Guarded - Couverture souple

“SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH Mr. Fuzzbutt.” Beau’s angelic voice rang out seconds before the backside of his long-haired black guinea pig bounced before Dr. Shelley Morgan’s eyes. At almost the same moment, a cry went up from the back room of the small veterinary clinic.

“Shelley, I need you!” Feet pounded quickly down the short hall before Jacob, the veterinary clinic’s too-excitable intern, burst into the room yelling, “Lucy is trying to turn Hercules into her Thanksgiving dinner. And this time I think she might just chew his balls off.”

“Language! And Thanksgiving’s four weeks away. At most, she wants a light snack,” Shelley said, pushing to her feet and sweeping the fur ball known as Mr. Fuzzbutt into her hands.

But Jacob hadn’t heard her attempt to lighten the moment. The intern/groomer/assistant had already spun around and disappeared into the back room. His cries of, “Stop that, Lucy. Get up, Herc,” were nearly drowned out by the cacophony of dogs barking.

Ah, it was a Wednesday. Most people hated Mondays because they believed the first day of the workweek was full of insanity, but Shelley knew otherwise. In her twenty-four years of life, every major catastrophe occurred on the day most folks referred to as “hump day.” Today was shaping up to be as invariably crazy as every other weekday that started with the letter W.

“Doc, can you help him?” Beau’s voice, still high-pitched from youth, wobbled as he spoke.

She turned to the worried ten-year-old who was small for his age. His large luminous brown eyes were framed by thick black glasses. His clothes, although threadbare and clearly hand-me-downs, were clean as were his faded blue sneakers.

“Don’t worry, Beau. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Just have a seat in the waiting area and I’ll be back shortly. I’ll bring Mr. . . .” she couldn’t bring herself to say the word Fuzzbutt to the child, and settled with “your little buddy back after I’ve examined him.”

“Okay, Doc. I trust you.” Beau nodded. His words so mature for one so young. “But I can’t just sit and wait. How about I bring in the bags of dog food from outside?”

“That would be a big help, Beau. You remember where the storeroom is? Just stack the ones you can carry in there. And don’t try to lift the big ones.”

Not that the little guy would be able to do much. The last time the clinic received donations, the dog food had come in fifty-pound bags. Beau likely didn’t weigh more than sixty-five pounds himself. Plus, it had rained late last night and the town handyman she’d hired hadn’t had a chance to fix the hole in the shed’s roof. So chances were good several of the bags were sodden and useless.

Still, he beamed as if she’d just handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “You know it! I’ll have the bags all put away before you can bring Mr. Fuzzbutt back. Just you wait and see.”

Then Beau was out the front door. The length of bells hanging from the handle jangled and banged against the glass as he took off around the corner to the storage shed.

Gotta love small towns. Shelley couldn’t suppress the grin, even as good ole Mr. F made a soft whoop, whoop noise in her hands. She glanced into his little black eyes and asked, “So are you really sick?”

The eye contact formed an instant telepathic connection. Shelley’s world swirled to gray. Still vaguely aware of her surroundings, she focused her attention inward on the movielike scenes sent from the little boar in her hands.

An image of Beau’s anxious face peering between the bars of the cage, filling and refilling the bowl with pellets sprang into her mind. At first she thought the guinea pig was repeating the same image over and over, but quickly she realized what was happening.

“Oh, so you’ve been eating,” she said. “But Beau doesn’t realize it because he’s been topping off the food bowl.”

Mr. F. whooped again.

She chuckled. “Well, you’re a pretty wise pig not to eat everything you’ve been given. Many others wouldn’t have such restraint. I’m not sure I would. You sure you don’t feel sick?”

The little pig winged an image of Beau snuggling him close and occasionally kissing him on the head as they watched Scooby-Doo. The image was so sweet she let herself get lost in the moment and almost forgot she was at the clinic.

“Shell-ley,” Jacob wailed.

She jumped and turned in time to see Jacob burst through the swinging door separating the back hallway from the reception area of the clinic. “Jeez! Jacob. You’ll freak out the animals.”

“Come on. I can’t stop her and he’s just lying there!” Jacob gestured wildly with both hands.

Right. Lucy attacking Hercules. Although Lucy was all of three pounds and a ferret, to Hercules, a ninety-pound dog. How much damage could she do?

“It’s Wednesday,” Shelley said on a sigh. “Although, at least if it started out like this, it can’t get any crazier.”

Mr. Fuzzbutt whooped again. I swear, the little pig’s laughing at me.

“Jacob, take Mr. F and put him in examination room one.” She hurried through the swinging white door, which led to the back, stopping briefly to hand Beau’s pet to her intern. “There’s a small cage in the cabinet under the sink. Pull it out and put him in it, then meet me in the doggie spa.”

Without waiting for a response, she hustled to the back room. She usually avoided this area. She’d spent a weekend painting murals of fields, dog bones, blue skies, and fire hydrants on the walls to give dogs and their owners the impression of luxury accommodations. According to Jacob and their boss, Dr. Kessler, her hard work paid off. Unless she was in the room with the canines.

Today, six dogs were there for the Thanksgiving Special, a deluxe grooming, complete with a complimentary toy turkey. Metal cages lined one wall, each with a plush foam bed. The occupants waited in doggy paradise for their turn at the day’s scheduled deluxe treatment by Jacob. Soft strains of Bach filtered through the air, barely audible over the ruckus of barks, yips, and howls as the canines commented on the show in the middle of the floor.

That was, until one of them caught her scent. Mrs. Hoffstedder’s beagle noticed her first. He let out a single high-pitched yowl, then lowered his head and covered his eyes with his paws. One by one, the other five dogs did the same.

Shelley didn’t bother to wonder why they feared her. She’d given up asking that question years ago. It’s not as if she’d ever beaten an animal. Jeez, she didn’t even raise her voice. But almost every dog she’d come into contact with for the past seven years either hid from her or tried to attack her.

Thank God, Jacob had remembered to lock their cages before he called for her, or it would have been dog-maggedon as the pooches ran for freedom.

She had to be the world’s weirdest vet. Telepathic, she could talk to any animal alive, including snakes, hedgehogs, and naked mole rats. Any animal, that is, except for the canine variety. She hadn’t spoken to a single dog since Barty, her Bay retriever, died in the car crash with her parents all those years ago. Just the thought of them made her chest tight. She shoved away the memories and focused on the clinic’s current crisis.

Dr. Kessler’s extremely valuable St. Bernard, Hercules, lay stretched out in the middle of the floor. The six-month-old puppy remained still. No small feat, considering Lucy, her beautiful cinnamon-colored sable ferret, was steadily chewing on his upper thigh, incredibly close to his testicles.

“You okay, Hercules?” she asked, gingerly kneeling down beside the pair and making eye contact with the dog.

Lifting only his head, he looked at her.

The telepathic connection zapped into place. An image of her prying her ferret off his body followed by him licking his dangly bits in relief flashed through her mind. She had to put her hand to her mouth to stifle a chuckle. Herc let out a loud sigh and dropped his head back to the floor.

Unlike every other dog in the world, Hercules neither feared nor loathed her. He didn’t love her either. Usually he ignored her completely. But today he seemed to recognize if anyone could save his balls—literally—it was her.

“Lucy,” she asked, focusing on her pet. “Why are you doing that?”

The ferret managed to glare briefly at Shelley and continue her assault at the same time.

In that momentary bit of eye contact, another collage of images soared into Shelley’s head. It took a moment for Shelley to assemble them into an order she could understand.

“Ah, Hercules, the gaseous, accidentally sat on you, again, after eating his breakfast. Now you want to put ‘that upstart pup’ in his place?” Shelley sighed. “All right, you had your revenge. It’s not like he wants to be gassy. Next time, try to avoid him after he eats. Let’s go.” The ferret didn’t budge. Shelley prayed for patience and for no blood to be drawn. “Lucy, let go right now. You can’t gnaw off his leg. And if you could, he’d be three-legged, wobbly, and end up squashing you anyway. Then you’d be trapped and forced to breathe his stench all day.”

Hercules let out a rumbling woof of assent and shifted his weight, as if threatening to fulfill Shelley’s prediction.

Lucy leapt away from Hercules with a shriek. She raced up Shelley’s arm and wrapped herself around Shelley’s neck for comfort. “You’re all right, girl. Why don’t you snuggle with me for a bit, hmmm?”

She patted the ferret on the head and rose to her feet. Hercules immediately began intimately examining his body, reassuring himself that he was still fully intact.

“Wow, how do you do that?” Jacob appeared behind her. She turned to find his brown eyes rounded and his mouth agape. “Ferrets are more like cats than dogs. But yours actually seems to understand you. Oh! They could make a reality show out of you. It could be called ‘The Ferret Whisperer’.”

Shelley swallowed a chuckle; no sense encouraging him. Instead, she spoke directly to the brown-and-white puppy behemoth still at her feet. “You’re okay now, Hercules. It’s safe to move again. Thanks for not eating her.”

Hercules sprang to his paws and raced out of the room without so much as a backward glance.

And we’re back to ignoring me. World order has returned.

She chuckled and didn’t try to disguise it this time.

“Don’t laugh. I’m serious,” Jacob said. “We could make some real money if Hollywood ever heard about you.” He stood, arms akimbo, in the doorway. His shaggy black hair hung in his face. He jerked his head to the right, throwing the sideways bangs out of his eyes. “I swear, I went near her and that rat tried to munch on my fingers. But you . . . you walked in and talked to her like Dr. Freaking Dolittle. And don’t think I haven’t seen you do it before. Mr. Fuzzbutt, for example. Yep, your parents misnamed you. You should have been called John Dolittle.”

“I’m a woman.”

“Jane then.”

She shook her head at him. Little did Jacob know, she was more like the fictional character than Hugh Lofting had ever dreamed possible. Except she didn’t speak to animals in their own languages. Shelley simply communicated with them telepathically. All creatures were connected. Well, mostly.

Humans were an entirely different story. She often felt like an outsider. And she was a member of the species.

“Lucy’s a ferret, not a rat. If you’re going to be a vet, you should know that. And as for what happened in the spa, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. Look, she’s a good ferret who normally gets along with everyone, animals and people alike. I figured she must have been upset with Hercules. You saw him sit on her last week. And let’s face it; he hasn’t adjusted to the new dog food well. It didn’t take much of a mental leap to figure something like that might have happened again,” Shelley said, leaving the back room and heading toward her office.

“Yeah, I suppose so.” Jacob sounded disappointed, but he rallied. Hurrying down the hall, he reiterated his previous comment. “Still, I’ve seen you do that with other animals too. It’s like you know what they’re thinking. Is that how you skipped ahead in vet school? You read the minds of the animal patients. Hey, would that be cheating? Can I learn how to do it?”

“What are you talking about?” Shelley stopped and faced him. His dizzying barrage of questions too much to absorb. She instead focused on the first one. “You can’t skip ahead in veterinary school. I graduated last year.”

“You’re not old enough to have gone all the way through.” Jacob waved at her. “Hello, you’re my age, and I’m just getting started. Next semester anyway.”

“First, you’re barely old enough to be carded, but I’m twenty-four. Second, I graduated from high school with my associate’s degree.”

“Seriously? You took college classes in high school?”

Something about the tone of his voice set her teeth on edge, but still she kept her voice light. “Yes, and you could have done it too. I went from there to the university, where I finished up my bachelor’s in twenty-four months because I didn’t take summers off. Then I enrolled in veterinary school. I didn’t skipanything.”

Jacob frowned at her, then gave her a very obvious once-over. “You’re . . . you’re a nerd? But you’re . . . hot. For a vet who dresses like my grandmother.”

Shelley glanced at her four-inch heels. “Did you just compare me to your grandmother? Does she walk around in ankle-breaking high heels too?”

Jacob just grinned.

Shelley’s eyes were going to pop out of her head if she listened to this guy another second. Without responding, she spun on her heel and closed the distance to her office door. Once inside the tiny space, she propped up the wooden and plastic-mesh baby gate across her doorway, designed to keep Hercules from wandering in while she was out. Setting Lucy on the floor, Shelley gave her pet a stern frown, then added aloud for good measure, “Behave. I mean it.”

Lucy shook her head, sneezed indignantly, and pranced beneath Shelley’s desk where her small travel cage rested. After climbing inside, she curled up into a tight ball and did what ferrets do best. She went to sleep.

“What do you want me to do with the guinea pig?” Jacob asked. All questions about her age, her clothing, and her career seemingly forgotten. He leaned over the mesh gate rather than crossing into her sanctuary. Not that she could take refuge in it. The computer work she had to file needed to be done on the main computer out front. Her desktop had been crashing all week, and the repairman hadn’t come yet.

“Leave him in the examination room until Beau’s ready to take him home. I’ve already examined him. He’s fine,” she said, gathering her supplies and carefully stepping over the gate. “Look, I’ve got plenty of paperwork to finish before Dr. Kessler returns. So if you want to get started on Mrs. Hoffstedder’s beagle, that’d be great.”

“No problem,” Jacob said and disappeared into the back.

The smell of cinnamon and pinecones permeated the receptionist area. The scent was an instant soother for her nerves. Now that the dogs in the spa had calmed down, all was quiet. Peaceful.

Settling into the chair, she pulled up the afternoon schedule on the computer. The muscles in her shoulders...