Over His Head

She still carried the scent of him in her nostrils. She hadn’t been that close to a sweaty male in much too long. Time was when she and Peter used to shower together every night after the horses had been bedded down. She could still remember the feel of his strong hands kneading the kinks out of her shoulders, sliding down her body…

She hit her pillow with a couple of vicious blows. Peter was long gone out of her life. Lord knew how many other women he’d scrubbed since she’d divorced him. She still read about him in the horse magazines as his newly developed riders won trophies and awards.

“I have to thank my trainer, Peter Lombardi, for finding—insert horse’s name—for me and training us. We owe this win to him.” Or variations on that theme. The riders in question were always young, frequently blonde, invariably rich, occasionally talented. She still felt smug that he’d never found another rider who was as talented and fearless as she’d been, who could ride his green horses over fences and make them look like champions. Someone who could ride his crazy jumpers over fences that made the average rider sick with fear.

He’d never married any of the rest of them, either. Well, not so far.

She sat up and leaned against her headboard. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy. She crawled out of bed, padded into the kitchen and pulled out the milk jug. Even in summer, a cup of hot chocolate was a guaranteed soporific. After all, she lived in an air-conditioned cottage.

She mixed herself a mug and slid it into the microwave. Two percent milk, nonfat chocolate powder. Unfortunately she’d never discovered a nonfat, nonsugar marshmallow. As she took out her steaming cup, she turned and saw Lancelot’s little eyes watching her. “Oh, nuts,” she said and poured a little chocolate into a saucer, blew on it, then set it down in front of him. The cats weren’t allowed to have chocolate, but they didn’t like it anyway, and Lancelot wouldn’t be caught dead sharing. He set to with pleasure.

She took the hot chocolate out onto her front porch, sat in one of the old white cane rockers and pulled her feet up under her. The temperature had dropped to a respectable eighty degrees, and there was a fresh breeze blowing through the leaves of the big oak that shaded her roof. She blessed her mother’s genes that kept the mosquitoes from biting her.

The house across the street was dark. She wondered where Tim slept. She hoped he didn’t wear pajamas. She’d always thought men who slept in both top and bottoms were kind of wimpy and old-fashioned, but then she thought of male teachers as pretty wimpy on the whole. Hers certainly had been. Teaching high school must be a real comedown for somebody like that. She wondered if he was running away from some sort of scandal.

The kind of strong muscles she’d felt when he’d wrapped his arms around her didn’t come from sitting behind a desk all day talking about Shakespeare and Tennyson. He must run, swim, lift weights—something to keep in shape. That kind of man probably slept nude.

The rocking chair seemed to have increased its speed. She shuddered and throttled it back. When the vision of an attractive man laying naked in bed brought her nipples to full attention and darned near tossed her out of the rocking chair on her nose, she knew she’d been alone in her own bed far too long.

One of the few good memories from her marriage was sleeping curled against Peter’s naked back. Peter only wore pajamas to bed when Poppy, her stepdaughter from hell, or as Nancy called her, “The Worst Seed,” stayed over.

Tim Wainwright apparently was raising at least two bad seeds of his own. Maybe three if Eddy was as weird as he seemed.

More reason to avoid the entire family. “If you’re lousy at something,” Dr. Mac always said, “quit doing it and take up something you’re good at.”

She felt incompetent to deal with other people’s children, and was absolutely, positively the world’s worst stepmother. She hoped she hadn’t scarred Poppy for life, although Poppy had inflicted some deep wounds of her own. Nancy swore she’d never give anyone a chance to slice and dice her again, nor did she intend to be responsible for even partially rearing anyone else’s kids.

She just had to arm her libido against Tim Wainwright and the heady way his touch had made her feel.

She’d slept alone too long. She’d almost forgotten how it felt to have a man inside her, driving both of them higher until the explosion of pleasure took them over the top.

Hoo, boy. Enough of that.

She sighed and went to open the front door. Before she could get inside, she felt a sharp little foot on her instep.

“No! Lancelot.” She shoved him back, slipped in and shut the door. “You’re staying here, understand? Helen and Bill will come over to visit, and you’ll be going to your new home with them before you realize it.” She set her cup down in the sink, picked up his dish and put it to soak, then went and climbed back into bed. This time she absolutely, positively must get some sleep. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be one god-awful day.

SHE WOKE UP AT DAWN as always, even on Saturday. When she started to sit, she realized her neck was giving her fits. She’d been too tense the day before. Now she’d pay for it. She pulled on a sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of threadbare low-rider cutoffs and padded into the kitchen barefoot to take Lancelot out for his morning potty break.

Poddy and Otto slept curled together in the pet bed, but Lancelot wasn’t in the kitchen. “Lancelot, if you’re in the living room making a mess, I swear I’ll barbecue you,” she called. The cats each opened one eye, then went back to sleep. She rounded the corner and saw at once that the front door was ajar. She must not have latched it properly when she’d come back in. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She grabbed Lancelot’s leash and harness and ran out onto the front porch. He was nowhere in sight.

“Damn! I’ll bet he’s gone back home.” She raced down the steps, taking care to slam the door behind her so that Otto and Poddy couldn’t wander. The asphalt of the lane already felt hot on the soles of her bare feet, but she ignored it, hopping a couple of times when she stepped on pebbles, as she ran across Tim’s lawn to his back door.

She nudged the pet door with her toe. It moved, so he hadn’t locked it, although she didn’t think the Wainwrights had a pet. She bent down, swung it open and tried to see into the kitchen. Next, she tried the back door. Locked.

Most of the people in Williamston left their doors open when they were home.

She peered through the window in the door, shading her eyes to see into the gloom. No sign of Lancelot. He must be inside somewhere. He’d probably scare those children into catatonia.

She raced around to the front of the house, tiptoed onto the front porch and tried to see into the room the Halliburtons had used for their master bedroom. The curtains were drawn. She could see only a sliver of a foot of the bed.

Okay, Okay, she thought, what do I do? Bang on the door, ring the doorbell, wake those city folks up at five on a Saturday morning to tell them they have an intruder? Somehow she didn’t think they’d be pleased. Besides, Lancelot was her responsibility, and this was her fault.

Only one thing to do.

She went to the back porch again. “Please, Helen,” she prayed. “Please have left the spare key over the door.” She stood on tiptoe and felt around. Her index finger touched something metallic.

She dislodged it, saw the key fall, made a grab for it in midair and missed.

It clinked on the porch steps. She dived after it and caught it before it could clink again. Now on her hands and knees bent over the step, she wondered whether she’d actually have the nerve to use it.

She and the Halliburtons had looked after each other’s property a million times. They knew where she hid her spare key, and where the spare keys to her storage shed and car were kept in the kitchen. She’d watered Helen’s house plants when they were out of town, and taken in their mail and newspapers. Helen and Bill had fed the cats when she was gone.

But this wasn’t Helen and Bill. New owners often changed locks. Maybe the key wouldn’t even fit.

Tentatively she slid the key into the lock. It went in. She began to twist it slowly. It turned. The lock clicked.

Now what? Barge in, call out, “Yoo-hoo, it’s Nancy!” and assume Tim hadn’t had time to get a handgun permit yet? Technically she wasn’t breaking in, but she was definitely entering.

She took a deep breath, put her hand along the jamb to keep the door from squeaking, opened it and stepped into the kitchen.

The refrigerator door stood ajar. On the floor in front of it was a bottle of Perrier. Intact, thank the Lord. So far as she knew, Lancelot had not yet learned to open screw caps. She put the sparkling water back. The refrigerator was empty except for several more bottles of Perrier and a couple of big bottles of soda—also screw-on tops. Lancelot must have been extremely disappointed. He could open any pop-top can he could reach.

She closed the refrigerator softly and looked around for evidence of destruction.

The kitchen looked clean. Cluttered, of course. At least a dozen cardboard boxes sat on the counters waiting to be unpacked, but Lancelot hadn’t been able to reach high enough to pull any of them off in his lifelong quest for treats.

She stood in the archway leading to the living room and listened. For a moment, there was nothing but silence, then she heard a soft snore from across the living room and down the hall. Tim must be sleeping in the Halliburtons’ master bedroom. She prayed Lancelot had gone in there and not up the stairs to join one of the children.

Slipping silently across the wood floor, she edged around the boxes and furniture in the living room and started down the hall. The door at the end was open and the snoring was louder now.

Five feet from that door she saw the figure in the bed. Wainwright.

He was not alone.

Beside him, spooned against his belly, head on a pillow, lay Lancelot.

He was the one snoring.

Wainwright lay under a single sheet, his naked shoulders exposed, his arm thrown casually across Lancelot’s back. He was breathing evenly.

She got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the room.

“Lancelot,” she whispered. “Get down here.”

No response. She crawled closer. “Lancelot!” It was hard to whisper with menace, but she tried. “Get down here this instant.”

Lancelot raised his head and stared at her unperturbed.

“Now!”

“Wha…?”

She froze. Please, God, don’t let him wake up.

Tim sighed.

She shut her eyes and began to back out on her hands and knees.

“What the hell!”

He sat straight up in bed. No pajama top. No pajama bottoms, either. Apparently, he saw her on her hands and knees two feet inside his bedroom at the same time he registered that his bed buddy was not the houri he’d no doubt been dreaming about.

He didn’t exactly shriek. The sound was too deep and male for that. He gave a sort of combined gurgle and yelp and lunged sideways off the bed.

His feet hit the floor. He grabbed the sheet and held it waist-high in front of him, but not before she had a glimpse of a well-muscled hairy stomach.

For a moment he simply gaped at her.

“Hi,” she said, and wiggled her fingers at him.

Lancelot, thoroughly awake now and aware that he was sleeping with a stranger, squealed, fell onto the floor and tried to wedge himself under the bed. Since the bed was low and modern, he only made it as far as his snout.

“That is a pig,” Tim said, pointing to the bristly butt sticking up on the far side of the bed. He sounded very, very calm.

“Uh-huh.” Nancy sat back on her heels. She held up Lancelot’s harness and leash.

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation why he was sharing my bed. Is it a he?”

She nodded. “His name is Lancelot.”

“And an equally simple explanation why you’re crouching at the foot of my bed at dawn.”

She nodded. “I was after Lancelot.”

“I see. Apart from the obvious question of how he wound up in my bed, it occurs to me to wonder if you’ve ever heard the term ‘doorbell.’”

Oh, boy. This guy was a good deal more annoying when he was in the right. She pushed herself up to a standing position and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Isn’t that kind of you.”

“Well, you’re the one who left the pet flap unlocked.”

“My mistake. I should have realized I’d wind up in bed with a pig. Sorry.”

“Listen, you. It could have been a possum or a raccoon or God forbid a skunk. Not to mention a copperhead or a water moccasin.”

“I’m curious. Did you also crawl in the dog door? Frankly you don’t look as though you’d fit.” He ran his gaze from her head to her toes.

She wished she’d taken the time to put on her sneakers, let alone a bra and underpants. She felt her face flame. She knew damned well her nipples were standing out to here, and her shorts not only bared her navel, but covered precious little below it.

“No, I did not crawl in the pet door,” she said with hauteur. “I used the spare key over the back door.”

“Ah. The spare key over the back door. My, I wish someone had mentioned that to me.”

“Here it is,” she said and tossed it onto the rumpled bed.

“Thank you.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll put Lancelot’s harness on and take him home.”

He waved a hand, nearly dropped the sheet and clutched it in front of him again. At that moment, she realized he was standing in front of a full-length mirror that had been propped against the wall beside the bed. The sheet might be concealing the family jewels, but she was learning a good deal more about Mr. Wainwright’s backside than she had thought she ever would. It was an extremely nice backside. Better than nice. Great. She felt her temperature rising just looking at him. If only he knew.

She gulped and grabbed Lancelot. She had to get away from that mirror before he caught her staring and turned around to see what had riveted her. “Lancelot belongs to the Halliburtons, the tenants you evicted,” she said. “The poor baby’s staying with me because they can’t have pets in the poky little apartment they’re stuck with in Collierville, while they try to find a house they can afford closer to Williamston. He just wanted to come home where his people loved him.” She hoped she was laying it on thick enough. Although she doubted he’d care.

She clipped the leash to Lancelot’s harness, stood and began to haul him toward the bedroom door. “It won’t happen again. I apologize for our intrusion.”

“No problem.”

Now she had to turn her back to him. She knew her shorts weren’t much less revealing of her backside than what she’d seen in the mirror of his.

“Do you always go barefoot?” he asked.

“In the summer, often. Seldom in January.” Better than bare-assed, she thought, and despite all her efforts, began to snicker. “Come on, Lancelot, bad pig,” she said and pulled on his leash. He squealed and yanked back.

She made it all the way to the back steps before uncontrollable laughter broke the surface. She sank onto the back steps, hugged Lancelot to her and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

At the same moment that Nancy began to laugh, Tim dropped his sheet and turned around. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing in the full-length mirror—and to realize what Nancy Mayfield had been looking at for the past five minutes.

That’s when he heard her laughing.

CHAPTER FIVE

NANCY HAD BARELY dragged Lancelot home and fed him and the cats when her doorbell rang. She froze. It had to be Tim Wainwright. No doubt infuriated. No doubt accusing her of burglary, being a Peeping Tom and assault with a deadly pig.

Might as well face him now. After all, he was supposed to drive her to the car rental agency. If he didn’t, she was stuck, and she needed to check on the mastiff and the Jack Russell at the clinic. Not to mention the usual Saturday grocery shopping. She opened the door prepared for a frontal assault, no pun intended.

The kid—Eddy, was it?—stood on the doorstep. He stared up at her with those blank, unblinking blue eyes. He was cradling something in his arms.

She caught her breath. All puppies looked pretty much alike at this age except in size, but this one had come from small parents and would probably stay small itself. Possibly some mixed variety that included Jack Russell terrier and dachshund.

Eddy held it out to her. “Please?” he said. His voice sounded rusty from disuse, deep and gravelly for a child his age.

She feared the pup was dead from the way it lay in the child’s arms, but when she took it, she felt the flutter of a small heart. And the warmth of blood on her palms. She turned and raced for her kitchen, as she called over her shoulder, “Come in, shut the door behind you tight so the animals don’t get out.”

She heard the sound of the lock clicking into place and then the patter of bare feet on her floorboards.

She grabbed a dry dish towel off the rack beside the sink and laid the pup on it. Poor little thing, it was too traumatized or too hurt to fight. “Hit by a car, probably,” she said as she gently lifted the satiny brown baby hair away from the place she had felt blood.

She gasped. The flesh was raw, the burns so deep she could see blistered muscle tissue. The pup wriggled and mewed more like a small kitten than a dog. Instantly Poddy jumped onto the drain board. “Down, Poddy, go ’way. I’m not hurting it.”

She felt rather than saw Eddy beside her. “Please,” he whispered again.

“Did you do this?” she asked sharply without taking her eyes off the pup. She ran cold water over a dish towel and, folding it, placed it over the wound, then turned to glare down at him.

He shook his head. Those blue eyes stared into hers, and for the first time she saw expression in him. A single tear ran down his cheek, cutting a swatch through the dirt. “I found him.” He reached out and touched the brown pup’s little skull tentatively. “Please don’t let him die.” Without warning, he began to shake his head fiercely and backed away from the sink. “Mustn’t die, mustn’t die!”

She caught his shoulder. He was thin, but wiry. He was as tense as a crossbow. Probably just as ready to snap. “I won’t lie. He’s in shock. Otherwise you’d never have been able to carry him. He’d have bitten you.”

She turned back to the sink. “Somebody’s poured lighter fluid or kerosene on him and lit it, but they did a lousy job. He must have broken loose and put out the fire in the damp grass. He’s brown. He wouldn’t have been easy to spot in the dark once the fire was out.”

“Somebody hurt him? On purpose?”

As she talked, she gently cleaned the debris and grass away, then placed a dry towel over the pup to keep him warm. “It’s nasty and deep, but you did the right thing bringing him to me. Let’s see what I can do.”

Her voice had gentled frightened animals for years. Let’s see if I can gentle this little Eddy beast, she thought as she went to get the first-aid case she kept at home. She was used to opening the door to neighbors with baby squirrels or birds that had fallen from nests, hurt cats and dogs, momma possums hit by cars with their bellies still full of their young—everything including snakes and cows…even the occasional fawn. So her kit was extensive.

By the time she came back, Poddy was sitting on the counter beside the pup. Wonder of wonders, Eddy was stroking him, not a liberty he allowed many people. Lancelot watched them from his basket. She didn’t think Eddy had noticed him yet. “Okay,” she said, “let’s spray a bit of painkiller over that wound, so we can clean it up and see what we’ve got.” She looked down at Eddy. “Won’t your father wonder where you are?”

He shook his head without taking his eyes off the pup or his grubby, small hand off Poddy. “He’s asleep.”

“I don’t think he is.” Probably calling the cops. “You sure you want to watch?” she asked. “Then we’ll call your father so he won’t worry.”

“Not watch. Help.”

She dealt frequently with people who didn’t want to watch or even to help when their animals were in pain, and many parents who felt junior’s tender sensibilities couldn’t take watching the birth of the kittens or the excision of a sarcoid tumor on a horse’s flank. As far as Nancy was concerned, if a child was old enough to ask to watch, he was old enough to know the truth about the event. She didn’t particularly enjoy children, considered herself hopeless with them, so she treated them like adults. It was all she knew to do.

“Okay,” she said. “Hold his jaws together gently. He’s warming up and really starting to hurt. He’s small, but he can still bite.” The pup had begun to whine and scrabble. She was afraid to give him a shot—any amount of sedative could kill him. She pulled on latex gloves and sprayed the wound with a solution that would deaden the tissue at once.

Eddy stood beside her with his fingers around the pup’s jaw. Without asking, he took the pup’s four legs in his other hand to keep the pup still, as Nancy clipped what remained of singed fur and trimmed off the seared skin around the deepest part of the burn.

Give the kid credit. He didn’t back off from the blood or the stench of burned hair and skin. On closer look, the blisters weren’t as deep as she’d thought. The actual muscles hadn’t been attacked, nor had any of the major blood vessels. She finished cleaning and treating the pup with antiburn salve, antibiotics and more painkiller, then bound the wound around the pup’s belly. “Okay, kid, that’s got it for the moment,” she said as she peeled off her gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket.

“Will he be all right?”

“No idea, but I think so. He’s going to need care. He’s probably eating on his own, but his mother may still suckle him as well. Did you find any others like this?”

Eddy shook his head.

Nancy shuddered. Please God let’s hope this was the only victim. The mother and other pups might not have been so lucky. “Where’d you find him? And what are you doing up so early anyway?” She slipped her hands under the pup, towel and all. “Go into my bathroom. Linen closet’s the little door on the left. Bring me a couple of towels. We’ll make him a bed.”

Eddy didn’t ask questions. He stiffened for a moment when he spotted Lancelot, and edged warily around his bed, but he got the towels. Together they settled the pup on top of a folded blue bath towel, and covered him with another to keep him warm.

“Ever nurse a puppy?”

Eddy shook his head.

“Then it’s time you learned.” She fetched one of the small nursing bottles and a box of dry puppy milk formula from her case, mixed up the formula with warm water and put the nipple on. She handed the bottle to the child, who immediately hunkered down beside the pup.

“Snuggle him in your lap, towel and all.”

Eddy did as he was told, and within seconds the puppy was suckling contentedly.

She was certain Lancelot would intrude the moment he smelled the milk. Amazingly he seemed to understand that this was one time he shouldn’t. He didn’t take his eyes off Eddy, but he stayed in his bed and confined his comments to the occasional snuffle.

She sat on the floor beside the boy. “Now, where’d you find him? Do you know who did this?”

He shook his head. “I went out in the yard. You fix animals, so I brought him.”

He must have been outside while she’d been trying to spring Lancelot from Tim’s bed. She wondered how he planned to get back into the house. The back door locked automatically when it was on the latch as she had left it. He probably hadn’t thought that far ahead.

The Halliburtons’ yard—she had to stop thinking of it as the Halliburtons’—was surrounded by thick woods that went down to the lake. Hers, across the lane, had a ten-acre pasture behind it with an old barn. The rest of the fifty acres she owned was covered in equally dense woods.