Head Over Paws

by Debbie Burns

  But leaving this one stranded wasn’t going to sit right, and he knew it. He jogged into the parking lot after the girl. So much for being resolute. “Hey, lady, I’ll give you a ride.” He stopped five feet from her. “To New Madrid.”

  She turned around and looked from him to the mechanic, a frown turning down her lips. “Hold on a sec,” she said to whoever was on the other end of her call. She sucked in one side of her cheek and shot a glance toward his truck. Relief seemed to flood into her features at the sight of Samson, who was standing in the driver’s seat, watching them from the window with an easy pant curling his mouth into a smile.

  She met Gabe’s gaze again. “You aren’t involved in the rescue?” she asked as if trying to make sense of what he was doing here.

  “I’m not a driver, but I am headed down to help.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds before she nodded. “Okay.” She lifted her phone again. “Hey, I’ve got a ride. We’re back to the original plan. I’ll see you down in New Madrid tonight.” She turned away and dropped her voice, but Gabe could just make out her words. “No, not him. The other one. It’s fine.” A pause. “He’s got a dog. It’s fine. I’ll text you.”

  Gabe returned to the spot under the awning for the crates. They were big and bulky, but he grabbed both by the handles and headed for the back of his truck. The camper shell was unlocked, and he’d slid them into the back by the time she joined him. Her arms were clamped over her chest and she had a purse with her, but that was it.

  “Do you need anything out of your car?”

  She gave a light shrug of one shoulder and shook her head. “I’m good. I didn’t pack anything extra.”

  The mechanic was putting out his cigarette and watching them from under the cover of the awning. “Guess we’ll be calling you about your car Monday.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got your manager’s card.”

  As the guy headed to an old Corvette on the far side of the lot, the girl appraised the strapped-down trunk at the opposite end of Gabe’s truck bed peeking out from between the crates. It was bursting open with the gear that enabled him to camp at will when he headed out on different weekend hikes with Samson.

  “Thanks for the ride.” There was a touch of hesitation in her tone, and Gabe sympathized with her. As much as he’d not been looking forward to a passenger, he wasn’t the one about to pile into a stranger’s car.

  “You’re welcome, but in good conscience, I can’t let you get into my truck without asking you to first snap a picture of my plates and text it to someone who knows what you’re doing today.” He shut the gate and camper top. “Just good practice for anyone getting into a stranger’s vehicle,” he said, thinking how he was probably freaking her out more.

  Her eyes widened a touch. They were hazel with flecks of green and gold. “Okay. Mind if I have a name to go with it?”

  “Gabe Wentworth. If you want to snap a picture of my license, too, you’re welcome to do so.”

  “Olivia.” She extended her hand, and her eyes widened again at his grip. “Graham,” she added, flushing pink and accenting the thin constellation of freckles bridging her nose and the tops of her cheeks. And somehow drawing his attention to a pair of full and defined lips.

  “My license is up front in my wallet if you want it.” Her hand was cold to the touch, probably from being stuck out in the rain. He held it just long enough to feel the warmth under the surface. “While you get settled, I’ll let my dog out to take a leak.” A leak? Really? You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?

  There was a thick strip of grass between the shop and the nail salon next door. Gabe pulled out the step stool and called Samson out the driver’s side back door.

  Samson lumbered down to the pavement and took his time with a deep stretch of his front and back legs. When finished, he fell into an easy trot after Gabe motioned toward the grass island. Oblivious to the rain, Samson sniffed around on the strip of grass before finding the perfect spot to pee. After some more sniffing, he scent marked on a scraggly bush and a broken piece of curb before trotting back through the rain.

  By the time Samson was loaded into the back again, the girl—Olivia—was settled in the front passenger seat. She’d removed her wet jacket and had tucked it and her purse on the floor behind her feet. She was wearing jeans that hugged her thighs and a perfectly snug, light-green sweater that drew his attention back to that hair of hers spilling over the top of it.

  Gabe paused for a second before sliding into the driver’s seat. It had been awhile since someone that pretty had ridden in his truck, and a bit of tension rippled across his ribs. There was no denying he was nervous about the prospect of riding alone in a vehicle with a chick this good-looking. That was irritating more than anything else. He’d have preferred to think the last few years of being a self-proclaimed hermit had moved him past being affected by such a thing.

  Clearly, they hadn’t. His stomach tightened and his throat threatened to lock up.

  He slid into his seat and shut the door, and dammit anyway if the smell of her—something light and fresh like flowers—didn’t war with the odor of wet dog inside the cab.

  Samson shoved between the seats to give her a solid sniff along her cheek and behind her ear before settling down across the back seat again.

  “Cute dog. I’m a sucker for retrievers. And that gray muzzle. He’s adorable.”

  “Thanks, and I’m pretty sure he not only knows it, but takes advantage of it.”

  She smiled. “What’s his name?”

  “Samson, but if you’ve got a treat on you, he’ll answer to anything.” He flipped on the ignition, more to keep the silence at bay than anything else, and said, “So, Olivia, huh? Nice name.”

  “Yep, Olivia. And thanks. When I was a kid, I always wished I had my sister’s name instead, but I think Olivia’s the name I’m supposed to have.”

  She folded her hands over her lap. Her seat belt was buckled. His seat belt, actually, and the way it was hugging her thighs and cradling the valley between her breasts was more action than he’d had in a while.

  Get ahold of yourself, man. Has it really been that long? Actually, it had, he realized. Over a year, and that last time hadn’t been anything to hang onto. Before that…it had really been awhile.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ava.”

  He nodded and allowed a direct glance at her as he slipped the truck into reverse. Her profile was as close to sculpted as he could imagine. He cleared his throat. “What’s better about Ava than Olivia?” He pulled out of the parking lot and headed on autopilot back to Interstate 55.

  “It’s easier to spell. And it’s a palindrome. What kid wouldn’t want their name to be a palindrome?” When Gabe raised an eyebrow and nodded in agreement, she added, “So, is it just Gabe, or is it short for Gabriel?”

  Gabe chuckled. “Honestly, if it was, I doubt I’d own up to it.”

  It was her turn to laugh. The sound of it rolled across the cab, warm and inviting. Infectious. She dragged a hand through the lower end of her hair, sweeping it all to one side, exposing her neck. “So, uh, thanks again for the ride. This is my first rescue drive, and it’s turned into a bit of a disaster.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “They don’t know yet. It crapped out a little way east, and I had it towed. By the time I got it here, the shop was a half hour from closing. They’ve done a few things, and they’re saying it could be the transmission, which would really suck. I was hoping to trade it in in a few months, not dump a few thousand dollars into it.”

  Gabe asked a half-dozen questions about what had happened, attempting to isolate what might’ve gone wrong, and none of her answers sounded promising.

  “I take it you know cars,” she said afterward.

  “I come from a family of mechanics.”

  “Oh
. So… You’re not a driver, but you’re headed down to New Madrid to help anyway? How’d you hear about it?”

  “A friend of mine. She’s joined a Facebook group of some sort. I guess a few of the animals who’ve been brought in from the floods are more roughed up than others. The organizers are looking for the help of a few vets, so I’m headed down.”

  “You’re a vet?” Her voice pitched a bit at the end.

  “Still feels a bit weird to say it, but yeah. I’ve been in practice since my residency this summer.”

  “That’s cool. I wanted to be a vet when I was growing up, but the idea of that much studying was a turnoff. It’s not that I wasn’t engaged in school. I was, but I’m dyslexic. Which is why my sister’s name being so easy to spell was appealing.”

  This level of honesty with a total stranger had Gabe unsure of how to answer. He merged onto the highway after first slowing down to let a semi in the slow lane pass.

  “It all worked out okay,” she added into his silence. “After bouncing around in a bunch of different classes, mostly art and math, I settled on math, but then I went to work for Teach for America after graduating. Now I teach middle-school math, and I love it.”

  “And you’re feeding the part of you who wanted to be a vet with this stuff, I take it?”

  Olivia nodded thoughtfully. “I guess so. I grew up on my grandparents’ farm.” She shot a look back at Samson, who was dozing again, lulled to sleep by the movement of the car. “There were always dogs and cats around. One of my favorites looked a lot like him. She passed away last year. Where I live now, there’s a no-pets policy.”

  “Sounds to me like maybe you should consider finding somewhere else to live. Where’re you from?”

  “Originally, a half hour south of New Madrid. I live in Illinois now, but I teach in St. Louis.”

  “Oh yeah? Whereabouts?”

  “A magnet school in the city.”

  “Huh. It’s a small world, and a small city. Smaller than I care for sometimes. I’ve lived in St. Louis my whole life aside from when I was away at school. Originally, I didn’t plan on returning, but I did. Family and all. And now I’m taking over a practice in Rock Hill, so it seems I’m staying.”

  Gabe guessed her to be about twenty-five or twenty-six, a few years younger than him, and he couldn’t help but notice there was no ring on her finger. He wondered if the call she’d made had been to a boyfriend. He couldn’t imagine her not having her pick of them. Not only was she something to look at, but she seemed nice, the kind of nice you didn’t easily forget.

  “That’s perspective for you,” she said. “My hometown’s smaller than Sikeston even. Growing up, I drove into New Madrid with my parents and grandparents on weekends to shop ‘in town,’” she said, making air quotes at the last two words. “St. Louis was intimidating the first few months. Especially driving downtown. But I like being immersed in so much culture. Back home, it was cotton and corn and the county fair. You also won’t see me complaining about such a big variety of places to eat within a few square miles of where I work.”

  It was on the tip of Gabe’s tongue to ask if she had a favorite restaurant when he realized how easy it was to talk to her. Almost as easy as it was to talk to Yun. Ever since they’d met, for whatever reason, he’d thought of Yun like one of those friends he’d had back in elementary school before he started taking notice of things like boobs and thighs and supple neck lines.

  But Olivia wasn’t Yun. She was a stranger, a stunning, friendly stranger whose curves and sculpted face stood out in his peripheral vision like a bull’s-eye. Only none of that was shutting him down. As easily as the conversation was flowing, he wanted to keep it going.

  Before he knew it, he’d driven the twenty miles to New Madrid and was pulling off on the exit ramp, and she was telling him there was no need to navigate. She could lead him where they were headed with her eyes closed. And Gabe found himself wishing they had another hundred miles before the trip ended.

  It was a curve ball he hadn’t expected. There was a beautiful girl in his truck and they were talking and he didn’t want it to end. Any of it.

  Had someone told him this a few hours ago, he’d never have believed it.

  Chapter 4

  The big metal shed behind Milton’s Feed Store had been converted from storage to a temporary holding space for misplaced dogs, cats, and a handful of goats. With no electricity, it wasn’t an ideal space, but it was March and above freezing most nights, and the animals were protected from the incessant rain that was tapping on the metal roof like a lullaby.

  Years before being legally allowed to drive, Olivia could remember her grandpa asking her to drive his ancient F-150 from the main store along the winding gravel pathway to this shed so that one of the workers could fill the truck bed with shavings as he paid. Maybe time and adrenaline had embellished the memory, but the first time she’d needed to back the truck up into the open sliding doorway, she’d barely had a decent view over the rim of the back seat, and she’d been terrified of backing into one of the sides.

  She’d stopped riding along with her grandpa when she was sixteen and went to work at the Dairy Freeze, a little roadside shack fifteen minutes south of here. How she’d possibly thought the nine years that had passed since then had been enough to keep her from being recognized this afternoon, she wasn’t sure, but she’d been wrong. She was about to take one of the crated dogs out into the rain for a potty break when a Milton employee popped in to fill a customer’s truck bed with some of the remaining bags of shavings piled high in one corner. She guessed him to be in his late fifties or early sixties. He was tall and fit for his age, so much so he rocked the overalls he was wearing. He looked familiar but not familiar enough for her to have once known his name.

  He singled her out just seconds after rounding the corner. “Olivia Graham, is that you, all growed up?” he asked, tipping his faded John Deere ball cap.

  Guess you’ll be making those phone calls to let everyone know you’re here after all. She headed over and spent the next couple minutes answering a slew of questions. With her red hair—hair that had been even brighter red when she was a kid—and freckles, Olivia had gotten used to people remembering her. The fact that her grandpa was a second-generation farmer who’d grown up in the Missouri Bootheel didn’t help her slide into anonymity either.

  Nor did breaking up with a Jones three weeks before the wedding. The Joneses were local legends, mostly because they’d been farming in the Bootheel since just after the Civil War and were one of the few families around here who’d held onto their land through the Great Depression.

  As much as she didn’t like to think about it, she wouldn’t be surprised if people hung onto their belief in her poor judgment for another few decades.

  “Trevor know you’re in town?” the man asked, driving her suspicion home. He was tossing the forty-pound bags of shavings into the truck bed like they were filled with fluff. The driver wasn’t stepping out into the rain, and Olivia hoped the woman stayed put just in case she knew her too.

  “I wouldn’t think so.” Olivia ran the length of the leash through her fingers, refusing to say anything else. She shot a glance over at Gabe. He was squatting in front of a crate and talking to one of the two rescue workers.

  It honestly didn’t matter if he overheard. Her sister was most likely finishing up with her clients, and she’d be driving down to pick her up. When Gabe was finished with whatever emergency had brought him here, it was doubtful he’d stick around either. And it wasn’t like she’d ever see him again. They’d met three hours from home, and there, they didn’t run in the same circles. He was a vet; she was a teacher.

  Her chest tightened into a knot at the thought. Even if she didn’t see him again, he wouldn’t be easy to forget. Neither would his endearing dog.

  Samson had won her over with a single look. He was one of those dogs who’d
bonded with his human so much that she’d swear he knew how to communicate like one. Even here around the kenneled dogs and cats and the playpen full of goats, he wasn’t on a leash. Instead, he hung close to Gabe, veering off once in a while to sniff something that sparked his interest.

  It seemed as if she’d made a friend during their short time together, because Samson left Gabe’s side a couple different times to find Olivia and furtively burrow his head under her hand for a bit of scratching.

  “Good kid, that boy,” the man said, not dropping the Trevor thing. He tossed in a final bag of shavings and gave a determined pat on the side of the woman’s truck, indicating he was finished. She waved a thanks from inside the cab and pulled away.

  “Yep,” Olivia agreed. Trevor was a good guy. She wouldn’t have been with him since her sophomore year of high school if he wasn’t. But him being a good guy didn’t mean it had been wrong to break off their engagement.

  None of that was any of this man’s business. She held up the dangling leash in her hand. “Well, I guess I’d better make myself useful.”

  He clasped her shoulder and gave a single nod. “You take care now, Ms. Graham. I’ll let your grandpa know I saw you.”

  Of course you will. Olivia resigned herself to checking in with her parents and grandparents soon and returned to the dog she’d been about to take out. She squatted to open the crate door and hooked on the leash. The dog was midsize and cute, some sort of Lab mix, mostly black with patches of white on her chest and back feet. The poor girl was shaking, and Olivia’s stomach twisted into a knot of sympathy. She didn’t know this dog’s story but had been told that while a few of the dogs and cats in the holding area had been dropped off by flooded-out owners, most had been found roaming loose in town or walking up to people’s homes, driven to high ground this last week by the rising waters.