“Does she know any tricks?” Josephine asked. “Auntie’s dog pulls her up the hills when she rides her bike!”

“Is that right?” Ian asked, glancing at me. His eyes smiled, and something fluttered in my stomach. “No, Angie doesn’t know too many tricks, but she’s very well-behaved. Now, the first thing I do when someone brings in a dog is try to make friends with it. Like this. Hi, Angie. You’re a good dog, aren’t you?”

“Does she ever talk back?” Hayley asked, and the girls dissolved into giggles.

Ian smiled a bit uncertainly, almost like he wasn’t sure if he was included in the joke, and my heart lurched. Suddenly, it occurred to me that despite the fact that he looked like a Russian assassin and acted like an iceberg, Ian McFarland might be a little…well…shy.

It was oddly appealing.

For the next few minutes, Ian showed the girls what a routine exam looked like, holding their interest pretty well, considering that they had the attention span of hummingbirds.

“I think I want to be a vet,” Caroline said, pushing her thick glasses up her nose. “Do you have to be smart to be a vet?”

“Yes, dummy, so that means you can’t,” Keira answered immediately.

The words were as sharp and vicious as a razor, and for a second, I was knocked speechless. Caroline bowed her head. “Keira, you’re done!” I said sharply, jolting out of my seat. “Out in the waiting room, right now.” Oh, would that the Brownie handbook would allow me to…I don’t know…do something to change her evil little heart and make her see how cruel she was. My own eyes filled with helpless, angry tears, and my fists clenched.

“I’ll get this,” Michaela whispered, taking Keira by the shoulder.

“What?” Keira demanded as she was steered out of the room. “I didn’t lie! She’s not smart enough!”

The room was silent, the other ten girls realizing that Keira had crossed a line. Josephine, God bless her, put her hand on Caroline’s back, but Caroline didn’t move, just stared at the floor.

“In order to be a vet, Caroline,” Ian said matter-of-factly, kneeling down in front of her, “you have to have a big heart. Do you have one of those?”

Caroline didn’t look up. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“She does,” Josephine confirmed.

“You do, Caroline,” Hayley seconded.

“Would you be very gentle? Sometimes the animals are scared,” Ian said seriously.

Caroline gave a minuscule nod, still not raising her head.

“You also have to love animals. All different kinds.”

“I do,” she whispered. “Even snakes.”

“Well, then,” Ian said. “Sounds like you’d make a great vet.”

She looked up at him. “Really?” she asked, her voice wobbly. Ian nodded.

My tears sloshed over, and in that moment, I loved Ian McFarland. Quite a lot, in fact. And Josephine and Hayley should get medals of honor, as far as I was concerned. I wiped my eyes surreptitiously, not wanting the other girls to see me cry.

Ian stood up and took a stethoscope out of his coat pocket. He held it out to Caroline. “Want to listen to Angie’s heart?”

“Can I, too?” Marissa asked.

“Can I? Can I?” the other girls chorused.

Caroline forgot Keira’s nasty remark in the thrill of using real live medical equipment, and Angie, who must’ve sensed that the little girl needed some extra love, licked her face. Caroline’s smile lit up the room.

Half an hour later, the girls were once again shrieking with glee in the waiting room, as Ian had given them each a pair of latex gloves and my gifted niece had blown hers up into an udder-like balloon. As they played makeshift volleyball, I went over to Ian, who was watching from behind the half door that led to the exam rooms.

“You did great,” I said. “Especially with Caroline.”

He gave a formal little nod of acknowledgment. “Thank you for your help.”

“Was it hell?” I asked, smiling.

“A bit,” he admitted. One corner of his mouth rose a fraction. He could use a shave, I noted, and suddenly my knees were a little weak.

At that moment, Hester came in through the door. “Hi, Josephine!” she boomed, scooping up her daughter and kissing her loudly. “Did you have fun with the vet?”

“I did!” Josephine said. “We saw his dog!”

Hester set Josephine down and lumbered over to Ian and me. “Guess what?” she said to me. “My fifty-four-year-old patient is pregnant! Isn’t that great?”

“So great,” I said. “Um, Hes, this is Ian McFarland, the new vet. Ian, this is my sister, Dr. Hester Grey.”

“You know,” Hester said in her loud, bouncing voice, “I thought about being a vet. But I’m not really fond of animals, and my scores weren’t high enough. Had to go slumming in plain old medical school. Johns Hopkins. Where’d you go?”

“Tufts,” Ian said.

“Impressive,” Hester practically shouted. “Our brother just dropped out of Tufts.”

“How was your seminar?” I asked.

“It was great. All sorts of new hormone therapies, just waiting to plump up Miss Egg for Mr. Sperm. Well, gotta run. See you soon, Callie. Nice meeting you, Owen.”

“It’s Ian,” I corrected, but my sister was already halfway out the door. “She’s a fertility doctor,” I informed Ian.

“I remember,” he said. At my look, he added, “From the DMV.”

“You love to bring that up, don’t you?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Her daughter looks just like her,” he observed.

“I know,” I said. “Which is funny, since both Hester’s kids are adopted.” I looked up at him. “Do you have kids, Ian?”

He shook his head. “No. No, my ex-wife…no. We didn’t.”

There was more to that story, I could tell, but whatever discussion might have ensued was swallowed as the latest batch of mothers came to fetch their Brownies. One of them was Taylor Kinell, Keira the Cruel’s mother. She was clad in expensive, skintight and age-inappropriate clothing…anemic T-shirt with fabric so thin it was basically gauze, low-slung dark jeans, hand-torn by the designer, no doubt. She bent down and opened her arms to Keira, giving us a flash of her tramp stamp and thong. “Hello, baby girl!” she cooed in the general direction of her child, though she was looking at Ian. Ah. Mother of the year parades wares in front of hottie vet. Sure enough, she whipped off her Prada sunglasses and blasted a huge smile at Ian.

“I have paperwork to do,” Ian muttered. With that, he fled down the hall to his office. I couldn’t blame him.

Walking over to Taylor Kinell, I slapped on a fake smile. “Taylor, we had a little problem today with Keira,” I began.

“Mommy! Mommy? Mommy!” Keira began, tugging her mother’s hand. “You said we could go out for dinner! I want to go out for dinner! I hate eating at home! Can we go? Mommy! Mommy? I’m bored! This was so boring! Mommy! You said we could eat out!”

“Yes, honey, I said we could. Where do you want to go, huh?” Taylor said. Keira kept yanking her mother’s anemic arm so hard I was surprised she didn’t rip it off and, being Keira, start gnawing on it.

“Keira, I’m talking to your mother right now,” I said patiently. She was only a kid, after all. Being evil was probably more nurture than nature.

“So? I’m hungry! Let’s go, Mommy!”

“Taylor, Keira made fun of another child today, twice, and as you know, bullying isn’t allowed in Brownies. Or really, anywhere else, right? Keira, saying mean things hurts people’s feelings, honey.”

“I don’t care,” Keira said.

Ooh. I turned to look at Taylor once more. “She won’t be able to stay in Brownies if she doesn’t learn some basic manners. Keira, would you like it if someone called you a dummy?”

“Which no one would, because you’re so smart, angel-love,” Taylor said immediately, shooting me a death glare. “As for Brownies, we were planning on leaving anyway. It’s a little bourgeois. Come on, baby. You can have two desserts tonight. Let’s go.”

My blood pressure bubbled dangerously. Did Taylor think she was doing her child a favor, raising her that way? I almost felt sorry for Keira. In ten years, she’d be the despised popular girl in high school, no true friends, everyone gossiping about her behind her back as she wielded her parents’ money like a weapon.

“Thanks for chaperoning, Callie,” said Sarah, Caroline Biddle’s mother. She held her daughter by the hand, her face bright with the joy of seeing her child again. Now here was a mother.

“Oh, my pleasure,” I said, then paused. “Did Michaela speak to you?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she answered, her eyes speaking volumes. “Please tell Dr. McFarland he’s CNN’s hero of the year, as far as I’m concerned.”

I smiled. “Will do. Sorry I couldn’t…do more.” Once again, the thought of Caroline’s dejected little face made my throat grow tight.

Sarah smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Caroline, thank Callie for the special day, honey.”

“Thank you, Callie!” the little girl said, locking her arms around my thighs and hugging tight. “Bye! I love you!”

“Bye, sweetness,” I said, smiling down at her. “I love you, too.” I watched as they left, Caroline chattering away, beaming, still holding her mommy’s hand, and I couldn’t help feeling a pang of envy at the sight of them, mother and child, so adoring of each other that nothing and no one else mattered. Caroline’s dad was a prince, a builder who thought the sun rose and set on his wife and child. Annie, Jack and Seamus were like that, too. The three of them together—the essence of happiness. Everything else was gravy.

The last of the Brownies left, and the office was abruptly quiet. “Callie?” I jumped. Ian had reemerged from his office, now that the coast was clear. “Can I see you for a minute?”

“Sure! Sure, of course.”

“Ian, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Carmella said. “Great seeing you, Callie. Nice job with the ankle biters.”

“Thanks.” I grinned.

I followed Ian to his office, where Angie was sleeping, curled in her dog bed. The room was orderly—that was putting it mildly—but it wasn’t sterile, not like Muriel’s black-and-white blank space. My own office was cheerfully cluttered, occasionally bordering on chaotic, sticky notes and photos scattered hither and yon, coffee mugs and the like. Ian’s, on the other hand, was very tidy. There were his diplomas, NYU undergrad, Tufts for his DVM. Shelves with heavy textbooks, a small sculpture of a dog. On the wall was a rather nice painting of a sailboat, lots of juicy oil and texture.

But most interesting of all was the framed photo on the cabinet behind his desk. It showed a younger Ian and a very, very beautiful woman. Long blond hair, creamy skin, bone structure to rival Natalie Portman’s. They were both smiling, and an unexpected twinge hit my heart. Ian looked very happy in that picture.

“Your wife?” I asked.

He glanced at it. “Ex-wife.”

Not quite ex in your heart, pal, if you keep her picture here to torture yourself every day. “She’s gorgeous.”

“Yes.” He said nothing else.

“Ian?” I said after a minute had passed.

“Yes?”

“You wanted to speak to me, remember? Though this is quite fun, too.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “Right.” He sighed. “I think I might need to hire you. If you think you can really do something, that is.”

“The warm and fuzzy campaign!” I clapped my hands, startling him. “Good for you, Ian. This will be great!”

“Will it?” he asked.

“Oh, come on. I’m not the dentist, for heaven’s sake.” At that moment, my stomach growled.

“Not again,” Ian said.

“Hush. I’m just hungry. I had a hard day. First I taught old women to hip-hop, then I had to herd the Brownies. Want to grab some dinner? We can talk about things while we eat.”

Ian looked wary. “All right,” he said after much deliberation.

“We can go to Elements,” I suggested. “It’s near where I live, and I can swing by and grab my laptop.”

“Fine,” Ian said. He looked at me steadily for a minute. Man, those eyes were so…blue. Betty Boop folded her hands under her chin and sighed deeply.

“Okay,” I said, remembering that I was a professional person and this was not prom night. “Um…do you know where it is? It’s a little bit hard to find, because it’s down this little one-way street, then you have to sort of turn into a parking lot, but it doesn’t look like a parking lot, it’s more of an alley, but it leads—”

“Why don’t I just follow you?” he suggested drily.

I smiled. “That, Dr. McFarland, is a great idea.”

CHAPTER TEN

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, we arrived at Noah’s Arks. Ian pulled in next to me, then got out of his car, looked at the sign and gave me a questioning look. “This is my grandfather’s place,” I explained as I fumbled for my purse. “I live with him. Come on in. You can meet him.”

Bowie greeted me with the type of joy usually reserved for parents and children separated by war, singing in joy, yipping, head butting me so that my jeans turned into a sea of fur.