Page 34 of This Baby Business
Stone winced. “We men have to do it with our shirts off.”
Sarah clapped her hands. “Finally, a fundraiser I can fully support.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” Cassie said.
“Don’t worry about shrinkage, either,” Emily said. “I checked the weather and we’re good.”
“Screw the weather. I’m not taking my shirt off unless Emily and Sarah wear bathing suits,” Levi said.
“Fair’s fair,” Jedd said.
Levi sat through the meeting, led by Emily, who happened to be an event planner for her family’s ranch when she wasn’t flying for Magnum. Last-minute assignments were discussed and dispensed, since she’d already taken care of most everything. Levi wound up tasked with picking up pet product donations such as shampoo and the like, because he was single. Zoey, the owner of Pimp Your Pet in Fortune, was apparently also single and super-cute according to Emily.
Not that she was trying to fix him up or anything. Still, that reminded him that he had promised to call Lily to follow up. He wasn’t too excited about it, but he’d promised. One date. He could do one date. But this fake engagement Carly had roped him into might put a crimp in that. At some point, he figured, he’d have to settle down. Just like he had to go to the dentist every six months. Painful but necessary. Then when he got his itchy feet, as he expected he would any day now and want to move on, he’d have both Grace and a woman to remind him he was stuck. No reason to rush into anything. He and Grace had managed fine so far without a woman to direct their every move.
He was insulted that Irene thought he had to be married to raise his child properly. To be trusted to do a good job. Anyone who believed that was stuck in the dark ages.
Before his day was over, Levi donated some flying time to Pilots and Paws by transporting a rescue dog. The pup he flew home from the Fortune Valley Shelter to his forever family in Washington was a Chihuahua mix, so nervous he peed everywhere, even managing to squirt all over Levi’s hand.
“Lucky for you, pup, I’m used to getting peed on.”
He landed at the regional airport and unbuckled the nervous dog. “All right, c’mon…” He took a closer look at the collar around his neck. “Bentley? That’s your name? Man, I’m sorry. Maybe you’ll have better luck with these new people. People in California need to figure out how to name their dogs.”
But when he got inside, an attendant told him that the people who were rescuing the dog hadn’t shown up. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
Holding the shaking pup and praying he’d already unloaded all the water inside him, Levi dialed Magnum on his cellphone. Cassie picked up the phone and after he explained what had happened, she handed the phone to Emily.
Who was crying.
“What the hell? What’s wrong?” Levi asked.
“They changed their minds,” she sniffled. “Oh, poor little Bentley.”
He glanced at the tiny face and swore the dog’s pupils were shaking. The whites of his eyes were showing. “You mean I flew all the fu—way here and now I have to bring him back?”
“It happens sometimes. Just bring him home. We’ll figure something out.”
He hung up. “Let’s go, Bent—you know what? Screw that prissy name. I’m going to call you Digger.”
His grandfather owned a dog named Digger. It wasn’t anything like this scrawny little thing Levi was afraid he might step on, but that dog had been a rescue, too. The only kind of dog his grandfather would ever own. Digger Sr. had been a retriever mix, a hunting dog that had never left his grandfather’s side. That’s the kind of dog Levi would get once Grace was old enough. A dog he couldn’t risk stepping on in a million years.
“The name’s a little badass for you, but I can’t call you Bentley.”
Digger Jr. shook all the way back to Fortune. Peed all over the seat, too. Levi wiped it up like he did Grace’s spit-up. It was official now. He’d never cleaned up this many bodily fluids in his life, and he’d been through boot camp. The terrified pup was small enough to fit inside his jacket, so Levi stuck him in the front of his lightweight windbreaker and zipped it up. Maybe it was the additional warmth, but it cut back on the shaking a little.
“Where’s the dog?” Emily met him at the entrance to the hangar. “Don’t tell me you left him there.”
Levi zipped his jacket down enough to reveal Digger’s trembling head, eyes wide enough to pop out of his head.
“Aw.” Emily smiled. “This is so great.”
“What’s so great? The forever family didn’t show up to claim him. And you were crying.”
“I know, but that was before.”
Stone walked out of his inner office. “Would never believe this if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? I thought you said this happens sometimes. The adoptions don’t always go through.”
