Page 23 of Tempting as Sin
“Oh. So he’s not yours?”
“Well, kind of. But he doesn’t live in the house or anything. My grandma doesn’t like dogs.”
“But you do.”
“Yeah. Plus, she doesn’t know, but he sleeps under the trailer. There’s wood around it, but it has a hole. He goes in there. My grandma doesn’t see, because she doesn’t go outside very much. She has to have an oxygen tank all the time. She has a disease.”
Which made the cigarettes a wonderful choice. Yikes. “I’ll bet you’ve been sharing your food with the dog, though.” That seemed safe to say.
“Yeah,” the boy said. “He likes sandwiches best. And beans, you know, in the can. But I can’t carry those out.”
“Hmm. I’m Lily, by the way. Lily Hollander.” She held out a hand, and after a moment, the boy shook it. Then she reached for Chuck’s paw, and he offered it up and grinned at her. She wished she had a couple more sandwiches. If she went inside to make them, though, she was afraid they’d both run away. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.
“Bailey. Bailey Blue Johnson.”
“Which would make this Chuck Johnson.”
The boy’s features were almost elfin under his mop of dark hair, his smile shy. Two adult teeth in front, another clue that he was eight now, rather than seven. “I guess.”
“That’s a good name. Hey, Chuck Johnson.” She crouched down beside the dog and did some more patting, and he flopped over onto his side, then raised a paw and waved it in a languid fashion, which made her laugh. “It’s like he’s waving from a float during the parade like an elegant lady. Do you go to that? Fourth of July? It’s pretty good, huh?”
The boy picked at the peeling white rubber on his toe caps. “No. I only came this year. To stay with my grandma.”
There went her heart. And her plans.
She’d planned for a dog. After careful research, consideration of her lifestyle and needs, and the needs of the dog, she’d settled on a standard poodle, and had already set out to acquire one. That was how her life went now. She didn’t get blown around by it anymore. She made plans that fit into her newly repurposed…personhood. Her organized life, in which everything she owned was meaningful, functional, and/or beautiful, and in which she managed her business and her home, helped her community where she could, and reminded herself that fear and loneliness didn’t kill you, they pushed you onward.
Just last week, in fact, she’d driven all the way to Missoula to meet a dog who was being fostered by a poodle rescue group. The gorgeous black female had been sweet but nervous, Lily had hesitated, somebody else had adopted her, and Lily had wondered if she’d been too picky.
She wanted a dog she could take into the shop, though, so “nervous” wouldn’t be the best for the shoporthe dog. Never mind, she’d thought. She’d keep looking. Poodles didn’t shed, and they were elegant, bright, and friendly. A poodle—therightpoodle—was the perfect choice.
She eyed Chuck some more. He was on his back now, rubbing himself happily on a patch of grass and grunting. If he had a breed, it wasn’t obvious, she’d bet he would shed like a cheap sweater, and not one molecule of him was elegant. He also wasn’t meaningful or functional, unless you needed a traveling flea carrier, and he sure wasn’t beautiful. But he definitely had needs. And then there was the vulnerable back of Bailey’s thin neck.
No rash decisions. Logic, not emotion. Create your own reality.Her new life, and her new mantra. A little bit of help wasn’t a permanent diversion, though, and she didn’tknowthat the dog wasn’t getting fed somewhere. She’d just…help. A little. Which was why she said, “You know—I was just wishing I had some company today. Maybe we could make a trade. I’ll go make us a few more sandwiches, because I’m still starved. You and Chuck could help me finish planting and watering my seedlings, and then we could get him cleaned up and see what he looks like under the hair. I’m kind of a beauty expert, and Chuck looks like a good project for a hot day. Fortunately, I happen to be prepared for this, grooming wise. I’ve been making dog plans, you see.”
“How do you be a beauty expert about dogs?” Bailey asked.
“Two words. College tuition. I used to wear this pink smock that saidDiva Dog.I drove a pink van, too. It was pretty silly. I do something a little different these days, but I still know how to give a dog a haircut. And Chuck looks awfully hot.”
When Rafe pulled into the garage and closed the door behind his anonymous, dust-coated SUV, he knew he’d done the right thing coming up here early. And when he climbed the three steps to the front porch that looked out onto the valley, smelled the sharp, clean scent of cedar and pine, and heard a faint murmur that was surely creek water tumbling over rocks, it was even better. He opened the door with the key Martin had collected from Jace, typed the code into the alarm keypad and got a reassuringcheepin response, dragged the bags inside, and locked the door behind him. No sense pushing his luck.
In here, the smell was more dust and wood; the stale scent of a barely furnished house that had been shut up for months. At least the checked curtains pulled across the windows had kept it fairly cool.
He’d take care of the dust later, but first, he’d work out. He’d been driving for three days straight on an inefficient route that featured more country and less concrete, listening to audiobooks about a Western sheriff and letting the spare writing and laconic dialogue seep into the folds of his brain. He’d stayed at anonymous chain motels, the details of which had been arranged beforehand by Martin, and had eaten in cafes where men wore feed caps and people greeted each other by name, where the menus were laminated, the tables were Formica, and the booths were vinyl. The kind of place where a hard-working waitress in sensible shoes slapped your check on the table and you paid her up at the cash register, next to the glistening slices of lemon meringue pie rotating behind glass.
The atmosphere had been helpful. The vegetable selection had been meager. And the whole thing had been long. Last night, feeling stiff and sluggish, he’d run on the treadmill in a featureless Coeur D’Alene hotel gym, turned the speed up higher and higher for over an hour, turned up his music too loud, andnotturned on the TV. And still hadn’t slept well.
Yeah, he was glad to be here.
He thought about opening the windows, then rethought it. Instead, he carried his bags up the log staircase to the bedroom that took up most of the second floor and opened all the windows up here instead. That would do for now.
The truth was, he was still jumpy and overstimulated despite the driving that had been meant to put him into something approaching a meditative, receptive state. That tended to happen when your picture was splashed over every entertainment magazine Hollywood had ever spawned, the paparazzi were waiting every time you left the house and outside your gym when you came out, and a million devices were broadcasting your furious offscreen voice shouting at a weeping, frail blonde, and your hands around her upper arms, holding her down. When you’d never been the bad guy, and now you were, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it.
Never mind. He was here now, and the one person who could link him to all of that wanted nothing to do with him. And, no, shewasn’tthe reason he was jumpy. He could see the road that led to her house from the window, but he couldn’t see her house, and he certainly wasn’t going to bother her. Daniel Boone had said that his father had moved the family every time he could see the smoke from the neighbor’s chimney, and that sounded just about right. For the next few weeks, he was Clay Austin, and Clay Austin wasn’t in Sinful, Montana, to make anybody’s life harder. He wasn’t here tobein anybody’s life, period. Rafe hadn’t been making great decisions around that lately. He was here to learn to ride a horse without looking like a fool, practice his accent and his economy of motion, do some hard, fast running on steep mountain trails, lose some weight the hard way, and stay in his own damn lane.
Martin wasn’t going to love it in Sinful, even though he’d insisted he should come, which had bloody well better not be because he was worried about Rafe. If it was, Rafe would have his revenge. The stores on Main Street had false fronts and sidewalk overhangs held up by wooden posts, as if they should be shot in black and white, most of the vehicles featured four-wheel drive, the busiest spot in town was the ice-cream store, and the only neon was a beer sign in a bar window. Martin was not going to have a good time.
Oh, well. Martin had been through worse. There’d been those camels, for one thing. And Sinful had a lake. With a swimming area bordered by floating logs, full of kids splashing in the shallows, but still. A water feature.
