The best things in life take a lot of effort. But some things in life that take a lot of work aren’t worth it. This is clearly one of those.
“If I had known when you called and asked me to come over that you wanted to go running, I would have hung up and gone back to sleep,” I say.
Uncle Bentley’s waiting at the door when I arrive, already holding Lucky’s leash.
“You know what sucks less than running?” Uncle Bentley asks.
“Not running?” I look down at my sneakers, wishing I’d worn loafers. Then at least I’d have a better excuse to bow out.
“I was going to say running with someone else,” he says. “But I guess yours is truer.”
“You hate running,” I say. “Why on earth are you doing it?”
“So when you get old—”
“You’re barely forty,” I say.
“When you get old,” he says, as if I never interrupted, “you have to go see doctors. They check levels for things.”
“Like what?”
Lucky’s now spinning around and around, the leash getting all twisted up around Uncle Bentley’s legs. And. . .now she’s chewing on it.
“Your dog’s kind of crazy.”
“She’s not my dog,” Uncle Bentley says. “She’s a loaner.”
“I don’t think dogs work like that.”
Lucky sits down on her haunches, her head pointed straight up at Bentley like a heat-seeking torpedo, her eyes focused on him, her tongue lolling, like the only thing in her world is Bentley. “You’re a good girl,” he says.
And she goes berserk. She spins. She leaps. She tries to lick his face, while he’s standing and she’s on the ground. She gets closer than I’d have thought possible, between the leaping and her giraffe tongue.
“Alright. I’m headed back home.” I turn to leave.
But Uncle Bentley’s already out the door and jogging alongside me, Lucky pulling and whining, her nails clicking on the tile floor of the hallway outside his posh condo. “I’ll come with you.”
“To my car?” I ask.
“I had an idea.”
“For what?”
“Well, remember yesterday, when you were saying you weren’t sure how to approach her, now that it’s done?”
Oh, right. Elizabeth. “Sure.”
“She lives near the old shelter, right?”
I nod.
“Let’s go for a walk over there.”
“I’m not ready to call her yet,” I say. “I need to make a plan first.”
“You and your plans,” Uncle Bentley says. “Not everything needs a plan.”
It’s like he’s talking gibberish.
“The world isn’t won with plans. The world is won by the bold. The brave.”
“So you’re saying people like me don’t ever win?” I might kick my uncle.
“When you realized you didn’t like Lisa, did you plan that?”
I hate him.
“What about when your grandmother showed up on your doorstep and apologized? Was that planned?”
“For her or for me?”
Uncle Bentley throws his hands up in the air. That frees Lucky though, and now she’s racing back and forth in the hallway outside my uncle’s place like a greyhound, her ears flattened to her head. It takes us a solid two minutes to catch her again, since she thinks it’s a really fun game.
“So, was that little interlude planned?” I ask.
Uncle Bentley throws the leash at me. Thankfully I catch it, or we’d have been at it again.
“Hey.”
“Emerson, you want a plan because you lost your mom.”
“So what?” There’s nothing wrong with having a little predictability.
“Be spontaneous.”
“What are the odds she’ll even be outside?” I fold my arms.
“It’s a gorgeous late spring day. Everyone’s outside.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s not even close to what I asked for.”
“Fifty fifty,” Uncle Bentley says. “How’s that? I bet we run in to her. Call it a hunch.”
“And if we don’t, our trip over there will be a total waste.”
“It’ll be fresh air with my favorite nephew and a nice walk with my dog.”
“What happened to the jog?”
“I’m being realistic,” Uncle Bentley says. “Jogging sucks.”
I can’t help laughing at that, because he’s right, but. . . “Then what are you doing with a border collie? They love to run.”
“The heart wants what the heart wants, Emerson. So if my heart wants a dog that loves to run, and her heart wants an owner who doesn’t, well. We’ll figure it out.”
“Your romance finally happened. With a dog.” I can’t help laughing about that. My handsome, brilliant, rich uncle whom people love to talk to, and the closest he’s gotten to a girlfriend is this maniac dog.
He points at himself. “I should be your motivation. If you miss your moment, this happens.” I know he’s kidding, but there’s an underlying note of sadness that’s not fake.
“Alright.” I nod. “Let’s go.”
An hour later, we’re still walking around, and I want to strangle Uncle Bentley and his stupid fresh air. “My toe has a blister on it,” I say. “And so does this space between my thumb and my index finger where your dumb dog’s leash has been pulling this whole time.”
“It’s a good thing we didn’t see her,” Uncle Bentley says. “Because all you do is whine. You’re a major downer. If I were her, I’d turn you down flat.”
It’s been more than two weeks since I realized that I like Elizabeth. It’s been nearly two weeks since I showed up at the shelter and found her and her two friends drunk. I’ve been searching and working and focusing on making a plan, but I keep getting stuck.
Because we met in such a weird way, nothing between us was ever real, and I’m not sure how to bridge that gap.
Anything I say will feel. . .contrived. I know I can’t think about anyone but her. I know that she makes me smile—even the thought of her. I know she said most of the truest things I’ve ever heard. I know that I want her with me forever. And I also know that she won’t believe anything I say. We lied to the world the whole time we were together, and I can’t come up with a plan to fix that.
Plus, a little part of me worries that she only ever flirted as part of our deal. Or that, even if it was real, she was like Lisa. She liked the Richmond package more than she liked me.
Besides.
She lives right by the old shelter. She probably walks by it all the time. If she really liked me at all, wouldn’t she have called? The obvious answer is yes.
And she never called.
We’re finally headed back to the car when I hear my name.
“Emerson?”
Uncle Bentley throws me a little thumbs up and keeps walking.
“Is that you?”
When I turn around, Lucky notices I’m stopping and spins too. And then there’s a cacophony of barking the likes of which I’ve never heard. Two tiny puffballs begin frolicking toward Lucky, and Lucky’s shaking more than I’ve ever seen her, like she’s having a nervous breakdown.
“Sorry,” Elizabeth says. “I kept Lucky at my place for a while, so she knows my dogs.”
“What are their names?” Uncle Bentley widens his eyes and sticks his chin out and tosses it at her, like he’s tasking me to storm Normandy or something. Ugh.
“Fluff and Boba,” I say. “I remember.”
“Floof,” she says. “But not bad for a fake boyfriend.”
A fake boyfriend. Why do the words sting so much?
I cough. “So, have you found a new shelter yet?”
Her shoulders droop. “Poor Bernie. He must be really irritated. He keeps sending me things, but so far they’ve all been. . .disappointing. I guess I got spoiled with the one I had.”
“He said you saw one really nice one,” Uncle Bentley says.
Elizabeth shrugs. “It was double the price I could feasibly afford.”
“Don’t you ever go by the old shelter anymore?” I finally blurt out.
Why isn’t she saying anything about it? Does she hate it? Was she mad?
She frowns. Then she shakes her head. “I think it would hurt too much.”
“Isn’t it, like, one block away?” How could she avoid it?
“I just loop around this way.” She’s pointing.
“But—you really haven’t—” Uncle Bentley looks as confused as I am.
It means she has no idea what I did. Maybe that’s why she didn’t call. That’s why my plan has stalled out. I should grab her arm and drag her. . .but then an idea occurs to me.
“Uncle Bentley, why don’t you head home? I’ll take an Uber.”
“You’ll—why would you do that?” His eyebrows rise. “From here—”
“I need to talk to Elizabeth.” I clear my throat.
“Oh.” He smiles. “Okay.”
“How’s Lucky doing?” she asks. “Looks like you two are still getting along pretty well. It’s been, what? A month?”
“I mean, she’s not exactly a perfect fit for me,” Uncle Bentley says, “but I can keep her a little longer.”
Elizabeth smiles. “I’ll send over her shot records, just so you have them.”
“That wouldn’t be a terrible idea,” he says. “It’s probably time for her next heartworm pill too, right?”
“You could take her to the vet, if you wanted,” she says. “Just as a temporary checkup.”
“They have those?”
What a dope. “Sure they do,” Elizabeth says. “For sure.”
“Great.”
“I’ll email you.” She’s still half-smiling as he and Lucky head the other direction, both of them turning around every few steps.
“What are you doing over here?” she asks.
“Oh, you know, kind of trolling around, hoping to bump into you.” I shove my hands in my pockets and look at my sneakers. This is so not the conversation I was prepared to have.
“Hoping to—why didn’t you just call?” She looks lost.
It’s now. I can’t keep waiting. “Because I wanted to see your gorgeous face,” I say.
Her mouth drops open a bit, and then she starts laughing. “You’re so weird.”
“I mean it,” I say. “I’m not great with this stuff, but I like you, Elizabeth. For real.”
“What about Lisa?”
“I mean, we broke up before you and I started dating.”
“Be serious,” she says.
“I am,” I say.
Her dogs start popping up on her legs. One of them has a prosthetic back leg. How did I not notice that until right now? “Do you need to take them back?”
“They’re fine.” She picks one up, but that makes the other one cry.
“I can hold one,” I say.
“You can try.” Her smirk is fond. “They’re very particular.”
I crouch down. At first the white one just looks at me, but then it slowly creeps closer, sniffing my hand from a few inches away, and then licking my fingers. Finally, it lets me pick it up.
“Floof is blind on the right side,” she says. “And usually she won’t let strangers touch her. You should be honored.”
It’s a dog, but somehow, I still am.
“Look,” I say. Floof bumps me with her nose, and I pet her with my free hand without thinking. “Lisa dumped me. I thought she liked me, and I thought we were right for each other, but I guess I didn’t know her—or myself—as well as I thought. Because dating you felt more real than any of the time I spent with her.”
Elizabeth and her tiny black Pomeranian are both staring at me with the same baffled expression, like I’m speaking Latvian.
“I know it was fake,” I say softly. “But to me, the time we spent was the most real time I’ve ever had with someone.”
“You haven’t called me in weeks.”
“My grandmother and I reconciled,” I say, “and—”
She nods. “Oh. Now that she’s done some digging, she realized I’m not suitable either.” She chuckles. “You have a real knack, Emerson, for picking people to date that your grandmother hates.”
I realize how I can find out whether she likes me or the Richmond estate. “We reconciled sort of, but not all the way. I’m not taking over Richmond Steel,” I say. “I probably never will be. Nothing I do makes my grandmother happy. But I decided that of all the things in life I can have, of all my options, the only one that really matters is. . .”
“Is what?” She’s staring at me earnestly.
“I don’t know. Saying ‘you’ seemed suddenly cheesy and cliche.”
“I’m okay with cliche,” she whispers.
I step toward her, and I can’t see anything but her mouth in that moment. Her lips, slightly parted, are a light, light pink. I reach for her arm, tugging her closer, and then my head lowers. I’m about to kiss her when something starts growling.
It’s Floof—she’s growling at Boba.
“They do that,” Elizabeth says. “It’s like a playing thing they do.”
“Oh.”
She sets Boba down, and she takes Floof from me and sets her down, holding the leashes loosely. “Bad dogs,” she whispers. And then she smiles at me.
Her bright eyes. Her windswept hair. Her tiny, bouncy dogs, now hopping up on her legs and mine. It’s not the perfect movie kiss, but it’s the only one I want to have. This time, I grab her hips and drag her closer. “I will always have a good, solid job. I’ll always take care of you.”
Her smile looks almost sad.
“I may not be rich, but I’m steady.” I sound even worse than earlier. I groan. “It sounds like I’m trying to sell you a Toyota Corolla.”
She grabs the collar of my shirt with her one free hand and yanks me down. “If you had been raised like me, barely able to make the Porsche 911 payment and using new credit cards to pay off other credit cards, a Toyota Corolla might sound pretty great.” She yanks my head toward hers, and our lips miraculously collide.
I’ve kissed women before. Pretty ones. Smart ones. Greedy ones.
None of them were anything like this. Her mouth is warm and urgent, and her hand is persistent, holding me close. She’s grinning against my face. “Even if being with me means you’ll never be rich, you don’t mind?”
There’s less than half an inch between her mouth and mine, and we’re both smiling. It’s not hot, but it’s exactly what I needed.
It’s sunshine.
It’s the promise of tomorrows filled with laughter.
Filled with a smiling Elizabeth.
“Not a bit,” I say. “As long as it means being with you.”
She starts laughing then, and she spins in a circle, the dogs racing around her feet in confusion. “Is this real?”
When she stops, her eyes are bright, and her smile is broad, and none of it looks feigned.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Every night for almost two weeks, I’ve dreamt that you came to see me. That you told me that you wanted to date me for real.”
I take the leashes from her carefully, and I drag my free hand down the side of her face, my fingers curling around her smile. “I should have come every single day, but I was waiting on something.”
“Something?” She turns and presses a kiss against my hand.
“Real dating has a lot more kissing than fake dating did.” I’m the one smiling now. “I like it.”
“The fake dating was never fake to me,” she whispers.
And my heart goes nuts. “Me either.”
I almost drop the leashes when I kiss her this time. Luckily, the dogs are both so fixated on bouncing up on our legs, I doubt they’d have even noticed.
Finally, a honking horn from some enthusiastic onlooker reminds me that we’re standing on the street.
“What did you want to show me?” Elizabeth bites her bottom lip that’s now much brighter pink than before.
“How far can these guys walk?” I ask.
She frowns. “Not super far.”
“To your old shelter?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t really want to see—”
“Then let’s carry them.” I don’t wait for her to ask. I just pick up Floof and start walking, Boba trotting along behind.
Elizabeth catches me pretty quickly and picks him up. “Seriously, Emerson.”
But no matter how much she bugs me, I don’t cave. I don’t explain why we’re going or what she’ll see. I just keep walking, my toe blister complaining. I ignore it, and then we come around a corner, and it’s there.
“Oh.” Elizabeth stops. “It’s not—they didn’t demolish it yet?” She frowns. “I thought. . .” Then her eyes widen.
She’s noticed the sign. “What’s going on?”
“My grandmother and I actually did make up,” I say. “But one of my stipulations was that she had to carve out the shelter and donate it to your charity.”
“She had to. . .what?”
“She agreed, but only if we brought it up to standard. Since the warehouse will be right behind it, she wanted them to look similarly new and nice.” I tilt my head, watching her carefully.
“To donate it. . .” She inhales sharply. “I’m having trouble keeping up, Emerson.”
“Richmond Steel is proud to present the Posh Pets Richmond Steel Shelter.”
“Wait.”
“She really wanted it to say Richmond Steel on it,” I say. “But she agreed to donate four thousand dollars a month for the next three years in exchange for that, so I thought it was worth it.”
“But—”
“As the manager and owner of the Posh Pets Charity, you’ll need to come in and sign all the papers for it to be official, of course, but it’s all ready for your signature, and I believe you have. . .” I glance at the date on my watch. “Four more days until the first of the pets you surrendered would run out of time.”
Tears stream down Elizabeth’s face.
“I thought you’d see the sign and call me,” I say. “But then you never did. That’s why my plan broke down.”
“That’s why you waited.”
“Well, it took a week or so to get things repaired and repainted, and getting the sign made, even expedited, was annoyingly slow, but then, yes. That’s why I waited.”
“You wanted me to come to you?” There’s a new glint in her eyes.
“I mean, I thought it would be nice.”
“But then, what was with the ‘even if I never have money’ nonsense?”
“When Lisa thought I was poor, she was pretty upset,” I say. “I thought it was nice that you didn’t seem to mind.”
“I’ve never really enjoyed looking rich,” she says.
“Underneath everything else, I’ll always be a Toyota Corolla. No matter how many expensive clothes or haircuts or facials I get.”
“It’s a good thing I like Toyotas,” she says.
“I guess it is.”
After we go inside the shelter, she lets the dogs off their leashes, and I can finally kiss her without interruption. I shouldn’t have waited an extra week, but it was worth it.
The next morning, after our first meeting of the day ends, Grandmother stops me. “You stay.” Usually she digs through piles of paperwork before the strategy meeting at eleven. But when I frown, she points to the chair across from her desk. “Sit.”
I listen. Because everyone listens to Catherine Richmond.
“Tell me.”
I swallow. “Tell you. . .what?”
“Something happened. You’ve been smiling like a halfwit all morning.”
“You really have a way with words,” I say. “When you finally retire, you should try writing a romance novel. I hear grumpy sunshine is a really big trope these days—”
“Stop babbling.” She presses her hands together in front of her and leans closer, her eyes focused. “You talked to Elizabeth.”
Okay. “That’s creepy.”
“Or, maybe I have someone following you.”
I shoot to my feet. “Are you kidding?”
She shakes her head. “I took them off you last week.”
“Wait.” I sit back down, unsure how upset to be. “So, you did have someone following me, but now you don’t?” I arch one eyebrow. “You—no one would even believe this if I told them.”
“What?” She leans back in her chair, her eyes never leaving my face. “That I would keep tabs on my greatest asset and my largest liability? It would have been irresponsible not to. The board could have had me dismissed.”
I roll my eyes.
“So, what is it? Why are you so happy?”
I bite my lip.
“Are you really not going to tell me?”
“Are you asking as my grandmother or as my boss?”
She frowns. “Is there a distinction?”
Now I’m really laughing. Since I have a favor to ask, I turn around and walk out, shaking my head. I know her a lot better than I did, because exactly fifteen seconds later, I hear her stand. The clicking of her heels on the tile floor sounds exactly like I knew it would. “Emerson, wait.”
I turn around slowly.
“Please tell me.” She looks much nicer, now.
“I might need a favor.”
“You’re holding this information hostage?” She narrows her eyes.
I shrug.
“I’m proud of you.” She nods. “Never give anything of value away for free.”
I still don’t reply.
“What do you want?” She circles back to her desk and perches on the edge of her seat. I know this face, too. She’s ready to play hardball.
“You have to agree first,” I say. “Telling you what I want will tip my hand.”
Her sigh is significant. “What’s the upper limit?”
“A hundred and fifty grand,” I say.
She arches one eyebrow. “Fifty.”
I shake my head, and then I slowly smile, since that’s what baited her to begin with.
She slams her hand down on her desk. “A hundred.”
“Done.”
She scowls.
I should have made her work a little more. Shoot.
“Alright.” She leans forward again. “Out with it.”
“I need to buy a top level jumper.”
“A top level—” She swears under her breath. “It is Elizabeth.” Now she beams. “I should have known.”
“Do you regret making our bargain?”
She shakes her head. “But I’ll give you the original ask. We can’t have our girl competing on a jalopy.”
“Wait, there’s a heart in there?” I lean against the doorframe. “I ran into her last night.”
“And finally showed her the shelter, I take it?”
I nod.
“So it went well.” Her smile is almost as big as mine was.
“It went really, really well.”
Her expression returns to blank and she straightens, focusing on her paperwork, straightening it. “That’s great to hear. Now, if there’s nothing else.”
I suppress my smile. She may not be great at expressing herself yet, but she’s learning. I’m on my way out again when she calls out.
“Emerson?”
“Yeah?” I turn.
“Since I said I’d meet your initial ask. . .” She swallows.
“What?”
“If you happen to have any photos, I’d like one.”
Her office is the most severe room I’ve ever entered. It’s stark—black. White. Red. If rooms could cut, it would shred the people who come inside. “How about a photo right now?”
Her shoulders droop. “I don’t understand.”
But I’m already striding toward her desk. I circle to her side, and I pull her to her feet. Then I wrap an arm around her shoulder and snap a selfie.
It’s the worst selfie I have ever seen in my life. “And now I have a new bargaining chip.” I whip my phone around to show her.
Her eyes are sideways, her mouth half-open to protest.
“Emerson Duplessis Richmond,” she says.
“You know, I’ve never had a middle name,” I say. “But I was thinking. If we change my name, maybe Emerson Alistair Duplessis Richmond.”
Tears well up in the corners of Catherine Richmond’s eyes, and she nods. “That was my father’s name.”
That figures. It sounds like an old man. “I’m sure he was as horrible as you.”
“Worse.” Now she’s laughing. So I snap another photo.
This one’s pretty good.
I text her that one and a few of Elizabeth and me from the night before. “That should get you started.”
“Think about what you might want from me to convince you to pose for some actual portraits,” she says.
I lean over her desk. “Grandmother.”
She meets my eye.
“I’d need you to ask. That’s what family is, remember? The whole bargaining thing was a game. Right?” I lift my eyebrows and compress my lips. “It’s all for fun.”
For some reason, her eyes well with tears again, but she nods. “Yes. You’re right.”
“Name the day, and I’ll be there. But only if you’re in them with me.”
“You could bring that David and Seren too, if you really wanted to.”
I consider asking her about the siblings, but just including Mom and Dad is already a big concession from her. “Sure. That would be nice.”
When I leave, I pretend not to see her wiping her eyes with a tissue.
But when I reach my office, I have no chill left. I call the number I got from Victoria right away.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” I say. “My name is Emerson Du—Richmond.”
“Hello, Emerson DuRichmond.”
I laugh. “Just Richmond, actually.”
“Catherine’s young grandson?”
“That’s me,” I say.
“Do you know who you’re calling?”
I sigh. “It’s a strange call, and I’m sorry if you find it upsetting. But you see, my girlfriend sold her show horse because she had no other choice.”
“Elizabeth Moorland?”
“Exactly. I heard you won on him a few weeks ago, and I’m sure you love him, but I’m hoping you’re willing to sell him back to me, because—”
“Emerson.”
“Yeah?” My heart sinks. The way she said my name wasn’t exactly encouraging.
“I have some bad news, son.”
Why do rich people always call me son? “I don’t like bad news. Could we skip it and go straight to the good news?”
She sighs. “I’m afraid in this case, there isn’t a lot of good news.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t sell you Elizabeth’s horse, because there’s been an accident. Hottie can’t jump anymore. In fact, I’ve pretty much decided the best thing is to put him down.”