Carolyn McSparren - Safe At Home

Tala Newsome knew that Dr. Pete Jacobi and his father had probably forgotten all about her. They were engrossed in their task—saving the life of the lion.

She leaned her head back against the bars and closed her eyes. She felt the gentlest caress on the top of her head. She blinked and yawned. The two men were still hard at work halfway across the big room.

There it was again. A fairy’s breath that ruffled her hair slightly. She rubbed her hand over her head and felt the bars behind her. Must be her imagination. She relaxed again, and a moment later felt a tug on her hair. She reached behind her and felt…

She stifled a scream, jumped up and spun around. An elephant’s trunk extended through the bars behind her. She froze as it slid gently over her face, down her cheek, then patted her shoulder as if to console her.

She gulped, moved back four paces and realized that she was looking into the faces of three large gray lumps clustered on the other side of the bars. Three elephants stood shoulder to shoulder, swinging their trunks gently back and forth.

“Hello, girls.” Tala heard the affection in Pete’s voice. “Just let me finish here and I’ll introduce you.”

Dear Reader,

What would you do if your truck nearly struck a wounded African lion on a country road at two in the morning? Not in deepest Africa, mind you, but in the Tennessee hills. I’d probably lock the doors and do a fast U-turn, but the heroine of Safe at Home has a stronger spirit. By morning she’s not only nursing the lion, but baby-sitting a trio of opinionated elephants, as well.

All because she needs help from a grumpy veterinarian who prefers animals to human beings.

Dr. Pete Jacobi doesn’t want Tala Newsome around his elephant sanctuary. She disturbs his mind and reawakens his heart to feelings he’s denied.

If that isn’t bad enough, widowed Tala comes complete with a son, a nearly adolescent daughter, an outrageous grandmother-in-law and a tough mother-in-law—none of whom intend to let some scruffy vet within a mile of Tala. Pete can’t cope with himself, much less an entire family.

Tala’s not coping very well, either. She’s broke, unable to understand her kids, trying to live up to her in-laws and fulfill her promise to her dead husband. Falling in love with Pete Jacobi is the last complication she needs.

But love doesn’t give a hoot about timing….

I hope you enjoy Pete and Tala’s story—and, of course, the elephants—Sophie, Sweetie Pie and Belle.

Carolyn McSparren

Safe at Home

Carolyn McSparren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the wonderful people at Y.E.A.R., the Yoknapatawpha

Exotic Animal Refuge, for bringing me nose to nose with

lions and tigers (pretty scary), and for The Elephant

Sanctuary who told me about the logistics of keeping

elephants. Any errors are mine, not theirs.

For Bruce Bowling, a veterinarian who puts up with

4:00 a.m. emergency calls.

Last but not least, for the nationwide large animal sanctuary

system that provides a peaceful retirement for some of

mankind’s rejects.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

SOMETHING TRIGGERED the alarm on the front gate. Pete Jacobi jerked awake, narrowed his eyes at the lighted alarm clock beside his bed. Two-thirteen in the morning. He’d been asleep less than three hours.

He groaned and raised his head. Icy rain still thrummed against his bedroom window. The powerful halogen motion detectors mounted under the eaves and by the front gate shattered the droplets into prisms.

If that was some local teenager trying to sneak in to test his nerve against the elephants, he’d picked the wrong weather for it. The girls were undoubtedly snoring contentedly in their enclosure. Or would have been until the noise woke them. They’d be pretty grumpy if any spotty adolescent kid from Hollendale tried to hoo-raw them tonight.

During the summer the girls often roamed the east Tennessee hills of the sanctuary most of the night, but they didn’t like really cold weather. Although when the trees started to ice up, and Pete tried to insist that they wear their earmuffs, they’d pay little attention to him. If they wanted them off, off they’d come.

He swung out of bed, jerked on the jeans he’d thrown on the floor, thrust his bare feet into the muddy rubber boots he’d dropped beside them. “Damn!” he snarled as his cold toes met the even colder rubber.

The lights and alarms should have spooked any normal intruder home to Hollendale by now. Pete shut off the alarm and heard in its place the insistent burping of the intercom he’d installed at the gate a couple of months earlier. Someone was still out there. He hit the talk switch. “Yeah?”

The voice that answered him was female and full of concern. “Please, you’ve got to help her! She’s bleeding.”

He jerked fully awake. “I’m a vet, not a doctor.”

“I need a vet. I’ve got to get her inside. She’s so cold already, I’m afraid she’ll die on the way to town. I think somebody shot her.”

He ran his hand over his hair and blinked to clear his eyes. “Okay, okay, lady. Relax. I’ll come open the gate.” He yanked his wet poncho from the hook beside the door and pulled it on over his shoulders. It felt as though he’d jumped into a vat of raw oysters. He took a deep breath, pulled open the office door and sprinted for the high-wire gates. His feet slipped and threw globs of mud onto his legs at every step.

She was hanging on to the far side of the gate with both hands. The moment she saw him, she turned and climbed into the front seat of a small pickup truck and slammed the door.

He clicked the padlock loose and began to pull the tall wire gates open. “Tomorrow I’m ordering an electric gate opener,” he snarled into the teeth of the wind. He wouldn’t, of course. Any extra money went to feed his girls, not to make his life easier.

The moment he’d shoved the left-hand gate open far enough for her to squeeze the pickup through, she floored the thing. He’d been intending to climb into the passenger seat beside her. Instead, her tires threw up a wall of icy muck that hit him square in the face. He yelped.

“Thanks a bunch!” he called after her as he closed the gate and hooked the open padlock over the hasp. He wiped his face with one hand and strode back to the office. She’d slammed on her brakes and now stood beside the bed of the truck. She was wearing a dark parka with the hood pulled forward over her face. He could tell nothing about her except that she was maybe five foot six and slim.

“Help me. I can’t move her.”

He leaned over the back of the truck expecting to see whatever dog or possum or coon she’d run over with her car. His mouth fell open. He turned to the woman. “Is she yours?”

“No. I found her on the road. She’s so still. She’s not dead, is she?”

He reached a tentative hand next to the animal’s rib cage. He felt a flutter. “She’s alive, but I don’t know for how long.” Without glancing at the woman, he said, “Go around the side of the building to the parking area and in through the small door. Inside you’ll find a button that raises the overhead door. I’ll drive her in.”