Chapter 6
Rhett
I was coming around to the idea of having a dog. It’d be good to have someone who was glad to see me each time I came home, but… I stared at the veterinary surgery window, tracing the shape of the cartoon dogs and cats painted on the window, then pushed myself away from my car bonnet. A dog also gave me an excuse to visit here.
I’d parked outside the place at least once a week since I heard Dave broke up with Katie. At first, I wanted to see if she was OK, then I wanted to just see her. Not so soon after her breakup, that was what kept me away, but it’d been six weeks and two days since, so surely now wasn’t too soon. Fuck, I was about to find out. I put my hand on the door and pulled it open…
To find an old lady with a couple of chihuahuas in her arms walking out.
“Oh, thank you!” she said, stepping out with a smile.
Her dogs seemed less pleased, barking furiously, lunging at their carrier like they were possessed by the devil.
“Everything OK, Mrs. Collins?” a familiar feminine voice said. Fuck, I felt that like a punch to the gut. “Do you need help… Oh.” Katie was there, standing behind the woman and her eyes went wide when she saw me. “Rhett?”
“Hey…um… Katie.” Jesus, now she’d think I forgot her name or something. Great start, dickhead , I thought furiously. The woman with the little dogs looked from me to Katie and then shot me a devilish smile that made clear she knew exactly what was going on, before taking her hellhounds to her car. “I’m here for a dog.”
“You have a dog that’s being seen by the vet?”
Katie held the door out for me, which was all wrong. When I imagined this in the early hours of this morning, I was one hundred percent more dashing. I swept the door open and into Katie’s workplace, then whisked her out into the date of her dreams. Instead, she asked me a very appropriate question I didn’t have a good answer for.
“Um… no.” For fuck’s sake , I told myself. You run into burning buildings. You can do this . “The boys and I, we’re getting a dog, from a shelter.” That was tacked on afterwards because people seemed very focussed on adopting, not buying from breeders. “And I wanted to get some advice on what we’d need to get before he arrives.”
I met her eyes finally, and that was a mistake. Every time I stared into those beautiful brown depths, it felt like the whole world was falling away. It was only a faint sound like a far off siren going off in my head that had me finishing what I was saying.
“I don’t really know that much about dogs, so I figured I’d ask the one person I know that does.”
“You thought of me?” Her pleased smile had all the awkwardness evaporating. “Oh wow, I didn’t realise you were paying attention when I was talking about work.”
I did. Every single word she said was etched on my heart, but I couldn’t tell her that. I followed her inside instead, where a waiting room full of people and their pets bore witness to my fumbling attempts to connect with my crush.
“So we have this checklist the vets put together.” I watched real hard when she bent over and retrieved a printout from a folder, only looking away when I caught sight of her cleavage. Dave was the kind of guy to leer down a girl’s top, so I would never. “You can get most of this stuff from a pet store, but they can be real rip offs. Like grain-free dog food can be a good thing or it can be just overpriced crap, and expensive collars are often just for aesthetics rather than due to any real improved experience for the dog. I…” She stared at me then, shooting me a lopsided smile. “When are you picking up the dog? If it’s not straight away, I could meet you at a pet store.”
“Yes.” I said that too fast, something no doubt the smirking ladies with the Siamese cats noted, but I didn’t care. “I mean, yeah, that would be really cool. You obviously know a lot more than us, and I could…” Fuck, I needed a drink of water badly, my throat turning to ash. I’d imagined this scenario a million times in my head and yet now it’d arrived, I was choking literally. “I could take you out for dinner afterwards.”
“To say thanks?” She waved her hand. “You don’t have to do that.”
But I did. Dave wouldn’t shut up about every dumb detail of his life, so I knew he did little more than Netflix and chill with Katie. She deserved so much more. I wanted to take her somewhere fancy, somewhere she felt special, and then?—
“I’d like to.” My heart was beating too fast and I was staring way too intently, something she seemed to register. Her smile faded, but something else replaced it. A sweetness I saw in her eyes all the time, especially when hanging out with the station mums and their kids. I just never expected to see it directed at me. “We could go to the local pub and have a counter meal.”
No, shit, not that! I thought.
“Fluffy?” a man in a white coat said, looking out over the waiting room.
“OK, it’s a date,” she said hurriedly. “Gimme your phone.” I unlocked it and handed it over without question. She tapped out her number and then gave it back. “Text me your schedule and we’ll try to work something out. I’ve just started…” The bell on the front door jingled as a man brought his blue heeler inside, the dog straining against the lead. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Right, right.”
I turned and headed for the door, barely able to feel my face. This hadn’t gone as smoothly as I hoped, but… Katie agreed to go out on a date with me. That made up for everything.
“Wait!” I turned around slowly, sure this was the moment when Katie would change her mind, tell me she didn’t think about me that way, but she hustled over to hand me the print out. “You forgot your checklist!”
“Of course.” I grinned then, unable to stop myself. “Lose my bloody head if it wasn’t screwed on. I’ll text you about dinner.”
A little nod and she was sprinting back to the front desk to deal with the blue heeler’s owner.
“Well, someone looks like the cat that got the cream.” Charlie looked up as I entered the break room, ready to grab a coffee before my shift. “You look like all your Christmases just came at once. What gives?”
“Katie…” I ground that out as I sat down heavily, my hands wrapped around the hot mug. “I just saw Katie.”
“And you decided to stop mournfully pining and asked her out?” Knox asked with a crooked grin.
“Yeah.” I nodded and then started grinning like a loo. “Yeah, I think I did.”
“Pay up,” Knox said, nudging Charlie in the ribs.
“Hang on…” Charlie leaned forward to peer at me. “Did you ask her out or not, because there’s money riding on this?”
“We’re going to go to the pet store and then dinner,” I replied, blinking as I realised what that meant.
“Sounds like a date to me,” Knox said as Charlie groaned. “So, how’s it gonna go down?”