About a Dog

by Jenn McKinlay

  “He didn’t!” Jillian cried.

  “You bastard!” Sam strode forward, looking like he was eager to do some damage on the smaller man.

  Trevor looked at the bigger man as if trying to decide if he could take him. Wisely, he concluded that he couldn’t.

  “Mac, I think that discussion is between us,” Trevor said. “I flew all the way here on a red-eye from London to urge you not to end things between us; I think I deserve a moment of your time in private.”

  Zach and Sam looked at Mac. She didn’t have to think this one over, not even for a nanosecond. She shook her head, and they stepped forward and grabbed Trevor by the upper arms, holding him in place.

  “After what you did to that poor puppy, I have nothing to say to you,” Mac said. “I meant what I said yesterday. We are done. Do not come near me ever again or I will have you arrested. Am I clear?”

  Trevor was struggling against Zach and Sam’s hold. Sam gripped Trevor’s elbow, and his arm went limp.

  “The lady asked you a question,” he said.

  “Yes, fine, I’m clear,” Trevor spat. “Have fun with your boy toy, you bi—”

  Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off as Zach’s fist connected with his chin, knocking Trevor out cold. Zach and Sam dragged him over to a waiting cab and tossed him inside, giving the driver enough fare to get him back to the Portland airport.

  They came back dusting off their shirtsleeves as if they had just taken out the trash.

  “Thanks, guys,” Brad said. He glanced down at Emma and asked, “Do you want us to close down the party?”

  Emma glanced back at the reception. People were still dancing.

  “No,” she said. “But if you all would go and mingle that’d be great. I need to talk to Mac . . . alone.”

  Mac saw Jillian and Carly exchange worried glances. This was not reassuring. She had a feeling Emma was going to tear into her and Mac couldn’t blame her. She’d asked Mac to cheer Gavin up, not destroy him.

  “Come here,” Emma said. She grabbed Mac’s hand and walked by the caterer’s truck. An unopened bottle of champagne was on the bumper of the truck and she snagged it as they went by.

  Mac followed Emma around the big brick building to a tiny garden tucked away in a corner. There was a bench and two chairs and a bubbling water fountain.

  “I didn’t know this was here,” Mac said.

  “I put it here so the workers had an outdoor escape,” Emma said. “It was one of my first landscape design projects.”

  “It’s lovely,” Mac said.

  Emma sat on the bench and Mac sat beside her. She waited while Emma wrestled the cork out of the bottle with a loud pop. She took a long drink and then handed the bottle to Mac, who did the same.

  “Okay, start at the beginning,” Emma said. She looked at Mac meaningfully. “The very beginning.”

  Mac chugged down more champagne, clearly stalling, until Emma took the bottle away. With a heavy sigh, Mac began her story all the way back on her own abomination of a wedding day.

  Emma never interrupted. She never said a word. She just sipped off the champagne bottle, pausing occasionally to belch. When Mac finished up her R-rated version, as opposed to the actual X rating, of the past twenty-four hours, Emma nodded.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to Gavin?” she asked Mac. Her voice snapped like a whip and it flayed Mac raw.

  Mac hung her head. Yes, she did, because inside she was pretty sure she was dying.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never wanted this—”

  “Didn’t you?” Emma interrupted.

  Mac turned to look at her, but Emma glanced away. She took another long swig off of the bottle.

  “I knew about that night after your wedding,” Emma confessed. She stared straight ahead, not meeting Mac’s gaze. “I went looking for you after everything was sorted out, and I remembered that spot was one of Gav’s favorite places so I thought he might take you there. He . . . um . . . seemed to have things in hand so I didn’t interrupt.”

  Mac blew out a breath. “You knew? All this time, and you never said anything?”

  “I didn’t think it was my business,” she said. “And I knew you’d feel weird about it.”

  “Weird?” Mac snorted. “Understatement.”

  “I also knew how Gavin felt about you, so I figured maybe it was for the best that he got to be with you, so he’d finally get over you,” she said. “But he never got over you.”

  Mac felt as if a giant fist was squeezing her heart in its meaty fingers, keeping it from beating and making her hurt.

  “Oh, he dated and there were some short relationships, and for a while there I really thought Jane was going to reel him in, but he never looked at anyone the way he looked at you,” Emma said. “Then you hooked up with Trevor.”

  She made a bleck face, and Mac smiled. Bleck was right. It was hard for her to imagine that she’d thought to spend her life with such a controlling, manipulative, emotionally unavailable man. Oh, sure, he helped her move on from Seth, but not really. It was more like he helped her move to the side—his side—to be whatever he wanted when he wanted it.

  “So, when you asked me to babysit Gavin . . .” Mac began but Emma interrupted.

  “It was complete bullshit. He loved Jane, but he wasn’t in love with her, and his business will be fine, but I thought if I made you think he needed you and threw the two of you together for a couple of weeks, you’d finally see him that way,” she said. “I was hoping the two of you—mostly you—would figure it out.”

  “Boy, howdy, did I!”

  Emma held up a hand. “Yeah, he’s still my baby brother.”

  “Sorry,” Mac said. “But the sex . . .”

  Emma clapped her hands over her ears and sang, “La la la, don’t say sex, la la la.”

  Mac pulled her friend’s hands away from her ears. She couldn’t help but laugh; then she sobered up and sighed. “Emma, I’m in love with him.”

  Her eyes watered up because the first man she’d ever loved, the only man she’d ever fallen in love with, had just walked out of her life. Emma put her arm around Mac’s shoulders and pulled her close.

  “Brad and I will cancel our honeymoon,” she said. “We’ll have an emergency intervention with the whole wedding party and gang up on Gavin until he sees reason about this whole mess, which is all my fault, although in my defense it was done out of love for you both.”

  Mac smiled. She loved the idea of bringing in the troops and having all of the support, but she knew that wouldn’t work.

  “Thanks, really, but I think this is something I have to do myself.”

  Chapter 36

  “How goes romancing the hottie?” Aunt Charlotte asked.

  “It’s not,” Mac said.

  She stood in the doorway of the living room watching her aunts, who were zipped up in matching knee- and elbow-length wet suits, lie on their surfboards on the carpet while they pretended to paddle.

  “Get ready!” Aunt Sarah shouted. “Here it comes!”

  They both paddled faster and then popped—well not so much popped as creaked—up onto their feet, positioning themselves as if they were riding the waves.

  “Hey, you stole my wave,” Sarah yelled at Charlotte.

  “Yeah, well, this is locals only,” Charlotte snapped back.

  Mac rolled her eyes and left the room. The aunts were planning a surf trip to Ogunquit and clearly they were practicing their surf ’tude as well as their technique.

  Mac pitied the lifeguards who didn’t take them seriously when they rolled up with their boards strapped to the roof of their Challenger.

  “Keep trying, Mac,” Sarah yelled after her. “He’s mad now, but he’ll get over it, especially if you stay on his radar.”

  “Thanks,” Mac said. “I’m ta
king Tulip for a walk. Back later.”

  She clipped the leash to Tulip’s collar and set out for their daily walk down to the boardwalk. This was not a random happenstance. Over the past week, she had spent her days tracking Gavin’s schedule. Some might call it stalking, but Mac figured if no point of contact had been made than it was really just familiarizing.

  The Monday after the wedding, she had put in for an extended leave of absence and a transfer to her company’s Portland office. She knew it was a crazy gamble and that Gavin might not give her a second chance, but she also knew that what Aunt Sarah had said was right.

  The aunts were going to be gone, someday, and Mac realized she didn’t want to miss any more time with them, especially since Sarah had decided that she was going to teach Mac to dance hip-hop, whether she liked it or not. How could she miss out on that?

  Mac and Tulip stationed themselves in their usual spot near the outdoor chess tables in the small park that sat by the boardwalk. Right on schedule, with his T-shirt drenched in sweat and his earbuds in, Gavin went jogging by. Tulip always wanted to jump over the summer roses that separated the park from the boardwalk and love on Gavin, but Mac held her back.

  She had made exactly two attempts to talk to Gavin since the wedding. Both times she had been met with a stone-cold silence. He didn’t yell, or raise his voice; he wasn’t scary or mean. In fact, he was nothing. He didn’t acknowledge her or engage in any way. Both times Mac had stammered an apology and then fled. She was pretty sure she would have preferred it if he had yelled at her.

  A few minutes later, when he jogged back the way he had come, she almost shouted his name, but she chickened out at the last second.

  “Mackenzie Harris, that was pitiful.”

  Mac turned around to see Zach and Sam sitting at one of the outdoor chess tables. Their match was well under way and Mac was surprised that she hadn’t noticed them when she arrived—then again, no she wasn’t. She had been pretty fixated on Gavin.

  “Hi, boys,” she said.

  Tulip recognized them and galloped over to greet them. Zach puckered his lips and Tulip kissed him right on the mouth. He was the only person Mac knew who encouraged this behavior. Sam patted his knee and Tulip abandoned Zach for him, wiggling all over when he found the sweet spot on her spine.

  “Mac, if you want to win him back, you’re going to have to work harder than spying on him from behind the shrubbery,” Zach said. He looked at the board and moved a pawn to take one of Sam’s.

  “He’s right.” Sam agreed. He turned his attention back to the board and frowned.

  Mac might have been embarrassed by the fact that they knew what she was doing, but she was at her personal lowest, which was ironic given that up to now, she’d always considered being dumped at the altar in front of two hundred of her nearest and dearest her rock bottom. Funny how actually loving the guy who left you made it that much worse.

  “Okay, school me,” Mac said. “What do I do to get him back?”

  “Has he seen you naked lately?” Zach asked.

  Mac frowned. “Are you suggesting I show up at his door naked?”

  “It would work for me,” Zach said.

  “Yeah, that’s because your definition of a relationship is warped,” Sam said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Zach protested.

  “Loving your own reflection doesn’t count,” Sam said. He slid his bishop diagonally across the board and took Zach’s knight.

  “That was cold,” Zach said. Mac wasn’t sure if it was the comment or the chess maneuver that bothered him more.

  “He does have a point though,” Sam said. “Gav is in love with you—”

  “He was,” Mac corrected him.

  “He still is,” Zach said. “The only person in Bluff Point more pathetic than you right now is him, and we know because we’ve tried to get him out and about and he refuses to leave his sad little apartment.”

  Mac felt tiny wings of hope flutter in her chest.

  “So, if you’re going to crack him,” Sam said. “You need to be an ever constant presence in his everyday. Remember, men are visual beings. If he has to see you—not trying to talk to him or win him back or anything like that—but just if he sees you constantly, he’ll crack like a walnut under a hammer.”

  “You had to go with the nut and hammer analogy?” Zach asked. “Really?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Okay, if I agree with your crazy scheme, how do you suggest I pull this off?” Mac asked. “How am I supposed to be ready to spring out at him a million times a day?”

  Sam and Zach both looked up at her and grinned. “Call Jillian. With three of your Maine crew in action, the poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance.”

  • • •

  “You look like a ho,” Aunt Sarah said.

  Mac paused in her walk down the hallway and took the turn into the living room nice and slow. She had never worn a dress this tight or shoes this high before, and she was terrified she was going to fall and break a leg or have her dress roll up from the bottom and give the world an eyeful of her nether regions.

  “A ho?” she asked.

  “I meant that in the most flattering way possible,” Sarah said.

  “Natch,” Charlotte said. “Ho is a compliment; it’s slut you have to look out for.”

  Charlotte was seated next to her sister on the couch with Tulip wedged in between them, dead asleep.

  “Thanks for the clarification and for puppy sitting,” Mac said. A car horn honked and she glanced out the window to see Jillian’s Jeep waiting for her. “Jilly’s here. I have to go.”

  Mac blew them kisses and headed out the door. She had just gotten a text from Zach thirty minutes ago, telling her that he and Sam had muscled Gavin into going to Marty’s to watch the Red Sox game with them. He ended the text with the words Dress sexy.

  Mac had spiraled into a panic. What did sexy even mean? Emma was away on her honeymoon and Jillian was tall and thin and looked smokin’ hot even in flannel, so she was no help.

  Carly had gone back to New York after the wedding, but Mac had kept her apprised of the situation in Bluff Point. Upon receiving Zach’s text, she had immediately video chatted Carly to ask her what to do. Carly had told her not to move. Ten minutes later, Carly’s younger sister Gina was at the door with the dress and the shoes.

  She shoved them at Mac and told her to tell Carly that she was not a delivery person. Then she stomped down the front steps in shoes just like the ones Mac wore now, the ones she was afraid to move in. Mac was filled with admiration for Gina. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to stomp in these shoes.

  Mac hobbled down the steps to the Jeep to find Jillian staring at her with wide eyes.

  “The man is going to have a stroke,” Jillian said as she took in the whole ensemble. “Is Carly trying to help you catch him or kill him?”

  Mac tried to pull the dress down to cover herself as she sat down. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Yes, you can,” Jillian said. “At this point, what do you have to lose?”

  “You mean besides my dignity?” Mac asked.

  “Dignity is overrated,” Jillian said. “Ask yourself this, is fighting for him worth sacrificing your dignity?”

  “What dignity?” Mac asked and Jillian laughed.

  Marty’s was thick with locals watching the baseball game. To say Mac was overdressed in her black micro-minidress and matching platform stilettos was an understatement, especially when Jillian was dressed in a sweet floral sundress and summer sandals.

  The arch of Mac’s right foot started to spasm and she envied Jillian’s sandals mightily. On the upside, the extra six inches of height helped her to see over the crowd and she spotted Gavin across the room, playing darts with Zach and Sam.

  Zach spotted her first and jerked his head in Gavin’s direct
ion as if Mac hadn’t had a small heart attack at the sight of him.

  “Courage,” Jillian whispered in her ear and Mac nodded. “I’ll lead. You look innocent.”

  Mac raised an eyebrow at her and Jillian grinned.

  “I meant innocent about our being here, not innocent, because, yeah, that dress is a walking perversion.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Mac said. “I’ve always wanted to be perverse.”

  Jillian scored a table near the dartboards, and Mac slid onto one of the stools. Her skirt rode up higher than she’d anticipated and she hopped back onto her feet with a sigh.

  “Yeah, you’re not allowed to sit in those sorts of dresses.”

  “I’m in hell.”

  “Maybe, but not for long,” Jillian said. She gestured to the dart game behind Mac.

  Mac slowly turned her head; afraid she’d lose her balance if she moved any faster, and glanced over her shoulder at Gavin. He was standing beside the dartboard looking like he’d just been conked on the head.

  Mac met his gaze and then she gave him a slow come-hither half smile and a wink before she turned back to Jillian, who hopped up from her seat and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  “What?” Mac asked. She’d just made her move.

  Jillian held up her phone. “Per Zach’s instructions, dress sexy, make sure he sees you, give him a hot look, then git.”

  “Git?” Mac asked, dismayed. How had she missed this part of the instructions?

  “We’re playing the long game here,” Jillian said. “Your mission is just to get inside his head and wear his resistance down, and then you can work out your issues.”

  Jillian grabbed Mac’s hand and tugged her back into the crowd. They pushed their way through and a hand grabbed Mac’s butt on the way. Without thinking about it, she turned and gave the offender a punch to the throat. He went down fast, but Mac recognized Seth as he dropped. Jerk! She and Jillian stepped over him and headed out the door.

  And so it went for the next week. Zach, Sam, Jillian, the aunts, and Jessie were all pressed into tracking Gavin’s every move. The man couldn’t cross the street without someone sending Mac an alert.