Chapter Five
Izzy was wearing a charcoal gray skirt and jacket today, this skirt a little tighter than the one he’d first seen her in but still professional. It did fantastic things to her ass.
She had opted to drive herself and Ana to the Pizza Pit. Careful and cautious to the last. Brad knew as a single mom she had to be responsible. Guarded. But it wouldn’t hurt her to loosen up. Humming softly, he leaned against the hood of his truck. And he’d be just the man to show her how.
She strode across the restaurant’s parking lot, her legs looking amazing in her black heels. Ana’s hand was nestled in Izzy’s, and the girl was bouncing up and down, yanking on her mom’s arm. Puppies did have a way of stirring kids up.
“Are you hungry?” he asked Ana.
“Well, duh.” She rolled her eyes and looked so much like her mother when he irritated her, Brad couldn’t hold back his laugh.
“Ana.” Izzy tugged on the girl’s ponytail. “Don’t be rude.”
“Sorry, Brad.” Ana slipped her free hand into his and pulled them all to the door. “Can we get pepperoni?”
“Works for me.” The feel of her small hand in Brad’s grip was strange. Her hand was slim and delicate, and warm as a furnace. He didn’t go around holding a lot of kids’ hands but had to admit something about it felt…nice.
Opening the door, he let her go and waved mother and daughter through. “After you, ladies.”
Ana skipped inside and made a beeline for the counter where orders were placed. “Looks like she’s been here before,” Brad said.
“Too many times.” Izzy shook her head. “Part of the guilt of being a single mom. Overcompensation with pizza.”
Placing his palm on the small of her back, he guided her to the order line. “Why should you feel guilty?”
She snorted and then covered her mouth and nose with her hand, looking shocked at the sound.
Brad grinned. Damn, she was cute. He lowered her hand and kept it nestled in his as they moved forward with the line. A different kind of warmth spread through his gut as he held Izzy’s hand.
She flicked her glance down to where they were joined and chewed on her bottom lip. “Single moms always feel guilty. We have support groups for this. We’re guilty we didn’t give our kids a dad. We’re guilty that we don’t have as much time to spend with them because we’re so busy working. And that there’s not enough money for the camps they want or the toys the other kids get.”
Brad blinked. “There’s a lot of crap going on in that head of yours.”
“You have no idea,” she muttered.
They reached the front of the line, and Ana bounced up to the cashier. “Extra-large pepperoni pizza, please.”
“Extra-large?” Izzy raised an eyebrow and gently tugged her hand from his grip. “There’s only three of us. A medium will be fine,” she told the teenager behind the register.
“A large at least,” Ana argued. She sucked on her lower lip. “I’m a growing girl, you know.”
Brad burst out laughing. “Is this negotiation normal?”
“Constant.” Izzy blew out a breath. “I think she just offered up the extra-large as an opening bid, knowing starting high is a good tactic to get what you really want.”
“Aaah. She’s learning from her mom, then.” He ignored Izzy’s lowered eyebrows and stepped forward, handing the cashier his credit card. “Make it an extra-large and three sodas.” He shrugged at Izzy. “I’m a growing boy, too.”
That earned a laugh from Ana, and they shot each other conspiratorial smiles.
Rolling her eyes, Izzy reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet.
“On me,” he told her, nudging her wallet back in the large bag.
“Thanks.”
They got their sodas and found a table, and Izzy plopped her bag on top of it and dug in. She searched for a bit and came up with a Ziploc bag full of tokens. “Here you go, Ana. Spend them wisely.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Ana scooped up the bag and disappeared toward the video game machines.
“You do come here a lot if you keep tokens in your purse.” He leaned over. “What else have you got in there?”
She slapped at his hand and put the purse next to her as she sat. “None of your business.”
He straddled the bench seat and sat facing her. “So, Isabelle Lopez, tell me about yourself. I know you are a secret softie when it comes to dogs and that you’re carrying around a lot of misplaced guilt. What else?”
“I’m a woman who likes to get down to business. And you still haven’t told me the details for your cockamamie idea about this award.”
Clutching his chest, he tsked. “You wound me. It’s a marvelous idea. We’re going to hold a little ceremony, maybe make it a lunch. Put out a nice spread. Charge, I don’t know, fifty bucks a ticket. At some point, yours truly will get up, make a little speech about how marvelous you are.” He leaned in close, smelled a hint of perfume on her skin. “That should be easy enough to do. You’ll get your picture taken; people will throw money at Forever Friends. A win-win.”
She scraped her teeth across her upper lip. “How much money do you think you’ll raise?”
He shrugged. “Hopefully enough for the next couple of months.” A server brought the pizza to their table, and Brad rubbed his hands together. “Should I go find Ana?”
Izzy stared at him for a moment and shook her head. She blew out a breath. “No, I’ll go get her. Back in a moment.”
Spreading out the plates and silverware, Brad watched as Izzy tugged on her daughter’s ponytail, a sweet smile softening her features. That woman had a lot of armor on, but it wasn’t as impenetrable as she thought it was. She just needed someone to pry his way in.
Ana jogged up to the table, jingling a handful of tokens. “Thank God the pizza’s here. I’m staaarving.” She dumped the brass coins on the table and one lazily rolled toward the edge.
Brad snagged it before it could fall. “Got it.” He tossed it on the pile of tokens.
Ana slid onto the bench seat. “You could have kept it. It would be like your commission for selling my mom on the extra-large.” She gave him an impish grin, and Brad chuckled.
Izzy settled across from them and reached into her bag. She pulled out a little squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer and squirted a dab into Ana’s outstretched hands. She offered it up to Brad, and he shrugged and stuck his palm out, too. After rubbing the sanitizer between her own hands, she returned it to her bag and pulled out little packets of red flake pepper.
She caught his surprised look and shrugged. “The Pizza Pit is good at many things, but refilling their condiments isn’t one of them. I like to be prepared.” She tugged a slice of pizza off the serving dish and placed it on the plate in front of Ana. “There you go, baby. Don’t eat too fast.”
“I’m not a baby anymore.”
Brad decided to nip that fight in the bud. “That’s right. We’re growing boys and girls.” He lifted his arm and flexed his biceps. Ana mirrored his action, her thin limb about a tenth the size of his. He poked her muscle. “Definitely need more pizza.”
Laughing, she lifted her slice and took a large bite. Cheese stretched from the pizza to her mouth, and she chewed her way to the end of the string.
Brad shared a smile with Izzy and took a bite of his own slice.
“Those puppies are so cute,” Ana chattered. “Did you see when Pansy licked my neck and Jasmine bit his tail, and then I don’t think their mom, Buttercup, saw this, but then Daffy bit her brother’s nose!” A stream of words was pouring from Ana’s mouth, a seeming impossibility as pepperoni and cheese kept disappearing into that same mouth at the same time.
“Eat first. Talk later,” Izzy instructed.
Ana nodded, and lowered her face to her plate. Her eyebrows drew together and she methodically fed the slice into her mouth, her teeth chomping together in a steady beat like a hungry Ms. Pac-Man. It was serious pizza-eating time.
Brad’s lips twitched.
“Don’t laugh,” Izzy warned him. “You’ll only encourage her behavior.”
He lowered his slice. “What? I wasn’t even smiling.”
“You were amused.” Picking a piece of pepperoni off her pizza, Izzy popped it into her mouth and chewed. “You have a very expressive face. You don’t seem to hide anything you’re feeling.” She leaned over the table and whispered. “Including the fact that you don’t like the names Ana picked out for your new dogs.”
“I never said—”
“You wince every time she says them.”
Well, yes, they were atrocious. He could only hope whoever adopted the dogs did a better job and didn’t inflict flower names on the poor things. But he had told Ana she could name them. The carnage was on him.
“I just don’t think the names reflect the dogs’ personalities,” he said, his voice low, not wanting to hurt Ana’s feelings. He curled one side of his top lip. “Especially Buttercup.”
“What were you calling her?”
“V. I.” Using a plastic knife, Brad cut off two more pieces for him and Ana, deposited one on the kid’s plate. “As in V. I. Warshawski.”
Izzy pursed her lips, making the plump flesh even rounder and more tempting. “Is that a cop from a book?”
“Private detective,” Brad corrected her, but was still impressed she’d gotten close. “All the dogs Gabe and I name have detective names. And V. I. was one tough broad, just like our girl back at the shelter.”
“And now she has a flower name. You’ll just have to suck it up.” Izzy shook her head. “And she’s your girl. She’s not mine.”
Not yet.
“It must be tough coming up with female detective names.” Izzy took a sip of her soda. “There can’t have been that many.”
Brad stopped chewing. “Are you kidding me? There’s Miss Marple, Nancy Drew, Kinsey Millhone, Eve Dallas, Stephanie Plum, and plenty more. If you go to the TV side, there’s all of Charlie’s angels, Cagney and Lacey, Jennifer Hart—”
“Okay!” Izzy held up a hand, palm out. “Jeez, I get it. I underestimated my sex, apparently.” She tilted her head, and a sheaf of silky, shiny hair slid off one shoulder. It was down today, and Brad could see that it wasn’t actually black, but a brown as rich and deep as his favorite dark roasted coffee. “How do you know all that?” she asked. “Are you some sort of mystery buff?”
Brad shrugged. “I do like mysteries. But I read anything and everything I could get my hands on when I was a kid.” There’d been nothing else to do but read and watch TV. When stays at the hospital became commonplace, his friends stopped coming to visit him. And his parents both had jobs they couldn’t miss.
Izzy slid a glance at Ana, who was pulling cheese apart into long strings before sucking them down. Leaning over the table again, Izzy whispered, “Are you okay? You looked sad all of a sudden.”
Jesus, he really did need to work on his poker face. His hand crept to his side and he rubbed the edge of his scar. “Fine.” He hated this part. Telling new people about his old health problems. They went from seeing the strong man he was to looking at him as if he might break. But if this relationship went where he wanted it to, Izzy would have to know. Clothes would be coming off and she’d see the large scar.
“In high school and college I spent a lot of time in hospitals and dialysis centers. I had something called polycystic kidney disease. When I was twenty-one I got a kidney transplant that changed my life.” After his recovery, he couldn’t believe how much energy he had. He’d forgotten that feeling tired all the time wasn’t normal. He’d actually been able to run and play sports, stay awake later than ten o’clock, had the time to date. Life had begun again.
Izzy’s face creased in sympathy. He didn’t like it, didn’t want her feeling bad for him, but knew hers was a normal reaction.
He pushed his plate away. “There wasn’t much to do when I was lying in those hospital beds, so I was very grateful for whatever books were on the traveling library cart. Mysteries, biographies, even romance. I didn’t care—if it was on the cart I read it. But mysteries were my favorite. Those were the books I could get lost in, forget where I was for a couple of hours. That, and when the therapy dog came around.”
“They let a dog into the hospital?”
Ana perked up at that. “What dog went to the hospital? Was it Buttercup?”
Brad ruffled her hair. “No, sweetie. Not…Buttercup. It was a dog named Harriet, a great big black dog. But her fur was so soft and she was so sweet that when she’d come visit me, my spirits always lifted.” He looked at Izzy. “You don’t understand the power that a dog has to change a person’s life. Make him happier, better. Harriet visited me for four years. She was what I looked forward to, what gave me the patience not to yell at the nurses just for doing their jobs and the doctors for not fixing me.”
Izzy gave him a small smile of understanding. “And now you own a dog shelter.”
“I worked as an engineer for a couple of years after college, but I knew this was what I wanted to do.” He shrugged. “Once I had enough seed money to start the shelter, I quit my job and never looked back.”
Without taking her gaze from his, Izzy said, “Ana, honey, how about calling Buttercup Violet instead. Vi for short.”
The little girl’s shoulders raised and lowered, and she turned back to her pizza. “I guess that works.”
Vi. V.I. Brad grinned and mouthed ‘thank you’ across the table. Maybe a little sympathy was a good thing. In fact, he should milk this moment for all it was worth.
“About that award ceremony, what day works best for you? Are you generally free on Fridays?”
Izzy narrowed her eyes, but finally agreed. “Yes. I can do Fridays.”
“Super.” Brad rubbed his hands together, and wondered how far, exactly, he could push this. “Now, about poor Vi and her puppies—”
“I am not getting any dogs!”
Apparently, Brad had reached his limit.