Читать книгу The Moment of Truth - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 14

CHAPTER FIVE

“DANA, WHERE SHOULD I put this towel?” At the sound of Lori’s voice on Saturday morning, Dana turned from the desk in her little living room where she was typing on her laptop. The girl had called sometime after ten the night before and told her Marissa’s boyfriend was spending part of the night at the dorm.

“Just hang the towels on the hook on the back of the door,” she told the younger woman. “In case you need them again. I’ll wash them the next time I do laundry.”

Kitty Kari, who’d been curled up on the corner of the desk, woke, stretched and, when her paw knocked against the edge of the laptop, started patting at the screen.

Lori grabbed her purse, keys and the backpack she’d brought her overnight paraphernalia in.

“You going home for Thanksgiving?” Dana asked.

“I’m not sure. If my dad’s going to be there, yes. I’m not leaving him there alone.”

“If?”

“A couple of his mining buddies have been talking about taking a hunting trip over the holidays. If they go, he will, too.”

“Has he done that before?”

“No, but I think he’d have liked to. He wouldn’t have left me home alone, though.”

Daniel wouldn’t have left Dana home alone, either. He just wouldn’t have played video games with her like he had with his two biological daughters. And he wouldn’t have asked the other two to help with the cooking or the dishes.

They’d done that on their own. Her half sisters, Rebecca and Lindsey—twenty and twenty-two, respectively—were good girls. Good sisters. To a point.

They just didn’t go to bat for her. Not that she blamed them. Her mother hadn’t, either.

And Dana didn’t blame Susan Harris for that choice. For an earlier one, yes, but not that one.

“Well, if you’re in town, you’re welcome to come over here. I’m getting a big turkey and making dinner for anyone at school who can’t make it home for the holiday.” She loved cooking Thanksgiving dinner. And even though the holiday was still three weeks away, she’d already started buying groceries as they went on sale.

“If I’m in town, I’ll help you cook,” Lori said and, thanking Dana for letting her crash at her place, let herself out.

Eight o’clock in the morning and she had her whole day ahead of her. As soon as she got her English paper done, that was. The five-hundred-word essay was due on Monday. And while Dana had an A in the class—straight As in all of her classes, actually—she wouldn’t be able to maintain her grades if she didn’t turn her work in on time.

She was two sentences farther along when her phone rang.

It was Jerome, from her English class. He’d lost part of his grant and was low on cash. He’d shown up for class one day in jeans that were wrinkled and had a stain at the knee and she’d made a joke about a rough night. He’d replied that he didn’t have enough money for laundry and was wearing things until they stank—at which time she’d offered him the use of her washer and dryer.

He’d been over every Saturday for the past three weeks. And was calling to ask if he could use her facilities again.

She told him that he was welcome, took a break from her laptop to clear her as yet unwashed clothes out of the washing machine and went back to work. Another paragraph, rewritten four times, and Jerome was at the door. She let him in and returned to her desk.

She heard him in the kitchen, settling at her kitchen table with his own laptop and thought to call out, “You going home for Thanksgiving?”

“No,” he answered back. “My folks and I decided to save the money so I could fly home for Christmas break instead of driving. It’ll give us four more days together.”

Jerome was from Missouri.

“I’m making dinner here for anyone who can’t get home,” she said. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“Cool. I’m there,” the eighteen-year-old said. “I’m no cook, but I know how to load a dishwasher.”

“Then dishwasher loader you are,” she said. Kari pounced on her keyboard, typing a series of As, just as Dana’s cell phone rang. “Hello?” she answered.

“Dana Harris?”

She recognized the voice. There was no reason to—she’d only heard it briefly—but she did.

“Yes.”

“This is Josh Redmond. I met you—”

“I remember you, Josh. I was going to call you in a little while to see how you and Little Guy are doing. I didn’t want to call too early.” With it being Saturday and all.

“The middle of the night wouldn’t have been too early,” the man said with a tired-sounding chuckle.

Dana remembered her own sleepless state a few days before. “He whined all night?” she said. She should have warned him. But why borrow trouble? The puppy might not have whined at Josh’s place.

And Little Guy needed a home.

But they needed it to be a good home, so that he would have a permanent home. And that’s where she came in.

“He whined. And then yelped. And pooped and peed. And whined some more.”

“Did you bring him into bed with you?” Most pet lovers knew how to solve separation anxiety issues. Or resolved to put up with the whining for the little bit of time it would take to train the animal to sleep alone.

“Hell, no, I didn’t bring it to bed with me!” Josh sounded affronted. “Why would I do that?”

“To get some sleep,” she said calmly, not sure they’d made the right choice in a home for Little Guy. Some animal shelters gave animals away to pretty much anyone who stopped in. A home was better than no home. But...

“I’m not sure how you think I’d sleep any better with him whining next to my ear than I did with him howling from the kennel in the bathroom,” he said. “I started him out with a pet bed in the kennel, but he chewed on that and left foam everywhere. So I tried a blanket. He peed on it. He ripped up the puppy pad and...”

The man was clearly beside himself. If she hadn’t been worried about Little Guy’s future, Dana would have smiled.

“Have you ever had a dog before, Josh?”

She’d assumed, since he’d been at the veterinary clinic, and seemed eager to take the dog, that he was an experienced pet owner.

“No.”

“You’re a cat person, then?”

“No.”

“Horses?”

“I’ve never had so much as a goldfish.”

Dana’s heart sank. She could hear Jerome in the tiny laundry room off the kitchen, moving clothes from the washer to the dryer.

“You’ve never had a pet?” She’d grown up with a kennel of them. Literally. And had made more than one road trip with her mother to deliver one of Susan’s purebred poodles.

“No.”

“And you’re there alone?”

With a growing and teething puppy who was going to get huge?

“I live alone, yes.”

He sounded tired. Frustrated. But he hadn’t asked her to take Little Guy back. Or called the clinic and dropped him off there.

He’d called her. His pet counselor.

Anyone who owned pets had to start somewhere....

“How about if I drive out there,” she heard herself suggesting before she’d fully thought about what she was saying. Her paper was three-quarters of the way finished. She had another day and a half before it was due. She could still make the movie she’d been hoping to see that afternoon. And the hair appointment she’d scheduled, if she was quick about it. “Puppies are a lot like two-year-olds....”

“I have no more experience with those than I do dogs,” he inserted.

Her curiosity flared. Josh was easily a year or two older than she was. At least. He wore expensive shoes. Was new to town and single. Where had he been before he’d relocated to the middle of nowhere in the Arizona desert?

And why did he choose Shelter Valley?

It was absolutely none of her business. She’d spent too much time with her nose in books. Wanted to know everything about everyone.

“He’s testing his boundaries,” she told the slightly desperate-sounding man. “And probably suffering some anxiety, too. As soon as he feels secure, and knows what’s expected of him, he’ll settle down.”

“How long does that normally take?”

“Could be a week, could be months.” She had to be honest with him. For Little Guy’s sake. As much as she wanted the puppy to have found a home, she didn’t want him to stay if it wasn’t the right place for him. “But there are some things you can do to make the process a lot easier on both of you,” she added. “How about if I do your first house check this morning and see what we can do?”

“Would you?”

“Of course.”

“We aren’t taking you away from something important, are we?”

“Just homework,” she told him. “And I’m almost done.” Or she would be. Soon. “I’ll be there within the hour.”

Right after she showered and told Jerome to lock up after himself when he was through.

* * *

JOSH WASN’T READY for company. He’d hauled a rented trailer behind the SUV for the trip out to Arizona with his brown leather sofa and recliner, his sleep mattress and bed frame and the solid wood dresser he’d had made in Spain during a weekend jaunt with Michelle and another couple. He’d brought the butcher-block kitchen table because it was the one he’d grown up with and had snatched from his mother when she’d been redecorating after he left for college.

He had linens—more than he needed. And the kitchen things his mother had hired her housekeeper to outfit him with when they’d given him his condo in Boston as a gift for graduating from Harvard.

His housewarming gift had been a housekeeper of his own.

He’d brought his bicycle, with a promise to himself to get back to riding it. His business books, a flat-screen for his bedroom and one for the front room, his stereo. And very little else.

Not even a trash can, or trash bags, he’d realized during the night when he’d had no place to put the puppy’s soiled towels.

He hadn’t brought paper towels, either. Or cleaning supplies. And he’d found that while toilet paper was good enough for human waste, it didn’t stand up to the messes his new housemate made.

An early-morning trip to the big-box store outside of town had taken care of the basics. He’d already used up a full roll of paper towels. Filled two trash bags with smelly and destroyed goods and hadn’t made his bed.

Or showered, either, for that matter. There’d been the little issue of soap. He’d had the toiletry bag he’d used on the road, the one he always traveled with and that he’d kept stocked with the supplies his housekeeper bought for him. He’d just never had to stop and think about such things as soap before. It was embarrassing to realize that he was a grown man who’d never done a thing to take care of himself. Including buying a bar of soap.

He definitely wasn’t ready for company, but neither could he afford to turn away the help from Pretty Pet Woman, who was giving up her Saturday to help him. Remembering her homework comment, he wondered if she was a student at the university. She’d seemed older to him.

He heard her car in the driveway and watched through his uncurtained front window as she climbed out, hooked a big brown satchel on her shoulder and shut the door of the old Mazda behind her. Mazdas weren’t bad cars. He’d never ridden in one but he’d read reviews. Their engines were decent.

The woman, Dana, looked even better this morning. Her jeans weren’t designer, by any means, but they fit her snugly and accentuated her long legs. Josh wasn’t swearing off women. But he’d sworn off commitment—relationships where someone was going to count on him. He wasn’t going to risk letting someone else down.

“Where’s Little Guy?” she asked after he let her into the modest, three-bedroom, two-bathroom home he’d rented on a month-to-month basis until he could find something he could afford to purchase.

She didn’t seem to notice the house. Or him, either, for which he was thankful, considering the day-old jeans...and beard...he was sporting.

He wouldn’t have been caught dead looking like this outside his bedroom in Boston.

“He’s back here,” he said, leading the way to the spare bathroom that was now completely taken up by the kennel.

As soon as they got close, the puppy started to howl again, saving Josh from the need to make conversation with the woman whose plain black sweater hugged her breasts. He was pissed at himself for noticing.

Maybe once the dog was settled he’d head into Phoenix for the night, find a club and a willing woman. Even without the Redmond money backing him, he shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone to hook up with. “Oh...my...”

Dana Harris was kneeling in front of the kennel door, unlatching the hooked closure. The puppy—drenched in pee again, judging by the whiff of air Josh caught as the demon hurled itself at Dana’s chest—squealed with delight when he saw his visitor.

And then Josh caught a glimpse inside the bathroom. The dog had done a number two in his kennel again. How could any being excrete waste so many times in one day? And he’d also reached through the bars to find the roll of toilet paper Josh had erringly left on the floor beside the kennel. It was smeared with puppy doo, ripped up into little pieces and now...scraps of it were everywhere those flailing, awkward paws could put it.

“Hey, Little Guy, what’ve you got going on here?” Dana asked with a voice he wouldn’t mind hearing directed at him. The woman, who was obviously a lot more comfortable around animals than Josh was, held the squirming ball of fur up and away from her as she lifted him from the kennel to the sink in one swift arc.

“I’ll need a towel, some soap and a glass if you have one,” she said over her shoulder, already running water lightly into the basin as the dog did everything he could to claw himself away from the water and up her shirt. Somehow she managed to hold on to him—and keep him at bay.

Josh didn’t need a second invitation to vacate the scene of the disaster. Grabbing a couple of rolls of paper towels, a bottle of dog shampoo and his travel coffee mug, he made his way back to the bathroom. Josh wasn’t a religious man, but he prayed, anyway, all the way back to the bathroom where he could hear his rescuer in a continuous monologue with his new housemate.

He prayed, not for freedom from the demon, but for the dog’s very quick acclimation to the right way to live in a home. Josh was on a personal mission to think of others, to be aware of their needs and put them before his own, so the dog was staying.

He was going to keep it alive and well if it killed him.

Which it might.

Hurrying back into the bathroom with his sleeves rolled up and with every intention of getting dirty, he found the puppy soaking docilely in the sink, a slightly sad and bedraggled-looking thing, shivering as Dana held him in place.

And for the first time since he’d rolled into Shelter Valley, Josh felt relief.