Everybody's Hero

“I agree. But you’re the only one he talks about. I think he likes you.”

Setting aside his “I agree” comment to examine at a later date, she said, “He sure has a funny way of showing it.”

“Taylor, please. I’m desperate. And I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

His words set off a series of echoes in her head, reaching way back, words that had taught her the meaning of disappointment and distrust.

“Seems to me I’m not the one you need to be making anything up to.”

Silence. Then a soft, “I agree. And God knows I’ll probably get an earful from my brother when I get back. If he even talks to me at all. I know this makes me dirt in everybody’s book, but I’m really stuck.”

More echoes, this time of genuine regret.

Taylor sighed, inwardly muttered something that was anything but a prayer, and said, “You know the first road you get to after you turn off from the highway, going up to the Double Arrow?”

“Yeah?”

“Make a left, then go all the way to the end. That’s my house. I’ll take Seth there after camp closes.”

“Thank you so much—”

“And don’t mind the dog. He’s loud but harmless.”

“Got it.” Joe paused. “Can I bring dinner to pay you back?”

“No,” she said, and hung up.

“Well, this is it,” Taylor said to the stone-faced child buckled up next to her in the Chevy pickup she’d bought off Darryl Andrews last year, after the dirt road leading to her place finally did-in her old Saturn. She was about to add something about the dog, except she noticed Oakley hadn’t budged from his spot on the porch, guarding the front door. Blocking it, anyway. Oakley’s method of watch-dogging ran more along the lines of “Look who’s here, let’s party!” than “Get your good-for-nothin’ butt off my property before I rip you to shreds.” Also, nobody’d clued Oakley in to the fact that the image of the lazy bloodhound was an inaccurate stereotype. Taylor often wondered what, if anything, the dog did during the day while she was gone, since he never seemed to change position between when she left and when she returned. If it weren’t for the piles of poop that magically appeared in her absence, she’d have no proof that he actually moved.

“You got a dog?”

Taylor couldn’t quite tell if that was interest or trepidation in Seth’s voice, but at least it was a response. “After a fashion,” she said, unlatching her seat belt and opening the truck door. A breeze would be nice right about now to wick the moisture off her back and bottom from sitting on the truck’s vinyl seat. But no such luck. Even the wind chime on the end of her porch was dead silent.

“Does he bite?” Seth asked, making no move to open his own door.

Trepidation, definitely. “Honey, half the time I’m not even sure he breathes. Come on, it’s okay.”

Seth had taken the news about Joe’s lateness more calmly than Taylor might have expected, but she knew he was ticked. When she’d said they were ready to go, the boy had collected his things and walked out to the truck like a prisoner resigned to his fate. Just warmed the cockles of her heart, is what.

“Seth?” she now said. When he finally looked at her, she smiled like a goon and said, “Really, this is going to be fun.”

Somehow, she got the feeling he didn’t believe her.

Tempted to mutter things she shouldn’t, Taylor got out of the truck. Seth, however, didn’t. Not until she went around to the passenger side and opened the door for him, anyway. Then, with excruciating slowness, the child slithered down from the seat, his eyes glued to the comatose dog the entire time. When she started toward the porch, however, the kid grabbed her hand.

“Seth, honey? I promise you, I’ve yet to hear of a bloodhound eating a child. He might slobber you to death—” she twisted her mouth at the prone mass on her porch “—if he ever wakes up, but Oakley’s as gentle as a lamb, I swear.”

Perhaps her voice finally pervaded the beast’s consciousness, because at that moment the big red dog hauled himself to his feet, his skin taking a few extra seconds to catch up, and let out a bay of joy before bounding over to them. Seth let out a scream and hid behind Taylor, shaking so hard she thought he’d break.

“Oakley! Doghouse!” she said, and the dog gave her a wounded “What did I do?” look before morosely lumbering off to his garage-sized doghouse at the side of the house. But he’d no sooner gone in than he turned right back around, sitting hunched inside the opening with a baleful expression. Taylor glanced down to see Seth staring at the dog as hard as the dog was staring at him.

“He looks like his feelings got hurt,” he said.

“Oakley loves kids,” Taylor said, continuing toward the house. “And they love him. He’s never run into one who was afraid of him before, so I guess he’s kind of confused.”

“But he’s so big.”

So’s your brother, but I’m not afraid of him, Taylor wanted to say, except then it occurred to her maybe she was a little more afraid of Joe than she wanted to admit. Or at least, afraid of her reaction to him. The man was like chocolate—even though it always gave her a headache, she couldn’t completely shake her affinity for it.

Would someone please explain to her why she was so attracted to driven, focused men, when she knew damn well that driven, focused men made lousy mates?

“Come on, let’s go inside,” she said, leading Seth into her house, a little two-bedroom bungalow with a sunroom off the living room and an eat-in kitchen. But it had been a steal, and it was all hers—or would be in twenty-nine years—and the lot was plenty big enough to justify having a bloodhound, even if she’d spent a small fortune on an invisible fence to keep the beast from following the scent of every rabbit or possum that wandered across the property.

“I’m hungry,” Seth announced from the middle of the living room, even as she noticed those big eyes taking it all in—the one whole wall filled with books, the mismatched, garage-sale furniture, the old Turkish rug from her father’s office that she’d discovered wasn’t colorfast when Oakley peed on it as a puppy.

“Yeah, me, too.” He trailed her into the kitchen—she’d replaced the ugly black-flecked floor tiles with a pretty white-and-gold linoleum, but she’d have to live with the harvest gold appliances and burnt-orange cabinets for a while yet, she imagined—where she opened the freezer. “You like Healthy Choice?”

“What’s that?”

“Frozen dinners. There’s…let’s see…lemon pepper fish, Salisbury steak and some Mexican chicken thing.”

“C’n I have the Mexican chicken?”

“Sure can.”

Outside, Oakley started baying at something. Seth wandered over to the kitchen window, which looked out over the front yard. “I think he’s lonely,” he said as Taylor put his dinner in the microwave.

“Could be. He’s used to coming inside with me when I get home.”

“Oh.” The boy turned to her. “Guess it’s not fair, huh? That he has to stay outside?”

“He’ll live. Right now, your feelings are more important than his. Okay, I’m out of milk, but I can make iced tea.”

Seth gave her a long, considering look before saying, “With lots of sugar?”

Taylor smiled. “How else?”

Oakley bayed again—Owrooowroooowrooooooo.

“Will he come if I call?” Seth asked.

“In a New York minute,” Taylor said, and the boy went to the front door and did just that, then hid behind the door when a hundred pounds of dog galumphed into the house, looking pleased as all get-out.

It was closing in on seven o’clock by the time Joe got to Taylor’s. Translation: His butt was in a major sling. As he pulled the Blazer up in front of the little white house with the gold shutters, he wondered who would be more ticked off with him—Seth or Taylor. His money was on the redhead. Shoot, the chill in her voice when he’d called had damn near given him frostbite. Then again, maybe it was nothing more than paranoia and a squirrelly connection. A guy could hope, right?

Candy and flowers in tow, he got out of the SUV, strangely disappointed at the lack of a welcoming committee. No glowering redhead with evisceration on her mind, no little boy tearing down the steps and up into his arms, not even the promised dog he shouldn’t pay any mind to. For a moment, he wondered if maybe he had the wrong house, until he heard it, just faintly— Taylor’s laughter drifting out the open window next to the front door, as soft and rich as the notes sporadically floating out from the wind chime hanging from the porch eaves.

Joe simply stood there, absorbing it, much the same way he was absorbing the almost-cool breeze sucking at his damp back. It was still hot, too hot, but the whispering of thousands of still-tender leaves, the calm whoooo…whoooo…whoooo…of a mourning dove soothed his frayed nerves, just a little. It would be another hour or more before the sun set, but the late daylight gilded the roof of the tiny house and set the masses of flowers ablaze in more containers than he could count scattered across the front of the porch and alongside the steps. There wasn’t much grass in the yard to speak of, but a great big old mulberry tree kept it shaded. Off to the side, the heady, peachy fragrance from a mimosa in full bloom mingled with the sweetness given off by the honeysuckle vine smothering the post-and-rail fence along one side of the house, arousing him in some way he couldn’t even define.