Safe At Home

She glanced at the lioness. “Do you think maybe she might wake up before I have to leave?”

“Maybe.”

That decided her. She nodded.

“You go on,” Mace said. “I’ll back your truck out and leave it outside by the front door with the keys in it. Don’t want claw marks on it if she gets out.”

“Right,” Pete said.

“Oh, and Pete, if you do somehow manage to sleep in, I’ll feed the girls in the morning and check on our patient. I’ll wake you if I need you,” Mace said.

Pete hunkered down a moment beside the cat, whose great pink tongue lolled between long, white teeth. “She’ll probably wake us up early. If she starts mouthing off inside these metal walls, it’s gonna sound like the hallelujah chorus.”

Mace yawned and opened the door of Tala’s truck. “Whatever happens to her now, my dear, take it from me, you did a fine job.”

Pete shepherded her through the door in the far wall that led down a short hall to his quarters.

“What a sweet man,” she said when the door closed behind them.

“Tell that to the vet students he’s terrorized over the years.”

“Vet students?”

“Yeah. He taught veterinary medicine for twenty-five years. Lived and breathed it. Now he’s retired, he’s terrorizing me.” Pete opened a closet door and pulled out blankets, bedding and a pillow. “Now, we have to get you out of those wet clothes.”

“I just want a flat place to lie down before I fall down,” she said, looking around. The small living room obviously also served both as office and kitchen.

The gray tweed couch was plenty long enough, but from the looks of it, was nearly as old as the doctor himself. At this point, however, lumpy mattresses were the least of her concerns.

“You can have one of my old sweatshirts.” Pete looked her up and down. “Probably come down to your knees. And I keep fresh toothbrushes in the guest bathroom.”

For unexpected female overnight guests, no doubt. The ones who did not sleep on the couch. Although if he was as gracious to them as he’d been to her, she doubted he’d have many takers. “You’re very kind.”

He seemed to withdraw instantly from her small compliment. He tossed the bedding onto the sofa, disappeared into his bedroom, and a moment later tossed a gray sweatshirt on top of the pile. “Here. The guest bathroom’s down the hall. You passed it on the way in. Fresh towels under the sink.”

“Thank you.”

“G’night,” he said and shut his bedroom door. Not quite a slam, but close.

She made up her bed, stripped off her wet clothes in the bathroom and slipped on the sweatshirt. It had shrunk so short it barely covered her crotch, but was so big through the chest and so long in the arms that she probably resembled one of his “girls.” She waved a gray arm at the mirror like a trunk and considered trumpeting, but thought better of it. She didn’t think he’d be amused.

She tried to wring some of the water out of her long braid, pulled off the rubber band that held it and loosened her hair with her fingers. Come morning it would look as though rats had taken up residence, but at least it would be dry.

She realized she had left her purse with her comb inside her truck. It could darned well stay there. She’d retrieve it tomorrow morning.

She crawled onto the couch, snuggled down and listened to the rain drum on the windows.

She’d get up early and drive to the Newsome mansion in time to have breakfast with Vertie, Irene and the kids. She could hardly wait to tell them her wild story. Surely even thirteen-year-old Rachel couldn’t act blasé about a real live lion. Eight-year-old Cody would probably beg to skip school and drive right back to the sanctuary to see for himself. Her children thought she was pretty boring. If this didn’t make her at least a little interesting, nothing would.

She heard something more like a cough than a roar from that big room. Tala was up and through the door before she gave a thought to what might be waiting for her on the other side.

The lioness eased herself up on her good right paw and raised her head as she let out another half roar.

Tala dropped to her knees beside the kennel and laid a tentative hand flat against the wire mesh, ready to snatch it away. Instead, the cat butted her forehead against the mesh, for all the world like a house cat. “Hello, baby,” Tala crooned as she worked her fingers through the mesh to scratch behind the lioness’s ears. The animal rewarded her with a low thrumming sound.

“Are you nuts?” Pete Jacobi said from behind her.

“Look, she’s awake,” Tala said softly.

The lioness sat up and bared her teeth at Pete.

“Get out of there!” He grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet, then practically dragged her back through the door. Suddenly he seemed to realize he was holding a barefoot woman wearing nothing but a pair of lace underpants and his old sweatshirt. He dropped his hands and backed off, although she could have sworn that the look he gave her legs was appreciative.

A moment later he was his old grim self. “Woman, don’t you go through that door again under any circumstances. You hear me? The next time she could be sitting on top of the file cabinet waiting to bite your head off.”

“But—”

“Listen,” he said as though she were about three years old. “That is a lion in there. An L-I-O-N. It is not some big old pussycat. It is a carnivorous wild animal, and it’s hurt. It doesn’t know why it’s hurt or who hurt it, and it will not differentiate between the good guys and the bad. You, lady, are not its rescuer, you are breakfast. Are we clear on that?”

“But—”

“Are we clear?”

She nodded.

“Now go to bed and let me get a couple of hours’ sleep. And if she roars again, stick your head under the pillow and ignore her.”

But Tala found herself straining to hear another of those chuffing sounds.

After about five minutes of quiet, she began to drift off. The last face to swim into her consciousness was not Adam’s, but Pete Jacobi’s, his fierce amber eyes glowing out of a craggy face that seemed to morph into the face of a male lion with a heavy mane in place of his unruly hair. The face opened its mouth, but instead of that momentary smile she’d seen when he looked at the elephants, she saw only very long and very sharp teeth. The better to eat you with, my dear, she thought as sleep finally claimed her.

CHAPTER TWO

PETE JACOBI WAS HALFWAY through his morning shower before he remembered the woman asleep on the sofa. He must be in a bad way if he’d forgotten even for an instant the sight of those great legs sticking out from under his baggy old shirt. Very sexy. Much sexier than if she’d been naked.

Well, maybe not. Might be interesting to compare. He grinned at his reflection and arched an eyebrow at himself. Yeah.

Once she stopped looking like a drowned possum she’d turned into a good-looking woman. But too thin. Still, she either had gumption—or no brains at all.

He dressed as quietly at he could and opened the bedroom door. He half expected her to be up and gone. He hoped she wasn’t. It would be nice if she stayed long enough for a cup of coffee and for him to check out his perceptions about her from last night. He wanted to see whether those big dark eyes were as stunning as he remembered.

From his door he saw one very shapely leg and bare foot sticking out from under a pile of quilts on the couch, and a cloud of long, heavy black hair spread over the other end of the quilt and falling almost to the floor. Somewhere between the two, the owner of hair and leg slept on.

Her right hand lay draped over the arm of the couch. The hand was thin and almost too fine-boned. Her nails were short and unvarnished, but well kept. He realized with a pang that he hadn’t noticed whether she wore a wedding ring or not, and suddenly hoped that she didn’t.

Pete shook his head, surprised at himself for his interest in her. He tiptoed past the couch and opened the door to the back room silently, then slipped through.

The lioness lay on her right side with her bandaged shoulder up. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth gaped. Her tongue lolled from the corner of her mouth.

For a panicky moment he was afraid she wasn’t breathing, then he saw the slow rise and fall of her rib cage.

“Morning, son,” said a voice behind him. “Gave her another shot for pain. She has been sleeping the sleep of the innocent and pure of heart for some time. Where’s your lady friend?”

“Doing the same, although she might not be so pure and innocent if she’s driving country roads alone at two in the morning.”

Mace Jacobi grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “What’s that old song about preferring the sadder but wiser girl? Especially one as good-looking as that.”

“Too scrawny. I didn’t know there was a New-some daughter.”

“There isn’t. Irene Newsome lost her only child more than a year ago. He was something fairly high up in the Fish and Wildlife. Supposedly shot by a poacher. Had a wife and a couple of kids. That’s probably his widow you’ve got on your couch.” Mace slapped a couple of white-wrapped packages on the steel table, looked at them over his bifocals and began to unwrap them. “I haven’t had time to feed the girls yet.”

“No problem. I’ll do it.” Pete hooked a bale of alfalfa and carried it toward the elephant enclosure. The girls waited impatiently, trunks swinging, their beady black eyes expectant. “What are you doing, Dad?” he asked on his way by.

“I started thawing a couple of deer-neck roasts last night. Thought I’d carve ’em up for Tala’s baby over there. She’s going to be mighty hungry when she wakes up.”

“If she wakes up.”

Mace peered at him over his glasses. “Oh, she’ll wake up, all right. You did a good job. Every bit as good as I was at your age.”

Pete broke the wires on the alfalfa and tossed fat green flakes through the bars for his girls. “Good morning, girls,” he said with affection. They looked down their trunks at him. Once again he was aware of how differently they responded to Mace. They were much warmer toward his father. Pete seemed to have lost his “trunkside manner.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to sleep so long,” came a soft voice from behind him. Amazingly, his girls raised their heads in unison and lifted their trunks toward the voice. They never greeted him like that.

He’d long since realized that elephants were a whole lot more perceptive than human beings. The girls were aware of his fondness for them, but no matter how well he fed, scrubbed, pampered and babied them, they still treated him with a kind of offhand exasperation. Maybe they sensed his unhappiness—his guilt over past mistakes. Maybe one day they’d decide he’d made the grade and grant him their complete trust and affection.

“You were exhausted, m’dear,” said Mace without looking up from the meat cleaver in his hands. “As soon as I get this done, we’ll go over to my trailer and I’ll make us all a good hot breakfast. The coffee’s already on.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I’ve already—”

“Nonsense,” Mace rumbled. “My pancakes are legendary.” He peered over his glasses at her. “You could use some honey and maple syrup.”

Tala went to the lioness’s cage and hunkered down. “How is she?” she whispered.

“As well as can be expected,” Pete answered. “Dad doped her up again for the pain.”

She put her left hand against the wire mesh and caressed the lioness gently. “Sweet Baby,” she said. The lioness rumbled softly.

She wore no wedding ring. Pete was surprised at the relief he felt. Then as he leaned forward he saw that she wore a gold chain around her neck. Two gold bands, one larger and wider than the other, hung on the chain. Her wedding ring? Her dead husband’s? He sighed.

Not that he was looking for a relationship. Not after Val. His heart lurched at the memory of Val, and his never-ending guilt.

Her fingers toyed gently with the pelt on the lioness’s head. Pete took a deep breath at the thought of those fingers curling in the heavy mat of hair on his chest. He set his jaw, furious with himself that he’d allowed even that momentary distraction.

After a moment, Tala stood up easily and gracefully, something not many women could do from that kind of position.

Pete realized he was staring. No, glaring was more like it. She was too thin, all right, but definitely stood out in the right places. She’d plaited her dark hair into a single braid that hung down her back almost to her waist. The overhead light cut shadows under her strong cheekbones. Showed the circles under her eyes as well, unfortunately.

She smiled at him tentatively. “I folded the bed-clothes and the shirt and put them on the foot of your bed,” she said.

He rumbled something at her. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her eyes. He’d never seen eyes that dark or that wide on a human being. They tilted at the corners, and even without makeup her lashes swept her cheeks.

“Last night you said you’d introduce me,” she said and walked over to him. She moved like a dancer. Maybe she’d been a dancer at one time. Could be that was the reason she was so thin.

“Sure.” Why did he always sound so abrupt when he spoke to her? “Sophie is on the right, the one in back is Sweetiepie, and the big one is Belle.”

“She’s the one that patted my head with her trunk last night and nearly scared me witless,” Tala said, smiling over his shoulder.

He gaped at her. “She touched you?”

“Through the bars. Very gently. I knew you had elephants, of course, but I didn’t know how many, and I hadn’t seen them before. I was half-asleep in that old kitchen chair pushed right up against them. I didn’t realize it was their cage.”

He bristled. “They’re not caged. Not any longer.”

“I loved it.” She leaned against the bars. “They are beautiful, aren’t they?”

“Should have seen them when they got here,” he said. “Skin and bones.”

Mace looked up over the tops of his glasses. “The bars are to keep them from investigating—actually I mean destroying—this room. Elephants are endlessly curious. Unfortunately, they are also incredibly destructive while they’re about it.”

“But last night, Belle touched me so gently.”

“She wasn’t interested in seeing the inside of your brain,” Pete said. “But if she decided to see the inside of that cabinet over there—” he pointed toward the drug cabinet “—she would just as carefully knock it over and stomp it until the doors popped off to check out what’s inside.”

“Oh.” Tala glanced at the girls, who were keeping one eye on her while they bundled hay into their mouths. “Would you do that?” she asked Sophie.

As if in answer, Sophie dipped her head and curled her trunk.

Tala laughed.

Pete jumped. Her laugh was low, but it seemed to glitter in the chill air. Suddenly he felt as though he’d happily stick on a false nose and do pratfalls over floppy clown shoes if he could hear her laugh again. Too long without a woman, he decided, that was all it was. Too much Mace, too many elephants, not enough human companionship.

A low growl came from the lioness’s enclosure. Tala looked at her quickly. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to wake the baby.”

Suddenly she was all mouse again, anxious and subdued.

“The scent of meat woke her, not you. Ah, m’dear,” Mace said over his shoulder, “might we be ready for a bite of breakfast?” He smiled over at Tala. “I’d say you’ve been christened Baby.” The lioness stared at him with narrow, yellow eyes.

“Watch it, Mace,” Pete said. “A hungry cat is a dangerous cat. Your dictum, remember? First time I went to work at the zoo.”

“This particular baby, however, is missing both her front claws and her top left incisor,” Mace said. “She could still kill me, but she’d have to work at it.”

“What?” Tala asked. She looked from the older man to the younger. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“No reason to,” Pete told her. “Didn’t make much difference last night. But it means she’s been somebody’s pet—inasmuch as a lion can ever be a pet.”

“But people will still try,” Mace said, neatly arranging bits of meat and bone in a steel bucket. The lioness rumbled in anticipation.

“Surely they know better,” Tala said. “I mean, look at the size of her, and you say she’s still young.”

Pete shrugged. “They watch a National Geographic special or an episode of Nova and see a bunch of cute lion cubs playing around on-screen and they think how great it would be to have something like that. So they pick up the phone and order one.”

“Order one? Like a pizza?”

“Not quite that simple, but even now that the government has cracked down on importing exotic animals, there are plenty of places where you can buy a lion cub born in the States and have it brought to you, if you’ve got the money, that is.”

“But it’s illegal to own exotic animals, isn’t it?” she said. “In Tennessee, I mean.”

“Sure is,” Pete agreed, forking another flake of hay toward Belle. “Some people think they’re above the law. Of course, in some places lions are used to police marijuana patches and other illegal operations. Scarier than dogs.”

“My word,” she exclaimed. “You mean she might have been guarding something up by the Hollow? What about the deer? How could you keep her from roaming to hunt?”

“Maybe you couldn’t. Maybe she got out and her owner shot her when he couldn’t get her back.”

“I can’t believe that. I grew up in the Hollow, and I wander all over it in the summertime. There’s not enough flat land to grow a decent crop of collard greens, much less marijuana.”

“All the easier to hide the plants in, m’dear,” Mace said. “You’d be surprised what some people will get up to in the name of money. Still, I wouldn’t think anyone would have declawed her or defanged her for use as a guard. More likely she was a pet that got too big and was dumped too far from home to find her way back.”

“And then shot?”

“Possibly by someone who thought she was a cougar,” Pete said. “She’s the right color.”

“But they’re protected,” Tala said. “And terribly rare. My husband was a warden and spent a good deal of time in the woods, but even he’d never seen one. I certainly haven’t. As we said, Tennessee has awfully strict laws about exotic and protected animals. People were surprised you were able to get permission to bring in your elephants.”

“You should have seen the hoops I had to jump through,” Pete said. “And the girls aren’t going to eat the neighbor’s poodle—or the neighbor’s kid, come to that.”

“No. But they might stomp him, mightn’t they?” Tala asked.

“Highly unlikely. I only take female Indian elephants. They can be a nuisance and certainly get cranky sometimes, but now that they can move around the place freely, they enjoy life—possibly for the first time since they stopped nursing on their mothers. And I’ve gone to great pains with the twelve-foot fences to ensure they don’t go rampaging through the soybean fields around here.”

Mace held the steel bucket out to Pete. “Here. Feed the lioness.”

Pete felt Tala’s breath on his shoulder as he turned away from her and walked over to the lioness’s enclosure. The cat raised her body on her right paw and tried to stand. She made a deep trilling sound in the back of her throat, then let out a full-throated roar that shook the steel walls.

“Hold on,” Pete said. He set the bucket down in front of the door to the enclosure, opened it a few inches and used the end of his pitchfork to shove the bucket inside. Then he quickly closed and locked the door.

The cat instantly swiped at the bucket with her muzzle and knocked it over so that its contents spilled on the concrete in front of her blanket. She collapsed in front of it and began to eat noisily.

Pete stood and felt Tala’s hand on his arm. Her fingers felt warm and gentle.

“She’s hungry. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a good sign.”

“What happens now?” Tala asked.

“Damned if I know. We could be in big trouble just having her here. I need to call the Fish and Wildlife people. Find out what they want to do with her. You know anybody over there I could talk to?”

“I guess so. But please, don’t call yet. I know they’ll drag her off. Maybe they’ll shoot her!” Tala’s dark eyes were enormous.

“Look, she obviously belongs to somebody. Illegally, but maybe somebody’s looking for her.”

“The same somebody who’s already tried to shoot her! The one who bought that cute little cub a couple of years ago. You can’t abandon her.”

Maybe he’d been wrong about her being a wimp, Pete thought. Plenty of fight in her now.

“I can’t risk the sanctuary either.” He gestured toward the girls, who were watching the interchange avidly, as though they understood every word.

“She needs sanctuary, too. Just because she’s not an elephant…”

“I am not licensed as a big-cat sanctuary.”

“Somebody must be.”

He took a deep breath. “Dammit, I can’t take on new problems. I have my hands full with three elephants. Do you have any idea how much it costs to feed even one cat that big?”

“How much?” Tala asked.

“What?”

“How much does it cost to feed a big cat?”

Pete glanced over at his father, who had leaned his rear end against the end of the examining table, crossed his ankles, and was regarding them as though they were playing mixed doubles at Wimbledon. “Dad?”

“Nebraska Zoo Food charges ten bucks per ten-pound feed. Normally she should have one a day, but skinny as she is, and with her wound, I’d say two a day plus extra vitamins would be more like it.”

“That’s a dollar a pound, two thousand dollars a ton. Plus shipping and handling?” She looked at Mace.

Mace shook his head. “No tax either. Animal food is not taxable.”

“I know that. We used to raise pigs.” She turned back to Pete. “You haven’t told me how much the surgery and drugs and things are going to cost.”

Pete had already decided not to charge for his services. But he needed to convince her that keeping the lioness was not an option. “At least a thousand dollars,” he said, and stared Mace down as though daring the other man to contradict him. “Even if we were to keep her until she’s well, we’d have to construct a decent enclosure for her. And she’s got to be kept clean, medicated. It’s a hell of a job.”

“We…I…have an account at the co-op in town. They have heavy-duty construction fencing and steel posts.”

“Somebody’d still have to build it. And that would mean letting them know we’ve got a lion on our hands. Besides, that doesn’t solve the problem of what to do with her in the long run.”

“Don’t you know any sanctuaries for big cats?” Tala asked, desperation in her voice.

Pete’s annoyance evaporated. “Yeah. There’s a network of sanctuaries across the country. We’re all familiar with each other, whether we have elephants or big cats, or apes—whatever needs rescuing.”

“Then please keep her till you can find her a decent home!”

“You realize you’re asking me to break the law and costing me a bunch of money I need for the girls.”

“I can’t do anything about the law except to say that if anything happens I promise to take all the blame and get my mother-in-law to go to bat for you as well. She’s on the county council. As to the money—I’ve got a little saved up, and we can charge the stuff at the co-op, and maybe we can make some arrangement for me to work off the rest. I can pour cement and dig postholes.” She looked around the room. “You could use some help. I’m a hard worker, and I’m quick with figures.”

“If I need any help, which I don’t,” Pete said, “and can’t afford if I did, I’d want a man capable of shoveling elephant dung, not—”

“A skinny half-pint woman?” Tala asked. “Look, I’ve been digging and shoveling all my life. I can drive a tractor and use a front-loader with the best of them. I may be skinny, but I’m tough.” She shoved her sleeve up and made a fist at him.

He had to admit her arms were sinewy.