by Linda Seed
Daniel, afraid the dog was going to fall out of the car, got a grip around the animal’s furry middle.
“That helps a little, I guess,” Lacy said, referring to the air, which was a little more breathable with the window open.
“I guess,” Daniel agreed.
It was ridiculous—utterly ridiculous—but sitting here with an ugly, smelly dog in his lap, the smell of vomit in his car, and Lacy driving his SUV beside him, Daniel felt unaccountably happy.
What the hell was that about?
The only sense that he could make of it was that he usually spent so much time alone that the sensation of someone needing him—Lacy for the ride home, Z for his very survival—made Daniel feel hopeful in a way he usually didn’t.
He sat back with the wind from the window blowing the crap out of his hair and began to enjoy the ride.
Chapter Thirteen
After Daniel dropped Lacy off outside her parents’ house, she gathered her stuff from the back of the SUV, gave Z a fond pat on the head, and thanked Daniel for the ride. Then, grateful to have the entire Vegas misadventure behind her, she walked quietly around the house and into the backyard, hoping to get to her Airstream undetected.
She was just unlocking the door when her mother came out the back door of the house, a pissed-off look on her face to match the sound of her voice.
“Lacy Ann Jordan,” Nancy said, her hands on her hips. “You get your butt into my kitchen right this minute.” Nancy disappeared back into the house, the screen door closing with a snap.
So much for making a quiet entrance.
“It’s not so much that you broke up with him. Though I simply don’t understand that at all. It’s that you told me over a text message.” Nancy was using a look that Lacy was very familiar with from her childhood. The look said, You might think you’re getting away with something, but you have another think coming, missy.
“I was afraid to tell you.” Lacy sat at the kitchen table and looked down at her hands in her lap. “I knew you’d be upset.”
“Upset!” Nancy said in exasperation. “Upset! Of course I’m upset! Brandon is a perfectly nice man, he’s a doctor … He could have provided for you! He could have given you a house, a family!”
“I’ve got a family! I’ve got a really big family, and lots of friends, and … and I can provide for myself!” Lacy had been cowed when she’d come into the house, but she was starting to feel the indignation of the misunderstood. “And I didn’t love him, Mom. Not really. Is that what you want for me? Marriage to a man I don’t love, just because he’s a doctor?”
“Well, I …” Nancy sputtered in surprise and frustration. “Why did you agree to marry him if you didn’t love him?”
“Because it just seemed easier!” Lacy stood and started pacing the kitchen. “Easier than telling him no and going through a breakup. Easier than figuring out what I really want to do with my life. Easier than telling you that it wasn’t going to happen.” She came to rest in front of the refrigerator, facing Nancy, her arms folded over her chest, her lips tight.
Nancy let out a deep sigh. “Well, honey, of course I don’t want you to marry someone you don’t love. I just want you to have all of the things you deserve. I don’t want to see you living in a trailer the rest of your life.”
Lacy gestured widely with her arms. “What is it with everybody and the trailer? Brandon and I fought over the damned trailer! It’s one of the things that led to all of this! I like the trailer! Of course I don’t want to live in it forever. But for now, it’s my home, Mom.”
“I understand that, honey. I do. Oh, Lacy, come here.” Nancy stood up and opened her arms, and Lacy stepped into them. Lacy felt herself getting teary-eyed, not because of her breakup with Brandon, but because it felt so good to have her mother’s love.
“I just want you to be happy, honey,” Nancy said.
“I know, Mom. Brandon wasn’t going to make me happy.”
Nancy sighed and patted her daughter’s back. “To each her own, I guess. But a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year and a 401K? That would have been a lot to be happy about.”
Knowing that her mother was so worried about her financial prospects made Lacy consider the state of her career.
Or lack thereof.
She liked being a barista. She liked the aroma of the coffee, the background music that played over the sound system at Jitters, the chatter of the customers, the sound of the coffee grinders. She liked the satisfaction of making a perfect latte. And most of all, she liked chatting with the people who came into the coffeehouse day after day. Not just her friends, but the tourists, the locals, the people who were such integral threads in the fabric of her life.
She liked the idea that by providing superior coffee, she could make a customer’s day just a little bit better.
But her mother was right—she would never be able to pay for a real house on a barista’s wages. Part of her had always felt that she was just biding her time, anyway. In her ideal future, she would be a stay-at-home mom to a gaggle of kids. Five, maybe more. She had nothing but respect for the women in her life who sought success in their careers—Gen, Kate. Even Rose was planning to start college part time once her baby was born. But Lacy imagined a different life for herself. She imagined nurturing her husband and family, making nutritious and comforting dinners, making a home. She wanted her house to be the one the neighborhood kids flocked to for the warm, welcoming environment it provided. She wanted her children to come home from school to feel the safe cocoon of her maternal love.
Basically, she wanted to give her kids what she’d had growing up.
She couldn’t fault her mother for wanting to see her with Brandon. After all, Lacy was in her thirties now. If she wanted kids—not one or two, but a gaggle—she’d have to get on it sooner rather than later. And Brandon had seemed like a likely prospect to father that gaggle.
As Lacy unpacked her things in the trailer, recovering from the disastrous Vegas trip, she shuddered slightly at the thought of Brandon as her husband and the father of her kids. Her house wouldn’t be that place of warmth and love as long as he was in it. Not that he was a terrible person; he just wasn’t the person for her.
Putting her clothes and other belongings away, she realized she’d forgotten a sweatshirt in the back of Daniel’s car. Also, more troubling, she couldn’t find her topaz earrings. The earrings had belonged to her grandmother, and had been a gift to Lacy on her eighteenth birthday. She refused to consider the idea that they were lost. She must simply have misplaced them somewhere in the trailer. She would have to scour the place for them later.
With the unpacking finished, Lacy flopped back onto her bed. Lying there, looking at the ceiling of the trailer, her thoughts drifted to Daniel. There was no sense denying that her attraction to him was growing. Seeing him cradling that ugly little dog in his arms had made her melt a little. A man who could be kind to a helpless, unsightly animal—even after that animal had thrown up in his car—was a man with some real father potential. Not to mention the way she’d felt in the bar when he’d held her in his arms …
But Lacy was smart enough to know that it was unwise to jump into a relationship just after ending one. That was a recipe for sorrow and regret.
Still. God. When he’d held her, she’d felt safe. She’d felt whole. She’d felt things that she had never felt with Brandon.
Even if Brandon did have a goddamned 401K.
Daniel looked down at Zzyzx with a scowl.
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
He had given Z a bath, and with that done, he’d set a blanket on the floor of his laundry room, thinking the dog could sleep there until Daniel could make other arrangements for him. But Z just looked up at him expectantly, leaving the blanket untouched on the floor.
“Just try it,” Daniel coaxed him. “It’ll be a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping out in the desert, and you didn’t seem to mind that.”
Z’s tail thum
ped on the floor as he wagged it lazily.
“Okay, let’s try this.” Daniel took a dog treat out of his pocket and placed it on the blanket. His theory was that if he could get Z to step onto the blanket, he’d see that it was an inviting place to lie down. Z did step onto the blanket, but only long enough to snap up the treat. Then he dashed back off of the blanket and crunched the treat in his little jaws, looking up at Daniel happily.
“Hey, look,” Daniel said, irritated. “I haven’t had time to get a proper dog bed. I don’t know what you expect.”
Finally, he decided to leave Z in the laundry room with the blanket for a while. If the dog could get used to the room and the blanket, then maybe he’d decide it was acceptable accommodations. “You stay,” he told the dog, pointing one finger at him.
Daniel opened the door that led from the laundry room into the kitchen. As soon as the door had opened the few inches Z needed to make his way through, the dog hit the door at a run, darting through and into the house before Daniel could stop him.
“Hey, hey … wait a minute!” Daniel called after him.
With a sigh, Daniel found Z curled up on the sofa, looking up at him hopefully, tail rhythmically thumping against the cushion.
Daniel reached down to pick up Z and put him back in the laundry room where he belonged, but as soon as his hand was in range, Z gave it a lick, with a happy little whine.
“Well, hell,” Daniel said. He looked at the dog with exasperation, his hands on his hips.
He guessed it wouldn’t hurt anything if Z had a little nap on the sofa.
At least he was clean, though that didn’t seem to help with the rotten-egg smell that was wafting up toward him from Z’s body.
“Ah, jeez,” Daniel said, grimacing. “We’re going to have to find you a dog food that doesn’t give you gas.”
Z laid his head on his paws and closed his eyes, apparently not nearly as troubled by his gas as Daniel was.
Daniel knew he was going to have to get busy finding a home for Zzyzx, before the dog got attached to him. Wasn’t going to be easy, given the fact that Z looked something like a miniature, fuzzy warthog, but without the tusks. Most people expected cuteness from a dog, or, if you wanted it for protection, fierceness. Z wasn’t about to provide either of those things.
Daniel figured that was fine. It wasn’t like Z owed anybody anything. He was who he was. They would just have to find him a home with someone who got that.
But that would be a job for tomorrow. Right now, tired from the drive home from Vegas, Daniel got a beer out of his refrigerator and plopped down onto his sofa next to Zzyzx to drink it.
As he sat there, he couldn’t help thinking about Lacy.
He had so many mixed feelings.
Under the negative column, he was sorry that she’d gone through what she had with Brandon. Breakups were a bitch, even when the person wasn’t right for you. He could attest to that. And he felt a little bit guilty that he’d had a part in causing that breakup. The embrace in the bar—well, he’d told himself it was about comforting her, and to some extent, it had been. But he’d be a liar if he said it wasn’t more than that.
And he wasn’t a liar.
And that brought him over to the plus column.
The way she’d felt when he held her, the way she’d sighed as she kind of melted into him—that was a hell of a big plus. He couldn’t quite get the impression of it out of his mind. Not that he wanted to. He’d been happily replaying it in his memory ever since it happened. Also a plus, it was a good thing that Lacy wasn’t with that stiff anymore. That she wasn’t going to marry him. Sure, the guy was a doctor, and he supposed that counted for something. But he didn’t deserve Lacy. Daniel wasn’t sure who exactly would. He, himself, sure as hell didn’t. Lacy was special. He supposed it was that—his conviction that she was both rare and extraordinary—that had prevented him from making any kind of move with her.
Didn’t stop him from thinking about her, though, about the joy in her face when they’d ridden in the gondola, the tears in her eyes when she’d seen his artwork. The way she’d sighed and relaxed into his embrace.
He was still thinking about her as he drifted off to sleep with Z snoring softly on the sofa beside him.
Daniel woke to the sound of Z whining. He figured he was only asleep about an hour; it was still before midnight. His neck was a little bit sore from the way he’d been positioned on the sofa, and he stretched it and rubbed at it.
He looked around for the dog, figuring Z probably had to go outside to pee. He didn’t find him by the door, though—either the front or back. Instead, he found him in the bedroom, on his hind legs, front paws reaching up the side of the dresser toward Lacy’s forgotten sweatshirt, which was sitting on top. Daniel had been planning to return it to her the next day at Jitters.
“Come on,” Daniel told him. He scooped up the dog and held him in his arms, scratching him behind his ears. “You can’t have that. It isn’t yours.”
He took Z outside, let him pee one more time just for insurance, and brought him back into the laundry room, where Daniel had originally planned for the dog to sleep. Daniel put him on the blanket, crouched down, and said in a stern voice, “This is your spot. Just settle in and get used to it.” He patted the dog on its back. “Goodnight, Z.”
Daniel left the laundry room, closed the door behind him, and turned out the kitchen light, planning to go to bed.
He didn’t even make it all the way to the bedroom before he heard Zzyzx scratching at the laundry room door and whining.
“Aw, for Christ’s sake …” Daniel went to the laundry room door and opened it. At the first opportunity, Z darted through the door, past the kitchen, and into the bedroom.
Daniel found him up on his back legs again, reaching for the sweatshirt.
“What if I give you this and it’s her favorite sweatshirt or something?” Daniel asked, as though Z had some kind of answers. “You’re gonna get it all … doggy. She’ll be mad at us.”
Z whined hopefully, scrabbling at the side of the dresser with his paws.
“Ah, hell,” Daniel said. He picked up the sweatshirt and put it on the floor, mentally promising to buy Lacy a new one.
Z stepped onto the sweatshirt, turned around two or three times, and then plopped down and curled up on the shirt. He let out a contented sigh and promptly went to sleep.
“I get it,” Daniel said in resignation. “I miss her, too.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lacy was waiting for Daniel to come into Jitters. At first, she didn’t realize she was waiting. She just knew that she felt unsettled, as though she’d forgotten to do something important, or was missing something that mattered.
Then, someone who looked vaguely like Daniel—a tourist with the same build, the same way of carrying himself—walked into the coffeehouse, and Lacy felt a surge of excitement, followed by bitter disappointment when she realized it wasn’t him.
That was when she realized she’d been waiting for him—and that she was a hopeless idiot.
An idiot, because what was she doing longing for one man barely five minutes after breaking up with another one? Who did that? A hopeless idiot, that was who.
Because, yes, she was longing for him. She’d been pretending that she wasn’t, but that was before the pseudo-Daniel had walked through the door and sent her spirits soaring and then plunging.
If that didn’t clarify things, what would?
She tried to tell herself that she was just looking forward to seeing a friend, one who’d helped her out when she’d been in a crisis. That was all. Who didn’t enjoy seeing a friend?
But usually, she didn’t fantasize about seeing her friends with their clothes off. So, there was that.
And where the hell was he, anyway? Daniel came into Jitters almost every day, except when he was out of town visiting his family or doing business related to his glass. He wouldn’t be out of town today, just two days after coming home from Vegas, would he?
Was he making his coffee at home? And if so, was he trying to avoid her?
All of this Daniel-related thinking and waiting was making it hard for her to concentrate on her job. As a result, she’d used the wrong kind of milk in Mrs. Watkins’s latte, had given decaf to someone who had ordered regular, and had burned herself on the milk steamer.
So it was a mercy when Daniel finally did come into the shop just after lunchtime, as Lacy was getting ready to finish a shift that had started before dawn.
When he walked in the door, she felt the same surge in her spirits that she’d felt with the tourist. But this time, the feeling stuck, because it really was him. The thing about her being an idiot popped back into her mind. Damn her stupid girly feelings.
“Hey,” he said, waving to her a little before shoving his hands deep into his jeans pockets.
“Hey,” she said back. They needed to work on their sexy banter. She reminded herself that she was at work and that she needed to be professional. “What can I get you?”
“Low-fat latte with cinnamon.”
It was his usual. She rang him up, and then got to work on the drink.
He stood just across the counter from her as she pulled the espresso and steamed the milk.
“Z misses you,” he said.
For a moment, she wasn’t sure what she’d heard. He missed her? But then, it hit her. He was talking about the dog.
“Zzyzx?” she said, just to make sure.
“Yeah.” Daniel didn’t meet her eyes. “He sleeps on your sweatshirt. If I take it away, he whines.” He looked sheepish. “It’s probably ruined. I owe you a new one.”
“Oh.” She slid a cardboard sleeve onto his drink and passed the cup over the counter to him. “I thought you were going to find him a home.”
“Yeah, well.” Daniel looked embarrassed. “I was going to, but … I can’t imagine there’d be people lining up to take him. He’s got a face even a mother would have a hell of a hard time with.”
Lacy guffawed. It was true. Zzyzx hadn’t been blessed with beauty. Still, there was something to be said for that. At least when people liked him, it would be for the right reasons.
