Chapter One
There was a beast standing at Savannah’s door. A statuesque monster at least double her size. She had just arrived in the town of Carson, North Carolina and feared that her troubles had followed her to the place she had felt the safest. The place she thought no one would be able to find her.
Except this man was standing with his suit rumpled and wrinkled. Nothing like the men she had seen outside of her apartment in Baltimore, Maryland. Those men had been dressed in designer suits that she knew cost more than her entire building.
As she stared back at the stranger surrounded by the darkness of her grandfather’s front porch, Savannah wondered how she got into this mess to begin with. How did she end up having to look over her shoulder at every little noise?
This was never supposed to be her life. She had wanted to live in a big city since she was a little girl. Though Savannah enjoyed the summers as a little girl visiting her grandfather in Carson, where she got her love of animals, this place left her feeling confined.
But here she was, answering her grandfather’s door as he took a long-overdue vacation and overseeing his house.
Savannah continued to stare back at the stranger as his dark gaze traveled up and down her body. That was when she remembered that only a thin, pale pink nightie separated her and the visitor. She considered covering her chest with her arms, knowing he was getting an eyeful of her breasts, but it was too late for that.
“Can I-” she began before the man shouted, “Dog!”
“What?” Savannah whispered in confusion.
“Dog. Help.”
Savannah noticed an old pickup idling on the street with the driver’s door wide open. Almost tripping on her bare feet, Savannah rushed past the guest and headed for the vehicle. Yanking the passenger door handle, she came face to face with a large dog covered in blood and what looked to be barbed wire around its neck and limbs.
“Oh my god,” she gasped in horror as she took in the animal’s injuries.
Savannah reached out to pet the dog’s head as it whined in pain.
How could someone do such a thing to a helpless animal? She thought to herself as she tried to assess his injuries from a distance.
With the scandal at her previous practice, Savannah hadn’t been too keen on covering for her grandfather, the local veterinarian, but she figured that the clients would be house pets needing shots and nothing more. Boy, had she been wrong. Not even twelve hours in the town and she’d come face to face with a horrific case.
“I can’t lift him like this,” she said, assuming that the dog’s owner had followed her to the vehicle.
“You can help him?” the man asked.
Ignoring his question, Savannah leaned over the canine and tried to figure out the best way to transport him into the clinic. “I need to call the vet tech and see if she can bring the stretcher to help transport him. He must weigh at least a hundred pounds.”
“I’ll carry him. Just tell me where to go.”
Savannah stared at the man in shock. He didn’t act like someone who had mistreated their pet, but then again, she had been fooled before. That was how she was in this mess, to begin with.
“Um, are you sure?” she began to question as she took a step back, but the man was already lifting the dog into his arms with the gentlest of touches. His head bent toward the animal’s ears and Savannah could just make out the hushed tones of reassurance.
Who was this man?
“You can follow me. Did you want to lock up your truck?” Savannah asked, but the man followed her dutifully as she took the path toward the clinic next door.
“I don’t care about the truck,” he growled. “No one will touch it here.”
Savannah begged to differ, knowing she’d had her car broken into once while she had been at the gym. And all the thieves had taken was a set of ear pods.
Quickly they came to the back entrance of the clinic. Savannah yelled out Trisha’s name, the overnight vet tech, so she wouldn’t be alarmed.
“Trisha. We need to prep OR one. Canine with severe lacerations from embedded barbed wire. Will need to be sedated and probably need a transfusion.”
The plump woman rounded the corner as Savannah and the stranger strutted past the kennels.
“Um, Dr. Monroe,” Trisha began as she looked back and forth between Savannah and the man carrying the dog. “Do you want to change before you go into surgery?”
Savannah stared back at the woman that had been working for her grandfather, Dr. Sullivan, for longer than she could remember. With a quick glance down at her attire, Savannah felt her cheeks heat in embarrassment. So much for not making a scene when she arrived in town.
“Yeah, um, let me grab some scrubs and shoes. I’ll be right back.”
“I’m sure Beau can help me get things set up.”
Just as Savannah turned to head toward the door that connected the clinic with her grandfather’s home, she asked, “Beau?”
“That’s me, ma’am,” he said in a Southern drawl that caused the lower muscles in Savannah’s pelvis to quake. She imagined if he hadn’t been holding onto the wounded animal, he would have tipped an invisible hat in her direction.
“Um. . .yes. . .okay.” Unable to comprehend any words to complete a full sentence, Savannah headed down the hall toward the biometric door that would give her entrance into her grandfather’s house. He may have been old school about everything else in his life, but he was not averse to technology. And securing his home adjacent to the practice where drugs were stored wasn’t something he took lightly, especially with Savannah staying with him for the unforeseeable future.
As if she had an invisible figure guiding her, Savannah made it up the narrow stairs to the bedroom decorated as if she were still a pre-teen. She blindly removed her nightie, tossed it toward the basket in the corner, and grabbed some scrubs she set on top of the dresser for the next day.
Only a few minutes had passed when Savannah returned to the veterinarian office freshly dressed. She found Trisha setting up the bag of blood for the possible transfusion while the man that brought in the animal was nowhere to be found. That was typical in Savannah’s book.
“Are we ready?” Savannah asked Trisha, who glanced toward the bathroom door before returning her gaze to her temporary boss.
Before Trisha could answer, the bathroom door opened and a bare-chested Beau stepped out, bashfully covering his torso with his soiled dress shirt.
“Sorry, the shirt ripped when I tried to put it on,” he bashfully explained as he held the torn blue material in his fist. Even with his large muscular frame, he seemed unsure of his body size.
Savannah looked over at Trisha, who stood slack-jawed at the statuesque man standing before them before heaving a deep breath.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have something to suit you. I can handle the surgery for the animal and call you in the morning when it’s come through. If you could leave your contact information and anything we should know about your pet, that would be great. But time is of the essence.”