And then he did the damnedest thing. He scratched me behind my ear and ruffled the fur on my head.
“But cute as hell.”
When he realized what he was doing, he pulled his hand away.
“Sorry. I swear I know you’re not a puppy.”
It wasn’t unpleasant, though. Quite the opposite. If I knew how, I’d ask for more scratches.
As a goodbye, I bumped his arm with my nose and took off down the slope.
“How come you get to run off-trail, huh?” he called after me.
It sounded as if he were still laughing.
It was Sedric’s turn to close the pub, so I came back home before eleven. I found Monty behind the bar in the breakfast room. He had all the bottles of alcohol spread out on the counter and was wiping the empty shelves.
Uh-oh.
Monty sometimes had these attacks of cleaning frenzy. It meant he was freaking out and didn’t know what to do with himself.
“Where’s our guest?” I acted all casual. I was good at it—years of training. With my elbow on the counter, I leaned in to inspect the labels on the bottles.
“Laurel went to check on the renovations on his property,” Monty replied. “His assistant picked him up after dinner.”
I pointed at one bottle. “This one has expired.”
Monty whipped around, gaping at me. “What? Which one?”
I couldn’t help it; I spluttered out a laugh. He was so freaked out, poor guy. “It’s hard liquor, man. When exactly do you think it would expire?”
“Asshole,” he muttered, but he was grinning.
I went to the fridge and helped myself to a can of blood orange soda. Monty bought the organic kind with real fruit juice, and I loved that shit.
He rinsed the cloth in the sink and began scrubbing the second shelf.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Sure,” he quipped.
“Uh-huh.” He’d spill in a second. Monty wasn’t one to hold back.
As if on cue, he paused his scrubbing and frowned my way. “Laurel pretends nothing happened.”
“I thought he might,” I said.
Waving the wet rag around, Monty threw his hands in the air. “I have no idea what’s going on in his head.”
“If he wants a repeat, he’ll let us know.”
Monty grunted, obviously not satisfied with my reply, and rinsed the cloth again. He moved on to the lowest shelf.
“What if the renovations are done and he leaves?”
“Isn’t that the plan?”
Instead of a reply, I got another grunt. He started cleaning the bottles, wiping nonexistent dust from them and carefully setting them back on the shelves, lining them up like art pieces in a museum.
