go to sleep right where he was.
She’d worn a pedometer to keep track of their mileage but hadn’t stopped to look at it until she’d already gone too far.
“I think we’ll have to limp home,” she told the dog. “So, I hope you’re as tired as I am.”
He got wearily to his feet, as if to show that he was.
Trying not to make the muscles in her leg any madder than they already were, she moved slowly and hadn’t gone fifty feet when a car, an old Buick, pulled to the curb beside her and stopped.
A teenage boy, one of three in the car, got out.
Andie’s friend, Jake, Audrey realized.
“Mrs. Graham? Are you all right?”
“Just a cramp, Jake. We’ll be fine.”
He hesitated, then said, “You’re really living around here?”
“Yes, I am,” she said.
“You want to get in? We could make room and take you home.”
“Jake,” the driver called out. “We’ve got to get to school.”
“It’s just a few blocks. We have time,” he told his friend, then looked back at Audrey. “Really. We do.”
She suspected he wanted to talk to her more than anything else and agreed. Jake climbed into the backseat, and she got in front with the dog beside her, sitting on the floor by her feet. Jake introduced her as Andie’s mother, which had his friend, the driver, doing a double take but saying nothing. Audrey gave him directions and thanked them all for the ride.
Jake whistled as they pulled into the driveway of Simon Collier’s house. “Wow. You live here?”
“I’m working here,” Audrey told him as she got out of the car.
Jake got out, too, saying, “She’s really upset that you’re back.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, but I have to try to make things right between us, Jake.”
He nodded. “I don’t know if she’ll forgive you or not, but…she’s really not very happy living with her father and his girlfriend.”
“I didn’t think she would be,” Audrey said. “But thank you for telling me and for being her friend. And I’m really sorry about all the trouble I caused for you last fall. I had no right to draw you into my mess.”
She’d gotten drunk at a party one night and made a huge scene. Andie, in trying to get her home, called Jake to come and get them both. Jake, who hadn’t even had a license back then, ended up wrecking his uncle’s car early that morning while trying to get an unconscious Audrey to the hospital. Audrey still considered it a miracle none of them had been seriously hurt in the accident.
“My uncle says I made my own choices, and they were all bad. Not in trying to help Andie, but in understanding what I could and couldn’t do. Understanding when I needed help myself.”
“But I’m the one whose behavior put you in a position to have to make those choices that got you into trouble. And for that, I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “I know. We got your letter.”
“Well,” Audrey said. “Thanks for the ride. If you or Andie needs anything, I’m living right there, above the garage. You can come by anytime.”
Not that she thought he would. Still, she was here. She wasn’t leaving.
Jake got in the car and Audrey watched them drive off; then, with her leg muscles still cramped tight, she limped across the driveway toward her apartment.
Audrey was sitting under a tree in the front yard, studying the house, the placement of the big trees and shrubs, the existing planting beds, the fence to one side that belonged to the neighbors, thinking of what to do with what was already there and what to add to it, when her phone rang.
Tink roused himself from his spot sprawled out in the grass beside her, but only long enough to lift his head, see that it was nothing but her cell phone ringing, then gave a contented, tired groan and sank back down into the grass.
Audrey was still laughing at him for how tired and complacent he’d been today, since their run, when she picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”
“Don’t tell me you’re actually enjoying this job,” Simon Collier asked, with astonishment in his voice.
She felt a little tickle of something run through her.
Pleasure?
At the sound of his voice?
Surely not.
Please, not.
“Is it impossible for you to believe I could be enjoying myself?” she asked, hoping that little fizzle of something didn’t come through in her voice.
“I would think it’s at least highly improbable, given the tasks involved. Namely, dealing with a certain unruly creature,” he said.
“I was laughing at the dog,” she told him.
“That I can believe. I think it has the IQ of a shrub.”
No way Audrey was going to risk another conversation with him about the dog’s intelligence and their battle for control. She feared she’d come too close to insulting Simon on that topic already.
“I was laughing because he’s funny and because he’s been good all day,” she explained.
“Impossible. What did you do, drug him? Because I’ve heard there are vets who are willing to prescribe things like that, to certain highly troubled canines. I considered trying to find one.”
“Don’t you dare even think of drugging this dog,” she said, rolling her eyes, knowing he was baiting her and still rising to it.
“So, what kind of miracle did you perform to make him…good?”
“I took him for a run this morning and wore him out,” she said. “He’s been too tired to do much of anything since then.”
“I find that very difficult to believe,” Simon insisted, then was silent as Audrey heard an announcement of a plane boarding in the background. “That’s my flight. I’ll need to go. I just wanted to check in with you and make sure you didn’t hurt yourself. Or that the dog didn’t hurt you.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Ms. Bee said you could hardly walk this morning when you got back to the house after exercising him. That you had to get a ride back?”
“Oh, it was nothing. I got a little carried away, and we ran too far. But it was me, not Tink, who did it. I just had a cramp.”
“You’re sure. Because I won’t have that dog hurting anyone—”
So,
