“You are a terrible dog,” she told Chuck, but she wasn’t able to be severe enough, because all he did was shake joyfully all over both of them, making them laugh some more. Which was the first time. By the time he was rinsed and toweled off, it was the fourth time he’d done that, and Lily had given up trying to shield herself. She brought out a couple more towels from the house, tossed one to Bailey, and said, “Well, that’s one way to cool off. Next time? Collar. Leash.”
“He looks kind of naked,” Bailey said, surveying Chuck, who was indeed a startlingly different and no more attractive dog with the layers of hair gone.
“He’s skinny and wet, that’s all,” Lily said, although it wasn’t. Chuck was big, clumsy, homely, and—well, a goofball. “And we’re probably not looking like beauty queens ourselves. You know what he needs now, besides his toenails cut?”
Bailey took another look at the denuded Chuck. “A makeover?” he asked dubiously.
Lily had to laugh. “How do you know about makeovers?”
“TV,” he said, looking affronted. “They’re always doing makeovers on my grandma’s shows.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not making fun of you. It’s just…He’s not really a makeover kind of dog, is he? Or maybe I’m thinking about us. We probably need a makeover ourselves at this point.” She was rewarded by Bailey’s grin. “And as for Chuck? He needs food. He’s a healthy boy, that’s obvious. Look how skinny he was under all that hair, and how well he’s managing anyway. Regular meals and a flea and tick pill, and he’ll be a new dog. Fortunately, I know where to get both. And I just had an idea. There’s this thing I read about. Dog sharing.”
It wasn’t a deviation off the logical, rational, functional-and-beautiful track. It was just a…an alternate route. Yeah, that was it.
“Huh?” the boy asked.
“It’s like—peanut butter and chocolate!” Lily said brightly. “You have some chocolate, but you like it with peanut butter, and you don’t have any. And your best friend has peanut butter but no chocolate. So you share, and it’s so much tastier for both of you. Sharing.”
Why was she doing this? The Humane Society number was right there on their website, and Chuck was even cleaned up. Homely as can be, but cleaned up. And if she couldn’t stand to think of him in a cage, standing on cold concrete and looking hopefully out through the wire of his pen, his tail wagging madly at everybody who walked by, his spark dimming a little with every day somebody didn’t take him home…
No. Just the thought of it made her choke up. She couldn’t fix everything wrong in the world, but she could fix this.
“Oh.” Bailey considered that. “How do you do dog sharing? A dog isn’t like peanut butter. You could split peanut butter up. You can’t split a dog up.”
“You work it out. It’s a…a custom solution. That means you make the answer different depending on the situation, do you see? You use flexible thinking.”
“Flexible means bending,” Bailey said. “Like girls who do ballet lessons say, ‘She’s so flexible.’ They think it’s better than being able to play football, even though playing football is way harder than bending.”
If Lily couldn’t afford to fall in love with a dog, she definitely couldn’t afford to fall in love with a boy. She wasn’t hasty anymore, and she wasn’t romantic. Yes, there’d been that little incident with Clay/Rafe. A temporary aberration, not a return to misguided thought patterns, and look how it had turned out. “That’s one meaning,” she said. “It also means being able to adjust to changes. Like you had to be flexible when you came to live with your grandma.”
A step too far. Bailey got that wary-fawn look again and was silent. “And right now,” Lily hurried on, “we definitely need to be flexible. We have to figure out a dog plan, because Chuck can’t keep sleeping under your trailer. But before we do, I’m going to say that it’s not safe for you to go into somebody’s house or in their car unless your grandma says so. You know that, right?”
Bailey shrugged and scratched his mosquito bites some more. “Yeah, like stranger danger. But stranger danger is strange men. And I don’t think Montana has it. I learned about that before, but it was in Phoenix. Which is Arizona. Ms. Swan never talked about it, so I don’t think they have it here.”
“Anybody,” Lily said firmly. “We’re not going into my house, and we’re not going in my car. We’re riding our bikes down the road a little ways, and that’s all. We’ll bring Chuck, and you can ride off any time.”
“OK,” Bailey said. “Except I kind of have to…um…” He was looking wiggly.
“Oh.” That one stumped Lily for a second. “OK. You and Chuck come in, and I’ll point to my bathroom, and then I’ll come back out and wait for you.”
Bailey eyed her with disillusion. “If it was stranger danger, I wouldn’t be supposed to listen to you.”
Lily had to laugh. “You’re very smart. You can go pee behind the house, or I can point to the bathroom. Your choice.”
Bailey thought it over. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Because I don’t think stranger danger is ladies, and because I have Chuck.”
“Good,” Lily said. “Then let’s get going. We’ve got dog food to borrow.”
Behind Lily, garden chores went undone. Around her, insects buzzed and a blue jay called, raucous and insistent. Ahead of her, Bailey rode down the road a ways, then back up, standing on the pedals, his wiry body surprisingly strong, while Chuck bounced along beside him in happy exuberance. Warmth radiated from the roadbed, but Chuck didn’t seem to be having any trouble with his paw pads. Chuck was made of tough stuff. Chuck was a survivor.
Before Lily turned her bike into Jace’s winding gravel driveway, she pulled open the door of the mailbox and checked through the stack inside. All junk, as she’d expected. She’d toss it into the trash bag at the cabin.
Two more weeks of checking Jace’s mail, and then she’d be staying far, far away. Being with Rafe in Australia had been bad enough, when she’d had his whole family plus Paige as a buffer.
When they got to the cabin, she told Bailey, “Hang on,” then went around to the side of the garage, felt under the eaves, retrieved the key, and didn’t think about what the rest of the summer would look like, about running into Rafe at the grocery store, about what she’d say and what he’d answer.
She wasn’t a fragile blossom. If she ever had been, she wasn’t anymore. Right now, she had a dog to feed, and that was all.
Up the wooden steps, then, strewn with tiny Douglas Fir cones and branches brought down in the last windstorm, with Bailey and Chuck following behind. Chuck would like the creek, she thought, turning the key. Maybe they could feed him his first meal here, and then go…
The door swung open with a protest of unoiled hinges. Twelve feet away, in a doorway under the staircase, a man clad only in black gym shorts and a pair of running shoes paused at the top of a chin-up, his silver-blue gaze locking hard on her. He held himself there for a long moment, every muscle in his shoulders and arms standing out in high relief, then lowered himself slowly, dropped to the floor with absolute control, grabbed a shirt from the couch, and walked over to her.
Also slowly. Or maybe you’d call it “stalked,” because it seemed to take forever. His abs shifted with every step he took as if he had tiny animals under there. As if he had so many muscles, they’d taken on a life of their own.
He was clean-shaven now. Leaner, she could swear. He’d had a makeover. A do-over. Something. His hair was a golden brown and clipped close to his head, and his chest…wasn’t…waxed…
“Hi,” he said, and her gaze flew back to his face. He pulled the T-shirt on, which involved more shifting muscle and some difficulty, because his skin was…wet…
Oh, man. She was doing it again.
He didn’t look all that comfortable himself, she realized.
“I came up early,” he said.
“I see that. I was just…” She held up the handful of flyers and envelopes. “Getting Jace’s
junk mail. And borrowing some, uh…dog food. For Chuck.”
Rafe had crouched down and was giving Chuck a scratch around the ears and a thump on the shoulder. “Somehow,” he said, “not what I would’ve imagined for you. Bit of a sad case, I’d say. And who are you, fella?” he asked Bailey. “Mate of Lily’s, hey? I’m Clay.” He put out a hand.
“You are not,” Lily said, at the same time as Bailey said, “Chuck isn’t a sad case. He’s just hungry, that’s all. And I’m not a fella. A fella’s a boy. I’m a girl.”
Lily wasn’t anything like the woman who’d sat, poised, perfect, and aloof, at the end of that bar. She was wearing overalls that were clinging damply to her in spots, especially around the, ah, torso area, which Rafe was carefully not looking at. They were stained with dirt around the ankles, too. Yes, they were printed with pink roses, but they were still overalls. Baggy, reinforced at the knees, and with huge, bulging pockets, one of which still held some kind of cultivator, because he could see the handle sticking out. He’d bet she’d forgotten it was there. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, and her pale-brown eyebrows hadn’t had anything brushed on them except possibly dirt. She had a few freckles on her nose, too.
She looked messy. She looked like the cutest farmer you could imagine. She looked just bloody fine.
Of course, she also looked not one bit happy to see him, so there was that.
All that went through his head as he shook the grubby hand of the boy—girl. Too-short jeans, too-messy hair, a blue-and-red striped T-shirt, and a kind of long-limbed, awkward almost-grace. She’d be a natural in the right kind of film. A road picture, maybe, about a father and the daughter he hadn’t realized he had. “Sorry,” he told her. Wait. Accent. But then, if he did the accent, Lily would think he was still lying to her.
He gave it up, kept the Aussie, and said to the girl, “I’m Clay Austin. What’s your name?”
She said, “Bailey. You talk kind of funny, but it sounds cool.”
He laughed. “You know, I get that all the time. The funny part, not the cool part.” He stood up and said to Lily, “Dog food, hey. This a new addition to the family, or are you just helping out a mate?”
“I told you,” Bailey said. “I’m not a boy.” Lily said nothing.
“What?” Rafe asked. “Oh. Nah, mate. Whoops, I did it again. Australians use ‘mate’ for everybody. Including girls, sometimes.”
“Oh.” Bailey appeared to be thinking that over and judging its merits as an argument. “I thought it was sailors. I read a book, and there was a first mate and a second mate, but they were guys.”
“It’s like ‘pal,’” Rafe said. “Or ‘buddy,’ maybe. Not like sailors.”
“Pal is a guy, too,” Bailey said. “And buddy.”
“You are possibly,” Rafe said, “the most literal person I have ever met. You may have to take my word on this one. You could call me a linguistics expert, at least when it comes to Australians.”
He thought Bailey might actually ask to examine his passport, but she’d apparently decided to move on. “Australia isn’t even the same continent as this. We’re North America, and Australia’s in the Southern Hemisphere. I never met anybody from the Southern Hemisphere before. How come you’re in Montana?”
“That’s a story in itself,” Rafe said. “You know some geography. Good on ya. But I’m not going to use the Australian up here. That’s just my accent. That is,”—he changed it out. “That’s juss mah ack-sent. This is how ah really talk.” He shot a quick glance at Lily. She’d been married to Antonio Carrera. She had to understand the value of anonymity.
“Oh,” Bailey said. “Because of warrants.”
“What warrants?”
Bailey looked more disillusioned than ever. Now, he wasn’t just a dodgy character, he was probably stupid as well. “You know. Warrants. Like, the cops tell you they have a warrant when they come to arrest you.”
Lily made a sort of choking sound. “Glad I’m entertaining you,” he told her. “And no,” he told Bailey, “not because of warrants. I don’t have any warrants. I was playing around, that’s all. You could call accents a hobby of mine.”
Lily gave the most ladylike of snorts, and he said, “I heard that.”
“I sure hope so,” she said. She wasn’t looking quite so narky anymore, or uncomfortable, either. Still cute, though.
Bailey said, “Everybody says they don’t have warrants, but the cops say they do, and then they take them to jail. My mom’s friend Terri said I should remember that that’s the redneck pickup line. ‘Of course I don’t have any warrants, baby. I’ve never even been to jail.’ That’s what Terri says.”
“I’ll be that one guy standing in the middle of the room after the cops leave, then,” Rafe said. “Because I’ve never been arrested in my life.” GQ might have dubbed him “Every Woman’s Type” after the last Beast movie, but somehow, he’d ended up with the two least impressionable females on Earth. And, of course, Chuck.
“Dog food,” he said. “Right. I don’t know where it is, so we may have to search. All I’ve unpacked is my weights, so you won’t be imposing. Feel free to browse.” He went into the kitchen and started opening cupboards.
“Back porch,” Lily said, moving past him, and if he went with her—well, he was being polite.
“Not much here,” she said, pulling a nearly-empty bag printed with bison and wolves off the shelf and shaking it. “Enough for now, though, and trust Jace to have the good stuff. Practically wolf food, entirely suitable for active dogs owned by manly men. And Bailey and me, of course.” She took down a metal dog dish, set it on the floor, and told the dog, “Sit.”
He sat for an instant—at least his rear end hovered somewhere near the floor. Until he bounced up again. Lily held the bag up, looked at him sternly, and said, “Chuck. Sit.”
“Could be he’s too hungry to sit,” Rafe said. “Also, he’s drooling all over the floor.”
“Could be that he’ll be even happier with boundaries,” Lily said. “And food. Although I keep thinking that a happier Chuck is a scary thought. And don’t worry. I’ll wipe it up.” She poured a couple cups of kibble into the dish as every muscle in Chuck’s skinny body quivered, his brown eyes went from the bowl to her face, and the pool of drool grew into a lake. “OK, boy,” she said. “Go.”
Chuck lunged, the food vanished in a few chomping gulps, and he started licking out the metal bowl so enthusiastically, he moved it across the floor. His enormous paws slipped in the drool lake, and Lily laughed. “Paper towels,” she told Rafe. “I’ll get them. If you could see your face. Wasn’t this what you had in mind for your wilderness retreat, then?”
“We should give him some more food,” Bailey said. “He was really hungry.”
“I will,” Lily said, heading into the kitchen and grabbing paper towels off the roll, then picking up Chuck’s metal dish and filling it with water, which he went to work on with maximum enthusiasm and absolutely maximum splashing. Because he had a paw in it. “Last thing tonight, and tomorrow morning. We’ll do three meals a day for a while, and we’ll get him fed up, don’t worry. If we feed him too much all at once, he’ll just throw it up, and Rafe will really love us.”
“I thought his name was Clay,” Bailey said.
“I meant Clay,” Lily said, without looking at Rafe. “I got mixed up.”
Bailey didn’t say, “I don’t think so.” But she was clearly restraining herself.
Lily had worried about this. She’d lost sleep over this. Right now, though, all she wanted to do was laugh. Rafe looked so…nonplussed. She went into the kitchen, threw the paper towels in the trash under the sink, and told him, “Let me guess. You’ve never lived in the country before. Or even a small town.”
“Well, no,” he said, “not in the States. How could you tell?”
“For one thing, that you thought you could live up here and not run into me. Paige told me you’d said that. And can I just say? You’re an idiot. There’s one supermarket,
one Walmart, one brewpub, four decent restaurants, one of which only serves breakfast and lunch, and one road leading up here from town. You’d have seen me.”
“Right,” he said. “Granted. All the same, it’s not exactly the Wild West. I don’t have to shoot a bear for food. Got a car and that one supermarket and all.”
“Uh-huh. You wouldn’t do that anyway. Bear meat’s disgusting. Very gamey. Also, this cabin has a wood stove, and that’s all.”
“And it’s June.”
“And the low last night was 42. Canada’s an hour up the road, and you’re in the Rockies. Fortunately, I’ll bet Jace has enough wood under the house to get you through. Would you like me to show you how to split it for kindling?”
“No, I would not.” He was scowling. He really was a ridiculously attractive man. Too bad she still wanted to laugh at him. “How hard could it be?”
“All righty, then,” she said. “The offer’s there. Wear gloves, and watch for black widows. Scared of spiders?”
“Do me a favor,” he said. “I’m from Queensland. Unless they have a legspan greater than thirty centimeters, I’m not fussed.”
“How much is that?” Bailey asked.
Rafe held his hands a foot apart, and Bailey said, “Wow. Could they eat, like, a mouse?”
“Reck— I guess they could,” Rafe said. “In a spider competition, I win. Also sharks, jellyfish, crocs, and snakes, for the record. And the blue-ringed octopus, of course.” He was holding onto that Southern accent for all he was worth, but Lily could swear he was slipping. Also, Bailey was going to look up Queensland and crocodiles and be more convinced than ever about the warrants.
“An octopus isn’t dangerous,” Bailey said. “They’re very intelligent. They use tools and communicate and everything.”
Tempting as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 2) Page 10