Page 17 of Butterfly Sisters
Leigh opened the door wider and addressed the dog. “Want to hang with me today?” she asked, gesturing for him to come inside. The dog peered up at Colton.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he told Elvis.
The dog walked through the doorway and sat down next to Leigh.
“Thanks,” Colton said, taking a step away from the door. “I’ll come back for him in a few hours.” He pointed inside the cabin. “You get to stay here,” he told Elvis.
Leigh reached down and stroked Elvis’s head. “Does he have a leash?”
“Nah. He won’t go anywhere.”
“Any special instructions?”
The corner of Colton’s mouth turned upward. “Nope.”
“Okay then. Have… fun.”
Colton turned away and threw up his hand as he jogged back to the truck, getting in and starting the engine. Elvis sat next to Leigh, Colton driving away down the dirt road, the dust kicking up behind them.
“Well, I guess it’s just us now,” she told Elvis. “You’re an excellent judge of character, do you know that?”
Elvis’s ears went up, his head turning to the side.
“I’d bark at her too.”
Elvis turned back to the door, and Leigh could have sworn he knew what she was saying.
SEVEN
Mama came into the living room, crisscrossing her yellow terrycloth bathrobe, approaching Elvis with a curious grin. “You woke me up this morning,” she told him. “What was all that ruckus?”
The dog followed her with suspicious eyes.
“Colton’s dog is staying with us today,” Leigh told her. “Meredith went fishing with him this morning.”
“What did she eat? I was going to make breakfast.”
“Toast.”
Mama frowned. “Is she planning to stay out all day?”
“She says she’ll be back in a few hours. The only reason I believe that is because Colton’s with her and he’ll keep time.”
Elvis perked up at the mention of his master.
Mama reached out to pet the dog, and he dodged out of the way, nearly jumping into Leigh’s lap, making them both laugh.
“All right,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I won’t bother you. I’m making a cup of coffee so you won’t have to worry about me. Want one, Leigh?”
“No, thanks. I had two earlier.”
While Mama filled her mug in the kitchen, Leigh grabbed her laptop and opened it, checking her inbox: empty except for sale emails from Neiman Marcus and Target, and one from an online book club she’d joined but never had time for. So, she searched the job listings online to see if anything new had popped up in the last hour, knowing how ridiculous that was. As expected, nothing stood out. Then, out of curiosity, she decided to look into the development they’d seen yesterday.
“What was the company building those new shops we saw from the boat?” she called in to her mother.
Elvis sat up, his ears going crazy. Leigh grinned at him, petting him and settling him back down.
“It was Greystone Properties, wasn’t it?” Mama replied, coming in with her coffee. She sat down at the other end of the sofa, crossing her legs and setting the steaming mug on her knee.
