Chapter Ten
Delilah had only thought applying for a job at Dairy Queen equaled rock bottom…
How could her loan paperwork be missing?
Delilah stared at the email she’d received from the financial aid department, rereading the words for the eighteenth time.
They didn’t make any more sense than they had the first time.
Probably because her brain had drained out of her head the moment she’d realized Zero had been about to kiss her last night. And then didn’t.
She blinked and read the email again.
Apologies…no paperwork has been received…nothing in your file…
There was nothing filed. No application and certainly no approval or, like, money available that she could access immediately.
This was bad. She basically had to start over at this point, putting her timeline very behind. She had to stay at the ranch a lot longer than expected. Was that even an option?
She groaned. Once the money came through, she’d planned on locking herself in a very stark room with no distractions and working on her dissertation for twelve or fourteen hours a day. Even then, she might not catch up.
Maybe she could reduce her training sessions to half days and spend some time at the museum in Kilgore without anyone at the ranch missing her.
Okay, focus.
Loan first, then figure out how to balance. She picked up her phone to call the financial aid department, hoping if she talked to someone directly, there might be some way to expedite, given how long she’d been a student and how close she was to finishing.
Someone knocked on her door before she could dial. Sheridan. With a distressed wrinkle between her brows.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Sheridan murmured. “But Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa got into the house and just slung a bag of sugar all over the kitchen—”
“Oh my God.”
Delilah took the stairs down two at a time, slipping her undialed phone into her pocket before it hit the deck and cost her the price of a cracked screen.
The kitchen was in chaos, with Hunter in the middle of it, desperately trying to use hand signals from on top of a chair.
The Captains were ignoring him, Jack rolling around in the white swirls on the hardwood floors that looked vaguely like snow.
Barbossa ran around the chair, barking at the fun game of Hunter spinning to follow his movements.
That dog. She’d swear on a stack of Bibles all four of them had been testing the waters with how well they could train their humans, and here was further proof. The faster Barbossa ran, the faster Hunter spun to follow, which seemed to thrill the dog.
First things first.
Delilah crossed to Captain Jack Sparrow and gave him the evil eye.
Then held up a treat so he could see it, but well out of his reach.
He immediately rolled to his feet, eyes on her fingers.
She flashed him the signal for sit, which he did, sugar frosting the fur around his muzzle, which made him look like he’d aged overnight.
Grandpa Dog would be the name of that painting, done in bright acrylics with a whimsical edge.
It was hilarious, but she didn’t dare laugh. Sheridan stood well out of harm’s way, a disapproving glint to her gaze. This was a mess. Her only saving grace—Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann had opted out of the fun, so she could at least claim some small victory.
“Outside for you, my friend,” she told Captain Jack and gave him the command for heel as she led him to the door that dumped them out onto the wraparound porch.
Once Captain Jack Sparrow picked his way down the steps to the ground, she threw him a treat and ordered him back to the barn, not that she thought he’d do it, but she needed to deal with Captain Barbossa before Hunter had a meltdown.
Double-timing it back to the kitchen, she entered to find Captain Barbossa with his paws on the chair, barking at a cowering Hunter, who had his hands over his face.
Delilah cursed under her breath and moved into eye-contact range, shooting the dog her business expression until he noticed her and shifted his attention to the one who always had the treats.
“That’s right,” she told him with a frown. “Mama’s here, and you’re in big trouble.”
The dog didn’t bother to look chagrined, just launched off the chair to dart through the sugar drifts in her direction, granules kicking out behind his hind paws. Captain Barbossa dropped his haunches at her feet, tongue out as he eyed her pocket.
“You think you get treats for sitting on your own? Hah,” she practically spit and pointed to the front door, despite being a staunch proponent of using the correct commands in all situations. “Outside.”
Predictably, the dog didn’t do what she said until she used the command for heel and then led him herself, just like she had the first Captain. At least they hadn’t completely abandoned their training. Though to be fair, she had never taught them the command for “don’t destroy the kitchen.”
Both dogs went with her willingly to the barn, snickering behind their sugary snouts as she locked them back in their individual stalls.
Why she bothered, she had no clue when the pair of them had mastered the art of the escape.
Mental note—talk to Zero about changing the lock mechanism on the stall doors.
The current latch might work fine for horses, but the dogs had obviously figured out how to bump the door until it disengaged. Probably she should be grateful the one who’d discovered the trick hadn’t taught it to all of them.
When she got back to the kitchen, she helped Sheridan sweep up the worst of the mess and then volunteered to vacuum while Sheridan tended to her still shaken son.
That was the part that hurt the worst. Hunter had made such great progress so far.
This might set him back days, maybe even back to the beginning.
“Is he okay?” she murmured to Sheridan in passing, loath to upset the apple cart when things seemed relatively calm at this point, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Hunter going back to being scared of the dogs again.
“I think so.” Sheridan had taken Hunter to his room and had just returned to the kitchen. “He’s upset that he couldn’t get the dogs under control himself and that you had to come save the day.”
Shocked, Delilah paused on her way to the closet under the stairs to return the vacuum cleaner to where it lived. “That’s what he was upset about? Not because he was scared the dogs would bite him?”
Sheridan nodded, arms crossed as she contemplated Delilah with an enigmatic expression that reminded her of the woman’s brother all at once. They were both hard to read with personalities that could shift like the wind in a thunderstorm.
“I mean, maybe a little. But that didn’t seem to be the main complaint. I appreciate you working with him as much as you have. It’s been a long time since he’s taken an interest in anything.”
Huh. She had no idea what to take from that other than it seemed she’d gotten Sheridan’s stamp of approval, despite the mess in the kitchen. Regardless, Hunter should be able to command the dogs, but he hadn’t worked with the Captains at all, something she might need to change.
She added that to her never-ending to-do list.
If Delilah hadn’t been trying to sort out the mess her loan had become, she’d have been downstairs and likely already working with the crew. But she couldn’t be in two places, and she still needed to call the financial aid department.
Tomorrow, she decided. It would have to be. One more day wouldn’t hurt. Right? She’d been lax in the research department, too, a reality that needed to change pronto, but right this minute, dog training paid the bills. Art did not.
Plus, dog training had the distinct advantage of being accompanied by a boss who looked like Zero Renshaw, whom she often ran across on the ranch grounds. She didn’t even pretend she wasn’t enjoying the show as she hustled back out to the barn for the second time that day.
This morning’s task appeared to be tractor taming. Zero had strewn the guts of the poor thing all over the crushed gravel driveway in front of the house. His short T-shirt sleeves rode up over his biceps, which bunched as he used a wrench to turn something mysterious and engine-y.
She didn’t dare stop. Or speak to him. She might be there a while, drooling.
After the almost kiss of last night, she could barely glance at the man without recalling the hard plane of Zero’s arm under her fingertips.
There’d been a moment when she’d been breathless with the anticipation of him leaning into that gap…
but she needed to make some headway with the Captains, not dreaming about her bossy boss who probably had no idea that moment had even happened.
Because on his side, it hadn’t been a thing.
Good. She didn’t need the distraction of a thing. Balancing her job with her PhD had already proven to be hard enough without adding a fictional romance to the mix.
The morning vanished rapidly as she worked with the Captains—solo, because Hunter never made an appearance.
She tried not to fret about it. Likely his mother had him in school today since Sheridan had seemed present earlier in a way that she hadn’t always been in the past. Not that it was any of Delilah’s business, but she lived in the house.
She knew Sheridan had bad days and good days.
The bad days usually meant Hunter ended up in the barn sooner rather than later.
A couple of hours into what had been a pretty productive session, she opted to try for something she hadn’t done before.
A risk. But necessary, given the situation in the kitchen this morning.
Instead of continuing on in the barn under ideal conditions, she snapped a leash on both Captains and took them down to the pond.