14. Rusty
CHAPTER 14
RUSTY
T he guys on the team would laugh their asses off when Rusty told them about today’s adventure, or maybe he just wouldn’t tell them. They’d only come up with a new nickname, one worse than Toolbox, which was his current moniker. Spiderman, Dangle, something like that. It wouldn’t even have to make sense, necessarily. Toolbox didn’t. A bolt wasn’t a tool; it needed a tool.
Anyhow, he was sitting in the waiting room at the animal hospital with Erin while Sin or Astrid or whatever her name was had disappeared to do questionable activities. She hadn’t said as much, but after the impromptu rescue in the canyon, he got the picture.
Would the dog be okay? He sure hoped so. The mutts back home had been constant companions throughout his childhood, and he missed them while he was away. Getting a dog was on his bucket list, but with the amount of travelling he did, that wouldn’t be happening any time soon.
Not anymore.
He’d planned to adopt a dog when he and Florence moved into their dream home. Neither of them was ready for kids yet—at least that’s what she’d said, but she’d changed her mind on everything else, so who knew? Florence adored dogs, horses, all animals really. In their final year of college, she’d run a half marathon to raise funds for the local wildlife sanctuary. Horses were her first love, and the home she’d always coveted in Savigny had been surrounded by pasture with a barn out back. He wouldn’t be surprised if Kirk Steiner had made the owner an outrageous offer and bought the place for her as an engagement gift.
Beside him, Erin stirred. The AC was set to icy, and he’d borrowed a blanket from one of the vet techs and draped it over Erin’s slender body. When it kept slipping down, he’d tucked his arm around her shoulders to keep it in place, and she’d responded by leaning into him and sighing in her sleep.
Then her eyes opened.
She looked wildly around until her gaze landed on his hand, then shoved his arm away with a ferocity that shocked him.
“Get off me!”
“Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… You had goosebumps, and the blanket kept slipping, so…” She was staring at him as if he were a serial killer. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“I d-d-didn’t like that,” she stuttered.
“I see that. Again, I’m sorry.”
“Why do men always act that way? Wait for the room to empty and put their hands all over you?” Her voice quieted as she muttered, “I swore the next time that happened, I’d kick the jerk in the balls.” A sigh. “But with you, I can’t.”
“Why not? Not that I’m encouraging you to kick me in the balls or anything,” he added hastily.
“Because you’re the client.”
“You keep saying that, but am I really? The use of Mav’s spare room in exchange for a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon doesn’t seem like a fair trade to me. If anything, Mav’s the client.”
“Well, he’s not here, is he?”
Rusty tried a smile. “Did I earn a few brownie points with the dog thing?”
“Those brownie points belong to Sin.”
“She’d definitely kick me in the balls.”
“She’d probably bite them off,” Erin said.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Rusty’s inbuilt sense of self-preservation stopped him from getting tangled up with a woman like Sin. Mav and his kamikaze streak might make a pass at her, though. “I swear I won’t touch you again. It’s just that I had no sweater to give you, and I didn’t want you to get cold. Back home in Minnesota, the girls would always snuggle when we hung out in winter. I figured… I figured wrong.”
“Really? Guys and girls hung out together?”
Where had she been that they didn’t? A girls-only boarding school?
“All the time in high school. It was normal.”
She crossed her arms. “Well, I wouldn’t know. I never went to high school.”
“You were homeschooled?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
“But you got your GED, right? You’re smart.”
“No GED, but I can recite the Bible from cover to cover. And I’m not even kidding about that.”
“You were raised in a religious household?”
“I was a child of God, at least until I quit the organisation. Now I have a one-way ticket to hell.” A tear rolled down Erin’s cheek. Fuck. “Can we skip talking about this?”
“Sure,” Rusty agreed, although he was burning with curiosity. “Now that you’re awake, you can wrap the blanket around your back and then it won’t keep falling off.”
Erin was possibly the most interesting woman he’d ever met, but when he began peeling away her layers like an onion, it was she who cried. He was beginning to understand why Ari was so protective of her.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing,” she said. Then, “Is that weird? Sitting in silence? Yup, it’s weird. Let’s talk about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Uh, your entire life story? From small-town Minnesota to earning squillions of dollars playing for the California Commanders? I mean, that has to be one hell of a journey.”
“I was hoping we wouldn’t be here all night.”
“Okay, you can skim over the boring parts. What’s it like in Minnesota?”
“Cold.”
“That’s it? Cold? You just froze into an ice cube every winter and thawed in the spring?”
“In the winter, the lake in our yard froze over and we went ice skating. That’s where I got my taste for hockey.”
“You had a freaking lake in your backyard?”
“I grew up on a farm. The winters were for hockey, and in spring through fall, I mostly helped my parents with planting and the harvest. Double shifts so my little sister could go to her dance classes.”
“Does she still dance?”
“She’s a cheerleader at the University of Alabama.” Rusty pumped his fist. “Roll Tide.”
“Is that a football thing?”
He almost said “What else would it be?” but he wasn’t about to tease Erin for her lack of life experience.
“Yeah, it’s football. The team came fourth in the Southeastern Conference last season.”
“That’s good, right? I didn’t even know what football was until I turned sixteen. One of my roommates had a boyfriend who gave me a spare ticket, so I figured I’d watch a game. The clock said sixty minutes, but it went on for, like, four hours.”
“That’s normal.”
“Really? Yikes. Does that happen in hockey?”
“Not to the same extent, but play stops for intermissions, commercial breaks, penalties, fights…”
“Fights? What fights?”
“Lotta testosterone flying around on the ice.”
“Isn’t the sport dangerous enough without punching people?”
“Probably, but that’s hockey for you.”
Erin crinkled her nose. “I don’t think I like the idea of you getting punched.”
Things were looking up. Five minutes ago, she’d been threatening to do him bodily harm herself. Rusty heard a door open, then another, and the veterinarian returned.
“Dog has perked up nicely now that we’ve gotten fluids in him. The break in his leg looks fresh, and I’d hazard a guess it was a result of him falling into the canyon. I’d estimate it’s no more than two days old. He was a very lucky little fellow.”
“So what happens now? Will he stay here overnight?”
“Yes, and if his recovery continues as we hope, we’ll operate to pin his leg tomorrow. Would you like to see him? A familiar face might cheer him up.”
“Not that familiar. I only sat with him for a couple of hours.”
“Astrid will need to find him a home soon. Maybe you’d be interested?”
“I figured she’d keep him. She seemed pretty determined to save his life.”
To the extent of leaving Rusty in a canyon for two sweltering hours. Even in the shadows, the heat had been oppressive. And he couldn’t lie—there’d been moments when he feared she might give up and leave him there. Irrational thoughts, but the mind wandered in stressful situations.
“That’s what Astrid does—she picks up the old, the runts, the injured, the strays, and she fixes them. She has quite the saviour complex. Which isn’t surprising given her job at the hospital, but few are so dedicated.”
“Her job at the hospital?”
Erin looked as puzzled as Rusty felt. Admittedly, he hadn’t known Sin for long, but she hadn’t struck him as the benevolent type, not when it came to humans anyway. Her bedside manner probably involved yelling at patients to “stop whining and feel better.”
“It takes a special kind of person to become a transplant scientist. I understand she spends most of her life on call.”
A transplant scientist? Rusty didn’t even know what one of those was, but Sin’s business was Sin’s business, and he wasn’t about to interrogate the vet. Dr. Howlett led them through to the kennel area, where the dog’s fur was still dirty and matted, but his eyes looked much brighter than they had earlier. Rusty stroked his cheek, and instead of shying away, the dog leaned into his touch.
“Good boy,” he murmured. “You’re safe now, I promise.”
It was only a minute later that he realised Sin had materialised behind them. How did she move so quietly?
“He’s going to be okay?” she asked Dr. Howlett.
“As things stand, it’s likely he’ll make a good recovery. The initial test results came back clear—he’s a real little trooper. Do you have a name for him yet?”
“Apparently. Go with Trooper.”
“Yes, yes, that suits him. No more food tonight if we’re going to operate in the morning. I know you often carry treats in your pockets. ”
Who was Sin? She could skilfully pilot a helicopter, she kept a knife in her bra, and she wasn’t short of cash. She didn’t carry a purse, but she did carry dog treats.
As they left the animal hospital, Erin said, “A transplant scientist? Really?”
Sin shrugged. “You don’t know for sure that I’m not one of those.”
Erin just rolled her eyes.