This bought him another “woo woo woo.”
“Okay, okay.” Mick picked up the ball, and because there was a lot of old-man dog pride on the line here, he gave it a dramatic throw, making sure it went only about twenty feet.
Coop gave an energetic leap. A single energetic leap. After that, he eyeballed the sea of sand ahead of him, huffed out a sigh, and sat. Then he craned his big, fuzzy golden head and gave Mick a sad-eyed look.
“Are you kidding me?” Mick asked him.
Coop lay down, set his head on his front paws, and stared forlornly out at the ball that his brain wanted to chase but his sore joints and tired body wouldn’t allow. It was a daily reminder for the dog, who in his own mind clearly wasn’t elderly, forgetful, or more than half deaf. Nope, in Coop’s opinion, he was still a rambunctious, energetic puppy.
Mick blew out a sigh and fetched the damn ball. When he came back, the dog sat up, eyes bright, tongue lolling.
“Not a chance,” Mick said on a laugh. “I’m not throwing it again. This was about your exercise, not mine. I already had my run today.”
A Lexus pulled up. A woman sat behind the wheel and stared out at the dunes and the ocean. All Mick could see of her was a cloud of whiskey-colored waves of hair and a pale face. She stared at the water and then set her head to the steering wheel and banged it a few times.
Then, head still down, she went utterly still.
Coop whined about the ball and nudged Mick’s knee, eyes pleading.
With a head shake, Mick threw the ball five feet.
Coop happily pounced on it.
While his dog pranced around proudly, ball in his mouth, Mick turned back to the car. The woman hadn’t moved. Had she knocked herself out? Was she still breathing? “What do you think?” he asked Coop. “Stay out of it, or ask her if she’s okay?”
Coop, who’d never been impressed by a single one of the women in Mick’s social life, yawned.
“Right,” he said. “Stay out of it.”
But the woman suddenly sat up straight and fumbled her way out of the car, falling to her knees on the rough gravelly asphalt, gulping in air like she was suffocating.
Realizing she was hyperventilating, Mick rushed to her and crouched at her side, having to push Coop back from making her acquaintance—which he tended to do with a rude nose push to the crotch. “Stay,” he ordered and looked the woman over.
Young. Late twenties maybe. Definitely having a panic attack of some kind. Not touching her, he spoke quietly and calmly. “Take a deep breath through your nose.”
She had to quiet herself to hear him, but she did as he said. She took a deep breath, shuddery as it was.
“Good,” he said, still holding Coop back from trying to say hello. “Stay.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Sorry, not you. My nosy-ass dog. Keep breathing. That’s it,” he said when she worked at it.
When she had it under control, she met his gaze, her own eyes hooded and clearly embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Coop, tired of being held back, shoved his big old head between them and licked her from chin to forehead. Mick palmed the dog’s face and pushed his head away from the woman whose shoulders were now shaking.
Aw, hell. He patted his pockets—for what, he had no idea. It wasn’t like he carried tissues or napkins on him to offer her. He rose to his feet to go search the truck, which was when she lifted her face and he saw that she was shaking with laughter, not tears.
She was laughing at his ridiculous dog.
Then she ran a hand down Coop’s back and that was it. The dog fell in love, sliding bonelessly to the ground to roll over, exposing his belly and all his manly bits—well, the bits he still had after the vet had finished with him years and years ago now.
“Ignore him,” Mick said and offered her a hand to pull her up to her feet.
Instead, she bent over Coop, stroking his belly. “What a good boy,” she murmured softly. “You’re just the sweetest thing, aren’t you?”
Coop ate it up, sighing in utter bliss, and . . . farted.
“Sorry,” Mick said, fanning the air with his hand. “He’s old.”
Coop sent him a reproachful look and then went back to smiling at the woman, who laughed softly and kissed his dog right on the snout. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispered. “You’re still the sweetest thing. Yes, you are.”
Coop agreed with an ongoing tail wag, stirring up the sand.
The woman stood on her own and sighed before meeting Mick’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“You okay?”
“Always.”
He arched a brow and she shrugged. “Sometimes you have to fake it until you make it, you know?”
As he did indeed know, he nodded.
“And sometimes in the faking, I panic.” She looked away, taking in the now-setting sun. “What you saw was just a long overdue panic attack, but I’ve got it handled now.” She bent and kissed Coop again, on top of his head this time. “And thanks to you too,” she whispered. Then she got into her car and drove off.
Sitting at his feet, Coop watched her go and let out a soft whine.
Mick, who at the ripe old age of thirty-two was far too jaded and cynical to whine after a woman, opened the door to the truck. “Can you make it?”
Coop tap-danced on his paws like he was going to jump, but didn’t. Instead he whined at Mick.
“You don’t want to even try?”
The dog took a step toward the truck as if to jump, but limped now as he looked back at Mick.
Mick sighed and picked up the hundred-and-fifty-pound oaf. “You’re going on a diet,” he said and buckled Coop in.
An hour later, Mick stood in the garage of his childhood home, trying to shrug off his frustration. Hard to do when just being here exhumed all his deeply buried resentments.
There were tools, boxes of decades-old crap, outdated cans of dried-up paint stacked high, and pretty much every garden hose his dad had ever bought, despite half of them being cracked or riddled with holes. The old man hadn’t thrown a single thing away in all the years he’d lived here.
And now Mick was stuck with straightening out every mess the guy had left, including his sorry finances.
Mick kicked aside a tarp and found a stack of kindling for the woodstove they’d had in the living room—twenty years ago. It had long ago been converted to gas and he’d bet that under the wood lived a very large, very fat family of field mice who probably spent their days wreaking havoc in the walls.
Perfect.
“Honey? Where are you?”
The sound of his mom’s voice flashed him back to when he’d been twelve, hiding out in here, stealing materials for the bike track he’d built in the field behind the house, complete with the ramps and jumps he’d used to shatter his collarbone with that summer.
“Micky?”
With a grimace for the nickname he hated almost as much as this house, he called out to her. “In the garage.”
Audra Hennessey appeared in the opened door holding two tall glasses of what he knew to be her fresh lemonade. Hers would be liberally laced with her also homemade moonshine.
She’d been working hard at pickling her internal organs for a couple of months now. Four, to be exact.