by Debbie Burns
This training session had gone off the rails, Megan realized. Sophie still needed pointers on how best to communicate with the dogs, but now didn’t feel like the right time. Today, she decided, just needed to be about Sophie and whatever she wanted to talk about.
“That happens,” she replied, “even if it isn’t easy for kids to experience. My mom remarried after my dad died—kind of quickly, to be honest—but they have a different relationship than the one my parents had. And it works for her.”
“That’s good,” Sophie said, scratching Sledge on his stomach as he rolled onto his back and wiggled. “I won’t be mad if my parents date other people. Not anymore.”
It was Megan’s turn to nod. For a reason she couldn’t explain, her cheeks were growing warm. She looked at the line of naked trees in the distance and watched a group of crows flutter their wings and hop between the branches.
“My dad likes dogs more than my mom does,” Sophie added.
Megan’s cheeks went from warm to burning hot. What do you say to that? There was no need to feel guilty, she assured herself. No need to feel as if Sophie had been reading her thoughts. Not that she had any to hide. She wasn’t crushing on Sophie’s dad. No way. It wasn’t as if she’d just been thinking minutes ago about wanting to wrap Craig in her arms and not let him go.
Nope. Not even close.
Thankfully, Sledge rolled over and stood up, shaking loose pieces of grass and dirt off his back. He looked toward the path and whined softly. Bless you, Sledge.
“I don’t know, Soph, but I think that’s Sledge’s way of telling us he’s ready to head back. What do you think?”
“Sure.” Sophie stood up and wiped her hands on the front of her jeans.
“So it’s your first walk, and we’re just over halfway. How are you liking it?”
“Are you kidding? This is the coolest thing ever. It’s like my dad says, you had me at woof.”
Megan laughed as they started down the trail. Sophie’s words brought to mind her and Craig’s intimate experience on the couch in the coffee shop and the moment he’d shared the same thought with her. Brought to mind the way those remarkable eyes had seemed to be taking in things about her no one else noticed, and making her heart flutter. She’d had the crazy urge to kiss him in the car while he was taking her back to work, but she’d fought it off. And she hadn’t even known about Andrew then. If she had, she’d probably have crawled onto his lap and done her best to kiss away the hurt and not gotten off until he made her.
What a crazy mess this was, she thought, wrapping the nylon leash in circles around her palm.
She remembered something her dad had told her just months before he died. He’d been in the garage all day working on an old car. When she came home from a friend’s and joined him, he was a mess of oil and grease.
Sometimes, little Megs, to get something to work again, you’ve got to make a mess of things. That’s just the way it is.
If she could go back, she’d tell him he was right instead of just rolling her eyes as she tossed him a rag. But you couldn’t go back. Sophie seemed to understand that. You could only go forward.
Chapter 9
Sophie sank into the front passenger seat of her dad’s car, kicked off her shoes, and flexed her sore feet. Reese slunk into the back and pulled out his Nintendo DS. He never fought for the front seat anymore.
“So how was it?” her dad asked, pressing on the ignition. “Think it’s something you’ll want to do again?”
It was the direction of his eyes—through the shelter window to right where Megan stood talking to a customer—more than his words that caught Sophie’s attention. A week ago, they’d been on the tour together and she’d watched her dad stare at Megan in an I-can’t-see-anything-but-you way.
Well, a week hadn’t made her dad forget Megan, and the walk this morning was proof that she was absolutely worth whatever attention her dad was thinking of giving her.
The fact that her dad’s crush ran an animal shelter just made the idea of helping with matchmaking so much cooler.
“It was fun but hard. I love the dog I had. She’s kind of old though.”
“You know that path you took this morning was almost four miles. I’m proud of you.”
“Proud enough for a favor?” She wiggled her eyebrows in a way that always made him smile.
“What sort of favor?” He slipped the car into reverse.
“Megan told me there was a rescue this week. Two little beagle puppies so underfed at first that the staff wasn’t sure if they’d make it. Now one is doing great, but the other’s just okay. I really, really want to see them.”
Her dad put his foot on the brake. “We’re just headed to lunch. If you want to go back inside for a bit, we’re not in any hurry.”
“They’re not here today because Saturdays are so busy and the dogs end up barking so much it might have caused them extra stress. Megan has them at her house. She’s going home to feed them at one o’clock. She gave me her address and said she was fine if we met her there. It’s only a couple miles from here.”
Her dad frowned. “Soph, that sounds awfully invasive to me. What about waiting till a day that they’re back at the shelter?”
She clamped her hands together. “Please, Dad. Please, please, please. They’re so little. I saw a picture on her phone. She wouldn’t have given me her address if she didn’t want me to come.”
Her dad’s jaw grew tight in consideration. “Reese, what about it? How about eating lunch around here today?”
“Can we get boiled hot dogs?” He didn’t miss a beat with his game. “For some reason, I’m starving for one.”
“Funny, Reese,” Sophie interjected.
Her dad just shook his head. “And you’re sure this was Megan’s idea? You didn’t press her?”
“I’m almost thirteen, Dad. I think I’ve got the etiquette thing down pat.”
He chuckled as he drove out of the lot. “Then boiled hot dogs and emaciated puppies it is.”
* * *
With the taste of Korean barbecue still on his tongue, Craig pulled into the driveway of the address Megan had given Sophie. It was on a street lined with big trees and old, well-kept homes in north Webster Groves. She lived in a house that had been converted into condos. Even with the modifications involved in converting one residence into two, the house still retained its fairy-tale gingerbreadishness. Seeing it stirred awake a surprise longing in the frozen tundra filling Craig’s chest.
Megan pulled in two minutes after them, offering a faultless smile as she stepped from her car. “I hope you weren’t waiting long. We had a last-minute adoption.”
“No, not at all.” He told himself to look away, but he couldn’t force his eyes off those lips. And if he did, they’d probably just drop to the hips he’d envisioned closing his hands over more than once.
She was nervous and working to contain it. He could tell by the way she shifted her feet and tucked her hands into her back pockets. With the hint of a blush coloring her cheeks, she was quick to focus her attention on Sophie, who asked who’d been adopted.
“Two rabbits, actually. To a guy who lives a few blocks down from here.” With a conspiratorial grin, Megan dropped her voice to a whisper. “Thankfully, the puppies are doing a lot better. Even the little one. Ms. Calbert, my landlord who lives next door to me, is ready to call in the Webster Groves cavalry if I bring them home another day.”
She led them down the drive and onto a sidewalk that wound around a large evergreen with a half-melted mound of ice and snow.
“Oh, I should warn you in advance. Even if they’ve had an accident in their crate, the first thing we do when getting them out is to take them outside. It helps with eventual potty-training.”
“We did that with Hershey,” Sophie said, following Megan through the doorway.
Motioning f
or Reese to go ahead in front of him, Craig trailed in last. He studied the foyer and living room with a touch of surprise. Everything about Megan’s place was inviting. Classy even. The floors were a rich hardwood; the ceilings were high and trimmed with antique molding. There was a fireplace with a mahogany mantel on the far wall—wood-burning, not gas—and the sofa and accompanying chairs seemed to call out an invitation to relax, have a seat, and stay a while.
He watched his daughter let out a coo at the sight of the puppies whine-yawning and stretching in the crate at the side of the room. A quiet hiss resounded from the adjoining kitchen. Craig spotted a gray-striped cat atop the fridge, staring at the caged puppies.
“Really, Moxie.” Megan said, hanging up her fleece and heading over to the crate. “You’d think that girl would have started getting over them by now. She’s been around dogs before.”
Megan squatted down to open the cage door and try as he might to look elsewhere, Craig’s gaze was drawn like a magnet to her backside. She wore low-rise jeans that hugged her hips and a tight, gray shirt that rose as she knelt, giving him a view of the smooth skin of her back. It had to be instinctual, the stirring that stretched from his chest to his groin. It’d been such a long time since looking at a woman woke him up from the inside out like this that it seemed foreign, like trying to say something in Spanish all these years after college.
“First things first,” Megan said, catching one of the wriggling puppies in her arms. “Ready, Soph? You can bring one out with me. They don’t need leashes yet.”
She stood up and met Craig’s gaze for the first time since she’d gotten out of the car. “Have a seat. Or whatever. We won’t be long.”
Sophie followed Megan out the front door, leaving him and Reese alone to scan their surroundings. Reese beelined for the kitchen and stood underneath the cat, meowing up at it softly.
“I didn’t know you liked cats,” Craig said. He headed for the frames lining the mantel. A younger version of Megan was in a few, hugging or leaning against friends or family, happy and bright-eyed.
“I don’t,” Reese said when he abandoned the meowing. “It has nice eyes though.”
“There’s supposed to be a second one around here somewhere.”
Reese turned toward him, squaring his shoulders the way Jillian unconsciously did when something threatened her. “How come you know so much about her?”
“I know very little about her. But I do know she has two cats.” Craig considered saying more but decided against it. He turned back to studying the room. On a side table, a marketing book he’d read a dozen times sat on top of a worn copy of Wuthering Heights.
“There it is, the other one,” Reese said, pointing toward the coffee table.
Craig stepped back a foot and saw a larger cat with gray and white patches of fur eyeing him with careful regard.
“Maybe I will get a cat someday. I like how indifferent they look,” Reese said.
Craig huffed. “Couldn’t you find something more inviting to like about them?”
“I don’t like needy things.”
“No, you don’t, do you?”
He walked toward the kitchen and Reese, who was still planted in front of the fridge. As he passed, he noticed Megan’s bedroom off to the side. He took in as much as he could without pausing. The sight of her bed, with its fluffy accent pillows and coordinating cream-colored duvet, stimulated something inside him again.
“Do you think I can hold it?” Reese asked, meowing up at the cat once more.
“I don’t know. It looked pretty irritated by the dogs.”
“They’re outside.”
Craig stepped beside Reese and held up one hand. The cat rubbed its chin along his fingers, switching its tail back and forth.
“It seems friendly,” Reese said hopefully.
Swallowing back his reservation, Craig reached for the cat. Reese almost never showed an interest in anything outside his DS and iPad anymore. When he did, Craig tried to encourage him at all costs.
The cat showed no objection as he cupped his thumbs underneath its arms, so he lifted it in the air. As he was lowering it, Sophie threw open the front door and he heard a puppy’s nails start to dance across the tile entry. The cat’s sharp claws slashed across Craig’s cheek before it lunged off him and hit the floor with a thump, dashing out of sight.
Craig brushed his fingertips over the wet drops of blood bubbling from the angry scratch along his cheekbone. Beside him, Reese inhaled sharply.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” A seldom-seen look of compassion and fear filled his eyes. “It was stupid to want to hold it.”
Craig felt an all-too-familiar feeling locking up his chest and weighing down his shoulders. As if he were trying to superglue together a ceramic vase that’s been broken into a thousand pieces. “It’s just a scratch, Reese. And it isn’t your fault. We’ll try it again sometime when there aren’t dogs around.”
* * *
“You should keep antibiotic ointment on it the next several days,” Megan said, shutting the door of her medicine cabinet after grabbing a tube of the ointment. “Cat scratches can get infected.”
Craig was standing two feet away in the threshold of her bathroom, leaning against the doorframe. He had the wet paper towel she’d given him pressed against his cheek and was watching her in a way that stirred up a slew of unsettled emotions. It was as if he was taking in everything about her.
Having him block the door wasn’t helping calm her either. But thank God for that cleaning binge the other day. At the very least, he wouldn’t leave with the impression she was a slob.
Leaning one hip against the counter, she uncapped the medicine and swallowed back a stomach full of reservation. “So can I have another look?”
He lifted the paper towel without taking his eyes off her, and her pulse started to sprint. She stepped closer, drawn in by a magnet-like pull as a siren went off in her head. She bit her lip, calling his gaze straight to her mouth.
“Tell me, doctor, will I live?” His tone was lighter than the look in his eyes.
She racked her mind for something to say. He’d lost a child, and he hadn’t told her. She understood not wanting to talk about a loved one’s death, not wanting sympathy, not wanting to have to comfort someone else because they didn’t know how to comfort you.
With words evading her, she focused on his scratch. There were two lines running along his cheek, but only one was deep. She could hand him the tube, and he could use the mirror to treat himself.
But he wasn’t moving and she wasn’t handing.
His kids had busied themselves with other things when they saw that he was okay. Sophie was planted on the floor, cooing over the squiggling puppies. Reese was trying to call Moxie out of hiding.
With her ears burning, Megan squeezed ointment onto one fingertip and stepped closer. She froze with her finger an inch from his face. He was still focused on her lips, and her ears were going from burning to ringing. It’s okay. He’s just Sophie’s dad. This is nothing.
Only it was something, this expanding electric field she felt whenever she was around him. It was the same as when she caved and baked her grandma’s triple-chocolate Bundt cake. One bite was never enough. Neither was an entire slice.
Finally, a few words rose to the surface. “Tell me if it hurts.” She closed the last inch between her finger and his skin.
She could smell the clean scent of sage again and something else she couldn’t discern. Cedar or pine maybe. She wanted to lean in and breathe until she could commit the smell of him to memory forever. Re-create it and stick it in a sachet by her pillow.
And then there was the feel of him. At the top of the scratch, his skin was smooth. As her finger moved downward, she ran into stubble. She ached to run her fingertips along the rest of his face—the bridges of his eyebrows, his temples, his jawbone.
&n
bsp; She was impossibly close to letting herself do it when he shifted abruptly, stepping away from her and clearing his throat.
“I take it you have a trash can in your kitchen,” he said, holding up the folded paper towel. He walked off without waiting for an answer.
With shaky hands and a pounding heart, feeling more alive than she had since she didn’t know when, Megan turned on the faucet and drew in a long, deep breath.
Chapter 10
Megan was using an X-ACTO knife to open the box that had just arrived. It was the new T-shirts she’d ordered, heather gray with a dog silhouette on front. It read Until there are none, rescue one. For the last year, she’d been letting Kelsey place all the orders. Last month, she had noticed that the gift shop had become a rainbow of brightly colored T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies. In Kelsey’s world, there was no place for black, gray, or white. But not all their customers felt that way, and sales were showing it.
It might dampen her afternoon, but Kelsey would have to find a place for gray.
The front door jangled open, and Megan looked over to see Wes striding in, accompanied by McTavish, the very senior golden retriever Wes had adopted forever ago. Although he was moving slower than the last time Megan saw him, McTavish lost no time smelling all the nooks and crannies in the front room.
“My beautiful, beautiful Megan,” Wes said. “How are you today?” He draped an arm over her shoulder and pulled her close, filling her nostrils with the scent of a robust pasta sauce mixed with his trademark Old Spice.
“As good as you!” She planted a kiss on his salt-and-pepper-stubbled cheek. Seeing the crinkles around his eyes curled in their own sort of smile, she held up a finger. “Wait, let me guess.” She paused for effect. “It was a chess club morning, wasn’t it? And by the look on your face, I’d venture to say one of those games that drags on over months is finally over and you won.”
His mouth fell open in mock hurt. As if he wasn’t aware that chess had become his all-consuming passion ever since his wife passed away. Megan suspected the gusto he’d put into his matches lately was his way of coping with her loss more than anything else. “Has my life become so mundane that you only see me excited about my chess successes?”