I didn’t go after that.
“Are you always this much of a dick?”I demanded.
He stepped away from me but didn’t lose eye contact.
“Nope,” he said casually.“It only comes out when I got a woman on my hands with more sass than sense.”
Oh my God!
He was the worst!
“Seems we’re even, since the sass only comes out in me when I’m dealing with a guy whose mostly a dick, and on top of that, doesn’t have the good sense not to write ‘thanks’ on a Post-it to a one-night stand who already knew she was a one-night stand and was all the way down with that, but you made her feel like a whore.”
With that, I yanked open my truck door, it screamed in agony (don’t worry, it always did that).
I climbed in, slammed the door, buckled up, and the entire time I started up, I glared at him where he now stood on the sidewalk by my front fender.
Necessarily, I looked where I was going when I reversed out.
And I wasn’t proud of it, but I flipped him the bird before I took off.
Sadly, this didn’t make him either spontaneously combust, or rush to my window to offer his abject apologies.
He just shook his head like I was a sassy woman he wasn’t a big fan of before he dropped it to look at his boots.
I was on CR 10 before I muttered to myself, “Crap, what did those fanatics get me into?”
But I knew.
My one-night stand just turned into my dog trainer.
And maybe my protector.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
And as ever all my life, I had no choice but to get on with it.
Therefore, I headed to the feedstore.
EIGHT
I Want It All
Hutch
Hutch not only took the time to read Mabel’s application, since the unreasonable woman wanted to adopt Moxie as well as Tonks, he also took the time to introduce them and see if that was going to be a fiasco.
It wasn’t.
There was a lot of sniffing and eye contact, but the biggest problem Mabel was going to have was Tonks wanting to play, and Moxie not.
Fortunately, cats could get to high ground and dogs could learn.
He returned them to their cages, said goodbye to the staff and set about doing the next thing on his agenda.
This meant, out on the road, he kept a lookout, checked his mirrors and noted, not unusually, CR 10 was deserted.
So he slowed at the spot he’d scoped out earlier, pulled his truck off the asphalt and into the trees until it couldn’t be seen from the road.
