“I...am on a mission to try the top two brands of each to find out which I like best,” he said.
She had the distinct feeling that he was making up every word as he went along. Someone who liked to clean also had brand preferences for every job.
But it wasn’t her business.
“Have you picked a name for him?” she asked instead, pointing to the puppy who was sound asleep with his head flopped against Josh’s chest.
He shook his head. “It didn’t occur to me.”
“The quickest way to teach him to come when he’s called is to call him only by one name, and to say that name every single time you speak to him. When you feed him, say his name and then the word eat, and put his food down. He’ll learn what eat means, too.”
“You called him Little Guy.”
“Because he’s male and little and I specifically was not naming him as I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep him.”
“Did you want to?”
He was getting personal again. This wasn’t about her. Though...she kind of wanted it to be.
And while Dana was all about living her new life, about believing that she was just as good as everyone else, she wasn’t so far along on her journey that she was going to pursue the guy who had to be the hottest bachelor in town.
“I didn’t think I wanted another puppy, not anytime soon. I’ve got a kitten now. And my duplex is small. But after having Little Guy around for a couple of days...yeah, I’d like another puppy. A smaller one, though.”
“You should get one, then.”
Maybe. “Anyway, I recommend naming him. Soon.”
“I like Little Guy. It’s what he is.”
“He’s going to be huge.”
“So...all the more reason to remind him that no matter how big he gets, I’ll still be bigger, right?”
He grinned. She melted.
And got the hell out of there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JOSH DIDN’T HAVE to wait until Monday to speak with Cassie Montford. His cell phone rang shortly after Dana Harris left Saturday, and he recognized the veterinarian’s number.
“Josh? This is Cassie Montford.”
Montford. Not Tate. She was on family business. He stiffened. “I assume you spoke with your husband?” he said, the Redmond in him coming out as he prepared to take control of the situation. To take control and not give off an iota of the emotion roiling around inside him. Getting his own way was all that mattered.
He didn’t want to leave town. Didn’t have any idea where he’d go.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” the older woman said. “I spoke with Sam last night but by the time we were alone and could talk it was too late to call you back. And I just got out of surgery now—a dog was hit by a car outside of town this morning....”
It had been less than twenty-four hours. Josh had expected their decision to take at least through the weekend. In Boston, it would have. The pros and cons of upholding a family secret would have been weighed very seriously.
“Sam and I will keep your secret for as long as we can without anyone being hurt,” Cassie said, her voice sounding even warmer than it had the day before at her office.
More personal.
“Sam has a request, though, Josh. He really wants to meet you.”
Ready to respond with an unequivocal no, until he was a little more certain he could trust himself, Josh didn’t get the chance.
“I’ve managed to rein him in for now, with a threat to tell his parents some things about his past that he doesn’t want them to know.”
It sounded like a stunt any number of wives in his Boston circle might have pulled. It was all about keeping up appearances.
“Not that I’d carry through with the threat, which he knows, but he got the point, anyway. Sometimes people need some space to work through their issues on their own.”
He swallowed. “I... Thank you,” he said.
He wanted to say more. To ask more. To find out more about Sam Montford’s life. About the secrets that he didn’t want his parents to know...the fodder that gave his wife some leverage.
But he was determined to stick with his promise.
He asked about Little Guy’s surgery, set a date for the week after Thanksgiving and started to ring off.
“Josh?”
He put the cell phone back to his ear. “Yes?”
“I can’t promise that Sam will wait forever,” she said. “My husband has a bit of a wild streak. When it gets ahold of him, he’s apt to do something off the wall.”
“Has he had run-ins with the law?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine his mother being gung ho about claiming her Arizona family if he had.
“Absolutely not. Sam’s never been in trouble with the law. Have you?”
Too late he saw what his question had implied. He quickly said, “No. I don’t have a criminal record.” It was the truth. He’d never even received a speeding ticket.
Hard to believe, when a woman had lost her life because of his carelessness. He’d walked away without paying any price at all.
“Sam’s just a bit of a social rogue,” Cassie said. “He says what he thinks, and when he believes in something he goes after it, regardless of what it costs him. He’s just found out he has a new cousin in town. And having grown up as the only son of the town’s founding family, he’s anxious to make your acquaintance. All I’m saying is don’t be surprised if you come home some night and find him drinking a beer on your back porch.”
Something Josh might have done if the situation were reversed...
Stop. He implored silently. This wasn’t going to work if he got in with the family. He’d fall back on his old ways. Become someone he hated.
“Also, just so you know, there’s another cousin here in town. Ben Sanders. He’s fairly new to the family, as well, but biologically, he’s a Montford. Ben’s married to Tory and they have two daughters.”
Did Cassie and Sam have children, too? There hadn’t been children in their family since he’d grown up...
And he didn’t want to know any of this.
“One other thing,” he said, realizing that he’d almost hung up without taking care of the thing he needed most from her. “Will you write to my mother? Let her know that all is well?”
He hated being beholden to anyone. For anything. To his way of thinking, if he needed something done, he paid someone to do it. Except he couldn’t afford that anymore.
“Is she on email?” Cassie asked.
“Yes.” He waited while Cassie retrieved a pen and took down his mother’s email address.
“So she knows you’re here already?”
“Of course. She knows where I am 24/7,” he said. “She always has. It’s about the only thing she’s ever asked of me.”
At least, the only thing she’d asked that he’d heard and complied with.
He wasn’t ready to know about all the times he hadn’t listened, wasn’t ready to be accountable for all the hurt he must have caused his mother over the years.
But he was getting there. One day at a time.
* * *
LORI WAS BACK Sunday afternoon, but only to drop off a catnip toy she’d bought for Kari, a thank-you to Dana for letting her spend the night twice that week.
She also let her know that she’d be in town for Thanksgiving and would love to help cook if Dana’s dinner offer still stood.
Sensing that the girl’s feelings were hurt by her father’s choice to go hunting instead of spending the holidays with her, Dana invited Lori in on the pretense of planning the menu for the holiday. She was planning to cook enough food for twenty people to come and go throughout the day. If she had lots of leftovers, all the better. She just didn’t want to run o
ut.
What she hadn’t expected, while she and Lori were sitting at the kitchen table just before dark, was for the other woman to ask about Josh.
“Did you invite Little Guy’s new owner?” Lori asked, tapping a finger on the edge of the tablet she’d been using to keep their list.
“No.” She hadn’t even thought about it. And she should have. She’d planned to invite everyone she came in contact with that she knew was alone. Or even might be alone.
“I thought you said he’s new to town. And lives alone.”
“Yeah, he is. And he does.”
“Did you not invite him because he’s not a student like us?”
“He’s not much older than I am. Three or four years, maybe.”
She’d seen a soiled Harvard shirt thrown on top of the washer when she’d taken her empty tea can into the laundry room to throw it away. Emblazed on it was a year four years prior to what hers would have been had she gone to college straight out of high school.
She’d asked him if Harvard was his alma mater.
And as he’d answered in the affirmative, he’d sounded slightly lost again.
“I think he went to college on scholarship,” she said now, saying out loud what she’d thought at the time. His reaction to having been a student at Harvard had been odd. It had reminded her of how she’d felt working at the furniture store, bearing the same last name as the one written on the marquee out front, but not being an heir to the business.
She was a Harris, but the name had been given to her, not earned consequence of biology.
After she and Daniel had found out about the lie her mother had told them both about Dana’s parentage, Dana had not only been taken out of Daniel’s will, but shuffled to the back corner of the family.
She’d felt like a modern-day Cinderella. And Josh Redmond seemed to have the same reaction when asked about his alma mater.
“He’s a nice guy,” she told Lori, remembering how Josh had gotten down on the floor to clean up his dog’s mess without a moment’s hesitation. “I was afraid, when I saw the state his bathroom was in, and this after he’d already lost a night’s sleep, that he was going to tell me to take Little Guy back. But he never even hinted at wanting to get rid of him.”
“I hear he’s gorgeous. A friend of mine had to go to the business office Friday afternoon to see to something about her scholarship and he was there, introducing himself. She told me about him because he was so hot, but when you told me about Little Guy’s new owner, I knew it had to be the same guy. I guess he starts work on Monday. He has an office upstairs in the admin building.”
Dana wasn’t going fishing for information. But she wasn’t above listening to gossip.
“I can’t believe someone as hot as he is doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or a wife,” Lori said.
“I know, right?” Dana agreed. And remembered the soulful look in Josh’s eyes. The lost look. “I wondered if he was married and his wife died,” she said. “I don’t know that, so don’t say anything to anyone. I honestly have no idea and don’t want to start rumors. I just...like you, I find it hard to believe that he’s way out here starting a new life all alone.”
“Yeah, well, if this town’s anything like Bisbee, I’m guessing it won’t be long before we all know who he is and where he came from.”
Which suited Dana just fine. The one thing she could not tolerate, on any level, was someone keeping their identity secret. Broken-heart secrets were fine. Everyone had a right to their privacy.
But not to lie about who they were. In a bigger town, like Richmond, a person could show up and claim they were anyone and no one bothered to look past the words. To know that they were lies.
Innocent people got hurt by those kinds of lies.
Lives were ruined by them.
Anyone who didn’t believe her could just ask her stepfather. The man who’d once thought she was the brightest apple of his eye.
And, later, couldn’t bear to look at her at all. Because she had another man’s eyes.
* * *
SOAPS OF ALL KINDS had found their temporary home on the shelf above the washing machine. Lined up by type, they fit. One by one he’d try them out. See what was good or bad about the different kinds and land on the brand he liked.
And it was his own damned fault that he hadn’t known what had worked until now. He knew who had worked for him: her name was Betty Carmichael. She was in her mid-fifties and had a family with children and grandchildren—he wasn’t sure how many—and he liked her a lot. She’d come with the condo he’d received upon his graduation from Harvard.
It seemed so long ago now. Hard to believe that in eight years of working and flying around the world, taking on daring adventures and making life about his own enjoyment, he’d never once thought about making a home for himself.
Michelle would have taken care of that.
And he’d have been perfectly content to let her do so.
Just as he’d been content to let Betty do all of his shopping for him, to make his choices for him, down to what kind of toilet paper and toothpaste he used. Hell, he hadn’t even had to find the pack of toilet paper and take out a roll, which might have given him a clue to what kind it was...maybe. No, there’d been brass cylinders beside every commode in the condo, each holding four rolls, and Betty had always kept them filled.
She’d worked every single day that he was in town. And was off whenever he was gone. The arrangement had suited him. And apparently it had suited her, as well.
He hoped her new employer, the couple who’d purchased the condo and agreed to keep her on, would be good to her.
Little Guy woke up. Josh turned as soon as he heard the movement in the kennel on the kitchen counter behind him.
Before the puppy could so much as stretch, Josh had him out of his cage and out the back door. He was getting this part down. Having been peed on during his way out the door twice in the past twenty-four hours, he was learning the hard way.
But he was learning and he had a question. Pulling out his phone, he easily found the number he needed from his recent call list and hit the send button.
Standing outside, watching every move the puppy made as he trampled over his feet in the dirt, Josh listened to the line ring. Little Guy had only been asleep for an hour. And he’d gone to the bathroom right before Josh had put him in the kennel. It was possible he didn’t have business to do.
“Hello?” She answered on the third ring.
“Dana? It’s Josh. I hope I’m not disturbing you...”
“Of course not. What’s up? How’s Little Guy doing?”
“Fine,” he was pleased to report. The dog might be a little confused by an owner who seemed to know less than he did, but Little Guy was clean, all of his parts were still working, there was no blood, no broken bones....
“Did you get some sleep?”
“Yes. Plenty of it.” As soon as he’d hung up from Cassie the day before, he’d purchased a new, much smaller kennel, come home and cleaned out the larger kennel, bathed the puppy another time, showered himself off, put the kennel on the side of his expensive mattress and slept until dark.
And then he’d repeated the process a few hours later when he’d stripped down and gone to bed.
He’d stopped at putting his hand in the kennel. He had to be able to move in his sleep. And Little Guy hadn’t pushed him that far.
“So what’s up?” the woman asked again, and Josh wondered if he was interrupting something. And wished she had all the time in the world. He was tired of his own company.
His life was so out of kilter at the moment. Other than the family he’d sworn off, and the business associates he’d met but couldn’t name, he didn’t know anyone in this town except for Dana Harris. Hell, he didn’t even know himself all that well at the moment.<
br />
“I was wondering about tomorrow,” he said, still watching the puppy. The idiot thing was batting at a cricket on the patio and missing by a mile. “I have to work from eight until five. I figure I can come home for lunch, but it can’t be good to leave this guy alone in such a small kennel for so many hours at a time.”
“People have to work,” Dana said slowly. “And puppies are almost always kenneled or in a box after birth. They’re also kenneled when they’re boarded. But then they tend to be a bit more rambunctious when they’re set free,” she said. “And if he’s left too long and has to relieve himself in his kennel, that barrier is broken and he might go in his sleeping spot more regularly, and then it could take you longer to house-train him....”
How the woman fit so many words into one breath he didn’t know. He’d never met anyone with so much to say all at once.
“I think I’d be stretching my welcome if I showed up the first day of my new job carrying a kennel with me,” he said laconically.
Not that he’d ever actually worked a job where he had to answer to anyone other than himself—or his father, who pretty much let him do whatever the hell he damned well pleased.
“I could come by a couple of times during the day,” Dana said while Josh was thinking about asking her, as part of her counseling position, to phone Cassie for him and see if she could arrange for some kind of day-sitting at the clinic.
He didn’t trust himself to speak with his distant relative again, so soon. Her invitation to meet the family had been too damned tempting.
“If you trust me to be in your home without you there,” Dana finished.
“Of course I trust you in my home.” It wasn’t as though there was a lot there for her to steal. He’d sold anything of real value. “But I can’t ask you to give up your day for me.”
This was his new life. He was supposed to be doing things for others. Or at the very least, not imposing on others.
“I’m not doing it for you,” Dana said with a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m doing it for Little Guy. He needs a home and I don’t have the space here to keep him.”
The Moment of Truth Page 6