Beauty & the Beasts Read Free Page A

livelihood depends on it. If people don’t think you’re almost as good a vet as I am—”
    “Not that kind of reputation,” he interrupted. “I mean socially. As a lady’s man.”
    “Ah.” Humor warmed her brown eyes and she leaned comfortably against the wall, waiting until a technician had walked down the hall and gone into the nearest examining room. “You mean, do people talk about the fact that you’ve dated every nice-looking woman in the county? Yeah, I think I can safely say that you have a certain reputation.”
    He growled, “I never dated you.”
    “I would have said no.”
    “Why?”
    “Because we work together,” she answered immediately. “We’d have fouled the nest, so to speak. Besides…you weren’t any more interested than I was, were you?”
    She was right, but he’d never understood why. “I don’t chase everything in a skirt,” he said grumpily.
    “No, only the pretty ones.”
    Her obvious enjoyment of his discomfort was the last straw. He uttered a profanity.
    Teresa’s grin faded. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
    “When we have a spare fifteen minutes.”
    “We have it right now. Not a soul waiting. I have some calls to make, but I can do that later.”
    They retired to his office, marginally larger than hers, and she ate a cup of yogurt and wistfully watched him drink a mediocre cup of coffee.
    “My doctor insists that a little caffeine won’t hurt the baby, but I don’t like the way they keep changing their minds. When I was pregnant with Nicole andMark, it was taboo.” She sighed. “I’ll live. Now. Tell me what set you off.”
    “You know that cat shelter, Ten Lives? A volunteer came to see me.” He told her what Madeline Howard had proposed and his own offer. “You have any problem with my giving away our services?”
    “You know I don’t.” She set down her yogurt and leaned forward, face alight with enthusiasm. “We can offer care at cost—”
    “Yeah, but what’s that? We have overhead, staff salaries and benefits…”
    After some amiable bickering, they settled on charges he figured wouldn’t break the bank. He was half hoping she’d forgotten their earlier conversation, but no.
    “So let me guess.” Teresa licked her spoon, then smiled. “This volunteer is single and attractive. And she turned you down.”
    “She told me she was tired of being judged on appearances.” He shook his head.
    “My, you must have been subtle.”
    “I asked her out to dinner!” Eric said in outrage. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, baby, your place or mine?’”
    “When’s the last time a woman turned you down?”
    “For dinner?” He had to think. “I don’t know, I don’t usually ask unless I think there’s interest on both sides…”
    “Never,” Teresa concluded with quick glee. “And your ego’s bruised.”
    Maybe she was right. Maybe that was all that waswrong. It wasn’t as if he’d had a chance to fall for Madeline Howard’s inner beauty.
    Except, dammit, he had glimpsed it. He’d made up his mind to ask her out, not when he first saw her, but while she was telling him about the shelter and the cats the volunteers were able to save. The color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes, the verve with which her hands shaped their plans. Inner beauty, or outer?
    “Look at it this way,” his partner said, pushing herself to her feet. “In another few weeks, you won’t have time to date, anyway, not with Garth here.”
    The dull ache of loss he’d been trying to ignore sharpened to a knife stab. “He doesn’t want to come,” Eric said starkly.
    “Oh, no.” Real compassion in her eyes now, Teresa sank back onto the chair. “You didn’t say anything.”
    “I just talked to him. I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”
    But he did of course; the first step was calling Noreen and finding out what was going on in Garth’s life that was so much more appealing than a summer with his father.
    He waited until nine-thirty that