The Road Home Read online

  A classic novella from New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis about a big-hearted vet, an irresistible guy and the adorable animals that bring them together. Originally published in 2004 as part of the anthology Mother, Please!

  Tall, dark and charming Jason Lawrence keeps visiting Mel Anders’s veterinary clinic—with everything from a drooling St. Bernard to a potbelly pig. Jason is sweet and fun, and Mel starts to look forward to his visits. Still, she’s suspicious—the man can’t have that many animals. But she never suspects that the whole thing just might be a set up….

  The Road Home

  Jill Shalvis

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you SO MUCH for buying a Shalvis classic romance! These books might predate the digital age, but they’re still fun and sexy! We hope you enjoy this peek at my earlier work!

  Best wishes and happy reading!

  Jill Shalvis

  www.jillshalvis.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  CHAPTER ONE

  IF ASKED, Melissa Anders would say her life was perfect. But when no one was looking, she sometimes took a deep breath, let it all out in a baffled sigh, and wondered how the hell she’d ended up here.

  Here being out in the middle of California, in the small, quaint Martis Hills, treating various farm-animal ailments instead of the upscale, spoiled, snobby, pedigreed cats and dogs as she’d planned.

  Sure, she loved being a veterinarian. But somehow during those long, exhausting college years, when she’d worked so hard to keep up her grades and scrape together enough cash to live at the same time, she’d never imagined living amongst rolling hills and farmland, where there were more cattle than people, running one of only two vet clinics for miles and miles.

  The people in town—and having grown up in Los Angeles she used the word town loosely—were all a bit…too friendly. They popped in on her uninvited, asked nosy questions and basically talked her ear off. Some even brought cookies, or amazingly delicious casseroles.

  She’d waited to see what their angle was, but having been here for a few months now, no angle had materialized. Maybe she’d moved to Mayberry.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like people, but that she preferred animals. Animals accepted. Animals loved unconditionally. Animals never, ever, gave up their young because they wanted a career in the ballet and couldn’t be bothered to raise a baby.

  Oops, a self-pity slip, she thought, as she got out of her car, smoothing down her plain black trousers and white blouse. She headed up the path to the large farmhouse that years ago had been converted into an animal clinic by Dr. Myers. He’d just retired to Phoenix to be with his elderly sister, and Melissa had leased it with an option to buy—not that she ever intended to do any such insane thing. But the place was cheap, at least to her LA standard, and with her college loan debt still hanging over her, she needed cheap.

  That was what had brought her here, she told herself, curiosity about small-town living. The low cost of the lease. It had nothing, nothing at all, to do with the fact she’d been born here twenty-eight years ago.

  And that her mother lived here.

  She grimaced and shook her head. No. The truth was, she’d come here because in some deep recess of her heart she’d wanted to be close to the only family she had. Which really pissed her off when she thought about it too hard, so she tried not to think about it at all.

  She unlocked the front door to the clinic, flipped on the lights and took a deep breath, which never failed to make her smile. Nothing like the smell of disinfectant to get her going in the morning.

  The converted living room made a nice waiting room. She had chairs lined up beneath the windows, a shelving unit on the opposite wall filled with retail supplies such as bovine toothbrushes and doggy breath mints. The reception desk was tiny, not really a problem since she couldn’t afford a receptionist anyway.

  She’d just stepped behind the counter and slipped on her white overcoat when the front door opened, the bell above it chiming loud enough to awaken the dead. On her first day, she’d taken it down, only to have everyone tell her that Dr. Myers had brought that bell all the way from Europe forty-five years ago, so she’d put it back up. Tradition in Mayberry—er, Martis Hills apparently ran bone deep.

  The man coming inside had his back to her while he shut the door. He was tall, lanky, and wore the town’s usual uniform of soft, faded Levi’s and a white T-shirt. She repressed the sigh for days of old, when on any given day in Los Angeles she could feed her love for fashion by just looking around.

  Then he turned and faced her, and oddly enough, every fond thought of the days of old fell right out of her head.

  He looked to be thirtyish. His hair was light brown, almost blond. Probably sun-kissed by the hot summer sun, and given the sinewy, rangy look to his body, he probably worked hard farming his land like so many in the county did. He was slightly hunched over a towel-covered bundle that was me-owing loudly in protest.

  “I’ve got something for you to fix up, Dr. Anders.” He let out a startlingly contagious smile.

  That he knew her name didn’t surprise her. Just another product of living in a small place. Gossip ran wild here, and no one was safe from that. Especially a single city woman running a vet clinic. Often in the dark of the night, she’d lie awake and stress about money or a variety of other things including why she always managed to stick out like a sore thumb no matter where she was. But that was for the dark of the night.

  Right now she had a patient, and she loved her patients, every one of them. When he handed the cat over to her, their arms brushed together, hers covered by her long white coat, his bared and tanned and warm, and also sporting four long nasty scratches down one forearm. It’d been a tough morning, she’d guess.

  With obvious relief, he slapped his hands together, ridding himself of the feline hair that was sticking to him. His own longish hair, brushing his collar, fell over his forehead as he lifted his head and smiled at her. “So, can you fix him up?”

  His eyes were green, and full of an easy warmth and friendliness that she’d never mastered. Not with people, that is. Odd then, how her mouth actually quirked in a smile back. “Let’s see. Follow me.” She entered the first of three patient rooms and set the poor, shaking cat on the table, keeping firm but gentle hands on his body. “Shh,” she murmured, bending close. “I’ve got you. Name?” she asked.

  “Oh.” Another quick flashing grin. “Terror.”

  “What?”

  He laughed. “That’s what he invokes in me, so I call him Terror. His real name is Bob.”

  “Bob,” she said softly, and rubbed her cheek to the cat’s, saying the name again, just as quietly.

  The caterwauling stopped at the sound of her crooning voice.

  “Ah, blessed silence.” The man sighed with relief. He lifted his attention from the cat on the table and smiled at Melissa, another slow, easy one that she was quite certain had set more than a few hearts pounding. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Now I’ll just wait way over here.” He backed to the wall, propped it up with his shoulder. “You go ahead and work your magic.”

  Mel stroked the cat’s chin, and a loud rumble filled the room.

  The man straightened. “What in the hell?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard a cat purr before?”

  “Well, sure, but that sounds more like an engine gone bad than a purr.” He appeared to be one-hundred-percent rough-and-tumble country guy, and yet he stared at the cat