CHAPTER 7
“I heard you had a magical touch with the ladies,” Dorothy Pines, current citizen in need, said, and Ford sighed.
He wanted to argue that it wasn’t the touch that was magical but which lady he was touching that was the game changer. But since he was on the job, and the lady in question was a fifty-pound bulldog named Bubbles who’d gotten herself stuck in an air vent, he let it go.
It was Thursday, his shift was coming to a close, and this was the most exciting thing to happen to him since running into Liv on the beach three days ago. Not that he’d seen her since. She’d been playing a one-sided game of Hide-from-the-Neighbor.
On Tuesday she’d been watering her flowers when Ford stepped out on the deck. Liv dove behind the planter, only giving him a reluctant wave when Bullseye sniffed her out for a morning high five to the backside.
Yesterday, he’d spotted her pulling up to get Paxton from camp. She took one look at Ford and bolted into the Bear Claw as if hellhounds were on her heels.
“I’d suggest waiting until she comes out on her own,” Ford said, repeating the same advice he’d given on the phone when Dorothy had asked to speak with the department’s new K-9 rescue specialist. Harris had sent her call Ford’s way, and Ford had thanked him with the finger.
Now he was ass up, with his head stuck in a wall vent, trying to sweet-talk a tank of a dog wearing a teal NAMAS-STAY tank top with matching booties to come out of her hiding spot, while a cluster of grannies in sweatbands and blue tips gathered around to watch the show.
“And here I thought you were the kind of man to take charge,” Dorothy clucked.
Ford straightened to find Dorothy right behind him—and Bullseye blinking longingly up at her. “I’m smart enough to know when a woman needs time to warm up,” he said. “And she doesn’t want me anywhere near her ham hock.”
“Well, if we leave her in there, she’ll keep gnawing on that ham hock until her rump is too big to squeeze back out of the hole.” Dorothy, relying heavily on the wall for balance, did some kind of front-bending yoga pose, then stuck the top half of her body inside the vent.
The bottom half had Ford averting his gaze. Covered in neon-green spandex and body glitter, Dorothy was showing enough saggy skin to make Ford shiver. Granted, she was the senior instructor at Downward-Facing Dog, a pet-friendly yoga studio on the west side of town. Senior in age, not experience, Ford suspected when she almost got herself stuck.
“Depending on how much she’s already eaten, you may have to grease her up to get her out,” an older woman in a leopard-print leotard and pearls said ever so helpfully from behind.
Bubbles had the body of a snow globe and the stubbornness of a pit bull, so Ford feared that if he didn’t do something to appease Dorothy, he’d be called back out to grease down the dog and owner.
“How about I call animal control?” Ford offered. “They have these poles with leashes on the end. Maybe we can drag her out.”
“She’ll take one look at that dogcatcher’s pole and dig her heels in,” Dorothy said, standing back up. “It would be like trying to pull an elephant through a straw! Can you imagine?”
Ford took in the older woman’s neon-green body suit and pink leg warmers and had a pretty good idea.
“You don’t want a hairless dog walking the neighborhood, do you?” she asked.
“Uh, no, ma’am.”
“Smart boy,” she praised with a smile and a pat—to his tush. “That’s why we called you and not animal control, right, ladies?”
Ten sets of silver halos bobbed in unison, and someone from the back said, “Also because we wanted to see if the town’s Best Buns were as tight as they looked on Facebook.”
Ford remembered the flash at the store the other day and ran a hand through his hair. “Like I explained to you on the phone, search and rescue doesn’t handle animal cases.”
“Well, Patty said you found her dog, LuLu, in record time, swore that it was a miraculous thing to watch.”
Ford looked at the Taser on his hip, because that would be less painful than his week. Ever since word spread that he had rescued Ms. Moberly’s dog, people in town had started referring to him as Officer Doolittle. Even the guys at the station had taken to hanging pictures of pets in costume on his locker.
“LuLu was hiding under Ms. Moberly’s bed, chewing on a chocolate bar,” Ford explained. “Bullseye here sniffed her out in two minutes flat. Nothing miraculous about that.”
“Doesn’t matter—it’s all Wag and Waddle can talk about,” she said, sounding put out. “Bubbles and I showed up to our weekly park date, and not a single person mentioned her new pageant outfit. They were too busy yapping about LuLu’s return, as if Jesus himself had appeared with a doggy biscuit to give her the strength to hold on.”
“That’s some story,” Ford mused.
“A winning story,” Dorothy said. “Then a few days later, my Bubbles, last year’s Wagon Days Darling runner-up, winds up in a grimy vent gnawing on a stolen slab of ham big enough to feed a whale. Which is what she’ll look like if we don’t get her out of there. This is her year, and Patty knows how hard Bubbles has been working to get her figure back after the last batch of puppies.”
Ah, Christ. Ford knew where this was going. In fact, the entire situation was making his head spin. Or maybe it was all the sweatbands and saggy breasts on display. Either way, Harris was in for a come-to-Jesus meeting when he got back to the station. “So you think Ms. Moberly stuck Bubbles in the air vent?”
“No,” she said on a sniffle, and Ford cupped the bill of his hat. “Bubbles went in there on her own to get a few minutes’ peace from the demands of motherhood. But I think Patty saw the human-interest angle, knew it would give us an edge with the mommy demographic, and threw in the hot ham hock when I disappeared to call you.”
“She cooked the ham hock in the five minutes it took to call me?”
“Hot as in stolen. She grabbed it right out of the butcher display over at the Bunny Slope Supermarket.” The older woman looked overcome with distress. “Don’t you understand?” she cried.
Ford was afraid he didn’t. He didn’t understand how he’d busted his ass to become one of the most sought-after K-9 rescue officers in the industry, only to be trapped in Mayberry handling neighbor feuds and dog-tampering cases.
Because you’re scared of a damn mountain.
Not that it was a completely foreign concept. He’d felt trapped back in Reno. Staying there hadn’t been an option. Reexamining old cases, second-guessing past decisions, until the second-guessing caused him to make shit decisions. Decisions that made him a risk to his teammates and subjects. So he’d come here, to close the file on the one case he couldn’t seem to let go of. Only the case was closed, but he still felt trapped.
The truth was, Ford had felt trapped ever since his dad disappeared, leaving behind more questions than Ford could ever solve. Wasn’t sure he even wanted to. Because what person would want to know, with certainty, that his father’s love had limits? Or exactly what he was lacking that made him so easily disposable?
Douglas Jamison was a private man who one day decided domestic life wasn’t for him, and he left behind a wife and son without warning.
Ford still remembered his mom pleading with the police to find her husband, swearing that there must be a problem because her husband would never run off and leave his son. The cleaned-out closet and missing personal items told a different story. A story Ford didn’t understand until his mom admitted, many years later, that Ford was the result of a long-term love affair.
His father was a private pilot for an oil company who had another family on the other side of the country. When his wife discovered the truth, she gave him an ultimatum.
Ford was merely collateral damage.
Over the years, he’d watched in awe as people searched the globe for their missing loved ones. Ford’s dad knew where his son lived, but he never once came searching for the missing love that had shaped Ford’s life.
“Bubbles’s campaign is sunk,” Dorothy cried, gripping her chest with such force it challenged the support of her sports top and had Ford looking down, where he saw Bullseye studying the woman’s fuzzy leg warmers—as if they were Lambkins’s long-lost cousin.
Ford gave a stern look and shook his head. Bullseye ignored this, his eyes trained on the pudgy old lady with nuzzle-worthy legs.
“I can already see the headlines in the Acorn Gazette: ‘Pageant princess blows the crown for a piece of cheap meat.’ I bet Patty’s already given them the ex-ex”—sniff, sniff—“exclusive,” Dorothy cried, Bullseye noticing the way her voice squeaked. Much like a chew toy.
“Nothing will turn off the mommy voters like a shoplifting sc-sc-scandal.”
Head low to the ground, mouth twitching in anticipation, Bullseye slowly moved forward.
“Bullseye, no,” Ford said sternly.
Bullseye stopped, his eyes darting from the pink furry legs to Ford with an excited Baby? look, to which Ford gave a Lambkins is in the car lift of the brow. With a dramatic huff, Bullseye hobbled over obediently and lay by Ford’s side.
“I’ll make sure there’s no mention of the ham hock in my report,” Ford said seriously, as if this were an actual case.
Dorothy stopped crying and dabbed her eyes. “Are you going to help my Bubbles, then?”
Ford cupped the bill of his hat and pulled it low. “On two conditions.”
“Anything,” she promised, taking his hands in her pudgy ones.
“Not a single mention of the words miraculous, celestial, holy, godlike, or supernatural,” he said, ticking them off on his fingers.
“How about transcendent?”
Ford shook his head. “Nothing that implies divine intervention or I will confirm the rumor that Bubbles was in possession of stolen meat.”
A collective gasp filled the studio, and one of the ladies moved to light the sage candle.
“I have a jar of baby food in my trunk. Blueberry Buckle flavor, a search dog’s biggest weakness. It can tempt even the most timid of dogs down a hundred-foot ravine.” He stuck out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Dorothy studied his hand, pausing before she took it. “What’s the second condition?”
Ford smiled. “You tell everyone who asks that it was Harris Donovan whose quick thinking and even quicker response saved Bubbles. And then you give them this number.”
Ford scribbled down Harris’s personal mobile number and handed it to Dorothy.
She stuffed the paper in her cleavage, then shook his hand. “You got yourself a deal. Now go and get my baby.”
It took Ford two minutes and a jar of baby food to extract Bubbles from the vent, and another hour and a half to convince Chuck the butcher, who wanted his name in the paper, not to press charges against a dog.
Wondering if his day could get any worse, Ford headed toward the front of the market. He smelled like incense and cold cuts, his uniform was coated in dog fur, and his shift had ended well over an hour ago.
He picked up a six-pack from the refrigerated section, not sure what the rest of his night would entail, but he knew it would involve a hot shower and a cold beer.
However, as his luck would have it, he stumbled onto something much more interesting on his way to the checkout counter.
Liv was in the freezer section carting around enough Popsicles to feed a small nation and wearing a pair of sweatpants, a red tank top, and matching sequined Converses that made him smile. It wasn’t the getup she’d sported last night in his dreams, but he wasn’t complaining. Sure, the sweats hid any kind of curves he knew she had going on under there, but that tank top was soft, snug, and showing off her goods.
And that woman had some pretty damn fine goods. A little on the smaller side—and reacting to the chilled environment—but showstoppers all the way.
Ford considered telling her she’d be warmer if she shut the freezer door, but he figured it would make it harder for her to hide from whomever she was hiding from without the frosted door for cover.
In addition to the stealthy peeks she was stealing down the aisle, she was fighting to tug a giant box of Popsicles out of the fridge. The box was winning. In her defense, it was on the top shelf shoved to the back. Meaning that every time she got on her tiptoes to reach, her tank moved up and her sweats moved down, exposing an impressive strip of silky midriff.
For a guy like Ford, all it would take was a single reach and grab, but since Nurse Cupcake didn’t do well with outside help, he leaned a shoulder against the ice cream display case and took in the view.
She gave a little hop-and-squeal move that was all kinds of girlie and a tad bit adorable, causing the door to close on her and nearly shut her inside the unit. But instead of coming out, she plastered herself to the cold door and peeked through the window as if the grim reaper himself were standing on the other side.
“You can always just pull the fire alarm and run out the back,” Ford suggested, and Liv jumped into the aisle, the door slamming shut behind her.
She looked down that aisle toward the back, where Chuck was packing giblets, then back to him. “You need to start wearing a bell.”
“It wouldn’t have helped anyway,” he said lightly. “I’m that good.” A smile tugged at her lips—not huge, but enough to know that she wanted to laugh. “Did Paxton bring home a penguin, or are you turning in your cupcake scrubs for Popsicles?”
“It’s my week to be Popsicle mom,” she explained, sounding slightly harassed. “Who knew there were so many different kinds to choose from? Sugar-free, gluten-free, nut-free, all-natural, artificial flavoring but not coloring, dairy-free.”
“Can Popsicles have dairy?” he asked with a smile, noticing that all the BS from earlier slipped away until all he could focus on was how easy it was to be around her. He’d noticed it the other night on the beach but couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
Soothing. Liv soothed his soul, silenced the what-ifs and vanquished the guilt. Which was ridiculous because being around her should cause all kinds of turmoil.
But it didn’t.
“They can also be made in a factory that shells nuts and seeds.” She looked up at him as if the fate of the world rested on this one decision. “What if someone has a nut allergy? Surely they shouldn’t be left out of Popsicle Day.”
“Why not get a box of each, and then you’ll be safe.”
She looked at her cart, which had more boxes than kids in superhero camp. “You see my problem.”
Ford looked down at her tank, which had SUPERMOM scrawled across the chest in red glitter. And poking out, just above the top curve of the P and first M, was hard evidence that she was super indeed. “Not a problem from where I’m standing.”
Liv looked down and quickly crossed her arms. “Let me guess, you’ve got a cup of coffee to warm me up?”
“I was going to offer you a hand with the top shelf, but who am I to argue with a lady,” he said. “Unless you’d rather ask Chuck for help.”
“Don’t even say that,” she hissed, and before he knew what was happening, Liv had a fistful of his uniform shirt and had him spun around so his back was to the butcher counter, his body shielding her from view.
“What? He’s nice, single, got a steady job, and with those meat cleavers for hands, he’s defiantly not a rookie. I bet he could help a lady out.”
Ford raised his hands to wave Chuck down, and Liv snatched them back.
“He could also keep my freezer filled with lamb chops and mincemeat,” she said, peeking around Ford’s arm. “But a steady supply of meat isn’t what I’m looking for.”
So it wasn’t just Ford. It was all single men she avoided. Good to know. Not that it helped his ego any.
“What is it you’re looking for, then?” he asked, and with a glare she stepped back. She was cute when she was trying to be tough. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
That got a small smile out of her, but the sparkle in her eyes told him she wasn’t falling for it. “It’s been so long I don’t even know.”
“Okay, how about start by answering a few simple questions.”
“What? Like favorite color, favorite food, favorite number?” She laughed. “There’s more to connecting with someone than how they answered the latest Facebook quiz.”
“I was thinking something a little deeper, like, ‘Are you willing to have open conversations in order to connect with others?’ But we can start with yours. In fact, I’ll go first.” Ford looked at her top. “At the moment, red, Popsicles, and no one really has a favorite number. Everyone knows the real question is favorite kiss,” he said, and the moment the words left his mouth, he regretted it.
Liv froze, which was the exact opposite of what was happening in his chest. Because Sam had just entered the room. That was a lie—Sam had always been there. From day one. Ford had just vocalized what they’d both been ignoring.
“Liv, I—”
“No, go on, tell me how these questions will help me figure everything out.” She folded her arms in a stance that was so far from warm and friendly Ford was afraid his nuts would get frostbite.
“Not everything,” he said softly, apologetically. “But it might be a good starting point to talk about the kinds of things that pique your interest. For me it would be smart, sassy, and someone who can rock a pair of cupcake scrubs like nobody’s business,” he said jokingly, trying to get the lightness back. “In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. But now that you mention it, I guess I like honest, easy to read, someone who doesn’t have to rely on beef-rib bouquets or charming one-liners. It should just happen naturally.”
Well, that went smoothly, he thought, looking down at the challenging spark in her eyes. Hating himself when he saw the raw ache behind it.
“Message received loud and clear,” he said. “But you’ve got to start somewhere. I get that it won’t be with me, but you need to put yourself out there.”