Page 9 of Unyielding (Poplar Springs #3)

NINE

DECLAN

“ A nd that’s when your father told the man that one of his paintings had once hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so of course he could charge that much!”

My mother, Linda, chortled into the phone at the appropriate moment, just like she always did when she told the story.

“And then did he tell the guy what actually happened?” I asked in a patient voice, playing my role in the retelling of the story I’d heard dozens of times before.

My father had taken an art class at the Met before I was born, and when he’d stopped to use the bathroom, he’d hung a small watercolor of his on the back of the door, which meant the story had the thinnest thread of truth.

“You know your father.” She laughed. “What do you think?”

As much as I enjoyed hearing my mom sounding happy, the fact that she was retelling the story was setting off alarm bells.

As much as she loved telling the story, it usually had some connection to the conversation at hand when she brought it up.

But this time, we’d been talking about the hernia surgery her cousin in Florida was getting when she started in on the old story.

I leaned down and scratched Ford while eyeing a half-finished report on my computer screen.

Even though I still had a few hours of work before the official end of my day, I wasn’t about to rush to get off the phone until I had a sense of my mom’s cognitive state at that moment.

“How are you doing, Mom?” I asked gently. “You feeling okay?”

“Never better, now that you’re home,” she chirped. “Salt Lake City was too far away and you were always so busy. I’m happy you’re taking over Ruth’s practice. We’ll get to see you all the time now! Maybe you’ll start coming around for family dinners.”

“Hold on, hold on.” I sighed, rubbing my forehead. “It’s not a done deal yet. I won’t know if she’s selling it to me for a few months.”

The line went silent for a moment.

“Oh. Did I know that?”

I closed my eyes. “You did, Mom. I’ve told you a few times.”

“Well, I’m a very busy woman. It’s hard for me to remember everything you tell me. I’m working on a new piece and it’s positively consuming me. I’m locked in my studio for twelve hours on some days!”

The intensity of her response had me on edge.

My mom was rarely defensive. I would need to be careful how I questioned her.

I didn’t want to set her off or cause her unnecessary worry.

What didn’t surprise me was the hours she spent in her studio.

She called it “listening to her muse,” but it looked an awful lot like shutting the rest of the world out and ignoring her responsibilities in favor of pursuing her passion.

It wasn’t quite as big a deal these days, but it had been hell when me and my sister were kids.

I flashed on the time my mom got called into the principal’s office at the elementary school because my sister’s and my clothes were covered in paint and Dahlia was wearing two different shoes for the left foot.

Our dad had left a paint-filled palette next to the washing machine.

My sister decided to wash our clothes and accidentally mixed the palette in with them.

She was only seven and I should have supervised, but she hadn’t told me what she was doing.

By the time we realized what happened, it was the next day.

Everything we owned was either dirty or covered in paint, so we’d settled on the “covered in paint” clothes.

I’d kept a hoodie on over my T-shirt and could have gotten away with paint on my jeans if Dahlia’s teacher hadn’t spotted her two left shoes.

While we waited in the principal’s office, I’d overheard discussion of whether they should call child welfare services to do a wellness check.

I was about to grab my sister and run when our mom arrived, looking annoyed at being pulled away when she was in the middle of a project.

She managed to deescalate their concerns—barely—and promised that it wouldn’t happen again.

But it did. Or, rather, something like it. Again and again.

“Have you talked to Dahlia lately?” she asked.

My sister had been texting me all day, trying to pin me down about getting rubber gloves in bulk for an art project she wanted to do with her classes.

“We’re in touch,” I said. “Hey, Mom, have you been to the doctor lately?”

“Not in a few months. Why?”

I quickly weighed if she was in the right frame of mind to have a discussion about her mental acuity and opted to wait until I’d had a chance to talk it over with my sister.

Dahlia was around our parents more often; she’d have a better sense of what was going on.

Maybe I was making her forgetfulness into something bigger than it was?

“Just curious. I need to get there myself and I wanted to see if you like your GP.” The lie came out smoothly.

“Oh, Dr. Murphy is wonderful. He’s helping me manage my cholesterol. Did you know it can be hereditary? You should have yours checked.”

“You got it. I’ll look into that. I need to run now, but I’ll swing by to see you and Dad soon, okay?”

“Sounds good, sweetheart. I’m so happy you’re back for good!”

I opened my mouth to correct her but snapped it shut. “Bye, Mom. Love you.”

After we hung up, I sat staring blindly at the computer screen as I tried to list my various worries in order of importance.

My mother’s health was obviously at the very top, but there was nothing I could do about it before getting a professional opinion.

Then there was the stress of jumping through all of Dr. Wilcox’s hoops so I could buy her practice, which was closely tied to another high-pressure situation.

Shannon.

I still couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong the night we’d had drinks.

The meeting had started out great, even though I had a hard time focusing on the business at hand with Shannon looking so damn good.

But right after Becca had come over to say hi, Shannon had stopped smiling at me.

In fact, she could barely look me in the eyes for the rest of the night.

Shannon’s shut-down obviously had something to do with Becca, though I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.

I was pretty sure the two of them had never really socialized back in school, but there hadn’t been any big rivalry—at least, not that I’d ever heard of.

Maybe it was just a question of the two of them rubbing each other the wrong way.

If that was the case, I could certainly understand it.

Becca was a great client, but she was… a lot.

It almost seemed like she considered me to be Black Hat’s private, on-call veterinarian.

It didn’t help that Julia Lett, the other vet in town, refused to work with her.

Ruth had brushed it off when I brought it up, reminding me that a big part of being a vet in Poplar Springs is the relationship we have with our “human” clients.

Given my interactions with Becca, I wondered if it had more to do with our genders.

Whenever I was there, all Becca wanted to do was chat, and if I didn’t know better, flirt with me.

She was a gorgeous woman, there was no denying it, but the way she seemed almost…

pushy, as if she expected me to fall all over her because of her looks, was a definite turnoff.

Shannon was ten times more beautiful, but she never put on any airs about it.

And she certainly never used her looks to try to manipulate people.

I knew from talk around the barns that Becca’s charms were just another tool in her arsenal.

I froze. Was that it? Did Shannon think that we had something going on because of the way she had flirted with me?

Ford let out a bark from the back room and I realized that I was wasting time up in my head instead of getting work done.

“Hey, mister, get out here. I know you’ve got your eye on the bags of prescription dog food, but don’t you dare.”

When the dog didn’t trot out, I wandered back, convinced that I was about to find a ripped open bag of food, only to discover Ford growling at the chest freezer.

“What’s wrong, bud?”

I paused and finally heard what the dog had already noticed, a repetitive clanging noise from the back of the ancient thing.

Ford backed away from it with his tail swishing and a worried look on his face.

“Shit.”

I ran to the freezer, threw open the lid and grabbed the thermometer.

It was five degrees warmer than it was supposed to be, and the reading, combined with the ominous noise in the back, could only mean one thing.

The old piece of junk was breaking down—and potentially ruining all the temperature-sensitive items stored inside.

I needed to go have a talk with Shannon, and she wasn’t going to be happy.