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from several litters ran loose, mewing and wrestling and poking tiny claws into Madeline’s tights and Eric’s corduroy pants.
    “In the spring the kittens go fast at adoptions,” she told him, plucking one off his pant leg. “But nobody wants the adult cats. By fall, everyone interested in getting a kitten has one, and we have a heck of a time placing the ones born from August on. We do better with adult cats in the winter.”
    He gently placed Hannah on the floor when they left the main house to visit the building where the feral cats lived. These unreclaimable animals had little contact with humans, other than the time it took to clean, change the litter boxes and supply food and water. They were all cats that had either been stray too long and reverted to wild behavior, or born to strays.
    Madeline and Eric discussed the vaccination program, and he asked questions about the health of various cats, what medications had been tried and commented on what might be worth an experiment. Madeline was impressed by his knowledge and his kindness to the motley collection of animals. She’d approached several vets in the shelter’s hunt for a replacement for Dr. Heyer. Most she’d talked to didn’t seem to think these scroungy, shy or aggressive alley cats were worth the bother. Yet Eric Bergstrom’s voice held affection as he talked to even the least prepossessing.
    Her continuing awareness of him physically, of him as a man, however, was most annoying. He hadwonderful hands, she noticed at one point: large, with long deft fingers. They were brown, callused in places, but also somehow elegant. He could have been a pianist. Or a surgeon, which of course he was.
    Now, as he talked, she found herself thinking that the close-cropped cut of his hair suited the clean angular lines of his face, giving him a cool patrician look—until he smiled with the rakish confidence of a man who knew women would fall for him.
    Don’t be one of them, she told herself with a flash of panic. He wants an ornament, a sexy woman in bed, not a friend or lover in an emotional sense.
    When they emerged from the feral building, Joan was hurrying across the lawn toward them. A tiny energetic woman, she invariably wore her unruly gray hair bundled into a knot atop her head. She talked and moved faster than a normal human being, which was a good thing since she worked six days a week to help support the shelter, while also doing much of the physical labor and generally being the authority and mastermind.
    “You must be Dr. Bergstrom.” She thrust out a rough hand, which he shook. “I don’t know how it is that we’ve never met. Madeline, have you shown him everything?” She focused intensely on his face. “I wanted to talk about the possibility of equipping a small surgery room so we could haul fewer cats into your clinic. Although at least the drive will be shorter now. Your predecessor was unwilling to give us special rates, you know. We had to go to Dr. Heyer. Bless him.”
    “Dr. Heyer gave me plenty of advice when Ibought the practice in White Horse. Good thing, too, since I had a lot of questions. I hadn’t realized Dr. Stewart intended to head for warmer climes the minute the check cleared the bank.”
    Joan curled her lip. “That doesn’t surprise me. He charged too much. And he was lazy. If your animal got sick at 5:02 p.m., you were out of luck. I have a friend who had to drive her retriever, who’d been hit by a car, half an hour into Everett on a Sunday just to find a vet to look at him.”
    “It’s difficult to be on call night and day seven days a week,” Eric remarked diplomatically. “That’s why I got a partner.”
    “He wouldn’t have wanted to share the profits,” Joan said disdainfully. “You should have heard the lecture he gave me on how I ought to euthanize any cats who weren’t adoptable. ‘What’s the point of keeping them alive?’ he asked, as though they’re no more than toys that ought to be thrown