I stare at him for a second trying to square this man’s rugged good looks with the fact that he’s never loved a canine. Sorry, Whitney Houston, but “The Greatest Love of All” is not inside of us. It has fur and terrible breath and likes belly rubs and is better than all of us.
“This does not compute,” I say.
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Does it compute that a person needs sleep and that you shouldn’t let your dogs hang around barking at three a.m. out of common courtesy?”
I look at Terrence, who is having a rare moment of sitting quietly on his haunches. He’s staring at Daniel like Daniel is the alpha dog.
As a matter of fact, none of the dogs are barking at all around Daniel.
I look around and the pregnant Bichon, Fluffy, is lying down by Daniel’s feet. Fluffer-Nutter is next to her on his back, like he wants Daniel to give him a belly rub. Chloe the Great Dane is sitting at attention next to Daniel, alternating her big-eyed goofy stare between Daniel and me. Dolly, the German shepherd and love of my life, is sitting pretty with her eyes looking up adoringly at Daniel, as if his pockets are full of bacon.
What the hell is going on here?
“Sure,” I say. “But you also have to understand that this is the country. If you can’t cope with animals making a bit of noise in the middle of the night, maybe you should move to the suburbs.”
“I got news for you. This”—he gestures around widely with his arms, indicating the whole neighborhood including my field—“is about to become the suburbs.”
I laugh. “You have to have a suburb nearby for this to become a suburb. This clutch of houses sits outside the city limits.”
“For now. Haven’t you ever heard of a TIF district?”
I smile. “A tiff? Like what we’re having right now?”
He looks at me like he wishes he hadn’t spilled the beans about something.
“What? What did you just blurt out that I’m not supposed to know about?”
He replies, “Nothing that’s not public record.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means you can find out for yourself what the plans are for the neighborhood. It’s all at the county planning office.”
“Do I look like I’m gonna go down to the county seat and ask to see paperwork when I don’t even know what I’m looking for? Suppose you tell me.”
He looks to the left and puts his hands up in surrender. “I’m gonna buy your land and turn it into a golf course.”
I stand there and blink at him for a minute. Is he joking? No, by his face he is clearly not joking.
“Well, good luck,” I say. “Because I’m not selling. Least of all to you.”
“You’ll have to, eventually. It’s a lot of money. And if you don’t, it’ll get ugly. They could take the land.”
“No they can’t. And they who?”
“The county. And if they don’t, then eventually the city will. They’re already talking about annexation anyway.”
“Bullshit. I own this place and I ain’t moving.”
“The golf course has partial public funding, so yeah, imminent domain will prevail in this case.”
“Again I call bullshit,” I say, my blood pressure rising. This is outrageous. How did I not know any of this? Because it’s all lies; I know it. He’s bluffing to get me to comply.
“Even if it were, the county is going to widen the road to accommodate all the new houses, so…yeah…imminent domain.
”
I don’t exactly know what that means but I can’t let on that I don’t.