The Moment of Truth

“I hear he’s gorgeous. A friend of mine had to go to the business office Friday afternoon to see to something about her scholarship and he was there, introducing himself. She told me about him because he was so hot, but when you told me about Little Guy’s new owner, I knew it had to be the same guy. I guess he starts work on Monday. He has an office upstairs in the admin building.”

Dana wasn’t going fishing for information. But she wasn’t above listening to gossip.

“I can’t believe someone as hot as he is doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or a wife,” Lori said.

“I know, right?” Dana agreed. And remembered the soulful look in Josh’s eyes. The lost look. “I wondered if he was married and his wife died,” she said. “I don’t know that, so don’t say anything to anyone. I honestly have no idea and don’t want to start rumors. I just...like you, I find it hard to believe that he’s way out here starting a new life all alone.”

“Yeah, well, if this town’s anything like Bisbee, I’m guessing it won’t be long before we all know who he is and where he came from.”

Which suited Dana just fine. The one thing she could not tolerate, on any level, was someone keeping their identity secret. Broken-heart secrets were fine. Everyone had a right to their privacy.

But not to lie about who they were. In a bigger town, like Richmond, a person could show up and claim they were anyone and no one bothered to look past the words. To know that they were lies.

Innocent people got hurt by those kinds of lies.

Lives were ruined by them.

Anyone who didn’t believe her could just ask her stepfather. The man who’d once thought she was the brightest apple of his eye.

And, later, couldn’t bear to look at her at all. Because she had another man’s eyes.

* * *

SOAPS OF ALL KINDS had found their temporary home on the shelf above the washing machine. Lined up by type, they fit. One by one he’d try them out. See what was good or bad about the different kinds and land on the brand he liked.

And it was his own damned fault that he hadn’t known what had worked until now. He knew who had worked for him: her name was Betty Carmichael. She was in her mid-fifties and had a family with children and grandchildren—he wasn’t sure how many—and he liked her a lot. She’d come with the condo he’d received upon his graduation from Harvard.

It seemed so long ago now. Hard to believe that in eight years of working and flying around the world, taking on daring adventures and making life about his own enjoyment, he’d never once thought about making a home for himself.

Michelle would have taken care of that.

And he’d have been perfectly content to let her do so.

Just as he’d been content to let Betty do all of his shopping for him, to make his choices for him, down to what kind of toilet paper and toothpaste he used. Hell, he hadn’t even had to find the pack of toilet paper and take out a roll, which might have given him a clue to what kind it was...maybe. No, there’d been brass cylinders beside every commode in the condo, each holding four rolls, and Betty had always kept them filled.

She’d worked every single day that he was in town. And was off whenever he was gone. The arrangement had suited him. And apparently it had suited her, as well.

He hoped her new employer, the couple who’d purchased the condo and agreed to keep her on, would be good to her.

Little Guy woke up. Josh turned as soon as he heard the movement in the kennel on the kitchen counter behind him.

Before the puppy could so much as stretch, Josh had him out of his cage and out the back door. He was getting this part down. Having been peed on during his way out the door twice in the past twenty-four hours, he was learning the hard way.

But he was learning and he had a question. Pulling out his phone, he easily found the number he needed from his recent call list and hit the send button.

Standing outside, watching every move the puppy made as he trampled over his feet in the dirt, Josh listened to the line ring. Little Guy had only been asleep for an hour. And he’d gone to the bathroom right before Josh had put him in the kennel. It was possible he didn’t have business to do.

“Hello?” She answered on the third ring.

“Dana? It’s Josh. I hope I’m not disturbing you...”

“Of course not. What’s up? How’s Little Guy doing?”

“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.”

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