by Maggie Marr
Sophia gasped. A smile hit her face. A great smile. One that made her whole face light up. A smile that also caused my body to tense. A smile that caused a thrill to tremble up the back of my thighs and make me feel … wow … make that feeling of want and desire pull tight through my body. Damn, no wonder magazines paid her big bucks to shoot that smile toward a camera lens. That smile made me light up like I’d just done two lines of blow.
Dangerous feelings.
“Hey, baby brother.” Angie looked over her shoulder at me. I raised my hand in greeting. Sophia’s gaze landed on me and she looked like she’d been caught stealing candy from a store.
“Ladies.” I ambled toward Hollister. I patted my palm against my chest. The big boy with the floppy black ears looked at Angie for approval. She shot Hollister a smile and nodded. He jumped up and pressed his front paws into my chest. A gasp flew from Sophia. I ran my hand over Hollister’s head and his nose pushed at my chin. He pressed his paws into my chest and stretched his whole body.
“That’s a good boy.” I scrubbed my fingers through the black fur on his back and he opened his mouth wide with a giant yawn and a tiny bit of a moan as though the world had never been so good. Two more pats and he popped his paws off my chest, his feet hit the deck, and he ambled toward his other three packmates spread out in the yard.
“You’re scared of dogs.”
“Terrified,” Sophia said. Her voice was soft and low, as though to even admit she had a fear of anything was horrifying.
“Everybody’s scared of something.” I walked over to the deck and settled into the chair beside Sophia.
“Not in my family.” Her brown eyes locked with mine. “You’ve met my father. We’re Legends. Legends don’t ever show fear.”
Angie poured a glass of wine from the bottle of pinot on the table. She reached toward me and I plucked the glass from her fingertips. Booze had never been my problem.
“Not true. I worked with your dad when I was a kid.” I took a sip. Damn, that was good stuff. “I happen to know that he’s terrified of snakes.”
Sophia crossed her arms over her chest. “So what? Snakes are kind of scary. They can sneak up on you.”
“No, no, no.” I shook my head. “He’s not scared as in he gets a little startled when he sees a garden snake. I mean he’s phobic. Can’t move. The great Steve Legend becomes paralyzed with fear when confronted with a garden snake.”
Sophia frowned and she looked at me as though she wasn’t quite sure she believed what I was telling her about her own father.
“Just saying.” I tilted my glass up to my lips. “Everyone is afraid of something.”
“What are you afraid of?”
With the wine at my lips and the bouquet filling my nose, I stopped. My heart accelerated in my chest. I forced myself to take the sip of wine. The glass was hard against my lips. I pulled it away from my mouth and set it on the table.
Angie’s gaze held me. She knew my fears. The deep dark things that made me lay awake at night. They weren’t spiders or snakes or dogs or sharks. Nope, those weren’t the characters in my nightmares. My nightmares consisted of falling down and not getting back up. Angie pressed her lips together. I didn’t know Sophia well enough to trust her with my deepest, darkest fear. Besides, I wasn’t yet certain if there was any integrity within this woman. She was hot. She tripped my trigger. But so had a number of other women in my lifetime.
“I don’t like bats very much,” I said.
Sophia shuddered. “I get that. My grandmother always said they could get caught in your hair.”
My gaze wandered to Angie’s pack still politely sitting on the yard. “Did she meet everybody?”
Angie nodded. “I thought maybe tomorrow we’d put her with the puppies.”
A smile pulled across my face. “Best gig at Pawtown. The puppies always find a forever home. They’re so damned cute. You’ll like the puppy house.”
Sophia pulled her arms across her chest. She didn’t look convinced but, hey, at least she was willing to try.
“I talked to Dillon today. His production company wants you to post pics of you doing work here. Even before production starts.”
Sophia’s tongue darted out and caressed her bottom lip.
A punch to my gut. A hot thrill pulled through my groin. A visceral response to her. One I couldn’t control. Attraction to a woman hadn’t lit up my insides like this in a very long time. Who was I kidding? I hadn’t been physically attracted to any woman in quite this way ever.
“Seeing me picking up poop, scrubbing kennels, and passed out does not constitute good photo ops.”
“Really?” Angie tilted her head. “I think Choo and Dillon see it a little differently. Why exactly do you think you needed to come here and do this show? What is Choo’s reasoning?”
“So people see that I really like dogs. That I wouldn’t hurt them.”
“Wrong,” Angie said. “The public could care less whether you like dogs. They want to see you punished. They want to see you do penance. They want to feel empathy for you so that they can allow themselves to love you again.”
Sophia’s head jerked back and tilted to the side as if she was one of the pups hearing a dog whistle.
“Photos of you sweating and scrubbing and looking less than glamorous are exactly what you should be Tweeting and Instagramming and Facebooking and whatever other platform some guy from Northern California comes up with.” Angie pointed her wine glass at Sophia and then drained it. She filled her glass again.
“Lucky for you I have just the picture.” I pulled my phone from my back pocket and scrolled through my roll of photos. “Oh, yes, this one is particularly penance-worthy.” I leaned forward and showed it to Angie. In the picture Sophia was bent over with a mop in one hand. There was a big pile of poo that she was scooping up into a bucket that already had a big pile of poo in it. Sweat dripped from her face and her hair was a mess. She wore a gray Pawtown sweatshirt, the kind we all wore when scrubbing to try and keep our clothes relatively clean.
“She looks awful.” A smile cut across Angie’s face. “It’s perfect.”
Sophia leaned toward me. A tingle rushed through me with the warmth of her skin so close. A scent of mint and oranges wafted to me. Her eyes widened and she pressed her fingertips to her lips. Her body tightened and she sat back in her chair.
“I can’t post that.” Fear hedged in her eyes, as though the idea of the world seeing her less than perfect was too much to bear.
“That picture is exactly what you need to post.” Angie tilted her wine glass toward Sophia. “They want to see you pay. Pay for what you did to the dog, pay for being a Legend, pay for being beautiful, pay for them loving you.”
My eyebrow shot up. I looked at Angie. Her words had become a little loose. Her pronunciation a little off. How many glasses of wine had she drunk? She tossed back the contents and set her glass onto the table. She pushed her hand through her hair and her head lolled a little to the side. She’d never been a big drinker, not even before the accident, and since she’d only have the occasional glass of wine with dinner or a couple beers when we all went to Big Daddy’s, this was a little unusual.
“There’s another bottle of pinot on the counter.” Her head rolled on her neck like it was on freshly oiled ball bearings. Her gaze landed on me. “Will you get it?”
“I’d like some coffee. What about you Sophia? Coffee or wine?” My eyes pierced Sophia’s gaze. I was trying to tell her to choose coffee without having to say it. Angie didn’t need to get drunk. She’d totally pay for it later.
“Coffee? Who the hell wants coffee?” Angie said. “I’ll get the wine.”
“I’ll get it.” I placed my hand on the arm of her wheelchair and stopped her from rolling into the house. I pressed send on my phone. The picture of Sophia looking scrubby went to Sophia and Choo. Let Choo convince Sophia that this was the type of photo she needed to post to rehabilitate her career.
I stood and walked
into the kitchen. Darkness seeped across the sky as the sun fell behind the hills. Through the window, I watched Angie placed her chin on her hand and her elbow on the arm of her chair. She stared into the distance. The sun flamed pink and fuchsia across the sky. Her focus was no longer on the dogs, no longer on Sophia. Angie’s focus was far away from here. There were times when I didn’t ask my sister about her thoughts, simply because I didn’t want to know.
I pulled out the coffee grinder and the beans. Finster followed me and sat at my feet. “Your mom seems a little tipsy.” He tilted his head and wagged his tail. Even though she wanted wine, I’d make coffee. Sophia walked into the kitchen. “She’s either asleep or passed out. I’m not sure which.”
I walked to the backyard. Angie’s head still rested on her palm, but it listed to the side and her eyes were closed. Yep, big sis was wiped out. I put her hand down on her lap and her head lolled forward. I pulled on her chair and turned her toward the house. To bed she would go.
I rolled her into her room. Delilah followed me and kept glancing at me for reassurance that Angie was okay.
“Don’t worry girl. She’ll be just fine once she sleeps it off.”
Angie was a huge force, and yet when I lifted her from her chair, her slight frame surprised me. I lay her on the bed and moved her legs so that she was comfortably positioned.
“Wait? What?” Her eyes fluttered open and her brows crinkled in confusion.
“Bedtime.”
She pulled herself up onto her elbows. “I am gonna have a huge fucking headache in the morning.” She flopped back onto her pillow.
“Yes, you are.”
Her snores greeted my words. I left her door open a crack and walked down the hall to the front room. Sophia sat on the couch, her palms pressed together and her gaze fixed on the far wall. The rest of Angie’s pack lay on their doggie beds across the room staring back at Sophia. The whole thing looked to be a standoff. However, I knew each of those pups waited for some indication from Sophia that she wanted to love on them.
No such luck.
Fear radiated from Sophia like heat from a depot stove. Her foot tapped and her gaze bounced from pup to pup.
“Will she be okay?” Sophia asked.
“Yeah.” This hint of confusion shot through me. Angie drinking that much was completely out of character. What was up with that?
“Did you guys eat? You hungry?”
Sophia nodded. Her gaze remained on the line up of dogs on the far side of the room. “She started dinner, but then we started talking and working with the dogs.” She stood.
I walked toward the front door. “Chinese?”
“Where?” Sophia asked.
“We’ll have to leave the ranch.”
Sophia let loose with a giant sigh as though leaving Pawtown was the first good idea she’d heard since she’d arrived.
Chapter 12
Sophia
The scent of Kung Pao scallops and fried won tons filled Trick’s pickup as we sped down the two-lane highway back to Pawtown. Eating at home was what I preferred, especially since I was persona non grata in public right now. A loud roar ripped from my stomach. Hunger pulsed through my belly.
“You’re hungry.” A smile cut across Trick’s face.
A tingle wove through my legs and up through my belly. He was a good-looking guy, but I’d met a bucketful of good-looking men both before I’d started modeling and since. No. There was this glint in his eye when he smiled, as though he was barely containing something wild and wicked. My breath shortened and my belly tightened. Heat flushed my cheeks. His lips. My gaze locked onto his mouth and I wanted to press against him and feel those lips on mine, on my neck, on my body, on—
“Five more minutes and we can eat.”
I focused on the truck’s headlights cutting through the darkness. Trick wasn’t the type of guy I wanted, or needed, or could even date. My career, the spotlight, stardom, prestige, those were the things I was after. And Trick? Well, he’d left a successful career behind after going supernova.
“How long have you guys lived out here?”
“Let’s see.” Trick tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “We came out after my third trip to rehab and my release from jail, so, what? Four years now.”
“Jail.” The word popped from my mouth before I could stop myself. Shit. He had mentioned this fact very briefly when I first me him in L.A., but it was still shocking to hear. I tried to pull back on the shock and surprise that had flown from my mouth. I had relatives who had done time. I just … Trick didn’t seem the sort to spend any time behind bars, especially with his Hollywood background.
“That’s what happens when you have a really bad car crash and you’re high.”
I nodded. I thought of my half-sister Amanda and her husband Ryan. He’d managed to escape going to jail, but his car crash was his first DUI offense and no one but him had been hurt.
“I ended up doing six months in jail and three months in rehab and then we came here.”
“But you still drink?”
“I don’t have a problem with booze. Never have.” Trick’s eyes flicked from the road and toward me. “It was the blow and the girls.”
“Right.” He’d mentioned that too. Stimulants and models. I, like every other girl in America, had had a huge crush on Trick Williams when I was in middle school and high school. And, of course, I watched the show he and his sister had starred in since Daddy had a part on the series, too. I turned my head toward him. And then tore my eyes away and stared at the road. I took a deep breath. That accident, what happened to Angie, Trick going to jail—that was a lot of serious stuff.
“I don’t know how she ever forgave me.” Trick’s voice was barely above a whisper. “But she did.”
How could Angie even look at Trick? She’d been just as big a star, or maybe even bigger, and she had just starred in her first giant studio film when the accident happened. She’d won an Emmy and so had Trick. She’d been dating Channing Tatum or one of the Hemsworth brothers … I couldn’t remember which, and they had been rumored to be engaged.
Then everything stopped. She spent a year after the accident in the hospital and then she just disappeared. Along with her ability to walk, she lost her career, her boyfriend, and her future.
“Wow,” I said.
Trick slowed on the highway at the orange sign that said Pawtown. He turned on his blinker. His headlights cut over the scrub brush and onto the gravel drive that would lead a quarter of a mile to Pawtown. His lights flashed over something dark underneath the Pawtown sign. Trick sighed. He pressed the brake and put the truck in park.
“Let me check this out.”
I leaned forward and peered out into the night. Trick’s body in his jeans and button-down shirt cut across the headlights and he walked slowly toward the wooden pole that held up the Pawtown sign. A rope was tied to the pole and on the other end was something that was dark, dirty, and not moving. Trick bent down and reached out his hand slowly. A snout pressed Trick’s hand.
My heart hit my ribs. Dog. Another damn dog. I pressed my palms together and forced air in and out of my lungs. Wow, I really was scared of these creatures. How was I going to overcome this fear? Trick reached toward the dog’s neck and untied the rope.
This one looked really bad. The fur was matted and even through the darkness and the headlights I could see the animal was way too thin. My heart ached a little for the dog, even though I was still scared as hell of it. Trick scooped the pup up into his arms and walked toward the truck.
Trick ducked his head into the cab. “I’ll put her in back.”
“Nope,” I said already opening the door on my side. “Put her in the front seat. I’ll sit in the back seat.”
“Really?” I took two fingers and pointed at my eyes and then pointed toward Trick’s.
“Oh, right, you want to be able to see her.”
I nodded. I slid from the truck and took the bag of Chinese food with me. Trick wal
ked around to the passenger side. “Throw me that blanket.”
I slid a soft blanket over the seat and Trick placed it on the floorboard. “She’ll be more comfortable down here. I don’t think anything’s broken but she sure is scared.”
She tilted her head at me and her sad brown eyes looked as if she carried the weight of the world. An urge to reach forward and place my hand on her forehead and stroke her pulsed through me. The need to tell her that she would be okay, and that she was in the best place in the world that any homeless pup could be. I might be terrified of dogs, but every other human that worked at Pawtown was absolutely mad for animals. In fact, most of the people at Pawtown seemed to prefer animals to people.
I climbed into the back seat of the cab of the truck and Trick slid behind the steering wheel. Before he started to drive he slipped his phone from his pocket. “I want to let Doc know we’ve got an admission.” He nodded toward the dog. “She’ll need an exam and a bath. Plus we’ll want to keep her separate from all the other dogs until we can assess her tomorrow.”
“Poor girl.” I clutched the seatback and looked over at her curled up on the floorboard.
Trick tilted his head and looked at me.
“What? I have a heart, even for dogs.”
He put the truck into drive and slowly pulled down the driveway to the front gate of Pawtown.
“Does that happen a lot? People just dumping off dogs at the sign?”
“More than I’d like,” Trick said. “It’s better than finding them just wandering along the highway. I mean, we’re a safe place for them and I’d rather have them come here than a high-kill shelter. Here they have good chance at a forever home and they’ll always have a place to live at Pawtown.”
Trick pulled to a stop in front of the clinic building. He turned off the truck and looked at me over the seatback. “I’m gonna be at least a half hour, maybe longer. You’re welcome to take your food and go on back to your place. Just leave me my box of takeout and I’ll have it once I get home.”