was not the one he should have used, Christopher realized. It had been carelessly thrown out there on his part.
Very smoothly, Christopher extricated himself from what could potentially be a very sticky situation. “Yes, but I have a feeling that Jonathan might not be comfortable with my advertising the situation, so for simplicity’s sake—and possibly to save Jonathan’s reputation,” he amended with a wink that had her stomach doing an unexpected jackknife dive off the high board—again, “why don’t we just call the meeting a training session?”
Training session.
That phrase conjured up an image that involved a great deal of work. “You’d do that?” she asked incredulously.
“Call it a training session? Sure.”
“No, I mean actually volunteer to show me how to train Jonathan—provided I still have him,” she qualified.
“I thought that part was clear,” Christopher said with a smile.
But Lily had already moved on to another question. “Why?”
“Why did I think that was clear?” he guessed. “Because I couldn’t say it any more straightforwardly than that.”
She really did need to learn how to express herself better. “No, I mean why would you volunteer to show me how to train the dog?”
“Because, from personal experience, I know that living with an untrained dog can be hell—for both the dog and the person. Training the dog is just another name for mutual survival,” he told her.
“But aren’t you busy?” she asked him, feeling guilty about taking the vet away from whatever he had planned for the weekend. Grateful though she was, she wondered if she came across that needy or inept to him.
Christopher thought of the unopened boxes that were throughout his house—and had been for the past three months—waiting to be emptied and their contents put away. He’d moved back into his old home, never having gotten around to selling it after his mother had passed away. Now it only seemed like the natural place to return to. But the boxes were taunting him. Helping this woman find her footing with the overactive puppy gave him a good excuse to procrastinate a little longer.
“No more than the average human being,” he told her.
“If the dog is still with me by the weekend,” she prefaced, “I still can’t pay you for the training session. At least, not all at once. But we could arrange for some sort of a payment schedule,” she suggested, not wanting to seem ungrateful.
“I don’t remember asking to be paid,” Christopher pointed out.
“Then why would you go out of your way like that to help me?” she asked, bewildered.
“Call it earning a long-overdue merit badge.”
She opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t a charity case, but just then one of his assistants knocked on the door.
“Doctor, your patients are piling up,” she said through the door.
“I’ll be right there,” he told the assistant, then turned to Lily. “I’ll see you at the dog park on Sunday at eleven,” he said. “Oh, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call. I can be reached here during the day and on my cell after hours.”
“You take calls after hours?” Lily asked him, surprised.
“I’ve found that pets, like kids, don’t always conveniently get sick between the hours of eight and six,” he told her, opening the door.
“Wait, how much do I owe you for today?” she asked, forgetting that there was a receptionist at the front desk who would most likely be the one taking care of any and all charges for today’s visit.
Christopher started to head out. He could hear his next patient barking impatiently from all the way down the hall. Without breaking stride, he told Lily, “I don’t charge for conversations.”
He was gone before she could protest and remind him that he had given Jonathan a cursory examination.
Lily was certain she hadn’t heard the man correctly. Granted, Jonathan hadn’t received any shots or had any specimens taken for a lab workup, but the veterinarian had spent at least twenty minutes talking to her about the puppy and he had looked the Labrador over. In her book, that sort of thing had to constitute an “office visit.”
Didn’t it?
While she was more than willing to do favors for people, Lily had never liked being on the receiving end of a favor because it put her in the position of owing someone something. She was grateful to the vet for taking an interest in the puppy that was temporarily in her care and she was happy that he’d offered to instruct her on how to maintain a peaceful coexistence with the ball of fur while the puppy was in her care, but she wasn’t about to accept any of that for free.
It wouldn’t be right.
Taking a breath, Lily extracted her checkbook from her jumbled purse and then braced herself for her next confrontation with the puppy.
Doing her best to sound stern, or at least authoritative, she looked down at Jonathan and said, “We’re going out now, Jonathan. Try not to yank me all over this time, all right?”
If the puppy understood what she was asking, then he chose to ignore it because the minute she opened the door, he all but flew out. Since the rope she had tethered to the Labrador was currently also wrapped around her hand, the puppy, perforce, came to an abrupt, almost comical halt two seconds later. He’d run out of slack.
The puppy gave her what seemed to Lily to be a reproving look—if puppies could look at someone reprovingly.
Maybe she was reading too much into it, Lily told herself.
Still, she felt compelled to tell the puppy, “I asked you not to run.”
Making her way out to the front of the clinic, Lily saw the receptionist, Erika, looking at her. She flushed a little in response. “You probably think I’m crazy, talking to the dog.”
Erika’s dark eyes sparkled. “On the contrary, most pet owners would think you’re crazy if you didn’t. They understand us,” she explained with easy confidence, nodding toward Jonathan. “They just sometimes choose not to listen. In that way, they’re really no different than kids,” Erika added. “Except that pets are probably more loyal in the long run.”
“I’m not planning for a ‘long run,’” Lily told the receptionist. “I’m just minding this puppy until his owner turns up to claim him,” she explained. Placing her checkbook on her side of the counter, she opened it to the next blank check, then took out her pen. All the while, Jonathan was tugging on the rope, trying to separate himself from her. “Okay, how much do I make the check out for?” She flashed a somewhat shy smile at the receptionist. “I warn you, it might be slightly illegible.”
Jonathan was tugging on his makeshift leash, desperately wanting to escape from the clinic—and
