“I mean it, Fletcher Hart!” Lily continued.
Fletcher stuck his head back in the room, the still ringing cordless clutched in his hand, his expression reproving. “Really, Lily. What’s two minutes petting Spartacus going to cost you?”
“I KNOW WHAT he’s doing,” Lily told Spartacus as the door shut behind Fletcher, and she heard him start talking on the phone. Unable to help herself, she bent down and gently petted the silky soft back of Spartacus’s blond head. “He’s trying to get me to bond with you so I’ll want to adopt you and take you home with me. That might be a good idea in theory because the old mausoleum I live in could use a little livening up. But the truth is that I’m not sure I still have any love left to give.”
Lily swallowed hard around the ache that rose in her throat. “Losing Grandmother Rose was so hard. I kept thinking I’d feel better.” But instead she had remained so numb inside. So depressed and alone and hopeless, all at once. Lily stroked him behind the ears, and heard him give a little moan in the back of his throat, not so very different from a cat’s purr. But unlike a cat, a species known for its aloofness, Spartacus seemed to want desperately to attach himself to her. And Lily understood that, too. She desperately missed having a family to call her own; the party at Helen Hart’s the night before had reminded her of that. “But then I guess you know a lot about that, too, don’t you?” Lily continued softly, still petting the extremely gentle-natured dog. “Having lost the only family in your own life.”
“Okay—” Fletcher burst back in, abruptly all business “—you can go now.”
The only problem, Lily thought, was that she didn’t want to go, since she and Spartacus were just starting to get acquainted.
“I mean it.” Fletcher shooed her toward the door. “Hasta la vista, baby. Vamoose. See you around.”
Lily straightened with as much dignity as she could manage, wishing she were a lot taller than five foot five inches. She propped both her hands on her hips and demanded indignantly, “Where did you learn your manners?”
“Didn’t,” Fletcher retorted briskly. “Can’t you tell?”
Lily blew out an exasperated breath, unsure whether she wanted to kiss him again or kick him in the shin. “Some things are glaringly apparent.” To her frustration, he looked pleased—instead of annoyed—by her insult, as if there was nothing he would rather do than work her into a temper and stand there trading insults with her. Spartacus, however, just looked upset to see her leaving. Her heart clenching, despite her efforts to stay emotionally uninvolved, Lily paused at the door. She swallowed hard around the ache in her throat. “Seriously, Fletcher, what is going to happen to N. L. Spartacus?”
The mirth left Fletcher’s expression. “I can keep him here another day or so.”
Lily’s heartbeat sped up another notch. “And then what?” she demanded.
He regarded her steadily. “Like you said, it’s really not your problem, Lily.”
Silence fell between them, more poignant than ever.
“I’m hoping to find a family for him,” Fletcher continued seriously.
“And if you don’t?”
He regarded her brusquely. “That’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Then why did you introduce me to him, bring me over here, have me pet him?” Lily demanded.
Abruptly, the artifice, the teasing fell away. Lily thought she got a glimpse of the real, unguarded man behind his customary mask of cynicism and what-the-hell playfulness. “Because I thought—” A shadow passed over Fletcher’s eyes. His expression tightened as he swept a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter what I thought,” he told her in a gruff voice, as Spartacus went back to sit on Fletcher’s foot. “I was wrong.”
AN HOUR AND A HALF later, Lily discussed the situation with the other bridesmaids as they congregated at a department store in Crabtree Mall in Raleigh, trying on shoes for Janey’s wedding. “He’s trying to get me to fall in love with N. L. Spartacus.”
Janey eyed her. “Seems to be working.”
“He thinks if I have a dog I can’t continue to try and win my bet with you-all.” Lily turned to Susan Hart, Janey’s cousin. “Which is why I was thinking…maybe you could take him?” Susan not only operated her own kennels on her farm outside Holly Springs, she headed up the North Carolina Labrador Retriever Rescue Association.
Susan, a voluptuous thirtysomething with champagne blond hair, shook her head wistfully. “I wish I could. But I’m at capacity and then some right now, with dogs that are coming into Labrador Retriever Rescue. You know how it is. Everyone wants their kid to have a puppy at Christmas. Six to nine months later they realize maybe this is too much work after all, and they just take the dog to the pound.”
Emma sucked in a breath. “That’s terrible.”
“I know,” Susan agreed. “But a lot of the dogs I get are able to be either adopted out to good homes, or trained to work with police and fire departments around the state. But it takes time to make a placement. Dogs that have been abandoned—like Spartacus—have issues, and require an awful lot of tender loving care, to feel secure again. That’s why Fletcher won’t take him—he doesn’t have the time to give Spartacus the TLC he needs.”
“Or so he says,” Lily grumbled, wishing Fletcher hadn’t made it seem to her like she was N. L. Spartacus’s only hope. He had to know—from the way she had let her own needs and desires go unmet when she was taking care of her grandmother—what a soft touch she was. And how very hard it was for her to say no to someone who asked for her help, even when it was for the best. She also wished Spartacus hadn’t looked at her with such sad, lonely eyes.
Misunderstanding the depth of her dilemma, Janey murmured, “You know, you don’t have to go through with the bet you made with us on your birthday, Lily. If you didn’t we would all understand.”
Lily saw the pity in their eyes. She’d had enough of that, too.
“You really didn’t know what you were saying that night,” Emma continued, gently giving Lily the out they all seemed to feel she needed.
What none of them understood was that the night of her birthday was the first time in years she had felt really and truly vibrantly alive. The only other time was when she’d been arguing with—or kissing—Fletcher, and that was just because he was so darn difficult and made her so hot under the collar.
Lily looked at the young women gathered around her as she tried on a pair of strappy black-and-white sandals. “So I wasn’t just foolish, I was stupid, too? Is that it?”
They all frowned in a way that let her know she was overreacting. “Reckless, maybe,” Hannah conceded, as she put the correct-size shoes back in the box for purchase. “That was quite a loser’s penalty you cooked up for yourself.”
“One none of us would ever expect you to follow through with,” Emma—who had made her own share of life’s mistakes—said seriously.
Lily sighed again. They thought she didn’t have it in her to be wild and crazy and fear-free. Because of the circumstances she had found herself in back in college, she’d never had the opportunity to embrace her youth the way other coeds did.
But Lily wasn’t responsible for anyone else now. It wasn’t too late. She could go back, recapture those years, that sense of heady freedom she had always yearned to experience.
“We could even substitute it with something else,” Susan Hart suggested brightly. “Like another bar or an event where you buy us all nachos and margaritas.”
And didn’t that sound dull, Lily thought, even as she absolutely dreaded what lay ahead if she didn’t win her bet. “I’m not going to welsh on my wager,”