A Beautiful Mistake

by Ashlee Price

  Marian taps her foot. "And I'm supposed to be okay with this?"

  I give her a puzzled look. "Are you allergic to dogs?"

  "No."

  "Did we have a rule against getting pets?"

  "We had one against having kids," she points out.

  My eyebrows crease even more. "And pets are kids?"

  "Some people think of them as their kids. Some people love them even more than their kids. My point is that pets bond with you and you can get attached to them."

  "So?"

  "So what if I get attached to them, hmm? What will happen when we get our divorce and part ways?"

  I shrug. "You can have them."

  "In my small apartment that doesn't allow pets?"

  "You can get a bigger one."

  She says nothing to that.

  "Or we can split. You get whichever dog you like. I get the remaining dog."

  "Ah, just like some couples with two kids do. See, just like kids."

  "Except, unlike kids, they won't have any hard feelings. I assure you they won't even protest."

  "Very funny." Marian frowns. "My point is, we shouldn't share anything more than this house, which will go back to you or to Candace when we're over. That way, things will be less complicated."

  I narrow my eyes at her. "Who said we're sharing the dogs? They're mine."

  "But you just said..."

  "Well, it sounds like you don't want them."

  "I didn't say..."

  "You don't want to be attached to them, right? So you don't want them. That's fine. I'll take care of them. They'll be exclusively mine, and when the time comes for our divorce, I'll bring them home with me. Nothing complicated there."

  Marian sighs. "Fine."

  "Fine."

  She puts up her hands. "Then will you make sure they'll be out of my way?"

  "Yeah, sure," I answer. "It's a big house, after all."

  "Right."

  She walks off. Cop barks.

  "Shh," I scold him as I hold a finger to my lips. "You don't want to make her lose her temper even more, do you? Because she's scary when that happens."

  Cop lowers his head and whines.

  I chuckle as I pat him on the head. "Don't worry. We'll stay out of her way."

  I glance at the stairs, catching a glimpse of Marian just before she disappears from sight. Then I turn back to my two furry friends.

  "We don't need her help anyway, do we, boys?"

  ~

  At least, that's what I think until I catch Cop choking on something during our morning walk in the yard a few days later.

  I run back inside the house and find Marian coming down the stairs, already dressed for work. I grab her arm.

  "Come quick!"

  "What?"

  I don't stop to explain. I can't. I just drag her to the yard, where Cop is still gagging and shaking. A few feet away, Truff barks. I'm not sure whether it's out of concern for his pal or whether he thinks this is some game.

  "I think he ate something he shouldn't have," I tell Marian as I kneel beside Cop.

  "You think?"

  She tries to open his mouth but fails. She shakes her head.

  "I can't do this, Dustin. I'm a human doctor, not an animal doctor."

  "Aren't the basics the same?"

  "If you can get down to treatment. You don't think you can ask Cop to calm down, can you?"

  "Cop." I look into the dog's eyes. "Help me out here, okay? Just calm down for a sec."

  Still, he writhes. I frown.

  "You know what? I'll hold his mouth open," I tell Marian. "You go and take a look inside."

  "But I don't even have - "

  "Use the flashlight on your phone."

  She gets her phone from her purse and turns the light on.

  "What about gloves?"

  "Just wash your hands after," I answer. "Ready?"

  She looks reluctant but nods.

  I trap Cop between my legs and pry his jaws open. Marian looks inside.

  "I think I see a twig."

  "Then get it out," I say in a strained voice. "And fast. Please."

  She draws a deep breath and puts her hand in. For a moment, she looks worried, but then the creases on her forehead lessen.

  "Got it."

  She pulls out the twig and examines it with a frown. "How on earth did you get this inside your mouth? Hasn't anyone taught you to chew your food? Not that twigs are food."

  Cop responds by placing his paw on her lap. He looks okay now. Happy. His tail swishes up and down.

  "Oh, he's thanking you," I tell Marian. "Look at that."

  She throws the twig away and sighs. "You're welcome." She pushes his paw away. "But I have to go."

  He puts it back on her lap. I chuckle.

  "It looks like he doesn't want you to go."

  Marian gazes up at me. Her copper eyes narrow as she puts her hands on her hip. "Are you finding this funny?"

  I just shrug.

  She pushes his paw away again, but it just goes back on her lap. She sighs.

  "Just a little," I finally answer her question. "I think it's cute that Cop likes you."

  "Well, I don't like him."

  With a frown, she pushes his paw off her lap a third time. Cop responds by putting both paws on her lap.

  I laugh.

  "Not funny." Marian holds both paws in her hands and looks into Cop's eyes. "I have to go. Seriously."

  She tries to get up, but Cop gets up faster. He jumps on her chest. She screams as she loses her balance.

  I try to catch her, but she falls on the grass first.

  "Ouch," she complains as she rubs her butt with a grimace. Then she looks at her hand and her eyes grow wide. "Shit. How will I - ?"

  The rest of her sentence vanishes as Cop starts licking her face. Marian pushes him away.

  "Cop!"

  But he just keeps licking her. And I can't help but grin as I watch.

  "Cop, stop it!" she screams.

  He doesn't. To make matters worse, Truff has caught on. He starts to lick Marian as well. She screams louder.

  "Dustin, don't just stand there!" she shouts at me as she tries to protect her face with her arms. "Get them off me!"

  "Yes, ma'am." I give her a salute before pulling both dogs off her by the collar.

  Marian wipes her face as she gets on her feet. Her features twist in dismay.

  "Now I'm all covered in mud and drool."

  I grin. "You still look pretty."

  Cop barks in agreement. Marian glares at me, then at him.

  "I saved your life and this is how you repay me?"

  "He was kissing you," I say.

  "Well, tell him I'd rather not be kissed next time, okay?" Marian lets out a deep sigh. "I have to go change."

  She picks up her purse and turns away. Cop starts to whine.

  Marian ignores him at first, but as the whining gets louder, she glances over her shoulder.

  "What?"

  "I think he just wants you to pet him," I tell Marian.

  "And why would I do that? He's not my dog."

  "Come on," I urge her. "What is it you have against dogs anyway?"

  She whirls around. "I have nothing against dogs. I like them, actually. But Cop is not my dog."

  "Oh, right. You don't want to pet him because you feel that if you do, you'll fall in love with him and you won't want to let him go."

  She shrugs. "What can I say? I fall in love easily."

  I cast her a curious glance.

  "With dogs," she adds.

  "And what's wrong with that?" I ask her.

  Marian sighs. "We talked about this already, Dustin."

  "And I'm telling you that there's no turning back now. You've already saved Cop's life. He loves you. He's going to feel miserable if you don't love him back."

  She looks at him as she taps her hand on her thigh. I glance at him.

  "Give her your best sad eyes, you big puppy," I whisper to Cop.

&n
bsp; Marian puts up a finger. "I heard that."

  Cop gives a whimper. Truff barks.

  For a moment, Marian just stands there. Then she starts walking back towards us. I give a triumphant grin.

  She frowns at me. "You are so unfair."

  I ignore her.

  She pats Cop on the head, then Truff. Their tails start to wag.

  "Now, I really have to change and go to work," she says. "Both of you, be good. Don't be mischievous like this man."

  She pokes my chest.

  "Hey," I protest. "We're all well-behaved."

  "Uh-huh." She starts walking backwards. "And that's how Cop ended up with a twig in his mouth that almost killed him? By behaving?"

  "It was an accident."

  She touches her chin. "Hmm."

  "He was just having too much fun. What can I say? Boys will be boys."

  "Well, this girl is off." She turns around.

  "Why don't you join me in taking them for a walk on your day off?" I ask her. "They'd love that."

  She doesn't answer.

  "So would I," I add.

  She pauses and throws me a glance. "I'll think about it."

  ~

  In the end, I guess Marian just loves dogs too much to stay away.

  After a walk around the park and around the block, we bring the dogs back to the house. We go straight to the backyard to let them run free. Marian sinks onto a bench in the garden and gulps down her bottle of water. I take off my cap and run my hands through the sweat-drenched strands of my hair.

  "What was your first dog?" I ask her.

  "Newfoundland," Marian answers as she puts the lid back on her bottle. "But he wasn't my dog. He was the neighbor's dog. I would go over to their front porch to pet him and he and I just became friends. Sometimes I'd fall asleep on the porch right next to him while waiting for my mom to come home from work. And when Mom had to work nights, they would let him stay at my house to accompany me. He made me feel much safer and less alone."

  I nod. "Sounds like a good dog."

  "He was. His name was Big Toto because he looked like Dorothy's dog but bigger. Much bigger."

  "What happened to him?"

  "My mom and I had to move away. We couldn't afford a house anymore so we had to move into an apartment and there were no dogs there."

  I frown. "So you never had your own dog?"

  "Hal bought me one after my mom died and I went to live with him. It was a poodle. A girl. I named her Lola. She was around for about five years before she got sick." She glances at me. "How about you? I bet you had a lot of dogs."

  My eyebrows crease. "What makes you think that?"

  "Because you seem good with dogs. And because I'm pretty sure you grew up in a house as big as this, if not bigger."

  I don't comment about that. "We had a few, but there were only two that I could really call mine - an Australian Cattle Dog named Taz and a Great Dane named Graham."

  Marian lets out a sigh as she looks around. "I guess you're right. This place needs dogs."

  Just then, Cop starts to bark.

  I go over to check. When I see what he's barking at - Truff with his feet buried in mud, digging a hole amid the rows of zinnias and irises - I frown. I glance at Cop and see that he's not entirely innocent - his paws are muddy, too.

  I slap my forehead. "We just can't leave you two alone for a second, can we?"

  "What ha - ?" Marian stops as she sees what I'm looking at. Then she gasps. "Why, you bad dogs!"

  I glance at her. "At least they didn't dig a hole in the park."

  But that doesn't seem to comfort Marian in the least. She shakes her head in horror.

  "What are we going to do?"

  I shrug. "Give them a bath?"

  ~

  Giving a dog a bath isn't easy. Giving two big dogs a bath? Insane, especially when those dogs are Cop and Truff.

  For one thing, Cop doesn't seem to like baths. He kept trying to run away and he succeeded the first several times. Even now that I have him tied up and his collar tightened, he's still trying, and although he can't get far, he keeps slipping from my grasp. The soap doesn't help.

  And Truff? He seems to love water too much. He keeps trying to drink it. He rolls around in the puddles. When Marian moves the hose around, he tries to chase it. She laughs.

  I grin. Well, at least she seems to be enjoying herself.

  She stops laughing, though, when Truff catches the hose by the nozzle. He takes it from her hand and swings it around. The water splashes on Marian's chest.

  "What the hell?"

  She stares down at her soaked shirt in disbelief. Then she picks up the hose.

  "Oh, I'll get you for that."

  She turns up the water and hoses Truff down, which doesn't seem like a punishment for him at all. He's having so much fun that he's fun to watch, but it's Marian I can't take my eyes off of.

  Now that her shirt is soaked, I can see her pink sports bra through it, and that's drenched, too, so I can see the peaks of her breasts poking through the fabric. My mouth waters.

  How long has it been since we had sex? I can't remember, which means it's been too long. I can still remember how her body felt against mine, though. I can still remember the warmth of her mouth, the taste of her skin, the incredible tightness that seemed to be trying to squeeze the life out of me.

  Those memories cause a stir in my groin.

  Cop slips out from between my hands once more. This time, I don't try to catch him. I just stare at Marian with narrowed eyes.

  Suddenly, she glances at me. As she sees the lust in my eyes, hers grow wide. Her lips part as her breath catches. The hose falls from her hand.

  For a moment, she just stands there, seemingly frozen, a drenched Aphrodite with the wavy strands of her red hair flowing past her shoulders and beads of water clinging to her shirt and arms. One drop falls from her elbow and splashes on the floor, drowning in the puddle made by the water still flowing from the hose.

  Then she quickly looks down at her shirt and covers her breasts with her arms. A blush coats her cheeks.

  I walk over to her and she steps back. I pick up the hose and close the nozzle as I look at her. She wraps her arms more tightly around her shoulders.

  "You should take that off," I tell her.

  Her eyebrows crease. "What?"

  "You should take that off and dry off before you catch a cold," I explain.

  She nods and walks away. I swallow the lump in my throat and turn the nozzle of the hose back on so I can let the cold water splash on me and hopefully cool my body down.

  Truff barks.

  I glance at him with a frown. "Oh, shut up."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marian

  "A-ah-ah-choo!"

  I grip the edge of the blanket as I sit up and send a sneeze across the bed. Afterwards, my head crashes back down on my soft pillow. My eyes, blurred with tears, gaze up at the turquoise ceiling. My lips droop into a frown.

  This is what I get for giving the dogs a bath - a cold.

  I tried to fight it. I took acetaminophen this morning for my headache before going to work. I drank lemon water with honey to help ease my sore throat. I wore a mask at work so no one would get infected from my sneezes and coughs, and I stuffed a whole roll of tissue into my pocket so that I could blow my nose whenever I wanted and not end up sniffing all the time.

  Still, I got sent home. Now, here I am in bed with this cold, with my head heavy, my throat sore and itchy at the same time and my nose running when it isn't sneezing. The last time I checked with a thermometer, I was running a low fever, too.

  Great. Just great.

  I hear a knock on the door and I turn my head.

  "Come in," I say in a raspy voice.

  Dustin comes in, holding a tray. I lift my head as I peer behind him, trying to see if the dogs are with him. A breath of relief leaves me when I see that they're not.

  "Are Truff and Cop in the yard?" I ask him as I let my head b
ack down.

  "Yeah," he answers as he puts the tray down on the table in the corner. "Let them dig all they want. I'll just have someone fix the garden later."

  I nod. I guess that's one way to deal with it.

  "Why? Did you want to see them?"

  "No," I answer quickly.

  "Because I can clean them up and bring them here if you want them on the bed with you," Dustin goes on. "I'm sure they'd love to see you. Who knows? They might even make you feel better."

  "No, thanks," I tell him. "I don't want them here."

  Dustin gives me a puzzled look. "Don't tell me you blame them for your cold. It's not their fault, you know."

  I narrow my eyes at him. "Who was it that got me wet, again?"

  "I got wet, too, didn't I?" he asks.

  The image of him without a shirt and with his chest and abdomen gleaming, dripping with beads of water, pops into my mind without warning. I shove it away.

  "But I'm fine."

  He does look perfectly fine.

  I frown. "Actually, I think it's your fault I'm sick."

  His eyes grow wide. "My fault?"

  "You're the one who asked me to help you bathe the dogs. In fact, you're the one who got me involved with the dogs in the first place, and they got me sick. So yeah, it's your fault."

  Dustin sighs. "Fine. Then hopefully this chicken soup I made you will make you forgive me."

  He brings the bowl of chicken soup to the bed. I sit up. The smell of ginger, onions, mint, chicken broth, something spicy and something citrusy slips through my congested nostrils. My mouth waters.

  I draw a deep breath. "What exactly did you put in there?"

  Dustin's eyebrows furrow. "If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it a long time ago."

  I frown. "I'm not accusing you of trying to poison me. I'm just curious."

  He stirs the soup. "Well, let's see. I put in some chicken, some rice, some chicken broth."

  "I know that," I say. "I'm asking about the spices."

  "There's ginger and scallions."

  "And?"

  "I put a bit of chili. I've read that spicy foods are good for colds. They should help decongest your nasal passages."

  "And the citrus smell? Where's that coming from?"

  "Probably from the lemongrass and the cilantro."

  I nod. "I see."

  "Also, there are mint stems in here. Mint is good for colds, too, you know."