No one delivered in Wishful. Worse, there was no fast food period, no drive-thrus, nothing unless she wanted to drive the thirty plus miles to South Shore, Lake Tahoe-which meant that she, a professional water burner, was in danger of starving to death.

She missed so much about New York, but what she missed most of all was her mom, who after being invincible and raising Emma on her own while working her fingers to the bone as an RN, had done the unthinkable.

She’d died of one of the few things that Emma hadn’t been able to fix-cancer.

Throat tightening, Emma moved through the front room of the old Victorian-turned-clinic, a place that had been decorated in the eighties with country chic and hadn’t changed much except for the equipment, and some of that was questionable. She opened the country blue, duck-lined curtains, letting in the mid-June sun. She wondered what the day would bring. The usual bee sting? Or maybe for kicks and giggles, a stomach flu.

The problem was people in Wishful saw her as Doc’s little girl. They acted as if she was just the key keeper, someone to drop some gossip with, or maybe to talk about her father-her least favorite thing to talk about.

God, what she wouldn’t give for a stroke or cardiac infarction, something she could really sink her teeth into

When the front door opened, the silly ceramic cow chime above it jangled, and in came a man, supporting another. Wishful wasn’t that big, and after being here for two months, Emma had met quite a few of the locals, including the Wilder brothers. TJ Wilder, tall and big and broad, assisted his equally tall and big and broad brother Stone, who was covered in mud and blood, dripping both all over her floor.

He was limping and grimacing in pain-at least until he saw her, at which point he swiped his face of all expression, going testosterone stoic. “Hey,” he murmured. “What’s up, Doc?”