Page 55 of The Woman Left Behind

Pete was her husband. He owned the Double D. And he, like Polly was a mom, was a dad to anyone who knew him.

“But I’d hear murmurings,” she continued. “Some of the men, it went against the grain. But if your boss tells you to do something?—”

“If your boss tells you to terrorize a woman and her husband because he wants to get into her pants and she won’t let him, you quit, and then you report that boss to someone who can stop his shit,” Harry ground out.

“I’m not excusing them, I’m explaining. And you’re transferring, because of Av and your feelings for Lillian.”

“Fuck yeah, I am,” he clipped.

“He’s gone, Harry,” Polly said gently.

“You can’t ever get that kind of stain out. She wouldn’t make an official statement because she’s still scared of Dern.”

Polly’s lips thinned.

“Fuck,” Harry muttered.

“Go have a cookie,” Polly suggested.

Christ.

“You run. You lift weights,” she reminded him. “You’re generally active all the time. You can have a cookie when it isn’t Christmas, Harry Moran. You won’t get a gut. Food is soothing.”

“It’s just when you think food is soothing, you get a gut.”

“Not if a pretty woman made you cookies, and you eat just one, for heaven’s sake.”

Harry scowled at her.

“Go on, get a cookie and then get to work,” she ordered.

Polly was totally the boss of this station, he just held the title.

Harry left and he didn’t go to his office.

He went to get a damned cookie.

And fuck him, after he ate it, he felt better.

FOURTEEN

Marie Antoinette

Harry

That evening, his dogs going crazy told Harry Lillian had arrived.

He and his pups moved through his house and out to the front door. When he got to his porch, he saw her parking her dark-blue Subaru, which was at least seven years old, next to his truck.

His pups raced toward her car until Harry put his teeth to his lip and whistled.

They stopped dead and sat, long tails sweeping the grass, tongues lolling with excitement, eyes locked on Lillian getting out of her car.

His dogs were social, but Harry didn’t often have company.

Something else that needed, and was going to (imminently), change.

Lillian had a bottle cradled in her arm with a big bow on it.

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