Choices

by Tessa Vidal

  “Getting nervous might be a comment on the owner's psychology, not the dog's.” A timid owner could encourage a chow to become aggressive. Ancient breeds needed someone to be the alpha, or else they felt it was their duty to seize the job themselves.

  “True. I've worked with Dickens myself, and I've observed other members of the staff working with him, and I have no reason to believe he has any tendency toward aggression.”

  Tucking away the papers, she guided me back toward the kennels. As we walked, she returned to her previous concern. “As I said before, Dickens is a beautiful animal. The previous owner bought him, I believe, specifically with Instagram in mind.”

  “Caro doesn't have an Instagram.”

  “A point in her favor. But then I heard about the show...”

  My breath caught. This job never gets old. There's always that moment of magic when you see a truly handsome animal for the first time. Dickens, aware of the impression he made, turned to study us from those deep-set eyes. He was alert but calm, making it easy for Sumners to guide him out of his crate and snap on the leash. His curly tail and easy stride gave him a bouncy look, his every move projecting ease and confidence.

  It was the walk of an aristocrat. A king.

  I took the leash, and the three of us went outside. Dickens was aware of the dogs running track, not to mention the group of dogs leaving their flyball class. He wasn't intimidated, but he wasn't much interested in rushing over to join anybody's fun. He was aloof. An individual. Almost catlike in his regard for other life forms. Well, a lot of chows were like that. Having a bit of a superiority complex wasn't a bad thing in a dog intended to be an only pet.

  Caro and Dickens could make a good team. Two princesses, I thought. Maybe it was destiny.

  In an hour, I'd be seeing Caroline Bullard again. Unless I really fucked things up, she'd be hiring me to help her train this dog. How would it be, working with the two of them, my hand over Caroline's hand to show her how to send a signal or retract a leash?

  As we made a circuit around one of the trails, I grew steadily more impressed. Despite the chow instinct to be the alpha and/or the one and only, he made no aggressive moves when we approached other dogs. He was well-socialized, curious and alert, but not too timid or too aggressive.

  “I can honestly recommend him as a dog with strong pet potential,” I said. “I don't know why somebody would surrender an animal like this.”

  “I'll never understand people,” was all Sumners had to say on that topic.

  Minutes later, we finalized the paperwork, and I found myself strolling away with a chow on a string almost before I knew what hit me.

  The restaurant where Caro wanted to meet wasn't far from the pier. I parked the Range Rover some distance down Ocean Boulevard so Dickens and I could stroll together through the afternoon crowds. A little knot of people had gathered to watch a man who had a red macaw on one arm and a pink cockatoo on the other.

  As we walked past, the cockatoo flared his crest and spread his wings, his black eyes fixed on Dickens. “Hello, pretty bird.”

  Taking the praise as his due, Dickens walked on without a hitch in his step. There was no doubt he turned heads, and no doubt he knew it. Teen girls actually squealed from time to time. A few people came close, asking permission to rub his fluffy head. A terrible idea with a lot of chows, but Dickens tolerated it― even enjoyed it.

  He had wonderful pet potential, no two ways about it. Again, I wondered who on earth would give away a dog like this. Maybe he was bad with cats. Some chows were. Otherwise, I was at a loss. There was absolutely no reason on earth for this animal to be consigned to a shelter. Even a shelter patronized by the occasional celebrity.

  The restaurant's staff was less impressed with Dickens. They weren't letting us through those glossy glass doors. “I'm sorry, miss,” the manager said. “Health regulations.” His smile was tense, and his eyes avoided mine. He didn't recognize Shell Tate, celebrity dog behaviorist. He just wanted this problem to go away.

  “Not even Caro Ballad's dog?” asked a sultry voice with the lightest possible gloss of Mississippi honey.

  My heart stopped beating.

  I looked into the cool dark of the restaurant, but mostly what I saw was shadow. Dickens began to wag his tail, although he was too well-trained to dash forward.

  The manager's face changed. A different kind of tension. “Caro, for you, anything, but...”

  “It's all right, Elric. If it's not allowed, it's not allowed. I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with the health authorities.”

  A cool blonde in ridiculous heels stepped into the light. Did I know this woman? Had I ever known her? My heart still wasn't beating. The breath was caught in my lungs. Glossy, gorgeous, she looked every inch the pampered, air-brushed movie star that you'd see on a big screen. She was real, she was standing in front of me, but were women like this ever really real?

  “Caroline...” I thought I said her name, but maybe I didn't. Nobody seemed to hear.

  Anyway, Caroline Bullard was gone. This was Caro Ballad. The Mississippi country girl had somehow transformed into the kind of LA blonde who wears Céline cateye sunglasses indoors.

  Chapter Six

  Shell

  Up close, Caroline still smelled of something expensive I couldn't name. No doubt it was a newer and even more expensive fragrance than the one she'd worn that night. Dickens snuffled. He smelled it too.

  “Tell Heather to order anything she wants, and she can put it on my account...” Caro's accent had softened over the years, but it was still there. Maybe you only heard it if you knew where she came from.

  The restaurant staff vanished back inside. Neither Dickens nor I had a glance to spare in their direction. All we saw was Caro.

  “Rayna,” she said, throwing her arms wide open.

  “It's Shell now.” I don't know how I got the fucking words out. Her slender arms felt like the strongest thing in my world. Dickens too snuggled into the hug, the first time I'd seen him take the initiative. A group hug with a chow. He liked her, he wanted to be hers.

  That spoke well for the friend I hadn't seen in eleven years.

  “I didn't expect...” She gestured at Dickens, then bent to scratch the fluff around his ears. “They let you take him.”

  “I don't think the shelter owner intended to release him. When I first came in, I had the distinct impression she was working herself up into a ‘no.’”

  “She thought I was lying when I said you were my behaviorist.”

  “You were kind of. We haven't seen each other in a few years.” I studied my beautiful, impossible friend from head to toe. I knew the names of some of the brands she wore from working with my other celebrity clients. The brands I didn't recognize were almost certainly going to be the next big thing. How could she be so perfect after all these years?

  “I know. It was stupid. My aunt had me on lockdown for my entire senior year, and by then...” She sighed. It was impossible to read her expression behind the expensive shades. “It was too late, you must've already hated me. I wanted to reach out, but I just couldn't.”

  There were a thousand things I could have said. A million. They all boiled down to one line. “I never hated you, Caroline.”

  “You did, though. You must have.” Those maddening sunglasses. That smooth face. “You could have called me.”

  I laughed a single sad laugh. “I could? I didn't know where you went or what your aunt's last name was, and your mom was in no mood to share that information with anybody from the Taylor family. I found out you were in Los Angeles from Twitter. By then, it was too late. You can't call up somebody you knew in high school after they get famous.”

  Sensing the tension, Dickens looked from Caro to me. Then his deep-set eyes peered beyond Caro, toward a noisy family party approaching the restaurant. Caught in our own memories, we were blocking the front door.

  “Let's walk.” Then I glanced down at her feet. Shit. Could she walk?

 
; Caro laughed. As flexible as a flamingo, she stepped out of one red-bottomed spike heel. Her long toes flexed in the sunlight, the gold polish catching the light. Standing one-legged, her knee bent to expose the pampered sole of her bare foot, she slipped the spike heel into her large bag, then pulled out a black sandal better suited to walking. The same again with the other foot. It was an entire performance, and I was choking, I couldn't swallow, I couldn't breathe. Caro taking off a pair of shoes and putting on another shouldn't be a sexual suggestion.

  Eighteen was a long time ago. Keep it professional.

  Somehow, we were moving down the sidewalk. I must be breathing again. The family vanished into the restaurant, unaware of the witchcraft performed right in front of them, a Hollywood star disguising herself right before their very eyes. Even as she walked, she expertly wrapped her blonde hair in a silk scarf from the capacious handbag. Now, you couldn't be sure if she was really Caro Ballad or if she was yet another blonde actress who looked like Caro Ballad. There were a thousand of them in Santa Monica.

  Eleven years. I had a metric fuck-ton of questions after eleven years, but they all flew away from me as I stood there on a public sidewalk watching Caroline― Caro― wrap up her rich blonde hair in an intricately patterned blue, black, and cream scarf.

  “Pretty good disguise.” I tried to sound blasé. “I thought you might have bodyguards.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes. But I thought you'd like a little privacy.” Her eyes were hidden, but her smile shone through. “Seriously, I think it'll be all right. Nobody will bother me. They won't even see me. All they'll see is Dickens. He's the real beauty here.”

  “All right, then, um...” I wasn't a woman who got tongue-tied. Not anymore, I wasn't. Rayna Taylor, high school senior and amateur card counter, was over a decade and two thousand miles away. “I want to observe you and Dickens together. As you know.”

  “Sure. We've got all afternoon. I allowed for that.”

  All afternoon with a movie star. A rare luxury.

  Somehow, I handed her the leash. Somehow, we were walking, me and Caro Ballad. That's all it was, a professional evaluation. A famous actress was experiencing the lonely side of fame and needed a loyal companion animal. I was the trainer. That's all it was, and I shouldn't make it anything more than that. As for my brother or what the people behind my brother might want...

  Ugh. I couldn't think about that stuff right now.

  Dickens liked her, and chows didn't feel obligated to like just anybody. They weren't that kind of dog. The easy way they strolled down the busy street toward the park spoke well for both of them.

  A chow isn't a hot weather dog, but it wasn't impossibly warm this close to the sea. We could walk together a little longer, see how it worked with the three of us. “Most of the time, you'll want him to exercise in the early morning,” I said. “Or have your people exercise him if you need to sleep in.”

  She smiled. “I'm sure it can be arranged.”

  From time to time, people lifted their cameras to snatch a picture, although no one got too close who didn't have their own dog on a leash. Other dog walkers recognized me, at least the professional ones did, and even the ones who didn't know me could appreciate a handsome animal. I noticed the tension in Caro's shoulders every time someone sneaked a shot, but she didn't make a big deal about it. She was playing the aristocrat, she was rising above it, pretending not to notice.

  Dickens too rose above it, regarding all hobby photographers with the same cool disdain he'd regarded the flirtatious pink cockatoo.

  “It's me.” I tapped the side of my head. “The fade. Maybe Shell Tate should've worn a scarf too.” A celebrity dog behaviorist didn't necessarily expect to be recognized by random people on the street. Mostly only my clients and potential clients knew who I was. Well, we weren't in the mountains of New Mexico anymore. Santa Monica was better at recognizing the small-cee celebrities. Celebrity chefs, celebrity yoga teachers, celebrity dermatologists and dog behaviorists.

  Caro walked more slowly, partly to look at me, partly because she was in tune with Dickens's pace. “I like it. The way it brings out your eyes...”

  I wasn't necessarily used to spending this much time with a client, even on a first evaluation. Most celebs were always in a tearing hurry. And the subject of my eyes seemed like a dangerous direction for our conversation to go. I wanted to sound professional, but I may have sounded brusque. “I'm pleased with what I'm seeing about how you work together, but Dickens is ready for a break. If you don't mind, I'd like to evaluate your home as well.”

  “Are you inviting yourself back to my place, Ray... Shell?” Was that a tease? Were her own eyes dancing with mischief behind the dark glasses? I couldn't be sure.

  She texted something to somebody, and it wasn't long before we were being picked up by a driver at the wheel of a tasteful Mercedes-Maybach. Said driver, who also wore Céline cateyes, seemed blissfully unperturbed at the sight of Dickens scooting into the back seat along with us.

  “The service vacuums the car every night whether there's dog hair or not,” Caro said.

  I laughed. “Was it that obvious what I was thinking?”

  Caro laughed too.

  “I'm going to put you in touch with a groomer who will want to see Dickens every week,” I said. “She can arrange to make house calls, if you prefer. A rough-coated chow is still going to shed, but that'll keep the situation somewhat under control.”

  “Rough-coated?” Caro ran those long, sexy fingers through the silk of his ginger fluff.

  “I'm not the one who invented the terminology. I might have called it fluff-coated.” As I joined in on the head-petting session, our fingers grazed each other, an electric sensation. The whole experience seemed surreal. Me and Caroline in the back seat of her silver Mercedes-Maybach riding to her house in Los Feliz with its view of the famous Hollywood sign.

  “A long way from Robinsonville,” I said.

  She rubbed her hand accidentally-on-purpose over my hand. Our eyes met, and a thrill of excitement shot down my spine. I held myself as still as possible, not wanting her to see the intensity of my response.

  “From where?” she asked. “Never heard of the place.”

  It was a silent ride after that. Although I still felt the crackle of electricity between her body and mine.

  Chapter Seven

  Caro

  “Who's Heather?” Shell curled her strong, tanned hand around her glass mug of beer. In high school, she'd occasionally dabbled with painting those short, practical nails in various shades of black and purple, but now they were glossed with a near-subliminal hint of clear polish.

  Such good hands. I'd never forgotten those hands. Did she remember?

  Dickens was snoozing in his comfortable doggy bed near the kitchen. The housekeeper had left for the night. It was me and Shell, all alone on this wide couch that suddenly seemed to put too much acreage between us. A couch good for huge Hollywood parties wasn't always good for one-on-one.

  “Heather,” I said slowly. Fuck. My publicist had been the furthest thing from my mind. “She's probably expecting a call.”

  Shell put down her mug. “By all means, call.”

  “Meh. She'll live.”

  Shell lifted an eyebrow.

  Shit. I should have caught her meaning a long time ago. Was I really this dazzled by memories from the distant past? “Mmm, I think maybe there's been a misunderstanding. Heather is my publicist. She wanted to have a sit-down, wanted to work out the best ways to incorporate Dickens into my publicity plan. You know.”

  “I do know. I work with clients a lot on their publicity.” Her voice had taken on a certain tone.

  “The publicity crap is her idea.” I wanted to pick up Shell's hand and squeeze, but maybe it would be considered harassment. I didn't know where the lines were drawn when you hired somebody who used to be a girlfriend. “I guess I wasn't aware you'd be able to take Dickens yourself. I wouldn't have chosen that restaurant if I'd thought it
through.”

  “I didn't mean to spoil your meeting, but you'd already signed the paperwork. The shelter director was the one holding up the adoption.” Shell was studying not my hands but my face. “I thought it was best to go ahead and get Dickens into his new home before she changed her mind again. There was something she was keeping back about that adoption, and I don't really think it was about you or about the dog.”

  Shell was off-duty now, and I'd fucked up by steering the conversation back around to the adoption. She'd asked about Heather because she thought Heather might be a girlfriend. Did that mean she was open to... something? Was she waiting for a signal?

  Hell. If she was any random stranger, I'd know exactly what she wanted and who needed to make the first move. Why did Shell Tate have me all mixed up?

  She kept gazing into my eyes as if she'd never seen them before. What was she looking for? Wearing sunglasses in your own house is a bit much, but I felt so naked once I took them off for the day.

  “Look, Caroline... Caro... I think you need to be prepared for a possibility.”

  “That doesn't sound good.”

  “There's something wrong. Nobody would surrender that dog to a shelter.”

  “I'm not sure I understand.” Although I was beginning to get a real bad feeling about where she might be going.

  “Whoever really owned that dog may be out there looking for him.”

  “Whoever really owned that dog gave him up.” I folded my arms over my chest. “There was a chip. A clear line of ownership.”

  “So it appears. The paperwork looked all right, and there is indeed a chip.” A tiny dent flickered between her steel-blue eyes. “Chips can be reprogrammed. In fact, while I was there, I had it reprogrammed with your phone number and address.”

  What was she suggesting here? Someone steals a dog, reprograms the dog's chip, dumps him in a shelter? “If somebody stole Dickens and changed his chip and his papers, they'd do it for big money. These dogs sell for thousands. To surrender him to the rescue, they actually have to pay a drop-off fee. Whatever you think you're saying... it doesn't make any sense.”