by Adan Ramie
“Chucky, you’re here!” Brenda said as she walked out of one of the rooms. “I didn’t know how much longer you would be, so I let Yarely clean the dog pen.” She looped an arm through Chuck’s, then pulled her toward the private office in the back off the left side of the hallway.
Chuck groaned. “Do we really need to talk to Kenna this early in the morning? I thought this was going to be good news.”
“It is,” Brenda hissed, and pinched her on the bicep.
Chuck let herself be pulled and deposited into Kenna’s office. She was surprised to find Stella sitting in a chair beside Kenna, both of them leaning toward a computer screen and in deep, quiet conversation. When Brenda cleared her throat, both women looked up and at Chuck. Stella gave her a warm smile, and Kenna smiled, too, but it wasn’t warm. In fact, it was even cooler than usual.
“Good morning,” Chuck croaked, and Brenda patted her on the back. She coughed into her fist, then shoved her hands at her sides under her arms. “What’s all the hubbub about?”
Stella’s smile sparkled as she looked up at Chuck. “This is about the crowdfunding account I started last night. It was going to be a sort of test run, more to see if the campaign I was planning would work than to actually find funding.”
Kenna scowled at Chuck, and Chuck tried to avoid her gaze.
“And?” Chuck asked.
“And it did better than I thought it would,” Stella said. She half-stood and turned the computer screen around to face the sisters. “Currently, we are halfway to the goal to save Stanley. Even if the local fundraiser doesn’t do really well, I don’t see why we could not raise enough online to make sure he could get the best care possible.”
“And I, of course, would be glad to provide it,” Brenda said. Chuck could almost see the dollar signs in her eyes.
Chuck leaned over to look through the numbers. With her face level with Stella’s, she could barely see Kenna in her peripheral vision; she was seething, her scowl intense and unwavering. Chuck concentrated hard on the figures Stella had up as she flipped between the website she was running the fundraiser on and an Excel spreadsheet Chuck had seen before when it was nearly all zeroes.
“This is impressive,” Chuck said, in awe. “I can’t believe you pulled this all together so quickly.”
Stella grinned back at her, then turned the computer back around so Kenna could look from Chuck’s face back at the numbers, which she did begrudgingly. “Raising capital is one facet of my job. I have to admit, I probably geek out about it more than I should, but I really enjoy doing it.”
“You’re a natural,” Chuck told her and gazed at Stella’s face. When she smiled and dropped her eyes demurely, Chuck wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor. Her humility was almost as sexy as her intelligence, competence, and hard work.
Brenda cleared her throat from behind her, and Chuck stood straight again. “Chuck, let’s leave these two ladies to talk about numbers. I need you to sign off on some medical forms.” The way she smiled, Chuck could almost believe that her sister had been on her side from the beginning when little Stanley first captured Chuck’s heart.
When they reached the back office, Brenda closed the door tightly behind them, then whirled on Chuck. “Can you believe this?” she asked.
Even she was bubbling with excitement; she had not seen her sister this thrilled since they opened Saving Gracie’s five years before. Chuck smiled, then walked past her and settled into a chair. She squirmed until she was something near comfortable and watched as her sister paced from the door to her desk and back again.
“Stella is a miracle worker. Honestly, if I didn’t think you would follow her around like a stud colt, I would beg her to come work here.” She stopped and looked down at Chuck with a smirk. “We could get her to take over marketing and fundraising from Kenna and her little friends.”
The last time they had held a fundraiser, it had been to repair a portion of the building that had burned in a freak electrical fire. Thankfully, none of the animals had been hurt, but the missing building had held several thousand dollars’ worth of necessary equipment.
Kenna and her club friends had put on a show in order to drum up donations, but wires had been crossed somewhere, and very few people showed up. If it were not for a wealthy friend of the family who happened to love the noir theme of the performances, they would not have made much more than a few pockets full of change.
“Maybe we could bring her in as an independent contractor of sorts,” Chuck suggested. She tried to keep her face impassive, but the idea of seeing Stella everyday sent her head in a whirl.
Brenda threw her a shady look. “So you can prowl around and preen for her like a flamingo?” She walked over and dropped down into her own chair. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Not many women like the idea of being stalked at their place of business.”
Chuck let out a dry laugh and shifted in the uncomfortable chair. “You think I can’t control myself at work?” she asked, then cracked her knuckles. “I am a professional.”
Brenda laced her fingers and stretched them high over her head, letting out a low groan as she stretched her arms and back. She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck, then set a level gaze on her sister. “Need I remind you of the way you acted when you were lapping up all the snake oil Kenna had to offer?”
Chuck blushed. “That was a long time ago. I have changed – matured – and learned from my mistakes. I made some bad choices, but I know that now, and I wouldn’t repeat them.”
Brenda looked into her eyes, searching them for something, then looked down at her tidy but full desk. She sighed. “Maybe we need someone else to help out around here, but I’m not ready to extend an offer just yet, even for part-time or contract work. I want to see how this fundraiser goes, but more importantly, I want to see how many adoptions she can arrange, and how well she does under the pressure of a full house.”
Chuck nodded, stood up, and stretched her arms and legs. She yawned and scratched a bump on her wrist as she watched her sister wake the computer at her side. “Stella is a professional.”
“She had better be,” Brenda said, her eyes on the computer’s monitor. “Or we’re going to have another abysmal failure on our hands. We can’t handle much more bad press, and a second failure of a fundraiser will make the ‘Bad Business’ section of the Rag.”
When her sister didn’t speak again after another minute, Chuck opened the door, left, and closed it behind her. From down the hall, she could hear the sound of muffled voices in Kenna’s office. She wondered what the two were talking about – and if it had anything to do with her. If she knew Kenna as well as she thought she did, she was positive Kenna wouldn’t have anything nice to say about Chuck. Then, she didn’t have much nice to say about Kenna, so she wasn’t too hurt.
She padded softly down the hall toward the partially-open office door, her ears keen to pick up the faint snippets of conversation – and occasional laughs – that floated through the air between her and the two women. When she was a few feet away, she pressed herself against the wall and strained her ears.
“Thank you for warning me,” Stella was saying.
Chuck grimaced. What was Kenna warning her about? Chuck?
“No problem. I thought you ought to know what you were dealing with,” Kenna answered.
Were the two being intentionally vague? Chuck thought, and felt her blood start to pump harder through her veins. She stepped closer to the door and tried to look through the crack, but she could see neither of them.
A chair scraped as someone stood. Stella’s laptop closed, and Chuck heard it being slid into Stella’s bag along with her trusty file folder. Chuck took a few steps back and aimed her body toward the baby room.
“I appreciate the gesture.” There was a pause. “It isn’t often that I get to work with someone so forthcoming.”
Was there an edge to Stella’s voice, or was that the distance? Chuck strained to hear, but nothing else was sai
d. Stella’s heels clicked across the floor. Chuck flung open the door to the baby room and almost slammed it behind her, but caught it in time to let it click softly shut on her tail. Immediately, she was swarmed with little creatures whose only desire was to be pet, scratched, or held. A smile replaced the frown on her face, and she knelt down to pick up the nearest kitten and puppy.
“Hello, little ones,” she said softly. She nuzzled their faces into her own.
A moment later, rubbing each of their little heads, all the anxiety and anger had drained out of her and into the floor to dissipate. The only thing that mattered – more than Kenna’s ruthlessness and Stella’s pull on her – were these tiny animals. Any one of them might leave to a forever home the next day, and she wanted to get in as much cuddle time as she could before they went. The more they enjoyed the attention, the more likely they were to be adopted, and Chuck desperately wanted to see them all going home with parents who would love them as much as she did.
Behind her, the door opened a crack, and an unruly basset hound skittered toward it and nudged it open before she could react. A bark from the dog nearly masked the yelp of the human he was accosting. Chuck placed the animals in her arms onto the floor, swung around, and was out the door in time to see the basset hound fling himself at Stella’s ankles – and take her feet out from under her.
Without a thought, Chuck dove under her to break her fall. Stella crumpled, her laptop held high to avoid damage, onto Chuck’s lap with the puppy happily lapping on her face. Chuck couldn’t help the grin that spread over her face.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Stella let out a healthy laugh and shook her head. She lowered the bag to the ground and took the pup by his ears and scratched them well. “You are a bad boy, aren’t you?” she cooed, then turned to Chuck. “You’re my hero.”
Chuck blushed. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
Stella placed a kiss on Chuck’s forehead, then pushed herself up with her palms and climbed to her feet. Chuck sat dazed on the floor with the puppy on her lap. Another puppy, a kitten, and a piglet rushed the door to investigate. Chuck pushed the door closed with her foot as another wet nose poked out, then on her hands and knees, gathered all the little fugitives into her arms.
“Looks like you have a lot of work cut out for you,” Stella said, and caressed Chuck’s head like she was the puppy.
Chuck held on just tight enough to keep the animals from getting loose. The kitten tried to crawl up her shirt while a puppy and a piglet squirmed their butts to get free of her grasp, and another puppy licked her face like it was made of peanut butter.
“I’m headed out to get some last-minute supplies.”
With the animals firmly in hand, Chuck pushed herself to her knees, opened the door with one hand, and started to deposit the little animals back into the room one at a time. When they were all inside, she closed the door firmly and tried to ignore the scratching and whining on the other side. Slumped against the door, she smiled up at Stella and wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
“I’ve got this,” she said.
Stella grinned down at her. “Are you busy right now?”
An image of the messy room behind her that needed its daily cleaning flashed in her head, but pushed the thought from her mind. She could deal with that later. “Not particularly. Why?”
“Would you mind coming with me to pick up some things? It would be so much easier if I had someone along to help me carry it all.”
She smiled that dazzling smile at Chuck, and Chuck knew if she hadn’t already been seated on the floor, her legs would have come out from under her. She cleared her throat.
“I would love to.” She pulled herself upright and brushed the dirt and animal hair off her jeans. “Where to?”
Stella readjusted her bag on her shoulder, pulled out her keys, and started for the door. “First, we need to pick up the signs I ordered. Then I have a few more places to go, and we will come back here to drop it all off. It should only take a few hours.” She smiled at Chuck by the door to the lobby. “Is that okay?”
“Sounds great,” Chuck told her, and held the door open for Stella to walk through first. If there was anything she wanted to do more than spend time alone with Stella, she couldn’t name it now. Even the furry little critters in the play room didn’t hold a candle to that smile.
As they climbed into Stella’s car, however, the thought of the snippets of conversation she had heard while eavesdropping came back into her mind. What had they been talking about, and how could she clear it up without making it known that she had been spying?
“What’s going on in there?” Stella asked, and pushed a stray hair off of Chuck’s forehead.
Chuck shook her head and put on a smile. “Just thinking about Stanley.”
“Aww, I can’t wait to see him again. When is Brenda planning to do the surgery?”
Chuck smiled. “Tomorrow after the fundraiser and adoption drive. He will be in surgery for a few hours, and she wants to make sure she can give him her full attention. She’s worried about a lump she found in his back leg, so it might take longer than just re-breaking and re-setting the bone.”
Stella’s face fell. “This really is going to be horrible for him,” she said, her voice soft. “Are you sure we are doing the right thing?”
She wasn’t, but Chuck nodded. “I have to believe that some amount of good life – even if it’s only a few years at the end of a brutal one – will be worth the suffering.”
Stella nodded and took Chuck’s hand. “You’re a good person, Chuck.” She smiled and gazed at Chuck for a long moment, then seemed to realize she was staring and turned her eyes to the wheel. She stuck the keys in the ignition and started the car. “Are you ready to go?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Chuck said. In the back of her mind, she still heard Stella’s words from earlier, and wondered if she hadn’t been mistaken after all. They could have been talking about something other than Chuck... right?
CHAPTER 9
By the time they got to the copy store, Stella was back in business mode. Chuck followed behind her, quiet and ready to lend a hand, while the dynamo worked her business magic. A small misprint magically turned into a large chunk of savings and extra services. They waited at the customer service desk while the young woman manning it skittered around trying to get together the extras she had been told by her manager to provide to Stella.
“You are some kind of mastermind, aren’t you?” Chuck asked under her breath. She leaned her head close, so that her lips were inches from Stella’s unpierced ears. “How do you do it?”
Stella smirked and leaned back to whisper into Chuck’s ear. “The game is all about what you believe you deserve. Anyone can tell people how to treat them; most people simply don’t know how.”
Chuck was in awe. In less than half an hour, she had an extra set of flyers, new business cards for the shelter, and even a set of postcards with a picture of Stanley in his current state on the front. Chuck helped the customer service rep load them into the back of Stella’s car while the woman herself looked on and chatted with the manager, a man twice her age who looked like he wanted to nibble her earlobe.
When they were back in the car, Chuck reached for the radio dial, then glanced Stella’s way and stopped herself. “Sorry, I was wondering what the weather was going to be today. The app on my phone never works.”
“What do you have planned?” Stella asked, putting on her blinker and maneuvering them onto the interstate highway. “A date?”
Chuck blushed and stared out the window at an ominous cloud. “No. I was thinking of getting some of the dogs out for a walk this afternoon. They have probably been cooped up too long without me there to rotate them outside, and they need to be on their best behavior at the adoption drive.”
Stella nodded, then turned on the radio and turned the dial to a news program from her steering wheel. They listened quietly to a political advertisement before the
meteorologist came on to talk about the week-long forecast. In the end, he talked about a slight chance of showers later in the day, but promised they would pass quickly.
Chuck debated whether it would be worth it to bathe a dozen puppies to get the energy out of them, and decided that it would. Once they had run out all their wiggles and had baths, they would be tuckered out, would sleep well, and hopefully awake the next morning with good attitudes for adoption.
“What’s going on in there?” Stella asked again. This time she ran her finger along the short hair behind Chuck’s ear.
Chuck shivered. “Thinking about puppies.”
“You spend a lot of time thinking about animals, don’t you?” Stella indicated her intentions to the other drivers with a flick of her blinker, then drove down the off-ramp onto a side street Chuck barely recognized.
“Only all the time,” Chuck admitted.
She hoped Stella approved, and for a moment, she worried. Then she pushed the thought out of her mind. If Stella didn’t like animals, why would she be spending so much time and energy fighting for the animals at Saving Gracie’s? And, more importantly, Chuck knew that she could never be with someone who didn’t love animals again.
Stella nodded, then pushed the button to turn off the radio. They sat in silence until they pulled up to a row of storage buildings that looked old but sturdy, and Chuck lifted an eyebrow at Stella in question.
“What, you don’t think I have any secrets?” Stella asked, then got out of the car.
Chuck got out after her, careful to stay close behind. She glanced around them as Stella walked confidently up to one of the buildings, stuck a key in a massive and shiny lock, and twisted. It opened in her hands, she tugged it off, then dropped it in her purse. She glanced behind her and grinned at Chuck.
“Ready to see inside my head?”
Chuck laughed until Stella hesitated, setting Chuck in a calm but serious gaze.
“What?” Chuck asked.
Stella licked her lips and paused as if she were carefully weighing her words. “Only one other person has ever seen inside this storage unit. I am normally an open book, but this stuff is not for public consumption.”