The Moment of Truth

“Fine,” he was pleased to report. The dog might be a little confused by an owner who seemed to know less than he did, but Little Guy was clean, all of his parts were still working, there was no blood, no broken bones....

“Did you get some sleep?”

“Yes. Plenty of it.” As soon as he’d hung up from Cassie the day before, he’d purchased a new, much smaller kennel, come home and cleaned out the larger kennel, bathed the puppy another time, showered himself off, put the kennel on the side of his expensive mattress and slept until dark.

And then he’d repeated the process a few hours later when he’d stripped down and gone to bed.

He’d stopped at putting his hand in the kennel. He had to be able to move in his sleep. And Little Guy hadn’t pushed him that far.

“So what’s up?” the woman asked again, and Josh wondered if he was interrupting something. And wished she had all the time in the world. He was tired of his own company.

His life was so out of kilter at the moment. Other than the family he’d sworn off, and the business associates he’d met but couldn’t name, he didn’t know anyone in this town except for Dana Harris. Hell, he didn’t even know himself all that well at the moment.

“I was wondering about tomorrow,” he said, still watching the puppy. The idiot thing was batting at a cricket on the patio and missing by a mile. “I have to work from eight until five. I figure I can come home for lunch, but it can’t be good to leave this guy alone in such a small kennel for so many hours at a time.”

“People have to work,” Dana said slowly. “And puppies are almost always kenneled or in a box after birth. They’re also kenneled when they’re boarded. But then they tend to be a bit more rambunctious when they’re set free,” she said. “And if he’s left too long and has to relieve himself in his kennel, that barrier is broken and he might go in his sleeping spot more regularly, and then it could take you longer to house-train him....”

How the woman fit so many words into one breath he didn’t know. He’d never met anyone with so much to say all at once.

“I think I’d be stretching my welcome if I showed up the first day of my new job carrying a kennel with me,” he said laconically.

Not that he’d ever actually worked a job where he had to answer to anyone other than himself—or his father, who pretty much let him do whatever the hell he damned well pleased.

“I could come by a couple of times during the day,” Dana said while Josh was thinking about asking her, as part of her counseling position, to phone Cassie for him and see if she could arrange for some kind of day-sitting at the clinic.

He didn’t trust himself to speak with his distant relative again, so soon. Her invitation to meet the family had been too damned tempting.

“If you trust me to be in your home without you there,” Dana finished.

“Of course I trust you in my home.” It wasn’t as though there was a lot there for her to steal. He’d sold anything of real value. “But I can’t ask you to give up your day for me.”

This was his new life. He was supposed to be doing things for others. Or at the very least, not imposing on others.

“I’m not doing it for you,” Dana said with a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m doing it for Little Guy. He needs a home and I don’t have the space here to keep him.”

That was all right, then.

“Do you really have time?”

“I’ve got breaks in between classes,” she said. “It won’t take anything at all for me to run out there. Besides, I miss him. I’d look forward to a little puppy playtime.”

The woman was...intriguing. “What about work?” he asked her. Little Guy was chewing on his shoe. The pair he’d peed on.

“Just volunteer stuff,” she said. “My scholarship provides for living expenses. And I worked for several years out of high school and have money saved,” she continued, refreshing in her openness. Her honesty.

“What are you studying?”

“General business,” she said and, muffling the phone, said goodbye to someone. What had she been doing when he’d called? What had he interrupted?

He should let her go. “You don’t seem like the business type.”

That was his world. Cold and calculating and nothing at all like a woman who got excited at the prospect of helping pets find good homes—helping people become good pet owners.

“My dream was to be a vet,” she told him. “But I couldn’t...afford...college right away, and it takes grad school in addition to a bachelor’s degree. When this scholarship fell in my lap, for a bachelor’s degree only, and knowing that I’d be thirty by the time I was in the job market, I figured it would be best to get a degree in something that would provide a good living rather than wishing on stars.”

“I don’t think being a veterinarian is wishing on stars.” Cassie certainly wouldn’t think so. Josh’s mind rushed ahead of him. Maybe he should talk to her. See if there was something she could do to help Dana with some kind of monies for graduate school when the time came. There he was, thinking like a Redmond again. So easy to give out handouts when you didn’t feel, in any way, the loss. Hell, what it would cost Dana to go to graduate school he’d spent on a week’s vacation. More times than he could count.

“Maybe not,” Dana said with a chuckle. “But I’m too practical to commit to so many years without a steady income.”

“What about your family? They can’t help?”

“No.”

When she didn’t say any more, Josh didn’t push, figuring that her parents were probably strapped for cash, like most of the nation.

Shoving his hand in his pocket, he itched to pull out a wad of bills. To trade grad school for pet-sitting help. He pulled out two twenties instead, and pushed them back in his pants.

They were going to buy him lunches for the week.

“Anyway, I can stop by around ten in the morning,” she said, her voice infused with its usual energy. “If you’re there around noon, and I’m back at two, we should have him covered until you get home.”