Page 18 of Happily Never After

Claire blew out the breath she had been holding for half an hour. “We have to trust the analyst. Just think about what this will do for the business. A new branch, a West Coast rep. Exposure, growth, even more joyful couples.”

“I have to text Sawyer,” Mindy said, sitting up and pulling her phone out of her designer handbag.

Claire grunted as her stomach twisted.

Mindy’s thumbs hesitated. She stared at Claire. “Don’t tell me you didn’t tell Luke.”

“Of course I didn’t tell him. He’s going to be pissed that I didn’t ask him first.”

Mindy shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand. “Why didn’t we ask him first? We would have gotten a way better interest rate. You could have leveraged blow jobs for a zero percent APR.”

Claire wrinkled her nose. “I’m not going to take my boyfriend’s money. I’m doing this on my own. We’re doing it on our own,” she clarified, gesturing between the two of them. “Happily Ever Afters is our baby. Besides, if he owned a stake in the company, he would start trying to boss me around and change the proposals. You remember the Barney incident.”

Mindy raised one eyebrow. “Doesn’t he do that already? And didn’t you guys recently have a big conversation about the importance of honesty?”

Claire sighed and pulled out her phone. A text from her groomer appeared onscreen. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell him tonight. I better go—Rosie’s done at the groomers. Apparently she almost took one of the technician’s arms off during the nail trim.”

“Sounds about right. See you tomorrow morning?” Mindy stood and dusted off the back of her pantsuit.

“Yeah, see you at nine. Bring the binder with the LA applicants, please. I need to take another look before we set interviews.”

Claire stood and walked to her car. Her purse was weighed down with a manila envelope full of loan details. It might as well have been an anchor. A one-hundred-thousand-dollar anchor.

Twenty minutes later, a freshly groomed Rosie panted happily in the back seat of Claire’s new Audi SUV. Her little black convertible had been set on fire the previous year by ESA,so she had opted for a more business-friendly model. Rosie seemed to enjoy the extra cargo space.

“One stop before home, RoRo,” Claire said as she swung into the parking lot of Tender Hearts Animal Rescue. She had adopted Rosie from the rescue almost two years ago. Rosie leapt out beside her.

Claire popped the hatch open and slung a forty-pound bag of dog food over her shoulder. The weight nearly knocked her into the gravel. She wrestled the front door open, and she and Rosie entered the building.

“Gloria? Sam?” Claire called out. No one sat at the reception desk. It must be dinnertime. She let the bag of food hit the floor with athunkand popped open the door that led to the kennels.

A wiry-haired woman wearing overalls and gold hoop earrings set a bowl of kibble on the floor of a large kennel and turned around.

“Claire! Good to see you. You’re just in time for the field romp.”

“I wish I could stay,” Claire said, glancing at her watch. She had an uncomfortable dinner with Luke to look forward to. “I just stopped by to drop off some food and towels. And to visit, of course,” she said, poking a finger through a kennel. A three-legged boxer licked her. Rosie play bowed to him, stump of a tail wiggling.

“Thank you so much. We always appreciate the donation. We won’t need any more, though.”

Claire turned around so fast she got a crick in her neck. “What do you mean you don’t need any more?” Tender Hearts was a nonprofit. They subsisted almost entirely on donations.

Gloria sighed and propped another kennel door open. Rosie rushed inside to greet her favorite shelter friend, a blind pug named Winston. “We’re closing down at the end of the month.”

The bottom fell out of Claire’s stomach. “Why? What happened?”

Gloria and her wife, Sam, had run the animal rescue as long as Claire had lived in West Haven. The shelter was always full of special needs animals and other unwanted cats, dogs, and birds.

Gloria stared into the eyes of a dachshund in a wheelchair. “We lost our main benefactor. We held on as long as we could, but it’s the end of the road.”

Claire drew herself up to her full height of five feet and three inches. “Who was your benefactor? I will personally go speak to them and convince them to continue supporting you.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Gloria said as she dumped a scoop of food into another bowl.

“Why not?”

Gloria slowly turned around and raised her eyes to Claire’s. “It was Barney Windsor.”

The name hit her like a bullet. She staggered backward until she hit the wall. Her fingers fanned out over her breastbone. Her heart was galloping again. Was there any aspect of her life that Barney hadn’t ruined?

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