Chapter 3
From a suite of crazy menopausal dreams, Amy woke with a start just as she was plunged into a dark pool of hot water. She gasped for breath, ripped off her sleep mask, and looked around her. It was a moment before she could place where she was…Right, right, the lake house.
She eased back down onto her sweat-soaked pillow. She couldn’t remember what she was dreaming, other than there was dark water (which was, obviously, another bout of night sweats; thank you, menopause) and Duchess.
Wait. “Duchess?”
She sat up again and looked around the room.
Where was her dog? She threw off the covers and stood up, padding around the enormous room in a quick, frantic search for her.
The dog couldn’t have gone far—Amy had locked her door last night in case Mr. Neely decided to murder her in her sleep.
But then she’d taken her nightly melatonin gummies (twice the recommended dosage), and Duchess had needed to avail herself of the facilities, and she’d opened the door to the small garden off the primary bedroom and let her out.
And as the gummies had kicked in, she’d gone back to bed and left the patio door open, hoping some of that cool night air would come in and cool off her body.
She’d ceased to care if Mr. Neely murdered her—at least she wouldn’t be hot.
She hurried to the patio door and peered into the small, gated garden. It was hardly bigger than a postage stamp, an area where one was supposed to have coffee or cocktails. No Duchess.
Amy began to panic. Lately, she was doing things here and there that she didn’t remember doing.
Like, putting her favorite coffee mug in the box for Goodwill.
Or making an appointment for Botox and forgetting it until the dermatology office called and asked if she was coming.
She was pretty certain she hadn’t done anything with Duchess that she’d actually forget, but she thought of the large pool outside and imagined her nearly blind old dog walking into it and drowning.
She thought of the road outside the gate and imagined Duchess getting smashed by a truck.
She picked up the fat bathrobe and put it on with nothing underneath but a pair of panties, and pushed her damp hair from her face as she dashed out of the room, calling for her dog.
At the first window to the deck, she could see the pool.
Thank God, Duchess was not in it. She looked in the open hall bath.
No Duchess. She raced on, but when she came to the large, sunken living area, she slid to a stop in her bare feet.
There was Duchess, safe from danger, sitting in Mr. Neely’s lap, her tail wagging.
She was looking away, but she could clearly smell Amy’s sweat-soaked body and began to whimper.
Amy could only hope that Mr. Neely couldn’t smell her, too.
He was looking directly at her and taking in her morning appearance, which wasn’t dramatically different from last night’s appearance, she was not going to lie.
“I take it you know this dog?” he asked as he stroked Duchess’s head.
Duchess rested her head on the arm of the chair with a smile on her mug.
There wasn’t much she liked better than a good head stroke.
“That’s Duchess.”
“You didn’t tell me you had a dog with you when we made our agreement.”
No, she hadn’t, but this agreement wasn’t going to work if he was one of those pricks who had a problem with woman’s best friend. Amy lived by the my-dog-can-do-whatever-she-wants rule. “You don’t like dogs?”
He gestured to the one in his lap. “Does this look like I don’t like dogs? I love dogs. But this one was wandering around the deck like she’d been on a bender. So I brought her in. Then she walked into the Christmas tree and damn near knocked it over.”
Amy looked at Duchess. She noticed glitter on her head.
“And then I must have startled her, because she bolted and slammed right into my leg.”
“She weighs maybe twenty-five pounds, so I doubt she slammed. And anyway, she can’t help it—she’s pretty much blind.”
“I noticed.” He lifted the dog off his lap and set her on the floor. Duchess whimpered, sad that the petting had ended. “Why didn’t you tell me about her when we made our deal?”
Amy hadn’t mentioned her because she’d been so stunned by his presence in her kitchen and that he was refusing to leave. Duchess hadn’t come to mind. “I forgot.”
“You forgot you had a blind dog?”
“I forgot in the moment. But she won’t be any trouble,” she added defensively.
Except that Duchess could be a little bit of trouble.
She didn’t always find the nearest exit, and sometimes she mistook houseplants as the next best thing to grass and did her business, and her food didn’t digest as well as it used to, so there were times she needed to be in another room.
“Are you sure about that?” He pointed to the twenty-foot Christmas tree. “That would be a pretty big deal to come tumbling down. And seeing as how I had to pay a deposit against any damages, I’m a little concerned.”
“She’ll figure out the lay of the land,” Amy insisted. “She can smell it now and knows not to walk into it.”
“What about walking into stone retaining walls? Because she did that, too.”
“The head bumps don’t bother her.” A drop of sweat began a long slide from the nape of Amy’s neck to her panty line. Tiny geysers of perspiration erupted across her scalp that made her think of a Chia Pet. She resisted the urge to wipe her neck with her hand.
Duchess had taken a couple of steps in the direction of the tree, in direct contradiction to the promise Amy had just made, so Mr. Neely bent down and redirected her toward Amy.
Duchess started trotting forward, blissfully unaware of the coffee table between her and her owner.
Amy, feeling a bit judged, quickly scooped the dog up before she could veer off course.
And in doing so, her robe split open below the tie, and she flashed a good portion of fleshy thigh to Mr. Neely.
She panicked for a split second, but then decided if he hadn’t seen a middle-aged woman’s substantial thigh by now, it was high time he should.
Still, she made sure the robe was closed when she had Duchess in hand.
“By the way, there is a dog door in the mudroom. I’d appreciate if you would keep it closed. ”
Mr. Neely folded his arms. He was wearing a sky-blue golf shirt today that made his eyes leap from his face. He looked awfully fresh. Well rested. A bit on the virile side. “You don’t have to worry about me opening and closing the door. Since I didn’t bring a dog.”
“Maybe you should have,” Amy shot back. “They make great companions.”
“Lucky me, it looks like I’m going to have access to a great companion for the next two weeks.”
Was he being sarcastic? “She won’t be any trouble,” Amy said again, and didn’t give him a chance to argue before turning on her heel and heading back to her room with Duchess licking the sweat off her face. It wasn’t fair that he could look so calm and cool while she was so hot and sweaty.
Once she was safely behind a locked door, and the patio door was shut, and Duchess had made a bed on Amy’s jacket she’d pulled off a chair and onto the floor, Amy went into the bathroom.
She gasped with alarm when she saw herself reflected in the mirror.
She looked much worse than last night. Her shoulder-length brown hair was in a tangled ball at the back of her head.
Little wisps of curls around her face made her look like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
There was a line across her face where she’d obviously slept on something, and her complexion was splotchy due to the massive hot flash that was still going on.
How had she become this haggard old woman?
This would not do. This was not the vibe she was going for during her two-week emancipation, and most assuredly not the vibe she would like for the stranger living in her house to see.
She had her standards. Lower, much diminished standards than she used to have—because now she would run into a convenience store in pajama pants, whereas when she was younger, she would not leave her house without a full face and dressed like she wanted to live.
Okay, so maybe she looked like this a lot these days. Life was hard and busy, and no one was looking at her anyway. Perhaps it was time to reevaluate.
She went back to her bed and searched for her phone. When she couldn’t sleep last night, she’d surfed TikTok like a fourteen-year-old.
She had a text. It was, of course, from Jonah the Destroyer, sent to her in the middle of the night, because her son thought she was on pins and needles waiting to serve him.
Did you get more Hot Pockets
This kid was unbelievable. Yesterday morning, she’d stood outside her slightly shabby but still charming craftsman cottage in Willow Valley.
She was packing up her ten-year-old SUV with clothes an artist would wear (flowing skirts, cargo pants and silk blouses—you get the idea), canvasses and paints (acrylic), groceries (and wine), and a check in her purse from the Hillside Art Gallery for five hundred dollars.
Oh, and Duchess.
Duchess had been a last-minute addition.
As Amy was getting ready to leave, Duchess had been looking up at the coatrack, tail wagging, expecting a treat.
Amy had thought about the all-male and fairly helpless crew living in her house and found them all so lacking in the proper care department that she had scooped up her fat little dachshund.
She’d strapped Duchess in and had just shut the hatchback when Jonah appeared on the drive in nothing but his boxers. “Mom, where is my blue hoodie?”