Bad Girls Don't (38 page)

Not that her own older sister Sue Ellen saw things that way. Of course, Sue Ellen saw things no one else did, like the face of Jesus in the fur of a llama.

Leena loved her older sister, but she didn’t understand her. Few people did. Which was why Sue Ellen earned the nickname Our Lady of the Outlandish.

Baby sister Emma was the one with the brains and fancy job title in the family. Leena was the one with the big dreams, very few of which had actually come true. Not that she’d told her sisters that. No, her reports to them had been filled with plenty of optimism and major exaggerations.

Which made her homecoming all the more humiliating.

Leena was still reeling from the bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall jokes that had been thrown her way when her modeling agency had fired her. The Image Plus Modeling Agency in Chicago was no Wilhemina.

“And you’re no Kate Dillon,” her agent Irene had shot back at her before showing her the door.

Okay, so Kate was one of the leading plus-sized models. And okay, so Leena’s assignments weren’t photo shoots for
French Vogue
or even Lane Bryant. That didn’t mean she was a total failure.

What about that layout for the Sears spring sales catalogue? last year? That had gone well, once the photographer and makeup artist had recovered from hurling after eating bad sushi they’d had catered in.

Before she could think of her other professional accomplishments, Leena was almost knocked down by a nun on the run who flew into the waiting room and rushed up to a family hidden from view by a large ficus.

Leena heard someone say, “Is he dead?”

Great. Her first day on the job and someone has to bite the dust on her watch. Not a good omen. Should she call 911?

“You called me here to give last rites,” the nun, whom Leena now recognized as Sister Mary, said.

“Yes,” a little girl replied.

“To a hamster?”

“Not just any hamster,” the little girl explained. “To Harry the Hamster.”

“I can’t give last rites to a hamster,” Sister Mary said.

“What’s going on out here?”

Leena stared at the hunk in the white lab coat who’d just drawled that question. She knew this guy. She recognized the wicked twinkle in his blue eyes. Cole Flannigan.

She thought he’d be bartending in some tropical hotspot by now, his Hawaiian shirt hanging open to reveal his muscular chest. At least his chest had been muscular the last time she’d seen it. Of course that had been almost a decade ago.

Still, he didn’t look like he’d gained a beer belly yet. In fact, his worn jeans made him look lean and extremely bedable. By a lean and equally bedable babe. Not by her, broke and chunky Leena Riley.

Had her career really taken off the way she’d told her sisters it had, why then things would have been different. Then she’d have had the confidence to stroll right up to Cole and kiss him silly, had she wanted to.

Her lack of confidence had to do with her empty bank account, not her body image.

Well, okay, maybe it did have something to do with her body image. I mean, she wasn’t a saint . . . or a nun.

“You want to know what’s going on here?” Sister Mary repeated. “I was just telling your patients that I can’t give last rites to a hamster.”

“What about a special prayer?” the little girl asked.

“I told you that Harry is just fine,” Cole reminded the family. “You didn’t have to call in Sister Mary.”

“Well, since I’m here, I might as well say a prayer.” Sister Mary spoke bent down and spoke quietly to the little girl and Harry the Hamster. So quietly that Leena couldn’t hear what she said but it made the kid feel better, judging by the shy smile she gave the nun.

“Your next patient is in exam room one,” Leena efficiently announced.

“Really?” Cole pinned her with a stare. “And you are?”

“Your new receptionist.”

Cole raised an eyebrow. “You’re applying for the job?”

“No, you’re
hiring
me,” Leena stated confidently.

“Why is that?”

“Because you need me,” Leena told him. “I’m here to rescue you from utter chaos.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sister Mary declared. “It’s not like you’ve had people knocking down your door demanding to work here, Cole.”

“No, she’s the first,” Cole agreed. He studied Leena for a moment. “Have we met before?”

Leena hesitated, unsure how to answer that question. She’d beaten him up once when she was in the sixth grade and he’d hung out with a bunch of younger kids who’d called her fat. Now probably wasn’t the best time to admit that fact, however.

Too late. “Wait a second.” Cole snapped his fingers. “Aren’t you Sue Ellen’s sister Leena?”

Right. Like that’s how she wanted to be known for the rest of her life. As Sue Ellen’s sister.

That was one of the reasons she’d left. Because she was sick and tired of always being referred to as Sue Ellen’s sister. Or Sue Ellen’s fat sister. Or Sue Ellen’s chubbo sister. “I’m Leena Riley.”

“I thought you were in Chicago doing modeling or something like that.”

He made it sound like she was pole dancing on Rush Street. “That’s right. I was.”

“And now you want the job as my receptionist? Why?”

“Do you really care?” Leena retorted as another bunch of patients and animals entered the already overcrowded waiting room and the phone started to ring. Chaos was threatening to return.

“No. You’re hired. For the day. We’ll talk about the future after that.”

Oh yeah. How the mighty had fallen. All the way from cover model on the spring Sears catalogue to small-town vet receptionist. Not exactly a lateral career move by any stretch of the imagination.

But it would do in a crunch. And she was definitely in a crunch.

Leena Riley, rising star reverting back to Leena the Loser.

No, she refused to think like that. She couldn’t afford to go down that road. It led nowhere.

Of course, some might think that Rock Creek qualified as nowhere.

But at least she had a job. For today. And that’s all she could handle for the moment. Today. Tomorrow would have to take a number.

After getting their names, Leena pulled the files on the patients waiting in the waiting room and then went outside to check on the two terriers and owners she’d banished out there. Luckily the spring weather was warm enough that they weren’t shivering in their boots, had they been wearing any. Leena was wearing a lovely pair of Italian leather Prada boots she’d gotten at a sample sale.

They looked good at a photo shoot, and went great with her jeans and crisp white wrap shirt, but were perhaps not the best choice for a vet’s office. Not when one of the banished terriers decided to squat and pee on Leena’s leather-encased right foot.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the owner, a harried-looking woman in her forties, declared. “Oscar gets a nervous bladder whenever we come to the vet.”

The other terrier started gnawing on Leena’s left boot. Suddenly the job at the graveyard shift of Gas4Less was looking a lot more appealing.

 

 

Cole finished with his last patient, a Siamese male named Si who needed his shots updated, and headed out toward the empty waiting room.

He was surprised to find Leena still there. He’d have thought she’d taken off screaming when the Great Dane with anxiety issues had come in two hours ago. Or the depressed boa constrictor.

Instead, there she was. Standing behind the U-shaped desk of the receptionist area, looking totally out of place. But looking good. Her dark blonde hair brushed her shoulders in what was no doubt an expensive cut. Ditto for her perfect manicure.

She’d always had a bossy streak, which was no doubt how she’d gotten that Great Dane to behave. It hadn’t made him behave when they’d been kids. He was ashamed to recall how he’d made fun of her weight and how she’d flattened him with a lucky sucker punch. He’d been two years younger than her—a cocky fourth grader.

“You still pack a mean right hook?” Cole asked as he handed her the file on his last patient.

“If necessary, yes.” She stared him down, which gave him a good look at her gorgeous blue eyes. “I hope my actions that day taught you a valuable lesson.”

“Which was?”

“That if you say something cruel, it will come back to bite you in the ass.”

“I suppose I should be thankful you didn’t do that and only punched me.”

“Yes, you should. I was suspended from school for a week because of you.”

“And yet here you are, begging me for a job.”

“Wrong. Here I am, saving you from trouble yet again.”

“That’s why you came back to Rock Creek from Chicago? To save me?”

“Do you need saving?”

“Do you?” Cole countered.

Leena shrugged. “I gave up looking for a knight in shining armor to save me ages ago. These days, I save myself.”

“And you also save overworked vets.”

“That’s right.”

“Even though you have no experience working in a vet’s office.”

“I have experience booking appointments.” As a model she’d usually been on the other end of the booking arrangements, dealing with bookers scheduling photo shoots. But how hard could this side of things be? Her organizational skills were very good. Everyone said so.

Even in kindergarten she’d organized the other kids’ cubbies. And in their mobile home, at age eight Leena had moved all the contents of the kitchen cabinets into a more efficient arrangement.

By the time Leena was a teenager, she’d perfected time management so that she knew exactly how long to study for a test to get a B or a C.

Emma was the A student in the family. So Leena hadn’t wasted her time on academic matters. Instead, after reading an article in a magazine about plus-size models, she’d focused on learning everything she could about the modeling industry. She’d gone to model shows and model talent searches at shopping malls all over the state.

And when she’d graduated from Rock Creek High, she’d packed her bags and headed to Chicago with her portfolio under her arm—consisting of several headshots and one full-length shot.

She could still remember her excitement at driving her used Toyota down Chicago’s famous Lake Shore Drive, seeing all those tall buildings lining Lake Michigan. Someday, she’d promised herself, she’d live in one of those pricy condos along the Gold Coast.

Instead, she’d ended up sharing a small apartment with two other girls on the outskirts of the Ukraine Village area of Chicago.

“So you have experience booking appointments,” Cole was saying, which made her wandering attention snap back to him. The man was hard to ignore. His light brown hair had a bit of a wave to it and was totally rumpled, giving him that I-just-got-out-of-bed look that worked very well for him. She wondered if he slept in the nude.

She probably should be paying attention to his questions instead of imagining him starkers. She’d known him when they’d been kids. Surely that should make her immune to his charming ways, right? Come on, she’d beat the guy up once.

So why were her hormones humming like queen bees zipping around a hive?

She should know better than to judge a person by their looks.

But then Cole’s charm went beyond his looks. It was also generated by the way he talked, that sexy drawl he’d mastered when his voice had deepened during adolescence.

“Hello?” He waved his big hands in front of her face. “Anyone home in there?”

“Sorry.” Leena blinked. “I was . . . uh . . . thinking about . . . uh . . . something else.”

“Your Prada boots?”

“How did you know they were Prada?”

“One of my patients told me. The terrier owner.”

“Ah, Oscar . . . the terrier with the nervous bladder.”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“I never forget a bitch named Oscar who ruined my Pradas.”

“They named her Oscar before they realized the dog was a she not a he. And then they refused to rename her.”

“Which is probably why the dog has a nervous bladder. Gender identification issues.”

His laughter caught her by surprise.

“A sense of humor is a requirement for this job,” he said.

“So have I passed the audition?”

“I still can’t figure out why you’d want to work for me when you’re a model. Something happen in Chicago?”

Leena shrugged. “Lots of things happen in Chicago.”

“And you don’t plan on telling me about them? You don’t think as your prospective employer, that I’ve got a right to know?”

Leena was prevented from answering by the dramatic arrival of her sister Sue Ellen, who burst onto the scene as she always did, with maximum effect.

“It’s true! You’re really here! You’ve come back home!” Sue Ellen engulfed her in a mighty python hold that squeezed the air out of Leena’s lungs. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? We could have set up a special welcome celebration. A parade or something. And what on earth are you doing over here at the vet’s office? Did you get a pet while you were in Chicago? Is it one of those designer dogs? Don’t tell me, let me guess. Is it a schnoodle? A labradoodle? A Yorkipoo? Is it sick? Is that why you’re here?”

“I don’t have a dog.”

“Some exotic pet then? A lynx maybe?”

“I don’t have any pets.”

Sue Ellen frowned and released her. “Then why are you in the vet’s office? Unless you came to see him?” She jabbed her thumb in Cole’s direction. “I thought you didn’t like him. Didn’t you beat him up once?”

Leena tried not to squirm. “That was a long time ago.” “And you came here to apologize?” Sue Ellen beamed proudly. “Isn’t that just like you? Even though you’re a big star now, you still remember the little people you beat up along the way.”

“Hey, watch who you’re calling little,” Cole protested.

“Well, of course you’re taller now, Cole,” Sue Ellen said. “Leena probably couldn’t take you down with just one punch like she did then.”