18. PRESTON
Chapter eighteen
PRESTON
FEELINGS FEELINGS EVERYWHERE
It’s been amazing seeing Dean every day, and while I suggested this as a way to help him relax a little, the man just can’t help himself.
“Leave that for me,” I call out to Dean as he rests his cane against the wall and then heaves the heavy bag of feed over his left shoulder. He’s balancing on his good leg, his injured right lifted slightly off the ground, and with an oomph, he grabs a second bag and throws it on top of the first, then picks up his cane and staggers my way. I’ve chosen to call the way he teeters back and forth with that boot on when he walks as staggering, it sounds far sexier than wobbles or hobbles.
“I was lifting double this, not two weeks ago. You gotta stop worrying, doc,” he says, staggering past me. “Besides, Poppy is due here any minute; you don’t want her tripping over this stuff now, do you?”
Shit, is it after three already?
“You make a good point. But I just don’t want you to hurt yourself. You’re supposed to be on light duties. Nial will kill me if I send you home more—”
He turns to raise one brow my way.
“More what? Broken than I already am?”
I shrug. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
He chuckles.
“Sure you were, doc, but it’s okay. I am broken. My leg, anyway. Not my arms. These I need to keep using or I’ll be hurting when I’m back at it.”
Poppy barrels through the door.
“Is Dean still here?” she asks, tossing her bag toward the chairs in the waiting area, but it only half lands on the seat and falls to the floor a second later.
“How about we start with hello?”
She rolls her eyes, and it’s more adorable than it should be.
“Hello, Preston.”
“Hello, Poppy. I hope school was fun today.”
“It was. Is Dean here?”
Before I can answer, he steps out from the back room.
“Why, hello there, little darlin’.”
Poppy rushes over to him.
“Can I please play with Cuddles?” she asks, bouncing on her toes.
“Sure, it’s about time this lazy bones woke up anyway,” he says, reaching into the sash and scooping up Cuddles. Poppy lets out a little squeal of joy, and the pigmy goat’s eyes shoot open, and it starts pumping its little legs in the air.
The second Dean puts him down, he’s prancing and bouncing around Poppy through the waiting room.
“Only two weeks until your birthday, isn’t it?” Dean asks.
“Yes, oh I have an invitation for you, and one for you, too, Preston,” she replies, grabbing them out of her bag and shoving it into our hands before returning to play with Cuddles on the floor.
I open the small white envelope and slide out the cow-shaped card.
“Come for a cuddle and cake to celebrate Poppy’s eleventh birthday,” I read aloud.
“I’ll be there,” I say, and Dean chuckles and slides the envelope into his back pocket.
“Considering the party is on my ranch, you can count me in, too,” he says, and she smiles up at him.
“You can give me a cow for my present if you want.”
I interject. “Now wait a minute. You know your mom already told you no animals. Your grandparents don’t keep livestock.”
“But if it’s a present, they can’t make me give it back. It wouldn’t be polite.”
Dean staggers over to the seats near Poppy and lowers himself slowly.
“Now, little darlin’, do you think it would be polite of me to get you something I know you’re not allowed to have?” he asks, and she scrunches up her nose and frowns.
“It’s not fair. Tommy Dukes has a whole flock of sheep. I just want one cow. Just one. It doesn’t even have to be a big one.”
“I know it doesn’t seem fair, but your farm isn’t really set up to keep animals. I’ll tell you what, though. If, when you’re grown up, you get your own land, I’ll give you a cow, as a housewarming present.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She leaps up and slams against him, hugging his neck tight. I catch a slight wince, but it’s replaced quickly by a smile.
It’s sweet, but there’s also a pang of jealousy that stirs inside me that she’s never hugged me like that. She still calls me Preston when my mother was Grandma from day one. I catch Dean watching me, his brow turned down in a soft frown, and he mouths, “Are you okay?” and I force a smile and nod before moving to busy myself at the computer.
Poppy finally lets him go, and they play together with Cuddles while I finish up placing a few orders and checking on tomorrow’s appointments.
I still watch them, out of the corner of my eye, hear her giggle and him laugh, and if you’d taken a picture of it, you’d think it was a beautiful shot of a girl and her father. Only he isn’t her dad. I am. I hate that it feels like he’s been given something that should be mine. It’s not fair to him or to her. How can I be mad that she finds it so easy to be near to him when I feel the same way? I just wish I knew how to have that with her, too.
“Poppy, you need to do your homework,” I tell her, and she whines.
“Five more minutes.”
“Now, please. You can play with Cuddles again after.”
Dean calls over Cuddles and pops him into the sash to settle.
“Your dad’s right, homework first,” he says, and she nods and grabs her bag.
I mouth, “Thank you,” to him, and he replies with a wink that lifts my spirits ten-fold and any niggling jealousy evaporates.
“What are we working on today?” I ask, and Dean slips out the back.
“I have to read for fifteen minutes, and then do the first page of division,” she says, grabbing out her homework book and a novel that is far thicker than I ever remember reading at her age.
“Did your teacher give you that?”
“No. We get to pick our own books this year. I’ve already read the first two in this series. This is book three.”
“That’s really good. I loved to read when I was growing up, too. How about you read to me?” I ask, and my heart doubles its pace as I wait for her reply. If I’d had the chance to be her dad from when she was born, I would have read to her every night I could. My mom used to read to me as a kid. It was often the same book about a cowboy and his horse travelling the wild outdoors. It didn’t matter that I knew it word for word, I loved hearing her do the voices of the characters and the sound of the horse braying. It would have been nice to have that same connection with my own daughter. I guess if she loves reading, too, even if I am not the reason she loves it, it’s still a connection, right?
“Okay,” she says, tossing a cushion on the floor in the corner beside the playpen we’ve got set up for more active visitors. It’s hard for most pets to stay cooped up in a carrier while they wait for their turn, so this offers a way to pass the time.
I grab another cushion and drop it beside her, then take a seat, stretching my legs out in front of me while I wait for her to start.
“Ready when you are,” I say, and she turns over the book in her hands.
“Willow Farm, Vet Academy Book three,” she reads, and I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face.
It’s wonderful listening to her read each page, laughing at the characters, and pausing to tell me about things that she suddenly remembers from the earlier books that I just have to know. It’s only when Mr. Thomas pops in with his cat Fluffy that I realize she’s doubled her reading goal.
“Sorry, Mr. Thomas, I’ll just be a minute,” I say, and Poppy goes to close the book. “No, no, you can finish the chapter. Mr. Thomas and Fluffy won’t mind waiting just a few minutes, will you?” I ask, full well knowing he won’t mind one bit. He’s got seven grandchildren and has told me countless stories of his time with them when he comes home to collect Fluffy after his trips out of town.
“Not at all, go ahead, child,” he says, taking a seat and resting his cat carrier in his lap. “Fluffy loves a good story.”
Poppy opens back up the book, a smile on her face I never want to see her without, and keeps reading. It only takes another five minutes to finish off the chapter, and she slips in the bookmark, not surprisingly covered in cartoon cow faces, and jumps up.
“You have to sign my paper for the pages,” she says as I climb to my feet far slower than she did. I push open the door to the back and call out to Dean.
“Can you come out front for a bit?”
Poppy passes me her reading log sheet, and I grab a pen. “Pages one to twenty-two,” she says, and as I’m jotting down the title and page numbers, I scan the list of books she’s already read this year. It’s all animal titles, and the word vet pops out more than a few times, too.
“What can I help with?” Dean asks, and I sign my name and pass the paper back.
“Poppy’s got to work on her division and I have Fluffy in for a check-up and nail trim. Can you sit out here with her, please?”
He rubs the back of his neck the way he does when he’s a little unsure.
“Nial is the one good with numbers, but I’ll do my best.”
“It’s not hard,” Poppy says. “We did the same sort of questions in class today.” She steps around me and climbs onto the stool behind the counter.
“If you say so, kid,” he replies and gives me a nod.
I take Fluffy back, and as we walk down the hallway, I can faintly hear Poppy explaining division to Dean.
“Think of it like your cows, you have fifteen cows in one pen, but they are really big cows so you want to split them up into three, how many go into each pen?” she asks, and then he replies with a, “hmmm.”
I don’t hear the rest, but when Fluffy is all sorted and we walk out Dean is sorting through a giant stack of files while Poppy is teaching Cuddles to jump over objects she’s placed on the floor like running a sheepdog through an obstacle course.
“Sorry, I thought I’d get a start on these,” Dean says, slipping another file behind a lettered divider in the drawer.
“No worries. Can I just pop behind to fix up Mr. Thomas?” I ask, and he steps back for me to pass in front of him, but with the small space I have to squeeze through sideways and his broad chest brushes against mine, sending a jolt of heat through me. I breathe in as if that will help, but all it does is fill my nose with his intoxicating scent. How does one man smell so goddamn good?
“Sorry, I’m in the way,” Dean says, but I’m through now and focusing all my attention on the computer.
“You’re good. I’m good. Umm, so, that will be twenty for today,” I tell Mr. Thomas, and Dean throws me a weird look as Mr. Thomas hands me a twenty-dollar bill. A lot of the older people in town still prefer cash to cards. I have an app on my phone to receive payment by card, too, now though, for when it’s needed.
Mr. Thomas leaves, and I turn to place Fluffy’s file back under F in the top drawer when Dean blocks my hand.
“I’ve reorganized them by their owner’s last name. You had three files for pets named Daisy and I found more than one document in each that belonged to another. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s actually really smart.”
“You had the ranch animals in one folder, same for the other farms, it was just the pets you were filing by the pet name. I figured you made a start on sorting it all out, just probably ran out of time.”
I shrug. “Actually that’s just how dad always did it. I guess there were fewer pets then and more stock animals.”
“Oh, well, if you want me to put it back I can.”
“No, no, I love it.”
“Thank God for that,” he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck the way he does. “Cause I already did the bottom drawer, and I really didn’t want to pull them all out and label them again.”
“Well, good thing you don’t have to, then. Umm, where does this go?” I ask and he takes the file, opens the already completed drawer and slides it behind the letter T.
“Did I hear that right? You only charged him twenty dollars for a check-up and nail trim?”
“Yeah, Mr. Thomas doesn’t have a lot of money, so I just charge him what Dad used to.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“I’d charge him nothing if he’d accept that, but he insists on paying. I have Mrs. Applebalm’s goat, Larry, tomorrow, so that file should now be…” I flick through the files behind the letter A. “That was pretty easy. You know, it’s really great having you here helping out,” I say, and he blushes.
“It’s nice to be useful to someone.”
“You’re always useful,” I reply, resting my hand on his forearm. His skin is scorching hot, and the warmth of him spreads through my touch and up my arm.
“Preston, see what I taught Cuddles,” Poppy asks, and I pull my hand away and slide back between the desk and Dean.
“Show me,” I tell her, moving to sit to watch as she takes cuddles through her course. Dean goes back to relabeling and reorganizing the files, but I catch him watching us more than once, and the way his eyes linger on me has me wishing more than ever that I didn’t ask to just be friends.
***
Cuddles is worn out and snoring softly in Dean’s sash when Isabel picks up Poppy.
“You’ve got one great kid there, Doc,” Dean says after they leave and he turns the sign on the door to show closed before pulling down the blinds.
“Thanks. I think so, too.”
He grabs a basket of pet toys we leave out.
“I’ll pop these in to wash while you load up episode thirteen. I want to know how it ends.”
“You know this is just one season? There’s like forty all up.”
“No way you’ve watched forty seasons of Doctor Who.”
“I have, but, for your introduction, we’ve started with the reboot series, partly because not everyone likes watching old shows that are in black and white, but mostly because the reboot has the best Doctor there ever was.”
“David Ten something, right?”
“Tennant.”
“Right, David Tennant. Oh, and for the record. I don’t mind black and white. Gramps’s television was about as old as he was, until he moved to Savannah. The weekend he left, Nial and I bought a big screen for the living room. We hardly watch it, but every time we do, we have a chuckle about the one that we grew up with.”
“Ours was the same. I watched the old episodes of Doctor Who with Dad when I was a kid. It was pretty much the only show he’d put on the television, so we all watched, Mom, too. I think that’s the one thing she will miss the least,” I say and suddenly the air in the room feels thick like mud. I’ll never watch Dr Who with Dad ever again. It’s stupid to be sad over watching a television show, but my eyes are starting to sting, and I turn to fiddle with the computer to bring up the streaming website.
“It’s okay to miss him,” Dean says, suddenly right behind me. He’s standing so close, the heat from his chest radiates between us, and when he places his large hand on my shoulder, I almost sink back into his touch. Almost. “I still miss my parents, too.”
“Will I ever be past it?”
“No.”
I suck in a breath, the ache only growing.
“But that’s okay,” he continues, softly squeezing my shoulder. “It hurts because the memories of them are like footsteps on our heart, stomping harder with every beat, reminding us of how much we loved them.”
I turn, sniffing back the tears that threaten to fall. Not that I think he’d care if I did cry. Dean surprises me more every day I spend with him. The years of ranch life haven’t hardened him at all. He’s still that sweet kid I knew growing up, the same kind guy who sat with me while my heart broke over Isabel and I thought my sky was falling in.
He holds my stare, his thumb brushing softly over my collarbone. It sends a shiver through me, but I don’t pull away. I can’t. I’m lost in his piercing stare. Then his gaze moves to my lips. A hope rises in me, and my pulse quickens. Is he going to kiss me? Fuck I hope he does.
His woody sweet scent envelops me in a warm haze I can almost taste. Maybe I should kiss him. Show him I’m open to something, even though I told him I needed to just be friends for now. It was silly. I can see what this could be with Dean and still build my relationship with Poppy. Why did I tell him I needed to only be friends?
“Dean, I, umm,” I start, and he licks his lips, his gaze moving from my stare to my mouth and back.
With every tick of the clock, it becomes clear he’s not going to make the first move here, and I can’t even be mad because he’s doing exactly what I asked him to. But I want those lips on mine. I need them.
I count down in my head, determined to do it. To kiss him. Three. Two.
Before I can do anything, Cuddles pops his head up from the sash and licks Dean right on the mouth.
Well fuck. A pygmy goat just stole my kiss.