by Dylann Crush
“That auto auction they have once a month over in Cramden. I’ve got my eye on a school bus that’s coming up next month.” He reached for his mug.
Zina met Lacey’s gaze, trying to sort out how she was supposed to respond. Usually her bestie handled crazy-ass requests with a combination of humor and grace. That wasn’t a skill Zina possessed.
“So a hearse and a school bus?” Zina asked.
“That’s right. I figure that will give me a good start. I’m prepared to offer y’all a steep discount for becoming your preferred transportation vendor.” He eyed them over the rim of his mug.
“That’s certainly a generous offer.” Lacey gave him a gracious smile, but the way she gripped the arm of her chair showed she was anything but relaxed. “But the wedding parties we have coming to town seem to prefer a more traditional mode of transportation like a classic white stretch limo.”
Kirby’s face fell. Zina’s chest tightened. How could Lacey handle a job where she was constantly having to turn people down?
“You know, I’ve seen some interesting new trends,” Zina offered.
“Like what?” Lacey shot her a look of annoyance.
“Like party buses or pickup truck limos. Maybe keep your eyes peeled for something like that at one of your auctions.” Zina shrugged at Lacey. “You wanted me to check out all those wedding websites.”
Kirby stood, his jaw set. “Got it. So if I can come back with something trendy or something more classic, you’ll let me work with y’all?”
“We’ll consider it.” Lacey set down her mug. “Zina, can you walk him out?”
“Sure.” She led Kirby to the front door.
“Thanks for seeing me this afternoon. You’ve given me a lot to think about.” He nodded at her as he propped his cowboy hat on top of his silver mane. “I’ll be in touch.”
Zina watched him climb into the rusty hearse before she shut the door.
“What in the world was that?” Lacey’s voice came from behind her.
“What was what? Did you see how crushed he looked?” Zina turned. “Does Bodie know you’re entertaining crazy old men on the porch?”
“No. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“At least sit down and put your feet up. Doctor’s orders.” Zina put her hands on Lacey’s shoulders and turned her back toward the porch.
“Tell me how the meeting with the contractor went this morning.” Lacey sat down and propped her feet up on the wicker coffee table.
“Fine. Alex seems to think he’ll be able to pull it together. He’s looking for a place to stay by the Phillips House though. Says he wants to be closer in case there’s a penguin emergency.”
“Of course. Tell him to take one of the bedrooms upstairs. I should have offered earlier.”
“You want him to move in?” Zina didn’t like the sound of that. Having to work on the wedding and share warehouse space with him was one thing, but if he were living at the Phillips House, she’d be exposed to his damn dimple all the time. And she was having a hard enough time resisting already.
“It’s fine. We have a few smaller events booked but no one’s renting out the bedrooms until after the Munyon wedding. Do you want to tell him or should I?”
“Why don’t you?” Zina might need to start limiting her interaction with the penguin handler. She couldn’t afford to get attached, not to someone who wasn’t going to be around for the long haul.
“Will do.” Lacey grabbed a thick binder from the table next to her. “Now, I need to go over the details for the wedding so you know what to expect.”
“Let me get a refill first.” Zina reached for her mug. If she was going to have to take over as wedding planner, she needed to be fully caffeinated.
“Oh, you might want to make a fresh pot. Bodie won’t let me drink anything but decaf.”
“You gave me decaf coffee?” Zina asked. No wonder she hadn’t felt that kick of caffeine. She moved into the kitchen to make an extra-strong pot. If she was going to have to take on the binder along with avoiding Alex and managing the dog rescue, she was going to have to have all of her wits about her . . . every last one.
thirteen
Alex couldn’t keep from smiling as he drove the distance back to Char’s. He’d been worried about pulling the wedding off by himself. With Zina’s help it was sure to go off without a hitch. Her ability to get things done was obvious based on her level of success at the dog shelter. And now he even had a place to stay. He couldn’t wait to tell Char his good news about moving out.
He eased the truck to a stop as he pulled into the driveway. Lacey’s call couldn’t have come at a better time. Moving into the mansion would solve a lot of his problems. Everything was starting to smell like roses, or at least a lot less like a huge pile of crap.
“What’s for dinner, Uncle Alex?” Dolly chimed in from the back seat. She’d been quiet on the ride home.
“I thought maybe we’d order pizza to celebrate.”
“What are we celebrating?” Gramps growled. “You moving into a mansion to work on that crazy penguin habitat?”
Alex shook his head. “It’s all going to work out, Gramps.”
Gramps didn’t seem impressed by his commitment. “If you ask me, you’re in over your head.”
“Well, good thing no one’s asking you.” He’d told Char he’d help with Gramps, and it was becoming clear that the old man needed some sort of purpose. Once upon a time his grandfather had been full of smiles. He was always the first one to crack a joke or pull a prank. But since Nana had passed, he’d become bitter and quiet. The sooner they got him sorted out with something to do, the better. Maybe helping out with the penguins would lighten up his mood a bit.
Before they could get out of the truck, Char came through the front door and headed their way.
“Hey, how was your day?” she asked as she pulled open the back door of the truck. “Did you find a place to live?”
“Yeah. Lacey Cherish offered to let me move into the Phillips House while I’m working out there.”
“What?” Char reached for Dolly and lifted her youngest out of the truck. “Why would she let you do that?”
“I’m going to be spending a ton of time out there working on the Munyon wedding.”
Char clenched her jaws together. So hard that Alex could tell he was about to get a browbeating from his older sister.
“I’m going to get to make snowflakes and they have dogs out there, too,” Dolly volunteered.
“Why are there dogs at the Phillips House?” Char asked.
“Cuz Uncle Alex broke their ceiling,” Dolly said.
Char’s brows lifted. “What ceiling?”
Alex let out a breath. “The other day I climbed up on the roof of the dog shelter to check on a leak and fell through.”
“Are you okay?” Char put a hand on his shoulder, her attitude switching from pissed to concerned.
“He’s fine. But I heard that poor woman’s roof sure isn’t.” Gramps eased himself down from the truck.
Alex winced as he recalled the gaping hole in Zina’s roof. But it was all going to be okay. He’d get the wedding done, help pay for her deductible on the roof, and still have plenty left to get Gramps settled in before he took off on a new adventure.
“I don’t even know what to do with y’all.” Char shook her head from side to side.
“Well you won’t have to worry about me anymore. I’ll start moving my stuff over to the Phillips House tomorrow.” Alex had enjoyed spending some time with his nieces but would be happy to have some space of his own.
“Gramps, too,” Char said. Her voice was firm, leaving no room for arguing.
“I figured Gramps would want to stay with you until we got this whole thing sorted. I asked him to help with the habitat, but don’t you think he’d be more comfortable sleep
ing here?” Alex’s blood chilled, his face tingled. She couldn’t be serious about him taking Gramps with him. The Phillips House wouldn’t be a good place for him. The bedrooms were on the second floor. Surely Char wouldn’t expect Gramps to be able to navigate the steps.
“I think I’d like it out there,” Gramps said, the faintest hint of a smile materializing on his face. “The air’s fresher and there aren’t as many people around. Plus, that way I’ll be able to help you on that project like we talked about.”
“It’s settled then.” Char grinned as she met Alex’s gaze. “I’ll help you get packed.”
Alex hesitated as everyone else disappeared into the house. Things had taken a turn sideways. He hadn’t seen that particular change of plans coming. For a moment, frustration boiled up inside. He’d be better off walking away now. The reason he’d stayed away for so long was that he didn’t do well working with others. Having to take Char’s and Gramps’s opinions into account when making his own plans wasn’t something he was used to.
But maybe it was something he needed to do more often. His interactions with Zina had taught him that sometimes people had to put their own needs aside to focus on others. He’d never been one to live his life that way in the past. But maybe he could try for the next couple of months. Fine. He’d take Gramps with him to the Phillips House and hopefully get him to help with the construction. But he’d also make sure he got his grandfather out to visit that home he’d heard about.
He stepped into the house. Gramps sat in the easy chair, his eyes glued to the cartoon on the television again. Dolly had set up a tea party for all of her stuffed animals in the middle of the living room floor.
“Where did your mom go?” Alex asked.
Dolly’s nose crinkled and she wheezed a few breaths before letting out a giant achoo. “Do you want some tea?” She wrinkled her nose and held up a tiny plastic teapot.
“No thanks. I need to talk to your mom about something.”
“She’s in the back, making sure she packs up my stuff so she can get rid of me tomorrow.” Gramps’s expression didn’t change. “It’d be better for all of us if you’d let me just move back to the ranch.”
For a split second Alex wondered how his grandfather felt about being shuffled around. The man had spent his whole life working hard to provide for his family, raise his kids. What would it feel like to have outlived them all and have nothing left to live for?
What the hell was happening to him? He could practically feel his insides turning to marshmallow fluff. The more time he spent at Char’s, surrounded by her and the girls, all of them looking to him to fix things, make things better, the harder it was going to be to extricate himself from their lives later.
So instead of seizing the moment to settle Gramps’s concerns, he headed down the hall. “Char? Where the hell are you?”
“Where the hell . . . where the hell . . .” Shiner Bock strutted along the top of the dresser in the bedroom where Jordan and Izzy usually slept. At least, until they’d been displaced by Gramps.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re here.” Char folded Gramps’s shirts into neat squares and set them into the suitcase on the bed. “I think it will be so much better for him to stay with you. Not to mention, the girls will get their bedroom back, and—”
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asked.
“What?” She paused, a pair of Gramps’s baggy old briefs in her hands. “What do you mean?”
He rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, trying to ease some of the tension away. “Gramps is pissed. All he wants is to move back to the ranch.”
Char dropped the underwear. “We’ve been over this. There’s no way he can live all the way out there on his own. I tried that with him. He fell while he was trying to move some stuff around in the barn and if the mailman hadn’t found him, who knows how long he would have laid out there?”
“I know. I just wish . . .” His voice trailed off as he thought about how to share the feelings of guilt he’d been trying to process.
“Wish what?” Char pressed.
“Forget it. It’s just weird being back.” He couldn’t quite put into words what had been bothering him. Some sense of misplaced guilt? That’s probably all it was.
“I’m here if you want to talk. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” But he had no intention of wasting his breath on words. Words weren’t going to build a penguin habitat. And that needed to be his sole focus over the next couple of weeks if he wanted to get back to his way of normal.
fourteen
Zina got out of the truck and held tight to Buster’s leash. It had been his turn to spend the night last night. He was such a good dog, she had half a mind to adopt him herself. Maybe she would if he didn’t find a family during the big adoption event she had coming up that weekend. She’d managed to avoid making a commitment to any of the pups up to that point, but where had it gotten her?
It was her favorite time of day. The sun hadn’t woken up yet, and the town was still quiet. So was the warehouse. With Alex and Toby working until the late evening hours on the penguin habitat for the past two weeks, she’d embraced any chance she got to enjoy the peace and quiet.
That was the main reason she preferred the early morning shift . . . so she could have a chance to think while she went about the routine of feeding the dogs and letting them out a few at once. Thinking time had been at a premium lately, especially since it seemed Alex was standing around every corner, muscles bulging, dimple winking, lips curling into any number of smiles.
Seemed like she’d memorized all of his smiles, and he had quite the collection. Her favorite had to be the cocky-into-vulnerable-grin combination. He didn’t share that one very often. She’d seen plenty of the plain ol’ cocky grin. If she didn’t know better, she’d assume that was the only one he had. But when he let down his guard, especially around one of his nieces, the unsure, unconfident, vulnerable part of him came through. That was the Alex she’d started falling for. Which was no good at all.
The way he’d barged in, taken over the warehouse, and kept making assumptions should be driving her crazy. But she could tell it was all a front. Hopefully he’d be long gone before he let down his guard for good. Because he was the kind of man who could ruin her if she let him.
She opened the door, and Buster went in first. The lights were on in the back of the warehouse, where she kept the dogs. Her stomach clenched. Did someone forget to turn them off last night?
Before she had a chance to check, the thump of a deep bass came from the radio she’d set up in the back. Morty’s voice punctuated the silence. “Who let the dogs out? Me! Me!”
Zina clamped her hand over her mouth to keep herself from laughing out loud. She crept closer, trying to see if he had the moves to go with the song. But then Herbie barked and ran over to greet her.
Morty reached out to silence the music.
“Good morning.” She bit down on her bottom lip at the shock on his face.
“How long have you been here?” He whipped a comb out of his back pocket and ran it through his hair.
“Not long.”
“Good, that’s good. I just came out to lend a hand. I’m an early riser so I figured I’d pitch in with the dogs.” He smiled but didn’t make eye contact.
Zina was afraid she might lose her semblance of control if he did. “Thanks. You don’t have to keep doing that though.”
“I don’t mind. Makes an old man feel useful.” He nodded, slipped his comb back in his pocket, and called to Herbie. “I got them all fed. Do you mind if I take a couple out back so they can get some exercise?”
“That would be great. Thank you.”
He disappeared through the back door and she let out the laugh she’d been holding back. What would Alex think about his grandpa jamming with the dogs? She unclipped Buster from
his leash and filled a bowl of kibble for him.
As she bent to set it down on the ground, Alex came through the door.
“Hey, have you seen my gramps?”
“He’s out back with a couple of the dogs. What are you doing out here so early?” The sun had yet to peek over the horizon. This was supposed to be her “me time” before the Sanders men got going for the day.
“They’re bringing in the pool feature today, so I wanted to make sure everything’s ready. Gramps isn’t bothering you or getting in the way, is he?”
“No, he’s been helping. This is the third time this week he beat me to the breakfast routine.”
“Good.” Alex grinned, and dammit, there was the slightest sliver of vulnerability in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes.
She commanded her heart to stop the funny squeeze-fluttery thing it was doing. “He’s really good with the dogs.”
“He’s been helping a lot with the habitat, too.” Alex moved to the workbench he’d set up along the wall and set out some more of his gramps’s tools he’d collected from the ranch. “He seems, I don’t know, happier since we moved in here.”
“And how about you?” She cocked her head. “Are you acclimating to being back in Texas?”
“I guess I am. It’s been nice getting to know my nieces, even if they thought I was a lot cooler when I lived by the South Pole.” His eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled.
“Kids will keep you humble.”
“Well, then humility is about to become my greatest strength. Did you get coffee yet?” He held out a thermos.
“Not yet. I was hoping to bum some off of your grandpa after I fed the dogs.” She took the mug Alex handed her, grateful for the incoming kick of caffeine.
“It’s been nice spending some time with him. Makes me wonder what it might have been like if I hadn’t left in the first place.”
Zina sensed the opportunity for a few minutes of real talk, not the flirtatious banter they’d been slinging back and forth for the past two weeks. “What do you think would have happened?”