Hidden hearts, p.6
Hidden Hearts, page 6
Leash still in her hand, jean shorts still showing off her long curvy legs, hiking boots now with legit scuffs, she smiled at him. The grin at her happiness with the dog turned tentative as she looked at him, as if to ask if she'd done it right.
He should have said good work and headed off. He should have done any number of things except what he did.
But he heard the words falling out of his mouth. “I'm off tomorrow and I saw that you were, too. Do you want to go grab a coffee with me?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Are we going past the turn?” Brandy asked as she reached out to brace against the dash. She was used to Theo taking his turns hard, but Ash didn’t throw her around.
She shouldn’t have reached out, and she shouldn’t have asked. They were clearly driving right past the turn into town and heading up the mountain road. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a really great cafe in Charlottesville.” He grinned at her, one hand casually on the wheel, the other elbow down on the armrest between them.
Just looking at him, she would have thought he was a sports car kind of guy—like Theo—but here in the big SUV she could see him with dogs and cats all around.
She’d gotten used to checking the seats for fur before she climbed in. Definitely not something from her old life, her regular wardrobe wouldn’t have survived the past few weeks.
Being at the sanctuary was like stepping out of time. She had minimal connection to her old life, just the way she wanted it. Bethany had emailed, checking on her. Brandy had emailed back, assuring her work friend that she was A) having the time of her life and B) definitely coming back when the job was done.
Of course, she’d heard nothing from Sammy. Nothing from Theo either, though she’d been clear to Theo that she wanted to never speak to him again. Her mother, of course, checked in all the time. She always brought up Theo and asked what was Brandy going to do about it? As if this were her own fault.
Some days she thought it was. It was definitely her fault for getting all the way to the church and the white dress. She gave her mother only vague answers, knowing that telling the whole truth would destroy both of them.
Now, she pushed thoughts of her old life out of the way. She would only be here for a while. Apparently, Ash wasn’t just taking her to the coffee shop in Jade River Valley. This was going to be quite the drive.
She was opening her mouth in an attempt at small talk, wondering what was appropriate to say to the boss on the way to a coffee shop, when Ash beat her to it.
“So, do you like being a civil engineer? Do you think you'll go back to it?”
“I'll definitely go back,” she said. “Honestly, I love it. I get to design and create things. I'm in charge of a team. Since I've been in charge, we've had seven small projects and five big ones come to full completion. In two cases, we weren't able to do quite as much as we had originally thought, but in the other three we did more.”
“You sound passionate about it."
She was. But she only shrugged. She couldn’t help that she loved the work. She was only gone because . . .
“So why are you here? Taking a job well beneath your paygrade in an area that you don't really have a skill set in.”
She turned to face him and raised an eyebrow. He only glanced at her, mostly keeping his eyes on the winding road flanked by lush green trees.
But she couldn't say he was absolutely wrong about that.
“Did you need a break from your very nice life designing things to make people's lives better?”
“Not that part,” she shook her head, breathing in the warm mountain air. It definitely did a body good. “The work is a lot. Nothing ever goes according to plan. You go to work in a local place that needs something, so there’s a lot of travel. You first have to assess the situation and figure out all the specifics of that job—no two are completely alike. Then you see what they need and what kind of resources they have to cover the work.”
She looked out the window. She missed it. She missed her friends at the office, she missed the travel, and the nice apartment with the mist shower and the double french doors into her bedroom. But she hadn’t been able to stay.
Looking back at Ash, she could see he was waiting for more, so she told him. “And then sometimes they get mad at the way that you handle it. I just needed a break from the stress.”
This time she laughed though, for all she’d said, she’d basically lied. That was the stress she thrived on, not the actual problem.
Turning and looking out the window, she slid her sunglasses down from the top of her head. The sun was out, and the day was gorgeous. She was looking forward to sitting on the patio with a coffee and a pastry and not needing to be in charge of any furry creatures for a while.
She still wasn't sure why Ash had invited her along. Was he going to tell her to stay in her lane? Suggest that she shouldn't be at Jade River Sanctuary? That she should move out so they could hire a real dog trainer?
The temperature wasn't quite as warm today as it had been. She’d also been doing manual labor most days on the job, getting hot and sweaty. Today was her day off, so she'd worn jeans. A fact she was grateful for now as she rubbed her palms down the front of her legs and wondered if he noticed.
When he didn’t push, she returned the favor of asking a softball question. “What made you decide to get in on the ground floor of the Sanctuary?”
He paused for a while, taking several deep breaths. Enough to make her wonder what he had to think about. Did he regret it?
“Lots of reasons. Roz is definitely one of them.”
“Agreed,” Brandy smiled at him. She could be nice. “She practically persuaded me into this job.”
At those words, Ash’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline.
Had he thought she'd pushed her way in? Begged Roz for a chance to come work at the sanctuary? Yes, she’d wanted a temporary job far from home, but Roz had pushed her to take it.
“What did Roz tell you to get you to come?” she asked him, not saying any more. Let him think what he wanted. She wasn't going anywhere.
“She said I'd get to be the solo vet. That I'd get to help grow the program. And, because we were small, I'd have my hands in all aspects of it. It sounded like a good challenge and a nice change of scenery.” He waved his hands at the beauty of the mountains all around them.
“Tired of giving Parvo shots and dental cleanings?” Brandy asked.
He laughed, but it was a rough sound. When he shook his head, his gaze darted out the window.
There was a story there.
“Did you not like working in a vet clinic?”
“I did, but I bounced from clinic to clinic. Never stayed at one place too long. Apparently, I'm super picky about who I work for.”
Brandy offered a tight smile, instead of voicing the word shocking with as much sarcasm as she felt.
“What did they do wrong?” She was dying to know how snobby he could be about vet work, though she had to admit she hadn’t seen any red flags in his work with the animals.
“One of the vets was prescribing probiotics and supplements instead of dewormers and vaccinations.”
“No woo woo. Got it.”
He almost grinned at that. Almost. “Another was overcharging the patients. I’m not sure how I felt about that, the neighborhood could afford it. But I found I didn’t like working with vain, uptight people who were just as vain about their pets and made them just as uptight as their humans.”
“Yuck.”
“Yeah, then I found someone, and he was wonderful. An older vet, doing all the right kind of work, taking care of his patients, helping the families who couldn't pay so their animals stayed safe. He did farm and big animal work.”
They came to a full stop at a T in the road, and it felt weird to go from a high speed all the way down to a stop. Almost like the conversation, but Ash took the turn smoothly. He was probably used to driving dogs around and Brandy decided she should be grateful that he thought dogs should be cared for and that he’d give her the same consideration.
“So why didn't you stay there?” Brandy asked, hoping he didn’t read into it, “Why did you come here to pester us?”
“He got sick one day and then he stayed sick. I took over more and more of the practice. Added his duties to mine, when I looked at getting paid for all the extra hours, I found out the truth about the clinic.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ash pulled into a space and put the car in park, glad that it should stop Brandy’s questions. She was still pressuring him about the clinic, but he climbed out and led the way.
He had no idea how this was going. He hadn’t even really meant to ask her out, it had simply fallen from his lips, and he hadn’t taken it back.
“Right here.” He pointed, realizing the polite thing to do would have been to get her door. But she was faster than he would have been, and he would guess she was more of the I can get my own door type.
The tables were under a little pergola with vines growing up and over the top. They crossed the lot in silence, and he was grateful. He didn’t like spilling other people’s secrets.
This time, Ash did hold the door for her, and kept watch as she passed him. The jeans hugged every curve of her, and he understood why his mouth had asked her out even if his brain had said no.
For a moment, he realized he liked being alone with her, without having a task that wasn’t going well or having her be oppositional. It felt like he finally had her to himself and he liked this Brandy. He liked the passion for engineering when it wasn’t telling him he didn’t know what he was talking about.
She stopped short of the counter, her eyes up at the menu on the wall.
He grinned. “We should get food, too. They have excellent grilled sandwiches, and the coffee is wonderful.”
“You know the area?” she asked, and he just laughed.
“I know the mountains.” He’d grown up a few hours south of here. “But I don’t know Charlottesville. I just happened to find this place when I was staying here.”
She seemed to take that as a good enough answer—which he never knew if she would. Brandy ordered a sandwich with a side of chips and a large frothy coffee and when she pulled out her card to pay for it, he pushed his hand out to stop her.
He offered up something he'd learned from an ex-girlfriend. “I invited, I pay. If you invite me, you pay.”
“Fair enough.”
At least that was easy. Ash had learned too many habits he disliked, first from early high school and then college girlfriends who insisted that the manly thing to do was to pay for everything. It had been Rena, much later, with her equity and independence who’d set him free and made it sound so reasonable. She'd said, “I won’t invite you anywhere I can't afford. And you shouldn't invite me anywhere you can't afford. And I shouldn't invite you somewhere not knowing if you can afford it or if it's what you want to spend your money on.”
He didn't still have Rena, but he still had that.
He paid for the order and was handed an old-fashioned metal stand with a plastic number on the top. He led Brandy outside to where the sun came in through the vines and colored flowers cast diamonds all around them. Though the parking lot was just on the other side, it still felt secluded, and the patio was only sparsely populated.
He headed toward the corner. “Is this good?”
Far away from everyone else for a moment, he would stay here surrounded by greenery with Brandy’s attention on him, even if she didn't seem quite all the way open yet.
He sat down but didn’t know what to say. She fidgeted with the stand, moving the plastic number until it was perfectly upright.
“So, what happened? What did you find out about the clinic?”
He should have known she wouldn't let it go. “The problem is that it’s not mine to tell.” Ash sighed. Still, she was never going to meet the man, he was a good while gone. “I don’t think you’ll have enough information to tell anyone, but all the wonderful work he did, it didn't pay.”
“That was surprising to you?” she asked, not accusing but almost as if how had he not known that?
It was a fair question. “Well, if you own your own clinic, you can make a really good living. With all the charity, I wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t rich, but it was a shock to learn that it didn't even pay our salaries. I don't know if he was a terrible businessman or just so soft hearted that he would do anything for anyone. He was barely covering supplies. The place was upside down and underwater and every other bad financial term you can think of.”
Her expression had moved to sympathy and Ash wasn’t sure if he wanted that either. “What did you do?”
“I stayed on. I let him pay me and didn't let him know that I'd seen the records, the overdue mortgage or even his hospital bills.” Ash still didn’t know if it had been the right decision, and he wasn’t sure if telling Brandy was right either. But it did feel good to finally share it with someone. “I kept working until he died so that he didn't have to see the place fold.”
“Ouch.”
“It was hard. It was the one place that I really thought was well run, the way I would have wanted to do it. I guess I was really stupid.” What a wonderful thing to tell a woman. He'd finally admitted to himself that he wanted to impress her and then he told her this.
“Are you afraid you’ll become him?”
He almost rotely answered ‘no,’ but it hit him. Hell, she was right. “Maybe.”
“Well, we've all been stupid about things that should have been obvious.” Something about the tone in her voice made him think she could put her finger on one specific thing. “Then you came here?”
Shaking his head, Ash admitted. “He passed almost two years ago.”
Just then, the server showed up, setting a wide, white mug of hot coffee in front of him and the cold, frothy drink with whipped cream and chocolate sauce in front of her.
“That's all sugar,” he commented.
She shrugged at him as if to say his opinion didn’t matter to her at all.
She peeled the straw and took her first sip. It made her happy. That was clear. Why was her giving him the politest ‘fuck you’ ever so sexy?
He sipped the strong, bitter flavor that invaded every sense and tried to steer the conversation back onto less sad ground. “I helped a friend open a veterinary clinic and shelter in Nebraska—”
“You weren't near the floods, were you?”
If only she knew. “Don't ask.”
She tipped her head, her gaze sharpening at him, as if to say tell me more. But nearly dying and lying to the first responders because he couldn't stand to watch a dog die because a human hadn't done their job wasn't anything he'd wanted to tell her about. He didn’t want to admit that he'd been frantic, and they'd all been scared. He’d been afraid more than once that he was going to wash away at any moment. More than that, he watched the firefighters who came to rescue the dogs almost get washed away. If it hadn’t ended well, he would never have forgiven himself.
It was nothing he wanted to relive.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Brandy asked, her tone open, the cold drink cradled between her hands, her words punctuated with sips.
“Anything,” he shrugged. “Whatever comes.”
Over her shoulder he spotted the server with white plates and thick sandwiches. Brandy’s was overflowing with grilled peppers, cheese, and spinach and she smiled as it was set down in front of her. She’d ditched the side salad for chips, and he was glad she ordered what she liked.
They were silent for a moment, each of them taking a first bite, the crunch of the sandwich always a delight. When he finished chewing, he looked up to find her watching him.
“If you didn't have anything that we needed to discuss away from the sanctuary, then why are we here?”
“I asked and you said yes.” For a moment, he was flummoxed. What was she even saying?
Then he swallowed hard. He was here across the table from the beautiful redhead, freckles scattered across her nose in the sunlight, iced coffee making her smile, but her hazel eyes were confused because, once again, he'd been an idiot.
She didn't even know that he'd asked her on a date.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“But you don't even like me.” How could he have? She was so confused!
Brandy set her sandwich back down. How was she supposed to eat when he said that? She was stuck forty-five minutes away from anything on a date she hadn’t realized she’d agreed to!
“A date? You're my boss! We can’t date!” she protested. As she grasped for straws it seemed the most polite and most damning way to get out of it.
“I'm not your boss,” he replied immediately. “I work for Roz and so do you. We all work for Roz.”
“Maybe I just thought you were my boss because you’re bossy.”
Maybe she shouldn't have said that. Maybe he shouldn't have asked her out! Did that mean he was interested in her? In that way?
He was fumbling for his next words, and she wasn’t mean enough to let him suffer, but she wasn’t a fan of rote politeness either. She very much preferred honesty, which might be why the whole thing with Theo and Sammy had hit so hard.
“You've been an ass to me at every turn!” She wanted to eat the sandwich. It was really good. She wanted to drink the coffee. She had been prepared for him to tell her that she was doing a shit job or to maybe even say she was doing a good job and tell her she got a sandwich for learning how to stay on her side of the fence. For finally getting Buzz to lay and stay where he was put until he was told to get up.
But she couldn't even enjoy the sandwich now and it was a damn good sandwich. It was going to sit here and get cold while she untangled this complicated man.
