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Chapter Five
Zoe had hated being married. Or maybe she’d just hated being married to Todd. But it’s not like her parents hadn’t given her a roadmap for the misery of marriage in the first place. Why she’d chosen to ignore everything she’d seen with her own eyes and chosen to believe that things would be different with Todd still confounded her. She could only chalk it up to a temporary lack of sanity.
Maybe her bad decisions had just been a moment of crisis as she’d turned thirty. So she’d let Todd sweep her up in the romance of it all, not paying any attention to the red flags that had been waving right in her face—like the fact she’d never been to his apartment or hadn’t known exactly what he did for a living. Consultant covered a lot of bases. Mostly unemployed freeloader in her experience.
The honeymoon phase wore off after the first three months. She’d spent the next six months trying to figure out how to untangle herself from the situation. And then she’d spent the next two years fighting for her livelihood and not letting him walk out with everything she’d worked for. But in the end the judge had ruled that she didn’t have to give him half of her intellectual property rights of every book she’d ever written. But she’d had to make some concessions for her freedom.
She stared at the text he’d sent and felt the knot in her stomach. For the next five years she’d be tied to him. He wanted his alimony payment early, because lo and behold, he was already out of money from last month’s deposit.
She did a couple of deep-breathing exercises that her therapist had suggested and felt the rage that came along whenever she had to deal with Todd dissipate. From the moment they met until the moment she’d kicked him out, they’d known each other less than a year. He was but a small blip in her life. But it was amazing how just the sight of his name popping up on her phone could incite such a reaction.
Once the rage left and the blood stopped pounding in her ears, it was replaced with the headache that had nagged her through a fitful sleep. There was a whine to her right and she tried to stretch her neck to see where it was coming from. And then she remembered. She had a dog.
“Well, Chewy,” she said, stretching out the kinks in her back. “I guess I haven’t given you much of a welcome. Thank you for not chewing up my furniture.”
He gave a soft woof and then unfolded his enormous body from the chair and padded toward her.
“You’re a little bigger than I had in mind when I decided to get a dog,” she confessed, scratching him behind the ears. “What did your owner feed you? Maybe we ought to cut it back a little.”
He growled low in his throat and turned his back on her. And then his head cocked to the side and he gave out a different kind of bark—almost a warning.
Zoe would have rolled her eyes, but her head was hurting too bad. Leave it to her to end up with a dog who thought he was human. And a man at that. In her experience, you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks once they were set in their ways.
Her stomach rumbled and Chewy gave her an embarrassed look.
“Hey, I haven’t eaten all day,” she told him. “A little less judgment please. A lot has happened today. My divorce was finalized this morning. Imagine that, after two years it’s finally over. And then to celebrate I got a haircut.”
She touched the back of her neck as she sat up on the couch, marveling at the feel of nothing but skin. “You don’t know what a big deal that is because you didn’t know me before, but believe me, I look very different than I did yesterday.”
Chewy woofed again and Zoe said, “Thank you,” deciding he was giving her a compliment.
“And then I got you,” she said. “And you know what happened after that.”
Chewy lay down on the floor and covered his face with his paws, whining.
“I forgive you,” Zoe said. “You were just excited. But we’ve got to work on listening to commands. I can’t go around with concussions all the time. That’s not conducive to creative book ideas.”
The sun was still up, but she could tell by the positioning over the mountains that it was late afternoon. She’d been asleep a few hours at least. And she wondered if it was too soon to take more ibuprofen.
Just as she’d swung her legs to the floor there was a knock at the door.
“Oh, no,” she said, looking at Chewy wide eyed. “I bet it’s the sexy doctor. They do not make doctors like that in New York. And what’s up with all the cheerfulness? I mean, who doesn’t get in a bad mood from time to time? Can you even trust a person who’s that good natured? The answer is no. There’s no man out there who’s just that ‘nice.’ With the exception of you, of course.”
Chewy made a sound like he was gargling marbles and padded over to the door, putting his paw on the knob like he was going to open it.
“Wait!” Zoe hissed. “Chewy, no. I’ve got to think. Dr. O’Hara is a scoundrel.” It sounded better in her head if she didn’t call him by his first name. She didn’t want to become too familiar. “I write about these men in my books, so I know how to recognize one. You’ll just have to trust me on that.”
Chewy put his paw down and looked at her like she was crazy.
“Did you see the way he looked at me when I asked him why he wasn’t tempted? You’d have thought we were standing naked in the garden with the serpent. I almost passed out on the spot. Do think he’s married?” She waved her hand in dismissal. “It doesn’t matter anyway because I’ve sworn off men forever.”
There was another knock at the door, and Zoe figured it would be rude not to answer. He knew she was here. Besides, he was a doctor, and he’d taken an oath to do no harm. And she wouldn’t put it past him to let himself in if she ignored him. He was a scoundrel after all.
* * *
Colt heard the knock on his door somewhere in his subconscious and groaned. It wasn’t often he regretted living in the quarters above the clinic, but this was one of those times. He scrubbed his hands over his eyes and put his feet on the pine floor. He looked at his phone for the time and grunted. He’d had five full hours of sleep. That was more than he’d had the last two days combined.
“I’ve got homemade lasagna,” his mother’s voice called out through the door.
