Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
His mouth—that beautiful freakin’ mouth—curled in annoyance. “I got one better than that.”
My brows rose. “You do?”
He grunted something in reply and walked to his truck. “You mind if I let Gertie out?”
I shook my head in the negative. “No, that’s perfectly fine.”
He opened the truck door and the large German Shepherd I’d seen a few days ago hopped out.
He was limping slightly, and I crouched down.
“He’s beautiful.”
And that was when I saw that Gertie only had three legs.
How had I not seen that when I’d been sitting next to him in the truck on the way back to his place? Was my head that far in the clouds?
“He’s something,” Evander agreed. “You ever seen him before?”
Confusion swept over me. “You mean other than when I was with you the other day?”
He nodded.
“No.”
His eyes softened.
“The woman vet has been taking care of him since the old vet died. Seeing as she lives right across the street, I was hoping that he wasn’t one of the ones that came over here and terrorized your chickens.”
I shook my head immediately. “No, he wasn’t one of them. Only hers, which started showing up about a month after Doc Civil died. This yard’s been hell ever since.”
He nodded.
“You know I was in jail?”
I froze, wondering if I should tell him that I knew everything there was to know about the man.
Even though I didn’t gossip myself, that didn’t mean that others in the area didn’t talk about him.
Hell, I sat two hours a night on Tuesdays and Thursdays listening to the other mothers discussing the man’s best and worst features.
I knew that he’d slept with four of the moms on my nephew’s team, and every last one of them was willing to go for more if the man gave them the time of day.
I knew that he was in jail. I knew that his family hadn’t taken care of his place while he was gone. I knew that his brother was a police officer and that he’d been the arresting officer in Evander’s case. I knew that Evander liked pineapple and mushrooms on his pizza. I knew that he was a size fourteen shoe and that he was six-foot-six-and-a-half and wore a size thirty-six by forty-two in pants. I also knew that he went on a jog every single day and that jog took him past my house, down the road all the way to the high school and through the main part of town and back.
I knew everything about him that one could know…except his secret, inner thoughts.
“Yes,” I finally admitted.
He didn’t seem to act surprised by this knowledge.
In fact, he was pretty relaxed…he seemed almost relieved that I wasn’t hearing it for the first time from him.
Which, I guess, was a good thing.
In my eyes, it meant that I was purposefully spending time with him despite knowing that he’d been to jail.
Which, I still wanted to know the full story.
I’d heard the gossip of the why, but gossip and the truth were sometimes two very different things.
I wanted to hear the story straight out of the horse’s mouth.
“I had the vet, the old one that used to be there before the woman, watch over Gertie.”
I nodded.
“We signed a contract. I paid him every cent of his money for the four years that he’d be watching Gertie and then I went to jail.”
I started to get an inkling of what he was about to say.
“And she wouldn’t give Gertie back?” I guessed.
He shrugged.
“Gertie and me share a bond that nobody, not even you with your dog, would understand.”
“Why not?” I accused.
I looked over at my dog, my livestock protector who I’d had to lock up in the yard because the vet’s dog kept attacking him anytime he was out, and sighed.
“Gertie and I were in Iraq and then Afghanistan together for over four tours,” he said. “We went through some crazy shit and came out standing on the other side … Well, mostly. He was retired after he was caught in a roadside bomb and lost his leg. We were separated for six months while he healed, and then while I got out. But the moment we reunited in the states, it was as if not even a day had passed.”
I smiled at his story.
“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you speak,” I told him bluntly.
He shrugged.
“She tried to keep Gertie on account of the fact that I’d been gone for four years and hadn’t taken care of him while she had.”
“How did you get her to give him to you?”
He grinned.
“Gert managed that on his own,” he explained, patting the dog that was at his side on the head. “Kicked up a fuss, and the attendants let him out because they thought something was wrong in the lobby. There wasn’t anything wrong, he just heard me.”