He didn’t look too put out. Just another day in the holler. “So, you’re back! Good to see you, good to see you. Hear you’re a nurse now. You fixin’ to open up a clinic in town?”
“Me?” she squeaked in surprise.
“We sure could use it. Like my great-nephew Roy, he went blind from bad ‘shine. Dawnie wasn’t able to find nothing to fix it, but maybe you could.”
She sucked in a deep breath. Wow. She had been experimenting with her herbs and minerals, but she couldn’t be sure if she had a solution.
“I could try,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything that I thought would work. Setting up a clinic, though…” She felt a wave of panic flood through her, chilling her flesh.
She was done with Flowering Dogwood—but now she felt as if she were being pulled back in.
Harold looked around uneasily, as if afraid he’d be overhead. “Yeah, I get it, maybe not the safest thing for you to do. Dawnie might not…” He let the words trail off with a regretful frown. She might not like it, he was going to say. Which would mean that nobody would come to the clinic.
That stung, though. It made it sound as if she wouldn’t try to help because of Dawnie. She wasn’t sixteen any more, things were bad around here, and it felt like Dawnie and her family were behind most of it. Was there anything she could do?
Harold looked at her thoughtfully. “Goin’ to the reunion tomorrow?”
She nodded. Suddenly he threw his arms around her in a completely unexpected and out of character hug, and she hugged him back, startled. It felt more than a little awkward because she was half-naked, and she heard Blake growl with jealous rage. “Uh, hello.”
“Watch your back,” he whispered in her ear. “Word is that Dawnie—urgh!”
Blake had hauled him off her.
“Hands off my mate!” Blake snarled, his eyes glowing as if he was possessed.
Harold flashed him a startled look and scuttled away.
“Damn it, Blake! Really? He was…” she trailed off. The Rosemund family were pushing their cart her way to say hi, or to sniff out intel—she didn’t know which—but now she couldn’t tell Blake that Harold had been about to tell her something useful and he’d scared him off. That would have to wait for later, and the moment had probably passed. That sucked, because they were running into brick walls otherwise.
“Krista!” Mrs. Rosemund said, beaming at her. “What brings you back to town after all this time? And who is thishandsomeyoung gentleman?” Her gaze wandered over Blake’s muscular body a little too hungrily, making her woeful husband, a scrawny coyote shifter, whine and hang his head submissively. Good lord. She was easily twenty years older than Blake.
Blake threw his arm around Krista’s shoulder. “I’m her fated mate,” he said hastily as a growl rumbled up in Krista’s chest. Krista’s claws shot out and then retracted, and when she smiled, her teeth were pointy.
It was going to be a long day.
