by Debbie Burns
“Hound, was he?”
Olivia had presumed so, but Gabe spoke up. “A pointer. German shorthaired, if I were to guess. Reddish-brown face and ears and a flea-bitten look to his coat. Pretty sure his tail was docked.”
The man nodded and ran his tongue along his front teeth. “I’ll be on the lookout for him.”
Gabe popped open his door and hopped out. “Got a pen and paper? I’ll give you my number in case you spot him.”
With Gabe blocking her view, Olivia sat back in her seat and released a tired breath. Conversations with her parents and grandparents were already playing out in her head. The same way she could hear Ava telling her she had a knack for creating chaos. Her muscles tensed in reaction to words that hadn’t yet been spoken. It wasn’t true. She really wasn’t one to cause chaos. Except for calling off her engagement less than a month before a wedding this entire town had been anticipating, perhaps.
Besides, she could make out with Gabe—or anyone else, for that matter—any day of the week and not be in the wrong. She’d broken things off with Trevor six months ago. With the exception of one major fail of a blind date that Ava had talked her into, she’d not so much as thought about dating. Or climbing onto some really hot, amazing guy’s lap hours after meeting him for the sexiest make-out session she’d ever had.
As Gabe stepped back into the cab, Olivia waved a humiliated goodbye.
“You okay?” he asked after shutting the door.
“Yeah… He, uh, keeps in touch with my grandpa pretty regularly, I guess.”
“Sorry about that. If you think it would help to put a face with the gossip, I’m happy to stick around and introduce myself.”
Olivia folded her hands on her lap. “It don’t think it would. Thank you though.”
Her hands were shaking, and she wasn’t sure if it was still from the cold water or from being caught in such a compromising position when it had seemed to be just her and Gabe and the rain, or maybe both.
The sky was growing dark in the east, and it occurred to her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The shakiness in her hands could also have something to do with the ravenous hunger sweeping over her.
She released a tired breath. “This sucks.”
“I’m sorry, Olivia. The road seemed all but deserted. I didn’t think we’d have company. If there’s anything I can do…”
This whole thing was her fault, not Gabe’s. And she didn’t want him beating himself up over it. “There’s one thing maybe.” She forced a lightness into her tone she didn’t yet feel. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I’m the queen of stress eating. If you’re hungry, it just so happens the world’s best shake-and-burger joint is down the road a little way. Maybe we could circle another time or two, then if we don’t see him, grab something to eat and check back in a little bit?”
“Olivia Graham, you know how to speak my language.” He cocked an eyebrow, his gaze dropping to her lips before he turned his attention to the road. “In more ways than one.”
Chapter 7
A half hour had passed since Olivia had abruptly shimmied off his lap, and Gabe’s blood was still running hot. It could very well be seventy-two and sunny instead of fifty-one and drizzling. Considering he’d come closer to drowning in chilly floodwaters than he wanted to think about, he debated offering Olivia the kudos she deserved. Considering how their short make-out session had ended, he wasn’t convinced he should. It wasn’t just those remarkable lips or the body that sent his thoughts in a thousand wild directions. There’d been something exceptionally real and raw in those few quiet, unexpected minutes.
And a part of Gabe that had been slumbering the last several years had stirred to life to salute with a hell yes.
The tree-house-size shake-and-burger joint she’d suggested was the takeout-only sort that seemed to thrive in small towns. Even before Gabe got a whiff of grilled beef spilling out into the parking lot, he knew he wouldn’t leave disappointed.
As they’d waited for their order, Olivia had admitted to working here at the Dairy Freeze for two years when she was a teen. Gabe could envision a younger version of her working behind the window, her striking red hair drawn up in a ponytail sporting one of the blue ball caps embossed with cheeseburgers, handing out white paper bags stuffed with greasy burgers, and that smile of hers sending a town full of guys into a tailspin.
On an afternoon as dreary as today, he was surprised to find business as steady as it was. It was sunset and the clouds were thinning to the west, a sharp contrast to the blanket of gray, endlessly dripping clouds overhead. With any luck, this wet spell was finally about to break.
After being caught midembrace, and sensing that Olivia was worried about the ramifications she’d face in a rural area like this, Gabe wasn’t eager to suggest they eat in his truck. Instead, they sat side by side on the dry half of a picnic table under a narrow awning near the walk-up window. Aside from him and Olivia—and Samson, who planted himself attentively between them in the event that even the tiniest morsel fell to the ground—everyone else was taking their food to go.
As he bit into the burger, Gabe stifled a groan of pleasure. They’d prepared it just as he’d asked: cheese, lettuce, pickle, ketchup, and mustard. “Damn.” He swallowed and took another bite before shaking his head. “Worth a much longer drive if you ask me.”
Olivia mumbled in agreement and wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin even though nothing had been there. Had there been, he’d have been tempted to swipe it off with his thumb. Any excuse to connect with that mouth again.
“I know,” she agreed. “I make it a point of stopping by every time I come home.”
“I can see why.” He swallowed a few more bites and washed them down with a mouthful of root beer. “How far away is your family?” She’d been visibly tense on the drive here, but she seemed to be calming down. He wanted to keep the conversation away from what had happened in the truck, but he also wanted to know more about her. A lot more.
Olivia nodded in the direction of the road toward the west. “My grandparents’ farm is another ten miles away. It’s where I grew up. My parents didn’t get a place of their own until after my sister and I moved out. It was a different upbringing than most of my friends had, but it worked for us. My parents lived in town a year or two, but last summer they moved into a prefab house on one corner of my grandparents’ property. They aren’t the best at adulting, I guess you could say.”
“There are all sorts of normal anymore, if you ask me. So, your grandpa’s the real thing? A full-time farmer? Growing up in the city, I can’t say I’ve known anyone who’s managed to make a living that way.”
Olivia nodded as she finished chewing a bite of her burger. “Yeah. Cotton mostly, but corn too. He inherited the land—about a hundred acres—from his dad. My uncle’s in the process of taking over so my grandpa can retire, though everyone says he won’t stop farming completely till the day he dies.
“My uncle lives in town with his family and still works the night shift at a bakery three days a week. At some point, he’ll move his family onto the property, but not for a few years. He wants his kids to finish high school where they are. My dad and my aunt are the only other Graham siblings, and neither of them are interested in farming. I guess you could say my dad’s a dreamer. He’s always working on the next big thing, which drives my mom nuts.”
Her fingers, long and delicate, were wrapped around her burger. Gabe had a feeling it would be awhile before he forgot the feel of them brushing over the ridge of his jaw.
“Yeah, well, neither of my parents are dreamers, and they still drive each other nuts.”
Her tense shoulders fell as they talked. Gabe took it as a good sign that she was relaxing again, the same way she had on the drive down when they’d fallen into easy conversation. Between bites of burger and fries, Olivia filled in the silence with
what she’d loved best about growing up in a such a rural area—the night sky; crisp, clean air; and the county fair—and what she’d loved least—the isolation and everyone knowing pretty much everything about everyone else, or assuming they did. Gabe listened intently, distracted only when their fingers brushed as they reached for fries at the same time and by how her long lashes framed her hazel eyes.
Her sense of humor, a touch dry blended with a heavy dose of realism, was refreshing. Unlike a couple of single women his age who worked at his clinic, she didn’t seem to be tailoring her answers to what he might hope to hear. It was this as much as the fact she was so damn beautiful that had him reaching out to brush the tips of his fingers down her temple. She could probably read it on his face, but he wanted to do much more than that.
He was impossibly close to leaning over and kissing her again—and he was confident she’d open her mouth to it the same way she did earlier—when a truck pulled into the parking lot and slipped into an open space ten or so feet away. The look that passed over her as she glanced that direction sent an alarm through Gabe.
“I, uh…” Bowing her head, she pressed her middle and index finger against her forehead. “Wow.” She sucked in a breath and looked up.
He followed her gaze and was only half-surprised when it landed on a guy about his age behind the wheel. He had dirty-blond hair and was wearing a faded hoodie, and his mouth had fallen open in surprise at the sight of Olivia.
“Everything okay, Olivia?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard enough that he heard it, then broke into a flurry of activity, lifting their empty fry container off the table and folding it flat into her wrapper along with a bit of her discarded bun. He didn’t think it was his imagination that she’d gone a few shades lighter.
“I was trying to find a way to bring it up. I guess this is another thing about life out in the middle of nowhere that I’m not crazy about. You end up running into the one person you’d enter a half marathon to avoid even though you hate running.” She gave Gabe a pleading look. “It’s getting pretty dark. We should look for the dog again while we can still see. I’ll, uh, be just a second though.”
When she reached for the trash, Gabe waved her off. “I’ll get it.”
Old boyfriend, he guessed as she headed over to the driver’s-side door of the guy’s truck. The guy didn’t seem that eager to get out. It wasn’t until Olivia came to a standstill by his window and a few awkward seconds had passed that he opened the door and stepped down from the cab.
Gabe gave the last bite of his burger to Samson, gathered the trash, dumped it, and returned to his truck with the dog trotting along at his heels. After getting Samson loaded with help of the stool, he checked his work email on his phone. He skimmed the subject lines to see most were sales pitches by drug companies and a few were responses from clients to the automatic follow-ups they received after bringing in an animal for a visit. He’d look at the messages later.
He kept tabs on Olivia in his peripheral vision. Gabe didn’t need to be an expert at body language to know she was stressed. Her whole body seemed stiff and tense. Her arms were tucked over her chest, and she shook her head abruptly a couple of times, sending that remarkable hair of hers tumbling over her shoulders. The guy didn’t seem to be antagonizing her or Gabe would’ve stepped out. His head was tucked, and he was staring at the ground more than he was at her. Finally, the guy tipped his hat and took off for the ordering window.
Gabe gave her time to get settled in the truck before reversing and pulling out of the lot. Once she was buckled, he asked, “Back to where we came from?”
She nodded, tucking her hands under her thighs.
When she didn’t seem ready to broach what had just happened, Gabe decided to focus on the dog. “I was thinking he might try going home after he calms down and runs off some energy. Not to his pen, per se, but to the house.”
“That makes sense. A lot of sense, actually.”
They rode in silence, and when she didn’t seem ready to talk, Gabe turned up the radio, scanning stations until he landed on one with good reception. It was bluegrass, and whatever was playing had a catchy fiddle and banjo melody.
By the time they were headed down the dirt road again, it was close to fully dark, but mercifully the rain was ceasing. “What do you know. Maybe we won’t be building arks after all.”
As she smiled, Olivia’s white teeth were illuminated by the soft light of the dashboard. “That’d be nice. It’s been so long, I can’t remember the way it feels not to have the ground squish under your feet with every step you take.” Gabe was pulling into the tattered driveway of the house when she added, “And around here, I bet everyone’s ready to not have rivers filling people’s backyards.”
He slipped the truck into park and shut off the ignition, scanning the heavily littered front yard for any sign of the dog. The windows were dark, without even a hint of digital light shining out of any of them, causing Gabe to suspect the power was out. The level of trash strewn about the front yard and the general disrepair of the home made it difficult for him to give the benefit of the doubt in terms of a caring pet owner residing here. Maybe there was a genuine excuse for why the dog had been left behind. Maybe there wasn’t.
Perhaps the owners were out of town and not keeping track of what was going on in their hometown. Perhaps it was the fault of someone else entirely. But whoever was responsible for that pointer should’ve pulled him out yesterday at the latest.
“Dogs are smart, but do you ever wonder how much they understand about how much of their condition is the responsibility of their owner?”
“I was wondering the same thing,” Olivia said as she unbuckled her seat belt. “If he knows that human error left him nearly drowning in a locked pen. The other thing I thought of was I don’t think those kids were telling the whole story.”
“How so?” Gabe asked as they stepped out.
“The dead bolt. From what I could see, it looked like it was submerged a foot at least.”
“It was. Maybe a little deeper. I wondered that too. How those kids knew to ask for someone to bring bolt cutters when they didn’t get more than halfway to him.”
“Yeah, the river’s rising fast, but not that fast.”
“The truth of the matter is that dog was probably dealing with floodwater in his pen for more hours or days than I care to think about.” Gabe headed around to the truck bed, opened it and the camper, and crawled in again. He rooted around in the camping tub until he found the metal tin where he kept a couple days’ worth of Samson’s kibble and a stainless-steel bowl.
When he shimmied out with the one arm full, Olivia let out an appreciative “Oh.” She stepped to the side as he swung off the gate. “Drawing him in with food is a great idea.” She raised her hands, crossing fingers on both of them. “Let’s hope he’s in hearing distance.”
Leaving the gate open, Gabe shot Samson a look through the back-seat window as they passed by. He could just make out his loyal dog in the darkness. Samson was watching them intently, ears perked forward. “I know, bud. You’ll get your dinner in a bit. Promise.”
Olivia laughed softly. “He’s the cutest dog I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Watch out; he knows it.” He offered the tin in Olivia’s direction. “Want to shake it as we walk? I’m hoping he knows the sound. Most dogs recognize it, regardless of what their food’s kept in.”
“Sure.” She took the tin, an old two-gallon popcorn one with a snowman family on the front, and shook it as they fell into step across the yard.
“Gabe?” Her voice was punctuated by the effort she was putting into shaking the tin. “That thing I was trying to tell you before…before we kissed…”
She stopped shaking the tin and paused midstep. Her words tumbled out, the weight of them visible on her shoulders. “I did that same thing. The same thing your ex-fiancée did.
Only it was worse. Three weeks. That was all we had left before the wedding. And everyone here knows it. What’s worse, he didn’t do anything wrong. It was me. All me. I just couldn’t do it.” She stopped to collect herself, shifting the tub to rest on her hip. She clamped a hand over her mouth and gave an abrupt shake of her head.
Gabe was determining whether to kiss her or let her finish first when he heard a long, drawn-out yawn that finished off in a whine, just audible over the gurgle of the floodwater. They both froze instantly. The sound had come from the front of the house.
Gabe scanned the littered, darkened porch. In the corner, nearly lost behind the haphazard lawn furniture and a knocked-over table, the pointer was cautiously rising onto stiff or wobbly legs.
From the confines of the truck, as if sensing he was in danger of losing his dinner, Samson let out a baritone woof.
The pointer looked from Gabe and Olivia to the truck, whined, and turned his attention to them again. Gabe was debating what to do next when, in the darkness, he was just able to discern that the gangly pointer was cautiously wagging his docked tail.
Moving slowly and deliberately, Gabe set the bowl down on the ground and glanced at Olivia. “Let’s finish this conversation when we’ve got nothing but time to do it justice. For now, how about you fill that bowl with kibble, because I think we’re just a step or two from making a new friend.”
Chapter 8
The dog recognized the man by his scent. In the still night air, it blended with the woman’s and the sharp metallic odor of the object she carried. His stomach cramped and his mouth watered at the sound of the kibble clanking inside it.
Weakened from the swim as the dog was, his legs would hardly heed his command. Instead, they shook underneath him, threatening to collapse without warning. So much time had passed since the dog had munched kibble between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Now that he was safe from the rush of the river that had swept into his pen, threatening to swallow him up, the thick fog that had been clouding the dog’s thoughts returned.
