Keeping Katie

by Stella Quinn

  He took a breath. “I’m sorry, man. I’ve been … struggling.”

  “I know you have. That’s why I’ve been so desperate to talk to you, Ant. Tell me everything. How are you? What can I do? You need me to come out there and butter your toast, I’m on the next plane.”

  Wow. Just…wow. He’d been expecting grief for not living up to his end of their publishing contract, not support.

  “I started something today.”

  “What—like, a manuscript?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That is so cool. But listen, Anton. If you need time, that’s what you’re getting. You are one of our stars, and sure, we love it when we can splash your stuff out over every store in America, because your readers love you, man. But if you’re not ready, we can be patient.”

  “I appreciate it, Eduardo. It’s nowhere near a thing yet, but I wanted to let you know.”

  “You take care, man. I’ll be waiting to read a few chapters when you’ve figured it out. And stay in touch already!”

  Anton let out an unsteady breath. The relief of knowing the whole of the management division of Cavendish Road Publishing weren’t baying for his blood was huge. “I’ll know in a few weeks if what I’m working on has enough juice in it to become a full-blown story.”

  “Just make sure I’m the first to know, that’s all I’m asking.”

  The first? Anton’s brain shifted into a vision of him on a long romantic walk over the headland with Katie, telling her the happy news that he’d rediscovered his mojo. “I can’t promise you the first, but you’ve got dibs on the second, Eduardo.”

  “You got it.”

  He’d no sooner dropped his phone to the table when it buzzed again. Huh…seemed like he only had to think her name and there she was. Fate was finally singing a tune even tone-deaf guys like him could hum along to.

  “Question,” Katie’s voice said in his ear. “Do you know what a hipster white-wine spritzer is?”

  This seemed like one of those questions that a guy needed to get right the first go. “No,” he ventured, “but I’m in.”

  “Esplanade? Thirty minutes? You know The Orca Bar and Taphouse with the wine barrel tables?”

  Anton looked up to the stars wheeling through the northern sky. Oh yeah, fate was singing a song in his key tonight. “Done,” he said.

  Two hours later, Anton was tipping the waiter who had brought over their second round of drinks and a cheese platter.

  “How did you get into dog therapy work?” he said.

  “Oh. Well there’s a short version and a long version of that answer. Which do you want?”

  “Both. Start with the long version.”

  “Bonnie. She was our chocolate Lab when we were kids. When she was about seven or eight, she became difficult to handle. She’d always been uneasy around other dogs, so we never let her off leash, but then she started breaking out of the garden, attacking dogs. It was awful.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “Fear aggression, we think. Maybe she had some sort of dog dementia, I’m not sure. We tried obedience classes, dog whisperers, training. Me and Vee watched thousands of clips online on how to train your dog, and with us at home she was an angel.”

  “But not outside the home.”

  “Nope. After a few years where her behavior escalated, she got out one day when the gate wasn’t shut properly. Ran down an elderly woman who was walking her dachshund. She didn’t bite anyone, but she barked and snapped so bad the woman fell over and was injured.”

  “Katie, how awful.”

  “Yes. It was truly awful. Our vet came over and talked to us and Uncle Roly, but we knew rehoming wasn’t an option. She’s...”

  Katie’s voice had grown thick.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No, it’s fine. Bonnie’s safe in Uncle Roly’s garden, under one of his rose bushes. She still gets a lot of love.”

  “Wow. And that’s why you work with dogs with behavioral issues?”

  “Yes. It depends on their age and their willingness to learn, of course.”

  “So, what’s the short version?”

  “Oh.” She took a sip of her wine. “When I was on college break—I studied engineering up at Santa Cruz before I did my air traffic certification—I volunteered at the refuge. It was still in town then, before those premises were sold. I cleaned kennels, walked the dogs, bathed them, and so on. That’s how I met Carol Graves.”

  “She’s like some town legend according to Danny. He’s the owner of the Cove to Coast Herald.”

  “Your boss?”

  He grinned. “Kind of.”

  “That sounds like you have a story of your own. But yes, Carol is a legend in these parts. Her golden retriever litters are the most sought-after therapy dogs on the West Coast. I was lucky to be given the chance to own one.”

  “Rose?”

  She smiled. “Rose. Speaking of, I should probably get home to her. She’ll be wondering why there’s no one on the couch sniffling over a Hallmark channel movie.”

  He laughed. “I did not have you pegged as someone who cries at movies.”

  “Huh. Well, you’d be wrong.”

  “I love being wrong from time to time. For example, I was pretty sure that after this morning in the park, you had decided not to see me again. I’m pretty happy I was wrong about that.”

  She picked up a cardboard coaster with an orca embossed in the center and commenced tearing it into shreds. “I decided to take a chance.”

  He pulled the shreds of cardboard from her fingers and held her hand with his. “I’m glad. This has been fun. Let’s do it again real soon, but with dinner.”

  She smiled up at him. “I’d like that. But um, yeah...I’d better get going.”

  “Did you drive? Because,” he grinned, “hipster spritzers and safe driving practices don’t seem a credible combination.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I walked. Uncle Roly’s place isn’t far; twenty minutes, tops.” She waved her hand vaguely in the air, which did nothing to clear up the mystery of where her house might be.

  “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

  “It’s the opposite way from your place! I’ll be fine, really.”

  “Thriller Writing 101,” he said. “Things go bump in the night, so why risk it? Besides, I’d like to walk you home. I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to engineer the right moment for a boy-likes-girl kiss, and saying goodbye at your porch seems like the perfect place.”

  “You get pretty cocky after two spritzers, Price.”

  He grinned. “Not at all. Humble but hopeful.”

  Her giggle wrapped around him more warmly than a scarf ever could. “Come on, then. It’s this way.”

  He fell into step beside her. “What are your thoughts on holding hands while we walk home?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  He waited a beat, then felt her smaller hand slide into his. He gave it a squeeze, and kept on walking. Baby steps.

  Katie’s house was a spic-and-span bungalow from a different era. Seeing the wide-planked porch and the shingled roof, he was reminded of the family shows he’d grown up watching on the television, where kids played in tree houses and old guys called Pops or Mister dispensed sage advice about growing up from the open door of their garages.

  “Um...here we are.”

  He leaned down to find the catch on the low gate that led into the garden and creaked it open.

  “What a lovely home,” he said.

  “It belongs to me and Veronica, has for over a year now, but I still think of it as Uncle Roly’s place.”

  “Why is that, I wonder?”

  She shrugged, and he let it go. Psychology could wait. The stars were out, and he could smell jasmine blooming somewhere in the garden.

  A low woof sounded from behind the wide front door.

  “Your chaperone,” he said. “Does she start flicking the porch light on and off when your goodb
yes linger too long?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “Let’s find out.”

  Chapter 19

  Katie took a sharp breath. Had those words just come out of her own mouth? Who was she, and what had the world done to the old Katie Shields, whose ex-boyfriends accused her of having a tepid heart?

  Anton looked even more surprised than she was, which made her grin and gave her the courage to put her money where her mouth wa—

  No, wait. Her mouth where her mou—

  No, shoot, that didn’t work either, but she stopped worrying about what was working and what wasn’t, because she’d just stood on her tiptoes and pressed the fleetest of kisses on Anton’s mouth, and he had let out a sigh that did something funny to her head.

  And her heart.

  And just about every nerve-ending she owned.

  “Anton?” she breathed.

  But he didn’t say anything, he just gripped her shoulders in his big, wide hands and hauled her up against him and fastened his mouth to hers.

  Oh, boy. Her heart wasn’t lukewarm. It was made of thunder and galloping hooves and trees lashed by hurricanes and tiny dancing fairy lights that made spirals in an ink-blue sky...

  The woof from behind the old wooden door was louder this time and was accompanied by a thud. Katie looked up as Anton lifted his face from hers.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “That’s a double wow from me.”

  “I’d, er, better, um...gosh.”

  His grin was sending her a lot of messages in that moment, fun and rakishness and an element of something too warm to be interpreted right that very second, with her thoughts in such disarray.

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  She fumbled behind her for the lock, promptly dropping her purse to the ground and spilling the contents everywhere. “Uh, my keys.”

  Anton fished them from the pile and unlocked the door, to the delight of Rose, who barreled out, licked their hands madly for a second, then ran for her favorite patch of lawn.

  “I’ll get going,” he said, and bent down to help her gather all her bits and pieces. Their hands met on a peach-colored lipstick, and she could feel her cheeks flushing a shade way darker than peach. She shoveled everything back into her purse and stood up.

  “So, er...goodnight.” Would he want to see her again? Should she suggest coffee? She had to work all week and Prince to train…when would suit her? When would suit him? Boy howdy, this man-woman business was hard. Andy had no idea how lucky he was to have snagged his sweetheart while he was still in the schoolyard, before all the pesky self-doubt of adulthood crippled his dreams.

  Rose trotted back up the steps, then pounced on a folded sheet of paper lying on the front door mat and pushing it into Anton’s hand.

  “I think this is from your purse,” he said.

  “Oh! Yes. This is the letter my sister sent me, you know, the one that brought me haring into the Cove to Coast Herald looking for Tuna Yango.”

  “My lucky day,” he said.

  She laughed. “I don’t know what possessed you to choose that ridiculous pen name.”

  He quirked his eyebrow at her. “But...I thought you knew?”

  She frowned. “Knew what?”

  “It’s an anagram.”

  An anagram. Well, that would explain why it was so wacky. “Wait. At the risk of sounding even dumber than I must already seem...an anagram of what?”

  He chuckled, and for some reason it made her both angry and sad. Anger won out. She didn’t get games, was that a crime? Did it make her a bad person?

  “This is so not funny, Anton.”

  His laughter faded. “Of course it’s not. It’s just a little embarrassing.”

  Her anger fanned into a sharp jab of hurt. “You think I’m embarrassing?”

  “What? No! Embarrassing for me. Look, Tuna Yango is an anagram of Agony Aunt. When I took over the crossword in the newspaper, Danny—that’s the owner—he coerced me into taking over the whole of Page Seventeen. Crossword, personal letters column, and the local photography section. I was up for the crosswords and photography, but he wouldn’t let me ditch the personal letters section. Said it was the only thing half the people in this town read. I felt a bit dumb about being known as the local agony aunt, so I made up anagrams. Agony Aunt became Tuna Yango for the crossword, and Anna Toguy for the letters. Dear Anna, people say when they write in.” He shrugged, six foot three inches of embarrassed male right there in front of her. “Do I look like a Dear Anna to you?”

  He didn’t, not at all. He looked like a handsome writing celebrity with the brain of a supercomputer, who had made it big in life and was now standing on her porch in one huge mistake. Her mistake.

  A thought even bigger than the mistake standing in front of her made her gasp. “Oh my.”

  “What?”

  She ripped open the letter she held in her hand and skimmed over the scrawl of her sister’s writing.

  Hey there, sis!

  This week’s clue is a tricky anagram. You’ll crack this one, I know you will. Five across…you know what to do!

  Yada yada yada. She fast-tracked her way down to the relevant section.

  I’ve met someone. THE someone. I’m feeling so, so good about this, Katie. Like, the luckiest girl in the world. And to think it was Tuna Yango who helped me out, LOL!!! Gotta love the irony of getting personal life hacks from a crossword compiler!

  Call me for the details too juicy to put in print (*waggles eyebrows up and down).

  Vee xx

  “I have been so stupid,” she breathed.

  “How?”

  She shoved the letter at him. “Read this paragraph. What does that say to you?”

  She watched as he scanned the page. What had taken her nearly two weeks to work out took him about two nanoseconds. Go figure.

  “We’ve been looking in the wrong place,” he said. “It’s not the crosswords Vee was saying had helped her out...it was the personal letters column.”

  “I’ll need to look in those back issues again.”

  “Of course. I can put a bundle together straight away.”

  She took a breath. She’d grown carried away with all this missing-sister, clue-solving drama. Her ex-boyfriend had been right when he’d said she’d closed off her heart...she’d done so for a reason. Vee was—probably—not missing. Vee was just living her own life and was tired of having her needy, overly dependent little sister acting as a handbrake, so she had gone on holiday and not bothered telling her.

  She needed to accept who she was. Katie Shields, loner, who worked and helped dogs and didn’t do relationships very well. Not with her sister, that was now clear…and certainly not with someone so creative and lateral thinking as Anton.

  The past days had been fun. More than fun. Better to stop it now before she broke her thawing heart into even more pieces.

  “If you could leave a pile of them at the newspaper office for me to collect, I’d be grateful.”

  “Sure, I can be there tomorrow. What time is best for you; do you have a work shift?”

  She rested a hand on Rose’s head for strength. “Just leave them at the counter. My schedule’s pretty busy for the next little while. I can’t commit to a time.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “I’ll leave a package at the desk. Um, Katie, if I’ve said anything to upse—”

  “You haven’t.” She was upset with herself, not with him. “I’d, er, better get inside; it’s late. Uncle Roly’s neighbors will be wondering what all the noise is about.”

  He walked down the steps to the path, then looked up. “Katie?”

  “Yes?”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  She didn’t have an answer. She just knew she felt—smaller, somehow, by what had happened here on the front stairs. And the last person she needed to see how small she was feeling was Anton.

  “Goodnight,” she said.

  “Goodnight. The package will be w
aiting when you’re ready to collect it. Take all the time you need.”

  She walked slowly into the house.

  “Rose?” she said.

  The dog rested a warm muzzle in her outstretched palm.

  “Why do I get the feeling he wasn’t just talking about the newspapers?”

  Chapter 20

  Anton jogged through the mist that had swirled up off the ocean.

  The minutes before the dawn were the most precious of the day, he’d always thought. They held the breath before the speech, the quiet before the chaos...and today, those fingers of light streaking up through the shadow of yesterday’s nightfall had shone some clarity onto the conundrum which had kept him awake.

  What, exactly, had he said to Katie that had turned a blissful goodnight kiss on her front porch into her closing him out?

  The clues to the crossword. That had been the moment. She had been deeply sensitive to the fact that she struggled with word games, and he had blundered into that vulnerability like a bear into a picnic basket.

  Good one, Price. The one good thing that’s happened to you in a year, and you’ve blown it by finding it funny.

  He turned a corner and let the thud, thud, thud of his sneakers smacking on asphalt fill his brain.

  If there was anyone who hadn’t worked out the clues, it had been him. He'd been so busy in his own headspace, he hadn't seen the hints right there in front of him.

  He turned them over in his head as he ran. If only his intern job at the Psychology Department of San Diego General Hospital hadn’t been so long ago, maybe he wouldn’t have been so blind.

  He tried to remember what he’d been trained to observe by his supervisor when a client came in for a session. The Fabulous Five, she’d called them, her signposts of a healthy mindset. Be in the moment, be kind to yourself, practice self-observation, stay physically healthy...heck. One more. Maybe he could ring Alice Goodly and ask her…let her know how splendidly his “say yes to an unexpected invitation” plan was going.

  It came to him as he turned into the walking track above the beach, where he could see a few other early risers taking their morning walk. Couples mostly, holding hands and leaning into each other against the cool of the sea breeze. He sighed. Of course, that was the fifth: make and maintain healthy relationships.