Not That Kind of Girl by Susan Donovan Read Free Book Online Page B

blood and sweat. It almost made her heave.
    “My complaint has already been processed,” he whispered. “Your dog will be impounded. She’s going to be put down.” Raymond chuckled in her ear. “May I just say, in advance, how sorry I am for your loss?”
    With that, the smell and sound of Raymond Sandberg dissipated. He was gone. She opened her eyes.
    “Miss Bloom?” One of the detectives moved toward her. His partner followed.
    “How could he already have an order for my dog to be impounded?” she asked then, not bothering to hide her panic. “He hasn’t set foot out of the hospital! What’s going on here?”
    The two officers glanced at each other. “He made some calls from his bed,” one said.
    “Mr. Sandberg knows a lot of people in this town,” the other officer added.
    “No,” Roxie whispered, feeling her throat close up with panic. “He can’t do this to Lilith. I won’t let him.”
    *   *   *
    Because home for Eli was a four-thousand-acre ranch in southern Utah, there was no such thing as a quick trip there and back. The drive was twelve hours each way. Flying wasn’t much better, with a jet from San Francisco to Salt Lake, a long layover, and then a puddle-jumper flight to St. George. From there it was another two-hour drive to the outskirts of Panguitch, then down three miles of bumpy access road that ended at the gate to Dog-Eared Ranch. Despite all this, a few days at home was always Eli’s preferred method of relaxation. It was the only foolproof way to return his mind, body, and spirit to a state of equilibrium.
    What did it say about his current state, Eli wondered, that he’d canceled all appointments for the week and set out for home on a Monday afternoon? Did it mean he was so out of whack he couldn’t wait for the weekend? Did he need to put about eight hundred miles between himself and Roxie Bloom, the long-legged, dark-haired sensual volcano who’d nearly rocked him off course?
    Eli hoped to have it all figured out in a few days. In the meantime, he’d remind himself to breathe and enjoy the trip.
    It wasn’t that he didn’t like San Francisco. He did. The city hummed with energy from the diversity of human beings who lived there. It had food, music, art, and architecture for every palette. Then there were the magical blue stretches of ocean and bay. The parks. The wind that whipped around the Golden Gate Bridge. The beauty of the city at night was a vision that sent shivers through him.
    But it all got to him after a while. The people and concrete and traffic and noise could make him feel jumpy. His core—that unshakable sense of who he was as a human being and a man—would start to feel just the slightest bit fuzzy. And when that happened, he knew it was time for a dose of never-ending mountain and sky, and the rolling waves of sagebrush topped by high-altitude cedar forest. He needed to be in a place that had more coyotes than cabs. He needed to go home.
    That’s how he found himself at the Salt Lake City International Airport that Monday evening, waiting for the SkyWest connecting flight to St. George. He looked at his cell phone and sighed with relief. In a few hours he’d be sitting on his porch, his dogs around him, a cold beer in his hand, and his familiar mountains rising in the darkness beyond.
    Of course, this idyllic homecoming would include the usual interrogation from his sister, Sondra, who’d never understood his San Francisco sabbatical in the first place.
    “Are you crazy?” she’d ask first, followed up with “Can’t you just let this go?” and, Eli’s favorite, “What are you—a glutton for punishment or something?”
    He smiled softly to himself and cradled the back of his head in his hands, watching, through the glass wall, the maintenance crew at work on the small sixteen-seat commuter plane. Of course she didn’t understand—how could she? Sondra knew who her mother and father were. When Bob Gallagher died last year, her world