Dog Sitters

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Dog Sitters Page 3

by Rozsa Gaston


  "He didn't have anyone else, okay? He said you had to go out of town and there was no one else. So what else was I supposed to do?" He glared at her. "And who says you're a big dog expert after babysitting one for four days?"

  "I grew up with dogs. I understand them intuitively."

  "Just like a woman to pull that 'I'm more intuitive than you' crap," he grumbled loudly. "Like, what good is your intuition going to do you, if you can't get the dog to come back to you?"

  "Just shut up and drop dead," she shouted, shattering the calm of the balmy June evening.

  "You can haul your rear end onto the plane and go fry yourself on a beach. I'll handle this my own way," Jack countered fiercely.

  "You will not handle this alone until I'm out of here at noon tomorrow." Hint could feel her face getting red. "Percy was in my care when you lost him, and I'll help find him."

  "Oh, so now it is me who lost him. I thought you said it wasn't my fault. Funny how your story changed. Just like a woman." He glared at her.

  "I… you… you're provoking me. Just go home and leave me alone so I can think clearly. I can't think with you storming around doing things," she fumed. "What good is doing stuff if you don't know what you're doing?"

  "It's better than doing nothing, all right?" He wasn't sure if it was, but he needed to do something. It wasn't in his nature to just sit around and hope the dog would return.

  The entrance to her building loomed ahead. In five steps, they were there. She pushed in the outer door, with him following close behind.

  "Don't come in here. Just go home," she ordered.

  "I'm not leaving until you calm down and we've come up with a plan."

  "Your plan is not my plan," she insisted.

  "I don't have a plan yet and neither do you, so we've got the same lack of a plan," he pressed back.

  The ludicrous logic of his remark made her want to laugh, but the situation was too grim. How could she focus on her upcoming meeting with Percy lost?

  The gray head of her downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Pappalardo, popped out of a first floor apartment. She stared at them for a long moment then shut her door loudly.

  Hint turned and stomped upstairs, Jack in tow. Opening her apartment door, she fought a strong urge to slam it shut in his face. He was a moron, but she would be even more miserable trying to figure out what to do about Percy alone than in his company. She stormed across the living room out onto her balcony, sliding the screen door closed behind her. If only shutting it could shut out what had just happened. With the dog lost, how could she go to her conference? With the career opportunity of a lifetime looming ahead, how could she not?

  ****

  Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the way of the Lord that will be established. Odd that the Biblical proverb had passed through his head, strangely comforting him. God wouldn't want Percy to remain lost would He? Somehow they would find him.

  "Do you think I could get something for us to drink?" Jack asked through the screen door to the balcony.

  He wasn't going out there, for the moment. The petite, auburn-haired woman on the other side looked as if she might toss him over the railing, all one hundred fifteen pounds of her at most.

  "I've got water, ginger ale, beer, wine, some tea. What would you like?" she called over her shoulder.

  "What kind of beer do you have?"

  "Something imported, I think." Marching back inside, she avoided his gaze then disappeared into the kitchen. "Späten. It's German," she called a minute later.

  "I'll take it."

  "I hate to think of Percy out there all by himself tonight," she said as she came back into the living room and handed an ice cold bottle to Jack. She'd brought one for herself too, he noted with satisfaction. She shook her head as she sank into the brown velveteen couch. Nailheads studded each of its arms, a handsome but curiously masculine touch.

  "What if he gets eaten by wild animals?" She gazed into space then trained her eyes on Jack.

  He shifted, unused to being stared at by a woman, especially one with long, dark eyelashes framing eyes that resembled Bambi's. Self-consciously, he took a long swig of beer.

  "He'll be fine," he reassured her. "It's a warm night. Besides, it's almost the summer solstice, so dawn will come early. The only animals he might run into are skunks or possums. Maybe a raccoon."

  "Skunks? What if he gets sprayed by a skunk?" Hint asked, her eyes huge and round. "And aren't raccoons dangerous? They've got enormous fingernails."

  "Claws. They use their claws to go through trash, not to get into scrapes with dogs," he fibbed, not wanting to alarm her. Believe me, Percy will find a nice place to sleep in the hollow of a tree. He'll make it through the night." As he leaned back in the comfortable brown armchair, the titles on her bookcase caught his eye.

  Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and The Jane Austen Handbook stood next to The Little Prince, Turkish Miniatures, an art book entitled Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Braque, and another one on Kandinsky. A biography of Audrey Hepburn completed the middle shelf's collection. Suddenly, he knew whose eyes Hint's reminded him of: Audrey Hepburn had the same doe-eyed look, encircled with thick lashes.

  "Do you think we should make signs?" she asked.

  "Definitely. Too bad we don't have a photo of him."

  "A photo? Maybe I do. Let me look." She jumped off the couch and rummaged through a collection of photo albums on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. "I think I've got one that Nicole took of Percy and me last Christmas. Where is it?" she murmured, flipping through the pages of the largest album.

  Jack looked over her shoulder. Lots of photos of a young boy stared back at him. He shared Hint's warm brown eyes and long lashes.

  "Is that a family member?" he asked, irrationally hoping it wasn't her son.

  "That's my nephew Russ. He's seven."

  "Good-looking kid," he commented, relieved. "Where does he live?"

  "In White Plains with my sister Jane and her husband."

  His heart swelled as he thought of his own sister's child, his niece Marguerite. If it were her puppy that was lost, he'd move heaven and earth to find it. At the least, he'd take time off from work to look for it.

  "Here it is." She held up a four by six photo.

  Jack grabbed it from her. Percy stared out at him, an irregular white spot on his forehead. The dog rested in Hint's arms, looking as if he'd found nirvana. Hint looked unmistakably happy, staring straight into the camera with a serene smile on her face.

  "Nice photo," he said. "Let's use it. Do you have a scanner?"

  "Yup. I scan illustrations for projects all the time. Give me that. I'll crop it, so it's just Percy. I don't want my photo posted on lamp posts all over town."

  "Why not? It's a good shot." He looked at her slyly.

  She made a face, reaching for the photo.

  "Okay, I guess I know," he continued. "You'll end up with dozens of messages on your answering machine from guys pretending to have spotted Percy. Except that they'll really just be trying to make time with you."

  "Huh. I doubt it. But I don't need that kind of hassle, so let me just crop Percy from this shot."

  She moved to the alcove of her living room where her studio was located.

  He liked the way she was all business now that they had a task to focus on. He could imagine her negotiating with a big New York publishing house to sell one of her elves and fairies projects. He would guess she probably didn't act too fairylike on those occasions.

  She sat down at the desk, turned on the printer, then lifted the cover and placed the photo face down on the scanning surface and closed the top. In a minute, Percy's image on the computer screen appeared before them.

  "That's one cute dog, all right," he commented, inhaling the unmistakable scent of stargazer lilies wafting off her hair as he leaned over her shoulder. They had been his mother's favorite flowers. Did Hint use lily-scented shampoo? He was getting dizzy standing near her. He watched as she carefully zoomed in
on Percy's image then cropped it so that not a single hair of the dog's coat was cut out of the shot.

  The result was almost more intriguing than the original. A lush, reddish-brown forest appeared to surround Percy's head and upper body; the forest of Hint's hair tantalizing a viewer with visions of whom it might belong to.

  "All right, we need some text now. What do we say?" He backed off, regaining his senses as he moved away from the scent of her hair.

  "How about "Lost Dog, Named Percy?" she suggested.

  "Brilliant. I was about to think of that myself."

  She rolled her eyes at him and turned back to the computer to type in the headline. The woman's storm clouds appeared to be lifting.

  "Then what?" she asked, busy centering Percy's photo.

  "Then we say something like 'Lost: Percy, eighteen pound schnoodle, black and grey—"

  "With star marking on forehead," she added.

  "You mean white blob on forehead," he corrected her.

  "It's a star," she insisted.

  "That's news to me. I thought it was just some irregular blob. Like someone splashed correction fluid on him when he was nosing around their desk."

  "Is that something you would do? Maybe it's just as well he got away from you before you could take him," she replied curtly.

  "I… uh… probably wouldn't do anything like that. It was just an idea."

  "You have weird ideas," she told him.

  "You have weird taste in magazines," he blurted out, regretting it the moment the words left his mouth.

  "What do you know about my taste in magazines?" She looked at him sharply.

  "I just noticed the one downstairs," he said.

  "I got my mail earlier today. There's no magazine downstairs with my name on it." She gazed at him, her brows knitting together.

  "Oh. My mistake." Jack looked away, flustered. He'd better keep his mouth shut. It had been the day before that he'd noticed Other Worlds magazine. But as far as she was concerned, he hadn't been to her place the day before. Watch it, big guy.

  "What magazine are you referring to, anyway?" she asked, looking suspicious.

  "Get back to work. We've got a dog to find," he ordered, attempting to get her off the subject. He needed her to turn away, so he could take a fast inventory of her living room. Maybe there was a magazine or two lying around.

  Searching her end tables and the lower shelf of the coffee table, he spied some fashion and design magazines. Predictable stuff. He looked toward the bookshelf. On top of the photo albums lay a glossy real estate magazine. The cover featured a mansion on the water that looked like it cost a gazillion dollars.

  "Well, what magazine did you mean?" she shot over her shoulder as she typed something on the keyboard.

  "I mean your fancy real estate magazines. Are you house-shopping?" he asked. Or husband hunting?

  "What fancy real estate magazines?" She turned around in her chair, her brows knit together. "What are you talking about?"

  "I mean this one." He walked over to the bookcase and casually picked up the magazine. "Is this your idea of where you'd like to live one day?" The caption described the mansion's location as Greenwich, Connecticut.

  "Why not? If you want to know the truth, I use the photos in that magazine as inspiration for fairy castles in my illustrations. Some beautiful estates are in there. Why would I have a problem living in one of them?"

  "Dream on. D'you know what one month's heating bill would cost in a place like that?" He tapped the cover of the magazine.

  "Why shouldn't I dream on? Using my imagination is a part of my job. And there's nothing wrong with appreciating beauty."

  "If you can afford it."

  "And if you can't? It hasn't stopped anyone yet. People can dream, can't they? What's wrong with that?"

  "Hey, nothing wrong with it." He held up his hand in surrender. Annabel Sanford, his ex-girlfriend, came to mind. She had only dated men in finance. Why were there so many women out there who insisted on assets from a guy? Couldn't a guy just offer himself? Apparently not.

  He glanced at Hint. She was like some sort of fey fairy creature herself. Too bad he didn't believe in fairies. A more practical woman who looked like her would have attracted his interest. But not her. No way. She was as weird as her name.

  "Just what? That it makes you feel pressure when you see a woman admire a beautiful home that's larger than yours?" she demanded.

  "Uh…" Busted. Why did she have to be so perceptive? "Something like that. It's probably a lot more complicated, but if you want to distill it down to one sentence that'll do."

  "I admire beauty. I like fine things. That doesn't mean I'll own an estate one day."

  "But do you aspire to?"

  "That's a good question." She stood and came over to the bookcase, so close that the flower scent in her hair took over his senses once again. Unsteadily, he moved away.

  "Sometimes owning something really big, or really beautiful or expensive can be a trap." She looked at him, her large brown eyes capturing his.

  He had a feeling she knew about traps, or at least about setting them. Fairies used magic, didn't they? They had unfair advantages, but he wouldn't be taken advantage of again. Annabel Sanford had already done that. Once burned, twice shy. "How so?"

  "I mean you end up devoting all your time and all your efforts to the house," she explained. "Or the art collection. You spend your life on upkeep of Persian carpets, window treatments, antique knickknacks, chandeliers, light fixtures, music and alarm systems, pools, spas, Jacuzzi bathtubs. It's a trap."

  "Sounds like you know something about it." His mind wandered immediately to Annabel's parents' home in Larchmont. It had been like a museum. He'd had wicked thoughts of knocking something over or spilling his drink on the carpet whenever he'd visited.

  "Maybe I do, maybe I don't," she responded. "But I know it can be a distraction. And I don't want to be distracted from what I do. I create. I'm an artist, not a museum curator."

  "So no fancy houses for you."

  "Not in the foreseeable future," she said firmly.

  "Only in your illustrations, right?"

  "Let's get back to dog hunting, shall we?" Her expression was inscrutable, her eyes screwed into small, dark orbs. Briskly she turned back to her computer.

  "Okay, where were we?" He peered over her shoulder, staring at the words she'd typed below the photo of Percy. "Adorable 18 lb. schnoodle. Answers to the name 'Percy.' Black and grey with white star marking on forehead. Please contact H. Daniels" with her phone number listed below.

  "Why don't you say 'friendly' instead of 'adorable'?" he suggested.

  "Why? He is adorable, isn't he?"

  "Yes, but that's a matter of opinion," he pointed out. "If you say 'friendly' people will know he's not likely to bite if they approach him."

  "I get you. Okay, friendly.'" She corrected the line.

  "And as far as the star marking goes, you might be the only one who sees that blob on his forehead as a star. Just say 'white mark on forehead.'"

  "It's not a blob. How can you say that about Percy?"

  "I know. I know. It's a mark. Say 'mark,' not 'star.' If someone finds him and they don't see it as a star they might let him go. Or keep him. Oh. And also," he continued, "Put down my phone number. You're flying to the Caribbean tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be the contact person."

  "I don't know if I can go if he's still lost." She looked uncertain.

  "You'd kick yourself if you didn't go and then he turns up ten minutes after you miss your flight," he reasoned.

  "What if he doesn't turn up? What if he's been hit by a car or eaten by an animal?"

  "I already told you, raccoons have better things to do, and skunks aren't aggressive enough to do anything other than stink him up. He'll turn up. Just go and do whatever it is you were going to do down there. Drink piña coladas. Pick up men. Get a suntan."

  "Who says I was planning to drink piña coladas or pick up men?" Her eyes spit f
ire at him.

  "Let me guess. You're going to the Caribbean to research fairy illustrations. Or to organize your business plan for the fall season."

  She looked as if she were about to say something then changed her mind. "We can put down both our phone numbers if you like. That way, if one of us isn't available, the other one takes the call."

  "How are you going to help if you're not even here?"

  "I'll know if it's Percy the caller's found and not some other dog. I know his markings better than you. I've spent more time with him." Her voice rose. "Then I'll call you to let you know if you should follow up or not. I told you, it wasn't just your fault. We both lost him."

  She looked as if she blamed him, despite her words. An angry spark leapt up inside him, remembering the way his ex-girlfriend had enjoyed confusing him with her push-pull games.

  "Let's see, that was before you said it was my fault," he snapped back. "Remember the line about not knowing what a doggy doo-doo bag dispenser is?"

  "Okay. I was mad. But I'm helping you find him, whether I'm here or not. I can take calls and help you brainstorm until he turns up."

  "You're a trooper," he said, his anger defused. She was definitely different from his ex. Equally confusing, but willing to make sacrifices, which Annabel most certainly had not been.

  "What are we going to do if Tom and Nicole call?" She pulled wildly at her hair.

  "Hey… stop that." He grabbed her hand, unwilling to see such gorgeous hair pulled out strand by strand.

  The one beer he had drunk was going directly to his head. She was annoying and confusing with that weird fairy style of hers. No wonder she didn't have a boyfriend. If she had one, she would have mentioned it when he suggested she might be picking up men on her Caribbean trip.

  "Why would they call?" He hadn't thought of that.

  "Why wouldn't they?" she asked.

  "Listen, they'll call me, not you, so let me handle it." He had no idea how he would. "Let's post signs tomorrow morning, and maybe someone will call, or he'll just show up on your doorstep before you leave for the airport."

  "Chances are about nil that he'll just show up here," she said mournfully. "This isn't even his home."

 

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