“Funny, but no,” Penny shouted. “Grandma had lined up every pair of socks I own on her mahogany table and made me stand there while she held up each one and explained why I’m still single. The calf-length ones that I sleep in? I’m tragic and desperate. The bleached purple ones with holes in the toes? I’m a slob. My favorite sweat-absorbing running socks? No man likes a woman who’s fitter than him.”
I laughed, and she playfully punched my arm. “They’re socks, Hazel. Socks! If my grandmother hadn’t handed me a hundred-dollar Victoria’s Secret gift card, I might have stuffed one of those cotton things she hates so much into her mouth.”
“Rhea’s not too off base, Penny,” I said as we wove through the crowd. “Men are insecure creatures.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all date professional athletes, you know.” She put a dramatic hand to her chest. “I could run marathons and never outstrip Chris’s athleticism.”
“Appears those two are finishing up,” I said, gesturing to the middle-aged guys sitting at the bar pocketing their wallets. We quickly claimed their chairs once vacant and tried to ignore the stream of patrons hovering around us all clamoring for their drink refills. “And for the hundredth time, Chris and I are not dating.”
Penny smiled. “I’m so glad you brought that up.”
I scoffed. “I did no such thing—”
“Hold, please.” She raised a finger, then leaned across the sticky wooden top to give the overworked bartender a generous view of her cleavage and ordered us each a pomtini. Facing me again, Penny tossed her hair over her shoulder and said, “Now, where were we?”
“Not discussing Chris Lalonde.”
“Too late, you created the opening,” she said. “But I’ll wait until we receive our drinks to talk about your love life like proper thirtysomethings. It’ll be very Sex and the City of us.”
As if on cue, the bartender laid down two pomtinis complete with a lemon twist. Great. I sipped the syrupy-sweet liquid, the sharp bite of alcohol burning my throat, and said, “I don’t want to talk about Chris.”
“Then we can talk about Evelyn. Your choice.” Penny shrugged and took three large gulps of her own cocktail.
“What about my mother?”
“Well, for starters, there’s the way you handled her breaking Rhubarb’s treat jar.”
“I didn’t mean to lose my patience with her,” I replied, feeling defensive at her tone.
“It’s not about losing your patience, Hazel. It’s about the fact that you refuse to recognize you’re just like Evelyn when it comes to this fierce need to protect yourself. Your coping mechanisms are different, but the issue is still the same.” She stared at me as if I were more transparent than glass. “Evelyn rarely goes outside her house, because if she does, things could go wrong and she’s terrified to mess up. But, Hazel, you won’t deviate from your set schedule for the same reasons. Your prison might be bigger, but it’s no less one of your own construction. You need to understand that not everything that can’t be controlled is a bad thing.”
Penny made it sound as if I was a timid, shaking chihuahua too afraid to leave the safety of my crate. Like I’d never done or experienced anything of value. But I’d gone to college, traveled to other parts of the world, purchased a fixer-upper home, and built a small business from scratch. The comparison simply didn’t hold merit. I was nothing like my mother—and I certainly didn’t suffer from the same issues.
“And anyway, Evelyn was right,” she continued. “You could stand to loosen up, try different things outside your comfort zone, live a little more.”
“I don’t need to ‘live a little more.’ I have a very full life,” I muttered, studying the way the condensation on my glass trickled down the sides.
“So do the dogs we save. We bring them in, shivering and frightened, and with our help, they calm down, discover their footing, and learn how to trust. But the pups don’t find joy in the confines of the kennel. That only comes when they take those first wobbly steps outside to something bigger. So no, Hazel,” she said, shaking her head before polishing off the rest of her drink. “What you have is a very safe, predictable life.”
“That’s not fair.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I cut my eyes away, studying the group of sorority girls and fraternity guys all decked out in their Greek letters flirting and having fun near the billiard tables, then looked back at Penny.
“It’s not? Okay, I’m going to walk you through how tonight will transpire. You’ll limit yourself to two martinis. Why two? Because three cocktails means you’re not comfortable driving, and you won’t call an Uber because heaven forbid someone you haven’t fully vetted knows your address,” she said, arching an eyebrow that dared me to contradict her. “And so you’re going to sip your two pomtinis slower than molasses, then leave me here to pick up some lame guy and make bad decisions, which you could have a full part in but won’t.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she held up a hand to silence me, now clearly on a roll.
“You’ll get home, change into those threadbare PJs I’ve tried to throw away countless times because of the holes in the hem, zone out to the Property Brothers on HGTV, eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and crash into bed at eleven so you can wake up early the next morning to prepare for intake at the shelter before doing it all again,” she finally finished. “Tell me which part I’m wrong about.”
“I prefer gelato,” I said, hating how I sounded like a petulant child.
Penny snorted. “Oh, right, how could I forget the Cherry Garcia in place of Phish Food incident of four years ago? You bought one mislabeled pint of Ben & Jerry’s and swore off the brand forever.”
“You can’t blame me,” I said. “It wasn’t what I wanted, expected, or paid for.”
“Which effectively sums up your life’s philosophy: One strike and you’re out. You refuse to budge on anything or allow people to screw up. Which has totally prevented you from having any real relationships apart from me, Evelyn, your uncle, and the dogs you rehabilitate.”
“Except I’ve experienced these ‘real relationships’ you speak of, and where did that get me, Penny? Every guy I’ve dated has turned out to be a fraud.”
She nodded, as if granting me that small point. “I agree with you that Jeff was a cheating jackass and not someone who belonged in your life, but Mark was a decent enough guy.”
Was she serious?
“He lied about having a record,” I said, raking frustrated fingers through my hair. “And if he’d lie about that, he’d lie about far more important things.”
Penny didn’t understand, because she came from a family that was overinvolved in one another’s lives. There were no secrets or lies or hidden agendas, and though she might complain about Rhea’s intrusive help, Penny never actually had to wonder where she stood with her grandmother. She could afford to take things at face value. I could not.
“It was a public intoxication charge Mark got during his sophomore year at Colorado State—years before meeting you—and yet, even after he apologized repeatedly for hiding that information, you wouldn’t hear it.” Penny tilted her gaze toward the ceiling and inhaled a deep breath, as if exasperated by me. “And now you’re applying the one-strike rule to Chris.”
I shook my head, dismissing her words. “Chris purposely kissed me in front of Andrea Williams as a way of getting back at me for confiding in my uncle, so don’t accuse me of acting unreasonable. He’s the one who violated my trust, and now he has to accept the consequences of those actions.”
“You’re right. That was wrong of him. No question. But, Hazel, you’re so skilled at keeping everything on an even keel—your love life, your professional life—and I get why, I really do, but there’s a time and place,” she said, her expression going soft and sad and full of pity. “You can’t ignore everything that’s disruptive. It’s dangerous.”
“Except Chris isn’t dangerous to me,” I said, my words strained, my throat working against the lie.
&nbs
p; “The hell he isn’t!” Penny slapped a hand on the bar top. “He scares you, pushes you into trying things you’d normally shy away from, and you know what? I’m glad. It’s about time someone challenged you, forced you to see gray in your black-and-white world. Life is meant to be experienced in Technicolor. There’s so much you’re missing. And I promise you this: Someday you’ll realize that the good people—just like the bad ones—can transform you into a better, stronger person. If you let them.”
Perhaps Penny was right, but what she was suggesting was a major risk. Because the only way I’d know what someone could bring to my life was to let them close enough to destroy it—and my heart.
CHAPTER NINE
Chris
This is going to go either spectacularly bad or spectacularly well, I thought, staring at the huge, brightly painted building that housed Rescue Granted through my windshield. It’d been three days since the gala, and I’d contemplated not coming in to volunteer at all, but I valued my career too much to risk getting benched. So here I was.
Dead leaves littered the asphalt and made rustling and crunching noises as I crossed the parking lot to the staff entrance. The temperature had officially dropped into the upper thirties, but at least the sky was cloudless and sunny.
“You’re either dumber than I thought or braver,” Penny said when I strolled into the office. She was typing at a computer, a stack of folders on the desk and a mug of what looked like tea beside her.
Spectacularly bad it is.
“Hazel’s still pissed then,” I said, shrugging out of my jacket and hanging it on a hook by the door. I blew hot breaths into my hands and eyed the steaming pot of coffee on the table beside Hazel’s desk. I was tempted to steal a cup; Hazel was a religious nut when it came to her coffee—it was the only frivolous expense I’d seen in the entire shelter. No instant sludge for her. Only whole roasted beans she ground fresh every morning. She’d probably murder me for so much as looking at it.
“Do dragons spit fire?” Penny asked, glancing up from her screen and staring at me as though I was about to dig my own grave. “I hope you brought your flame-resistant suit.”
I scratched my jaw and chuckled. “Good thing I’m on bath duty today. The soapy water will protect me.”
“Now there’s an idea . . .” Penny eyed me in a way I wasn’t sure I liked. “You. Soapy and wet and holding a puppy. You could be Mr. December.” Her lips, which she’d painted a lurid crimson, curled up in a cruel smile. “A Dogs with Douches calendar might bring in so much money that Hazel would forgive you.”
“Title needs work,” I said, even as the idea took root in my brain.
Penny ignored me, writing something on a form and filing it in one of the folders. “Hazel’s already in grooming. She was convinced you weren’t going to show.”
Once again, I was reminded that people expected the worst from me. At least this was one promise I hadn’t delivered on. “Yeah, well, here I am. Ready to do the gross work per usual.”
“You might want to cut the sulky attitude. Hazel doesn’t like it when the pups whine—I can only imagine what she’ll think of the surly personality you’re sporting today,” she said, squinting at a piece of paper before returning to the computer.
“Always happy to provide a challenge.”
“Your funeral, Lalonde.”
I tempered my frustration as I walked down the main hallway to grooming. I’d faced harsher critics than Hazel, who I was certain was 99 percent bark and only 1 percent bite.
I peeked into the grooming room through the small window in the door and smothered a groan that under better circumstances might have been a laugh. Hazel stood at one of the raised tubs, scrubbing down Toffee, the Scottish terrier missing the majority of his hair and part of his left ear. He stared up at Hazel with huge brown eyes, shaking and whimpering tiny, plaintive pleas for mercy, which Hazel disregarded.
If that adorable dog couldn’t release the tension from her shoulders or calm the jerky, impatient way Hazel handled the bottle of shampoo that threatened to slip from her fingers, then I was definitely screwed. Straightening my spine, I knocked and stepped into the room.
Hazel peered at me over her shoulder, shock glinting in her eyes. “Wonders never cease. You’re late. Again.”
“I’m so flattered you noticed. Again,” I said, flashing her my fakest smile. I took a rubber apron from a pile, slipped the neck strap over my head, and tied the strings behind my waist. “Need some help?”
“I’m well acquainted with what you consider helpful, so thanks, but no thanks.” She switched on the coil hose and doused Toffee with enough water to drown out the little guy’s protests.
“Stop being a stubborn mule and tell me what to do,” I said, watching as she made every effort to pretend I didn’t exist. But the way a flush crawled up the back of her neck, only partially hidden by her ponytail, told me she was all too aware of me. Still, witnessing her struggle with it, even as she spit fire at my feet, was sexy as hell, which only led to thoughts of how I might turn that fury to passion.
“Fine. Snowcone has fleas,” she said over the loud rush of the water, nodding to the Maltipoo sleeping in one of the crates fastened to the wall. “When you’re done bathing her, you can bring her over to the haircutting area.”
Penny had commented that Hazel believed I’d bail on my duties, but based on the smirk Hazel gave me, I was now sure she’d not only known I would be here, but she’d also purposely saved the insect-ridden Maltipoo for me as payback.
Grabbing the basket off a shelf labeled SPECIAL CARE, I pulled on a pair of gloves, gently removed Snowcone from her crate, and placed her in the large stainless steel sink sequestered on the far side of the room meant for the health concern cases. What little remained of her white curly fur was covered in tiny black flecks, like someone had dumped a container of pepper on her. There were so many bloodsucking pests on Snowcone that her skin actually appeared as if it were crawling. And the smell—oh god, the smell—was so putrid I forced myself not to gag.
“Do you remember the steps on the checklist for this type of situation, or should I refresh your memory?” Hazel asked from where she continued washing Toffee.
“I’m not an idiot,” I grumbled. I was a fuckup, that was obvious, but I wasn’t incompetent or incapable of following directions like everyone seemed to believe.
I wet Snowcone’s coat and squirted on the medicated shampoo, holding my breath until I’d worked up a lather. I gently moved my fingers along her skin as I broke up the flea dirt, pretending the insects weren’t jumping onto my gloves and arms. Snowcone clawed at the sink’s edge in a futile attempt at escape, her cries growing unbearable.
“It’s okay, Snowcone. I’m almost done,” I murmured, my heart breaking at the tortured look in her big round eyes. Ugh, how did Hazel handle this sort of agonizing guilt every day?
Hazel shut off the hose and wiped her hands on the back of her jeans. “You know, Lalonde, I’m surprised you showed up today.”
“Well, if I didn’t, my boss would tattle to my other boss,” I said, irritation surging through me again.
“There you go again with the fifth-grade antics.” She unfolded a towel and wrapped a shivering and panting Toffee in the warm, soft fabric, rubbing the water out of what little hair he had. His tongue lolled out to one side and his chest heaved, but Toffee’s tail was now wagging at rapid speed. I realized dogs despised baths as much as I despised burpees.
“Am I wrong?” I asked.
Hazel sighed. “I’m not the calculating, vindictive person you think I am.”
“So let me get this straight, I’m supposed to extend you the benefit of the doubt, but you can hold tight to your split-second decision about who I am? That seems fair,” I said, turning on the water and rinsing out the medicated shampoo, careful not to let my annoyance at Hazel transfer to my treatment of Snowcone.
“Actions speak for themselves, Chris. At the first opportunity to take the easy way out, you
jumped at it, regardless of what it cost me.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have stepped out of line if you hadn’t given me a shove,” I said, my voice echoing off the tiled walls.
“If you think answering my uncle’s questions honestly constitutes a push in Andrea Williams’s direction and callously kissing me the way you did, then you’re every bit the arrogant, hot-tempered, brainless athlete you pretend to be.” She looked me up and down, shaking her head with a dismissive expression. “A shame, as I’d thought there might be something real under the façade and bravado.”
My aggravation transformed into indignation. I’d expected more—better—from Hazel, but this is what I got? “So one misstep and that’s it? You write me off as a lost cause?”
At my words, she momentarily froze, as if I’d hit a sore spot, and I wondered if this sort of behavior was a pattern of hers. If she so easily pushed people away—was so inflexible in every aspect of her life—because it was easier than opening herself up and making herself vulnerable to potential heartbreak.
“I tried, Chris. But when people show me who they are, I tend to believe them. It’s less hurtful in the long run than hoping they might change.” Cradling Toffee, Hazel crossed the room and placed him in a vacant crate, the towel still snug around him.
I spun to face her and leaned against the sink, crossing my arms over my chest. Snowcone would have to wait. “Tried? At the rate you give up, it’s a miracle you run a successful rescue.”
She shook her head, as if I was an even bigger disappointment than she’d originally suspected. “If that’s how you feel, then I’ll make this simple for you and let you off the hook.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Hazel shrugged. “Consider your volunteer commitment at Rescue Granted completed. You can leave now, and from this point forward, I’ll tell my uncle you arrive on time and finish the work without protest.”
“So you’ll lie?”
She shrugged again, as though I wasn’t worth a response.
Rescuing the Receiver Page 11