About a Dog

by Jenn McKinlay

  “I still don’t see why you can’t just mention Trevor to Gavin,” Jillian said. “Whether we like it or not, he is your boyfriend, and Gavin would have to respect that.”

  “Because Emma asked me not to mention him,” Mac said.

  “Huh?” Jillian asked. “Why?”

  “She seems to think that, given his recent breakup, my playing single girl to Gavin’s lonely boy will cheer him up,” Mac said.

  “Oh, it’ll cheer some part of him up,” Carly joked. Jillian and Mac glared at her and she huffed out a breath.

  “This whole thing is a recipe for disaster,” Jillian said. “You realize she asked you to pair up with Gavin specifically because she trusts you so much and with the most important person in the world to her save Brad. Does she not see you two as consenting adults? Whatever was she thinking?”

  “She’s got bridal brain,” Carly said. “She wasn’t.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say no, Mac?” Jillian asked. “Or better yet, why don’t you just say you changed your mind?”

  “She blindsided me,” Mac said. “And now I feel like it’s too late. It’s so close to her wedding day. I don’t want to do anything that will bum her out.”

  The three of them were silent while they mulled over the situation.

  “You know you could have told me, right?” Jillian asked.

  “I know,” Mac said.

  “You didn’t not tell me because you think I’m a ‘good girl,’ right?” Jillian asked. She made air quotes when she said “good girl,” letting Mac know it was a sore point.

  “Um, last I checked you carry tequila in your purse,” Mac said. “I think any hold you had on the good girl rep is dusted and done.”

  “Sorry, being a pastor’s daughter leaves a girl with issues,” Jillian said.

  Pastor Braedon, Jillian’s dad, was the minister who was going to marry Mac and Seth. He was a good man, but even he had wanted to punch Seth in the face for what he’d done. Mac smiled at the memory.

  “Listen, I think the simplest way to get through this is to just run interference,” Carly said. “Jillian and I will make sure over the next two weeks that you and Gavin are never alone.”

  Jillian nodded. “All of Emma’s activities are for the whole group, minus the bridesmaid stuff, so it should be easy-peasy to Velcro ourselves to you and make it impossible for Gavin to revisit the past.”

  “Of course there is an alternative to this plan,” Carly said.

  “What’s that?” Mac asked.

  “You could just sleep with him again.”

  “Hello? Trevor. Boyfriend.” Mac stood up from the bench. She was more irritated with Carly than she should be. She knew that. Carly was just being her usual bawdy self, but at her suggestion, Mac had felt a flash of heat that was impossible to ignore. She could not think of Gavin that way. She simply could not and any suggestion otherwise left her rattled.

  “Fine,” Carly said. She rose to her feet and pulled her jacket tight about her body. “It was just an idea, you know, to put the whole lust thing between you and Gavin to bed, as it were.”

  “Stop,” Mac said.

  “Okay, but you might want to sleep on it.” Carly tried for an innocent look but failed miserably.

  Mac turned to Jillian. “I’m going to choke her out. You’re my witness. Tell them I was provoked.”

  Jillian stood up and shook her head. “Stop it, both of you. We have a plan now. Everything will be okay unless, of course, you do sleep with him again.”

  Mac said nothing. In fact, she was pretty sure her brain shut down in self-defense as she did not want to risk picturing Gavin or a bed or Gavin in bed or any variation on that theme whatsoever. Too late.

  Like a movie loop in her head, she remembered the night in the back of his pickup truck as if it had just happened. Gavin drove her to a field on the edge of town and they’d parked between two old copper beech trees.

  While Mac had cried and cried and cried, Gavin had opened up the back of the truck and tossed down a blanket so they could look at the stars while they drank from a bottle of Jack Daniels he had swiped from his father’s liquor cabinet when he’d stopped at home to grab her a box of tissues.

  Mac had cried until she was sure she was dehydrated. Gavin hadn’t said a word. He’d listened to her cry. He’d kept one hand on her back as if just by touching her he could ease the pain and humiliation that was shredding her from the inside out.

  When she’d finally run out of tears, she’d turned toward him to thank him, but the words never came. Instead, she’d been caught by surprise by the way the full moon shone on his hair, making the lighter strands glow. His gaze on hers had been steady, full of compassion and concern, and something else, something she wasn’t ready to see but which felt like a balm on her wounded heart.

  Mac grabbed him by the front of his dress shirt and pulled him close and then she kissed him. Gavin was still for just a breath, as if trying to grasp the fact that her lips were on his and he was deciding what he should do about it. Mac would have ended the kiss right then and there and apologized, but Gavin shoved his fingers into her elaborate hairdo and held her still while he took over the kiss, plundering her mouth with his as if he had been planning to do this very thing for years.

  It had been the most amazing kiss, the most amazing night of Mac’s life, and now she had to make very, very sure that it never happened again.

  Chapter 9

  “What was I thinking?” Emma cried. “How could I have thought I could pull this off? It’s going to be a disaster! That’s it! We have to cancel the wedding!”

  Mac didn’t bother to glance up from the Library Lover’s murder mystery she was reading while sprawled on a lounge chair on Emma’s back deck. This was, after all, the fourth time in as many days that Emma had threatened to cancel the wedding.

  “Breathe,” she said. “In through your nose for eight seconds, hold it for four, now let it out through your mouth for eight.”

  Emma did as she was told and then said, “But the wine . . .”

  “Do it again,” Mac said. When Emma was about to start talking, she added, “One more time.”

  Emma did as she was told while glaring at Mac at the same time.

  “I’m sorry, is my crisis interrupting your reading?” Emma asked when she was finished.

  Mac glanced over the top of the book at her. “Are you calmer now?”

  Emma huffed out a breath. “Yes.”

  “Okay, good.” Mac put her book aside and sat up.

  A movement along the bushes that formed a natural fence between Emma’s yard and the neighbor’s caught Mac’s attention. She stared past Emma at the thick hedge. Could it be a deer or a moose? She hadn’t seen either of those in the seven years she’d been gone from Maine.

  A long tail stuck out of the hedge. It was brown and wagging. Mac stood and moved closer to the railing. Soft brown ears and a black nose poked out of one of the bushes.

  “I thought you and Brad weren’t going to get a dog just yet,” she said.

  “Dog? What dog?” Emma joined her at the rail just as a floppy brown puppy rolled backwards out of the bushes. “That is not my dog.”

  A fat, fluffy white cat pounced out of the bushes with a fierce hissing noise and her claws extended.

  “And that is Mrs. Gruber’s cat Snowball,” Emma said.

  “Really?” Mac asked. “She looks more like Satanball.”

  The furious white cat chased the puppy, who yelped and fled all the way across the yard until the brown and black blur disappeared into the woods beyond.

  The cat stopped at the edge of the trees and paused to lick its chest, looking quite pleased with itself.

  “I’m sure I’ve seen that dog before,” Mac said. “I just can’t remember where.”

  “Sorry for your mental collapse,” Emma
said, not sounding sorry at all. “But can we get back to me now? I am the bride.”

  Mac could tell she was only half kidding.

  “Sure, what’s the problem this time?”

  “Wine,” Emma said.

  “I am not whining,” Mac protested. She pushed back her Red Sox baseball hat and gave her friend an irritated look. “I have been at your beck and call for four days and I have not even sniveled, not even when you made me help you with the seating chart and place cards, not even once.”

  “No, not whine, wine,” Emma said and made a drinking gesture with her hand.

  “Oh, good idea, I’d love some,” Mac said.

  “Fabulous, are you willing to drive down to Portland to get it?”

  “Come again,” Mac said.

  The back door to Emma’s house banged open and Gavin stepped out onto the deck. Mac had a sudden urge to cover herself, which was ridiculous given that she was in a tank top and shorts, perfectly respectable, but the hot stare Gavin sent her when he saw her made her feel practically naked.

  “Gavin, your timing is perfect,” Emma said. “I need your truck.”

  “Okay, why?” he asked.

  “Mac needs to go to Portland to pick up eight cases of wine, because the winery guy who told me he could get it delivered here in time is a big fat liar,” Emma said. “This is what I get for buying local.”

  “Harsh,” Gavin said.

  “Okay, so his driver had an emergency appendectomy, still,” Emma said. “I need to have it picked up today so that Brad can store it in the brewery before the wedding stager takes over the brewery to clean it up and decorate it for the reception. Believe me, we are going to need every minute of the next week and a half to get it done.”

  “I got like three words out of that,” Gavin said. “Portland. Wine. Today.”

  “Good enough,” Mac said. She stood up and wiggled her fingers in front of him. “Keys, please.”

  “Do you even know where you’re going?” he asked. He held his keys just out of reach.

  “GPS is my friend,” Mac said. “Emma, address.”

  “And how are you going to lift eight cases of wine?” he asked. “Each case has, what, twelve bottles in it?”

  Mac raised her arms and clenched her muscles like she was a power lifter. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  Gavin tapped the brim of her hat, knocking it over her eyes. “No, you’re not. Come on, I’ll drive.”

  “Oh, will you?” Emma cried at the same time Mac said, “No!”

  They both looked at her and she said, “I mean, don’t you have to be at work, healing sick animals and stuff?”

  “Doc Scharff is covering the afternoon so I can be on call tonight,” he said. “We have a goat that’s about to kid out at the Peaberry farm and dollars to donuts, it will happen at three in the morning, so I’m free this afternoon.”

  “Perfect,” Emma said. She pulled out her phone. “Okay, Mac, I’m texting you the address and then I’ll text David at the winery and tell him to expect you.”

  She kissed Gavin’s cheek and then Mac’s and practically pushed them out the door, shoving Mac’s big bag into her arms as they went.

  “Drive safe!” she called and slammed the door shut in their faces.

  Mac followed Gavin to his pickup truck with the same enthusiasm of a criminal about to be hanged. How could this have happened? She and the girls had been managing the situation so well. Four days, four, had passed and Mac and Gavin had not been alone together, not once.

  What was worse, she hadn’t washed her hair, thus the hat, she had no makeup on, and she was a little afraid her deodorant had worn off. She did a quick check. Nope, she was good. Well, that was something anyway. Then again, seeing her in her natural state, especially if she was smelly, might work as a repellent. Now she wished her deodorant had worn off.

  She wondered if she could send an emergency text to Jillian or Carly and have them arrive in time to provide buffer. Probably not. Damn it.

  • • •

  Gavin drove, trying to keep his eyes on the road and not on the woman in the passenger seat beside him. It was a losing battle.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her plugging the address Emma had given her into her GPS app. Without makeup and half hidden under a baseball hat, she looked like she was twelve, which made him feel like a pervert for the lurid thoughts he was having about her. Clearly, it had been entirely too long since he’d been on a legit date.

  The way she fussed with her phone, he could tell she was trying to avoid talking to him. He wasn’t an idiot. He got it. He just wasn’t going to make it easy for her.

  “Turn right onto Main Street in one mile,” the robotic voice of the app instructed.

  “I’m pretty sure I can get us to Portland,” he said. “It’s once we’re there that we’ll need an assist.”

  “Oh, right,” Mac said. She fumbled with her phone. “I’ll just mute the bossy britches.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He wondered if this would be as uncomfortable as their last car ride together. Maybe he should have respected her obvious desire for space.

  Why hadn’t he just given her the keys? Oh, yeah, because letting a woman haul eight cases of wine seemed kind of rude and because it was the first time he’d gotten her alone in four days.

  Despite his obvious ulterior motive to get her to consider him more than a pal, he was wondering how she was holding up being back in the town she hadn’t set foot in since, well, that night. Yeah, he definitely didn’t want to think about that or he’d start picturing her naked again.

  “How is it going?” he asked. “Being back in town?”

  “Fine, good, great.” She nodded like she was trying to talk him into believing it.

  “Did you want to pick one?” he asked.

  She flashed him a smile. “Fine, it’s fine.”

  So, she didn’t want to talk about coming home. Okay. He supposed they could go back to the weather, always a safe bet, or he could nut up and confront the situation between them. He went with the latter.

  “So, I almost didn’t recognize you without your mushrooms,” he said.

  “Come again.” She gave him a look.

  “Carly and Jillian,” he said. “They seemed to have sprouted on you like fungus.”

  “We’re very close.”

  “Uh huh, I know a block when I see one.”

  She turned her head to look at him and opened her mouth to say something but seemed to change her mind. Then she narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Carly would definitely kick your ass for calling her a fungus,” Mac said.

  Gavin laughed, then he frowned. He could totally see Carly whupping his behind.

  “That’s okay. I know you have my back. Right, buddy?” he asked.

  Mac’s eyebrows lifted, tipping her hat brim back just enough so he could see her warm brown eyes regarding him with . . . suspicion. Yes, it was definitely suspicion. Smart girl.

  They passed through town and he turned onto Route 1. It was a mild day so he had the windows halfway down and the breeze blew into the cab of the truck, whipping the ends of her hair until she was forced to wind it into a quick braid, which she tied off with a band from her big purse.

  He glanced at the voluminous bag. How much stuff did a woman need to carry for a wine pickup in Portland?

  “Were you planning on spending the night?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

  He pointed to her bag.

  “Oh,” she said. “I know it’s a little bigger than normal.”

  “Little bigger?” he asked.

  “Okay, a lot bigger,” she said. “But I like to know that I have everything I need when I’m going to need it.”

  “Such as?”

  “
You want to know what’s in my purse?”

  “Just to make sure you’re not smuggling a dead body out of town,” he teased.

  “I don’t know. That’s kind of personal, don’t you think?”

  “More personal than other time we’ve spent together?” he asked. Her eyes went wide and she looked flustered. Well, at least she wasn’t immune to him. Cold comfort, but he’d take it.

  “Fine,” she said. She lifted her purse onto her lap and unzipped it. “Let’s see; pencils, pens, hairbrush, girl stuff, wallet, sunglasses, an extra workout shirt—hey, that’s where that went. I’ve been looking for that.”

  She looked at Gavin and he lowered one eyebrow in disbelief. She really carried around all of that stuff, every day? It boggled.

  “Don’t look like that,” she chastised. “I need all of this. I also have sunscreen, a first aid kit, a blow-up neck pillow, an umbrella, my accounting calculator—”

  “Stop!” Gavin said. “You have an accounting calculator in your purse?”

  Mac hefted it out of her bag so he could see it. It was the size of a paperback book but looked like it weighed quite a bit more.

  “I always have it with me,” she said. “You never know—”

  “When you’re going to have to bust out a math equation?” he asked.

  She dropped it back into her bag.

  “Geek,” he said.

  “I’ll have you know the preferred term is nerd,” she said. Her cheeks warmed to a faint pink hue and he decided he liked being the one to make her blush.

  “My apologies,” he said. “Nerd, then.”

  “Much better,” she said.

  “Well, nerd girl, make with the gadget because we are arriving in Portland,” he said.

  Mac fumbled to turn the volume up on her phone. As the GPS commanded where to turn and when, Gavin followed its directions, trying not to get distracted by the woman beside him.

  Judging by the way she’d had Jillian and Carly running defense around her the past few days, he knew he needed to let her off the hook about the two of them, even though it about killed him not to see if any of the magic that had been between them before was still there.