The Vixen and the Vet by Katy Regnery Read Free Book Online

her little pink tongue darted out to lick her lips. It was a nervous tic , but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t affect him. It did. A lot. He shifted toward her in his seat slightly.
    “You were the all-American golden boy. Now …”
    “Now he’s Asher Lee, man of leisure.” Miss Potts’s cheerful voice echoed through the quiet of the room, slicing through the intimacy of the moment as she set down a silver tray on the table between them.
    Asher scowled but was quickly distracted by the smell of homemade muffins.
    He turned to Savannah. “You made muffins this time?”
    Savannah started to say something, but Miss Potts interrupted. “She did —what a clever little thing. And so lovely. You’ll notice two are gone, Savannah. I couldn’t help myself.”
    Savannah blushed again, then looked up at Asher , and something miraculous happened. For as long as he lived and breathed, he wouldn’t forget it, because it was really and truly miraculous on the order of the loaves and fishes. Savannah Carmichael, one of the most beautiful girls he’d ever seen up close, looked at his face. And she smiled.
    ***
    Miss Potts chatted with them for a while, pouring them each a cup of steaming hot coffee, as they munched on Savannah’s mother’s muffins, then left them alone to resume their conversation.
    “ A man of leisure. What does that mean?”
    He shrugged, tucking in to the last chunk of muffin. “Mostly I read.”
    “ Fiction? Nonfiction? Poetry?”
    “A little of everything,” he said. “Don’t you need to take notes?”
    She glanc ed down at those long legs of his. Yes , was the answer to his question. Yes, I should be taking notes. But ever since she’d arrived, the visit had felt so much more social than professional, she’d been lulled into a comfortable repartee, and she didn’t feel like breaking it by taking out her notebook and scribbling notes. She had all night to write down her thoughts and reflections. She could always fact-check later. Wasn’t the important thing to create a relationship with her subject? Yes, of course. This first meeting was about creating a baseline comfort. She was doing everything right.
    “Next time. We’re just getting to know each other today.” She grinned at him. “ What’re you reading right now?”
    “ Right now? Oh, um … a very informative book about, um, interpersonal relationships.”
    He blushed as he said this, and she wondered why it embarrassed him but didn’t ask. His voice was deep and warm and soothing, and she could have listened to him talk about books for hours. He also told her about his childhood, which seemed idyllic, and gave her a basic timeline of his life from enlisting to now so she’d have a framework for the article. Before she knew it, the alarm on the phone in her purse was lightly ringing church bells to tell her that an hour had come and gone.
    She silenced it with a sheepish smile. “I guess it’s time for me to get out of your hair.”
    Was it her imagination, or did he look slightly sorry to hear that? Either way, it was definitely time for her to go. From the moment she’d arrived, she’d been sidetracked, and she needed to get home and get her game plan together in time for Wednesday’s visit.
    What surprised her the most was that , once they’d situated themselves before the windows with only the less damaged side of his face visible to her, she’d quickly discovered how easy it was to talk to him. She wasn’t distracted by his prosthetic hand, which dangled out of sight over the far edge of his chair, or by his mangled skin and missing ear, both of which were mostly hidden from her view. All she could see was the weathered, rugged handsomeness of his left side, the imperfection of his nose, the occasional twinkle in his brown eye, the easy way his long legs crossed in front of him.
    He was smart and quick and well-read, and though he’d warned her that he was unpolished , she had yet to see much evidence of it. In