It’s strange to be dating someone who has access to so much money that he could literally pave the driveway at his house in gold bricks, because staring at Posh Pet’s bank account—the ten grand hasn’t hit yet—is depressing. I couldn’t even pave a shoe box with regular bricks.
I mean, we’re not really dating.
But as I watched him drop what some people spend on a downpayment on a house on clothing and a haircut in one day, I could see his frustration. I felt the same way. But walking and talking like a leopard means that you need spots.
And spots around here aren’t cheap.
He’s clearly still so new to everything. He hasn’t noticed that I only said that I attended Duke—which is true. I never said I graduated there. Because his grandmother didn’t press, I got away with that statement, but most people would have followed up with a question about when I graduated and in what major. Our world is full of carefully phrased explanations, casual name-dropping, and unacknowledged label recognition. Meanwhile, some of us are faking it, because our family hasn’t really made it in a very long time.
As an expert at faking it, I can attest that it’s a stupid way to live.
And yet, it’s all I know.
Which is why I’m stuck staring in the mirror at my fourth outfit. I haven’t had a first day of work in four years, and I’m stupidly nervous. Not because I think Ace will fire me, but because I don’t want to give him any cause for it.
Other than dealing with unloved and neglected animals, I really have no experience. I’m not even sure exactly what he wants me to do. I’m about to rip off the boring beige suit I inherited from my mom—she should have known she was never going to get back down to my size when she bought it—when my phone bings.
It’s Emerson. GOOD LUCK ON YOUR FIRST DAY OF WORK.
I can’t help smiling. He really is a big old golden lab puppy. What was that woman thinking, dumping him? Was it the hair?
Either way, I bet she’s regretting it heartily right now.
I HOPE YOU DIDN’T ANSWER WHEN SHE CALLED.
He doesn’t reply. That’s not promising.
PLEASE TELL ME YOU STAYED STRONG.
Still nothing. I’m about one inch from driving to his house when he finally replies.
I IGNORED HER. BUT I CAN CALL HER TODAY, RIGHT?
NO. BAD EMERSON. NOT UNTIL I GIVE THE ALL CLEAR.
ARE YOU SURE?
VERY.
And now I’ve got my purse, I’m kissing the dogs and clipping Lucky’s leash to her collar so I can drop her off on my way, and then I’m en route to the car. I totally forgot that I was going to panic-change clothes again.
That’s probably for the best. The suit’s fine—like it even matters what I wear. No outfit will improve my basic competency at a desk job for which I’m utterly unqualified.
When I stop at the shelter, Lucky looks at me with wide eyes, her ears all the way back, almost flattened on her head.
“I know,” I say. “You don’t like to stay here. I’ve spoiled you. But if you’re never here, no one can fall in love with you and adopt you. Maybe your new owner’s right around the corner.”
She ducks her head.
“I mean it,” I say. “Someone who comes in there today might need a high-energy bestie. A runner, or maybe, like, someone who loves frisbees. Ooh! I know. Maybe someone with sheep.” Stupid, Elizabeth. Who has sheep around here? I can practically hear Lucky thinking the same thing.
But when I tug on her leash, she vaults over the console in my car and out onto the ground, pressed up tightly against my side, barely pulling as I walk. It’s very nearly a miracle, honestly. I’ve never had a dog pull as persistently and as obnoxiously as Lucky, not in ten years. She’s usually just so excited to be moving that she gets pushy. Only, not today. She notably slows as we approach the door, forcing me to almost drag her.
I crouch down. “It’s not that bad, girl, I swear.”
She licks my face, blanketing me in slobber, and probably smearing my mascara. One of these days, I’m going to break down and buy waterproof. . .
“Don’t make me feel worse, okay?”
When I walk her inside, I’m a little disappointed. Ruth is here, since it’s a Monday, and she grimaces. “Sunday didn’t go very well.”
“But Hannah said she took six to the event at Petco.”
Ruth shrugs.
“How many were adopted yesterday?”
“One.”
I close my eyes. At the rate things are going, I’m going to be taking dozens of animals right back to the shelter to die if I can’t figure out how to keep this place. It’s time for me to broach the deal with Emerson.
“After work,” I whisper to Lucky.
She still cries when I leave, but I tell myself it’s because she doesn’t want to go in the kennel and not because she misses me. I’m surrounded by dogs and cats who need homes, and I can’t take them all in myself, no matter how much I want to save them all.
On the way to the address of Ace’s office, I think about the fact that we’ve only had four adoptions in the past week. That would always concern me, but it’s especially problematic right now. I have a hundred and nineteen animals in my care. Forty-one cats, six birds, and seventy-two dogs. If I show up with all those animals—they’ll have to slate them all for elimination almost immediately. They were all set to be killed when I took them, but it still hurts to consider so many of them going on the block.
I feel like I’m entirely to blame for the mass execution now looming, but I can’t think what more I can do to prevent it.
When I pull up in front of the building Ace gave me, I’m confused. It doesn’t look like an office at all. It looks like a French-inspired brownstone or something. Didn’t Easton say he was doing well? When I park around back, I realize there are quite a few cars. There’s even another woman walking in at the same time.
“I’m Rebekah.” She smiles broadly, and I notice her teeth are lovely. Her hair’s very, very processed, and it shows at the ends, but her genuine smile more than makes up for any other deficiencies. “You must be Elizabeth.”
I nod.
“Mr. Devonshire told me you were coming, and I have to say, I’m delighted that he hired you.”
“What do you do?” I ask.
Rebekah laughs. “I should maybe have led with that. I’m his office manager, but I’ve been his de facto assistant for over two years, and it’s high time he found someone to do all the odds and ends that entails. Someone who’s not me.”
Right. I’m going to be doing odds and ends. That makes sense.
Rebekah unlocks the door—apparently at eight-fifty-one, we’re the first ones here. “What did he tell you?”
“Um, not a lot.”
“Do you have questions?”
“I might need to know more before I have questions.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing, really,” I say. “He didn’t even tell me the name of the company.”
Rebekah freezes in the doorway, blinking. “Are you serious?”
It feels ridiculous now that I’m saying it. I needed a job, and Easton told me Ace needed someone. Then I saw him at a party, and he said I could start today.
But clearly it’s not a normal way to get a job.
Of course his office manager finds it strange.
“Are you friends from school?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “But my brother and Ace are good friends.”
“Ace?”
I freeze. “Um, Mr. Devonshire.”
“You call him Ace?”
“You don’t?” I’m actually a little embarrassed to realize that I don’t know his real name.
“We’re pretty relaxed—gaming companies tend to be from what I hear—but I’ve never heard anyone call him that. You’re referring to Austin Devonshire, our president and CEO, right?”
At that exact moment, Ace screams into the tiny parking lot and slams his white 911 into a parking spot. He hops out and closes the door, smiling and waving. “Celly!”
Rebekah blinks. “Didn’t you say your name’s Elizabeth?”
I swallow. “When I was a kid, I was obsessed with celery and peanut butter. For a while they called me Celery, but that was long. So it became Celly.”
“Hey, Ace,” I say. “I got here early, and now Rebekah’s a little freaked out. Sorry.”
Ace barely stops in time to keep from crashing into me and drops an arm around my shoulders. “Wouldn’t be doing things right if she wasn’t. I poached her from an investment bank, if you can believe it, because I needed someone to bring an air of legitimacy to the place.”
“Legitimacy?”
“Dad thought I was wasting my time playing video games all day.” He tosses his head to herd us into the building. “He had a point. I kind of was. But what he didn’t get is that I was also product testing. I’m crap at designing games, and I can’t code to save my life, but I’m amazing at finding redundancies, slow spots, time wastes, and streamlining what people care about in the games. So I bought myself some eggheads and we were making good products. We just didn’t know how to keep the business side together.”
We’re in the center of the brownstone now, and it’s more functional for a gaming company than I expected. There’s a big kitchen with two large tables, and the rest of the room’s just sofas with televisions and gaming consoles. “We do all the product testing here—and we really do test it.”
Of course they do. . . Surely they’re not just sitting around playing games all day. Why on earth would his dad be skeptical?
“The real magic happens upstairs, but we have to keep the product testers happy, too.” His grin’s become almost flirty, so I fling his arm away.
“Well, if you’d warned me, I would’ve called you Austin.”
“You didn’t even remember my real name, did you?”
“Is that my fault? Did you or Easton ever once use it?”
“Do you know how I got that name?” He smiles. “Your brother was mocking me, because every single time we played Grand Theft Auto, or Mario Kart—you name it. In every car game, he smoked me. He started calling me Ace as a way to rub it in.”
“You showed him,” I say. “I mean.” I gesture at the mooshy looking sofas and the televisions. “Look at all this.”
“Hey, now,” he says. “My dad bankrolled the startup, yes, but I’ve been in the black for more than two years.”
“Enough in the black to pay for your lifestyle?” I ask.
People are filtering through the back door, some of them climbing stairs, and some of them headed for the televisions in this main room.
“Maybe you should take this into your office,” Rebekah whispers.
Ace laughs. “Yeah—see why I hired her?”
“It would be great if you could walk me through why you hired me and what exactly you want me to do.”
I follow Ace toward what I imagine was the master bedroom at one point. It has it’s own en suite bathroom, for sure. Once Rebekah has ushered us over, she backs out and pulls the door almost closed. “I’ll be going over the expense reports when you’re ready.”
He groans. “Fine, fine.” But once the door’s shut, he says, “Listen, I know you and my dad both see me as a screwup, but that’s why I did hire you. That kind of contempt makes me work harder.”
I don’t say a word, but he senses my thoughts.
“And I do work hard,” he says. “I cleared a two hundred grand profit last year, after paying everyone and all the costs. And this year, I’m on track to more than double it.”
I’m so used to Easton talking about going public that I haven’t even thought about having a business that’s earning a sustainable long-term profit. “You don’t want to sell it?”
He shakes his head. “Never. If I sell it, or if I were ever to go public, I’d have no control over what happens to my people. I have seventeen employees, and I care about them. They’re good folks. Right now, they have insurance and a good vacation policy and great retirement benefits. What would happen if Nintendo or PopCap came in here?”
I shrug.
“That’s the point. Who knows?”
There are a lot of things I didn’t know about Austin Devonshire other than his name, apparently. “Alright, well, I can only stay until one every day, especially right now. I’ve got a lot of fuzzy animals to save.”
“Speaking of, I’ve been thinking of adopting some cats. They could live here full time. I think most everyone would like that. I asked around and no one’s allergic.”
I can’t help smiling. “Cats need litter boxes to be kept clean, they need annual shots, and they need regular flea treatments.”
“You think I’m really dumb.” He looks a little sad. “Like, nonfunctional.”
“No, but I think a lot of people take on animals without much idea of what their care entails, and the animals are the ones who suffer.”
“Dude, I’d take care of them. But if you have a nice one, or like, maybe two so they have a buddy, or three would be alright, can you bring them over?”
He seems to be serious. “We always need good homes.” With all the people here, some of the friendlier cats would be in heaven. “But what about weekends?”
“We always have someone here,” he says.
“What about holidays?”
“Can you leave them alone for a day or two?” He looks worried. “I thought you could.”
“Two days, max,” I say. “And you’d need an auto-waterer and feeder.”
“Or I could bring them home with me?”
I shrug. “Maybe. Cats can get confused and lost that way.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it. But I still think we’d do pretty well. Even at Christmas, we never close for more than two days.”
That’s either a very sad commentary on his role as an employer, or a sign that the people here really love their jobs. The jury’s out on which. “But back to what you need me to do?”
He walks me through it, but Rebekah wasn’t wrong. Basically, he’s here so often that a lot of details fall through the cracks. Personal stuff, business things, and a strange mixture. “Once you get caught up on some of this—” He gestures at a pile of paperwork he wants me to sort through. “Then we can see whether you might have time to help Rebekah out, too.”
“Sure.” I wind up working on a table in the corner most of the day, but he assures me that he’s ordered a desk that will be in soon.
“I didn’t think I’d find someone so fast,” he says. “So I told the furniture lady that two weeks was fine.”
“Well, I do appreciate it,” I say.
“Easton says you’re having trouble getting a loan?”
“Sort of,” I say. “Mom’s selling off the building my shelter has been in for years. I’ve got to find a new place.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Elizabeth I know.” He lifts his eyebrows. “When you were a teenager, you’d have gone after your mom with a paintball gun if you had to.”
“I’ve evolved,” I say. “Thankfully.”
As soon as the clock hits one, I race back to the shelter and start prepping the new animals for their glamour shots. I’m not quite as good as the lady who usually comes in, but she texted to say she had the flu. Once I get some good ones, I start posting on our page. It’s probably the most tedious thing about what we do, but also maybe the most important. These sweet little pets have no one to advocate for them except for me. Photos are the frontline in most cases.
We do have two late-in-the-day adoptions while I’m working, which is pretty nice. One of them comes from the first post I made today. They rushed over for the very shaky terrier that I hope will relax some once he’s in a home without a hundred other critters. Before I’ve even quite finished, the clock is singing that it’s five. I stretch slowly, and then I hop up to get animal food ready and flip the sign over to closed.
While I’m feeding them, I watch the cats pretty closely. We do have a brother and sister—both already spayed and neutered—who are really closely bonded. One is cream, and one is tortoiseshell, and they often sit in a yin and yang position, their tails lashing one another’s faces. It’s really sweet. I’ve been worried they’d be separated. . . Maybe they’d be a good fit for Ace’s unconventional office.
I try to imagine a bunch of programmers petting them, or a bunch of gamers chatting, while these two rub up against their knees.
I’ve almost decided to try them out tomorrow morning when there’s an awful cacophony from the dog kennels. The very best thing about cats is that they don’t bark when people show up. Usually, they hide. I hate having to tell people that we’re closed, but when I’ve let people in after hours before, sometimes I’ve been stuck here for more than an hour, and I have too many things to do today.
I’ve been bracing myself all day to tell Emerson that his company’s the one buying the shelter. I really do have to ask him to help, but I’m worried he’ll be mad I didn’t tell him sooner. Or maybe he’ll tell me it’s my problem. He does barely know me, after all.
When I get to the door—all of the dogs are still losing their ever-loving minds—I’m surprised to see that my visitor is Emerson. When I swing the door open, I discover he’s not even alone. His Uncle Bentley’s with him.
“Emerson said you might need funds soon, so I thought I’d bring this by.” He holds out an envelope that I assume is my check. “He said he wanted to see the shelter and invited me to come. I hope it’s okay.”
“Oh,” I say. “Sure. Thanks so much for this.” His check is going to save us this month.
“Sorry it’s not more,” he says. “That’s what we had left over.”
Ten grand, just sitting around. Must be nice. “I really appreciate it.”
“Then level with me,” Bentley says. “You’re not really dating, right?”
Emerson freezes.
“I mean, last week, you were with Lisa.” Bentley’s smile is pretty confident. “This is some scheme to make your grandmother happy?”
“I wasn’t with Lisa last week,” Emerson says. “She dumped me the week before that, but I just hadn’t really accepted it.”
“And then in seven days, you just got over her and met someone new?” Bentley’s clearly skeptical.
“You’ve never been in a new place, have you?” I step closer to Emerson and slide my hand down toward his, lacing our fingers together. “A place where you felt out of your element, a place where you didn’t fit in?”
Bentley frowns. “Of course I have.”
“Then you’ll know exactly what drew Emerson and I together.”
“You felt out of place?” Bentley snorts. “Nice try.”
I squeeze just a little closer, and Emerson loosens up a tiny hair, which is nice. “I have always felt out of place at the parties Mom and Dad made me attend. Do you meet a lot of socialites who run animal shelters?”
He frowns again.
“What about socialites who flunk out of school?” It’s not helping that Emerson’s standing entirely still, saying nothing. I squeeze his hand.
His eyes lift toward Bentley’s. “That’s what I liked about her.”
“That she failed out?” Bentley chuckles. “Nice try. You pushed harder than anyone in school.”
“No.” He’s shaking his head. “That she succeeded at the thing that mattered to her. The second we interacted, which first happened at the funeral.” He turns toward me, his eyes meeting mine slowly. “I could tell she wasn’t like all those other phonies. She’d argue with her parents about her shelter in the middle of a party. She’d go out in public with her hair in a messy topknot, if that’s what a dog needed. And she would jump to my rescue when I was hopelessly sticking my foot in my mouth, just because she could.”
“And you just forgot about Lisa?” Bentley still sounds unconvinced. “Because—”
“It’s not that I forgot about her.” Emerson’s talking to Bentley, but he’s still looking at me. “It’s that I realized I’m a better fit with Elizabeth.” When he smiles, it’s small, like the beginning of the sunrise in the very early morning.
And his words.
They sure seem authentic. I reach up without thinking, tucking his hair back with my free hand. “And I immediately realized that he was unlike all the other idiots I’d been shoved at my entire life. This guy’s the real deal.”
Emerson’s eyes drop to my mouth, and I realize he’s going to kiss me. To convince Bentley, of course, but it would still be our first kiss. My first kiss in more than a year. My breathing gets a little choppy, and I’m not sure why I’m so strung out. It’s not like I’ve never kissed anyone. We both want Bentley to buy the story, right? His mouth is just a tiny bit open, and at the thought of him kissing me, I shiver, just a bit.
But when Emerson’s other hand grabs my waist, I shift, and my foot bumps the dog food bin. The lid falls to the ground with a clatter, and all the dogs that have slowly calmed down are off again.
“Wow,” Emerson says, still looking at me. “That’s a lot of dogs barking.”
“They’re usually louder around dinner time,” I say, realizing that we are not about to kiss. Hopefully our interaction still calmed Bentley’s suspicions a little. “Hey, do you guys want to help? I just finished with the cats, but you can meet some of the dogs.”
Judging from the look on Emerson’s face, he’s not much of a dog person, but Bentley looks excited. “Sure.”
“Do you have a dog?” I always ask that—most people say yes. The ones who don’t often have a reason.
“Whoa.” Bentley holds up his hands. “You’re going to start pushing cute little puppies at me now, aren’t you?”
The black lab we call Shadow, the German shepherd I named Storm, and the golden retriever who’s next to them are barking so loudly that the combination may burst my eardrums. “Guys.” I call them to order a few times, and they all sit down. After a few more haphazard yelps, they settle in.
Bentley isn’t looking at them, though. He crouches down in front of Lucky. She wasn’t barking. She was sitting still, watching me intently. “This one really likes you.”
I lift two food bowls. “I bring food. They all like me.”
“Hey, that’s Lucky.” Now Emerson crouches down next to Bentley. “She was stuck in a crate for twenty-three or more hours a day for almost her entire life until a few days ago. She hates being in a kennel so much that Elizabeth’s been taking her home with her.”
“I was worried about my two Pomeranians,” I say, “but she’s really careful with them. She’ll run a human over in a heartbeat, but around them, she crouches down on the ground and lets them bite and swing over her.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” Emerson says, “that she’s careful with small things.”
“Border collies are really smart,” I say. “But I doubt she’s been properly socialized. Time with other dogs is probably exactly what she needed.”
“That, and some nice long runs.”
“Runs?” Bentley straightens.
“I know—you hate running.” Emerson’s eyes are dancing, and he looks exactly twenty percent more handsome when he’s happy like that.
“Actually, the doc told me I need to be out jogging more.” He makes a face. “Apparently my exclusive weight-lifting regimen was fine when I was young, but cardio health requires a little bit of, well, cardiovascular work.”
“You don’t say,” Emerson says.
“I was thinking of getting a running buddy.”
“You just said you didn’t want a dog,” I say. “Now you’re just being mean—getting my hopes up.”
“Besides,” Emerson says. “With all your traveling, you can’t have a dog.”
“They have places you can leave them,” he says. “But I told you—I’m not traveling anymore. Not very often, anyway.”
Emerson doesn’t look convinced.
“How about I take Lucky home with me tonight?” he asks. “If you’re taking her to your place anyway.”
“Like, a trial?” I quirk one eyebrow.
He nods slowly. “Maybe.”
I’m a little surprised at how disappointed I am. That’s dumb. I do not have the bandwidth to manage a border collie. I should be delighted. Though, with what I know about the breed, I doubt she’ll even make it the whole night. “She’s pretty rambunctious. And if you take her for a jog, just be aware that she still pulls pretty badly.”
“I think I can take it.”
“It gets annoying fast.”
“I hear that about myself a lot,” Bentley says.
I laugh. “I doubt that.”
“Are you hitting on my uncle right now? In front of me?”
“Who are you?” I wink.
“You’re rude,” Emerson says.
“Oh! You’re that Emerson guy I’m dating. Sorry, I forgot you were here for a moment.”
“You said I look like a movie star, but now you’ve forgotten I exist.” He shakes his head.
“You?” Bentley asks. “What movie star could you possibly resemble?”
“I think he looks a lot like Chad Michael Murray,” I say. “He was in—”
“I know who he is,” Bentley says. “He’s filming a movie with Emerson’s brother.”
“He’s done filming now.” Emerson huffs. “And it’s annoying that she’s comparing me to him, right?”
“Wait, do you mean Jake Priest is your brother?” I can hardly believe it. “Really?”
Bentley’s smiling. “Why am I not surprised that he didn’t tell you?”
“That’s. . .insane.”
“Oh, no.” Emerson groans. “Don’t tell me you’re a fan.”
“I was,” I say. “Until he beheaded that cow in Iron Cross.”
“It didn’t really die,” Emerson says. “It was CGI.”
“Still.” I fold my arms. “That was it for me.”
Emerson laughs. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been more grateful that Jake’s a cow murderer. Can you imagine anything worse than dating someone who has a crush on your brother?”
“Actually, speaking of strange coincidences, my brother called. Guess who my parents are selling this building to?”
Emerson freezes, and his eyes cut sideways. “Bentley?”
Bentley shakes his head. “It’s not me.”
“Richmond Steel.”
Emerson’s shoulders slump. “I was afraid you were going to say that. Grandmother was talking about a new warehouse today, and it felt like a weird coincidence.”
“Do you think she might reconsider?”
“She said it was a done deal and that the penalty clauses were really steep.”
Which means. . .I’m officially screwed.
“I mean, we can talk to her,” Emerson says.
“She’s not very flexible,” Bentley says. “Never has been.”
I can’t even look at them, not right now. I didn’t realize how much hope I was pinning on Emerson asking his grandmother to spare the shelter.
“This may not be what you want to hear right now,” Bentley says, “but I have a great realtor friend. Maybe he could help you find a new place.”
Sadly, that may be where we are, and even worse, my only hope there is selling Hottie. This day just gets worse and worse.