CHAPTER TWELVE
Today was the day. She was nervous, it was a big step, but if not now, when?
Nora parked in the lot of Riverbend Rescue, and marched in.
She was going to be a great dog mother. She’d done the research. Her apartment was dog-proofed.
She was ready for this.
She had a bean-filled dog bed in light sage-green corduroy with a removable pillow pad and a cute brown paw print pattern. She had a chunky ceramic bowl for water and one for food, and both were personalized with the name she’d already picked out. She had a collar with a bone-shaped tag hanging from it, again already personalized with the name. She hadn’t bought a crate for the car because her guess was, the dog had seen enough bars, but she’d look into it, depending on how well the dog traveled.
She was ready.
“Hi, Kim,” she said when she hit Reception.
“Mrs. Bowman, hey.”
“Ms. Bowman. But Nora’s fine. Just Nora.”
“Right. Nora. Are you ready for the most important commitment of your life?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound sure. Maybe we’d better have a few more visits. Don’t want you flaking and trying to return her tomorrow.”
“I’m sure.”
“Come on, then. Let’s go get your girl.”
Nora gritted a smile. She’d tried, but after their initial meeting and the two others since then, she’d come to the conclusion that she and Kim got on like sandpaper and an open wound. Either their spirit animals really hated each other, or Kim was a sociopath.
Jury was out.
They stopped at the now-familiar cage, and Nora’s heart swelled as the dog rushed up to the bars, wagging her tail. “Hello, Sunshine,” she said. “Going home today!”
Sunshine dropped her butt to the ground, continued to sweep her tail over the floor, and made an odd popping noise as she licked her nose and smacked her lips.
“I’ll be glad to see her go,” Kim said, opening the door for Nora. “Thought she was here till the end, you know?”
Nora knelt, and Sunshine crawled onto her lap. She slid off, gave it another shot, and this time when she slid off, she stayed on the floor. She held still for Nora to buckle on her brand-new collar.
“I can’t believe my luck that no one adopted her before I came back.” Nora clipped the leash to the collar, and stood.
Sunshine heaved up to her paws and shook her head, making the collar jingle.
“Eh, you were pretty safe,” Kim said. “She’s not got all that much going for her in the pizazz department. By which I mean, she’s a good girl, and she’s only a little weird-looking.”
“She’s not weird-looking.”
“She’s very yellow.” Kim waited for them to come out and closed the cage door with a clink. Sunshine flinched and shuffled to press against Nora’s knees.
“What’s wrong with yellow?” Nora asked.
“Not a popular color for dogs.”
“What about yellow Labradors? Golden retrievers?”
“They’re blond. Golden. She’s custard.”
Sunshine was extraordinarily yellow. Like a crayon. It wasn’t weird, though. It was beautiful. “And what’s the problem with her being good?”
“Easy to overlook. She’s too quiet. If she was a scrappy doodle with three legs, she’d be gone in a hot minute. Or a one-eyed yappy terrier. You wouldn’t believe how fast they go.”
Nora glanced down at Sunshine. Sunshine smiled up at her, small brown eyes narrowing to a friendly squint behind thick white lashes. Nora’s chest clenched. “She’s perfect! Why would people not want that?”
Kim shrugged. “They want a bit of spirit, maybe?”
Sunshine radiated peaceful spirit.
“It is what it is, you know?” Kim said. “She’s never going to be anyone’s first choice.”
“She’s mine. She’s my first choice.”
“Sure? We’ve got some new puppies coming in, I hear they’re cute with little patches and—”
“Stop fucking with me, Kim.”
“Jesus, okay.”
~ ~ ~
“You comfy back there, Sunshine?” Nora checked the rearview mirror. She’d put Sunshine in the back, and could see the dog’s head turning this way and that as she stared out the window.
At the sound of Nora’s voice, Sunshine’s tail wagged, but she didn’t move her eyes from the window.
“All right. Before we head home, we have to make a quick stop at the store. The one thing I forgot to pick up today was food for me. What can I say? I was excited. Don’t worry, though. I’m usually more organized. I won’t ever forget to feed you.”
She chattered on, telling Sunshine all about her new home and her new life. “The one downside is that I don’t have a yard of my own, but our landlady—Mrs. Valdez, we like her—said we can use her yard, as long as I clean up after you. And if I don’t, Mrs. Valdez said she’d put it in my mailbox. So. You let me know if I miss it.”
Nora eased out of traffic and pulled into the lot of a strip mall she’d passed each time she came out to the shelter.
“Back in five,” she said, hopping out and closing the door. She took three steps toward the small grocery store tucked between a dry-cleaners and a nail salon, and that’s when hell broke loose.
Pivoting on a heel, Nora stared at her car. It was rocking. Sunshine had gone batshit crazy, barking and leaping around. She threw herself against the seats a few times then wriggled up and over with an inelegant belly flop that took her out of sight until she lunged up at the window.
She did not stop barking for one second.
Holy crap.
Nora inched closer to the car.
Should she open the door? What would happen if she did? What if Sunshine leapt out and went running off into traffic?
What was she supposed to do?
She couldn’t call Anna. Anna liked her animals small and docile. She’d had a chinchilla as a pet when they were kids. She’d have even less of an idea of how to handle a freaking-out seventy-pound dog than Nora did.
She could call Kim, but they’d left the shelter forty minutes ago. Felt a bit soon to be having a problem. And then Kim might get in her car and drive over here, take Sunshine back to the shelter because Nora wasn’t good enough…
No. No Kim. She was on her own. She could handle this. She didn’t need anyone.
And there wasn’t anyone she trusted to back her up in any case.
Gabe.
The thought of him flashed into her mind, and she groaned.
No. She couldn’t call him. She didn’t want to call him.
Although…he was the sort of guy you’d want to have around when you were having a crisis. It didn’t even matter if he was a dog person or not, he had such an air of competence, you got the sense that he could handle anything. From an apocalypse to a dinner party (pretty much the same thing to Nora) to an angry lawyer.
A freaking-out dog should be easy.
Hating herself for even thinking about involving him in this, Nora hit the button to call. It had only rung once when it struck her that Sunshine wasn’t barking anymore.
She hung up before he answered and leaned down to peer through the window.
Sunshine sat on the back seat, panting. As soon as Nora looked in, she wagged her tail.
“Hah.” It was fine. There was no problem. Everything was fine. “Good girl,” she said and hitched her purse on her shoulder.
Way to overreact, Nora.
The phone buzzed in her hand. “Crap.” Sighing, she answered. “Hello, Mr. Sterling.”
“While I do love to hear you say my name that way, why are we so formal all of a sudden?” The amusement was clear in his deep voice.
“I’m being professional.”
“You be professional. I’m going to stick with inappropriate, because it works for me, and because I want to. What can I do for you, honeypie?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You called me.”
“I did? Are you sure? No. It wasn’t on purpose. It was a mistake. You know what happened? I must have butt-dialed you.”
“The correct term is booty call. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
“No! I meant butt-dialed. Didn’t I say it right? I sat on my phone.”
“Nora?”
“Yes?”
“It’s a flip phone.”
“Yes.”
“The buttons are covered by the casing. You can’t accidentally press them if you sit on your phone, and thus butt-dial me.”
She chewed her lip. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Any other feeble excuses? No? Ten minutes. Answer your door. Your turn to be naked.”
She giggled, and mentally smacked herself. Right. She’d answer the door if he came running over for sex. She’d pack a bag and leave for Mexico if he came running over for sex. “You don’t have my address.”
“Oh, darn. If only I knew how to use the internet, where I hear they keep such useful information.”
“Don’t come over, I’m not there. Sorry, I didn’t mean to call and disturb you.”
“Not gonna lie, honey. I’m disappointed. See you soon.” He disconnected.
She stood there, smiling at nothing, until a horn on the street reminded her she was supposed to be getting food, not imagining how it would go if he did show up for a booty call.
This time she got four steps away before the performance began. An elderly couple walking past recoiled at the noise, huddling together for protection.
Nora dashed back to the car.
Sunshine fell silent.
“I’m beginning to think you have abandonment issues,” Nora said through the gap in the window she’d left for fresh air. Sunshine stuck her nose out and huffed. “Are you going to let me go get some people food? It’s either that, or you’ll be sharing your dinner with me tonight.” She’d give it one more go.
Sunshine licked the window and let Nora get ten whole paces before she freaked out again.
Nora hustled back across the lot and jumped in the car quickly, in case her crazy dog decided to make a break for it. Sunshine, however, seemed more than happy the minute Nora was in sight, slumping down on the back seat with satisfaction.
“No shopping today. I’ll improvise. It’s not a problem. I won’t have to share your food.” She had cereal. She could eat it dry.
They made it home without further incident, and were met by Mrs. Valdez, whom Nora suspected had been waiting and watching from the front room where she taught her piano students.
Sunshine was a hit with the old lady. This was an encouraging development, because Nora had been wondering if she’d ever be able to leave the dog again. She might find herself in need of an emergency dog-sitter. They hung out in Mrs. Valdez’s yard, chatting as Sunshine sniffed around, never going far from Nora even though she was off the leash.
Once they’d said goodbye to Mrs. Valdez and gone upstairs to Nora’s apartment, Sunshine made a beeline for the dog bed. She settled in with what seemed to be a characteristic lack of grace, and let out a deep, contented groan.
“Big day, huh?” Nora said. She sat on the floor beside the bed, stroking Sunshine’s soft head as she fell asleep.
A bubble of contentment rose up. I have a dog.
Pulling her Filofax out of her purse, she made a show of clicking the top of her pen, and checked off item number two. Then, because although it was dorky, no one would ever see it, she doodled tiny floating hearts around the check mark.
Nora ran her eye down the list she’d made two months ago. She was making progress. The contentment grew. She paged through, stopped at her sexual odyssey list, paused, then wrote, booty call.
Sunshine began to snore, and Nora smiled.
One thing at a time.