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Two weeks had passed since Faith had walked out of Vale’s office. She wouldn’t talk to him. Not that Vale blamed her, but the entire situation grew more and more ridiculous. How had he ended up on Steve’s side rather than his cousin’s in an argument that shouldn’t have been happening in the first place?
Sharon wouldn’t return his calls. Faith wouldn’t return his calls.
He rapped his knuckles against her apartment door yet again. Apparently, she wouldn’t answer the door at her apartment either.
Unfortunately an angry little lady had opened her apartment door and threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave.
“I need to talk to Faith,” he explained, frustrated that he’d been the one pushed away, he’d been the one left behind, yet here he was at her apartment door and yet again she was ignoring him.
When a tiny dog launched past the woman and attached itself to his ankle, Vale was the one yelping in frustration and pain. The dog might be small but his teeth were sharp and sank into Vale’s flesh with unerring ease.
“Don’t hurt him,” the woman squealed, coming after the beast Vale was trying to shake free without permanently mangling his leg in the process.
“Don’t hurt him?” Vale snorted, dancing around in effort to dislodge the dog. “What about me? This mutt is vicious.”
“Yoda, get back here,” the older woman called to the dog Vale had managed to free from his flesh but which was still latched on to his pants with tenacious determination.
Then what the woman had said sank in as surely as the dog’s teeth had.
“Yoda?” He glanced behind her. Sure enough. Apartment 907. The angry lady was Faith’s dog-sitter. “This is Faith’s dog.”
Vale smiled a devilish smile, knowing he wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not Faith took his calls or answered the door. She’d be calling him before the day ended.
Bending down, he scooped the dog into his arms, prepared for the pain that was sure to come in doing so. He wasn’t disappointed.
Sometimes getting what you wanted was a pain in the kisser. Or, as in this case, a pain in the arm.
He turned to the dog-sitter who scowled at him and was telling Yoda to “get him”.
“Tell Faith I have her dog. If she wants Yoda back, she knows where to find him.”
Faith blinked at her neighbor. “He did what?”
When Mrs. Beasley had burst into the tiny office space she’d rented, face red, chest puffing, eyes wild, Faith had feared for the elderly woman’s life.
“That handsome devil who you went away with, the one you’ve been moping around over, he dognapped Yoda!” Mrs. Beasley panted, her wrinkled hands fluttering against her heaving chest. “Call the police, now, so they can catch the scoundrel.”
“Sit down, Mrs. Beasley.” Sharon came over to the older woman, handed her a glass of water, and motioned to the empty chair she’d placed behind the exhausted woman. “You’re going to have a stroke if you don’t calm down.”
“I’m not going to have a stroke,” the woman denied, her face flushed with excitement. “We have to do something. That awful man has stolen Faith’s dog.”
“Hmm, he always did want a dog, but taking yours is a bit much, even for a Wakefield,” Sharon mused from beside Faith, both of them eyeing Mrs. Beasley with concern.
The poor woman really had been frantic when she’d burst into Faith’s new office a couple of blocks over from their apartment complex.
“Do you think we should call for an ambulance? You’re looking a little winded, Mrs. B.”
“An ambulance?” Mrs. Beasley stared at her as if she was daft. “We need the SWAT team, not a defibrillator.”
“It’s okay,” Faith assured her neighbor, taking her pulse and respirations. Tachypneic and tachycardic. She patted her neighbor’s shaky hand, motioned for Sharon to get her a blood-pressure cuff and stethoscope. “Vale won’t hurt Yoda.”
At least, Faith didn’t think he would.
“He might,” Mrs. Beasley cried. “Yoda could tell he was a rascally fellow and didn’t like him one bit. Even if he was dashing.”
Wasn’t it just like Vale to have caught Mrs. Beasley’s eye even while the woman had been threatening to have him thrown into jail?
“What did Yoda do?” Faith took her blood pressure. Slightly elevated at 140/90, but not too bad considering how upset the woman was.
