She grins. “Excellent.” She opens the kennel, and the dog comes barreling out toward me. Her missing leg doesn’t slow her down one bit. She sticks her snout under my hand and begs for pets.
“Demanding little diva, aren’t you?” She barks in response as if she can understand me. “It’s settled. I hereby name you Diva.”She barks and runs circles around me as we make our way back to the reception area to complete the adoption process.
“This is why I laughed when I first saw your car,” Juniper explains as I stare at Diva jumping up and down on my leather back seats.
“We need to stop at the pet store anyway. I’ll get one of those backseat thingies for dogs.”
“Backseat thingies?” She giggles.
“Whatever. Let’s go.” I switch on the car and drive toward the nearest pet store.
“Oops. I think it’s too late for your backseat thingy.”
“What do you mean?” I glance into the backseat to discover Diva peeing all over it.
“Crap.”
“Not crap. Pee.”
This is all Cedar’s fault. I should send him the bill to clean the piss out of the leather seats. Dare me, will he? I’ll teach him.
Chapter 10
Always have an excuse ready to make a hasty retreat from any and all family activities ~ Cassie’s rules for surviving this thing called life
“She’s here! She’s here!” Elizabeth exclaims as I enter Beckett and Lilac’s house on Friday night.
I pretend to not understand why she’s excited. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”
“Ha! As if you don’t know.”
I do. Elizabeth and Gabrielle have been pushing me about who I’ve been dating since November. No matter how many times I explained to them I don’t date – I love ‘em and leave ‘em – they persisted.
Of course, me letting it slip how I’d been with the same man more than once didn’t help with the situation. And after getting caught having a knockdown fight with Cedar, I have no chance of stopping the barrage of questions now.
River arrives and wraps an arm around Elizabeth. “Let her be, Bessie. You didn’t enjoy it when she teased you when we were having issues.”
“But did she stop? Nope. She kept banging on and on about it.”
“Banging?” He grins.
She elbows him. “You know what I mean.”
When he whirls her around and sticks his tongue down her throat, I’m outta here. I have no interest in watching my sister make out with her man. Yuck! I enter the living room where Gabrielle and River and Lilac and Beckett are waiting for my arrival.
“What’s that?” Lilac asks while gesturing toward Diva.
“I think you mean who.”
“No. Who refers to a person,” Lilac corrects. “When referring to a dog—”
I hold up my hand before she can continue. Lilac is Ms. Encyclopedia. I should have known better than to correct her.
“I don’t care if it’s a who or a what,” Beckett grumbles. “She better not make a mess on my carpet.”
“She won’t,” I insist despite having picked up quite a few Diva messes in the past few days.
The shelter claimed she was potty trained when I adopted her. They lied. Unless ‘potty trained’ means taking a dump in my hiking boots.