Chapter 1
The puppy-dog eyes were a little much. Remington Lane—Remy to his friend; he only had the one—stared down at the most pathetic, beseeching expression he had ever seen in his life.
The eyes were pitiful, large and dewy. Their owner straight from the shelter by the looks of things and trying hard to tug on heartstrings Remy wasn’t even sure he had.
And then he noticed the dog.
The dog seemed unbothered; however, his one and only friend’s little sister, Lydia Clay, seemed terribly bothered, and tragic on top of it, standing in his doorway on the verge of begging.
“I couldn’t leave him in the shelter, not after I saw who he had belonged to,” she said, the emotion in her large eyes intensifying as she gazed up at him.
The he in question was the most sorry heap of bones Remy had ever seen. An ancient-looking cow dog that had neither bark nor bite.
He felt pained by what he expected to come next. Lydia was doing her best to look pained.
“Who did he belong to?” he asked, already sure he knew the answer and not liking it one bit.
“Your dad. He was your dad’s dog, Remy.”
Lydia might as well have hauled off and punched him in the gut. Because if there was one thing Remy didn’t care about, it was his dad. Well, if there were two things he didn’t care about, it was his dad and where the man’s soul had ended up after his demise.
Hunter Lane, gone too late, quite honestly.
“Of course that was my dad’s dog. He looks halfway to death’s door, and like no one has ever bothered to take an interest in him.” Remy did his best to steel himself against any sympathy the dog’s fate might arouse within him.
Lydia looked up at him, pleading now, her hands clasped at the center of her chest.
Lordy. He did not have time for this. But if there was one thing he did care about, it was the Clay family. How could he not?
His own family was, well, the technical term was . . . a shit show.
His dad had been an evil drunk, and his mom had been too busy spreading herself around town to pay any mind to her only son.
Remy had spent his childhood going back and forth between the room his mother rented over the bar in town, and squatting in a bedroom in his dad’s barely habitable ranch house.
The Clay family had been his real family. They had practically raised him. They had taken care of him. They were . . . good people in a world that had left Remy uncertain whether anyone could be trusted.
But the problem with good people was that they were too soft.
Lydia was a perfect example. Remy and Lydia’s older brother, Matthew, had been friends ever since sixth grade.
Lydia had been an irritating fourth-grader back then, wandering around with her blond hair up in an absurd ponytail, saving baby birds, snakes, and any other critters who crossed her path.
Some would argue that many of them didn’t even need saving; they had just encountered an overenthusiastic child with a savior complex.
He had in fact tried to argue that point with her on a couple of occasions, but most especially when she had brought a raccoon home from an abandoned nest when she was seventeen years old.
That fat-ass raccoon was still alive, and—in spite of Lydia’s best efforts to return it to the wild—living in her house, and eating better than most people.
Remy resented it.
The trouble was, he couldn’t quite resent Lydia. However much he might want to.
She was sweet and good, and there were too few things in this world that were sweet and good besides.
She was the real deal in a way he’d never been, that was for damn sure. His version of good was not causing harm. He’d gone out of his way to make a life that was self-contained and didn’t cause any trouble. He tried to build more than he broke—that was his goal.
As a rancher, he tried to take care of his animals and honor their use—yes, he ranched beef, but he took the duties of his work seriously and to heart. As a programmer he tried to combine the useful and the entertaining—as a kid he’d been fascinated by the way things were put together.
Whether it was an engine in a car or the invisible building blocks of the video games he played at the Clay house, he always wanted to know how things worked and why.
Maybe it was a side effect of being a kid in a house that he couldn’t make heads or tails of, but whatever the reason, that fascination had taken him places. He wasn’t saving the world or anything like that, but he hoped his personal scales would balance in the end.
Lydia wasn’t just neutral though. She wasn’t balancing scales.
She seemed to think any animal with a limp was her problem to solve.
He wondered sometimes if that was why she took an interest in him—her whole family, really.
They were a constant presence in his life—he’d had dinner with the Clay family the other night. They always included him in their get-togethers.
But much like the pathetic dog at Lydia’s side, he was a shelter animal. Not a pedigreed anything.
“Looks like you have yourself another dog, tiger,” he said, moving to close the front door of his house.
“No,” she said, stopping him from shutting the door, her blue eyes stormy.
“I can’t take him. I mean, I actually tried.
But he and Pascal took an instant loathing to each other.
Also, Maleficent can’t handle large dogs without a lot of preparation and coaching, not after the incident with those pit bulls at her previous owner’s house. ”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So let me get this straight. This dog is here because he and a raccoon had a personality clash, and your Chihuahua mix has a Napoleon complex.”
“She has complex post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“She’s a Chihuahua,” he said. “Her brain is the size of a walnut. Nothing in there is complex.”
Lydia sniffed, her indignation clear in every fiber of her being. “I’m going to choose to ignore that, because I assume that you’re grieving, and therefore in a little bit of a dark space.”
“You would assume incorrectly. I drank a six-pack of Bud Light and shot off fireworks the night my dad died.”
“It isn’t Hank’s fault that your dad was a terrible father.”
“No, it’s not,” Remy said. “It’s also not my fault. Not my fault that he owned a dog that he didn’t take care of and didn’t have succession planning for. I’m just grateful that the dog isn’t me.”
As soon as he said that, the dog looked up at him. Made eye contact. And Remy felt . . . seen. Scolded.
That dog looked him dead in the face and asked without words: But you’re okay with it being me? That’s a fine thing.
“It’s a no-kill shelter that you work at, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “But old dogs like him are difficult to place. Can you at least . . . consider fostering him? He just got uprooted from his home, and I don’t know if he’s the best pet because I suspect he’s endured some years of neglect.”
Well, Remy was dead familiar with that. He hadn’t asked to be born any more than the dog had asked to be bought by his dad and brought into that house. It was so damned annoying. That he felt sorry for the dog. That he felt kinship with the dog.
“This is—”
“You have plenty of land. Your house is big.” She clasped her hands again and looked up at him, like a sad little orphan, and he was of the mind that if he said no, he was going to come across as a total monster.
He didn’t always mind that. Honestly. He didn’t have a reputation for being the friendliest man around town. Though his reserve stemmed from the fact that people often weren’t all that friendly to him—his dad’s reputation preceded him.
But the Clay family gave a shit about him. And as a result, he felt obliged to give more than a shit about them.
“I don’t know anything about taking care of a dog. I don’t have any supplies.”
“Lucky for you, I know everything about taking care of animals. And I’m going to be here to help you. Every step of the way.”