Chapter 6
chapter six
Caleb
I jog to the admin building since it’s closer than the house. My oldest and tallest brother, Ethan, glances up as I burst through the door. Maybe we should have made the front desk a little taller because he has to lean over so far when writing something. Oh well, that’s an idea for later.
“Everything okay?” Ethan asks.
“Yeah, I just need something with a plug.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “Huh?”
“Do you know if the electricity in the barn works?”
“The lights work. They’re on every night.”
“Yeah, but the plugs inside?” I ask, looking around for something useful.
“It has plugs on the inside?” Ethan sounds just as bewildered as I am.
I chuckle. “Apparently all the electrical outlets in there are something only a woman would notice on her first visit, not the idiots who grew up here.”
“That’s wild,” Ethan says. “Here, take this.” He unplugs his phone charger from the wall.
“Thanks, bro.”
I jog back to the barn, feeling as if I’ve forgotten something. Not something small like the cord in my hand, but something big. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, like I left my house with front doors unlocked and the stove on. The answer slams into me a few seconds later.
“Oh no. No, no, no,” I mutter, picking up the pace. Rex!
Charlotte stands absolutely still, frozen in fear. In her hand, which is extended probably the exact same way it was when I absentmindedly dropped the leash in it, is Rex’s leash handle.
“Charlotte, I’m so sorry.” I walk calmly toward her. “I cannot believe I spaced out like that—I’m really sorry. I’m used to being around dog handlers all day.” I don’t tell her that just being in her presence makes my brain stop working as well as it should.
“It’s…okay,” she squeaks out, still unmoving. My eyes trail down to Rex, who stands happily, tongue still panting from his session of playing catch. His amber eyes focus on me, awaiting another command.
“Sitz,” I tell him. He sits. Then he does something completely unexpected.
He leans his body against Charlotte’s leg.
Her back somehow gets even straighter. Her body freezes so completely she’s like a wax figure of herself. I doubt she’s even breathing. I crack a smile. “He trusts you.”
“I…don’t…trust…him…” she breathes. “Please take this leash from me.”
A single tear falls down her cheek. I take the leash and call Rex away. Her body relaxes and another tear falls, which she quickly swipes away before trying to regain that professional composure she always seems to pull on over her real emotions.
“I’m really, really sorry. Let me go put him up.”
She nods quickly, glancing down at her leg, where this large dog had just leaned against moments ago.
Disappointment floods into me. What if more people are afraid of dogs than I thought?
What if this nonprofit won’t be successful because most people won’t want to get on board with saving retired, potentially aggressive working dogs?
Maybe I just have to try harder to convince her that Rex is worth it. And anyone else who doesn’t believe.
I put Rex in his kennel, giving him a treat for being such a good boy, then I head back to the barn. My stomach twists into knots. How could I have been so stupid to hand a leash to a woman who doesn’t like dogs? Charlotte is sitting at her makeshift desk when I return, tapping away on her laptop.
“Let’s answer your question,” I say, holding up Ethan’s phone charger. I plug one end into my phone and then plug the other into one of the outlets in the barn. My phone screen turns on. “Let there be light!” I say. “It works!” I test out the other outlets—seven in all—and they all work just fine.
“This will be really helpful,” she says. “Thank you for checking.”
Charlotte is colder to me the rest of the day. I don’t even think she means to be so icy to me. That’s what makes this all worse. The woman is genuinely terrified of dogs and she’s been assigned to help dogs as her job. While she works, I run out and grab us lunch.
“What’s that?” she says, closing her laptop when I walk in the barn with two bags from Taco Crave. Her expression softens. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to,” I say, setting one back down in front of her. “Fried avocado, right?”
Her eyes widen, then narrow in suspicion. “How did you know that?”
“Okay, I swear I’m not a stalker,” I say, sitting across from her. “I went down to Taco Crave and was chatting with Raul—”
“He’s so nice,” she interjects.
“Exactly,” I say. “I told him about the gala and said I hired a party planner to help, and he actually knows you. He said you come by a couple times a week to get his fried avocado tacos.”
She grins, cheeks blushing a bit. “It’s a little embarrassing that my taco guy knows me by name.”
“Nah,” I say, unwrapping my taco. “Everyone loves Raul. And Raul remembers everyone in town’s order.”
“I appreciate this,” she says, shoving aside some paperwork. “I’m starving.”
“I appreciate all your help. And again, I’m really sorry for leaving you with Rex. I just zoned out. I never would have done that if I was thinking properly.”
“It’s fine,” she says, taking a bite of her taco. “I know it was just a mistake. I cannot stand manipulative men,” she says, lip twitching in disgust, “but you weren’t doing that. You’re not one of those pricks who tries to force women to do things they don’t want to do.”
She takes another bite and does a little shoulder boppy dance because it’s so delicious.
“Don’t take this the wrong way because I do not suddenly like dogs or anything, but…
it wasn’t too bad. I mean, it was and I thought I might die of fear, but it was okay.
Rex was good. He just stood there looking for you after you ran off. ”
I smile.
“It was still terrifying!” she says, but she’s smiling now, too. “Never do it again! But I survived, and I feel a little braver now.”
She rubs the inside of her wrist, where a jagged white scar has marred her soft skin. I want to know what happened but it doesn’t seem like the right time to ask.
“Rex told me to tell you something,” I say, reaching for another taco.
“Oh yeah?” She rolls her eyes. “Does he speak English or German like his dog commands?”
I grin. “He mentally told me, with his mind."
“Ohh, okay,” she says sarcastically. “What did the giant scary dog telepathically tell you?”
I raise my voice like I’m some kind of cartoon dog and say, “He said, ‘tell Miss Charlotte thank you for helping raise money for dogs like me.’”
She quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t think Rex sounds like that.”
“What would he sound like?”
She clears her throat, and talks with a deep voice with a poorly done German accent. “I’m Rex, a big scary dog.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, that’s probably more like it.”
“Tell him I’m happy to help raise money for dogs like him.”
“I will,” I say. She’s in a much better mood now, and some of the guilt I feel has receded. It’s probably not from my apology, but from the tacos. Is there anything tacos can’t fix?
I buy us lunch for the next two days. Charlotte stops asking if she can work at the barn and just starts showing up.
I like that more than I care to admit. This is for the nonprofit, though, not making new friends with me.
This is for the fundraiser. The gala. She’s a professional doing the job and sometimes the job gets done better when you’re onsite and not back in your office.
It’s not like she’s here to see me. That doesn’t stop me from taking an extra shower after dog training clients, and again after handling chores around the property, making sure I’m dressed a little nicer than usual.
Today, she arrived with little plastic soccer cones that she uses to mark areas around the barn.
I’m helping Ethan in the office for a bit, so I can only watch her work through the window.
Ethan is close to finalizing a business contract with a chain of dog groomers.
Our plan is to have self-serve dog wash stations on our property so the public can come wash their dogs and we can use them to wash the dogs under our care.
By partnering with another company, they’ll handle the overhead and maintenance, and we provide the location for a split of the profits.
Ethan has done an amazing job of taking care of all of this, and Max, our main groomer, is on board.
Our website has finally been updated to include all the information we want on there, and my brothers got their bios all ready.
My youngest brothers, Max and Owen are twins in their senior year of university.
Except for Owen, who went on to vet school at A&M after graduating with his bachelor’s degree.
Everyone has found their place here at Alden K-9.
Ethan is our business manager, and I’m the dog trainer and face of the organization.
Leo is an artist by trade and is helping us with all graphic design and creative stuff while also working on his commissioned art on the side, and the twins have been away at college most of the time but will work here full time once they graduate.
Max just finished a degree in business with a minor in nonprofit work, which should be very helpful.
My parents are thrilled. When they left us this property, they assumed we’d sell it and split the money five ways.
Instead, we’re turning it into something that benefits the entire community.
“Yo,” Owen says. I jump. He materialized out of nowhere. It’s Friday, and he usually makes the drive home from college on Fridays but I didn’t see his car show up. “You got that look on your face.”
“What look?” I say, leaving the window and going back to my laptop.
He claps a hand on my shoulder and peers out the window to where Charlotte is moving around soccer cones in the grassy area outside the barn doors. “The look,” he says again. “You can’t keep your eyes off that party planning hottie out there.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
Max gasps, also appearing out of nowhere. “Holy shit, is Caleb the Womanizer falling for someone?” He lets out a low whistle. “Quick, someone check if hell has frozen over!”
From the corner of the room, Ethan snorts.
“I don’t have time for any of this,” I mutter. My phone rings, and the name of our biggest donor appears on the screen. “Now I really don’t have time for this," I say, heading down the hallway to my office. I answer WLB Construction.
“Hello, how are you doing today?”
William Bryan himself, not his secretary, is on the line. “Caleb, we need to change the date of the gala. That Friday’s not going to work.”
My heart stops. “I’m sorry, sir, what do you mean?”
“I’ve got some new plans that just popped up, so let’s move the date up to that Wednesday instead.”
I run a hand through my hair. “Sir, invitations have already been sent, and people have RSVP’d. It’s really too late to change the date—maybe you can send a proxy instead?”
“If I’m donating twenty five grand, I’m going to be there to get the praise for it, you hear me, son?” William’s good old boy accent gets stronger when he’s annoyed. “Everything is done online anyways these days, just change the date two days earlier, it’s not a big deal.”
“We greatly appreciate your donation, but I’m worried our vendors won’t be able to change on such a short notice.”
“Make it happen,” he says. “Or WLB won’t be your top donor anymore.”