“Yeah?”
“Your hand.”
“My hand?”
“Could you remove it from my door?”
And put it on my boob, a traitorous part of my brain purrs.
No. Nope. Will not be asking him to do that.
George jerks backward, as if he forgot he was holding me hostage.
I climb inside my car, and I definitely do not watch the way his jeans hug his legs as he slowly walks back toward the hangar.
Chapter
9
Paws digging intomy back wake me up.
“Grumps,” I groan. “Chill out. It’s my day off.”
Grumps gives zero fucks about my work schedule and craving to sleep in. He has deemed that I will be the one to take him on his morning walk, and he will try to tunnel his way into my bedcovers until I get up and fulfill his demands.
Rolling over, I come nose to nose with the surly cocker spaniel.
“You suck,” I mutter.
He sneezes in my face.
Muttering curses mixed with admissions that yes, he is the cutest dog to have ever existed and could never do anything wrong, and of course I’m the one who is the problem, I crawl out of bed and stumble my way through teeth brushing and into a pair of sweats that’ll ward off the morning chill.
Despite Grumps’s insistence that I get out of bed immediately, he is as slow as molasses on the walk, stopping every few feet to sniff a random patch of grass. I use the time to plot out everything I need todo for the day. Yes, technically, it is my day off. But days off mean house days. Working to make sure the crumbling structure I poured all my savings into stays standing.
Anything I can do to lessen the stress in my mom’s life.
The road we walk down is nice, though. The same one that Mom and Marge would take Grumps for walks on when he was freshly rescued and learning what being loved and cared for was like. They walked the half-mile from our two-bedroom apartment to get to this road with no outlet, and as they reached the driveway leading to an old Tudor-style house, they’d fantasize about a future when they’d buy the place and fix it up. Replace the glass panels in the sunroom and fill it with plants. Weed the backyard and plant a garden. Get a new roof installed and new floors…honestly the place needs a new everything.
They fell in love with the bones of the house.
But they weren’t the ones to call the real estate agent. I was. That day when I realized life was short and there was absolutely no way my mother would reach the end of it without living in her dream house.
Such a sweet idea.
If only the results had reflected the thought behind the gesture.
When Grumps and I return through the back door, we find my mom and Marge in the kitchen, the latter scrambling eggs and the former with papers spread over the table that she doesn’t bother glancing up from when murmuring, “Morning.”
“Thanks for walking Grumps.” Marge smiles my way. “Cheddar in your eggs?”
“Yes, please.” After I pour kibble in the pup’s bowl, I settle across from Mom. “What’s all this?”
“A leasing contract for that space on Fifth.” She smiles up at me, her reading glasses having slid to the tip of her nose. “And a business plan for my plant shop.”
“You…” I clear my throat and try to tuck away my panic. “You’re looking into that?”
Along with her dream to live in this house, in the years before she got sick, my mom started to talk about owning a small shop where she can sell her plants. The idea came after she set aside her corporate goals. I’m not sure being a boss bitch at a Fortune 500 company was ever her true heart’s desire. After growing up in the foster care system, I think she saw that as a stable life.
