Love and Loyalty (The Four Families #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Jenny

Poop bags, check. Collapsible bowl, check. Giant-ass bottle of water, check. Belly bag with bottle holster, check. Carabiners, check. Cell phone, check. Keys…

I pat down my hips and scan around me. Nope, not in eyeline.

Ok, replay the last five minutes. I glance down at my belt to confirm I checked all the stuff for work.

I’ve already put on my shoes. My cellphone is in my pocket, which means I had it in my hand when I left my bedroom.

Before I was in my bedroom, I was in the kitchen heating a Hot Pocket.

Before I did that, I came back from getting the mail.

I had to use my keys to get into the apartment.

That’s a plus. Definitely narrows down the search area.

Heading back into the kitchen, I scan the counters. Nope, not there. But the Hot Pocket sleeve is next to the trash can, not in it. The keys aren’t in the microwave. They would’ve exploded and caused a fire, and I would’ve noticed that.

Dammit. I open the freezer. Motherfucker. My Amanda Chase key chain with the glitter snow globe glares at me as if to say, “Again?”

I cringe and mutter, “Sorry.”

I don’t know why I apologize to the inanimate object, other than it would be rude not to. My punishment for my indiscretion? Cold metal in my pocket. Could be worse.

Glancing at the clock, I’m relieved—and a little shocked—to find this morning’s brainfart has only set me back two minutes.

I’ll make it to my favorite client on time.

Double checking Jenny from the Past hasn’t set Jenny from the Future up for failure, I give myself a satisfied nod and head out of the apartment.

First stop is Kingston the Klee Kai. He's always mistaken for a husky puppy, but he’s actually already five years old.

He has the pointy ears and nose of a dog clearly descended from a wolf, but his tail curls into a little cinnamon roll.

The happier he is, the tighter the curl gets.

And when his mouth is open, he’s smiling.

I’m not supposed to have favorites, but I do, and it’s one-hundred-percent him.

His owner is a super-cute, little old grandma who left for a trip to Italy.

She would’ve brought Kingston with her, but there was a quarantine issue, so she asked me to check on him.

I don’t love leaving such a human-focused dog alone for long, but she assured me her family would be coming by to watch him as well.

On a normal day—when I’m here for just an afternoon walking session and not vacation care—the lady who lives here and I usually sit down for a few minutes, have some tea together, and chat before I take Kingston out.

Her house smells like an old lady, roses, and garlic, and I feel more at home here than I do anywhere else.

Her family visits a lot, but I think I might be the only person she speaks to who isn’t related to her, or at least nine billion years old. Either way, she’s fucking amazing, and exactly who I want to be when I grow up.

Oh, and she tells me the best stories about her super-hot grandson, Nico.

Ok, I don’t know for sure he’s hot. I’ve never seen any pictures.

But in my mind, he is. Blond hair, blue eyes, chiseled jaw like one of those Hemsworth brothers…

but better, because he lives in my mind where he doesn’t fart, or forget to brush his teeth, or have any flaws.

Kingston greets me at the door, hopping on his hind legs and resting his front paws on me. “Down,” I say, even though I love it when he does this. But rules are rules. He bounces from the front door to the kitchen. He knows the drill.

I pick up his food dish and his water bowl, give them a quick rinse, and put them in the dishwasher. I’m not sure why Nonna, my client, insists on running everything through the dishwasher, but I’ve stopped questioning her.

Once Kingston is all harnessed up, I lock the door behind me, and we’re off to pick up his doggie friends.

Five dogs and six bags of poop later, and over half my steps done for the day, we’re on our way back.

My stomach drops when I see the road along our usual path home closed for a street festival.

Do I bring the dogs through it, or walk two blocks to go around it?

The fastest detour is to go down Carver Street.

But that place freaks me out. After a millisecond of consideration, I choose the longer—and safer— route and drag the doggos that way. They don’t seem to care.

All in all, the afternoon is pleasant. I return the dogs one by one, leaving Kingston and me to head home. He’s dragging a little bit, sniffing and peeing on every leaf or blade of grass he can find. It’s like he’s leaving comments on the doggy internet.

There’s a few more cars on the street than when I left this morning. Some nice ones too—including a big-ass SUV—and one of the luxury cars is trying to be low key about it, no flashy aftermarket add-ons to be seen.

I punch in the code to get into Nonna’s house, but there’s a weird second beep, which means it was already unlocked.

Might be a glitch, because I know I locked it.

But several things strike me as odd. The house smells less like roses and more like sandalwood.

There’s also a light jacket hanging on the hook that wasn’t there before.

And the biggest oddity? There’s a man standing in the middle of the living room.

Last time I checked, he isn’t supposed to be here.

Other things I notice at the moment? He’s wearing a nice suit, and while it might have been off the rack, it’s been tailored to fit him.

His dark hair is slicked back, and he has deep brown eyes—almost black, but not quite ready to make the commitment into a straight up mythical creature.

He’s also upset, his emotions clear on his classically handsome face and fluctuating between sadness, confusion, and rage.

Oh, and the most important detail—he’s pointing a gun at me.

“Who the fuck are you?” he snarls as he stares down the barrel at me.

I have zero sense of self preservation, which apparently means arguing with this man seems like the best option. “Me? You’re the one breaking into Nonna’s house.”

Kingston is pulling at his leash as he barks and bounces.

It’s not his territorially deep growl, which sounds much bigger and scarier when you don’t see he’s like twenty pounds and constantly smiling.

His tail is even still up in a cinnamon roll.

So even though there’s a gun pointed at my head, he doesn’t see it as a threat.

The man with a gun blinks at me a few times. “Why the hell are you in my grandmother’s house?”

Kingston finally pulls out of my hands. He runs over to the man, jumps on him once, sniffs, backs up, and barks twice. The man grabs the leash, unhooking it with the hand not holding the gun in my direction, then tosses the leash onto the couch and narrows his eyes at me.

This would have been a lot better if he’d accidentally tossed the gun instead.

Despite our epic playdate and walk home, Kingston takes the opportunity to lay into a bout of zoomies, doing three laps around the couch before bounding up the stairs. I can hear him running back and forth in the hallway, completely content in Zoomieland. My brave protector.

With no leash to hold onto anymore, I throw my hands in the air. “Your grandma gave me the passcode so I can take care of her dog.”

The man flicks something on the gun, and his finger moves toward the trigger. “Bullshit. Nonna doesn’t have a dog.”

Kingston does another lap upstairs. I’ve seen his zoomie circuit plenty of times.

Most likely he’s hopping onto Nonna’s bed, doing three high speed circles, then jumping down with a huff.

Above us, his tiny feet continue to run back down the hallway, down the stairs, and he sprints another three laps around me, the guy with the gun, and the couch, before running into the kitchen and barking at me.

“I beg to differ.” I take a few steps forward but stop when the man makes a low rumble sound in his chest. There are a million things weird about this. “If you didn’t think Kingston is Nonna’s dog, why did you take off his leash?”

His mouth hangs open. “Um, I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t be here.”

Kingston barks at the dishwasher and bounces, pausing long enough to give me his what-are-you-waiting-for glare.

Before I can grab his bowl for him, the front door opens behind me, and a woman says, “Joey, why are you trying to shoot the dog walker?”

He lowers his gun slightly, his gaze dancing between me and this new woman. She puts her hand on my shoulder and steps between us. Clearly, she also has no fear of death.

Brushing past Joey, she heads into the kitchen. “Sorry, Kingston. Mean old Joey isn’t letting you get any water.” She opens the dishwasher, pulls out the water bowl, and fills it before walking it over to the back door where Kingston normally eats and drinks.

“Nonna had a dog?” He lowers his gun slightly and sits on the edge of the couch, staring off into space. “That doesn’t make any sense. I come here every day at noon and never see a dog.”

“And I pick him up every day at eleven,” I inform him. “Nonna and I drink some tea, I walk Kingston and then return him at one thirty.” I scoot against the wall to go toward the kitchen, leaving as much space as possible between me and Mr. Itchy Trigger Finger.

Once Kingston’s had enough water, he trots into the living room and goes to his basket, where he cautiously and with precision pulls out all of his toys and scatters them around the floor.

He hates it when his prized possessions aren’t out for him to survey.

He’s in all his glory showing off his hoard to Joey and this mystery woman.

The woman comes out of the kitchen, and I finally get a good look at her.

Holy shit! How are we the same species? She’s tall with long blonde hair, her bone structure like she was carved from marble.

And the way she’s dressed, I’m dead. Blazer, leggings, and a teal blouse.

I should wear more blouses, they’re cute.

The woman turns her head between me and Joey, then back to me. She extends her hand. “Hello, I’m Alana. You must be Jenny. Nonna spoke about you all the time.”

Joey whips his head toward us. “No, she didn’t.” But he lowers his gun completely, placing it next to the leash, and leans against the back of the couch. He might be relaxed, but I’m not.

“Well, not to you,” Alana counters as she shakes my hand and then clasps both her hands around mine. “It’s a shame we had to meet like this.”

“By gunpoint?”

She holds my gaze, and her expression is hard to understand. “I’m sorry to tell you, but Nonna passed away.”

“No, she’s on a trip to Italy.” I shake my head. “She left early this morning.”

“Three hours into her flight, the private jet went off course and exploded over the Atlantic Ocean.”

The words sound so strange. Planes don’t explode. They crash, but they don’t explode. Sometimes my mouth works faster than the social awareness part of my brain. “That’s great!”

Joey jumps to his feet. “The fuck?”

“I mean, it was fast. She didn’t even feel it, right? The likelihood of her surviving the explosion and the impact with the water has to be small.”

Alana raises her eyebrows. “I was thinking the same thing.”

I shrug. “It was fast, painless, and she didn’t see it coming. It’s the third best option besides dying in your sleep. Well, assuming you’re dreaming of nice things and nothing scary. Or getting fucked to death—which you would see coming. Hopefully.”

Joey throws his arms up in the air and starts to pace. “That’s my grandma you’re talking about.”

I point at him. “We had lengthy conversations about how she wanted to die. Seriously, just a week ago we were sitting at the kitchen table, eating cookies and talking about the best ways to die. We both agreed not seeing it coming would be ideal. Fast and painless, like decapitation or something. Or poison, a fast acting one, like you’re here one moment, and the next you're facedown in your soup.”

Joey’s eyes grow wide, completely horrified. I’m not exactly giving him the reaction he expects.

I explain, “I don’t grieve the right way. I’ll seem fine, then six months from now, I’ll see a duck and start sobbing uncontrollably.”

Alana tilts her head to the side, crosses her arms and asks, “Why a duck?”

“Because it’s on the cheese she sometimes snacks on.”

Joey frowns. “That’s a parrot. The duck is on the box of the store-bought cake snacks she buys.”

Yeah, I got those two confused. “Either way, I’ll have some pent-up emotional outburst at some inconvenient time and completely out of context to the rest of the world.” I take a deep breath before saying, “I am sorry for your loss.”

The three of us stand in an awkward silence for way too long. It isn’t until Kingston drops his chew toy and trots over to Joey and starts sniffing him that the conversation changes.

He looks at me and asks, “What the hell are you going to do about this?” Joey doesn’t touch Kingston, even though he’s giving his best ‘I’m a good boy and you should pet me’ face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Aren’t you going to take him with you?”

“I can’t. He’s not my dog. And my apartment doesn’t allow pets. You’ll probably have to look after him for the time being.”

Joey doesn’t like this answer. He lifts his head to the sky, closes his eyes, and exhales. But not in a therapeutic way. In a way that makes you think, oh shit, he might kill someone if he doesn’t get some chocolate in him soon.

Oh, double shit. Do I have any chocolate? Of course not. I’m on the clock.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with him?”

“Well, he’s a companion dog, which means he’ll want to be in the room with you.

He really can’t be alone all day. I’ll be back in a few hours to take him out for his night walk and to feed him dinner.

And I’ll come by in the morning too.” Hmm, Joey probably doesn’t actually live at Nonna’s house.

“When you decide to take him back to your place, I can keep walking him, assuming you live nearby.”

He exhales again and pinches the bridge of his nose. “How often am I going to see you?”

“I come in and out of this house six times a day, so I’ll ask you not to threaten to shoot me every time.”

He grumbles, “I guarantee nothing.”

“Joey…” Alana gives him a warning.

Cool, this won’t be the most awkward job ever. “Well, I’ll be back later to take care of Kingston. Again, sorry for your loss.” I leave and once on the street push out the biggest breath in the history of exhales.

What the hell did I get myself into?