by Isabel North
Gabe scowled.
Nora continued, “He had a nice body but he didn’t have muscles. Definition. I didn’t miss them, because I didn’t know what I was missing. You know what I wanted to do when I saw Mr. Sterling’s abs?”
“Same as any other red-blooded woman, I imagine.”
Nora sighed. “What do they feel like? I’m assuming you know.”
“Yeah, I know. They feel great.”
“I bet his feel great.”
“They do.”
Nora spun the desk chair and bumped into Anna’s knees. “Oh my God. You didn’t…? You two haven’t…? Ew. Now I feel weird.”
“No, I didn’t and I haven’t. My friend Amber did. Said he was an absolute maniac in bed.”
Amber? Gabe didn’t recognize the name, but he was pleased she’d had a good time with him. He decided to be optimistic and assume that’s what she’d meant by a maniac.
“What do you mean, a maniac?” Nora said, her voice high. “Like…? No, I can’t guess. What do you mean?”
“She said it was like being screwed by three men at once.”
“Why? How? What the hell did he do to her?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t ask for a play-by-play. We’re not that close. Where is all this curiosity coming from? Are you sure you don’t have a list in that Filofax? Please don’t embark on your sexual odyssey right now. I need you focused on the job. Besides, you’ll do it wrong and end up in hospital. Or jail. Your mother will blame me.”
“I will not do my sexual odyssey wrong. I’m not on a sexual odyssey. It sounds exhausting. I’m too old. I’m off men. I don’t even have a sexual odyssey list.”
Yeah, she could deny it all she wanted, but she had a list. It had been puzzling Gabe since he’d seen the word odyssey when her Filofax fell off her lap in his warehouse. He’d wanted to read through the planner badly to start with.
Now he hungered for it.
The list had been only a couple of items long. He could fill a page and a half without even trying. And he’d love to volunteer.
“Stop thinking about him, Nora,” Anna said. “You cannot think about that man.”
“Why not? I thought about him most of last night. The last three nights.”
“Nora.”
“Not like that! Ew. I wouldn’t tell you that. You’re my baby cousin. I was trying to say that he scares the crap out of me, all right?”
Gabe blinked. He did?
“He’s not scary,” Anna said.
“He’s so out of my league it’s not funny. I can’t concentrate. I can’t get his abs and his pe… I can’t get his abs out of my head. And that—” she held out her hands in a ta-da kind of move, “—is why I was looking at the hot tattooed guys. Exposure therapy.”
“Huh.” Anna cocked a hip. “That may be the best excuse for looking at porn I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s not porn.”
“It’s porn. One of the pictures, the one at the bottom? It was a GIF, Nora. It was moving. Porn.”
“It doesn’t matter. Exposure therapy, aversion therapy, whatever. I was trying to numb my hormones.”
“Did it work?”
“It did until you said the maniac thing. How am I supposed to get over thinking about him and his abs being maniacal in bed? I can’t Google that.”
“Not on my work computer, you can’t. Use your own.”
“I don’t have a computer.”
She doesn’t have a computer? Gabe couldn’t help it. He made a shocked noise.
Nora and Anna froze. “That wasn’t me,” Anna said. “Was it you?”
“No.”
They both stared at the computer. Hand shaking and Tiffany bracelet chiming, Anna reached out. She tapped the monitor back on.
Gabe leaned forward and shut the camera down, disappearing from Nora’s screen.
Anna slumped with relief. “Shit. Can you imagine how embarrassing if he’d been there all along?”
Nora was pale. “You’re not the one who said you wanted to jump him and—”
Someone banged on his office door. Hard.
Gabe watched Anna and Nora turn to face their doorway with puzzled frowns. Fuck. He cut the link, closed the program, and stretched back in his chair, making it creak. He rolled his head against the seat to face his own doorway.
Bill Anderson stood there. “You done getting your ego stroked, pervert? How long have you been spying on that poor woman?”
“Spying? Sounds evil.”
“You are evil.”
“Says the lawyer. I wasn’t spying. I was having a very businesslike conversation when they turned off the monitor in the middle of it. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they put me on hold.”
“You should have said something.”
He grinned. “I know.”
“Ready for the meeting?”
He was ready for everything. Gabe jumped up, stretched his arms overhead, shook them out. “Lead the way.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Today was the day. She was nervous, it was a big step, but if not now, when?
Nora parked in the lot of Riverbend Rescue, and marched in.
She was going to be a great dog mother. She’d done the research. Her apartment was dog-proofed.
She was ready for this.
She had a bean-filled dog bed in light sage-green corduroy with a removable pillow pad and a cute brown paw print pattern. She had a chunky ceramic bowl for water and one for food, and both were personalized with the name she’d already picked out. She had a collar with a bone-shaped tag hanging from it, again already personalized with the name. She hadn’t bought a crate for the car because her guess was, the dog had seen enough bars, but she’d look into it, depending on how well the dog traveled.
She was ready.
“Hi, Kim,” she said when she hit Reception.
“Mrs. Bowman, hey.”
“Ms. Bowman. But Nora’s fine. Just Nora.”
“Right. Nora. Are you ready for the most important commitment of your life?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound sure. Maybe we’d better have a few more visits. Don’t want you flaking and trying to return her tomorrow.”
“I’m sure.”
“Come on, then. Let’s go get your girl.”
Nora gritted a smile. She’d tried, but after their initial meeting and the two others since then, she’d come to the conclusion that she and Kim got on like sandpaper and an open wound. Either their spirit animals really hated each other, or Kim was a sociopath.
Jury was out.
They stopped at the now-familiar cage, and Nora’s heart swelled as the dog rushed up to the bars, wagging her tail. “Hello, Sunshine,” she said. “Going home today!”
Sunshine dropped her butt to the ground, continued to sweep her tail over the floor, and made an odd popping noise as she licked her nose and smacked her lips.
“I’ll be glad to see her go,” Kim said, opening the door for Nora. “Thought she was here till the end, you know?”
Nora knelt, and Sunshine crawled onto her lap. She slid off, gave it another shot, and this time when she slid off, she stayed on the floor. She held still for Nora to buckle on her brand-new collar.
“I can’t believe my luck that no one adopted her before I came back.” Nora clipped the leash to the collar, and stood.
Sunshine heaved up to her paws and shook her head, making the collar jingle.
“Eh, you were pretty safe,” Kim said. “She’s not got all that much going for her in the pizazz department. By which I mean, she’s a good girl, and she’s only a little weird-looking.”
“She’s not weird-looking.”
“She’s very yellow.” Kim waited for them to come out and closed the cage door with a clink. Sunshine flinched and shuffled to press against Nora’s knees.
“What’s wrong with yellow?” Nora asked.
“Not a popular color for dogs.”
“What about yellow Labradors? Golden retriev
ers?”
“They’re blond. Golden. She’s custard.”
Sunshine was extraordinarily yellow. Like a crayon. It wasn’t weird, though. It was beautiful. “And what’s the problem with her being good?”
“Easy to overlook. She’s too quiet. If she was a scrappy doodle with three legs, she’d be gone in a hot minute. Or a one-eyed yappy terrier. You wouldn’t believe how fast they go.”
Nora glanced down at Sunshine. Sunshine smiled up at her, small brown eyes narrowing to a friendly squint behind thick white lashes. Nora’s chest clenched. “She’s perfect! Why would people not want that?”
Kim shrugged. “They want a bit of spirit, maybe?”
Sunshine radiated peaceful spirit.
“It is what it is, you know?” Kim said. “She’s never going to be anyone’s first choice.”
“She’s mine. She’s my first choice.”
“Sure? We’ve got some new puppies coming in, I hear they’re cute with little patches and—”
“Stop fucking with me, Kim.”
“Jesus, okay.”
~ ~ ~
“You comfy back there, Sunshine?” Nora checked the rearview mirror. She’d put Sunshine in the back, and could see the dog’s head turning this way and that as she stared out the window.
At the sound of Nora’s voice, Sunshine’s tail wagged, but she didn’t move her eyes from the window.
“All right. Before we head home, we have to make a quick stop at the store. The one thing I forgot to pick up today was food for me. What can I say? I was excited. Don’t worry, though. I’m usually more organized. I won’t ever forget to feed you.”
She chattered on, telling Sunshine all about her new home and her new life. “The one downside is that I don’t have a yard of my own, but our landlady—Mrs. Valdez, we like her—said we can use her yard, as long as I clean up after you. And if I don’t, Mrs. Valdez said she’d put it in my mailbox. So. You let me know if I miss it.”
Nora eased out of traffic and pulled into the lot of a strip mall she’d passed each time she came out to the shelter.
“Back in five,” she said, hopping out and closing the door. She took three steps toward the small grocery store tucked between a dry-cleaners and a nail salon, and that’s when hell broke loose.
Pivoting on a heel, Nora stared at her car. It was rocking. Sunshine had gone batshit crazy, barking and leaping around. She threw herself against the seats a few times then wriggled up and over with an inelegant belly flop that took her out of sight until she lunged up at the window.
She did not stop barking for one second.
Holy crap.
Nora inched closer to the car.
Should she open the door? What would happen if she did? What if Sunshine leapt out and went running off into traffic?
What was she supposed to do?
She couldn’t call Anna. Anna liked her animals small and docile. She’d had a chinchilla as a pet when they were kids. She’d have even less of an idea of how to handle a freaking-out seventy-pound dog than Nora did.
She could call Kim, but they’d left the shelter forty minutes ago. Felt a bit soon to be having a problem. And then Kim might get in her car and drive over here, take Sunshine back to the shelter because Nora wasn’t good enough…
No. No Kim. She was on her own. She could handle this. She didn’t need anyone.
And there wasn’t anyone she trusted to back her up in any case.
Gabe.
The thought of him flashed into her mind, and she groaned.
No. She couldn’t call him. She didn’t want to call him.
Although…he was the sort of guy you’d want to have around when you were having a crisis. It didn’t even matter if he was a dog person or not, he had such an air of competence, you got the sense that he could handle anything. From an apocalypse to a dinner party (pretty much the same thing to Nora) to an angry lawyer.
A freaking-out dog should be easy.
Hating herself for even thinking about involving him in this, Nora hit the button to call. It had only rung once when it struck her that Sunshine wasn’t barking anymore.
She hung up before he answered and leaned down to peer through the window.
Sunshine sat on the back seat, panting. As soon as Nora looked in, she wagged her tail.
“Hah.” It was fine. There was no problem. Everything was fine. “Good girl,” she said and hitched her purse on her shoulder.
Way to overreact, Nora.
The phone buzzed in her hand. “Crap.” Sighing, she answered. “Hello, Mr. Sterling.”
“While I do love to hear you say my name that way, why are we so formal all of a sudden?” The amusement was clear in his deep voice.
“I’m being professional.”
“You be professional. I’m going to stick with inappropriate, because it works for me, and because I want to. What can I do for you, honeypie?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You called me.”
“I did? Are you sure? No. It wasn’t on purpose. It was a mistake. You know what happened? I must have butt-dialed you.”
“The correct term is booty call. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
“No! I meant butt-dialed. Didn’t I say it right? I sat on my phone.”
“Nora?”
“Yes?”
“It’s a flip phone.”
“Yes.”
“The buttons are covered by the casing. You can’t accidentally press them if you sit on your phone, and thus butt-dial me.”
She chewed her lip. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Any other feeble excuses? No? Ten minutes. Answer your door. Your turn to be naked.”
She giggled, and mentally smacked herself. Right. She’d answer the door if he came running over for sex. She’d pack a bag and leave for Mexico if he came running over for sex. “You don’t have my address.”
“Oh, darn. If only I knew how to use the internet, where I hear they keep such useful information.”
“Don’t come over, I’m not there. Sorry, I didn’t mean to call and disturb you.”
“Not gonna lie, honey. I’m disappointed. See you soon.” He disconnected.
She stood there, smiling at nothing, until a horn on the street reminded her she was supposed to be getting food, not imagining how it would go if he did show up for a booty call.
This time she got four steps away before the performance began. An elderly couple walking past recoiled at the noise, huddling together for protection.
Nora dashed back to the car.
Sunshine fell silent.
“I’m beginning to think you have abandonment issues,” Nora said through the gap in the window she’d left for fresh air. Sunshine stuck her nose out and huffed. “Are you going to let me go get some people food? It’s either that, or you’ll be sharing your dinner with me tonight.” She’d give it one more go.
Sunshine licked the window and let Nora get ten whole paces before she freaked out again.
Nora hustled back across the lot and jumped in the car quickly, in case her crazy dog decided to make a break for it. Sunshine, however, seemed more than happy the minute Nora was in sight, slumping down on the back seat with satisfaction.
“No shopping today. I’ll improvise. It’s not a problem. I won’t have to share your food.” She had cereal. She could eat it dry.
They made it home without further incident, and were met by Mrs. Valdez, whom Nora suspected had been waiting and watching from the front room where she taught her piano students.
Sunshine was a hit with the old lady. This was an encouraging development, because Nora had been wondering if she’d ever be able to leave the dog again. She might find herself in need of an emergency dog-sitter. They hung out in Mrs. Valdez’s yard, chatting as Sunshine sniffed around, never going far from Nora even though she was off the leash.
Once they’d said goodbye to Mrs. Valdez and gone upstairs to Nora’s apartment, Sunshine made a beeline for the dog bed.
She settled in with what seemed to be a characteristic lack of grace, and let out a deep, contented groan.
“Big day, huh?” Nora said. She sat on the floor beside the bed, stroking Sunshine’s soft head as she fell asleep.
A bubble of contentment rose up. I have a dog.
Pulling her Filofax out of her purse, she made a show of clicking the top of her pen, and checked off item number two. Then, because although it was dorky, no one would ever see it, she doodled tiny floating hearts around the check mark.
Nora ran her eye down the list she’d made two months ago. She was making progress. The contentment grew. She paged through, stopped at her sexual odyssey list, paused, then wrote, booty call.
Sunshine began to snore, and Nora smiled.
One thing at a time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nora tested it out that evening, but while being left in the car had hurled Sunshine into a frenzy of panic, she didn’t seem to care when Nora left her in the apartment.
She simply watched from her bed as Nora walked out and shut the door.
After standing outside and counting to fifty, braced the entire time for barking and general canine chaos, Nora went back in to assess the situation. She nearly fell over the dog, who was sitting stuffed up by the door, but doing it with steady patience.
Sunshine licked the back of her hand, bumped her knees with tail-wagging enthusiasm for a minute or two, and wandered off to chew a plastic bone.
So it was being left in cars that set her off.
Or watching through a window as someone she loved walked away from her.
Even though she could have left Sunshine asleep in the apartment the next morning, in the end Nora decided to take her to the office.
“Wow,” Anna said when they walked in. Sunshine pranced beside Nora in her new collar and leash, looking around with interest, as if she’d forgotten what the outside world looked like. Anna fumbled for her purse, pulled out a pair of enormous sunglasses, and put them on. “Aah. Better.”
Nora scowled. “She’s not that yellow.”
“I have a degree in Art History. I went through design school. I am an interior designer. And yet if someone asked me to describe that exact color yellow, I’d come up blank.”
