The Vixen and the Vet (2 page)

She was surprised to feel her cell
phone vibrating in her back pocket. Once upon a time her phone had been the epicenter of her world, as she fielded calls and texts, chased down stories, and followed leads as the up-and-coming star reporter for the
New York Sentinel
. But, over the past two or three weeks, it hadn’t buzzed more than a couple of times. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the unfamiliar area code: 602. She thought for a moment. Hmm. Phoenix. Who did she know in Phoenix?

“Savannah Carmichael,
New York Sen
— Um, this is Savannah.”

“Hey,
Savannah. It’s Derby Jones.”

Savannah drew a blank. “Mm-hm. What can I do for you, Derby?”

“For starters, you can remember me,” said the woman in a cheerful, knowing voice. “We met at the West Coast Journalism Conference out in LA last fall. I was doing a story about—”

“Health care for seniors!”

“Yep! I knew you’d remember me once you remembered the story.”

“I’m like that weird lady at the dog park who knows people by their dog’s names. Spot’s mom. Rex’s dad. Senior health
-care story.”

Derby
laughed. “I don’t know if you remember, but I was stuck on that story. I couldn’t figure out the angle, but you stayed up until well after midnight with me, looking over my notes, talking to me about what I wanted to say. When the sun came up, I had an angle.”

“That’s right.” Savannah smiled. “I was glad to help. How was the article?”

“Actually, it was so good, I won a Sunshine Award from the SPJ.”

“Valley
of the Sun ?”

“Yep. It also won me a raise and a promotion.”

“That’s great, Derby. Your star’s rising, I guess.” She tried her best to sound enthusiastic, even though it stung a little bit.

“And yours is falling.”

Ouch. “Umm …” started Savannah, at a loss for words.

“
Jeez, there I go. I’m not known for my tact.”

“You don’t say
.”

“Listen, let me get right down to it
. I’ve been keeping tabs on you since that conference, reading your articles, following your stories. You wrote that groundbreaking piece on the New York subway system. And you deserved the award you won for the article on the preferential treatment some lawyers are given in the DA’s office. Not to mention the time you rode in the back of an NYPD police car for a week and did that terrific piece about the habits of New York’s Finest. You’re talented, Savannah. More talented than most. I can’t figure out what happened with the Monroes, but it sounds like you were taken for a ride.”

Savannah swallowed the lump in her throat. “It was my fault. I should’ve seen
—”

“We all get a bad source now and then. That was a doozy.”

Savannah grimaced, wondering if Derby would ever get to the point of the call and stop making her feel about two inches tall. She started every day with a heavy heart, grieving the loss of her dream; she didn’t exactly need someone to drive it home for her.

“Anyway,” continued Derby, “I already knew it that weekend, but you’re a heck of a reporter.
Top-notch. I’m betting you’ll never make the same mistake again with a source, and any paper would be lucky to have talent like yours.”

“Well, that’s,
er, nice of you to—”

“So here’s the scoop
: the
Phoenix Times
is looking for someone to take over the Lifestyles section. I know it’s not New York, and I know it’s not the
Sentinel
. But for someone with ambition, someone looking to get back on her feet …” Derby let that thought linger, and Savannah battled her conflicting emotions.

L
ifestyles?!
She’d been an investigative reporter for arguably the most well-regarded newspaper in America. Lifestyles would mean reporting on cook-offs and fashion shows, charity benefits, and star sightings. Not to mention, the
Phoenix Times
was second-string at best. And it was in … Phoenix. Hot, dry, middle-of-nowhere Phoenix.

Then again, it was Phoenix. The sixth
-largest city in the United States and a hub of Southwestern activity. Far enough from New York that her calamitous failure at the
Sentinel
would feel removed, yet close enough to LA and San Francisco that maybe she could segue to one of those bigger outfits after a few successful years. And no, Lifestyles wasn’t exactly her dream department, but it was a way back in, wasn’t it? After a few months—a year, tops—she could ask for a transfer to one of their other departments.

“Derby,” she said, determination lowering her voice to a serious pitch. “What do I have to do to make it happen?”

“Our editor in chief knows who you are. He’s willing to give you a swing at the job, but you have to wow him with a Lifestyles piece first.”

“Oh, I have a ton of stuff I could send
—”

“No, Savannah. You don’t. I tried to find something
, anything, that you wrote that could pass as a human interest piece. I came up dry.”

Savannah nodded, gloom encroaching. Derby was right. She didn’t have anything.

“But Maddox McNabb, our editor, he’s all about hot scoops and he loves that you’re coming from a New York background. He can be a little heavy on the edits, but I haven’t had any complaints so far. He makes a good story more sensational, and at least a quarter get picked up on the national news wire.”

“
Wow. Great numbers. Sounds like he’s got the magic touch.”

“
Like I said, no complaints. Anyway, he needs a piece. Something big and heart-tugging and personal in time for the Fourth of July. That’s, uh, five weeks from now. Think veterans. Think returning soldier dad home in time for the big Fourth of July barbecue. Small-town Americana stuff that makes every reader cry before breaking out in a chorus of ‘America the Beautiful.’ How you write it is up to you, but Maddox wants updates every Friday from now until the second. If he likes it, he’ll run it on the front of Lifestyles on the Fourth, and let’s just say he’d probably like to see you in Phoenix soon after.”

Savannah’s brain whirled, but she could feel the excitement gathering inside her. No, human interest wasn’t her forte, but she could change that. She’d write the best goddamn piece of lifestyle Americana the
Phoenix Times
had ever seen.

“I’
m all over it. Tell Maddox he’ll have the idea and the first installment by next Friday. Six days.”

“I knew you’d bite,” said Derby,
her voice laced with approval. “I’ll e-mail you with Maddox’s info. The rest is all you.”

Savannah shook her head, smiling into the phone, marveling at second chances that came from unexpected places
, and determined not to squander this chance. “Derby, I don’t know how to thank you. Really. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Hey, I’m not Mother Teresa. You come work here? I figure you owe me a few more of those
late-night sessions cracking stories. I sure wouldn’t mind another Sunshine Award.”

“You got it,
” Savannah said with feeling. “Anything I can ever do for you, all you have to do is shout.”

“I hope you don’t regret that offer,” said Derby, “because I promise I’ll be collecting.”

Savannah chuckled and exchanged information with her guardian angel, thanking her again for reaching out and sending her thanks to Maddox for the chance. When she hung up the phone, the sun was even lower, aggressively gold on the horizon, brightening the hills beyond her small neighborhood.

She squinted, her eyes pulled to the
grand, old Victorian house straight ahead, about two miles away, up on the hillside.

Asher
Lee’s house.

T
he front door of her own house opened, and Scarlet appeared dressed in an adorable cotton candy–pink sundress, modestly covered with a mint-green cardigan.

“Hey, Scar
let,” Savannah said, still staring at the massive brown house in the distance. “What do we know about Asher Lee?”

“Asher Lee?”
Scarlet fanned herself as she followed her sister’s gaze into the distant hills like her sister. “Some folks call him “Hermit” Lee. Poor thing. Used to be a big-time football star over at Danvers High. But he got his face and hand blown off in some war, and no one’s seen him for a million years. He got real strange when he came home, refusin’ to go into town, hirin’ Miss Potts to be his maid. No one’s seen him in almost a decade. Nobody knows what he does up there, but there’s the normal fiddle-faddle about the bogeyman and such. Really, it’s easier just to forget he’s up there. It’s just so awkward and sad.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

Scarlet shook her head pursing her lips and looking away from the old brown mansion. “Why are you so interested?”

Savannah turned to her sister, cocking her head to the side. “I think it’s about time someone showed a little
Southern hospitality to our very own wounded veteran.”

“What’re you up to,
Vanna?”

“
Nothing bad, little sister, don’t trouble yourself. I just wonder if he’d like to tell his side of the story.”

“Leave him be. All he wants is his privacy.”

“Not if he’s got a story to tell, Miss Scarlet. Not if he has a story he’d like the world to know.”

Asher Lee did not anticipate or appreciate visitors. While Danvers had not been especially welcoming upon his return home, at least the locals had seen fit to respect his privacy.

Which is why, when his ancient doorbell rang on Sunday afternoon, he started, jumping a foot in the comfortable reading chair that sat by the window on the west side of his vast office. Once upon a time the room had been called
the library, and it still maintained an impressive collection of books that rivaled that of the Danvers Public Library. And in the years since Asher had returned home, he’d added to the collection, occasionally hiring out-of-state woodworkers to expand the cherry bookcases to house more and more books. Books were his refuge, his only real pleasure.

At present, he was deep into the romances of Jennifer
Crusie, an author who wrote with excellent pacing and laugh-out-loud wit. He’d already read six of her books and had three more to read before he’d move on to a different author. But not romance this time—there was only so much romance he could read before his heart bled from living vicariously, knowing that life loomed long and his own chances at happily-ever-after were nonexistent. Sometimes he argued with himself—why torture yourself reading about what you can’t ever, ever have?—but a few weeks would go by, and after the thrill of mysteries, the voyeurism of biographies, and the swashbuckling satisfaction of adventure, he’d find himself gravitating toward romance. Again.

He reasoned that he had no one to impress. Aside from Miss Potts, who did his cooking, cleaning, laundering
, and shopping, and the occasional craftsman who worked on his monstrosity of a mansion, he saw no one. Despite the injuries he’d sustained, at thirty-four years old he was physically fit enough to live until a hundred. In short, he had a long, lonely road ahead. He could read what he wanted.

When the bell ran
g a second time, he stood up from his chair, his muscular body moving with surprising grace, made his way around the attractive cherry desk that served no real purpose—he wrote no letters, and his bill payments were automated on the laptop that sat lonely in its center—and headed to the library door. He cracked it just enough to hear Miss Potts’s light step on the front hall marble, then hurried out into the upper gallery, moving as quietly as he could to a spot that had been rigged with decorative mirrors at clever angles to show who was at the door. There he stood, eyes on the mirror across from him, as Miss Potts opened the door.

He forgave his quick gasp.

It had been years since he’d been this close to a woman. To a young woman. To a young, very beautiful, woman. His heart kicked up as his eyes widened, and he twisted his head as close as possible to the stairs so that he could pick up the sound of her voice.

“Miss Potts!” she
said, and he watched her embrace the older woman.

“Why, Savannah Carmichael
! I’d know you anywhere!”

Savannah Carmichael. Savannah Carmichael.
Her last name was vaguely familiar, but he definitely didn’t know a Savannah Carmichael. He would have remembered her name. It was like music, like the heroine from one of the more melodramatic historical romances he sometimes read.

Her brown hair was straight and shiny, pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck
, and her brown eyes were serious and determined. Her lips were full and pink, and though he couldn’t see the rest of her body, the V-neck of her sundress was tight across her chest, making his heart speed up again. He stared at the sacred valley of white, lightly freckled skin that led south to the swell of her breasts and started a whole different swelling on a southern part of him. Sucking in a breath, he looked away. There was no chance in hell he’d ever have the opportunity to visit that particular corner of heaven ever again. Didn’t make any sense to torture himself by looking at something he couldn’t have.

“Miss Potts, I knew you were here working for
Ash—Mr. Lee. It’s so great to see you!”

Asher was surprised by her smooth, refined voice. Miss Potts
obviously knew her, but most folks in Danvers had thick accents, and hers was light at best. Had she moved away at some point and just recently returned home?

“And you, dear. I heard through the grapevine that you’re home for the summer? Helping with your sister’s wedding?”

“Yes. Scarlet’s getting married. Can you believe it?”

“In fact, I can. Scarlet was making cow eyes at Trent Hamilton in the second grade, dear. Had to separate those two from day one. Some folks are just meant to be together. From the cradle.”

Hmm, thought Asher. She had a sister, and both had been Miss Potts’s students, so despite her lack of accent, she
was
a lifetime resident of Danvers.

Miss Potts still hadn’t invited her in, per
Asher’s wishes. No one was ever to be let into the main house. Never, ever. Under no circumstances.

“I
t is so lovely to see you, dear, but Mr. Lee does keep me busy. Is there something I can do for you?”

She cleared her throat
, and he took a quick look in the glass again.

“I don’t know if you know,” she began
, “but I went into journalism after college. I’m taking a break from my job at the
New York Sentinel
, but I’ve been commissioned to write a piece for a very notable national newspaper, the
Phoenix Times
. They want a human interest piece in time for the Fourth of July, and I thought … well, I wondered if Mr. Lee, that is …”

He
stared at her pretty face, watched her cheeks flush with color. Interesting. She was determined to get the interview, but uncomfortable about asking.

“Oh, my dear. I’m sorry but it’s out of the question. You see, Mr. Lee doesn’t talk to anyone. No one. And certainly not a reporter.”

She squared her shoulders. “But he must have a story to tell. And I want to hear it. And I want to tell it. With him.
For
him.”

“I’m afraid it’s quite impossible
, dear.”

For the first time he noticed the foil
-covered plate in Savannah Carmichael’s hands, which she offered to Miss Potts. “I made brownies. It’s Scarlet’s recipe, and they’re very good. I’ve taped my card on top. Won’t you give these to him and just ask if he might consider calling me?”

Brownies
. His mouth watered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had homemade brownies. Interesting tactic for an interview. Smarter than coming with guns loaded about his service record. He would have resented her presumption that she knew him when she didn’t know the first goddamned thing about him or his life.

“It won’t do any good, I’m afraid.”

“Do you refuse?”

Miss Potts lifted her chin a notch
, and even though he could see only her back, he knew the look Savannah was presently enjoying. The no-nonsense look of a grade school teacher who’d had just enough of Savannah’s shenanigans.

“I don’t refuse. I will give him the brownies. But the answer will still be no. In fact, the answer will be silence. I don’t want any misunderstanding between us, dear.”

“There isn’t any,” said Savannah, and Asher clenched his jaw at the brave disappointment in her tone. “I don’t expect anything. But promise you’ll give them?”

“I promise.” She took the brownies
, and Savannah nodded once with a sheepish smile, deepening the worry on her pretty face.

“Thank you.”

“Of course. You run along now. Wish your sister all the best from Miss Potts, dear.”

He watched as Savannah lifted her eyes to the mirror on the landing of the double staircase
. He was unable to glance away as her eyes reflected into five mirrors in a flash, and finally slammed into his. Her eyes widened, and he heard her gasp before he jerked himself back, out of view. He rested his head against the dark wood paneling of the gallery, berating himself for being such a fool. She’d seen him. Minimally she’d seen his eyes. Damn it. She knew he was home. She knew he’d been eavesdropping. Damn it again.

Without waiting to hear the rest of the good-bye pleasantries between the two women, he
stalked back to his office, flinging the door open with such strength that the door smashed into the wall, echoing in the quiet of the gallery, before slamming shut with a bang.

He moved quickly
to the front window, where he could look out at the circular driveway without being seen. He watched as Savannah Carmichael stopped on the edge of grass in the center of the circle and, turning around, gazed up at the house.

She was trim and lovely,
in her mid-20s, with intelligent, searching eyes and a thoughtful countenance. She cocked her head to the side and narrowed those determined, chestnut-colored eyes, as if assessing whether or not what she’d seen was real or a figment of her imagination. Finally she looked right at the window where Asher stood, and even though he knew she couldn’t see him through the glare of glass and the darkness of the room, he held his breath until she turned on her heel and headed back down the driveway to her waiting car.

***

The mansion had been an almost-otherworldly mix of creepy and elegant, from what little Savannah had seen from the doorway where Miss Potts stood guard. The elegant marble flooring was a striking contrast to the worn, once-garnet-colored carpet that lined the stairs, and the dark woodwork was so shiny and ornate in the front hallway she could almost close her eyes and imagine she’d walked into the 1890s, visiting the grandest house in town. It smelled clean and old, a mix of lemon oil and leather-bound books, and as Savannah wound down the hillside roads back toward town, she found herself even more intrigued by the reclusive veteran who lived a hermitlike existence at the edge of an all-American town from which the smell of barbecues and bonfires wafted up.

But the
oddest thing of all were the eyes she thought she’d seen in the mirror at the top of the staircase right before she turned to go. Was that a trick of the light, or had she actually seen Asher Lee’s brown eyes staring back at her for an instant? She didn’t know for sure. She’d gasped and blinked, and they were gone. If they
were
his eyes, they’d arrested her completely for the short moment they’d smashed into each other, and a strange, unexpected warmth had flooded her veins as she searched the mirror for one more glimpse. There had been none.

Trick of
the light
, she told herself, wondering if Miss Potts was currently throwing her brownies in the dustbin.

Who was Asher Lee?
As she stopped at the first of several stoplights on Main Street, she berated herself. Since when did Savannah Carmichael approach a source with brownies instead of good, old-fashioned research? Why, she hadn’t even bothered to stop by the library to look into the Lee family history, and Asher Lee’s in particular. He’d always existed beneath her radar—considerably older than she and immensely tragic, it was easier to file him away as a small-town oddity—but that was no excuse for taking brownies instead of asking for the interview with an angle built from professional expertise and research. She detoured sharply at the third light, turning onto Maple Street, where she parked in front of the small brick public library. She was going to find out a few things about Asher Lee, and then return with a solid, professional angle to finagle that interview. And this time, she wouldn’t take no for an answer, come hell, high water, or Matilda J. Potts.

***

Asher had just about had it with Miss Potts’s good intentions. He knew how much she wanted him to be a part of the world again, but she didn’t seem to understand how much her pushing infuriated him, only serving to increase his frustration that the reward for serving his country was to live out his life in a lonely prison of his own making.

Pounding out his anger on the treadmill hadn’t helped, nor had doing bicep curls on his good arm until it burned. He stared at the business card in his hand for the umpteenth time, mulling over the scorching argument he’d had
earlier with his maid/housekeeper/surrogate grandmother/meddler extraordinaire.

After saying nothing about Savannah Carmichael’s visit, she had cleared his dinner plate and sat down across from him at the massive mahogany table that his grandfather had imported from England in 1925. From her lap she produced the foil-covered plate with the business card neatly taped to the top, set the plate on the table in front of her
—just out of his reach—and met his eyes.

“I know you were watching. She caught your eyes in the mirror.”

He glowered at her, and she sat back, her lips tilted up subtly.

“She’s always been an ambitious thing, Savannah Carmichael. But she’s good people. Her folks take the collection at Stone Hill Methodist every Sunday
, and her sister’s a terrible flirt with a heart of gold. They keep their lawn neat, pull their garbage cans off the curb before nightfall, and I’ve never heard of Frank Carmichael needing a ride home from Ernie’s. The Carmichael’s are solid folks. But Savannah … that girl was special.”

Miss Potts carefully started loosening the edges of the plate as she rhapsodized about the perfectly perfect Carmichaels.