Behind the Ties (Home in Carson Book 5), page 1
Behind the Ties
By Renee Harless
A new love awaits...behind the ties.
Beau Baker thought his path in life was set. He had bigger dreams, but the small town life kept him locked in…
Until a new woman shows up in town, causing him to question everything.
Being a veterinarian was in Savannah Monroe's blood, but she never thought her job would have her on the run. But she finally stopped looking over her shoulder once she found solace in the tiny town of Carson, North Carolina…
Until that security is tested when the leader of the dog fighting ring she busted tracks her down and brings danger to her new home. Had Beau’s path in life led him to this moment? Was his bigger purpose to step in and protect her?
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Copyright ©2022 Renee Harless
This work is one of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. All trademarked items included in this novel have been recognized as so by the author. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Chapter One
Chapter One
There was a beast standing at Savannah’s door. A statuesque monster at least double her size. She had just arrived in the town of Carson, North Carolina and feared that her troubles had followed her to the place she had felt the safest. The place she thought no one would be able to find her.
Except this man was standing with his suit rumpled and wrinkled. Nothing like the men she had seen outside of her apartment in Baltimore, Maryland. Those men had been dressed in designer suits that she knew cost more than her entire building.
As she stared back at the stranger surrounded by the darkness of her grandfather’s front porch, Savannah wondered how she got into this mess to begin with. How did she end up having to look over her shoulder at every little noise?
This was never supposed to be her life. She had wanted to live in a big city since she was a little girl. Though Savannah enjoyed the summers as a little girl visiting her grandfather in Carson, where she got her love of animals, this place left her feeling confined.
But here she was, answering her grandfather’s door as he took a long-overdue vacation and overseeing his house.
Savannah continued to stare back at the stranger as his dark gaze traveled up and down her body. That was when she remembered that only a thin, pale pink nightie separated her and the visitor. She considered covering her chest with her arms, knowing he was getting an eyeful of her breasts, but it was too late for that.
“Can I-” she began before the man shouted, “Dog!”
“What?” Savannah whispered in confusion.
“Dog. Help.”
Savannah noticed an old pickup idling on the street with the driver’s door wide open. Almost tripping on her bare feet, Savannah rushed past the guest and headed for the vehicle. Yanking the passenger door handle, she came face to face with a large dog covered in blood and what looked to be barbed wire around its neck and limbs.
“Oh my god,” she gasped in horror as she took in the animal’s injuries.
Savannah reached out to pet the dog’s head as it whined in pain.
How could someone do such a thing to a helpless animal? She thought to herself as she tried to assess his injuries from a distance.
With the scandal at her previous practice, Savannah hadn’t been too keen on covering for her grandfather, the local veterinarian, but she figured that the clients would be house pets needing shots and nothing more. Boy, had she been wrong. Not even twelve hours in the town and she’d come face to face with a horrific case.
“I can’t lift him like this,” she said, assuming that the dog’s owner had followed her to the vehicle.
“You can help him?” the man asked.
Ignoring his question, Savannah leaned over the canine and tried to figure out the best way to transport him into the clinic. “I need to call the vet tech and see if she can bring the stretcher to help transport him. He must weigh at least a hundred pounds.”
“I’ll carry him. Just tell me where to go.”
Savannah stared at the man in shock. He didn’t act like someone who had mistreated their pet, but then again, she had been fooled before. That was how she was in this mess, to begin with.
“Um, are you sure?” she began to question as she took a step back, but the man was already lifting the dog into his arms with the gentlest of touches. His head bent toward the animal’s ears and Savannah could just make out the hushed tones of reassurance.
Who was this man?
“You can follow me. Did you want to lock up your truck?” Savannah asked, but the man followed her dutifully as she took the path toward the clinic next door.
“I don’t care about the truck,” he growled. “No one will touch it here.”
Savannah begged to differ, knowing she’d had her car broken into once while she had been at the gym. And all the thieves had taken was a set of ear pods.
Quickly they came to the back entrance of the clinic. Savannah yelled out Trisha’s name, the overnight vet tech, so she wouldn’t be alarmed.
“Trisha. We need to prep OR one. Canine with severe lacerations from embedded barbed wire. Will need to be sedated and probably need a transfusion.”
The plump woman rounded the corner as Savannah and the stranger strutted past the kennels.
“Um, Dr. Monroe,” Trisha began as she looked back and forth between Savannah and the man carrying the dog. “Do you want to change before you go into surgery?”
Savannah stared back at the woman that had been working for her grandfather, Dr. Sullivan, for longer than she could remember. With a quick glance down at her attire, Savannah felt her cheeks heat in embarrassment. So much for not making a scene when she arrived in town.
“Yeah, um, let me grab some scrubs and shoes. I’ll be right back.”
“I’m sure Beau can help me get things set up.”
Just as Savannah turned to head toward the door that connected the clinic with her grandfather’s home, she asked, “Beau?”
“That’s me, ma’am,” he said in a Southern drawl that caused the lower muscles in Savannah’s pelvis to quake. She imagined if he hadn’t been holding onto the wounded animal, he would have tipped an invisible hat in her direction.
“Um. . .yes. . .okay.” Unable to comprehend any words to complete a full sentence, Savannah headed down the hall toward the biometric door that would give her entrance into her grandfather’s house. He may have been old school about everything else in his life, but he was not averse to technology. And securing his home adjacent to the practice where drugs were stored wasn’t something he took lightly, especially with Savannah staying with him for the unforeseeable future.
As if she had an invisible figure guiding her, Savannah made it up the narrow stairs to the bedroom decorated as if she were still a pre-teen. She blindly removed her nightie, tossed it toward the basket in the corner, and grabbed some scrubs she set on top of the dresser for the next day.
Only a few minutes had passed when Savannah returned to the veterinarian office freshly dressed. She found Trisha setting up the bag of blood for the possible transfusion while the man that brought in the animal was nowhere to be found. That was typical in Savannah’s book.
“Are we ready?” Savannah asked Trisha, who glanced toward the bathroom door before returning her gaze to her temporary boss.
Before Trisha could answer, the bathroom door opened and a bare-chested Beau stepped out, bashfully covering his torso with his soiled dress shirt.
“Sorry, the shirt ripped when I tried to put it on,” he bashfully explained as he held the torn blue material in his fist. Even with his large muscular frame, he seemed unsure of his body size.
Savannah looked over at Trisha, who stood slack-jawed at the statuesque man standing before them before heaving a deep breath.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have something to suit you. I can handle the surgery for the animal and call you in the morning when it’s come through. If you could leave your contact information and anything we should know about your pet, that would be great. But time is of the essence.”
Savannah hated the tone she had to take with patient owners sometimes, but when they stood in the way of treatment or stood half-naked, distracting her technicians, there wasn’t much else she could do.
“I’m staying.”
“You’re
“Dr. Monroe,” Trisha said, trying to bring her attention away from Beau.
“You need to leave. We’ll contact you with the bill in the morning.”
“Look, ma’am, I don’t know what you think happened, but this dog found me in the middle of my best friend’s engagement party. I’m not leaving until I know that the dog is okay.”
“Suit yourself, but I can’t have you in the operating room.”
With her final gauntlet laid down, Savannah moved into the operating room with Trisha on her heels, letting the door close behind her.
Throughout the surgery, Savannah didn’t let a single thought cross her mind about the man that dropped off the poor animal; her focus was completely on the canine that miraculously missed any major arteries or bones with his injuries. She could tell he was a sweet guy who seemed to get caught up in the fence by accident. It was nothing like the case in Baltimore that caused her to get fired and leave the state. She also knew that she owed the stranger an apology.
Animals were her life and it killed her to see one harmed, especially at their owner's hands. Unfortunately, she had seen it more times than she could count.
Three hours later, Savannah and Trisha eased the dog into a large crate with an IV attached to get some fluid and not move too much as he woke. Dr. Monroe hadn’t expected the monster of a man to wait for the surgery to finish, especially if the dog had been a stray, but she and Trisha practically tripped over him as he sat on the floor across from the operating door. The man had been so stoic he hadn’t even budged when they had opened the entrance. His dark eyes trained on the animal and softened when he saw the canine breathing steadily.
Savannah almost wanted to comfort the man, something about how he was so concerned over the animal left her heart a puddle of goo in her chest, but she thought better of it. She had learned one too many times that a client’s story could be filled with lies. And she didn’t know this man any better than any other stranger in Carson.
She wasn’t here to draw attention to herself. Savannah needed to stay quiet and hidden; no waves needed to be made.
Too bad her lady parts wanted to make a lot of waves with the shirtless man who pinned his gaze on her.
***
Beau wasn’t the kind of man to be dumbfounded by a woman. He knew he was what some females considered good-looking, at least the women outside of Carson. He was just a local to the women in town, but he had never felt as self-conscious as when the ethereal-like woman opened the door to Dr. Sullivan’s home.
As a misunderstood dark-haired Thor, as the Lady Busy Bees (the local geriatric gossipers) called him, many were surprised that he had a passion for Greek and Roman Mythology. The vixen at Dr. Sullivan’s reminded him of what the common folk felt like in Aphrodite’s presence. She was a classic beauty in Beau’s mind. And he had been rendered speechless when the wind whipped around her translucent nightgown as she sashayed down the front steps to his truck.
He talked slowly, but it was rare he was without words. And this woman left him speechless.
Her name, he learned, was Savannah Monroe, the granddaughter of Dr. Sullivan and a veterinarian. He found it interesting that the love of animals ran in their family. He didn’t know Dr. Sullivan too well, other than the man had a classic Corvette that he kept in pristine condition.
She’d hurt his feelings when her initial reaction to finding him at Dr. Sullivan’s door had been one of fright. She looked terrified for her life and what he thought may have been misplaced interest. It wasn’t until he blurted out the word “Dog” that her reaction morphed into something different. Her eyes hardened and her flat lips tipped downward as she looked past him to the truck he left idling across the street. Beau had checked on the mutt in his passenger seat before ringing the doorbell for Dr. Sullivan’s house.
He watched her in awe as she worked before he was kicked out of the operating room and left shirtless in the hall. Trisha, the kind woman that worked in the office, had offered him some scrubs, but the shirt hadn’t fit. The pants barely tugged on. He wasn’t upset that his suit was caked in dried blood; he just knew that the old woman at the dry cleaners was going to have some questions. Normally he showed up with grease; blood was a different story.
Hours seemed to pass as he waited outside the operating room, just waiting for the tiniest of information regarding the animal. He’d never seen himself as a pet person, but with his mother moving, maybe the dog chose the perfect time to find him.
Finally, the door to the sterile room opened and his eyes were drawn to the limp animal cradled in the arms of Dr. Monroe and Trisha. They carefully maneuvered themselves down the hall to a small room with a crate set up for surgery patients. Beau took in the IV bag and towels rolled to comfort the animal. He smiled, knowing that the dog would be in the best care.
The doctor gently ran her hand over the dog’s body. The caring nature of her touch caused Beau’s heart to jump to attention. He’d been around beautiful women before, but nothing had caused a reaction like the one he had around this one. It was stupid. He couldn’t get mixed up with anyone from town; Beau had plans.
He wanted out of the place that had trapped him for so long. First, it was his flighty mother that had decided after her sixth disaster of a marriage (there was only one that had lasted longer than a year) that Carson was the town they would settle in. She had randomly chosen it from a map during one of her tirades. So, at the age of thirteen, Beau had moved to a new town. Luckily, he met Tate on the first day of school and had an instant best friend. She was one of those girls his mom called a “tom-boy,” so Tate didn’t have many friends, as it were.
She was his best friend and the second reason he stuck around for so long. He didn’t want to leave her and the shop that her father had left her. It took everything they had to keep it afloat. But now that she was engaged to a celebrity in the racing world, Beau wasn’t needed around as much. The town did their best to keep the old auto shop in work for Tate, and with the town growing, Beau didn’t think their past troubles were going to be a problem any longer. In the last year, the shop was actually in the black.
“I, um. . .didn’t expect you to stick around,” Dr. Monroe said, turning toward him after flipping the latch closed for the crate.
Her question brought him back from his internal musings and Beau felt his chest deflate. This stranger already didn’t have a good opinion of him and he didn’t know why he cared so much.
“Well, I had hoped to make sure that the animal survived the surgery.”
“She did great. Trisha will stay the night with her and then when she’s all healed up, we can take her to the shelter.”
Beau’s body froze as if he’d been dumped into the Arctic Ocean. “Shelter?”
“Yes. That’s standard practice for strays. We don’t have any records of missing pets in the area, but the shelter may have some from the local counties.”
“No.”
“No?” she replied, staring at him incredulously. Her eyebrows tilted downward and her eyes narrowed as if she had never had someone question her before.
“No,” he repeated, taking a step closer to her. Beau noticed that her entire body stiffened as he approached. “The dog found me and I want to take care of her.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works.”
“Well, how can I make it work?” he asked as he reached his hand out and tucked a loose piece of her hair behind her ear. Beau wasn’t sure what possessed him to act in such a forward manner toward the doctor, but he couldn’t help himself. He was drawn to this woman and there was little he could do to stop it.
“Um. . .well. . .,” the blushing doctor stuttered.
“You just need to call the shelter and ask if they have any lost pet reports that match the little lady’s description, Beau. Though when I volunteered there the other day, I don’t recall seeing any. After that, you can fill out some registration paperwork here at the office and we can relinquish her to you. Dr. Monroe, I assure you that Beau is a great candidate for a pet owner. I’ve known him since he was a pre-teen.”
“Thanks. Ms. Trisha.”
“Yes, but. . .” Dr. Monroe began but then immediately stopped herself. “I guess Trisha would know best. I’m going to go clean up. Trisha can help see you out.”
