Page 2 of Moore to Love

She nodded with a yawn. “That makes sense, I guess.”

“So is there anything we can do?” Ryland repeated her question from earlier.

“The more fur you remove from your cat, the less that will end up as hair balls in their stomach. Brushing him every day can be an effective way to minimize hair balls, and it’ll probably help you bond even more with this little guy.”

“Yeah, I bet he’ll love that.” Waverly lifted Gracie from her feet to press a kiss on top of her head. “This one, too, even though I’m guessing she doesn’t need it as much with her short hair.”

“Anything else we should do?”

“If it ends up being a persistent issue, I can recommend specialized foods with high-fiber formulas that help minimize shedding and encourage hair balls to move through the digestive tract more easily.” I gave Gracie a little scratch behind her ear. “I don’t want to jump the gun on that when he’s been eating well for you guys so far, but we’ll keep a close eye on him going forward, just in case.”

Waverly beamed a tired smile my way. “Thanks for doing a house call. I don’t think I could’ve waited until morning to find out what was wrong with him.”

“Don’t thank him.” My cousin’s expression held none of the gratitude in his wife’s as he glared at me before scrubbing his hands over his face. “We wouldn’t have needed a vet if he hadn’t talked you into taking Wiggles in the first place.”

“C’mon, admit it. The little guy has grown on you, too,” I teased.

“Too?” Waverly leaned against Ryland’s side, tilting her head back to grin up at him. “Wiggles spends more time on your lap than he does mine.”

“Only because Gracie beats him to yours,” my cousin grunted.

Waverly didn’t look convinced. “Mm-hmm, I’m sure it has nothing to do with all the treats and scratches you give him when you think nobody is looking.”

“I knew we’d make a cat person out of you some day.” I shot him a grin. “I just didn’t think it was going to be this quick.”

“You’re taking way too much credit there. All you did was talk my gorgeous wife into taking Wiggles, which took basically no effort at all on your part.” Ryland brushed a kiss against the top of Waverly’s head.

“That’s fair.” I shrugged.

“How’re things at the clinic?”

“Busier than I ever could’ve imagined.” I ran my fingers through my hair with a sigh. “At some point, I’ll need to consider recruiting a second veterinarian. Preferably someone who has experience with large animals. That’s not my specialty, but I’m getting more and more requests from local farms ever since the vet in Stuart left. I have enough training to help out in a pinch, but Joshua is having a heck of a time juggling my schedule when I go out on one of those calls when the clinic is open.”

Waverly leaned forward and pierced me with her blue-eyed gaze, suddenly looking more alert than she had the entire time I’d been here. “Would an extra pair of hands around the office alleviate some of the issues, even if it’s just someone to do clerical tasks and not another vet?”

“It definitely wouldn’t hurt.”

She perked up even more at my answer. “Remember the day when you talked me into taking Wiggles? Jude was hanging the new sign up at our office, and one of Ryland’s clients stopped to offer to babysit because this guy”—she jerked her thumb at my cousin—“was giving me a hard time about my nonexistent pregnancy after our honeymoon.”

“I do.” My response was a major understatement. The single mom had been on my mind ever since I saw her on the sidewalk in front of his law office, the same day I asked Waverly if she would foster Wiggles. She had been walking her two children back to her car after they’d gotten ice cream.

Even though I didn’t know her, seeing the rust bucket that she was driving had pissed me off. When I said something about it, Waverly had filled me in on her situation. Ryland had handled her divorce from her ex, who Waverly had described as a jerk. When she’d said that the woman didn’t have a job, my cousin Jude—who was there to hang the sign—had mentioned that he could use some help at his construction company. I hadn’t been thinking about hiring anyone else at the time, but I found myself reacting to his offer by saying that I had some work she could do at the clinic.

Waverly proved that she had a great memory as she asked, “Would you be willing to interview her for a possible position at the clinic?”

“If you two vouch for her, she doesn’t need to interview. The job is hers, however many hours she can give me.”

With as often as I’d thought about Eloise over the past month, hiring her probably wasn’t the smartest call. I barely knew her—hadn’t even said a word to her in our brief interaction—but there was no denying that something about the single mom had captured my attention. And it wasn’t just the difficulties she faced.

With her wavy, light brown hair, green eyes, and plump lips, there was no missing that Ryder’s client was attractive. But her killer curves had made the biggest impression on me. Even dressed down for an outing to the ice cream shop with her children, I hadn’t missed the swell of her breasts stretching her sweatshirt. Or her perfect ass when she’d bent over to help the kids into the car.

If she worked for me, I couldn’t go there with her since I would never take advantage of an employee like that. I wouldn’t be able to act on any attraction I felt for her, but she could probably use a job more than a date with a man who had no time for a relationship.

2

ELLIE

The school drop-off line was the seventh circle of hell. Getting Benjamin and Madison out of bed, dressed, fed, and into the car was hard enough each morning. But the excruciating wait while other parents demonstrate how very little they cared about anyone else was the worst.

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