Page 81 of Doing Life

“My lips are sealed. No Abby. You had enough.” Lance held up his pizza. Sloan knew he only fed Abby the tiniest bit of people food. She had to maintain a certain weight for the Seeing Eye program.

“What kind of dog do you think I should get, honey?” he asked, just curious to see what Lance would say.

“Well, you worked really well with police dogs, so I can see you getting that kind of breed, but by the time they retire, they’re six to eight years old…” Lance propped his elbows on the table. “So maybe a dog who washed out of training for some reason. They’re usually six months to a year old. We can look into all sorts of the programs around Dallas.”

“I like that idea.” He could see that. Not every Malinois or German Shepherd was suited to police work, and he could really dig into that, training a dog for all sorts of stuff.

“Yeah. So we’ll see what we see. Your K-9 guys might know of someone who has dogs to adopt out.”

“I’ll ask.” He’d kind of avoided the K-9 guys because he wasn’t sure he was ready for that, but he would introduce himself and ask. Why the hell not?

Lance squeezed his hand. “Look at us both turning into real boys.”

“Lord.” He had to laugh at that. “I should get you back to bed. You have therapy from hell tomorrow.”

Groaning, Lance nodded. “Yoga. And you have some kind of training, right?”

“Yeah.” Ugh. He hated sitting at a little desk all day taking notes. “Come on, honey. Eat up.” He sucked down his drink and his pizza, then stood and hauled Lance up. Lancemunched his pizza as they all trooped back to the bed, and they washed up in the bathroom before snuggling in and putting on an audiobook to lull them to sleep.

So normal.

And Sloan had never been more in love.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Okay, Lance. You’re going to ride back with Sloan, right?”

“Yeah. He just had to make an appearance this morning. Said his testimony would be well over by noon.” Brick and Dan were dropping him off at the county courthouse on their way to take Brick to an appointment to adjust his prosthesis. Lance hoped to hell Sloan was still around, though he had been ten minutes ago when Lance had texted him to ask what he was doing for lunch.

“Okay, we’ll drop you off on the square. If you need us—” Dan cut off.

“Yes, Mom. I’ll call.”

“Good deal.” The van pulled up parallel to the curb, he thought. “Okay, the place is pretty parked up, so you’re about a block and a half away.”

“Just point me and shoot me.” He’d researched this town’s downtown and where he needed to go, where he wanted to take Sloan for lunch. All in relation to the courthouse.

“Okay, when you get out on the right side, turn left. Block and half down on the right. Big stairs.”

“That’s good to know.” He and Abby were still working on stairs and handrails and his leg and all. So this would be good practice. “Thanks, guys.” He tamped down his nervousness as best he could. Abby needed him to be confident.

They stepped out of the van, facing away from it, and he turned left. There was quite a bit of traffic around the square, from what he could hear, but not a lot of people on foot. So typical of the US, especially Western places like Texas. Everyone drove and parked as close as they could to their destination.

He grabbed Abby’s harness and his cane, which he’d been practicing with. He found that kept people away far better than theDo Not Pet-Service Dogstuff on Abby’s vest.

“Okay, girl, here we go.” He tapped, and Abby walked, and he tried to focus on not tripping and making an ass of himself.

They headed to the courthouse, and he found the stair rail, so he put away his cane and held on to Abby with one hand and the rail with the other.

His heart was pounding ninety to nothing. All he had to do was get up the stairs without falling down.

And then find the door and then ask for directions to the elevators. God.

He could do this.

Lance even had a place he could ask. In fact, he’d done enough research that he knew that there was an information desk through the big doors in the front.

But first the stairs.

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