Cold Nose, Warm Heart

by Mara Wells

  The woman on the far bench rose, calling her dogs, and soon LouLou was alone at the park. She trotted from tree to tree, sniffing and wagging her tail. How nice it was to see the poodle being her happy, doggy self. LouLou didn’t let indecision weigh her down. She followed her instincts and made the best of whatever came her way. He really should be more doglike about life.

  “The benches are definitely a good thing. Shall I make a list?” Riley pulled out her phone, clearly determined to make the best of this situation. “You want a world-class dog park? I’ll help you. No matter what happens to the Dorothy, the neighborhood canines deserve a place to play and be free.”

  “Thank you.” Caleb watched as she pulled up a fresh note and labeled it Dog Park. The park would need a distinctive name, something to draw people from near and far.

  “No need for thanks. I know you’ve had it hard, too, but I’m not quite over my grudge yet. However, this is for the dogs. All for the dogs.”

  “Then by all means, we must have a list.” Caleb’s fingers stilled on her shoulder. If she moved a few more inches, she could tuck into his side, and he’d slide his arm around her. But no, focus on the dogs. He wrenched his gaze away from her and studied the layout of the park.

  She opened up her notes and typed benches, then trees. “Anything else?”

  “What else do you like here?”

  Riley stood and turned in a circle, examining the enclosure. “The water fountains for the dogs.” She added it to her list.

  “What about the dog toys?”

  “Toys? You mean the agility equipment?”

  “Sure, if that’s what it’s called.” He lifted a shoulder. Weird name, agility, but then, he wasn’t a dog person.

  Riley tapped her finger against the side of her phone. “Agility equipment is only good if you know how to use it.”

  “Do you?” He wouldn’t be surprised if she trained dogs on the side. He suspected she had a lot of hustle in her.

  “Not really.” Riley tapped some more on her phone, brightening with each search result. “But we could have a trainer come by. Weekly lessons! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  He hadn’t thought much beyond giving the empty lot a facelift, but if Riley wanted classes, why not? “What kind of lessons?”

  “Agility, obedience. We could offer lots of classes.”

  “That sounds—” he rubbed the back of his neck, “—like a lot of organization.”

  “On it.” Riley added classes to her list and smiled at him.

  He smiled back, and suddenly the moments on her couch, on the bench outside city hall, outside the dumpster, all rushed his mind at once. His heart picked up its pace, even while he chastised himself. Beside the trash bin? Really? What had he been thinking?

  She turned a wide smile on, a dimple dancing in her cheek, and he remembered. He hadn’t been thinking. Just feeling.

  “Do you think?” He inched closer. She let him.

  “Mmm?” Why did her eyes have to be so melt-in-them chocolate?

  He reached toward her, but his hand diverted at the last moment to chuck LouLou under the chin. “Do you think you’d like to see more dog parks, LouLou?”

  Riley took a long, loud inhale before responding. “Wait, are you asking my dog out on a date?”

  The poodle licked his hand with her small, pink tongue. Caleb smiled. “She appears to be saying yes.”

  “A dog park date?”

  He nodded, fingers still under LouLou’s chin. “She’ll be our consultant.”

  “Our?”

  He nodded crisply. “Precisely. The dog park we’re building together. What do you say?”

  His mind flashed to her licking her agreement, like LouLou was, but it wasn’t his hand he pictured her tongue on. He slammed the door on his X-rated mind and tried not to be disappointed when she nodded. Safer that way. Less germy.

  “This weekend?” He frowned, thinking of his calendar. “Wait, I’ve got a thing. The weekend after?”

  “Sure. In the meantime, I’ll talk to Eliza about the half-and-half compromise we’ve reached.” Riley kept nodding. She hadn’t stopped, really, so her head kept bobbing as he suggested times and places, and before he knew it, they were back in the Porsche, on their way to the Dorothy, and he had basically just agreed to date a poodle.

  Chapter 17

  Grams patted her recently sprayed-into-submission coiffure and sniffed. “It doesn’t surprise me. Those Donovans can be quite charming.”

  Riley made a noncommittal humming sound and prayed for an emergency text that would put an end to this torture. She’d gladly pull more chicken bones out of Mr. Cardoza’s garbage disposal if this weekly round of bunco practice would come to an end.

  “Oh, he’s a charmer alright.” Patty rolled the dice and sighed at her results. “He even flirted with me.”

  “Not even one bit shocking. The Donovans are quite shameless in their skirt chasing.” Grams took a sip of chardonnay and snorted.

  Patty’s skirt was more of a housedress, quilted and worn at the cuffs, but Grams’ words had her sitting straighter in her walker-turned-seat. She gripped the yellow handle bars that were now armrests. “Is that such a bad thing? Riley’s all alone in that downstairs apartment. Wouldn’t it be nice for her to have a gentleman friend?”

  Grams rolled the dice. “Riley has terrible taste in men. And Patty, yours clearly isn’t much better. A Donovan is not a suitable gentleman friend for Riley. She needs someone…” Grams trailed off and studied the popcorn ceiling.

  “Handsome? Charming? Wealthy?” Patty rolled the dice and jotted down the points. With only one table going, it wasn’t a true bunco party, but the ladies liked to keep their skills sharp for the monthly game at Patty’s church. That bunco required little in the way of skill was no reason not to enjoy a nice afternoon snack-and-chat.

  “Sounds like Caleb to me.” Eliza filled the fourth seat. She didn’t always come to bunco practice, but when she did, she brought double chocolate brownies and a bottle of red wine. Riley took a hefty sip of her store brand merlot and snatched another brownie for herself. It was her third, but she was behind Grams and Patty by at least two, so she took an extra-large one.

  “What was it like, seeing Husband Number One again?” Riley used the name she’d grown up with before she knew that HNO was William Donovan. The quickest way to get Grams to stop talking about Riley’s love life, or lack thereof, was to get Grams to indulge in a bit of her own drama.

  “She ignored him,” Eliza reported to Patty after her roll of the dice. “I was expecting fireworks, but all we got was a Cold War.”

  “He doesn’t deserve my attention.” Grams took a delicate bite of her fifth brownie. She cut them in fourths, acting as though she couldn’t possibly eat a whole one, but there wouldn’t be a crumb left in Eliza’s pan when she left later that evening. “He knows why. He knows what he did.”

  “What did he do?” Riley asked around a mouthful of her own brownie. She’d heard the dramatized version, the kid-friendly version, the sly innuendo version, but she didn’t think she’d ever heard the truth version.

  “What didn’t he do?” Grams sniffed and dabbed at her nose with a cocktail napkin left over from the Fourth of July. Bright-blue stars crumpled in her hand.

  “If it’s too painful to talk about it, I understand.” Riley knew Grams would rise to the bait. She never passed up the opportunity to tell a story, especially about herself.

  “If you insist.” Dab, dab with the star-spangled napkin. “We were newlyweds, not married even a year, before he took up with another woman. Dancing. So-called business trips. Boys’ nights that kept him out until dawn. All while I stayed home and waited for him to come home.” Dab, dab. “I thought we were happy. I didn’t know. Not until—”

  Riley gripped the dice in her hand. “Until what?”

 
Grams’ face changed, became older, sadder. “She got pregnant. I didn’t.”

  “Oh no.” Patty reached over the brownies to pat Grams’ clenched fist. “That’s terrible.”

  “Said he had to choose his family.” Grams spit out the words like the wound was still as fresh as the day it was inflicted. “Like I wasn’t his family. Like I was nothing.”

  “But he didn’t stay with her, did he?” Eliza’s comment wasn’t necessarily a silver lining, but it did cheer Grams up.

  “Nope. That’s how they are, those Donovans. They go through women like, like—” she grabbed another napkin. “—tissue. Like father, like son. Isn’t that true?”

  “Caleb’s only been married once. And she left him.” Riley didn’t disagree with Grams, not exactly, but she did feel strangely compelled to defend Caleb. LouLou liked him, after all, and dogs were known to be good judges of character. Riley liked him, too, a fact she planned to keep to herself, along with how beautifully his lips fit against hers and how she was slowly being won over by his daily texts. No, Grams would not want to hear about how she scrolled through their very short history of conversations when she climbed in bed. Or how her fingers hovered over the keys, itching to send a late-night invitation. So far, all she’d done was slide her phone into its charger before falling asleep alone, but maybe one night she’d give in and give it up. A girl could hope anyway.

  “He’s young yet.” Grams waved her star-spangled tissue. “Just you wait. He’ll show his true colors soon enough.”

  * * *

  Caleb hadn’t seen Riley or her little flirt of a poodle, LouLou, in two weeks. Of course, he’d texted. GIFs of adorable dogs doing adorable things, like eating birthday cakes or falling asleep in their food dishes, and names and locations of the dog parks he’d found in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. She’d texted back laughing emojis and GIFs of baby goats romping and a cockatoo that liked to dance to Taylor Swift songs.

  Early last night, he’d sent her an itinerary for today, working their way up the west side of the two counties and then circling around and hitting a few parks on the east side on their way back down. It wasn’t that he was so rigid that he couldn’t enjoy a weekend drive exploring dog parks unknown to him before, but he’d seen how happy lists made her when they’d gone to South Beach. He’d made the list for her, and he felt like an overeager puppy for doing it.

  LouLou bounced against the glass front door of the Dorothy before Caleb even attempted the steps. Riley pushed open the door, hair pulled up in a high ponytail and sporting one of what he was beginning to suspect was an endless supply of pink T-shirts. This one featured sleeves and a front pocket in a darker shade than the rest of the shirt. A hobo bag with an especially long strap crossed her chest, and she pulled on oversize shades as she shut the door behind her.

  He squatted to greet LouLou. She placed her paws on his knees and stared at him intently. “Hello there.” He chucked her chin, and her tail whipped frantically back and forth atop her back. “It’s like she knows what’s going on.” He tilted his head up to where Riley now stood over him.

  “Of course she does.” Riley bent to clip the leash onto LouLou’s collar. “Her English is excellent.”

  Caleb barked out a surprised laugh. “Well then, shall we, ladies?”

  LouLou pulled Riley toward the Porsche. “I think that’s a vote for top down.”

  “Not a problem.” Caleb held the door open for them, and when both were settled safely, he rounded the car, noting that he hadn’t felt this happy in weeks. Two weeks to be exact.

  * * *

  Even poodles didn’t have an endless enthusiasm for dog parks. Now on their fifth stop of the day, Caleb and Riley sank onto a dog-bone-shaped bench in Hollywood, Florida’s recently renovated Hollywoof park and surveyed the weaving poles, the separate sections for large and small dogs, and the mushroom-like platforms at different heights for what Caleb could only guess were doggy step classes.

  LouLou didn’t stray too far from them, exhausted from the frenzy of running at Snyder Park when she’d spotted turtles in the lake. She hadn’t gone in after them, but she’d run the shore in anxious back-and-forths until Riley’d finally scooped her up and hosed her off. Caleb’d watched as Riley added hoses to her dog park wish list. He noticed that she didn’t add lake or turtles. She’d been awfully worried that LouLou would catch a turtle, even though the poodle was never closer to one than ten feet.

  “What would you even do with a turtle, LouLou?” she’d asked while hosing mud out of the poodle’s curly coat. LouLou’s response had been enthusiastic tail whumping and a roll in the soft grass as soon as Riley loosened her hold.

  Now, LouLou inspected the base of a tree with some half-hearted sniffing and then, with a huff, flopped onto her side and watched them with one eye.

  “I can’t tell if that means she likes it here or if she wants to go to sleep so she can dream about catching turtles.” Caleb didn’t even try to cover up the giant yawn that overtook him.

  “She’s exhausted, poor thing.” Riley hid her own yawn with a hand. “This is more action than she typically gets in a day.”

  Getting some action was not on the agenda today. Sadly. Down, boy. Focus on business. “What’re your feelings about the big dog/small dog separation fences we’ve seen? Some parks seem to have them, some don’t. Do you think it matters?”

  “My guess is it depends on the dogs.” Riley’s head fell back, and she contemplated the clear sky. “If someone brings an obnoxious dog in, it’s probably nice to have a separate area to take your dog to instead of being forced to go home.”

  “You don’t seem to have that problem at your park.” Caleb couldn’t believe he’d called the empty lot her dog park. Well, that was what he was offering her—or rather the neighborhood—wasn’t it? A compromise. And it was working. With each dog park, Riley relaxed a little more with him. If he’d longed to reach for her, to pull her into his arms a hundred times today, he tried to ignore it. She’d kept a careful distance between them, and he respected that. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been so vulnerable—after the meeting and then dumping her ex’s stuff. She’d been raw, and it had made him raw, too. What Riley really needed was some fun. He draped his arm along the back of the bench and asked her if there’d ever been a fight at her dog park.

  “Not recently, but there have been some incidents. I’m going to vote yes on having two separate areas.” Riley got out her phone and added that to the list. Then she groaned.

  “What?” Caleb didn’t realize he was massaging the back of her neck until she leaned into his fingers with a sigh. So much for keeping his distance. But a massage was fine. Relaxing. He dug into a knot where her neck flowed into the shoulder, and she sighed again.

  “Marco and Kent.” She tilted her head forward to give him better access to her tense muscles. “Another plumbing problem. These pipes are going to be the death of me.”

  “What pipes?”

  “The original pipes.” Riley rolled her head, vertebrae cracking. “The plumber says we need to redo the whole building. We can’t. I do what I can and call the plumber when it gets real bad.”

  “You’ve got plumbing skills? You’re such a Renaissance woman.” Caleb kept his hand on her neck, kneading, while she rolled her head again.

  Riley smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s me, only instead of a paint brush, give me a wrench. I’m holding that whole place together with a lick and a prayer.”

  “It shouldn’t be that way. What about the reserves? Your maintenance fees?”

  Riley flicked her wrist, fingers swishing like she was batting away a fly. “Gone with the wind, as Grams likes to say. Every penny seems already spoken for. Insurance, utilities. I paid for a hallway lightbulb out of my own pocket last month.”

  “It’s that tight?”

  “It’s that tight.”

 
It didn’t make sense to Caleb, how the building could be running on such a shoestring of a budget. Management companies were supposed to make things easier on the owners and residents, not create the kind of stress he was feeling stored in Riley’s body. He gentled his touch. “The Dorothy needs a change. You see that, right? You can’t go on like you are.”

  “It’ll get better. When we get some new renters. It has to.” Riley’s back stiffened. “I better head back. My wrench is calling me.” Her attempt at humor made him smile, but he was still troubled by how much her job demanded of her.

  “Five more minutes.” Caleb trailed his fingers up to put pressure on the base of her skull. It was a dirty trick, meant to entice her into staying, and it worked. “You and LouLou could both use a bit more rest.”

  “No kidding.” Riley closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side, slouching on the bench. “That feels good. Amazingly good.”

  “I’m glad.” He increased the pressure, enjoying how her muscles melted at his touch.

  “But I’m worried you’ll get the wrong idea.”

  He eased up on a knot, kneading it lightly with his knuckles. “What kind of wrong idea?”

  “I’m not going to kiss you again.” Her neck cracked, and she sighed. “It was a bad idea before.”

  “Which time?” He felt her muscles quiver at the memory. He soothed them with long strokes.

  She leaned in to his touch. “All the times.”

  “So you remember them?” He certainly did. Every damn day for two weeks.

  She hummed an agreement. “Bad idea. Ideas.”

  “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “Then you have a bad memory.” She sat up, and her ponytail whipped to the side when she turned her head his way. “It could never work. We’re on opposite sides of the development issue. Plus we’re practically cousins.”