12
Thad added a tablespoon of dried basil to the ground turkey crumbles sizzling in the skillet his grandmother had owned since before he was born. The fact that he was using this skillet to cook a poodle’s breakfast made him roll his eyes. There was probably someone Dumpster diving in this city at this very moment, yet here he was using high-quality ingredients because Puddin’ had a sensitive stomach. When had his grandmother lost her good sense?
“Probably when you came to live with her,” he said to Puddin’, who stood watch next to him. Judging his cooking skills, no doubt.
“You’d better be glad I love that woman, because you would be eating table scraps if it were up to me.”
Thad could only imagine the uproar it would cause if he even uttered those words in his grandmother’s presence, or around Ashanti Wright. She treated Puddin’ as if he were her dog.
Thad glanced down at him. “She ever kiss you on the mouth?”
It was probably for the best that Puddin’ couldn’t answer. For one thing, he was grossed out by people who kissed dogs on the mouth. For another, he was jealous enough of this poodle. He didn’t need yet another reason to hate him.
Thad measured out a half cup of the ground turkey, brown rice, and sweet potato mixture and dumped it in Puddin’s Burberry dog bowl. He still regretted Googling the price of it. He would never view his grandmother in the same way knowing she’d spent that kind of money on a dog bowl.
Puddin’ looked down at the food and then back up at him.
“What?” Thad asked. Then he remembered. “Sorry, I forgot to add your kibble, your royal highness.”
He grabbed the high-priced specialty dog food from the pantry and added some to the bowl. Then he topped off Puddin’s water before bringing a cup of coffee into the dining room where he’d set up his laptop. He needed to check his bank account before heading to the Bywater house.
Call him old-fashioned, but Thad still couldn’t bring himself to download banking apps onto his phone. He didn’t fully trust checking his account on the home computer either, but at least he’d added an extra layer of encryption to the house’s Wi-Fi.
He checked off the bills that had come through overnight using a pen and notepad he kept specifically for tracking his finances—another relic of times gone by. Just as he logged out of the bank’s website, an email notification popped up in the monitor’s right-hand corner.
He clicked on the icon. It was from the genealogy website Nadia had pestered him into sending a DNA sample to. It had started when a Tee Ball teammate of one of his nieces was diagnosed with a hereditary heart condition. Nadia became obsessed with learning about their father’s medical history. Since they wouldn’t know where to find the asshole who had left their mother months after Thad was born, going the 23andMe route seemed like the best course of action.
But what had started out as something to protect her girls’ health had turned into an obsession for his sister. She was determined to learn everything there was to know about both sides of their family.
Thad had no idea how this stuff worked, but apparently there was information that could only be found on the Y-chromosome, and now that he was the last remaining male on the Sutherland side, mailing off his spit was the only way to dig deeper into the histories his sister so desperately wanted to learn.
A waste of time and money, in his opinion, but if anyone could bother him until he was willing to do anything to make it stop—including sharing his DNA—it was Nadia.
Thad knew there were people who shied away from using genealogy services because they didn’t want the government to be able to access it, but that wasn’t an issue for him. Uncle Sam had owned his DNA since he was eighteen.
He clicked the email and then the link that brought him to the website’s direct message page. Thad frowned in confusion, but it soon turned to irritation as he read through the message.
“What kind of bullshit is this?” He clicked on the sender’s icon. He had never seen this woman before in his life, yet she was claiming they shared the same grandfather? As if he was supposed to just believe that screenshot she’d attached was legit. Anyone with a smartphone could manipulate a photo.
“Of course, you’d love to meet your family in Louisiana,” Thad said with a grunt.
And how long after she met them would she try to shake his grandmother down for money? The woman had probably run across the profile from the local paper on Grams after she sold Sutherland Dry Cleaning, and figured an old widow with money in the bank would welcome her with open arms. Never mind the fact that her long-lost relative bit was essentially accusing that widow’s husband of having bastard children floating around out there. She probably hadn’t even considered that.
Thad reached over, intending to delete the message, but the longer he stared at it, the more it pissed him off. His grandfather was the most upstanding man he had ever met. Taking in his daughter and her two children after her husband bailed. Raising those two children as his own so his daughter could return to college and make a life for herself. Becoming a pillar of the community who had literally given the shirt off his back to those in need, or at least the shirts that had been abandoned by customers.
And that’s the man this woman had decided to disparage?
Thad began typing a response. He wanted to see how far this scammer would go.
“Dude, what’s going on?”
“What the fuck!” Thad yelled, jumping up from the dining room chair and slamming the laptop closed. “What are you doing sneaking up on people, Von?”
“I texted you that I was coming in. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. So I used the key you gave me.”
“That’s for emergencies. So unless something’s on fire I’m kicking your ass.”
“This is an emergency,” Von said. “Actually, it isn’t.” He gestured to the computer. “I caught you looking at porn, didn’t I?”
“Shut up,” Thad said. “As if I give two shits whether you see me watching porn. I’m a grown man. I can watch porn if I want to.”
“You would watch porn in your grandparents’ house? What kind of sick monster are you?”
Thad was two seconds away from tossing his best friend out on his ass. He would do it with a smile.
“Wait, you weren’t on one of those message boards again, were you? We talked about this, Thad.”
“I wasn’t on a military message board. Did you come here for a reason?”
“Yeah.” Von pulled out a rolled sheaf of papers from his back pocket. “I got the estimate back from the contractor. It’s up there, man. No way can we afford to use this guy.”
Thad snatched the papers from his hands. His eyes widened at the number in bold at the bottom of the page.
“Damn. Maybe we’re going into the wrong business. What does it take to become a contractor?”
“I thought the same thing.” Von laughed. “The shitty part is, based on what I’ve found online, his prices are reasonable.” He turned around one of the dining room chairs and straddled it. “We were already planning to do most of the work ourselves. My suggestion is that we only use the contractor for the heavy stuff, like electrical and plumbing, and figure out a way to conquer the rest on our own. We can probably find a few more vets in need of work. It will still cost us less than what this guy is charging.”
“Yeah, but even with hiring more men, this still means putting in a lot more time than we first thought,” Thad pointed out.
“You got something better to do with your time? Other than hang out with this dog?” He hooked a thumb at Puddin’, who had joined them in the dining room.
“Don’t remind me about this dog,” Thad said. It occurred to him why Puddin’ was standing at attention. “Shit. I forgot his vitamins.”
He grabbed the bag of multivitamins disguised as chicken-flavored dog treats from the kitchen counter and tossed two toward Puddin’. The poodle caught them midair.
“Impressive,” Von said. “You two should take your act on the road.” He grabbed a handful of walnuts from the bowl Thad kept on the dining room table.
For as long as he could remember, his grandfather had kept a wooden bowl filled with unshelled pecans, walnuts, and Brazil nuts, along with a nutcracker, on the dining room table. He’d been surprised when he got here and realized that his grandmother had gotten rid of Granddad’s nut bowl. It was probably Nadia’s idea, because the wooden bowl no longer matched the color scheme.
“You’re bringing him back to daycare today, right?” Von asked.
“Yeah,” Thad said. Then he cursed as something else occurred to him.
“What’s wrong?” Von asked.
“Putting in longer hours at The PX means I’ll have to leave Puddin’ at the damn doggy daycare until eight most nights of the week,” Thad answered. “That’s an extra sixty dollars a day, on top of the regular daily fee.”
“Damn!” Von looked as if he’d swallowed the walnut whole. “We are getting into the wrong business.”
Thad ran a hand down his face. “Maybe I can cut a deal with the daycare owner.”
“Are we talking about the same daycare owner who came to the Bywater house looking like she wanted to strangle you? That daycare owner?”
“Yeah, that’s her,” Thad said.
“Maybe I should ask her. She seems to like me better than she likes you.”
Thad refrained from responding because anything he said would reveal too much and he wasn’t in the mood to hear Von’s mouth. He was grateful that, for once, Von hadn’t been able to read his mind.
“Let me refill my coffee and pack up the dog’s food. I’ll meet you at The PX in about thirty.”
Von followed him into the kitchen and stood to the side while Thad grabbed a travel mug from the kitchen cabinet. His grandmother had at least a half dozen of them, all with logos from various companies that sold dry cleaning supplies. The moment Thad filled the cup, Von took it from his hand.
“Pour yourself another. I’ll see you at the site.”
“Asshole,” Thad mumbled under his breath. He grabbed another travel mug.
After fixing his coffee, he packed enough food for Puddin’s dinner, then stored the rest in the refrigerator. He was running late. He’d decided yesterday that if he was going to pay for this dog to go to daycare, then Puddin’ would be at Barkingham Palace as soon as the doors opened.
He stopped at the dining room table and stared at the closed laptop. He had not downloaded the genealogy site’s app onto his phone yet, but now he was thinking maybe he should.
No, he shouldn’t. He wasn’t wasting any more time today on that scammer. He whistled for Puddin’ to follow him.
Even though the daycare was only a few miles from his grandmother’s house, it still took twenty minutes to get there. If people would stop checking their cell phones while stopped at traffic lights it would cut his travel time in half. He’d had to blow his horn at every single light.
The moment Thad walked through the doors of Barkingham Palace, he sensed that something was different. The space hummed with excitement. Three women occupied the lobby, along with four dogs.
“I’m sorry, but we’re full for today,” the receptionist was telling a woman who held a brown fur ball against her chest.
“Is there a waitlist?” the woman asked.
The receptionist—Deja, if he remembered correctly—nodded. “You can access it through our website.”
Another woman in line turned to look over her shoulder and gasped. “That’s him!” she said.
Thad took a step back as the women in the lobby converged on him.
Wait. It wasn’t him they were after. They all hunched down and crowded around Puddin’.
“Watch it, ladies,” Deja called from behind the desk. “He’s taken.”
“Where’s his girlfriend?” asked a woman trying to wrestle two medium-size dogs on leashes.
“In the back with her mama,” Deja answered. “Let me call her to come get Puddin’.”
Deja summoned Ashanti through the intercom system. A minute later, the door leading to the back of the daycare opened and Ashanti walked in, holding a leash with her French bulldog on the other end of it.
Thad fully acknowledged the heat that spread throughout his chest at the sight of her. She glanced his way, and it was as if she’d looked straight through him.
Damn, this one-sided attraction thing was brutal.
He had to remind himself that it was for the best that Ashanti Wright thought he was an asshole.
“There’s my boy,” Ashanti said. She knelt on one knee and rubbed Puddin’ behind the ear. “Aht, aht,” she said, turning her face away when the dog’s snout got too close. “You know I don’t play that.”
Thank you, sweet baby Jesus. She didn’t kiss dogs on the mouth. His attraction to her grew exponentially.
Puddin’ turned his attention to Duchess. The two performed their usual greeting, sniffing each other’s butts, then Puddin’ leaned forward so Duchess could snuggle against his neck.
“Oh, my word! They are just too precious together,” one of the women said.
“Aren’t they?” Ashanti said. She tugged on Puddin’s leash and glanced at Thad. “I’ll take him. You can leave his food with Deja.” Then she addressed the others in the lobby. “I’m sorry we don’t have room. We are trying to secure a bigger location. I almost had one, but…” She looked directly at Thad this time. “It fell through.”
“Oh no,” the woman with the brown fur ball said. “I hope you can find a new one soon. Betty Boop would love it here.”
Thad shook his head. He was convinced if any of these dogs could talk, they would curse their owners out over these stupid-ass names.
“You can still watch the Barkingham Palace webcam,” Ashanti said. “We’re going to have two streams open to the public soon, the one we have now and one that showcases our outdoor space.”
With that, Ashanti left the lobby without so much as another glance his way. Thad managed to hide his disappointment.
Betty Boop’s mom walked up to him. “Are you Puddin’s owner?”
“Um, I guess you can say that,” Thad said.
“He is the cutest. You must be so proud.”
Of what? That Puddin’ had only spent ten minutes licking his own balls this morning instead of twenty?
“Uh, sure,” Thad said.
He waited until the women left the daycare before approaching Deja. He nodded toward the door as she set Puddin’s food on the counter.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“You don’t know about the viral livestream video?” she asked. She picked up a cell phone and, after a few swipes at the screen, turned it to face Thad. He snorted a laugh when the guy on the video lifted the tent and discovered the two dogs together.
“Damn, Puddin’ really is getting more action than I am,” Thad said. He shrugged. “I guess I should try to find those dog biscuits.”
Deja stooped down and came up with a basket of cellophane-wrapped treats.
“They’re sold out everywhere, but Ashanti makes sure we always have some available for our clients.” She set two treats on the desk. “But we have to limit the amount you can buy until she’s able to bake more inventory. We’re getting orders from around the world. The last twenty-four hours have been unreal.”
“She makes these herself?” Thad asked.
Deja nodded. “I’ll add these two to Puddin’s bill. Remember, pickup is at six.”
“How could I forget,” Thad said.