“Of course,” she said, trying to look serious and not… shocked.“The rescue.The reason we got together in the first place.”
They were in his house that night.She was wearing one of his T-shirts, and had broken him enough that he brought her food to eat in his bedroom.Matilda didn’t need him to tell her that this was not something he normally permitted himself.She could tell.
He had made her a rich, hearty stew to ward off the latest snowstorm.It had simmered all day, he’d told her when she’d arrived and had breathed in all that deliciousness in the air.And now he served it with a bit of crusty, yeasty bread that she was fairly certain he’d baked himself.When she’d complimented him, he had scowled at her—without a smile—and had told her that if he couldn’t provide her a decent meal, then he might as well close the diner and leave town.For good.
She had no idea that men—or rather, Tennessee, the most perfect of men—could be sodramatic.Matilda knew better than to say that to him, but privately, she was delighted.She loved all these clues that really, they were the same.
“I didn’t forget about your rescue,” he told her, and here in private, he touched her all the time.Like it hurt him to live through all the hours they were apart during the day and couldn’t touch her like this.She was familiar with that quiet little agony.Tennessee leaned over to kiss her on the nose.“I’ve been talking to old Mrs.Bonney.You know who she is.”
“Of course,” Matilda said at once.“Mrs.Bonney was a schoolteacher here for a long time.Back when there was only one teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, if I’m remembering right.I’m pretty sure she knew my grandparents.She might even have taught my father.”
“More than likely.”Tennessee smiled.“She’s an institution.She also owns that strip of land right there at the bottom of the hill below the Lodge.More important for animal rescue purposes, she also owns that big, old barn that all the tourists take pictures of.”
Matilda stopped shoveling the stew he’d made into her mouth, which was hard, because it was outrageously good.She fancied herself something of an artisan soup maker in cold weather, but she had nothing on Tennessee.
Yet she wasn’t sure she could allow herself to believe what he was telling her.Or what shethoughthe was telling her.
Slow down,she told herself.You’ve made up enough stories about this man in your life as it is.
“She wants to sit down with you and her lawyer down in Marietta,” Tennessee told her, correctly interpreting her silence.“Because one thing everyone might not know about Mrs.Bonney is that she’s a cat lady.I think she has something like ten cats in that house with her right now and I’ve never known her to say no to a kitten.”
“She sounds like my kind of lady,” Matilda said.
“She knows who you are,” Tennessee told her.“She said she would never consider trusting an animal’s life to anyone exceptthat girl in the red truckand if she can help you make that dream of a rescue come true, she will.”He grinned at the look on her face, and Matilda knew it had to be something like dumbstruck.“Before you get too sappy on me, I think it made her feel good to have somewhere to leave not only some of her property, but all of those cats.”
“She can depend on me to take care of her babies like they are my own,” Matilda vowed fervently, cats unseen.
Something she repeated in person to Mrs.Bonney herself when they got together the next week.She sat in the old woman’s sweet little house, filled with the kind of clutter that Matilda was very careful never to allow hers to become—but hey, life was long—with a big, fat calico cat purring happily in her lap.
“I always wanted to be a rescuer sort myself,” Mrs.Bonney said as they sipped tea and ate sugar cookies from a tin that tasted like butter.“But I only end up making pets of them, I’m afraid.”
“In the end, that’s the goal, isn’t it?”Matilda asked.“We want them to have families.Seems like yours are perfectly happy right here with you, where they belong.”
Mrs.Bonney gazed at her for a long moment.“They all said I went a bit odd after my Peter died.But between you and me, though I was certainly fond of him, he had a hard limit on cats.”She didn’t shift her gaze from Matilda’s, and Matilda couldn’t repress the urge to sit up taller in her seat.“My advice to you, if I may, is to never, ever accept cat limitations.Not only does that lead to fewer cats, it tends to be emblematic of other issues.”She nodded, with a sniff.“The less said about that, the better.”
“Mrs.Bonney,” Matilda said in the same intense way, “I have not accepted a cat, dog, or small mammal limitation yet.”
The old woman smiled, her cheeks creasing.“I knew I liked you.”
And that was how Pied Piper Rescue, Matilda’s dream come true, started in the rundown old Bonney barn that was going to need a whole lot of TLC to get going.Matilda was no stranger to the TLC side of things.She’d transformed the outbuilding behind the cottage all by herself.
What mattered was that it was real.And it was happening.
Even if Matilda couldn’t really explainwhyit was happening to all the interested parties who she had to tell about the new venture.Like her sister and brother and all of her extremely nosy cousins.
“So Tennessee Lisle just took it upon himself to suddenly become deeply interested in animal welfare, and hunt down this old woman with this barn, and convince her to do this?”Rosie asked one morning, having come to the barn while Matilda was busy working there on her day off.
“As you know, Rosie,” Matilda said airily, “Tennessee takes the welfare of the town very seriously.Why not the animals as well?”
“Yeah, right,” Rosie said, studying Matilda suspiciously.Especially when Matilda aimed her vaguest smile her way.“That sounds like him.”
Her brother Jack was even more dubious.
“Did you bribe him or something?”he asked gruffly.
“Jack,” Matilda said impatiently.“If you don’t want to help me clear out this barn, I don’t really know why you’re here.I thought you were the renovation king.”
“I don’t understand why this is happening,” her cousin Wyatt chimed in, gruffly.
