“Good morning, Will,” the receptionist said as he entered the reception area.
“Hi, Faye, I hear the adoption software is acting up.” He looked around, but didn’t see the director. “Is Tansy in her office?”
“Go on. She’s expecting you,” Faye said, waving him toward the back as she reached to answer the ringing phone.
Harley hesitated and Will wondered if the dog was afraid he was being returned to the shelter. “It’s all right, buddy,” he said, patting the pup’s wide head. “You’re stuck with me for another week.”
When they reached the director’s open door, Will knocked on the frame. “Are you ready for me to check out the program?” he asked.
Tansy Dexter stood up and motioned for him to sit in the chair behind her desk. “We’ve noticed it duplicates entries, though it doesn’t happen every time. I’m afraid I won’t be able to catch all of the duplications and correct them manually, and as a non-profit our records have to be impeccable.”
Will nodded. “Otherwise it looks as if you’re padding your success rate of finding homes for the animals.”
“Exactly,” Tansy said. “We could lose our funding.”
“I understand,” he said, sitting down in front of her computer and loading the program. He wasn’t surprised that Harley got as close to the chair as he could and lay down. It had become a ritual for the dog to lie at Will’s feet when he was working.
Going into the log files, he scanned for errors and checked his code to confirm that his algorithms were correct. Finding the bug, he quickly implemented the fix, then ran a unit test to insure he had repaired the problem.
How could he have missed something so simple? He had tested the program at home before turning it over to The Haven and it had run perfectly. But he’d been short on time and had only run the program once or twice. With extended use, it had failed to perform correctly.
“That should take care of it,” he said, looking up at Tansy. “Is there anything else the program’s been doing that it shouldn’t?”
“No, other than the duplications, it’s worked beautifully. We can’t thank you enough for developing it for us,” she said, beaming. “Now, if we could get donations for the new roof just as easily, I might be able to sleep at night.”
“Are you getting close to your goal?” he asked, hoping they were. With the amount of rain that fell on Seattle, it was imperative to have a roof that didn’t leak.
“Let’s just say we’re closer than we were, but we can’t call the contractor just yet.” She sighed. “But I can’t do anything about it until after the first of the year, so the top priority on today’s ‘worry list’ is ensuring we have enough money to meet the day-to-day expenses of The Haven.”
“It sounds like a headache,” Will said, meaning it. He didn’t want to think what might happen to the animals if The Haven ran out of money.
“So, how are you and Harley getting along?” she asked as she bent down to pet the dog.
Telling her about Harley’s ability to open doors with lever handles, Will laughed. “I’ve nicknamed him Harley Houdini.”
“Oh, my, I’ll have to make a note of that,” Tansy said, grinning. “That’s something his adoptive parents will need to know when we find him a forever home.” She gave him a beseeching smile. “You wouldn’t be interested in sharing your life with a big teddy bear of a dog, would you?”
“’I am tempted to keep him,” Will said, realizing it was true as he reached down to stroke Harley. He hadn’t intended to become attached to the pup, but Harley was easy to bond with and Will had a hard time imagining his life without the dog. “But it wouldn’t be fair to him,” he said, regretting that he couldn’t keep Harley. “I’m gone all day and there wouldn’t be anyone to take him for walks until I got home.”
She nodded. “I understand, but had to ask.”
Rising to his feet, Will picked up Harley’s leash and started toward the door. “I’ll let you get back to it. If you run into any more problems, don’t hesitate to call me.”
“I will, and thanks, Will,” Tansy said, already sitting down behind the desk to get back to work.
Making a mental note to donate more to the roof fund when he brought Harley back after the New Year, Will left The Haven and drove the forty-five minutes home to Crystal Cove.
He had a lot of thinking to do and the sooner he got started sorting out his feelings for Macie, the better.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR SEVERAL DAYS, Will agonized over Macie and her reviews of his software. He hated to admit it, but most of her comments had been right on the money. He had been making mistakes, and whether they were minor bugs or not, they were stupid errors that he should have caught. The bottom line was, he had been rushing jobs in order to take up the slack at Snohomish Software Solutions, and the quality of his work had suffered.
He also couldn’t seem to stop missing Macie. He felt empty without seeing her every day. Somehow she had managed to get past his defenses with little effort. All she’d had to do was flash that cute little smile of hers and the battle had been lost. He might have tried telling himself that he wanted nothing to do with her, but he had known from the beginning that she was special. That what they shared was special. Otherwise, he would have thrown away her invitation to the Christmas party without a second thought and forgotten all about her.
But Macie Fairbanks was hard to forget. She was everything a woman should be—soft, curvy and so damned responsive to his touch. His body hardened at the memory of what they had shared on Christmas night. In their entire five-year relationship, he had never experienced even a fraction of the passion with his ex-wife that he had shared in that one night with Macie. But what’s more, she respected him. She’d been the one person to believe in him so much that she had told him the truth.
But could he have fallen for her so hard, so fast?
It certainly hadn’t been that way with Suzanne. He had taken two years to propose, and if he was completely honest with himself, he wouldn’t have been all that upset if she had turned him down. When he thought of asking Macie to marry him, a painful knot twisted his gut at the idea that she might say no.
Damn! He had to be losing what little sense he had left if he was fantasizing about proposing to a woman he had only known for a week.
Will took a deep breath, then another. Even if he was in love with Macie, he wasn’t sure he could get past that she’d intentionally hidden her identity from him. They’d talked about her alter ego’s negative reviews of his software and she hadn’t said a word about her pseudonym. So how could he ever trust her to be completely honest with him?
He had already been in one marriage that ended because of his wife’s lies. He’d be damned before he repeated that mistake.
Will sighed heavily and turned his attention back to the computer screen. Even if Macie had a reasonable explanation for not revealing who she was, it was all water under the bridge now. He hadn’t seen her since the day after Christmas, and if he had, she probably wouldn’t have talked to him.
“It’s probably for the best, Harley,” he said, glancing down to where the dog was normally curled up at the side of his desk on a blanket. Except the space was empty.
Calling the puppy, Will went to see where he was and what he had gotten into. But panic began to grip him when he couldn’t find the dog.
A sinking feeling formed in the pit of his stomach as Will walked into the living room. The door was standing wide open. Harley had let himself out of the house again.
Not bothering to put on a jacket, Will grabbed the leash and ran down the dock calling the puppy. Nothing. As he approached Macie’s house at the end of the dock, he hoped the furry traitor had decided to pay her a visit. Every time they had gone to the pet area across from her place, Harley had tried to pull Will over to her door as they pas
sed by.
Ringing the doorbell, he waited impatiently for Macie to answer. When she did, he didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Is Harley with you?”
“No, I haven’t seen him,” she said, her tone cautious.
He rubbed the tension building at the back of his neck as he looked up and down the dock for any sign of the puppy. “I must have failed to set the lock properly when we came back from our last walk.”
“Have you checked the parking lot and the pet-friendly section?” she asked, shrugging into her coat and joining him outside.
“Not yet, I was hoping he was here with you,” Will said, his trepidation growing with each passing second.
“While you check the parking lot, I’ll see if he’s in the pet area,” she said, pointing across the dock.
As she hurried one way, Will took off at a run in the other. When he found no sign of the dog, he was filled with a mixture of relief and dread. He was glad the dog wasn’t in the parking lot, but still concerned that he might have wandered off down the street or worse yet, been run down by a car on the busy street beyond.
Retracing his steps to the dock, he spotted Macie running toward him. Her worried expression told him that she hadn’t found Harley, either.
“No luck?” she asked.
“No.”
“Where could he be, Will?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I can’t just stand here, I have to find him. It’s going to be dark soon.”
Macie scanned the perimeter of the floating home community. Wait, she thought when she spotted a black-and-white dog at the far end of the small cove. “Is that him?”
“Thank God.” Will sprinted in the direction she had pointed. “Thanks for the help,” he yelled over his shoulder.
“Thanks for the help, Macie,” she repeated, making a face. “I’ll accept your assistance to find the dog I let get out of my house, but I won’t listen to anything you have to say.”
She quickly looked around to see if any of her neighbors had witnessed her little display of temper. If they had, they probably thought that she had lost her mind after eating too much of her own cooking.
As she waited for Will to bring Harley back from the woods, she wondered how she was going to be able to live in the same community with him. Seeing him come and go every day, running into him occasionally in the parking lot, or passing him on the dock was going to be sheer torture.
She’d come to terms with the fact that she had fallen in love with Will, and that nothing would ever come of it. How could it?
Relationships couldn’t be built when there was a huge lack of faith. It was clear that Will had trust issues and combined with a good amount of male stubbornness, it made for an insurmountable obstacle between them.
Macie sighed. It would be easy to place all of the blame on him. But she couldn’t. She had her fears, as well. The other morning when Will had left, it had reminded her that she wanted a man she could count on to be there for her, not one who walked away at the first sign of a problem or disagreement.
When Will finally returned with a wet, muddy Harley in tow, she was waiting for them. “You’re going to need help giving him a bath,” she said, falling into step beside them.
“Thanks, but I can handle it,” he insisted.
She huffed at his stubbornness. “Really? As big as he is, you’re going to be able to hold him in the shower and shampoo the mud out of his coat at the same time?”
“I’m going to try,” he said, opening his door.
Macie laughed when he dropped the leash and Harley immediately made a beeline for the carpet in the living room. Lying on his back, the dog began to roll, then stood up and shook. Mud flew everywhere.
“Oh, yes. You’re doing a fine job on your own, Mr. Parker,” Macie said, not even making a halfhearted attempt to mask her sarcasm.
Will looked fit to be tied as he caught Harley and hauled him down the hall. “Don’t just stand there. Close and lock the door, then come into the bathroom to hold his leash while I get the water going.”
“I thought you didn’t need my help.” She couldn’t help but grin as she secured the door then followed him into the guest bathroom.
“Just hold on to him and keep him from slinging any more mud,” he said, turning on the shower.
When he had the water adjusted to the right temperature, Macie handed him the leash and turned to leave. “Have fun.”
“Where are you going?” he asked, frowning.
“I assumed I had fulfilled your command and am no longer needed,” she said, enjoying the chagrin on his handsome face.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, struggling to get a reluctant Harley under the spray of water. “You were right.” He took a deep breath as he hefted fifty pounds of squirming puppy into the shower stall. “There, I’ve said it. Now will you please grab the dog shampoo from the cabinet and start scrubbing the mud out of his coat? I’m drowning here.”
Laughing at the sight of Will’s hair plastered to his head and the water dripping off of his chin, Macie grabbed the bottle and squirted it over the dog. “Were you anticipating something like this?”
He frowned. “No. Why do you ask?”
“You’re only supposed to be fostering Harley for a couple of weeks,” she said, squeezing in beside him to work the shampoo through the dog’s coat. “Why do you have dog shampoo?”
“My grandmother gave it to me about six months ago when she started needling me about getting a dog to keep me company,” he answered.
And why did you keep it, Will?
A half hour later, she, Will and Harley emerged from the bathroom, wet from head to toe. “Do you have stain remover?” she asked. “While you dry him off, I’ll see if I can get the mud out of your carpet.”
“On the shelf above the sink, along with some disposable rags,” he said, briskly rubbing down Harley’s coat.
Once she had cleaned up the carpet and wiped off the spots on the walls where mud had landed, she put on her coat and turned to go, but with her hand on the door handle, she stopped. She was going to have her say, whether Will liked it or not.
“Not that it makes a difference,” she said, facing him. “But there’s a confidentiality clause in my contract with Techno Nerd Monthly prohibiting me from revealing that I’m Ms. Tera Byte. That’s why I didn’t admit that I was the reviewer you despise that day. I like to eat and pay my mortgage. And I didn’t tell you before we had sex because all I could think about was how much I cared for the man holding me. The last thing on my mind was the magazine or the reviews of your programs.”
Without waiting for him to respond, she opened the door and stepped out onto the dock. As she walked home, she felt better that he knew everything, but extremely saddened by the fact that he hadn’t tried to stop her when she left.
Pulling her coat around her, Macie took a deep breath to keep from sobbing. She was renewing her moratorium on men. And this time, it would be permanent.
* * *
ON THE EVENING OF NEW Year’s Eve, Will took a shower, put on his suit and tie, then checked his watch. An hour before midnight and he had plans. If everything worked out the way he hoped, he would have good reason to celebrate the New Year. But only if the woman he loved was able to find it in her heart to forgive him.
Tucking an envelope into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and a small velvet box in his trouser pocket, he picked up the bottle of champagne he had chilled earlier and called to Harley. “Let’s hope she’ll forgive me and doesn’t throw us both off the end of the dock,” he told the dog as they left the house and started walking toward Macie’s.
A few minutes later, waiting for Macie to answer the door, Will took a deep breath. He had some serious apologizing to do and he just hoped Macie would listen to him. He hadn’t been willing to listen
to her the morning he discovered she had been the one reviewing his software. He deeply regretted that, and if she gave him the chance, he would spend the rest of his life listening to every word she had to say.
When she opened the door, Macie looked confused. “What are you doing here, Will? It’s almost midnight. Is everything all right?”
“I hope so.” He smiled. “Do you mind if Harley and I come in?”
“I wasn’t expecting company,” she said, clearly reluctant to let him in.
“We need to talk,” he said, allowing Harley to nose his way past her.
“Well, I suppose it’s all right,” she said, standing back for him to follow the dog inside. “What’s this all about?” She was dressed in a fuzzy pink robe, matching fuzzy slippers and a flannel nightgown, and he had never seen her look prettier. “Why are you wearing a suit and tie?” she asked, frowning. “Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m as sober as a judge, but I was hoping you would help me and Harley bring in the New Year,” he said, walking into her kitchen to put the champagne in the refrigerator. He noticed the inside compartment was practically empty with no signs of any food prepared by Macie.
“You dressed up to walk fifty yards to my house in order to ask me if I would help you celebrate the New Year?” she asked, staring at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Yup.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her as he watched Harley amble over to stretch out on the rug by the patio door. “And I also wanted to talk about my refusal to listen to your explanation.”
She closed her eyes a moment, then she looked directly at him and shook her head. “Will, there isn’t anything left to say. I told you why I couldn’t reveal my identity as the reviewer and why I had to adhere to my contract. Accept it or don’t. It’s the truth and I’m not going to apologize for protecting the only income I have.”
“I’m not asking you to apologize to me, Macie.” He stepped closer. “After you left yesterday evening, I had a lot of things to think about, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that if I had been the one under a confidentiality clause, I would have done the same as you.”
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