Page 39 of The Way Back Home

“Only the ones with corny lines.”

“Oh, come on, a man’s gotta try. You’re surrounded by good ole country boys and big strapping soldiers with anger-management issues all day long. And I’m just a small-town veterinarian. I know how you girls fall for those big broken types.”

“Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but I ain’t falling for nothing or no one,” I say, and I wish I felt as much conviction as I spoke with, but I am a big fat liar.

“But you will be my sexy nurse, right?” He winks.

“Oh my God, would you just fix my pig already, please?” I grin, patting the pig’s head, and rub one leathery ear between my fingers. The other has the cannula with the drip in it.

For the next hour, I watch on with squeamish fascination as Jude fuses her tiny bones back together with even smaller metal plates and screws. I pass the instruments after he points them out to me, and he talks as carefree and easy, as if we were on a date, about everything, from what he’s doing at that moment to why he wanted to become a vet in the first place and how he ended up leaving Atlanta for here. He ceases talk altogether when he stitches her up, and then he removes her from the oxygen, carefully lifting her and carrying her to a crate where he lays her on the soft blankets. There’s a dish of water nearby. Her snout wriggles, but she doesn’t wake. She is just the most precious thing I’ve ever seen, and I share a house with the world’s most adorable four-year-old, so that’s saying something.

Jude straightens and leans up against the crate. “You wanna sit with her?”

“Is that okay?”

“Well, we don’t have any animals in recovery right now. I was planning on sitting here anyway. You hungry? Everything else in town is closed, but I can rustle us up some TV dinners from the freezer.”

“Wow, you really go all out, huh?” I sit down beside the crate.

“Hey, I just saved your pig, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did. Thank you.” I stroke her head gently and shake my own in disbelief. “I can’t believe I have a pig. I’ve already got a dog at home.”

“Here, in Magnolia Springs?”

“Oh no. I meant back in Fairhope.”

He frowns. “You still staying with August Cotton?”

“And Bettina, yeah. I booked the room before their parents passed and I’ve been looking for a rental ever since, but apparently, there’s nothing in town. I don’t know how true that is, given that Kathy Abernathy and her good friend Georgia don’t like me much.”

Jude pauses for a beat, and it seems as if he’s mulling over his next words. “I have a cabin out by Tanglewood Road that’s unoccupied if you want to use it?”

I side-eye him. I can’t stay in this man’s cabin. I barely know him. I mean, I didn’t know August either, but Tanglewood is different. It’s ... well, it just doesn’t feel right. And who’s going to make sure the Cottons aren’t eating frozen pizza every night? “I can’t do that. Besides, you don’t know the first thing about me. What if I’m a crook or a serial killer?”

“Do you know the man you’re living with?” he says, and it feels very much like a loaded question. “Besides, any woman who runs a non-profit that helps wounded veterans and rescues dogs from kill shelters, and piglets from cardboard boxes, I might add, is no serial killer.”

“Okay, good point.”

He smirks. “Plus, you have that sweet and innocent baby face.”

My eyes grow round. “I am not baby-faced.”

“Sure you’re not,” he says, and that freaking grin is back, doing things to my insides it has no right to be doing. “Anyway, you should think about moving out of Tanglewood.”

“Lord, you two really hate one another, don’t you?” I grin. “What, did he steal your position as quarterback?”

“We have . . . history,” Jude says, and then elaborates at my baffled expression. “I spent summers here as a kid; it’s why I have the cabin in the woods. And let’s just say August Cotton was an asshole long before he ever came back from war a wounded veteran.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling more and more uneasy by the second. August can be difficult, I’ll give him that much, but anyone smart enough to look further knows he has a heart of gold, he just keeps it locked firmly up tight behind a wall of iron thorns. “Well, the man can sometimes be pretty tough to take, but I think that’s understandable given what he’s been through.”

“He in that program of yours?”

I laugh. “No, August is one of those special cases. He’s happier to suffer in silence.”

“And what about you? Do you date men who aren’t wounded veterans?”

“Only if they fix my pig for free.” I wink. I don’t know why I’m flirting back. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s actually fun, and it’s been a long time since I had fun.

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