“You’re not going to feed the birds right now, are you?”
“I’ll wait until there aren’t any more dogs left in the park.” She lifted her chin toward Bandit. “From the conversation you were just having with him, it sounds like you’re already in hot water. Don’t need me calling the pigeons over for your dog to try to chase.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“So what did you do, anyway?”
“Pardon?”
“I don’t walk as fast as I used to. Heard you telling the pooch you couldn’t figure someone named Bianca out.”
I sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“Not much I can offer these days except my time. Try me.”
I didn’t generally talk to strangers. Certainly, I didn’t tell them problems with my love life. But, hey…why not? I was batshit crazy these days anyway. This was par for the course.
“I’ll give you the short version. Met a woman—lied to her. One lie turned into two—which now seems to have snowballed out of control.”
The woman shook her head, tsking. “Since you seem to care about her finding out, I take it you like this lady?”
“I do.”
“Whatever it is, you need to come clean. Better to be slapped with the truth, then kissed with a lie.”
My shoulders slumped. That’s exactly what I’d done. Kissed her with a lie, both in the literal and figurative sense. “The funny thing is, I lied because I thought I needed to lie for her to give me a shot. But in the end, she was getting to know the real me and now that one lie is going to make her question all of the truths.”
The old woman pointed to Bandit. “Is she a dog lover like yourself?”
I was too ashamed to tell her that even my dog walking stint was part of my lie. “She is.”
“That’s good. I have six dogs and two cats. Leave them home when I come to feed the pigeons each night. Animal lovers like us are a different breed. I always say, look at how a person treats an animal to know what’s in their heart. If she’s an animal lover, she already knows how to love unconditionally—it’s likely she has a good spirit and has it in her to forgive an old dog like yourself for making a mistake.”
“You think?”
“I was married for forty-three years. But when I first met my Walter, God rest his soul, he hit the sauce a little too hard one night and kissed a pretty bar maid.”
“And you forgave him?”
“Hell no. I dumped his ass. Made him grovel for a good month, went out on a date with a guy I knew he didn’t like and made sure he knew about it. But in the end—I hated the sin—but really missed the sinner.”
I laughed. “Thanks for the advice. I think.”
Since I’d kept Bandit out long enough, we said goodbye to the old lady and walked back to Forever Grey. Suzette was waiting in the lobby.
“I saw you coming up the street. You two seemed to have hit it off.”
“We did, didn’t we?” I leaned down and gave the dog one last pet.
“Will you be able to donate some time to dog walk each week? We can try to put you with Bandit if you’ve bonded.”
I had zero available time, yet… “Sure. My calendar is full during the weekdays, but perhaps we can work something in.”
“How about Sundays?”
“No,” I snapped…perhaps a bit too quick. “I meant—it’s hard for me to get away on Sundays but I should be able to figure a time during the week. Do you have a card? I can call you once I figure it out.”
She reached behind the counter and pulled out a card, handing it to me in exchange for Bandit’s leash.
“Thank you. I’ll be in touch soon.” Before my sanity returns.It was starting to feel like I was being blown off. After I returned home from my business trip, I’d texted Jay to let him know I was back, and though we’d exchanged messages for a while, he didn’t attempt to nail me down for our next date either. Perhaps he was just busy at work, and I was reading too much into things.
While I was a bit disappointed about it since I thought the chemistry we had on our date was off the charts, there was a part of me that also felt a bit conflicted about my conversations with Dex. Mister Moneybags had grown on me. And unless I was misreading things, he was also interested in me. My trip out of town gave me the opportunity to pull together my story about the elusive Dexter Truitt, and I’d also done some deeper research. Tonight, I had some questions about his father that I thought might be difficult, but would definitely shed more light on the mysterious man.
Promptly at eleven, the chat window on my laptop popped up. My pathetic heart started to accelerate seeing that Dex was already typing to me.