“Why?” Mabel asked.
There were many reasons. She’d wanted a dog while she’d been in Dallas, but it hadn’t seemed fair to the dog. It still wasn’t. As for Armie, it probably couldn’t work for all the same reasons. “I work long hours. I work weird hours. Well, I will if anyone ever actually makes it to an appointment.”
Armie worked crazy hours, too. And wasn’t his position elected? She couldn’t see herself as anything but a liability in a campaign. It might be different if she could tempt the man into some stress-relief sex that didn’t have to necessarily end in some kind of happily ever after.
She knew that was something that wouldn’t happen for her. She’d lost that chance, or maybe she’d never had it at all.
Mabel shrugged like that was no big deal. “So? Take the dog to work with you. He’s perfectly housetrained. We can get a pooper-scooper, and there’s a nice patch of grass out back. He’s been around town his whole life, and he’s a sweetheart.”
There was only one problem with that. “You can’t have a dog in a clinic.”
“Maybe you can’t in Dallas, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, hon, this is not Dallas. Now tell me how Armie LaVigne was in bed. I know I’m married and my Dale is a gentle lover, but I’m not dead.”
Lila stopped, hoping she hadn’t heard right. “What?”
Mabel shook her head and leaned against the reception desk. “Hon, if you wanted to keep it quiet then Armie shouldn’t have parked that big old parish vehicle of his in the front drive. Angie Jones runs the post office. She gets up real early, and she definitely noted that Armie was at your place. She told Dixie, who owns the café Angie eats at every morning. Now, I personally think Angie would do well to avoid Dixie’s waffles given those thighs of hers, but that’s none of my business. Dixie told her fry cook, who got on the phone with his wife. Now, Frank’s wife is Marie, who works with Miss Marcelle at the hair salon. She told Miss Marcelle, who told Delphine Guidry. Delphine told her daughter, Seraphina, who told everyone in her morning yoga group. I know it seems very big-city, but Emma Lorraine got some crazy ideas in her head when she went to L.A. Now a whole group of them meet out in the park and do yoga in the mornings. The pastor of the First Baptist Church has tried to stop them because he calls it devil worship, but they claim it’s just a nice way to stretch their lower backs and don’t pay him any mind. Kenny overheard the yoga-girls-slash-devil-women, depending on who you talk to, and he told me that you and Armie are having a baby.”
She felt her jaw drop. “Oh my god.”
“Kenny says that he was there because the park is nice at that time of the morning, but I think he’s a pervert and he’s watching those women stretch. I should talk to Armie about that. No. Now that you’re going to be his baby momma, you should. You tell Armie those women don’t need creepy Kenny staring at their butts, though Armie might also tell them that those leggings they wear are damn near obscene.”
It was a lot of information to process, but one fallacy stood out. “I’m not sleeping with the sheriff.”
“Okay, ‘sleeping with’ is a phrase we use because we’re ladies and don’t want to use the other phrases. But it’s a euphemism, hon. I know there wasn’t a lot of sleeping going on.”
“I’m not having sex with Armie LaVigne.” Not yet anyway. He turned out to be a very prudish, hot-as-hell alpha male. He didn’t want her to use him for sex. It was ridiculous. “Peanut showed up at the door last night and I’m ashamed to say I called 911. The sheriff came out to see if I was okay, and he ended up sleeping on my couch.”
“Did he scratch on the door and scare the crap out of you? I can understand that. But why did Armie sleep on your couch?”
Well, she had tried to kick him out. She hadn’t been successful. “I told him I was fine, but he thought I would sleep better knowing I wasn’t alone in the house. I can’t imagine he was comfortable on that couch. It’s not very big. But he insisted.”
After he’d kissed her and gotten her hot and bothered for the first time in forever. Wicked man. Mean man.
Mabel gave her a knowing look. “He’s courting you. I know that’s probably not a word you use a lot in the big city.”
“I know what courting is.” And Armie wasn’t doing it because that would be ridiculous, too.
Mabel continued on like she hadn’t said a thing at all. “That is when a man does all kinds of silly things to attract a woman he wants to spend time with. It’s like in the animal world when a male bird puffs out his chest. Armie is doing the same thing, except he’s damaging his spine because I remember Bill’s couch and it was from the sixties. It couldn’t be comfortable. Didn’t he give you a ticket? That was probably his way of showing masculine power. Like a gorilla beating on his chest.”