The Pet Stylist and the Playboy

by Rebecca James

  Every day began with a cycle of giving out medicine, walking and feeding the dogs, feeding the cats, changing and washing bedding, switching out toys, bathing and grooming, sweeping, mopping, and numerous other tasks.

  I enjoyed it. The animals were good company, and I liked living out in the country.

  Most evenings, I sat at the old table in the living room updating the shelter’s website on the lap top while Fred, the cockatiel, bobbed and swayed on a stand Dante had built for him. He seemed to love it when I played music and would sometimes flutter down to stand on the desk and nibble at the corner of the laptop with his short beak.

  Dante. I still couldn’t believe he was working at Gus’s. After I left the clubhouse, I had really thought I’d never see him again. Of course, his job was only temporary, but I was thankful to have the extra time with him.

  Sometimes I thought Dante acted weird around me. I would catch him looking at me with an expression I couldn’t figure out. He’d taken a disliking to Hugh, and I wasn’t sure why because the veterinarian was very nice. Every time Hugh came around, though, Dante got this look on his face like he wanted to rip something up. I couldn’t figure it out. When Morgan came over, he witnessed Dante’s annoyed eye and as soon as Dante had left, said, “He’s jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of what?”

  “Of the hunky vet spending time with you, what do you think?”

  I snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why else would he puff out his chest like a rooster and eye Hugh like he wants to slam him into the wall?”

  “Must be something else. Dante doesn’t think of me that way.”

  “I disagree. He’s fighting it, but he has feelings for you.”

  I cast a pleading look Morgan’s way as I continued cleaning out the dogs’ crates. “Please don’t say that. I don’t want false hope. I let go of that dream a long time ago.”

  Morgan looked contrite. “Sorry. I just think you think he doesn’t care, but he does.”

  I threw the rag down, suddenly angry. Not at Morgan, but at Dante, who’d been in front of me every day for the past two years and hadn’t noticed me.

  “If he cares enough to be jealous when I talk to another guy, why the fuck doesn’t he do something about it? Can you answer that?”

  “Maybe he’s afraid of hurting you.”

  All the hot air left me on a sigh. “Nothing hurts more than thinking he doesn’t want me.” I picked the rag up again and changed the subject. Morgan was smart enough to let the subject go.

  After that, I paid more attention, but for the most part, Dante stayed outside, and I was inside. He mended fences and mowed the lawn, trimmed the hedges and fixed broken benches. But he always came up to Gus’s to eat whatever I’d prepared for lunch, and sometimes, when I was out walking the dogs, he joined me, laughing at me when I’d get caught up watching a squirrel or the ducks, at which point I’d punch him in the arm. Those were the best times because I felt so close to him. Sometimes I thought if I could just keep that much with Dante, it would be enough; but other times, a fire burned inside me when I looked at him, and I thought I couldn’t stand being around him another second if I couldn’t touch him the way I wanted to.

  On a sunny, warm Saturday a few weeks after I moved into the shelter, Deirdre, Gus’s teenage neighbor, came by and offered to walk and feed the dogs so I could have the afternoon to myself. Usually when Deirdre was there, I took Gus’s car and went to the grocery store or to pick up his medication refills, but that day I didn’t need to do either, so I happily took her up on her offer and headed for the dock with a book from Gus’s extensive collection of paperbacks.

  The sun felt amazing on my skin as I stretched out on the warm boards. It was one of those perfect days that were wasted in the city, where finding a patch of grass sometimes felt like a miracle.

  I read for forty-five minutes or so, then set the book down and closed my eyes. The day before, Foghorn and Blaze had stopped by to say hello and to adopt one of the shelter dogs. They’d chosen a border collie mix and named her Sheila. It had been nice seeing them again, and it had warmed my heart knowing they hadn’t forgotten me. I’d been surprised to realize they hadn’t known Dante was working for Gus. I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t he told them. It didn’t make sense.

  The wind ruffled my hair, and I think I’d fallen into a doze when footsteps shook the dock, and a shadow fell over me. I opened one eye.

  “Hey.”

  Dante sat down on the dock. “Hey,” He looked out at the water, profile stark and perfect. “It’s peaceful here.”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “You made the right decision taking this job.”

  I had, but I knew I wouldn’t have been so content if he hadn’t been around while I settled in.

  I lay listening to the water lap against the dock, my contentment deepening. Dante leaned back on his elbows and turned his face to the sun, and we were quiet for long moments.

  “Do you know if this is a lake or a pond?” I suddenly asked.

  “Lake,” Dante said without opening his eyes.

  “How do you know? I always thought ponds were small and lakes big.”

  “It isn’t size that determines it, it’s the vegetation. Lakes are deeper and don’t have a lot of plant growth. Generally, they’re nicer to swim in.”

  “Oh. You’re smart. You shouldn’t be wasting your time washing cars and trimming hedges.”

  Dante made a face. “I’m not all that smart. I just remember that from college biology.”

  I closed my eyes. He was wrong—he was very smart, and for the umpteenth time I wondered what reason he had for not doing more with his life.

  “You said you’d never told me your real name because I never asked,” Dante suddenly said a few moments later, and my eyes popped open to find him looking down at me. My heart stuttered in my chest as it always did when his attention was focused on me. “So, I’m asking. What happened before I found you in that gas station bathroom?”

  The question surprised me, because he’d never brought it up before. I’d always figured he wasn’t interested, but maybe he’d been waiting for me to tell him in my own time. I nibbled on my lower lip, unsure how much I wanted to share. My life hadn’t exactly been the greatest, but I was kind of flattered he wanted to know.

  “I lived in a lot of foster homes, and then, when I aged out of the system, I was homeless for a while.”

  “That must have been rough,” Dante said.

  “When you found me, I was at my lowest.”

  “I’m glad I found you, then. What happened to your parents?”

  Familiar pain that I kept buried rose up and slashed at my heart. “I was abandoned on the steps of a police station when I was less than a year old.”

  I could feel Dante watching me, but I kept my eyes on his legs, tanned, muscled, with sun-bleached hairs sprinkling the skin.

  I flinched slightly when Dante touched my hair, but as he began running his hands through the strands, dislodging them from the elastic band, I began to relax and closed my eyes again.

  “I’m sorry. No kid should have that happen to them,” Dante said.

  I let out a humorless laugh. “I know, right? I mean, how fucking unlovable can a baby be?”

  He tugged at a strand of my hair. “Aw, I’m sure that wasn’t it. Babies aren’t unlovable. Your folks must have been in rough straights. At least they left you someplace where someone would find you. That showed they cared.”

  I’d never thought about it that way. My parents hadn’t thrown me in a dumpster or chucked me out in the woods to die. They’d wrapped me up in a blanket with my name embroidered on it and left me in a basket where someone was certain to find me. It made me look at things from a different angle, and that took some adjusting. Could my parents have been in trouble? Or were they just poor? Maybe they’d meant for me to have a good life, not a string of foster homes where people would be shitty to me.

  Dante’s finge
rs in my hair felt amazing. He’d never touched me like that before, and, frankly, I was on cloud nine.

  “So,” Dante continued, “when you were eighteen you went out on your own. Were you homeless the three years until I met you?”

  “No, I lived with someone for a while.” We were heading into dangerous waters. Dante’s fingers were warm and gentle on my skin, and I realized he’d stopped playing with my hair and was stroking my face. I didn’t know what to think about it.

  “A boyfriend?”

  “Yeah.” I mustered my strength and sat up. I found the band that had fallen out and started to pull my hair back again, but Dante stilled my hand.

  “You should wear it down more.”

  I stared at his hand on my arm before moving my gaze to his face. He looked casual, but serious. I slipped the band on my wrist. The last twenty minutes had felt like a dream. Maybe I’d fallen asleep on the dock or fallen in the lake and drowned. If Dante leaned in and kissed me, I’d know I was in heaven.

  He didn’t, though.

  I cleared my throat, trying to think of something to say. “I like yours down, too.”

  “Mine’s not thick like yours.” Dante tugged at the strands falling about my shoulders, sending tingles up and down my spine. I loved to have my hair played with, but I’d never had anyone to do it, at least not in a long time.

  “I once had a foster sister who liked to play with my hair,” I said, surprising myself.

  Dante smiled. “Yeah? What was her name?”

  “Mercedes.”

  “Like the car?”

  I nodded, appreciating that he didn’t make fun of the unusual name. “She used to braid my hair. Sometimes she’d curl it.” That was before our foster mom burned her with the curling iron for using it. I’d gone ape shit on the lady and had been taken from the house after that. I’d never seen Mercedes again and often wondered if she’d made out okay.

  I turned my head and looked out over the sun-streaked water.

  “I should go make Gus something for dinner,” I said reluctantly. I wanted this time with Dante to go on forever.

  “He okay? I haven’t seen him out in the past few days.”

  “Yeah, he’s just been tired. He overdoes it and then pays for it afterward.”

  I stood, and Dante got up, too.

  We walked together toward the front of the house where Dante had parked his motorcycle.

  “You have big plans for tonight?” I asked him, even though I really didn’t want to hear about his next conquest.

  “Nah. I think I’ll go home and watch some TV before going to bed.”

  I stopped and looked at him.

  “What?” he frowned.

  “You’re going home on a Saturday night? Are you sick?”

  Dante laughed, the dimple at the left of his mouth making an appearance. I loved that fucking dimple. “Come on. I don’t go out every weekend.”

  “Yes, you do. And you either stay out all night, or you bring someone home and screw their brains out. There are dents in the wall behind your bed to prove it.”

  Dante sobered. “Yeah, well. That was pretty damn inconsiderate of me. I’m sorry.”

  Now I was really confused. “Who are you, and what have you done with Dante Durham?” I asked.

  He shoved my arm playfully. “Come on. Can’t I apologize for being an ass?”

  I watched him carefully. He certainly was acting weird, but the notion that Morgan could be right about Dante having real feelings for me was too much to hope for. I covered my confusion by shoving him back, and the next minute we were wrestling like kids. When Dante pinned me with my arms behind my back, he chuckled close to my face, breath hot in my ear.

  “Say ‘Dante’s the best,’ and I’ll let you go.”

  I struggled, but he had me.

  “Dante’s...” I felt his hold loosening. “A pest.” I wiggled away from him and ran toward Gus’s house, just barely missing his lunge for me. Dante gave chase, but I was a faster runner. We wound up throwing ourselves onto Gus’s front porch, me slapping my hand on the wall like it had been declared base, both of us laughing and breathing heavily.

  As I looked into his laughing eyes, I knew it had been an afternoon I’d never forget.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dante

  Dinner at my parents’ house was long and quiet, as usual. Listening to them ramble about events and people I had no interest in always set my teeth on edge, and the friends my parents had invited made the whole thing worse. The man was large and boisterous, talking loudly enough for the neighbors to hear, and the woman had so many diamonds on her fingers, I wondered how she managed to lift her hand to use her fork. Their daughter was close to my age. Undoubtedly, my mother hoped I’d make a connection with her.

  Normally, I would’ve made a connection with her—over the back of her daddy’s Mercedes during a moonlit stroll. But I wasn’t feeling it that night. Thinking of the Mercedes took my thoughts to Swish and what he’d told me about living in foster homes. I’d always figured there’d been something like that in his past, but I wasn’t sure why I’d never asked him about it before.

  I managed to leave my parents’ dinner party without having to engage in conversation alone with the daughter, but I knew it was just a matter of time before I wouldn’t be able to escape my future.

  Sonny called me a few days later, wanting me to go clubbing with him, but I declined.

  “What’s with you, man?” He sounded a little concerned on the other end of line. “You quit your job, and now you don’t wanna go out.”

  I sat on my bed, pulling on a thread in the quilt. “I’ve just got stuff going on.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Come on,” I said irritably, “Life’s not all about partying.”

  “Last time I checked, it was. That and getting a paycheck. So, how’s the new job? You like it any better than the car wash?”

  “Yeah, it’s good. I like working with my hands.” It was true. I wished I could do that kind of work forever, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  Sonny and I chatted a while longer, and I half-heartedly promised him we’d get together soon before disconnecting. Truth was, I could never go out clubbing with Sonny again and be fine with that. Even if things weren’t about to change irrevocably for me, I just wasn’t interested in the club scene anymore.

  I picked up my guitar from the corner of my room. My parents had never encouraged me with my playing, not considering guitar a respectable enough instrument for a Durham. Their attitude had only made me try harder to learn on my own, and by the time I left home, I’d gotten pretty good. A guy in college had helped me even more, and now I could play just about any song I put my mind to. I played for a while, mind wandering.

  Gus had told me to wait until after lunch to come to work that day. I was going to build him a safe outdoor area for the dogs, and he wanted to talk to me about it before I got started. Now that I’d wrangled the hedges into decent form, the yard work had become a lot easier. Gus had a rider mower, so I could get the grass done in an afternoon. I’d weeded yesterday, and there wasn’t any yard work to be done that morning. No excuse to go over there until he wanted me.

  Hung passed the open doorway and gave me a strange look but continued on down the hallway. I knew my club brothers were wondering what was up with me, holing up in my room, playing my guitar or just staring at the ceiling. Only Ax knew I was mourning what was soon to be my old life.

  The sound of a throat clearing had me looking up again from the guitar strings, and—speak of the devil—there Ax stood in the doorway, heavy brows lowered and a scowl marring what was otherwise a good-looking face. For the briefest of seconds, the sight of him alarmed me until my brain computed who it was. The club all knew Ax’s rep mostly came from well-placed rumors, and that his stints in prison had been about taking the fall for members of his former club and not his own acts, but it was hard to remember that in the initial shock of his looming presence.


  “Didn’t your mama ever tell you not to frown like that or your face might freeze that way?”

  Ax gave me a look like I was crazy. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine the guy having a mother. He’d probably been created in some super human lab experiment.

  “I stopped to see if you’re okay. You’ve been playing sappy music for the last fifteen minutes,” Ax said.

  I set my guitar back in the corner. “I have not.”

  Ax walked into the room and took a seat on the other bed. Swish’s bed, that I could barely bring myself to look at these days because it was always empty.

  “Seriously, I almost had to break out the tissues.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “You’re a moron.”

  “You working near Swish is only making the whole thing worse, you know,” Ax said.

  “This is what I need to do, until...” I left the rest hanging, like I was getting ready to die instead of go back to the snooty Hamptons. Sometimes it felt like that was what was happening.

  Ax crossed his beefy arms over his chest and shook his head. He had on jeans, a tight wife-beater, and a skull earring in his ear, all adding to his threatening appearance, which was probably his intent. Someone would have to be crazy to bother a guy who looked like him. While I was aware the way Ax looked worked for him out on the streets, I suddenly wondered if he used his appearance as a barrier in his private life as well. Made it pretty ironic that Ax had been the one my drunken self had chosen to unburden himself to that night long ago.

  “Man, I don’t see why you don’t just tell your old man where to go. You don’t want or need his money.”

  I rubbed at the stubble along my chin. “It’s complicated. And I kind of do want the money.”

  Ax looked confused, and rightly so, as I’d never cared about money before and certainly had never used what had always been at my disposal. I’d always felt if I was going to turn my back on that life, that included the dough.