Page 40 of Holding On To Good

But she sure wasn’t going to call him from here. She’d been humiliated enough in front of Reed Walsh for one night.

Chin lifted, shoulders back, she turned on her heel.

“No goodbye?” he asked dryly.

She considered flipping him off but kept walking, arms at her sides, fingers curled into her palms.

She had her pride.

Pride that took a nosedive when a huge dog raced up the steps and almost knocked her on her butt.

She took a stumbling step back, regaining her balance.

And the dog shoved its nose in her crotch.

“Seriously?” she asked the dog, God, and whoever else might be listening.

Not that it did any good. The dog kept right on familiarizing himself with her person in a very personal way.

“That’s not the polite way to greet someone,” she told him as she gently pushed his head aside. When he came right back for more, she snapped her fingers. “Sit.”

And he did.

The dog was big and sturdy with the square head and ears of a boxer and the sweet face of a Lab, his wet body quivering with the combination of excitement and cold. Mostly brown, he had patches of white on his trunk, hindquarters and muzzle.

White patches that’d caught the reflection of her headlights ten minutes ago.

“You,” she said to the dog. “This is all your fault.” He stopped quivering and lowered his head. “Oh, no. Don’t even bother with that woe-is-me routine. I’m the one with woes here. I have many, many woes all because of you.”

He whined and nudged her hand with his head.

“Fine,” she grumbled, giving in and bending to stroke between his ears. He thumped his tail against the wooden porch floor—thump, thump, thumpity thump. “But only because I know your bad behavior isn’t your fault.” Straightening, she faced Reed once again. “You shouldn’t let your dog run wild. It’s irresponsible.”

Great. She sounded as uptight and holier-than-thou as Miles when he was in lecture mode.

Could this night get any worse?

“He knows his way home,” Reed said.

As if to prove it, he tapped his fingers against the side of his thigh and the dog got up and trotted over to sit at his bare feet.

“Yeah?” she said, hands on her hips, completely over him, this conversation and the entire night. “He also knows his way onto the road. Take better care of him or I’ll report you to Animal Welfare.”

With that, she spun around again and stomped back across the tiny porch, down the steps and back into the rain, her phone starting to buzz again in her pocket. She should report him anyway, she thought, heading down the driveway. If there was one thing that really fried her potatoes, it was people not taking good care of their pets.

Except Reed’s dog hadn’t seemed neglected. And other than running into the road and sniffing her crotch, he had been well-behaved and obedient.

If she reported Reed for neglect, she’d be doing so purely out of spite, as some sort of revenge against him for being such a jerk. It’d be petty. Immature.

And she’d already gone that route by defining surly for him, as if he was so stupid he didn’t know what it meant.

This time, she’d take the high road.

And leave it up to Karma to make things right.

Reed stood on his porch, one hand on his dog’s head, and watched Verity Jennings do a stiff-legged march down his driveway.

In the rain.

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