Love Is in the Air (101 page)

Wyatt dovetailed seamlessly, “Your first soccer goal. The first time you get lai—”

“Get engaged,” Jazmine said over him. Okay, maybe high school prom was a subject for another talk.

“Yeah,” Wyatt conceded. “That.”

“Really?” Andrea asked him.

“Trust me. I’m looking forward to sitting under my own tree…” Wyatt said, having to keep his voice steady. He glanced up to Jazmine who fidgeted with her necklace. “It’s oak, if you care… but not yet,” he emphasized to Andrea. “Not
yet
, my little friend.”

Wyatt stood up, stretching out the kink in his left leg. “I’ve got way too much to do first. As do you, little Missy.”

He was about to ruffle her hair when she launched into his arms and squeezed as hard as she could. Wyatt wasn’t sure what to do. Was there some sort of child-hugging protocol? They really should come with a label or something. He looked up at Jazmine for help, but her gaze was fixed on Andrea. Were those tears in the red head’s eyes?

He opened his mouth to say something witty so he didn’t have two crying females on his hands when his cell phone rang with the theme to
Bonanza
.

* * *

Jazmine had never been happier to be wrong about someone. She watched as Andrea detached herself from Wyatt’s arms so he could answer his phone. Andrea moved back to her customary spot right behind Jazmine’s right thigh and nuzzled into her waist.

“Wyatt without the Earp here,” the pet communicator despite himself joked into the phone. Jazmine rolled her eyes a bit. But just a bit. “Sorry, you must have the wrong Mr. Stampley.” Wyatt’s grin evaporated. “Bodhi just had a head-ache, maybe a migraine. He couldn’t—” His hand flailed, useless at the end of his arm. Then Wyatt went utterly still. “Stroke?” He paused, the light going out of his eyes. “Which hospital? Valley Presbyterian. I’ll be right there.”

He turned to face them. “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta—”

“Of course,” Jazmine said, putting her hand on his arm. “We’re fine. Go.”

He attempted a half-hearted smile at Andrea but then turned and headed to the exit at nearly a run, trailing his worry behind him like the tattered shadow of a boy who refused to grow up.

CHAPTER 4

Martin sauntered over to Mrs. Crumpet’s desk even before the organizer gave the announcement.

“If we could please have all of the pet communicators come to the main desk to receive their referrals.” He was first to queue up, as per usual. With the poise only several years of male cheerleading could give you, he reached out a hand for his stack.

The assistant gave him what appeared to be five small slips of paper. He stared at the tiny pile in his hand, then back up to the assistant. He gave a disdainful sniff.

“I believe you have given me the wrong referrals?”

The timid assistant quavered. “No, I mean, I don’t think so.”

“I normally garner three times this many,” Martin demanded, making the girl tremor before his eyes. “You must be incompetent.”

“I’m sorry… I don’t know—”

“Oh, I think we have another stack,” Mrs. Crumpet stated, urging the assistant on to some lesser communicator before turned her full attention to him. “Martin, let me take a look.”

Martin purred, “Much better.”

* * *

It was like coming up out of a dark hole filled with yucky mud. Everything looked bright, and there were so many colors.

Andrea smiled up at Jazmine. This was her best day since… well, since Dad and Blackie had left. She was still sad that she couldn’t see them yet. Really sad. But they were together. And happy. She felt like she had a hot air balloon filling her up inside. It hurt a little. But it was wonderful.

Jazmine smiled back at her. Andrea was sure she had never seen anyone as beautiful as her nanny. Her hair was so shiny, it looked smelled like the candles Mommy used to burn in the kitchen. Cinnamon.

Even Jazmine’s voice was pretty and warm, “See? I told you that Blackie was happy.”

“And with Daddy,” Andrea reminded her. Her Dad with Blackie. In the field. With the tree. The balloon grew.

“And with Daddy.” Jamzine’s smile widened, her green eyes glowing with warmth. Maybe Jazmine would be there with them someday. The balloon almost burst. Then she thought of something else and the balloon seemed to shrink a bit.

“Jazmine? Is Wyatt’s uncle going to be okay?”

Jazmine’s smile faltered. “Oh, Andrea. I’m not—”

A voice called out over the loud speaker, “Mr. Stampley, please come to the registration desk.”

“C’mon, sweetie. Let’s go up to the front.” Andrea felt Jazmine’s hand slip over hers. It was warm. It was safe. The balloon was full.

* * *

Jazmine held Andrea’s hand tight as they wove their way through the strange crowd of expectant pet communicators. Again, Andrea almost lost an eye when the lady with the sticks in her hair turned around abruptly. Perhaps the porcupine look wasn’t exactly best in a crowded room.

“My referrals?” Martin demanded with his hand held out as if he were waiting for it to be kissed. Or for someone to genuflect. Which seemed unlikely, considering to whom he was talking. Mrs. Crumpet.

She had to give it to the guy, she wasn’t sure she’d have the guts to even look crosswise at the organizer, much less confront her.

The organizer seemed to take it in stride though, with only a subtle tightening of her lips. “Patience, Martin. At the moment we are missing a communicator.”

“Where should we look?” the assistant asked.

“I’m sure somewhere to the left,” Mrs. Crumpet responded with a sigh.

Jazmine shimmied between Martin and the “herbal” brownie lady.

“If you’re talking about Wyatt,” Jazmine said. “He had to head to the hospital.”

All the ire drained out of Mrs. Crumpet as her hand flew to her chest. “Oh, dear. It’s not regarding Bodhi, is it?”

“I’m afraid so.” Jazmine felt rather than saw Andrea deflate next to her. “I’m sure everything will be fine, though.” She gave the little girl a quick sideways squeeze. Andrea looked up. Jazmine gave her a nudge with her hip. The corner of Andrea’s mouth turned up in a lopsided grin.

“We can only hope,” Mrs. Crumpet said in a lighter tone. “Right, young lady?”

Andrea nodded, seeming more than a little awed by the organizer.

“Right,” Jazmine answered for the tongued-girl.

* * *

All right. It was time for this after-school special to end. Martin once more presented his outstretched hand and politely, if pointedly, cleared his throat.

“My referrals?”

He had been more than patient. It was time for him to start being treated as what he was: a headliner. Really, how much time was he expected to have to wait for these… these minimum wagers?

Mrs. Crumpet’s nostrils flared. Clearly the stress of her position was getting to her. She turned to retrieve a rather large stack of cards. Martin glimpsed tightly packed writing scribbled all over the surface of the uppermost note. This was more like it.

“I was trying to do this in private, Martin. But since you insist.” She ceremoniously deposited the weighty stack into his outstretched hand.

Of course she would want to wait until the other communicators left. She didn’t want a bunch of green with envy pet psychics on her hands. Martin glanced down at the stack, wearing his equally-patent-pending Cheshire grin. Then he scanned the first card. Not only had the woman with the chameleon who wouldn’t change colors
not
chosen to hire him, she dared complain that he used “guilt tactics” to get her to hire him.

He riffled through the small mountain of note cards.

“These aren’t for clients,” he said still trying to understand what was happening. This could not be happening. Not to him. Never to him.

“No, as a matter of fact, Martin,” the organizer stated, his Chesire grin apparently leapt over to her lips. “They are your
complaints
.”

* * *

From the stunned expression on Martin’s face, Jazmine was pretty confident that he’d never actually heard the word “complaint” before. At least not in connection with himself. And she was fairly sure she had never seen the exact shade of red Martin’s face was displaying occur in nature before.

Martin spluttered next to her, his dignified demeanor fraying alongside his meticulous diction. “Wh… What? I… I have never—”

“You’ve always been such a big draw before that we turned a blind eye, but we simply cannot ignore all those…” Mrs. Crumpet indicated toward the rather large stack of complaints that threatened to spill out of Martin’s hand.

“Th… These? These…
cards
…” Martin slapped the notes into his other hand with a resounding
smack
. Andrea took shelter behind Jazmine’s right thigh as the pet psychic ranted on. “These cards represent tiny, close-minded, unenlightened—”

“They are pet owners who felt you were more reaching out to their pockets,” Mrs. Crumpet said with a ring of finality in her voice. “Than to their animals.”

Wow
, Jazmine thought. Mrs. Crumpet knew how to shut a full of himself guy down. You could just see the wheels turning in Martin’s head. He was going over and over the best come back, but how could he? Mrs. Crumpet had taken him to school and she hadn’t even needed a ruler for it.

“Resolve them, Martin, or we won’t be inviting you back next year.”

“Well, I never… I mean that…” Martin sputtered and fumed until it appeared he gave up on verbal language and very dramatically knocked the trashcan lid open and hurled the cards into the garbage.

Andrea tugged on Jazmine’s sleeve. She was loath to take her eyes off of Martin’s imminent implosion, but she knew it had to be important if Andrea was reaching out. Jazmine looked down to find the little girl holding up a card. Written across it in a first grader’s handwriting were the words…

“You Are A Meany.”

Jazmine chuckled. That he was. As he turned around, hands free, Jazmine handed him Andrea’s card.

“There ya go,” she said with a far more satisfying feeling than she would have thought possible.

* * *

The girl with the clown-colored cut him off mid-rant handed him yet another complaint. Would the humiliation not end?

This was unconscionable. He would have her hide. And not in the way he had been implying earlier. She would rue the day she decided to lock horns with Martin. He mustered all the venom he had at his disposal.

“Oh, if I did not have a rabbit healing to get to…”

Perhaps that would have sounded better if it had been some sort of poisonous reptile, but one must work with what one had. Filled with righteous indignation that he hoped poured through his every movement, Martin turned in a slow circle, fastening his maleficent gaze on each set of eyes as he passed.

He made note of each suppressed smirk for the purposes of future retribution. As he completed the circuit, he gave one last haughty look to the crone and the frizz head while raising his index finger to the heavens.

“You have not heard the last of me!”

Martin turned on his heel and marched out of the hall, suitably satisfied with his last dramatic moment. Still, success would be his revenge. And he would have it. They would all rue the day.

Rue it
.

* * *

Mary Marjorie Crumpet suppressed a sigh as she watched Martin stalk off. If only he would stay gone. But if he was half as arrogant as she thought he was, he would be back with carefully chiseled words dripping with honey.

She turned to find the rest of the communicators staring at her as if she had just killed the wicked witch. The entire room burst into applause. Blushing, Mary Marjorie waved them off, but had to admit it was difficult to suppress the urge to shout out “ding dong” in response.

The only one not clapping their hands together was the little girl who had recently lost her dog. Andrea, she believed her name was. While the child looked like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, there was still a tinge of sadness about her. No one so young should carry such burdens.

For not the first time today she missed Bodhi Stampley. If there was one person in the world who could reach a child like that it was Bodhi.

“Well,” the child’s caregiver said, “On that unpleasant note, I think we will be heading out too.”

“Wait, dear,” Mary called out, digging around under the desk. “Could you be so kind as to take these to Wyatt?”

The woman did not look one hundred percent convinced, but Mary urged the cards towards her. After a day like today, if Mary could avoid tracking down that little rapscallion, what was the harm in it?

Jazmine eyed the two piles. “Two stacks, huh?”

“Yes,” she said, letting a bit of mystery perhaps goad the young woman into taking on the assignment.

Finally the woman accepted the cards. “I’ll drop Andrea off, then swing by the hospital.”

The hospital. Yes. “Tell Bodhi,” Mary stopped herself. How many years had it been since she’d spoken his name so casually? “I mean, tell Mr. Stampley…” What would she tell him? If she could? But none of that could be spoken in a room full of impatient pet psychics. “My chinchilla misses him already.”

Jazmine smiled as she tucked the cards into her purse. “I will.”

Mary waved to little Andrea as they left. And to her surprise the girl waved back. Perhaps there was some hope for the world.

CHAPTER 5

Wyatt hated hospitals. There was just nothing about them that was ever pleasant. The smell of sickness covered by harsh cleaners and antiseptic sprays mingled with the aura of desperation. Not cool. Not cool at all. His feet moved even faster.

White walls broken only by a drab slate blue stripe surrounded him, twisting him around until he had no idea which way was which. Wyatt stopped at a nurses’ station.

“Room 502?”

The nurse nodded indicated to her right. “Down that hallway, take your first left and the second door on the left.”

Wyatt gave her a distracted nod and headed out. Of course he was pretty darn sure that he had been down this hallway and taken the first left, but hey, maybe the second time was the charm. It wasn’t until he had rounded the corners that it dawned on him that the brunette nurse had curves in all the right places yet he hadn’t given her the time of day.