by Lori Foster
Footsteps crunched on the dry grass. Jim, the shelter director came up beside her. “You know we can’t guarantee that.”
Only a few inches taller than her five-foot-four he was unassuming in appearance, but when it came to the battle to save animals in need, he had what it took. Commitment and the ability to bounce back from one loss to fight another day. In six months, she’d never learned to do that. Kathy pushed her hair out of her face, her fingers catching on a tangle in the blond strands. Turning her hand, she observed the brassy remnants of her once impeccably maintained highlights. She only knew how to fight.
“You heard me.”
Jim motioned a volunteer with a crate of skinny, fussing kittens to the van on the right. Placement in the vans was the first step in a sort of rough triage. The two white vans contained the animals most likely to live. The blue van was for animals with a question mark. The yellow van was for the ones who might be too far gone for saving.
“Be practical.”
She’d been practical her whole life, planned everything. Followed through. The only thing she had to show for it was . . . nothing. “That’s your job.”
Hers was to coordinate the medical care and fostering for the animals that needed it.
She watched as a big black dog with more sores than hair struggled to follow a seasoned volunteer’s urging to come with her. From his size, square muzzle, and big floppy ears, she determined he was probably a lab or lab mix. Though every step had to be agony with his infected wounds, the dog went with Susan, even sitting quietly when she stopped in front of the vans. Reflex more than anything else had Susan’s hand dropping to the dog’s broad head. The dog flinched. Though the touch had to hurt, he leaned into Susan’s side and kissed her wrist. At some point in the dog’s life, he’d known love. And somehow, he’d lost it. Kathy flinched as her eyes met his across the small yard in silent empathy. Nothing hurt like that. Nothing.
Susan looked at Jim. Mouth tight, he motioned her to the yellow van again. Blinking rapidly to dispel tears, giving the dog another pet, Susan nodded.
“No.” The denial burst from her. Oh, God no. The dog was so close to another chance. Kathy waved Susan back. Jim cut her a hard look. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Could he see how fragile her control was becoming?
“You find the money, the foster home and I’ll save him. Hell, I’ll save them all.”
It was a fact of life in a shelter. Money was tight. Volunteers tighter. When it came to who to save, it always boiled down to potential adoptability, and big black dogs were the last to be seen as wonderful, even if they were. To make matters worse, because of their size, they were expensive to treat and expensive to house. When operating on a shoestring, expensive mattered. Kathy and Walt had always planned on adopting a lab mix when Danny got old enough to have a dog. Except Danny was never getting any older, and she’d somehow lost Walt.
“You can’t save them all,” Jim reminded her in that no-nonsense voice he used on everyone who lost perspective.
You couldn’t save him. There was nothing you could do.
The aching sense of loss that had been Kathy’s constant companion for the last six months almost swallowed her whole. The horrible sense of guilt and failure followed immediately. She pushed them back. She couldn’t take her gaze from the dog’s, couldn’t stop feeling his trust and joy. He thought he was being saved. “Not him.”
Jim frowned. “I don’t have a choice. Our budget’s stretched to capacity after last week’s raid. We don’t even have space at the shelter to house this lot, forget what it would cost to save him alone.”
She knew that. She didn’t care. “Then I’ll take him.”
“It’ll cost more than you pay in rent a month just to get him on his feet, forget what it will take to deal with any hidden issues.”
“That’s my business.”
Jim pulled his ball cap down over his hazel eyes as the first van loaded with dogs and cats pulled out of the drive. He shook his head. “Is this going to be your one?”
She knew what he was talking about. Eventually, every volunteer ran into that one impossible fight from which they couldn’t walk away. “Maybe.”
Not taking her eyes off the big black dog, watching as he stayed calmly beside Susan despite a small dog snapping at his leg as it was led by, she headed across the bone dry yard they were using as a staging area, her boots crunching on the grass. They’d all been “the one” as far as she could tell. Her reason for rolling out of bed, her reason to keep moving, the happy endings she created for them giving her a desperately needed sense of control over something.
She took the leash from Susan’s hand and rested her fingertips on the dog’s practically bald head, feeling the inflammation in his skin radiating out in a slow burn. It was impossible to tell what he’d look like healthy—beautiful or ugly—but that didn’t matter. All she needed to see was the tentative hope in his big brown eyes. She gently rubbed a patch of hair behind his ear and whispered, “Danny would have loved you.”
CHAPTER TWO
Pulling the car up in front of the big cape style house, Kathy turned off the engine. The lilies she’d planted last fall had come up, lining the driveway in a beautiful display of white, yellow, and cream. The grass was cut short and neatly edged. Walt, as always, was handling everything with efficient practicality. Sometimes, she wanted to hate him for that.
Her hands shook as she took the key out of the ignition. She could do this. She gripped the wheel. Walt liked animals. He used to like her. All she had to do was introduce Sebastian to Walt and her mission would be accomplished.
Easing her grip, she stared at the house. Everything was just the way she’d left it. The siding was still white, the shutters still black. Even the artificial wreath she’d hung on the bright red door last December was still in place. She didn’t know what she’d expected to change. Something should have been different, but nothing was. The place was exactly as she and Walt had planned. Such a beautiful house to hold so many memories she couldn’t face, so much pain she couldn’t bury.
Don’t come back here again, Kathy, unless you’re ready to put this marriage back together.
Oh, God. What was she doing? This was a mistake. She wasn’t ready to face anything, least of all her soon to be ex-husband. She stretched for the ignition, bumped the keys on a lever. They fell to the floor in a discordant jangle. Swearing, she slammed her hand on the wheel. It didn’t help. No physical pain could override her emotional suffering. A whine came from the back seat.
She turned and rubbed Sebastian’s head. “It’s okay, boy.”
It had to be okay. She had to make it okay. As Jim had predicted, there was more to Sebastian’s issues than a flea allergy and a secondary staph infection. Because he hadn’t been on a preventative, he now had heartworms. Advanced enough she’d had to have him treated immediately or there would be no possible recovery.
As if sensing the waver in her attention, Sebastian whined again. She glanced over her shoulder. He was staring at the house with what only could be called anticipation.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
He nudged her shoulder. Clearly while he was sympathetic, he wasn’t going to back down. He was fighting for his life while she was fighting for . . . She ran her fingers through her hair. She didn’t know what she was fighting for anymore. Everything in the last six months had become a blur. And she was so tired.
The garage door jerked and started to open. Her heart leapt into her throat. Even as she dove for the keys, her eyes stayed glued to the slow revelation. First to come into view as the white door lifted were well-scuffed, brown cowboy boots, then muscular legs encased in faded denims. The tear in the right knee made her want to cry. She knew the exact minute and hour Walt had gotten the tear. He’d been teaching her to play football. She’d been going for a touchdown. He’d tackled her, turning so he took the worst of the tumble. She remembered the laughter in his gray eyes when he’d gotten up, the l
ovemaking that had begun when the laughter had stopped. The sheer joy being with him had always given her.
The door rose higher, revealing rock-hard thighs, a loose shirt tail framing lean hips, and a slabbed abdomen. She tore her gaze away before the door rose higher. Kathy didn’t want to see Walt’s bare chest. She pressed her palm over her own chest and felt the small gold disk above her breasts. She hadn’t taken it off in thirteen years. She didn’t want to know if he’d taken off his.
Her heart beat against her knuckles. Terror or desire? It was so hard to tell anymore. She hadn’t taken a thing from Walt after she’d left, refusing his requests to talk, his offers of money. She’d taken enough when she’d taken his son. But now she was back, proverbial hat in hand. Because she didn’t have any choice. There was nowhere else to turn.
“This isn’t going to be easy, Sebastian. So when we walk up, look sweet.”
Sebastian didn’t make a sound. His attention was on Walt, who stood in the doorway. She shoved the door open on her beat-up Cavalier. It stuck halfway like it always did. She gave it a kick. It creaked the rest of the way open. A quick glance as she opened the back door showed Walt was standing, legs apart, arms folded across his chest, watching her in that assessing way he had that always made her think of a warrior. He was a cop. It was probably close enough.
Emotions tumbled over her, joy, fear, pain—too many too fast. Pretending to fumble with the leash, she bought herself a little time, but not nearly as much as she needed. Finally, there was no hope for it. She straightened and gently urged Sebastian out of the car. It was only a small step down for him, but he gave a little yelp as his feet hit the pavement.
“I’m sorry.”
He had very little skin on his pads. She wished she could afford boots for him to wear until it grew back, but she couldn’t afford anything. Donations had covered half his heartworm treatment, but only half. The other half was going to have to come out of her grocery bill, her gas money, and likely her rent. She blew her bangs off her forehead. Mr. Bentley was not going to be pleased.
She rubbed the top of Sebastian’s nose. Since this wasn’t the first time rent was going to be late, she likely wasn’t going to have a roof over her head come August. But Sebastian had a chance. And she needed that more than she needed a roof over her head. Sebastian gave a soft woof. “Don’t worry, he’s not as gruff as he looks.”
Not that a body could tell from Walt’s expression. That ability to conceal his softer side had been a self-defense mechanism for Walt growing up in a house where his parents waged constant war, and scary as heck to her the day he’d asked her to the sophomore dance. She’d been shy and insecure and head-over-heels in love with him from afar. He’d been so calm, so self-assured, so devastatingly in control, she’d been sure it was a joke, but he’d shown up on her doorstep at the time he’d stated, smiled softly at her stammer, and then swept her away. She’d been his ever since, secure in the belief that nothing could come between them. She sighed and tightened her grip on the leash. She’d been very naive.
Walt didn’t say a word or raise his hand as she walked up the driveway, but at least he’d buttoned his shirt. The glance he cut Sebastian wasn’t encouraging. When Kathy looked down, she found the dog watching Walt with the same steady assessment.
“Another one of your lost causes?” Walt asked as she got close.
“He’s not lost, he’s with me.”
Her smile felt stiff on her lips, so she wasn’t too surprised when Walt didn’t smile back. Still, she’d hoped for anything other than the cold implacability with which he leaned against the garage doorjamb and observed her.
“It wouldn’t kill you to say hi.”
“No, it probably wouldn’t.”
She sighed. Sebastian leaned against her leg and gave her hand a lick. “But you’re not going to?”
“No.”
Just that one word—one syllable—that left her nowhere to go, had never left her anywhere to go. Walt had always been so strong, so complete unto himself, she’d never known how to tell him she was falling apart. Until one day, she’d woken up to discover the chasm between them had grown so big that now she was living in a run-down apartment and he was going on about his life as if she’d never been part of it. And the hole she’d tumbled into after Danny’s death had just seemed to get deeper and deeper and she’d kept falling and falling with nothing to stop the downward spiral.
Until the day she’d found a kitten behind her house. Too little to survive on its own, she decided to take it to the local animal shelter only to discover they had more than they could cope with already. Standing and watching the goings-on, she’d realized here was a place that needed her. The more she’d helped out, the more she’d gotten involved, the more she’d found a purpose, saving one life at a time until now she’d come full circle, standing in front of the one man whose life she’d destroyed. And she’d come asking favors.
“This was a very bad idea.”
Good grief. Had she said that out loud?
The only break in Walt’s posture was the cock of his head to the side. Still no smile or even that crinkle at the corner of his eyes that passed as one. “Probably, but let’s hear it anyway.”
She held up the end of the leash. “I need a home.”
His arms folded across his chest. “You have one.”
“For him.” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Just for two months.”
His eyebrow cocked up. “No.”
Oh, damn. “I don’t have anywhere else to turn.”
With every passing moment, Sebastian’s weight grew heavier against her thigh. She could feel his heartbeat, or maybe it was her own. She couldn’t think when she was around Walt. Just looking at his face, so like her son’s, brought back the pain, awakened the guilt until it felt like there was a monster inside her, clawing to get out.
“Whose fault it that?”
“Mine.” It was all hers.
With an expression she couldn’t interpret, Walt knelt down in front of the dog. She hoped he didn’t look closely enough to see what she had when she’d looked into Sebastian’s face. Walt didn’t need any more pain.
Walt offered Sebastian his hand. The dog wuffled the back and then ducked his head slightly in invitation.
Walt hesitated. It was easy to understand why. She’d had the same concern herself. “He’d rather take the pain than go without the pet.”
That brought his gaze back to hers. “You know that about him, but you never saw it in me?”
She blinked. The monster inside howled, and raged, tearing strips from her soul. She clenched the leash in her hand. Why did he have to do this? “I knew you hurt.”
“But you didn’t know I needed you.”
Was he asking or telling? “No. You didn’t.”
He swore. She flinched. Same conversation. Same pattern. Same well of pointless tears choking off her voice. Same pointless effort. “I just need a place for him to stay for two months. That’s all.”
Sebastian lapped Walt’s cheek. Walt rubbed his knuckle under the flap of the dog’s big ears. His gaze met hers. “Well, I need a hell of a lot more than that.”
She knew that. Had always known it, but she couldn’t bring Danny back and didn’t have anything of equal value to give. Walt stood. She took a step back. He caught her hand.
Memories flashed through her mind’s eye in a raw bleed. Walt holding her hand at their first high school dance. Walt holding her hand when she’d been rejected from her first choice of college. Walt holding her hand as the doctor walked away that fateful night. He’d been her first love, her first lover, first husband, and first failure. She looked down to where his big capable hand swallowed hers. And now another first. The first man she’d used.
His fingers squeezed. “You know my price.”
She shook her head, denial, protest, fear. “I just had nowhere else to go.”
His mouth set in a straight line. “This should have been your first stop.”
“No, it shouldn’t.”
There was so little holding her together. Just being here was fraying the invisible knots she’d used to bind the pain into a manageable ache, keeping it contained while she ran from fight to fight creating endings she could live with.
“But you’re here now.” His thumb stroked over the back of hers in a hauntingly familiar comfort. His grip didn’t loosen. “I’ve been waiting six months for this moment, and I’ve got to tell you, sweet, I’m damn tired of waiting.”
The statement lashed over the open wound of her guilt. Tears seared her eyes as the agony rose in a whirling twist, hoarsening her voice. “I’m giving you a divorce. What more do you want from me?”
He took the leash from her hand. His pale gray eyes met hers. “What I’ve always wanted. My wife.”
CHAPTER THREE
She followed as far as the steps. Walt led the dog into the house. Sebastian balked just inside the door, looked back over his shoulder, and whined. She shook her head. She couldn’t go back in there, couldn’t bear to see the bright interior with all its sunny colors, all its hopes and expectations. They’d scrimped and saved to buy this house, waiting longer for a place of their own because they’d planned on a family and they’d wanted just the right house in just the right neighborhood. They’d wanted everything perfect. And it had been. Perfect house, perfect pregnancy, perfect baby. The only thing they’d forgotten to ask for was the perfect ending. But who could have thought it would end like this? With their baby dead, their dreams in ashes around their feet, and the only thing linking them together anymore a sick dog and loss?
Walt motioned with his hand. “You’re letting the air-conditioning out.”
“Sorry.”
Her feet wouldn’t move forward or backward. Even when Walt dropped the leash and turned, she could only stare at him helplessly, hope rising, panic building. He reached out. She flinched. His hand dropped. Inside the hope that he could forgive her died all over again. And then he did the most extraordinary thing. He cupped her cheek in his hand. The way he’d used to. The way she’d thought he’d forgotten.