Dr. Adam Whitaker pulled to a stop in front of the fire station and strode inside, trying to hide his yawn behind one hand while carrying his vet bag in the other. The story of his life right there, in a nutshell. It was gonna be another long day, but before he could get to the must-do’s on his list, he had to look over a stray dog found up in the foothills just outside of town. It had been found in the aftermath of a wildfire – or during it, Adam wasn’t too clear on the details just yet – with no tags or identifying information.

Moose Garrett, one of the local volunteer firefighters, was the one who’d called Adam this morning to ask for his help. He believed that the dog had been abused, and Adam was pretty sure he had to be right. Any dog left to wander in the hills in the middle of a wildfire probably wasn’t being taken care of by its owner, whether or not it was also being kicked around.

There were levels of abuse, and from the sounds of it, this dog was definitely on one of the tiers. It remained to be seen which tier. Adam could only hope for the sake of the dog that Moose was overstating the case, although Moose’d never struck him as being someone to exaggerate.

Jaxson Anderson, the new Sawyer fire chief, was inside the station bay, along with Troy and a couple of the other volunteer firefighters. It didn’t look like Moose had made it there yet. Adam shook hands with everyone, chatting as he went. He’d known most everyone here since they were knee-high to a grasshopper; all of them except for Jaxson, of course. The new chief had just moved in from Boise and although Adam hadn’t had a chance to get to know him real well yet, he was impressed with the guy regardless. Anyone willing to go charging into a burning building to save people ranked pretty high in Adam’s estimation.

“So, did we get the fire in the foothills under control?” Adam asked, once the greetings were over. He figured it must be if the guys were all here, but he was curious anyway. It must’ve been a small fire if it was killed off that quickly.

“Yeah, late last night. Thank God it’s early enough in the season that there are still patches of snow around, keeping the fire from spreading too quickly,” Jaxson said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “With this wind that keeps howling through, though, any spark can easily mean an inferno, especially because the more the wind blows, the more things dry out, which means the faster shit catches on fire. If we could only get the wind to stop—”

Just then, the man door to the fire station opened, and in came a very dirty Moose, ash and sand and dirt streaked everywhere. He looked like the lone survivor of a dirt hurricane. He was bent awkwardly at the waist, his hand securely wrapped around the collar of a beautiful white-and-black setter, which Adam assumed was the stray he’d been called in to look at. But setters, an expensive and sought-after hunting breed, didn’t tend to be strays.

What the hell…?

Then came Georgia Rowland trailing in behind Moose and the dog. She was the local branch manager of the Goldfork Credit Union, and someone with a good head on her shoulders. Adam was a little surprised to see Moose and Georgia together – had they spent the night out in the wilderness? By themselves? All alone? I wonder what Rocky Garrett will have to say about that…

Eh. None of that mattered right now. Even as Adam hurried towards the trio, his eyes were trained on the setter, inspecting her for injuries, watching for limping or an unwillingness to bend in a certain direction.

“There’s the woman of the hour,” he said softly, once he’d reached her side. She was skittish as hell, but didn’t appear to be limping, so that was a plus. He looked at Moose, his mind running through the possibilities of where to do his examination. “Let’s take her back into the supply closet. It’s got that table in there for organizing, and it’s nice and enclosed. She won’t be able to run too far if we corner her in there.”

Moose nodded, his face a mask of concentration as they made their way to the closet. Poor guy – it wasn’t easy to wrestle a dog of this size into submission. Life would’ve been a lot easier if Moose had slipped his belt underneath her collar to use it as a makeshift leash, but instead, the firefighter just had a death grip on the dog’s collar. If Adam remembered right, the Garrett family had never had any pets, and to be honest, Moose’s inexperience was showing.

Well, he’d gotten the dog to the fire station in one piece, and there was definitely something to be said for that. Adam was impressed with his grit. The dog probably put up one hell of a fight.

He put his vet bag down and then together with Moose, they maneuvered the gorgeous setter onto the table in the storage room, her trembling legs almost refusing to keep her upright. The sight tore at Adam’s heart. She was completely terrified; probably a half an inch away from pissing herself.

Whoever had done this to this dog deserved to end up in a special level of hell, as far as Adam was concerned.

Moose turned to Georgia, who was hanging out in the doorway of the small closet. “She knows you better, plus I have to file some paperwork for last night’s fun. You mind helping Adam out here?”

“No, not at all,” Georgia said. Moose sidled past and out into the main area of the fire station as Georgia closed the door to the closet and turned to Adam with a smile. “What can I help with?” she asked.

“Just help keep her on the table so I can look her over. Actually, I have some small dog treats in my bag in the corner,” he jerked his head towards his beat-up vet bag, “if you could grab those for me.”

He continued to pet the beautiful dog, using his hands and voice to try to convey peace and calm, even as he used his pettings to do surreptitious inspections, searching out broken bones or lacerations or bruises. The poor thing was trembling so much, it was hard to tell if she was flinching from him touching a particular part of her body, or because she was just terrified in general.

Adam was glad in that moment that he didn’t know who’d done this kind of psychological damage to this dog. He didn’t fancy spending the rest of his life in jail for murder, although he was pretty damn sure it’d be worth it.

Georgia began feeding the small treats to the dog, her hand sliding into place over the collar so Adam could use both hands to get to work on a full-blown inspection. He was impressed that she didn’t need to be told what to do; she just got into place without needing him to say a word.

As he inspected every inch of the dog, checking out the pads of her feet, trying to find a scar for a spaying procedure on her belly, feeling for any joints or bones out of place, he wondered idly why it was that he wasn’t attracted to Georgia. Not at the moment, of course – she was covered from head to toe in ash and dirt and looked like she’d been dragged along behind a pickup truck for a couple of miles – but just in general. She was pretty in an understated way, athletic, intelligent, funny, good with animals…

And she did absolutely nothing for him.

This was probably why he was 38 and single. He’d loved his wife; he’d loved Chloe. That was it. Two women in almost 40 years. Did that mean he was going to find the next woman to love when he was 60?

That would just be his luck.

While Georgia kept the dog occupied and in place on the table, Adam asked her questions about how they’d found the dog – she’d apparently named her Sparky, an on-the-nose name for a dog found in the middle of a wildfire – and what had happened up in the foothills. As Georgia recounted her harrowing experience of trying to escape the fire, Adam pulled his handheld chip scanner out of his bag, waving it carefully over the dog.

Nothing.

Whoever abused her and left her to die in a wildfire had also failed to chip her.

Real winners, here.

With any luck at all, they’d catch the rat bastard who did this and make him wish he’d never bought a dog. And if the justice system didn’t, maybe Adam would. A few years in jail would totally be worth it.

He finished up his examination and together, they headed out into the main bay of the fire station to give a report to the gathered men. As they were chatting about what to do with the dog, Michelle Winthrop – the Sawyer city dog catcher – showed up. Large and in charge, animals were her first (and sometimes only) priority, something Adam sure could admire about a person.

Here was another single woman, as focused and interested in animals as he was, beautiful in an understated way, someone to be admired…

And someone who did absolutely nothing for him.

He sighed to himself.

“I don’t recognize Sparky,” Jaxson said to the group, pulling Adam back into the discussion. “That doesn’t mean much, of course, since I only moved here five months ago. Does she look familiar to any of you?”

They all turned as one to search out Sparky in the corners of the station. Considering how much the setter hated people, Adam figured she’d be hiding under a fire truck or behind a pile of equipment, but was shocked to see that she was instead sprawled out on Troy’s lap, her tongue lolling out happily, a mostly empty bowl of water off to the side, as Troy quietly ran his hands over her fur rhythmically.

Troy sensed the eyeballs on him, and he looked up from his pettings of the beautiful dog to see them all staring at him. “She likes me,” he said simply.

Wow. Adam could hardly keep his eyes in his head at the sight. Seeing how relaxed the dog was around Troy…

Stunning, to say the least.

As they discussed who would take the dog home – Troy, obviously – and how it was that Sparky was lost out in the wilderness to begin with, Adam noticed something.

A little…spark between Georgia and Moose, if he could be forgiven for using the pun in a fire station of all places.

Huh.

They were practically kids compared to him – at 12 years his junior, they’d been entering first grade when he’d been entering his senior year, a thought that made him feel ancient beyond his years – but even Adam knew that Moose’s parents had decided who Moose would marry almost before he was born.

And that person was not Georgia Rowland. It was, in fact, her cousin, Tennessee Rowland.

Tennessee was the daughter of the older brother, the one who’d inherited everything – the one who owned the biggest farm in Long Valley County and didn’t hesitate to use that fact whenever and wherever he could. Adam could only be grateful the man was a farmer, not a rancher; the few times a year he had to deal with him because of his horses was pushing the limit as it was. If he had to constantly be out at the Rowland place to work with a herd of cows and interacting with Robert Rowland every time…Well, Adam might’ve picked a new profession by now.

Georgia was the daughter of the younger brother, on the other hand; the one who’d inherited nothing and was now the high school biology teacher. Obviously, that wasn’t good enough for Rocky Garrett and therefore, wouldn’t be good enough for his oldest son, Moose.

But damn…if the sparks between Moose and Georgia were so obvious even he could see them – and Adam would be the first to admit that he tended to be blind to that sort of thing to an *ahem* extreme degree – well, things were about to get real interesting in the farming world. He could only wish the two of them luck, ‘cause they were gonna need it.

Well, it was time to get a move on. He said his goodbyes to the group and then headed out to his late-model Ford truck, pulling his miniature calendar out of his shirt pocket and looking it over as he went. He let out a huge yawn even as he tried to focus his eyes on his scribbled notes. Shit, he was already tired, and the day had just begun.

Hmmm…He had a horse with a tender leg, a cow that refused to let her calf nurse, two rabies shots to give, and a neutering to perform back at the clinic, all before 3 pm. Then the real fun would begin – absolutely no sarcasm intended – when he would hurry over to the riding arena to work with the kids in therapy camp for a couple of hours. Those kids were truly the highlight of his day, no doubt about it.

But he also needed to submit invoices for vet work, figure out when he could squeeze in some time to do vaccinations, and then there was also the vet-as-a-career presentation that Miss Lambert over at the elementary school really wanted him to give to her fifth grade class.

He yawned again, his jawbone cracking, and he rubbed at his burning eyes with the palms of his hands. Maybe he’d stop by Mr. Petrol and get a coffee to go, and then tackle his day. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the gas station. As he drove mostly by instinct, he tried to think of how to be more efficient with his time. Type up an invoice as he was helping a cow give birth? Return phone calls as he did vaccinations?

Yeah, not gonna work. Each scenario was more ridiculous than the last.

He tried to force his non-caffeinated brain to do something more useful than just shrug in helplessness at him.

He could hire another vet to help him; they could share the practice, like a lot of dentists and lawyers did. But there just wasn’t quite enough work to pull something like that off. Adam had too much work for one person to handle; too little work for two.

Actually…He tapped his chin, thinking. It wasn’t so much the vaccinations and birthings that were kicking his ass – it was the paperwork. He felt like he was drowning in it. If he could just hand the office work off to someone else, hell, that’d make all the difference in the world.

He did have someone right now…kinda. Oliver Blank was a high school student who he had coming over after school to help with the animals staying at the clinic for one reason or another, but as much as Adam liked the kid, he wasn’t exactly prime office help. Although he was an absolute gem around animals, he was equally as awful with people. Hell, just last week, he got into an argument with a client who’d had the temerity to ask for a business card. Oliver had told the woman hotly that if they handed out business cards to everyone, well, soon they’d run out of them!

Yeah, it’d taken precious minutes to smooth that one over. He’d tried to explain to Oliver after the slightly mollified woman left the clinic (business card in hand, thankyouverymuch) that the whole point of business cards was to give them away, but…

Well, it hadn’t exactly gotten through to the kid. Adam half expected that next, he’d let loose on a client’s head that if Adam took the time to talk to the client about vaccination schedules, Adam wouldn’t have the time to actually vaccinate any animals!

Which, while being somewhat true, also greatly missed the point.

No, he needed to stop relying on Oliver to man the desk, no matter how desperate Adam was for an extra set of hands upfront. He needed to keep Ollie in the back, far, far away from any being that walked upright. Let him stick to the four-legged variety, where he could work his magic. Ollie understood and loved animals on a level that Adam wasn’t even sure he was at. He’d make a damn fine vet one day…as long as he never had to talk to another soul while doing it.

As Adam walked out of Mr. Petrols, sucking at the brown, life-giving liquid, he sighed to himself. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, it was time to face the facts: He needed to hire an honest-to-God receptionist. An older woman who would be steadfast and unflinching in the face of growling dogs…and humans. Someone who could help him keep on track and get to his appointments on time. Someone who could do his billing for him.

You know, all the shit Adam hated to the depths of his soul.

A part of him cringed in pain at the idea of adding someone else to the payroll of Whitaker’s Vet Clinic, but if they would actually bill clients on time and get both his accounts payable and accounts receivable under control, hell, they’d probably pay for themselves just through the avoidance of late fees. Oh, and by actually collecting money owed, something Adam wasn’t exactly the best at.

So instead of heading out of town towards the Cowell spread to look at their mare’s lame leg, he took a right and headed over to the local Sawyer Times office. It was time to bite the bullet and hire someone to help him shoulder the load. An even-keeled, placid, heavyset, 50-year-old woman with a touch of gray in her hair and a steely-eyed gaze that could bring even the most riled-up dog to heel with a glance.

Hells to the yes.

Now, he just needed to find this paragon of perfection and hire ‘em on the spot.