Page 18 of Heart Me Up
“Hi, you must be Greg.” I walked toward him and stretched out my hand. “I’m Foster Walkoviac.”
He gave me a polite smile and a firm, businesslike grip. As he released my hand, I gestured at Amy. “This is my partner, Amy Palmer.” Amy came over to do the handshake thing too. Greg gave her a much warmer smile.
I guessed that answered the question of whether Craig had told Greg about how I’d abandoned him last night. Shit.
Best to head this off at the pass. “I just wanted—”
Amy interrupted. “I’m gonna head back out to the car and make some phone calls while you two talk.”
“Okay,” Greg said. “It was nice to meet you.”
Amy hesitated. “Hey, how old do teenagers have to be to work here?”
Greg gave her the friendly version of his smile again and said, “We go by state law, so at least 14 years old.”
Amy grinned like she’d found a hundred bucks in the pocket of an old coat. “Mine are 15 and 16. I think they’ll be applying for some weekend work soon.”
“Great, we can always use part-timers and on-call help. Melanie can give you the link for our online application.”
Amy walked over to talk to Melanie. Greg turned his head and stared at me. Hard.
Okay, well, I was glad Craig had a friend who was looking out for him. But I’d done nothing wrong.
“I didn’t mean for Melanie to bother you,” I told him. “She said Craig’s not here, so I was hoping I could leave him a note.”
Greg considered me for a moment, then said, “Sure.” He waved me toward the office. “Follow me.” Huh. Was he planning to watch me write the note?
We entered the office, and I sat in the guest chair again. Craig’s desk was messier than it’d been on Wednesday. I couldn’t tell if the papers were the same, but the tennis balls and coffee mug were gone and instead a pile of feathery cat teasers and catnip mice spilled across his closed laptop. Greg’s desk was as immaculate as before. He sat down and stared at me expectantly.
I cast around before gesturing at Craig’s chaos. “Um, would it be okay if I borrowed a pen? Do you have some paper?” There had to be some unused sticky notes somewhere under the piles of papers and cat toys, but I couldn’t see any.
“Sure,” Greg said, but he made no move to find any for me. Was this some sort of power play? I didn’t have time for that shit.
I waited a beat longer, then stood back up and dug around on Craig’s desk until I found a pen. I picked up one of the smaller stacks of paper and asked Greg, “Which of these is it safe for me to write on?”
Greg shrugged. “I have no idea.”
I rolled my eyes and poked around some more. I didn’t want to leave a sticky note, but I would if I had to. Only… “Where do the sticky notescomefrom? Like, the blank ones.”
Greg let out a laugh. “His desk is a mystery to all of us, sorry. But it works for Craig.”
The sticky notes I could see were new since my visit on Wednesday, so Craig must have some system for getting things done. Which reminded me of something.
I pivoted toward Greg right as he pulled a sheet of Bark & Purr letterhead and an envelope out of his desk. He handed them to me with an aggrieved sigh. “If I waited for you to find something to write on over there, you’d never leave.”
“Thanks.”What a dick.“But maybe you can answer a question for me. I meant to ask Craig the other day, but I forgot.”
Greg leaned back in his desk chair, steepling his fingertips together and raising one eyebrow like an uber-handsome Bond villain. “Something to do with Corrina Richards and her surprisingly healthy status?”
“No.” I walked back to Craig’s desk and sat in his chair. I pushed a few items aside to make room to write my note. No matter how messy it was, I was way more comfortable at this desk than at Greg’s sterile one. “No, I noticed on Wednesday Craig had a sticky note to buy lube. What does a pet resort use lube for?”
Greg’s eyes lit up and his smirk was back. I was giving even odds as to whether he was going to bullshit me or make some sex joke, but he held up two fingers. “Two reasons, the most frequent being rectal thermometers. We occasionally need to check for overheating, and the pets don’t tend to appreciate having their temperature taken.” I winced and nodded. That made complete sense.
Greg’s face grew even more animated. “The other reason is rare, but it’s so interesting.” I was taken aback when he started gesturing with his hands to illustrate a dog’s penis and its foreskin, which was apparently called a sheath. I was dumbstruck even more when he enthusiastically told me how you had to make sure a dog’s penis never gotstuckextended out of its sheath. Um, ouch.
“Of course, we try to monitor for dogs humping other dogs, but sometimes employees are paying attention to something else happening in the yard and they miss it.” And apparently it didn’t matter if dogs were neutered or not. Greg made apfftsound and waved his hand in the air. “Having no balls reduces or removes their mating drive, but rubbing one out still feels good, you know?”
“Um, okay?” I was trying to pay attention to Greg’s little lecture on dog penis functionality, but I was also surprised at how much friendlier he’d gotten. The asshole persona he’d been trying to intimidate me with a few minutes ago was gone, and now I thought I was seeing the man who was Craig’s good friend.
