How to Ruin a Wedding(94)
“I’ll go,” I mumble. “See you later.”
I hang up and head out to the entryway, larger now, with new, easier-to-clean floorboards and a fresh coat of light-blue paint on the smooth walls. Dainese frowns as she hangs up the phone from behind the desk.
“No luck?” I ask her.
“Too much luck,” she says. “Ever since you moved here, everyone is . . . nicer when I call?” She shakes her head. “That’s not the right word; it’s not that they weren’t nice, but they’re almost too eager to help. And their quotes are way lower than they used to be.”
“Are you sure?” I frown. “I don’t know anybody, so I wouldn’t warrant any special treatment. Maybe they like you and you don’t realize it.”
She counts off her fingers. “The vet charges way less for visits. Our bulk orders have been discounted fifteen percent each time, the carpenter didn’t even charge us for the floorboard changes, and this plumber just quoted me two thousand less than when the pipes first broke.”
“Well”—I point to my drenched appearance—“I’m not often lucky, so whatever is happening, I say we don’t question it.”
“I guess,” Dainese says. “But if you’re sleeping with any of the vendors, you can be honest, I won’t judge you for it.”
“Excuse me? Most of them are, like, sixty years old.”
“Nuh-uh,” Dainese says. “The plumber is our age, and he’s genuinely the sexiest man I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“No way!” I say. “I’ve never seen him.”
“Please hold.” She brings up her phone, types for a bit, then pulls up a photo of him. “Sexy, right?”
Blond isn’t normally my type, but he’s got sharp, defined features and a movie-star smile. Not at all what comes to mind when I think plumber. I usually pull up a Super Mario Bros. visual.
“Sexy, but still, not sleeping with him.”
“Then it’s not too late for me.”
“On that note,” I say. “I have to head out early.”
“Rehearsal,” she remembers, grabs the towel she used on herself, and tosses it over my face. “Hope you clean up beforehand.”
“Is this a roast?” I snap, grabbing it and drying my face off, leaving her to her laughter.
The air is crisp and sharp as the light autumn wind slices into my skin, made worse by the water still clinging to my hair and clothes. It’s been an abnormally warm fall, but being wet in the wind makes my teeth chatter as I walk home.
My route is familiar now from all the times I’ve walked back and forth from the shelter to my condo. It’s a fifteen-minute walk, longer before I found a shortcut through a cemetery that shortened the time by ten minutes.
Creepy sometimes, but also safe, knowing nobody here cares at all about me. And since my condo overlooks it, the price is significantly lower than any other place so close to the beaches.
As I walk, I think about what Dainese said. About the weird luck. The way things have somehow fallen into place here, even when I was too busy to notice.
And I think about Save a Paw.
For years, that was the dream. The only dream. The thing I worked toward every second. And when it began slipping out of reach, all I could feel was this dread of inevitable failure.
But I didn’t love the shelter because of the name on the building.
I loved it because of the dogs I cared for. The ones I cleaned, and fed, and sang off-key to. I loved it because I loved what I was able to do for them.
That’s what I’ve found here, accidentally.
Maybe because I stopped trying to force things. Or maybe because I finally looked up and realized this life—this business, this place, and the people that I’ve fallen in love with—wasn’t a backup plan.
It was an evolution of a dream I’ve always had.
I quicken my pace as the cold starts to seep into my bones, and a few too many sneezes rack through my body. If I get sick the day before her wedding, I’m pretty sure Valerie will remove the nails from my fingers and toes.
My teeth are chattering by the time I make it out of the cemetery, turn the corner to my house, and hurry up the path. Then I see someone leaning by the front door, arms crossed over his chest.
I trip over my own feet, save myself from a complete face-plant with my sore hands, and right myself just in time for Anders to look up and notice me.
He’s in dark jeans and a black sweater that makes his hair even darker, his eyes even brighter, even at this distance. He’s got a little five o’clock shadow and a tiny wrinkle between his slightly furrowed brows. The wind has swept up stray strands of hair that fall on his forehead, his cheek, and it’s slightly longer—just a couple of centimeters—than the last time I saw him.
My heart pounds as he pushes himself from the door and approaches me with long, purposeful strides. His scent hits me first—sandalwood and mango and pure comfort. He stops an arm’s length away, and I tilt my neck to meet his gaze.
His is without heat or coolness. Unreadable.
“Lucinda,” he says, and hearing his voice in person, instead of a generic greeting from the phone speaker, makes my stomach flip.
I open my mouth, feel a sneeze coming on, and then hold a hand to my lips. He looks handsome and sexy and amazing, and I look like a drowned rat that got resurrected only to be drowned again.