Chapter Twelve
Garrett chose a booth in the corner of the tiny restaurant adjacent to the Bitter Bark Bed & Breakfast. It wasn’t a college haunt, and it wasn’t a super popular local spot, especially midweek.
It was private and intimate and exactly what he wanted.
He let Jessie pick her side of the booth and slide in, and then he sat right next to her. Not too close so she felt crowded, but close enough that he could easily touch her or brush the bit of thigh that showed when she sat down, and catch a whiff of a floral perfume.
She wanted only sparkling water, which sounded even better than a beer, so he had one, too.
“So how do we start?” he asked her after they were settled. “With your first memory of childhood? How far back in time?”
She stabbed a lime bobbing in her drink with a stirrer, thinking. “I usually start with a topic that I know makes my subject comfortable. Which is why I specifically ask for the first interview to be in someone’s office or home. That’s where I can see what matters to them, based on our surroundings.”
“What would I see if I were sitting in your living room?”
“My two roommates and the mess they leave,” she said with a dry laugh. “You’d do better at my office so you can see what’s on my desk. And, full disclosure, it’s not an office, but a very small cube in the middle of a maze of other cubes.”
“I know that maze well. What’s tacked to your cube wall?”
“A picture of me near the Eiffel Tower from a trip to Paris, a butterfly I thought was beautiful, a motivational quote, and a list of A-list types I’d like to interview for the website.”
“Am I on it?” Suddenly, the idea that his name could be hanging on her office wall threw him a little.
“Not that list.”
He had to keep this on her. “Well, we’re not there, we’re here. But Bitter Bark was your home once, right?”
She inhaled and glanced at the restaurant. “It’s so different from when I was here. I didn’t feel that connected to Bitter Bark, North Carolina.”
“Then why did it hurt to leave?”
She pointed to him. “Good question.”
“So answer it.”
“I meant that was literally a good question. Anytime you can ask a ‘why’ question, you’ll get the best, most honest answer.”
“And that answer would be…”
She thought for a moment before answering. “It hurt to for a couple of reasons, including being yanked right before my junior year in high school and leaving my best friend and her amazing family, but also because I was second. Completely and utterly second.”
“What do you mean?” At her look of incredulity, he corrected himself. “I mean, why do you say that?”
Laughing again, she put her hand over his. “You’re so cute it hurts.”
“Please don’t put that in your article,” he said, using his other hand to take a drink. “Explain second.”
“I was second,” she answered, “to my sister. In everything. In every possible way.”
“Were you jealous of her?”
“Not of her talent, which was considerable. Or the fact that she got every extra dime and so much attention and adulation. My sister is beautiful and has, well, she had a special talent. But I didn’t envy it, no.” She started to shake her head, then stopped. “Okay, maybe a teeny tiny little bit.”
He angled his head a little closer to hers. “So glad to hear you’re normal.”
“Points for hitting an emotional beat,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He made a triumphant gesture with his fist, and she cracked up.
“Just a little beat,” she added. “Nothing major.”
“Then tell me more until we get to a major one.”
“What I was jealous of,” she admitted, “was how close my mother and sister were. How they were always each other’s number-one person to share anything with. I mean, it was understandable. They went away every weekend to dance competitions. Once I was old enough to stay home alone or spend the weekends at Waterford, I never went with them.”
“Why not?”
“Because they were endless hours of hell watching a million overly made-up little divas dance to the same fifteen songs, all so we could see a three-minute solo of Stephanie. And the presentation of a trophy that she always won.”
He smiled at that, and the fact that she took his hand, maybe without realizing it, as if she wanted to touch him while she shared her story.
“So, Mom and Steph had a zillion inside jokes and shared experiences and nicknames for the other dancers, and they always had each other’s back. Always. I wanted that, but I just didn’t have it. I wanted to be someone’s number one.”
He curled his fingers around hers. “I get that feeling.” He’d seen it in the faces of lost dogs. In the expressions of lost people. In the mirror, sometimes.
“For the record, Garrett, what I just revealed to you is a basic wound. When someone offers you a glimpse of a wound, you dive in.”
He curled his lip. “That sounds cruel.”
“Not if it’s done right,” she assured him, turning to face him more.
“How can diving into a wound be anything but harsh? Even if you wanted to share it?”
She nodded, encouraging him. “Exactly. The trick is to get me to do that. Be creative, be subtle, but don’t miss the opportunity. I took down a few bricks, and that’s when you…try to take down more to see the real me.”
He searched her face, seeing the real her, no bricks. Only inviting green eyes and soft, soft lips.
“So…number one.” He tried to focus. “You want to be someone’s number one?”
She cringed a little. “It’s not quite that simple, and it does make me sound like, I don’t know, a husband hunter or someone equally desperate.”
Not to him. It made her sound normal, human, and a little vulnerable, which he liked.
“But I love my job, and I want to be number one there. That would work, you see. But I have to beat out some very formidable competition.”
“Someone bigger and better and, what did you say, beautifuler?”
She inched back, surprised. “You really were eavesdropping on my conversation with Lola.”
“Not intentionally,” he assured her. “Mostly, I was trying to gather my wits to tell you to get the hell out of Dodge. But then…”
“Lola ran after me.”
“And you were crying.” He stroked her knuckles. “Why were you crying, Jessie?”
She took a slow, shuddering breath. “Leaving Waterford.”
He wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but sensed he’d just taken down one of those bricks she’d been talking about. So he should dive in, right? “Why was that so hard?”
“It was like Camelot to me,” she whispered. “All that love. All that connection. All that family and fun and so many number ones, a person could never be lost. Neither could a dog,” she added with a laugh. “Strays are welcome at Waterford, and…I was.”
Something stirred in his soul, a deep, primal, unexpected but so familiar feeling that he had to do something. Save someone. Hold and fix and protect and love someone.
Oh man. He knew this feeling. Not only with a few hundred rescue dogs. But with the woman who’d scarred and changed and damaged everything. Jessie might be revealing her emotional baggage, but it was cutting deep into his.
Why didn’t that make him run? Why didn’t that make him want to get away from her, and fast? Why did he want more?
He realized she was looking hard at him. “Are you okay?”
“Just…trying to think of my ‘why’ questions.” He inched closer. “Like why do I want to kiss you so much right now?”
She gave a shaky smile. “Probably because…I do, too.”
Still holding her gaze, he leaned into her mouth, drawn like a magnet, aching for the contact with her lips. Nothing else mattered.
When her eyes fluttered, he closed the space and kissed her.
His blood thrummed, tightening his chest as he flicked his tongue over her lips. That was enough to kiss her again, with even more intensity, both of them melding closer in the booth. He dropped his hand from her cheek to her shoulder, sliding down her arm, brushing his fingers over her bare thigh.
Interviews were forgotten. Questions disappeared. The slow burn of arousal replaced everything. “I remember kissing this girl,” he whispered, separating, but only to kiss her cheek and jaw.
“And all roads lead back to Manhunt.”
“Not a bad destination, Jess.”
For a long beat, they looked at each other, the tiny vein in her temple beating with the same increased rhythm of his pulse.
Deep in his pocket, his phone vibrated and dinged softly, the sound of a call that he would most certainly ignore.
“You going to get that?”
“No.”
“I think you better.”
In other words, stop and think about this. He pulled out the phone, reacting at the name on the caller ID. “It’s Bill. The guy Marie said came into the shelter with Lola.”
“Oh, talk to him, Garrett. Please.”
He nodded and tapped the screen. “Hello?”
“Hey, this is, uh, Bill. About the dog.”
Jessie leaned closer, so he angled the phone to let her hear both sides of the conversation. “Yeah, Bill. Thanks for returning my call.”
“Listen, I don’t want to get involved, ’cause I’m not, you know, a dog person. And I’m not a, you know, person who gets in the middle of people’s shit.”
They shared a confused look as Garrett encouraged him to keep talking. “I understand, Bill. Anything you tell me is confidential. We’re trying to find out if she’s been lost or abandoned.”
“Well, it’s mighty hard to say which one it was,” Bill murmured. “Maybe lost, maybe abandoned. But I never seen nothing like that in my life.”
“Like what?” Garrett asked, holding Jessie’s gaze, which looked as confused as he felt.
“I was sittin’ at a rest stop on 73 drinking coffee in my van, and this guy pulls up right in front of me, facing me, in a pickup truck with a dog in the passenger seat. He gets out and leaves both windows all the way down. I thought for air, you know, but wouldn’t you know it? That dog climbed right out and started taking off.”
Garrett felt himself tense as he always did when someone mistreated a dog. Intentionally or not. “What happened?”
“Well, I sat there for a second, trying to decide if I should go find the guy or chase down the dog. Then it became pretty damn obvious that dog was headed for the highway.”
Jessie flinched, putting her knuckles to her mouth, as if she couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to Lola.
“I ran my ass off, got the dog, who obeyed the order to stop, I should say. But it didn’t have no collar on, so it wasn’t easy to get him to go back to that truck. When I did get back in the parking lot, what do I see? That truck pulling out and hauling ass.”
They left her behind? Jessie mouthed the question, horror in her eyes.
“So either that guy in the truck was dumb as a rock and didn’t notice his dog was gone, or he, you know, did that on purpose.”
Garrett closed his eyes. “Did you get a good look at the man?”
“Nah. Had a ball cap on. I did see Rhode Island plates on the car, though. But I didn’t get the number.” He paused a second. “I knew where the North Ames shelter was ’cause I had a painting job down there, so I dropped the dog off. I’m glad it’s okay.”
“She,” Garrett corrected. “We’ve named her Lola, and she’s fine. Thanks a lot, Bill. You did the right thing.”
“Some people are idiots, you know?” Bill added.
“No kidding.”
“Thanks for the information, Bill,” Garrett said. “Appreciate it, man. You did a good thing for that dog.”
He snorted and said goodbye.
Jessie dropped back against the leather booth, deflated. “How could someone do that?”
“To quote my friend Bill the painter, people are idiots, you know?”
She shook her head. “Now what?”
“I don’t know.” But what he did know was the mood was over with that call. “Come on, I’ll walk you back.”
They walked into the B&B still holding hands, but he could tell the news that someone didn’t love Lola enough to keep her had knocked the wind—and everything else—out of Jessie.
“It doesn’t mean she wasn’t loved,” he assured her as they headed for the wide staircase. “People leave their dogs for all kinds of reasons.”
“Then why not give her to someone who’ll care for her? A friend or family member? Why let her run toward the highway?” Her voice cracked with emotion, the sound tweaking him again.
There was something about a woman who loved dogs, something good.
“Jessie, she’s fine. She’s in a good place.”
“She’s depressed. Unless I kiss her on the head, she doesn’t eat.”
“She’ll snap out of it. You work with her for a few more days, and she’ll be fine,” he promised her.
“And then what will happen to her?” She stopped outside a room door. “Some other idiot will take her?”
He took her shoulders to hold her and bolster her a bit. “We only adopt them to good people. Or we’ll keep her at Waterford.”
She looked down, then back at him. “My roommates might not hate the idea completely.”
That made him smile and pull her closer, his mind drifting over the conversation and all he’d learned about her. “What does it say?” he asked.
She eased back, frowning. “What does what say?”
“The motivational quote on your office wall?”
She smiled for the first time since Bill called. “Why would you want to know?”
“Wouldn’t you? If the interview shoe was on the other foot?”
“Yeah, I would. It’s corny, and I got it for a college graduation present, but I always have it at my desk wherever I work. It says, ‘Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.’”
“Albert Schweitzer. Or Gramma Finnie.”
She laughed. “Schweitzer. And it’s hokey, I know.”
“A little, but I think it says a lot about you.”
“Like what?”
“That your values are in the right place. That you’re not a win-at-all-costs kind of person, even if your boss is.”
“Really. I thought it meant I was searching for happiness.”
“Are you?”
She eased back even farther, eyeing him. “Aren’t you a fast learner on the interview front?”
He smiled and kissed her head, her hair silky under his lips, smelling like flowers and woman and something he wanted to get lost in. “See you tomorrow for the emotional beating.”
That made her laugh, which was the best way to end this evening. Well, the second-best way, but it would have to do.