Twelve
The following Monday morning Cole hung around the clinic’s reception room drinking coffee and chatting with the staff, all the while keeping one eye on the parking lot, watching for Daria to drive up. He had thought about her all weekend, and he was anxious to see her again, to gauge how things would be between them now. He wanted to let her know that he thought she was something special and that he had no intention of letting her get away if he could possibly help it.
When he saw her little Toyota pull into the clinic’s parking lot, he cut Carla off midsentence with a quick wave and headed outside.
“Good morning,” he said, opening Daria’s car door for her.
“Good morning yourself,” she said, climbing from the front seat. Her smile assured him that her memories of the weekend were as fond as his own.
“Did you get your little girl back?”
“All in one piece. I hate to admit it, but I think she had a great time.”
“That’s good. Don’t be sorry.”
“Oh, I’m really not. I sure missed her though.”
“And that’s good too.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Nowhere. I just wanted to see you.”
She smiled as though she wasn’t sure how to take him.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about all the things we talked about the other night. I’m glad we could be honest.”
“I am too, Cole. I really am.”
He cringed inwardly. He hadn’t told her anything that wasn’t true, but as he realized how much he still had not revealed to her, he felt a twinge of guilt. But there would be time for that. He would make sure of it. “Want to talk some more?”
“Are you asking me out again?” she teased, a hint of exasperation in her voice.
He laughed. “And what if I were?”
“Well,” she sighed. “I suppose I’d be forced to go out with you, seeing as you’re my boss and all.”
“Yeah,” he played along, “if you want to keep your job, you’d probably better not turn me down. Besides, you never did get all the way through that list of ‘Things I Like About Colson Hunter.’”
She slugged him halfheartedly with her purse. “You’re not even funny.” But her eyes belied her words. How he loved those blue, blue eyes.
He fended off her playful attack and resisted the urge to take her arm possessively and escort her into the office in full view of Carla, Travis, and Doris Kline. Instead he opened the door for her and followed her in. He knew by the way they all suddenly went into a flurry of activity that his staff had been riveted to the front window. He wasn’t going to play games with any of them. They might as well get used to it, because if he had his way, he and Daria Camfield were going to be much more than friends.
He was amused to see that Daria was blushing as she hurried past the other employees to hang up her jacket and put her purse away. Cole ignored Carla’s raised eyebrows and the conspiratorial smile on Travis’s face and walked straight back to his office.
But later that morning, when he and Travis were alone in the barn, he couldn’t ignore the young vet’s comment. “Daria looked like the proverbial merry widow this morning,” he said with a smirk. “That must have been some date this weekend, you old devil you. Guess you made her one happy woman, huh?”
Cole threw down the feed bucket he’d just emptied and glared at his partner.
Travis drew back and threw up his hands in mock surrender, his face a mask of astonishment. “Hey, man, I’m kidding. Don’t get all bent out of—”
“Carruthers, don’t even talk that way! Don’t make this into something cheap.”
“Cole, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was only…”
Travis’s words trailed off feebly, and Cole sensed true contrition in his voice. Realizing that he’d overreacted, he put a hand on his partner’s arm. “I’m sorry, Trav. I was out of line. Just please don’t turn this into something crude. You know me better than that.”
Travis brushed him off, turning his back on Cole and walking to the other end of the barn. He was obviously taken aback by Cole’s harsh reaction. As he walked away, he muttered another apology, leaving Cole feeling guilty for being overly defensive.
The two men finished their work in the barn without speaking.
That afternoon they were forced to work together during an emergency surgery on a Saint Bernard pup that had been mangled in a freak encounter with a grain auger.
As they worked over the sedated puppy, Cole attempted to smooth things over.
“You want to ride with me to the high-school game Friday night?” he asked Travis.
“It’s over in Clayton this week, right?”
Cole nodded.
“Yeah, sure. Man, it’s shaping up to be quite a season, isn’t it? They hammered Hillsdale last week.”
“I’ll say! If I was a betting man, I’d wager we’re headed to the state play-offs.”
“You really think so?” Travis sounded doubtful.
“Well, it’s probably too soon to tell, but we’ve got the best defense in the league by a long shot.”
They bandied around play-off match-up possibilities and traded stories about their own prowess on the high-school gridiron. By the time they’d finished the surgery, things seemed to be back to normal between them.
But after Travis had gone out to check the large animals in the barn, and Cole was left alone to put the final sutures in the dog’s cuts and gashes, his thoughts turned again to his confrontation with Travis that morning. Why had he lashed out at his friend like that?
Inexplicably Bridgette’s face flashed before him, and he vividly remembered when he was just beginning to fall in love with her. Bridgette had been the first woman he had ever loved. The only woman. Talking with Daria about her had brought those memories to the foreground. He realized that the speed with which Daria’s and his friendship had turned into something obviously romantic echoed his and Bridgette’s whirlwind courtship. He struggled futilely against the comparisons.
It hurt him to call his marriage a mistake, but he had begun to face the truth that it probably was. Bridgette had too many emotional issues in her life to be able to give much to a marriage relationship. Looking back he could see that the signs had been there all along if he hadn’t been so blinded by love. Now he asked himself, was he blind to Daria’s wounds? She’d certainly suffered her share. And yet, Daria seemed whole and at peace. Was he missing something? Something told him to slow down, to back off a bit. And yet his longing for love and companionship, his loneliness, and their undeniable chemistry all shouted, “Grab her before someone else does!”
He wished he’d had the courage to tell Daria the whole story surrounding Bridgette’s death. It would have been a relief to get it off his chest, to relieve the burden of the secrets he carried. But it seemed too much to put on her—on any woman—on a first date. He didn’t want to scare her off, and yet already they had become so close that he felt like an impostor for not having told her everything.
Until Daria Camfield, he hadn’t found anyone he felt was worth the risk of laying himself open. There was something exhilarating and hopeful about finally having met a woman to whom he was willing to reveal his true self. But if things were going to become serious between them, as he so desperately desired, she needed to know the whole truth—before she’d invested her love in him and it was too late to turn back.
He went through the rest of the day like a robot, performing his duties perfunctorily and keeping to himself as much as he could. But as he drove home that evening, his thoughts ran wild. He knew that, though he must give Daria a chance to know the real Colson Hunter before he could expect her to love him, for him it was too late. He had already fallen in love with her. And the joy of that realization caused him to quash the whispered voice of caution he had thought to heed just hours ago.