Chapter 4
Lydia couldn’t sleep. She was sitting in the center of her bed, picking at a fingernail. She was on edge after that encounter with Remy. After he had thanked her. Thanked her for bringing the dog, thanked her for involving him.
He had gone from resentful to thankful a lot quicker than she ever could have imagined. And then, there had been that moment in the utility room.
HEAR THAT YOU HAVE VOLES.
The text from her brother was overdramatic on arrival.
Voles that I rescued. I don’t have an infestation.
It’s weird.
I’m weird.
That was true. No one could ever dispute it, and no one ever had.
Lydia Clay was a weirdo. Maybe that was why she had always felt an affinity with Remy.
Not that he would ever identify as a weirdo.
Hell, he was one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen, and that wasn’t just a personal opinion or her own bias.
He was over six feet tall, broad and muscular.
His angular jaw was just the kind of sharp that caught a woman’s eye, his eyes a piercing blue, his nose straight, his mouth beguiling.
Yes. She had used the word beguiling. It was just that. There was no other word for it.
She would give quite a few things to be less weird, and less obsessed with him. Sometimes she wondered if she had imprinted on him like a baby deer. Maybe that was her problem.
Oh well. She wasn’t going to dwell on her obsession. Because there was no point in dwelling. There was no point in anything but helping him with Hank.
She didn’t think about Remy all the time.
Just when she had to deal with him. And that was .
. . often. He came to every family function, after all.
She sighed and lay on her back on the bed, arms out like a starfish.
And when she woke up the next morning, she put her animal shelter T-shirt on, a pair of jeans and sneakers, and went to work.
Work started first at home. Feeding the animals, checking in on Chicken Little, her one-footed banty hen, and giving kibble to all the pets that needed kibble, including Terrence the blind ferret.
Some of them required special medications as well. Then she went to the shelter for the day. An elderly couple came to look at small dogs, and they left with a geriatric Chiweenie.
It always made Lydia’s heart feel full to bursting when an animal found its people.
And what she loved about the shelter was that it facilitated people finding exactly the right dogs for them.
So many of the dogs that came into the shelter were older, dogs who had lost their owners because they had passed away or they had had to go into assisted living.
In most cases, those dogs had been very well taken care of. Hank’s situation was unusual.
With Hank on her mind, she called the equine rescue and asked for an update about the three surviving horses she had brought in.
“I know someone who’s willing to take them and care for them. Give them a permanent home.”
“They should be ready in another week,” said Shelley, her contact at the rescue.
“Great. I’ll give him that timeframe.”
She didn’t mention that Remy was Hunter’s son.
She didn’t think he needed anyone wondering about his character.
She thought so often about small-town gossip and how damaging it could be to have parents with difficult reputations, because she had seen it affect Remy.
In spite of the fact that he had never been anything but good, disciplined, successful.
The opposite of his parents in all ways.
He had done well for himself, and still, he seemed to exist on the fringes everywhere but in the Clay household.
She wrinkled her nose, and went through some new intake paperwork, scheduling vaccinations and neutering appointments with the three veterinarians who volunteered to work on the shelter animals.
Then she texted Remy to let him know that she was on her way, and tried to tamp down the little flutter in her stomach.
He didn’t text back, but she drove straight to his place all the same. When she arrived, his truck wasn’t in the driveway, and she felt a kick of irritation.
She walked up the front steps to the house and peered in the window. If the dog had been left there alone, she was going to be annoyed at Remy.
What if Hank was in a kennel? She didn’t think Remy was unkind to animals. If he were, she would never have developed a fixation on him no matter how sexy he was. Rodents before bro-dents. That was her motto.
But he was an inexperienced dog owner by his own admission, so it was possible he just didn’t know what to do with Hank during the day.
She heard a motor rumbling and the sound of tires on gravel, and she turned to see his shiny red truck barreling up the road. And there was Hank, sitting proudly in the passenger seat, tongue hanging out. His shaggy brown fur looked glossy, even from where Lydia was standing. Had Remy brushed him?
She blinked. She could hardly believe it. And then she took note of the man himself. He was wearing a cowboy hat, grinning, singing along to the radio.
It took him a second to notice her. When he did, his expression went blank, and he pulled up beside her car, killing the engine and getting out of the driver’s seat.
“Didn’t expect you this early.”
“I did send you a text. The shelter is only open until four on Tuesdays.”
“I see.”
He rounded the front of the truck and went to the passenger side, then opened the door up. She half expected Hank to leap out. But instead Remy reached inside and picked the dog up, placing him gingerly on the ground. She blinked. “So, things are going well.”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Yesterday, you seemed so . . . down on it.”
“I’m down on anything pertaining to my dad.”
He walked past her, and she was surprised to see Hank follow at the edge of his boot heel, as if he was superglued to him. No leash required.
She had just been thinking what an amazing thing it was that the shelter allowed people to find animals that matched their needs perfectly.
But apparently, Remy had found his perfect match in Hank.
They were like long-lost soulmates, and she wasn’t sure if she had ever seen anything quite like that.
She followed him up the front porch steps and into the house.
Hank went straight into the living room and jumped up onto the leather couch, causing the throw on the back of it to slide down and cover him.
He rested his chin on his front paws and looked utterly at home and satisfied.
Remy crossed his arms and pushed his cowboy hat up. “I thought we had a chat about that, Hank. I am unsure about you being on the furniture.”
Lydia chuckled. “I think you’ve lost that battle.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“I talked to Shelley at the equine rescue. She said that the three horses should be ready to move to a nonmedical facility in about a week. They’re doing well.”
He nodded. “I have plenty of room.”
“Do you have use for three more horses?”
“I don’t need to have use for them. They can stand out in the field and live the rest of their lives happy and well fed.
” He grimaced. “Listen, Lydia, I admit that I’m not the bleeding heart about animals that you are.
But my dad wasn’t a good man. He treated everybody that came into his life—man or beast—like they were there to serve him.
And if they didn’t serve him, they didn’t matter.
If I can do even one thing to counteract some of that .
. . to take away some of the harm, I want to do it.
I can’t change the way people see me, I can’t do anything about whatever reputation I’ve ended up with around town by virtue of the fact that I’m related to Hunter Lane and Cassie Elliott, but I can try to do good all on my own.
If no one ever sees it . . . that doesn’t matter. I’ve done alright for myself.”
It was a beautiful thing to say, but it made Lydia feel profoundly sad. “But you deserve to be seen for who you are. You deserve for people to realize that you’re a good man.”
“It’s not about deserving anything,” he said. “Leastways not from my perspective. I don’t mind. I have my house up here, I have my ranch . . . I don’t need recognition.”
“Don’t you want it?”
“Not especially. I’ve never really seen the need. It just doesn’t matter overly much to me. I don’t have plans to start a happy family here.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think that kind of thing is for other people. People who grew up with a different kind of life. People who . . . people who had it just a little bit different.”
“My family loves you,” she said.
I love you.
The words welled up deep and true inside her. There was a reason she had never been in a serious relationship with anyone else. There was a reason that although she had gone out with a couple of men a couple of different times, it had never gone past a chaste kiss at the door.
There was a reason that at twenty-seven, she was still a virgin, and not the born-again kind, the original variety.
She had decided to devote her life to animals.
To nature. She had decided that she was going to give her all to it.
Some people devoted their lives to the church.
She devoted hers to the care and keeping of critters.
And her parents had accepted that. They understood that she wasn’t ambitious, that she would only ever be able to afford to rent a little house at the end of a dirt road.
She had accepted that too. But what she hadn’t fully accepted was that her feelings for Remy were tied up in all her life choices.
They were stronger than she would like to believe. But it was more than just being attracted to her older brother’s gorgeous best friend, who had been part of her family for so many years. She now realized it was love.
“And I’m damned appreciative of your family,” he said. “They’ve been everything. They mean the world to me. But I don’t need the whole town to look at me and see a good person.”
“What do you need?”
He shrugged. “I expect that I have it. My house, being a rancher. My dad is gone. So, that’s a boon.”
“Now you even have a dog,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
And yet she could feel that there was a sadness to him. As if there was something missing, something he couldn’t articulate. She knew because she felt the same way. She had a pretty good life. But sometimes . . .
Sometimes she wondered if she was missing out. Sometimes she wondered if she needed . . .
“What?” he asked, as if he could read her thoughts.
“Nothing.”
She told herself Remy was a dead end. That was the honest truth. And while she was standing there grappling with the hard reality of her feelings for him, she also tried to grab hold of that one and clutch it tightly.
Did she just want to live in a house with her animals forever? Did she want to be consecrated to the church of animal rescue? It wasn’t something she had really put into words before, so it wasn’t something that she had really accepted.
Her heart was in a holding pattern. For Remy.
But the man had a pretty complete life.
“Matthew thinks I should want what he has,” Remy said.
“And you don’t?”
The corner of his mouth lifted upward. “Not in the market for a husband, no.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right, but a wife.”
“Not really in the market for one of those either. Because I’ve never seen marriage pan out for members of my family.”
“My parents are very stable.”
“Yes, they are. Your parents are wonderful people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a parent support kids the way yours do.
And it spilled over onto me, and for that I’m damn grateful.
Trust me on that. But it doesn’t mean I would know the first thing about how to have a relationship.
Although I do know about other aspects of romance. ”
The way he said it, all throaty and serious, made her feel warm.
“Well. How nice for you.”
“That’s why Matthew was such a great wingman for me, and I was such a great one to him. We were both very charming and not competing for the same type.”
“Must be a big loss, not having your wingman.”
He lifted a brow. “I do okay.”
That made her feel hot in ways she wished it didn’t. Women had always liked him. Even before he’d become so successful. How could they not like him?
“I think we should give Hank a bath,” she said, eager to change the subject.
“I sprayed some air freshener in the truck,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “We bathed him at the shelter but he was a mess, and I think it would be a good idea to get him all cleaned up here so you can get accustomed to the process.”
“You’ve handed me extra chores, Lydia, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
“But, Remington, it’s a chore that will love you back.”
Remy grumbled as he walked past her down the hall toward the bathroom, but she heard the water start to run, and she laughed.
But then Hank heard it too and bolted, straight off the couch and right out of the room.