About a Dog

by Jenn McKinlay

  The lids on Carly’s eyes snapped up. “Gavin, as in her little brother Gavin? The boy she raised as her own since their mother died? The same man-boy you slept with in a singular lapse of good judgment when you got dumped at the altar seven years ago? The one man in your personal history that Emma does not know about, that Gavin?”

  “Yep,” Mac said. She lifted her drink to her lips and downed it. “That Gavin.”

  Chapter 3

  Mac lugged her suitcase, carry-on, and garment bag off the passenger car and onto the platform in Portland, Maine. The Downeaster train had brought her up from Boston, which had been her first stop after flying in from Chicago as she’d had to do a final fitting before picking up her dress at the Boston bridal shop on her way to Maine for the wedding. Now she just had to find Emma in the station and they would set out for Bluff Point, which was a half-hour drive up the coastline.

  The two-and-a-half-hour train ride had given Mac plenty of time to think about the next two weeks. Emma, being Emma, had planned a wedding that was not just the celebration of two people uniting their lives. Oh, no, it was more like a two-week hostage situation where there was a daily itinerary of endless activities designed to milk every magical matrimonial moment out of the event. Just reading the five pages of detailed instructions that Emma had emailed everyone exhausted Mac.

  Despite the intensity of the agenda, Mac planned to participate fully. She understood that the over-the-top celebrating was a part of who Emma had become when her mother passed away so young. Emma was always the one who made every birthday, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day one to be remembered since she had a deep-seated fear that each one might be the last.

  Since it was an Emma extravaganza, there were a million picky little details to nail down, and Mac had made a personal vow that she would be the perfect maid of honor for Emma. She would do whatever Emma asked of her and serve it up with a smile on the side. She hoped this would alleviate the guilt she felt since she had been such a no-show as a maid of honor thus far.

  Mac wheeled her suitcase beside her as she entered the station, narrowly missing a mom and her two sons who were on their way out. One of the boys gave her the stink eye and Mac gave it right back. The boy’s eyes went wide with fright—Mac gave a really good stink eye—and then she winked at him, letting him know all was forgiven. He grinned before he scampered off to catch up to his mom.

  Mac entered the station and scanned the large room looking for Emma. Her friend’s long, straight blonde hair usually gave away her location at a glance, but Mac did a quick visual sweep and didn’t see her. She searched again thinking Emma might have her hair in a topknot or a ponytail, but no. There was no petite blonde anywhere to be seen.

  Mac shrugged and hauled her bags over to a seat. Maybe Emma was running late. She dug in her purse for her cell phone to see if there was a text she had missed, but as she moved her hand around the voluminous bag, she couldn’t find her phone. She sighed.

  She loved her big bag, she really did. It was one of the many reasons she’d let her gym membership lapse, besides the fact that she never actually went, as she figured carrying around twenty pounds of stuff kept her fit enough, but at times like this, which were frequent, she thought she really needed to downsize.

  A buzz sounded from her bag and Mac held it open wide, hoping the display screen would light up so she could see it. Ha! There was a blue glow coming from the bottom. She snatched up her phone and answered it without pausing to look at the number.

  “Emma, I’m here, where are you?” Mac asked.

  “I’m right behind you,” a man answered.

  Seven years. It had been seven years since Mac had heard his voice, which was much deeper than she remembered, but still she would know Gavin Tolliver’s voice in a crowded room loud with conversation and laughter. His was the sort of voice that wrapped around you like a hug. It was deep and masculine but full of warmth and kindness with a self-deprecating humor to it that Mac had always found charming even when Gav was a gawky teen just learning how to talk to girls.

  Mac closed her eyes and braced herself before slowly turning around, still holding the phone to her ear. Her heart was pumping hard in her chest and when she looked at the man walking toward her it stopped for a solid three beats before it resumed its rhythm with a thump to the chest that felt like a closed fist to the sternum. Oomph!

  “Hi, Mac,” Gavin said into his phone, bringing his voice intimately into her ear while she stared into his baby blues. A woman could drown in eyes that pretty. How had she forgotten? Mac yanked the phone from her ear and ended the call.

  “Gav,” she said on a shaky exhale. He stopped in front of her right on the periphery of her personal space. She forced herself to smile with teeth, which felt like more of a snarl. “I wasn’t expecting you. How are you?”

  “Better now that you’re here,” he said.

  Mac gave him a wary look. What the hell did that mean?

  “I’m pretty sure if I misplaced my sister’s maid of honor, I’d have to flee the state or possibly the country,” he teased. He smiled at her and Mac felt it all the way down to her toes.

  “Oh, yeah, huh,” Mac stammered. She resisted the urge to do a face palm. She sounded like a moron.

  “Come here,” Gavin said. He tucked his phone into his jeans pocket and held out his arms. “A proper greeting is required for the return of the prodigal Mac.”

  “Oh, right, of course,” she said.

  In her state of shock at seeing him, Mac’s legs were refusing to follow the basic one foot in front of the other protocol and she lurched forward into his arms, forcing him to catch her before she took them both down.

  It was a good bracing squeeze, the sort cousins shared at annual family reunions. But it was enough for Mac to catalog the fact that this was not the man-boy she had fumbled around in a pickup truck with all those years ago. Oh, no, this was a man who stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, a lean waist, and powerful arms. Gavin Tolliver had grown into a hottie when she wasn’t looking.

  Amazingly, his scent was the same and it struck Mac in the olfactory system like a lightning strike. The warm citrusy cedar smell that was uniquely Gavin blew open the locked door of her memories, and Mac was hit like a two fingered poke to the eyeballs with a mental picture of the man in her arms sans clothes holding her close and going in for a bone-wilter of a kiss. Ack!

  She jumped out of his arms so fast she tripped over her suitcase and landed in a heap on the bench seat behind her. She cracked her hip on the wooden edge and the pain rocketed up her back but she refused to let it show. Instead, she quickly crossed her legs and threw her arm over the seat back, pretending that she meant to do that.

  Gavin looked surprised and then he grinned at her as if he found her adorable and not freaky, which she clearly was. Mac wondered how she could have forgotten the dimple that dented his right cheek when he smiled or the girlishly long, thick lashes that framed his eyes so becomingly. Then he winked at her and she felt as if everything she had ever known to be true had just hopped on the Downeaster train back to Boston.

  This was not the Gavin Tolliver she remembered in his grubby Little League uniform who thought it was hilarious to stick whoopee cushions under her sleeping bag when she spent the night at Emma’s, for that was the only image of him she had ever allowed herself to recall after their one night together. It had worked like a charm to banish the memory of what had been the most amazing sexual encounter of her life. She had even convinced herself that their night together had only been spectacular because she had just been left at the altar and had been as emotionally charged as a hair dryer tossed into a bathtub.

  But now, this man standing in front of her in his well-worn jeans and work boots was making the past seven years of her carefully crafted revisionist history an utter mockery. This guy had charisma and sexual magnetism to the tenth power. When he smiled at
her, she actually felt her skin get hot and when he winked, well, her girl parts almost overheated. Dang, this guy could probably unhook her bra just by looking at it!

  There was no doubt about it, Mac was screwed. Or maybe, she just wanted to be. Gah! Mac shook her head, trying to dislodge that thought. No, no, no! This was Emma’s little brother! She tried to picture him in his Little League uniform. Sadly, she could not shove the man body in the form-fitting gray T-shirt in front of her into a dirty eight-year-old’s baseball uniform. Damn it!

  “Mac, are you okay?” he asked. “You look mad.”

  “What?” She glared at him. Then she glanced away, trying to avoid his gaze. “I’m fine, just tired.”

  “Long day of travel,” he said. His voice was kind and understanding, which Mac found unreasonably annoying. “I’m parked right outside. Come on, let’s get you home.”

  Without waiting for her answer, he took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Then he grabbed her bags as if they weighed nothing and wheeled them toward the door. Mac had no choice but to grab her purse and her garment bag and follow. She wished she had worn a better travel outfit than jeans and a T-shirt, then berated herself for even thinking about her outfit, and then she cursed Emma for not warning her that it was Gavin who would pick her up. Forget hostage situation; suddenly, the next two weeks looked more like an incarceration than a celebration and Mac did not have a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Gavin hefted Mac’s bags into the back of a big black pickup truck. So, he still drove a truck, a different truck, but still a truck. She went to open the passenger door but he got there first, holding it open for her to climb in. Mac squeezed by him, trying not to brush up against him as she went. Healthy boundaries were going to be scrupulously maintained if a mere smell memory had her picturing him naked. Oh, horror!

  He shut the door and jogged around the front of the truck. She turned on her phone and toyed with the screen, pretending to be doing something other than avoiding looking at him, which was really what she was doing.

  Gav pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road that would take them home. Mac glanced out her window, wondering if the silence felt as awkward to him as it did to her. She supposed she should say something, but she had no idea what.

  Why couldn’t she be like Carly, who in her usual blunt fashion would just give his ass a squeeze, crack a bawdy joke about the last time they saw each other, and move on? Or like Jillian, who would say something kind but distant, which would effectively put up a barrier as daunting as razor wire between them, letting him know they were not going there. Ever.

  Sadly, it was neither of those two who had slept with their best friend’s little brother. Oh, no, that was Mac, who as a corporate accountant who operated in numbers and facts and bottom lines had zero capacity to navigate life’s layers of innuendo. Damn it!

  “So . . .” Gavin said. He gave her a sideways glance when she turned to look at him. “Are you hungry?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Not at all. Not even a little. I’m good. Thanks.”

  She pressed her lips together to shut herself up and turned away from him. Ugh, she couldn’t even look at him. She could be half starved to death and desperate for a ham sandwich and she wouldn’t do anything that would prolong their time together for even a nanosecond. Seriously, if she had to go to the bathroom, she would risk peeing her pants before she’d extend this trip to include a pit stop. Thankfully, she did not have to go.

  “Okay,” Gavin said. Again, his voice was gentle, as if he were talking to an injured baby bird. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Will do,” Mac said. “Roger that, you betcha, by golly wow.”

  Okay, now the urge to punch herself in the temple and knock herself out was almost more than she could stand. Being unprepared to see him again had reduced her to a babbling idiot.

  He on the other hand did not seem to be suffering from any awkwardness. Obviously, Gavin either didn’t remember what had happened between them seven years ago or he was so completely over it that it didn’t occur to him that being thrown together after seven years of radio silence was weird. Now didn’t that just fluff up her ego?

  Still, if he had forgotten all about that night, it was most definitely for the best and it made her relax just the teensiest bit. Perhaps all of her worry had been for nothing and everything was going to be just fine over the next two weeks.

  She stole a look at him, then glanced back out the window and then back at him. His hair was cut short on the sides and longer on top. It was several shades darker than his sister’s, almost brown but not quite but not really blonde either. His bangs fell over his forehead in a casual way that could have been created with a lot of product and artful arrangement but Mac suspected was more the result of a quick towel dry and a distracted manner.

  Despite the fact that Mac hadn’t seen him in years, she knew the highlight reel. Emma had kept her apprised of all the main events in Gavin’s life. He had gone to veterinary school, graduated at the top of his class, and had returned home to work at old Doc Scharff’s practice. Doc was in semi-retirement and was training Gavin to take over the biz fully when he was done. Emma was so proud of her brother; she practically glowed when she talked about him.

  Although she never admitted it, Mac knew that Emma had put her life on hold until she knew Gavin was settled. She always said she and Brad were saving for a house before they got married, but Mac suspected that Emma had been waiting to make sure Gavin could stand on his own two feet before she started a family of her own. Mac had a feeling Gavin didn’t realize it and would be pretty unhappy if he ever figured it out.

  Maybe that’s just how big sisters were with little brothers. Mac didn’t know because she didn’t have any siblings. The only person who had ever been like a younger sibling to her was Gavin, and, oh, yeah, she had slept with him. Even thinking about it made Mac feel dirty.

  Emma hadn’t only shared Gavin’s accomplishments, she had also kept Mac informed on his love life even though Mac had never asked and really didn’t want to know. The last girlfriend, Jane, had never been a favorite of Emma’s. She had dubbed her Jane the Pain, which had been shortened to “The Pain” for the duration of their relationship and had then morphed into “The Beyotch” after Jane ran off with Gavin’s business manager.

  Mac didn’t like knowing all of the sordid details about Gavin’s personal life, but she had never been able to stop Emma from oversharing without giving her a solid reason why. Now she was uncomfortable knowing as much as she did and not knowing what to say to him about any of it. The silence in the cramped cab of the truck was becoming excruciating, however, and she didn’t think she could take it anymore as they crossed over the Presumpscot River, heading north on Route 1.

  “So, it looks like they’ll have a nice day for the wedding,” she said. She grabbed for the old New England mainstay of talking about the weather like she was reaching for a life preserver in a choppy sea.

  Gavin looked at her and grinned. “She speaks, and about the weather, too. I guess you can take the girl out of Maine but you can’t take the Maine out of the girl.”

  Mac felt herself blush, which was alarming as she was pretty sure she hadn’t had a case of the face hots in years. So, there was one more reason to avoid this man. No self-respecting thirty-two-year-old woman wanted to walk around looking rashy.

  “Ayuh,” she said, intentionally using an old Maine expression for agreement. Gavin smiled at her, which had been her intent but it also made her face heat up again. She resisted the urge to cover her cheeks with her hands and instead asked, “Er, so what’s new with you?”

  Gavin glanced from the road to her. He gave her a look with one eyebrow raised that said Seriously? before turning back to the road.

  Mac blew out a breath. She was pretty sure she’d had pelvic exams that were more fun than this, and that was with the doctor saying
“Scooch down” repeatedly until her ass cheeks felt like they were hanging on nothing but air.

  “I’m guessing Emma has already given you the four-one-one on my life,” he said. “Correct?”

  “She might have mentioned some stuff.”

  “Well, in answer to your question, I’m fine.”

  He clenched his jaw and forced a closed-lip smile that flashed at her as if to prove he was A-okay, but when it didn’t reach his eyes, she knew he was far from it. He turned back to the road, and Mac saw the muscle in his jaw tighten repeatedly. So, not fine then.

  Chapter 4

  “That’s good,” she said. She knew it sounded lame but better that than nothing, she supposed. “I’m glad you’re doing okay.”

  Gavin turned off Route 1 and wound his way down an old back road pockmarked with potholes that twisted and turned its way through the thick woods that skirted the edge of town. Mac bounced in her seat as they traversed the uneven pavement and smiled. How many times had she and her friends driven on this old road, trying to hit the potholes and make their car bounce?

  When they broke through the trees, she was greeted by Spencer’s Orchard. The sight of the roadside stand with the big white house and huge red barn in the background surrounded by rows and rows of apple trees hit Mac with a sense of nostalgia that made her misty-eyed. There had never been an autumn that she didn’t spend at least one weekend picking apples at Spencer’s Orchard right up until the year she left.

  It was early June so the trees had bloomed just weeks before. She could still see some of the pink blossoms that had yet to close up into little fists of green that would plump out into juicy red Macintosh or Macoun apples by September. When she closed her eyes she could almost taste the sweet, tangy, crisp bite of the first apple of the season.

  “You all right?” Gavin asked.

  “Me?” Mac opened her eyes and glanced at him. “I’m fine, why?”