine crowded out any chivalrous impulses. “He’s going to live to lick another day.”

  Kennedy clapped her hands without a hint of embarrassment. “Aren’t you a regular miracle worker?”

  And aren’t you one hell of a dog trainer?

  He reached into his white lab coat pocket and removed a treat. In an instant, Muffin bounded to his feet with a short but definitive yip. “Seems Lazarus here has worked up a healthy appetite.”

  “Praise the Lord and pass the mashed potatoes. Come to Mama, Muffin Wuffin.” Kennedy scooped up the dog and smacked wet kisses on the top of its head.

  Muffin stared at him darkly, telecommunicating, See what I’m dealing with? Be a bro and hand over a Barkie Bite.

  Rhett passed the treat in solidarity.

  “Silly me!” Kennedy’s shoulders shook with her tinkling laugh. “Before I forget, I brought you something special.” She reached into the bedazzled insulated bag beside her chair and removed a cake, as if bearing a fake dead dog and baked goods were normal occurrences.

  Everland, his hometown, could be described many different ways, but normal wasn’t the first adjective that sprang to mind.

  The real miracle to this appointment would be shuffling Kennedy out before getting asked around for dinner. She sported that same determined look while wielding a pump-action shotgun on the opening day of turkey season. She might primp into the textbook definition of a Southern belle but had crack-shot aim when a tom was in her sights.

  “This right here is the praline Bundt that’s won the Everland Fair’s Golden Fork five years running.” She positioned the cake to make it impossible to miss the caramel glaze or her cleavage. “You do like a nice Bundt, don’t you, Dr. Valentine?” She dropped her voice to a purr. “Or are you more of a sour cream pound cake man?

  Dessert had never sounded so dirty.

  “Rhett,” he snapped automatically. “Plain Rhett suits me fine.” The words Dr. Valentine made him want to check over his shoulder for his father and make a sign to ward off the evil eye. “We graduated a year apart. My dad coached Sailing Club. Your brother Kingston was on my team.”

  “Of course.” She leaned forward with a suggestive wink. “And might I say you’ve gone from a dingy to a yacht.”

  Time to hustle her out before things turned dangerous. He didn’t want to lead her on. Not when her megawatt smile gave him flash blindness, even as shadows haunted beneath her eyes. Everyone knew last year’s divorce had hit her hard. Breakups sucked. He understood. He even sympathized. But at the end of the day, her failed marriage wasn’t his circus.

  He had his hands full with his own damn monkeys.

  “Listen. About the cake.” He handed it back and led her toward the door. “My office policy is never to accept gifts from—”

  “Gift?” She halted so fast her heels scuffed the linoleum. “Why it’s nothing but a harmless little nut cake!”

  “Did Lou Ellen put you up to this?” His sister acted like her fourth term as second vice president of the Everland Ladies Quilt Guild was a mandate to nominate him as the town’s most eligible bachelor, as if his single status was due to circumstance rather than choice.

  Online dating profiles kept popping into his inbox, as well as invitations to donate a dinner and movie date to the upcoming Village Pillage silent auction, or meet so-and-so’s third cousin, niece, dental hygienist, or belly-dance instructor. If he dared to smile at a woman at the post office, the local gossip blog, the Back Fence, posted a poll about wedding cake flavors by sundown.

  He’d rather lick one of his waiting room chairs than date under that kind of scrutiny. Besides, bachelorhood came with undeniable perks:

  He never woke without the covers.

  Never got an arm ache from spooning.

  Never had to fake laugh at a chick flick.

  And when blue balls struck, well, his right hand had him covered.

  Yep, all a man needed was a cold beer, a boat, and a couple of dogs.

  And if he ever hit his head hard enough to climb back on the relationship horse, it would be to a low-maintenance country girl who made up for a lack of drama with a love of big bird dogs. Labs would work. Or Chesapeake Bay Retrievers.

  “Weeeeell, I did run into Lou Ellen last week at the club.” Kennedy’s cheeks tinged pink as he opened the exam room door. “And she may have let slip that you were in need of a little female companionship. After all, it has been a long time since…well…”

  Ah. And there it was. His own personal elephant in its own personal corner.

  He reached for the knob, careful not to grind his molars, at least not audibly. If there were a better way to deal with references to that one time he was left at the altar…he hadn’t found it.

  Once, just once, it would be nice to make it a goddamn week without some reference to Birdie.

  “Remember this, Rhett Valentine.” Kennedy squeezed his bicep, her thick gardenia perfume exacerbating his headache. “There’s no I in happiness.”

  “Come again?”

  She screwed her nose like he’d come up a few Bradys short of a bunch. “H-a-p-p-y-n-e-s-s?”

  He took a deep breath. She had to go. Now. Before he said something he regretted.

  He ushered her and Muffin into the foyer. “Don’t forget to grab a Milk-Bone in the bowl by the magazine rack.” He shut the door, the loud snick cutting her off mid-protest.

  He scrubbed his jaw, eying the locked cabinet that stored the horse tranquilizers. Lou Ellen was going to raise hell once she caught wind of this snub.

  Tempting, but nah. “Suck it up, Buttercup,” he muttered. If the biggest problem in his life was a bossy big sister determined to sail him off into a happy-ever-after sunset, he should be grateful that things were looking up.

  Or at least not facedown in the gutter.

  Was he happy? Well-meaning busybodies pestered him with the question, but no one ever quit talking long enough to hear his answer.

  Yeah. He was. Happy enough anyway.

  He didn’t return to his office until Kennedy’s Miata convertible screeched from the parking lot. His three Golden Retrievers, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald, dozed on their respective pillows and didn’t flinch when his desk phone rang.

  “Valentine Veterinary,” he answered.

  “The council w
ork session got postponed to next Thursday,” Beau Marino drawled in his deep, no-nonsense tone. He was Everland’s youngest mayor in a century, son of a Bermudan bartender and local blueblood, and Rhett’s best friend since kindergarten. “Weather service predicts it’ll be blowing seventeen this afternoon with gusts to twenty.”

  “Sounds good.” Rhett broke into a grin. They jointly owned the Calypso, a bachelor pad in the form of a coastal cruiser moored at Buccaneers Marina. “I don’t have an appointment for an hour. I’ll swing by home for the marina key and pick you up after work.”

  “You know where to find me.” Beau lived in Belle Mont Manor, the biggest house in the county, but he called city hall home. Worked around the clock.

  Rhett hung up and drummed his fingers on the desktop, shedding the irritation from Kennedy’s appointment like an onionskin. An evening sail should screw his head on straight. Always did.

  As his headache faded, the wall clock chimed ten o’clock. Outside the street-facing window, a silver-haired man in a seersucker suit led a Maltese whose lavender ribbons matched his bow tie. Doc passed the same time each day, a warm and cozy thirty seconds carefully orchestrated to make his only son feel like shit.

  And the gambit worked.

  Migraine roaring back, Rhett opened his top drawer, shook two ibuprofen from the bottle, and chased the pills with a swallow from the cold coffee in the mug next to his keyboard.

  What masqueraded for an innocent pleasure stroll was, in point of fact, a one-man protest against Valentine Veterinary. Doc had made good on his long-ago vow never to darken the door to Rhett’s office—going so far as to drive to TLC Pet Hospital in Hogg Jaw for Marie Claire’s care—a dick move, but it proved the saying about Valentine men. They did stay true.

  Even if it was to words spoken in anger.

  Rhett was groomed to study family or internal medicine at Duke and join his dad’s practice, not bolt to UGA and become a doctor of veterinary medicine.

  Mama’s death had sent them both to hell, but they dealt with different devils. Seemed his old man was bent on sailing into his final years on a bitter ship.

  God-fucking-speed.

  As for him, Rhett had his dogs, a growing practice, and low tolerance for bullshit. He was sick and tired of being the bad son for having a different vision of his future. He sank into his leather office chair, shoved his glasses up his forehead, and exhaled.

  Next to his computer perched a brass-framed black-and-white photograph of a laughing woman surrounded by two labs, a Siamese cat, lop-eared rabbits, lovebirds, and three guinea pigs.

  He grabbed the picture and ran his thumb over the glass. To live with Ginny Valentine meant to love loudly, indiscriminately, and with gusto. Doc tolerated the chaos because it made his wife happy, and she was his sun, the light in all their lives. Rhett’s core constricted as if an invisible screwdriver tightened his solar plexus. Did Mama watch over them? He set the frame back down. There’d never been a single sign after her death. No visitation dreams. No soft shift to the air as he turned his shoulder muscles to jelly beating on the speed bag in his tool shed or sanded cedar planks for the fishing skiff he was building in his backyard.

  Nothing. Not even during the whole bad business with Birdie.

  With any luck, Mama was up there plenty distracted by drinking gin with Margaret Mitchell, her favorite author. Or flying. She always said that’s the one thing she wished she could do, fly wild and free like one of the storm petrels that haunted the coast.

  His gut twisted knowing how much she’d hate the way her beloved family had grown apart in her absence. Lou Lou smothered everyone in her path, relentless as a weedy vine. Dad sheathed himself in a thick shell, gnarled and bitter as a walnut casing. And Rhett, well, he grew long “keep your fucking distance” spines like a prickly pear cactus.

  He couldn’t fix any of that, but so help him, he’d give Mama a fitting legacy—a rescue shelter that bore her name. The Virginia Valentine Memorial Shelter would be her real monument, not that cold slab of ornate granite nestled beneath a dogwood in the Everland cemetery. Her love and compassion for any animal great or small deserved to be made permanent through bricks and mortar.

  Or do you want to atone? He rubbed the lines between his brow as if the gesture would erase the gnawing question.

  If Mama was a saint, he was another simple sinner who kept on trying.

  Word from the Low Country Community Foundation was that the construction loan was as good as wrapped up. The last obstacle before being deemed “shovel ready” was persuading Doc to donate the land. The shelter deserved to be built on the spot where Mama used to take them to play as children, the small rise where live oaks rang with katydids and tree frogs, herons silently stalked the tidal marsh at the bottom, and in the distance the ocean unfurled across the horizon like one of those bright blue ribbons Mama wore in her hair.

  He drained the rest of the coffee, grimacing at the final acidic swallow. Shit. He’d put off the request long enough, but for better or worse, Doc was his dad. The guy who’d walked him around the back patio on his feet, taught him how to trim a sail, and helped him win third in the state science fair with his stem cell research project.

  The guy who’d championed him.

  Rhett’s gaze tracked the ceiling fan in mute outrage. What the hell? Maybe Doc deserved a thank-you, because nothing ever made Rhett want to succeed at his clinic like the fact his father openly rooted for his failure.

  “All right. Let’s get this over with,” he announced to the dogs. They scrambled to attention as he stood and grabbed the three leashes dangling off the hook by the door.

  Doc was a creature of habit. Not only could Rhett set a clock by his dad’s morning walk, but the man had a sweet tooth. Right now he must be stopping into the What-a-Treat Candy Boutique for his daily Charleston Chew before joining the Scrabble game at the dog park. With a little hustle, Rhett could catch him by the courthouse.

  He shoved on his glasses and adjusted the frames. This conversation was going to be as fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

  But nothing good ever came easy.

  Chapter Three

  Sorry. I misheard you.” Pepper forced a laugh even as her stomach rode a high-speed elevator straight to her toes. “It sounded like you just said that I don’t have a job.”

  The HR administrative assistant’s polite smile died a slow death. Two faint lines emerged between her brows. “Pepper Knight, is it?”

  “Yeah, that’s me.” She took out a tube of gloss and smoothed it over her dry lips. In another minute or two, she’d chuckle about the misunderstanding, once the dust cleared and she signed her hiring documents.

  The woman tapped on her keyboard before making a series of henlike clucks. “Oh. I see. Oh dear.”

  “What?” Pepper pressed two fingers against her sternum. The last thing she wanted to do was play “heartburn or heart attack?”

  “My boss left me a note before going to Myrtle Beach.” Another cluck. “Your offer was withdrawn. I was supposed to follow up, but the notification went into my spam folder. Hand to chest, this computer upgrade is making me crazier than a one-legged cat in a sandbox.”

  “Withdrawn?” Pepper’s heart accelerated from third to fifth gear. Her neck muscles tightened. In pressure cooker situations some people became carrots, limp and lifeless. She was an egg. Hot water hardened her. She focused on the woman’s name placard. “Listen, uh, Maryann.” The struggle for a smile was real. “Let’s be reasonable. Of course I have a position. One that I applied, accepted, and, most importantly, relocated for.” Pressure built in her skull. She’d jumped at this clerkship rather than holding out for a more desirable location in Boston or DC because it was a guaranteed bird in the hand. A safe choice.

  “What can I do to make this work? A background check? A drug test? I can pee right now. Right here. Well, not here, here, of course, but—”

  “I’m sorry, darlin’. This one’s out of my hands. The position is re
voked.” Maryann unscrewed her Diet Coke and took a long swallow before leaning forward, her voice a confidential whisper. “You didn’t hear it here, but this decision came from up the food chain, see. The judge’s mama is a long-time friend of Senator Haynes, the Senator Haynes, chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee, who called in an emergency favor. His oldest grandson has gone wild and needs discipline.” She straightened and resumed her loud voice. “But a pretty, smart thing like you? Why you’ll land on your feet in no time at all.”

  “No.” The walls closed in like an Indiana Jones movie. The floor dropped out like a sinister Tower of Terror. “This. Is. Not. Happening.”

  She’d entered a wormhole. This office was a portal to a parallel universe, a nightmare land where darkest dreams come true. Nothing was as terrifying as the HR assistant’s sympathetic expression.

  Pepper went to reapply more protective lip gloss, but the tube slipped from her trembling fingers, hit the floor with a clatter, and rolled under a nearby desk.

  Looked like the universe had indeed given her a sign this morning. Her hopes and dreams were at a dead end.

  “My job offer was rescinded.” Hot electrical currents zinged through her spine. “Regifted to a member of some back-scratching boy’s club?”

  “What’s the thing all you lawyers say?” Maryann held up her hands. “Time to plead the fifth. I said too much already.”

  “But this is straight up sexist, nepotistic bullshit!” The final word burst out as the beige and cream office decor faded behind a scarlet haze. How many years had she worked her butt off (or rather, grown it through midnight Chips Ahoy stress eating sessions)? NYU engendered a culture of extreme anxiety. Sleep deprivation, tension, and the dream of a social life someday were her constant companions because there was a future payoff. She needed this—no, scratch that—she deserved this job and all that went with it. Stability. Security. A chance to build a future on a rock solid foundation capable of weathering any of life’s storms.