Chapter 4

Cade used his rearview mirror to glance at Hailey in her booster, then turned his attention back to the road. The pet supply place was forty minutes north, but Hailey seemed content with an iPad and headphones. It was odd seeing a little person in his backseat.

He cleared his throat. "If you don't mind me asking, where's her dad? You're from San Diego, right?"

"San Francisco." Avery turned to check on Hailey and resumed her spot in his passenger seat. "I got full custody in the divorce." She went quiet for a beat. "My ex didn't contest it."

"The divorce or custody?"

"Either." She turned her focus to the side window while Cade's head swam. Some people were too stupid to know good when they had it.

They drove alongside the Klamath Mountains, heading toward the Southern Coast Range in a contented quiet. With the occasional curve, glimpses of the Pacific came into view, the shoreline and cliffs rocky. The fog was heavy near the bank in the late dusk, but not nearly as much as his thoughts. Her words slammed around in his skull.

Granted, he'd never been married, nor was he a father, but he couldn't see himself giving up rights to his kid. He'd probably learn more from Redwood Ridge's Twitter page than from Avery, but he was curious about her. "Was he a total prick, your ex? Pardon my language."

She breathed a laugh. "Doesn't matter. He's not in our lives anymore."

Good point. "What's his name?"

For that, she turned to study him with intense brown eyes. There was so much hiding in her gaze that he had to force his away or wreck the car trying to figure her out.

"Richard. That's his name."

He grunted. "So he is a dick."

Covering her face with her hand, she laughed. It sounded rusty at first, but it gained momentum. She had the kind of laugh that drifted into corners and made a person stop to listen. His chest did that funny twisty thing again at the sound, but damn, it felt good to make her laugh. He hadn't known her long, or at all, but it seemed to him she didn't do it often.

She sighed and laid her head against the seat. "I suppose it's no secret, anyway. Yeah, he's a jerk. I think he just wanted a trophy wife, which was fine, I guess, until he started treating Hailey like she wasn't there. I filed for divorce two years ago and just got it granted last month. He stretched out the proceedings that long." She tilted her head toward him. "Word to the wise, don't marry an attorney."

He fisted the wheel. She didn't strike him as a trophy wife, and the whole ignoring Hailey thing pissed him off. There was a wealth of information she wasn't telling him, but he let it go. "What do you call fifty lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?"

Her grin stole his air. "A good start."

He laughed. "A woman who knows her lawyer jokes. Impressive."

"Why don't snakes bite lawyers?"

He shook his head. "Why?"

"Professional courtesy."

Laughing, he scratched his jaw and made a couple of turns before speaking again. "So you left the big city to come home to Redwood Ridge."

She appeared to mull that over. "I don't know if it's home, but my mom's here and I think it's a better environment for Hailey."

If he traveled a thousand places, Redwood Ridge would always be home. Crazy and annoying and irritating as it could be sometimes, it was home. "You'll settle in. Might take awhile to get used to things, but the people care about each other, take care of one another."

She nodded. "It only took an hour for half the town to know I'd passed out at the clinic."

"Only an hour?" he joked. "Aunt Rosa's usually faster than that."

She grinned, but it fell flat. "I met your mom today, and your other aunt. The mayor?"

He made a dismissive grunt. "Aunt Marie. My brothers and I call the three of them the Battleaxes. An impenetrable force of evil wrapped in good intentions. They meddle. A lot. Kind of frightening, actually."

Another laugh. He was on a roll, even if he was only half kidding.

"Your mom seems nice."

"She's certainly the tamest of the three. Still, don't stand too close or look in their eyes. It's a trick."

"Noted." She paused with a lazy smile. "What about your dad? What does he do?"

Dear old Dad. A pang of longing hit his gut. "He passed away from a heart attack nine years ago."

"Oh wow. So young. I'm sorry. That must've been hard."

No sugarcoating that. "Took us all by surprise. He started the clinic thirty years ago. My brothers and I never thought of doing anything else but following in his shoes."

She nodded. "Has Flynn always been deaf?" Her cheeks flamed. "Is that too personal?"

"Nothing's too personal around here. And yes, he was born deaf. Fluke of nature."

"And Drake? I didn't get to see much of him, what with my eyes closed and me on the floor."

He barked out a surprised laugh. "Drake. What to say about him?" Nothing she wouldn't find out via town gossip. "He's...mourning. He married Heather, his high school sweetheart, right out of vet school. She died from an aggressive form of ovarian cancer three and a half years ago."

Avery was silent as she stared out the window, rubbing circles over her collarbone. As he was about to ask if she was all right, she cleared her throat. "I would be devastated."

Drake had been beyond devastated. He'd been wrecked. He was getting better, but it had taken Cade and Flynn a year to even get him to go anywhere besides the clinic, and another year to pack up Heather's things to send for charity. Seeing his brother like that made Cade never want to fall that hard for someone, never sink that deep.

"He took it rough. You haven't met her yet, but Zoe was Heather's best friend. Zoe's our groomer. She has a little workshop attached to the back of our building."

She seemed lost in thought as he made the turnoff for the store. "Who did the murals in the clinic? They're wonderful."

He grinned, happy for the topic change. "That would be Zoe. She paints when she's not wrestling dogs into bathtime submission." He parked and cut the engine before turning to look at her head on, his arm on the back of her seat, hand inches from her soft brown waves.

"Are you really okay with hiring me?"

Something told him not to brush off her question too casually. And hmm. She had a light dusting of freckles on her nose he hadn't noticed before. Her berry scent rose to claim him. He never thought fruit could be such a turn on.

"I'm very okay with hiring you." Suddenly, he had the strongest urge to prove to her not all men were dicks. But he'd been an ass the night they'd met, so her opinion of him couldn't be that high. It didn't sit right in his gut. "I'm sorry for the way I behaved when you brought in Seraph. Truly, I am."

Her lips parted and her breathing grew deeper. "You said that."

Forcing his gaze to hers, and not dropping it to her mouth like he wanted, he swallowed. "Bears repeating. I'm sorry." He studied her another moment. "Can you do the job?"

She blinked. "Yes."

One corner of his mouth quirked in a grin, the one he knew drove women crazy. Charming her had just become his mission. Damned if he knew why. "Then stop worrying about it."

---

Two hours into her new job on Monday, Avery knew she'd been handpicked for the position by the divinity himself. To use the term clusterfuck would be putting too much of a positive spin on the lack of organization.

They were going by a paper chart system, and there was no rhyme or reason to where they were stored. Some were in the back room, some on the front desk, others in the doctors' offices. It made her brain hurt. There was a small storage closet off the patient room hallway that wasn't in use.

After she'd finished her new employee paperwork, she turned to Rosa. "Can I do some organizing?" She didn't want to overstep her boundaries, especially on the first day, but to continue this Dr. Seuss system would waste patient time. Rosa would only be training her for two weeks before she retired, so now would be the best time to get anything done while someone was around to man the desk.

A slow grin spread over Rosa's face. "Organize, you say?"

"Um, yes." Why was she grinning like that?

Squawk. "Crazy."

Avery eyed the cockatoo on the perch by the window. She didn't know if the bird was calling Rosa crazy, Avery's attempt to organize crazy, or if it meant in a general sense. Either way, the feathered beauty was growing on her. It said the most random things and only spoke in song lyrics. She'd laugh if she could breathe among the clutter.

"You go right ahead, my dear. Organize to your heart's content." Rosa's grin was calculating, and after what Cade had told her a few days ago, Avery figured she'd best not ask.

Without a word, she made her way down the hall and propped open the storage closet, deciding to start in Cade's office. She eyed the two tall filing cabinets before chancing a peek inside the drawers. Empty. Shaking her head, she moved them into the storage closet along the wall, and proceeded to do the same thing with the empty filing cabinets from Drake and Flynn's offices.

She went back up front. "Which charts are for deceased patients?"

Rosa waved her hand behind her to the stack teetering by the printer.

Avery found a tote in the back room and dropped those charts inside before dragging it to the storage room in a corner. With one wall lined with filing cabinets, the other was bare, so she moved a few filing cabinets from the front desk area into the storage room and got to work putting charts away and labeling the drawers. By the time lunch rolled around, she was to the M's.

Cade walked past the room, stopped, and turned. He eyed her handiwork and put his hands on the top of the doorframe, stretching his light blue scrub top over his muscles. "Whatcha doing?"

Caught between filing cabinets and, well...a hard place, she pressed her lips together, trying not to stare at his yummy body. "Charting." She paused. She had asked Rosa first, but Animal Instincts belonged to Cade, Flynn, and Drake. "Are you mad I moved things?"

Humor infused his eyes, igniting all that blue. "Nope. Why don't you go to lunch? Or better yet, head over to the deli with me."

She bit her lip. "I was going to pop over to Hailey's school. You know, stalk her to see how she's doing."

His grin was slow and knowing. "Nervous, Mom? I'm sure she's doing fine."

She rubbed her forehead. "I know. It's just, she's..."

"Never been away from you this long?" He dropped his hands from the doorframe, still smiling. "Go on then, mama bear. We'll get lunch another time."

Mama bear? His tone was amused, low, raking over her skin. She shivered. Shivered, damn it! And why was he asking her to lunch? Before she could say more, he stepped away, leaving her to fan herself with a chart.

Brent walked past, chuckled as if the tech knew she was having a hot flash, and sashayed away.

Like it was her fault Cade was so lick-able.

Donning her coat, she walked the few blocks to Avery's school to get some air and chewed on a granola bar. It tasted like cardboard with chocolate chips, but she swallowed it to get something in her stomach.

Breathing deep, she inhaled humid air infused with pine and salt. The temperature remained in the upper thirties, but the stiff breeze was chilling. A low fog hovered in the distance, and Avery was learning it never really dissipated. Through rays of sun or storm-drenched clouds, it was always there, like a protective bubble for Redwood Ridge.

She passed many of the storefronts, figuring she'd make some time over the weekend to swing into them and check things out. The town square, set up more like an I-shape, was perhaps two miles long, with the vet office being near the southern end. The town catered to the tourism market with a café, bakery, bookstore, herbal cooking, and a candle shop, but there were also accounting offices, an attorney, and a dentist.

At the end of the street, she cut left and strode to the chain link fence encompassing the playground. She searched for Hailey, and found her off to the side with another little girl perhaps a year or two older. A teacher was helping Hailey bounce a rubber ball to the girl in a game of catch.

She stilled, fingers gripping the cold metal fence. Tears sprang to her eyes at the grin on Hailey's face and the bark of laughter that floated across the playground. Her chest swelled. Hailey had made a friend. On her first day! She wasn't distressed by the commotion of the other kids, but instead she...played.

"Is she yours?"

Avery turned to the woman next to her she hadn't noticed and swiped her eyes. She cleared the emotion from her throat. "Yes. We just moved here."

The woman nodded, tucking a stray piece of reddish hair behind her ear. Her gaze trained back to the girls. "That's my daughter, Jenny. Grew up my whole life here, but I still come by every day at recess to check on her. I can't help it. I work at the pharmacy. I'm April, by the way."

"Avery, and that's my daughter, Hailey." She glanced at the girls again, noticing the characteristics of Down syndrome in Jenny.

"Heard you fainted at the-"

Avery groaned, earning a laugh from April. "Who hasn't heard? I'm so embarrassed."

April's smile transformed her thin, regal face into something more approachable and friendly. "Did you faint because of the hot docs or something gory?"

She breathed a laugh. "Gory. I walked into the surgery room and down I went. Though the vets are attractive, aren't they?" She immediately bit her tongue at the unprofessionalism, her cheeks heating.

"Yep, all three of them. Smokin'. You'll learn soon enough the tactics some women will go to just to get their attention." April tilted her head. "Not many single options here in Redwood Ridge, never mind selections that delicious. You're a lucky woman, getting to work with them."

She shook her head at the tease.

April shoulder bumped her. "Oh, come on. You wouldn't be admitting anything the rest of us don't know."

"True. So what tactics have you used?" If this wasn't the oddest conversation...

"Nah. I'm happily married. My husband's a truck driver, so he's gone a lot." April shifted on her feet. "You're staying up at the rental cabins, right?" When Avery nodded, April said, "We're right down the road in the apartments. We should get the girls together sometime. They seem to be clicking."

They pulled out their phones and exchanged numbers before April headed back to work. Avery needed to take off, too, but she glanced at Hailey one more time. Sighing in contentment, she walked to the clinic, her heart so happy it hurt.

Until she walked in the door and found Drake leaning against the front desk, arms crossed and a surgical cap covering most of his dark hair. Flynn and Cade stood off to the side, watching her entry.

Her steps slowed as she glanced at the clock, wondering if she was late. But no, she still had five more minutes. Dread pitted her stomach as she unbuttoned her coat with shaking fingers. "Is everything okay?"

"You," Drake said, pointing a finger at her, his face an unreadable mask. "Did you do this?" He jerked his chin at the lack of charts and newly available counter space.

There was still a lot to be done, but not if they were angry. She'd asked Rosa first.

Avery slowly walked to the desk and edged around Drake, the granola bar she'd eaten sitting heavy in her stomach. "The charts for today's appointments are here in this basket. When you're done with them, I figured you could just set them back here, and I'll file them away."

Cade dropped his chin to his chest, lips quirking as if fighting a grin. Flynn stood next to him, eyeing the ceiling. Both men's expressions were in direct conflict with Drake's.

Silence stretched, but she kept her chin up. She'd done nothing wrong, had asked permission first, and heck, the place needed organizing. How had they found anything before she came along? And it had only been one morning.

Drake straightened and stepped into her space. "You," he said, stretching the word out, "are a keeper. Well done." With that, he strode down the hall to his office.

Avery's jaw dropped. She forced it closed.

Cade chuckled and swiped a hand down his face.

Flynn signed, "Thank you," and followed Drake.

At Cade's silent laugh, his shoulders bouncing, Avery narrowed her eyes. "Was it necessary to freak me out like that? You guys just can't pat me on the back like normal people?"

Squawk. "Don't fear the reaper."

Cade laughed harder.

Brent and Gabby walked in from the back. Brent lifted his brows at Avery's irritation and Cade's hysterics. "What'd we miss? Dish, doll."

Squawk. "Laughing on the outside."

She eyed the bird. "Be quiet."

"Don't go breaking my heart." Squawk.

Apparently, that had been the last thread of composure for Cade. He wiped his eyes and groaned in distress when he couldn't stop laughing. Walking past her, lips pressed together, he patted her on the back and followed his brothers.

Avery rolled her eyes and went to finish charting.

Squawk. "Don't go away mad."