Good Guys Love Dogs

by Inglath Cooper

  Colby glanced at her watch. The eleven o’clock church service would be starting in an hour and a half. But she didn’t feel like going this morning. She needed to pull herself together. Deciding to let Lena sleep on, Colby wrote her a note, then grabbed her keys and left the house.

  32

  It had become a ritual for Ian to drive into town for the Sunday-morning paper. He arrived at Cutter’s Grocery around eight-thirty. Located in the middle of town, Maude Cutter and her husband, Harvey, ran the place. Since he’d first set foot in the store, he’d been unable to resist Mrs. Cutter’s homemade cinnamon rolls, which she made fresh every day. The tantalizing aroma predictably tempted him as he stepped inside and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the counter. He nodded at Dillard and Willard Nolen, who were sitting on the bench by the door swapping sections of the paper.

  “Morning, Mr. McKinley,” Mrs. Cutter said from behind the counter. “Looks like we’re gonna have a nice week.”

  “No rain in the forecast?” he asked. This, too, was part of the ritual—Mrs. Cutter’s weekly weather bulletin.

  “Doesn’t look like it. We may get a few clouds by Wednesday, but they don’t talk like it’ll turn to rain.”

  “Good. I’ve got some work to do on the barn. Then there’s all that hay that needs cutting,” he said, some inner devil urging him on. Dillard and Willard both peered over their papers at him, nodding in approval. Obviously, they hadn’t heard about his tractor mishap or they would have known he wouldn’t be going anywhere near one. He smiled to himself and picked up the paper. “I’ll take some of those cinnamon rolls, too. You’ve ruined my willpower, Mrs. Cutter.”

  The older woman beamed. “It’s nice to know I can still tempt a young looker like you.”

  Ian chuckled and paid her, enjoying their banter. He leafed through the financial section while he drank his coffee. A little while later, he left the store with a fresh cup of coffee in his hand.

  The morning felt crisp and cool, the sky cloudless above him. He climbed into his car, thinking of how different his Sundays had been in New York. Trying to get ahead on his work, never catching up from one week to the next, but continuing the race until the days and months ran together, and he had forgotten how to stop and smell the roses altogether. He was relearning how to do that here. He hoped he never forgot again.

  On his way out of town, he spotted the tail end of Colby’s truck behind her clinic. Common sense told him to keep on driving, but given that he hadn’t been listening to that a lot lately where she was concerned, he swung the Mercedes into the parking lot and sat there, debating whether or not to go in.

  Since the moment she’d left his house on Friday, he’d been comparing her to Rachel in ways he shouldn’t have. The two of them couldn’t have been more different. Not in a million years would he have imagined doing with Rachel what he’d done with Colby. Rachel would have been horrified at the thought of helping him bathe Smidge in tomato juice. She’d have thought he’d lost his mind for buying Matilda. And she didn’t eat pizza. Under any circumstances.

  The mere fact that he compared the two of them should have made him turn the car around and drive away as fast as he could get the thing in gear. Instead, he got out and crossed the parking lot to the back door.

  It had been left open an inch or two. He knocked. “Colby?”

  No answer. He went inside and called her name again.

  “I’m back here.”

  He followed her voice. Several dogs barked in unison, aware now that they had company on an otherwise quiet morning. He found her at the back of the building, sitting on a crate in the middle of what looked like a supply room. A bunch of smaller boxes surrounded her. A clipboard lay across her lap.

  “Putting in some overtime?” he asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

  She kept her face averted, running a thumb beneath each eye and not quite meeting his gaze. “I. . .not really. Just doing some inventory.”

  Her voice sounded funny, raspy and uneven. “Thought you’d be in church,” he said.

  “I asked Him for a rain check,” she said with a bad attempt at a smile.

  There was something wrong. He saw it in the tenseness of her expression. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, focusing on the clipboard in her left hand.

  But he could see she wasn’t. He went over and sat down on the crate beside her, careful not to touch her. “You want to talk about it?”

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “There’s nothing to talk about—”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She tossed the clipboard on the floor and wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. “Oh, shoot!”

  “What is it, Colby?” He put a hand on her arm and tried to ignore the shock of awareness that touching her sent through him.

  She didn’t answer for several moments, visibly struggling for composure. “It’s a long story. You don’t really want to hear it.”

  “Hey, I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  She sat there, not saying anything for a while. He just waited, knowing she would get around to it when she felt ready. She let out a heavy sigh and then said, “I found out why Lena’s been hating me the past couple of months.”

  “And?”

  She dabbed at her eyes with her shirtsleeve and sighed, her shoulders slumping. “I had her when I was in college. I wasn’t married.”

  She looked up at him as though she expected him to be shocked or disgusted. He was neither. He knew she must have been young when Lena was born. But he’d assumed she’d married and divorced.

  “That was a long time ago,” she said before he could respond. “Lena never knew her father. I told her he was dead.”

  Surprised, Ian didn’t know what to say. “Why?”

  She got up from the crate and moved to the window that looked out on the back parking lot, arms folded across her chest as if she were physically holding herself together. “We were young, and when I first found out, I had no idea what to do. Doug wanted me. . .he wanted me not to have the baby. I almost let him convince me it was the right thing to do. . . .”

  “But you didn’t let him.”

  She shook her head, pain clear in her face.

  Colby Williams was the strongest woman Ian had ever known, and the unfamiliar fragility he sensed in her now bothered him in ways he couldn’t explain. He wanted to pull her into his arms and give her the comfort she so clearly needed. He subdued the impulse with hard-won restraint. “And that’s why you two didn’t stay together?”

  “That pretty much ended things.”

  Ian didn’t know what to say, amazed at the guy’s heartlessness. “He didn’t want to be in her life?”

  “No. And I could never bring myself to tell her that.”

  “So how did she find out about him?”

  “She found a letter from him to me in my old room at my parents’ house. That’s why she’s been so different lately. Not that I blame her. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to keep that letter. I’ve called him, asking him to speak to her, but I haven’t told her in case he still doesn’t want anything to do with her.”

  “Hey,” he said, tilting her chin up and forcing her to look at him. “Don’t blame yourself. She’s lucky to have you for a mother.”

  He felt her distress as if it were his own. They stood there, staring at each other, caught up in something Ian didn’t want to name but couldn’t deny. Consoling her wasn’t his right or his place. But she needed comfort. And he was here. He told himself that was all there was to it as he pulled her against him. He actually believed it until the reality of her breasts against his chest shot that theory all to pieces.

  It felt as if she melted against him; she wrapped her arms around his waist, her hands splayed across his back.

  Ian closed his eyes. His hands hung suspended behind her until the need to touch her overrode all the reasons why he should not. He let one hand rest in the center of he
r back while the other stroked the length of her hair. Soft and straight, it felt like silk against his palm.

  Something shifted inside him, cutting him adrift from everything he had felt certain about just moments ago.

  His first thought? They fit somehow. Like two interlocking pieces of a puzzle. Colby was a woman able to take care of herself. A woman who didn’t need a man to complete her. But with her in his arms, he himself felt a sense of completeness that was distinctly unnerving, if equally welcome.

  For long, uncountable moments, they stood, simply holding each other. When she looked up at him, her eyes were questioning and needy in a way that he could not ignore. He felt the shift inside him again, and of its own volition, his hand moved to smooth a strand of hair from her face. He was sure the uncertainty in her expression reflected his own. Kissing her suddenly seemed like something he had to do. He leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers. She made a soft sound somewhere between protest and acquiescence.

  He deepened the kiss, cupping his hand around the back of her neck, holding her closer. He was aware of the curves and lines of her, surprised by how right that felt, too. It was the first time he had held her this way, and yet there was nothing strange or unfamiliar about it.

  The kiss grew more hurried, more greedy, Colby as insistent as he. What began as consolation became something else entirely. Yet, he didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want to. Reason and logic deserted him, and he wanted more of everything. Her mouth. Her skin. The soft sounds of pleasure coming from her throat.

  The phone rang, the answering machine out front picking up the call. The noise sufficient to bring some semblance of sanity to what was happening between them.

  Colby pulled away and touched the back of her hand to her mouth.

  “Colby, are you there? We didn’t see you at church, and I got a little concerned. No one answered at your house, so I thought I’d check here. If you get this message, give me a call.”

  “My mom.” Colby pressed her lips together and avoided his gaze.

  Ian nodded and stepped back, shoving a hand through his hair. Colby moved to the window, looking out, her breathing still erratic. He wondered what he was supposed to say about what just happened when he had no idea why or how it had.

  “We shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her voice oddly uneven.

  She was right. They shouldn’t have. He had no right to kiss her. But if anyone should be blamed for this, he should. “It wasn’t your fault. I—”

  She turned to face him and raised a hand to interrupt. “Please. You were just being nice. I took advantage of that.”

  “You didn’t take advantage of anything, Colby.” Confusion settled over him like fog over San Francisco. He should feel guilty, but of all the other emotions churning inside him, that one was absent. In all honesty, he had wanted to kiss her for a long time now—on the day she’d brought him home from the hospital and then again on Friday night when she’d left his house. From the first day he’d met her, something had been simmering beneath the surface between them. He couldn’t deny that. But he’d never expected the kind of heat their kiss generated.

  “Okay, let’s be rational about this,” she said, one hand in stop sign mode. “You and I both know what just happened wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been upset. You were only—”

  “Colby.”

  “—trying to make me feel—”

  “Colby.”

  She stopped, meeting his gaze with what looked like a sincere attempt to convince them both that this whole thing had been nothing more than a fluke brought on by need on her part and martyrdom on his. As much as he would have liked to believe that, his gut didn’t buy it. “Let’s put this on rewind. Stay right there.”

  He backed out of the room while she watched him, a curious expression on her face. He retraced his steps to the door that opened into the parking lot and called out, “Colby?”

  “In the back,” she answered, sounding puzzled.

  He wound his way down the hall, across the room to the window, where she stood looking at him as if she thought he’d lost his mind. “So this Doug,” he said. “He’s a real jerk, right? Well, I think you’re doing the right thing in waiting to tell Lena that you spoke with him. That kind of thing might do a lot of damage to a fifteen-year-old’s self-image. And if you ever need anyone to talk to about this, just pick up the phone and call, okay? After all, that’s what friends are for.”

  Colby’s face broke into a smile, her eyes still moist from the earlier tears.

  “All right?” he prompted.

  “All right,” she said.

  “I’m going to go now.” He backed away from her, slowly, their gazes snagged, until he turned abruptly and left before he changed his mind.

  33

  The smile lingered on Colby’s lips long after Ian had gone.

  An hour ago, she’d thought she might never smile again.

  She sank back down on the crate and sighed. No matter how they colored it, what happened here had been a mistake. Of the screwing-up-your-life-in-a-big-way variety.

  Logically, she knew that to be true. So why hadn’t she wanted it to stop? Why had she been sorry to see him go even as she’d been telling him he should?

  Being friends with Ian McKinley might not work out exactly as she’d thought it would. Maybe she’d been crazy to think it possible, anyway.

  Considering everything going on with Lena right now, she hardly needed to set herself up as the other woman.

  No, the friends thing definitely wasn’t working. But it wasn’t too late for damage control. She would just stay away from him. No more complicated than that. The right thing to do. The only thing to do.

  In the week following the incident at Colby’s clinic, Ian was tempted to call and find out whether she’d heard from Lena’s father yet. The way he saw it, the jerk didn’t deserve a chance to be part of Lena’s life. But he didn’t call. His reasons for wanting to weren’t as pure as they should have been. And he knew it.

  He worked in his office each morning, then spent his afternoons puttering around the barn and the outside of the house. The leaves had begun to brighten toward full color now, the oak trees lining the driveway streaked in yellow. Somehow, in the city, the beauty of autumn always escaped him. Here, he reveled in it. He brought Matilda out in the afternoons and let her nibble at the grass while Smidge raced circles around her, wanting to play.

  Even though he didn’t see Colby, she was never far from his thoughts. He’d gone over that Sunday morning so many times, it played like an old movie running through his head. As much as he tried to rationalize it to himself, a voice in his gut told him that a happily engaged man didn’t do what he’d done with Colby Williams. Be that as it might, he found reassurance in the realization that it didn’t have to. . . wouldn’t. . .happen again.

  When Rachel called on Wednesday and said she would like to come down for the weekend, he said all the right things. Of course he wanted her to come. He would be glad to see her. But when she called back on Thursday and said something had come up at work and she would be tied up all day Saturday, he felt more than a little unsettled to find that he wasn’t disappointed.

  Then he ran across a letter from Colby on the editorial page of Friday’s paper. The sight of it made his chest tighten and blew to pieces any notion that he’d put what happened between them from his mind. Without taking his gaze from the page, he set down his cup of coffee and began to read.

  Dear Editor,

  On my way to work today, I found a black-and-white beagle puppy lying in the middle of the road at the top of Nolen Hill. His small body was twisted and broken, rain pelting off his fur. It was too late for me to do anything to help him.

  A few yards away, his brother and two sisters sat huddled together on the shoulder, looking as if they were sure the person who had left them there would soon return to take them home.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve seen dogs and cats who, no longer wanted, h
ave been dropped off and left to sit by the road in that same way, just waiting.

  I have to wonder how someone left those puppies, knowing that they would either starve to death or be hit by a car. Their fate was certain to be one or the other.

  As anyone who has ever been to my clinic knows, I encourage the spaying and neutering of pets so that unplanned-for puppies and kittens won’t be brought into the world. If such a thing should happen, though, please don’t abandon them to the kind of fate I’ve just described.

  I plan to one day be part of bringing a No-Kill shelter to this county where unwanted pets can stay until they are adopted. Until then, I hope I never see another animal abandoned this way.

  Colby Williams, DVM

  The editor included a note below the letter that read: “For anyone interested in adopting a pet, the county shelter will be holding Adopt-A-Pet Day on the lawn outside the courthouse on Saturday from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.”

  Ian put down the paper and turned his chair to stare out the window. His throat felt tight, and it was hard to swallow.

  The letter made him think about the choice Colby made sixteen years ago. She had accepted responsibility for her actions. Had a child and raised her by herself. Not an easy task for someone trying to get through college and then vet school. She was the same woman today that she had been then. A woman with values that she not only spoke, but practiced. Her own life couldn’t exactly be a bed of roses at the moment, and yet she’d taken the time to write this letter.

  He read it again, and if he’d had any doubts before, he no longer thought that putting Colby Williams out of his mind would be easy.

  34

  Without looking up, Colby knew exactly when Ian walked through the gate to the Adopt-A-Pet Day on Saturday afternoon. She glanced up and found him smiling at something Stacey Renick was saying to him.

  It had been almost a week since she’d seen him, and yet her awareness of him was as pronounced now as before. She felt as if she had a divining fork inside her, and he was the only water in a bone-dry desert.