“So you kiss all the store clerks then?”
He rolled his eyes. He and Tabby weren’t complicated. They were friends, with the very occasional added “benefits,” but neither of them were interested in more. “Tabby’s not in the picture.”
“Does she know that?”
“Here’s an idea,” he said. “How about you make it my Christmas present to stop with the twenty questions?”
She turned to the window, shoulders squared.
Ah, hell. Now he felt like an asshole, but he had to admit, he did appreciate the silence.
About an hour up the highway, the rain turned to slush. He knew it wouldn’t be much longer before they hit snow, which didn’t bother him any. He’d grown up driving off-road vehicles and boats, and his dad often proudly said Max could drive a semi into an asscrack. And it was true, he could drive anything anywhere under any conditions. Where the danger and unknown came in was from the other idiots on the road.
Luckily tonight there was a shortage of them. They had the roads to themselves, probably because only the hearty would even dare try to be out in this insanity.
At the halfway mark, he stopped for fuel. Before he pumped gas, he tried to take Carl out, wanting him to do his business now so they wouldn’t have to make another stop. “Let’s go.”
Carl curled up tight on his seat, eyes closed, playing possum. Carl didn’t like snow very much. Max looked at Rory.
Rory shrugged.
“Come on,” he said to Carl. “This’ll be your last chance for a few hours.”
Nothing from Carl.
“Now,” Max said.
Carl, still not opening his eyes, only growled low in his throat.
From the passenger seat, Rory chuckled. “Is it like looking in a mirror?” she asked.
“Funny.” Except not. He lowered his face to the dog’s. “If you get up right this minute, I’ve got a doggie cookie—”
Before he’d even finished the sentence, Carl jumped up and out of the truck without a backward glance. “How about you?” he asked Rory. “You need a pit stop?”
She looked out the window into the snowy mess. “I’m good.”
“Not even for a doggie cookie?”
She smiled but shook her head.
Whatever. Not his problem.
She did, however, try to give him cash for gas when he came back with Carl, which Max flatly refused. He knew she was strapped, that she barely made ends meet. He also knew he was lucky as hell to have a great job with great pay, and yeah, that great pay was because his job could be dangerous, but he was good at what he did. And even if he hadn’t landed a great job that he loved, he had his family. The entire nosy bunch would do anything for him and he knew it.
Rory didn’t have that kind of support. She’d had it rough growing up. Her dad had never been around and her mom had remarried when Rory had been young. Her stepdad was a good guy, but 100 percent no-nonsense. He could be a real hard-ass, a stickler for obedience and all that. Rory had three half sisters, all sweet kids but quiet and meek.
Rory was the opposite of quiet and meek, and she hadn’t fit in. As far as he knew, she’d left school after their junior year and had never been back. And after what she’d done to him, he’d told himself he’d been more than fine with that.
But it didn’t mean that he hadn’t worried more than a little bit. Or that he wasn’t aware of how hard it was for her to make it on her own, in San Francisco no less, a very expensive city. She worked at South Bark Mutt Shop and she also went to night school, and he knew she lived with a couple of roommates and still barely made ends meet. He didn’t like to think about how she must struggle just to keep food in her belly. So no, he wasn’t about to take her damn gas money.
He’d just started pumping the gas when his phone buzzed an incoming call. Willa ran South Bark and was Rory’s boss. She was also the one who’d asked him to give Rory a ride to Tahoe, clearly having no idea that Max and Rory had gone to school together and had history. A bad history.
“How’s the ride going?” Willa asked.
Max leaned against his truck. “Well, we haven’t killed each other yet.”
Willa didn’t laugh.
“You know I’m kidding, right?” Sort of . . .
“Max.” Willa’s voice was quiet. Serious. “There are things I probably should’ve told you about Rory.”
“You mean about the chip on her shoulder?” he asked wryly. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“She’s earned that chip, Max. The hard way.”
“And let me guess. You’re going to fill me in.”
“She’s smart, so smart, Max. She’ll fool you if you let her.”
He shook his head and hunkered beneath the overhang, trying to avoid getting snow in his face while he waited for his gas tank to fill. “What does that even mean?”
“She’s been with me for six years—”
“Working in your shop, I know,” he said, impatient to get out of the snow, back in the truck and on the road.
“But what you don’t know is how she came to me.”
Actually, he did. Rory had pretty much ran away from home and—
“It was late one night,” Willa said. “I was on a walk through the Marina Green when I found a girl in the park, sick as a dog from a drug someone had dumped in her drink.”
Max froze. This was something he didn’t know, although he wished he had because he’d have gladly hunted down the asshole who’d drugged her and he’d have—
“I’m not telling you this to make you mad,” Willa said quietly. “I just want you to understand the chip.”
He let out a long, purposeful breath. “What happened?”
“I took her to the hospital, helped her recover from events that she can’t remember to this day, and gave her a job. But it wasn’t easy. It took her a long time to learn to trust me.”
Imagining what she must’ve suffered and reeling from that, Max couldn’t even speak.
“Basically, I bullied her back to life,” Willa said. “And lately she’s been really . . . okay. Even happy.”
Max knew this to be true. He’d seen Rory in the courtyard of their building, smiling and laughing with friends. He’d seen her with the animals in Willa’s shop, specifically with Carl, who loved and adored her. And the reason he kept seeing her was because in spite of himself, he’d been drawn to her and he’d made sure their paths crossed. Often.
Shit.
He peered inside his truck, expecting to see Rory hunched over her phone, but there was no phone in sight. Instead she had her head bent to his dog, who was in her lap. All 100 plus pounds of him, big head on her shoulder.
He went back to the overhang. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked Willa.
“Because I know there’s something between you. A chemistry. We’ve all seen it, Max, the way you come by the shop with Carl for more groomings than you need, making sure to do it when Rory is there.”
“Maybe I just love my stupid dog,” he said, not happy to hear that he’d been that transparent when it came to his uncomfortable and complicated feelings for Rory.
“Oh, I know that’s also true,” Willa said smugly. “But that’s not why you tip her so much. Look, I can tell by your tone I’m annoying you, so let me make it count. I know that you’re trustworthy or you wouldn’t be working for Archer. I guess I’m just hoping you can also be . . . gentle.”