“Caleb tried that with the front door the day he moved in,” Spencer admitted with a shake of his head. “But then he couldn’t pay the locksmith, so I got all his copies of the keys.”

“Someday, you’re going to have tell me the entire story of how you two started that game,” she said.

Mentioning someday—a future between them—caused something to spark in Spencer’s dark eyes. “Someday,” he promised, “I will.”

Chapter 18

Spencer was never one to rush the job. He was always meticulous when it came to washing up both before and after seeing an animal. His surgeries ran a little long because he liked to double-check the sutures. Eva and Lawson even joked that he’d gladly spend two hours judging each individual animal during the West Coast Canine Classic, despite the fact that the entire show was meant to be completed in an afternoon.

He finished cleaning up after Wheezy and putting away his supplies in under six minutes flat.

Ruby must have been equally determined because she was sitting on the front steps of Mrs. Orson’s house when he emerged, a cardboard box sitting next to her. When he glanced inside it, he winced. A reusable lunch box, deflated and travel-stained, sat in one corner. A set of purple scrubs and a worn pair of sneakers sat in the other. On top of it all was a black-covered novel with what looked suspiciously like a nipple peeking through.

An entire career, summed up in one small parcel. A career that was, to all intents and purposes, over.

“Is that the infamous porcupine book?” he asked as he approached. He forced himself to speak lightly, as though it was perfectly ordinary to hold a conversation like this on an old woman’s front porch while several walker-laden men shuffled down the sidewalk in front of them.

Ruby twisted to look up at him, her eyes squinted against the setting sun. She was, without question, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The red, angry mottling of her rash looked even redder and angrier in the outdoor light. Exhaustion darkened the hollows under her eyes, and her usual curls hung limp around her shoulders. She looked like a woman who’d been through battle and emerged—not victorious, exactly, but with her head held high.

God, he loved that about her.

His chest clenched as he realized that he loved a lot more than that. He shot a hand out to brace himself on the porch railing, his whole body reeling with the implication of what he was looking at—of who he was looking at.

Ruby Taylor. The woman he loved.