Dante knit his brows for a moment, and then pretended to be reasonable as he said, “Let me take him to my house. I have a fenced yard, he can stay there.”
“And are you going to shoot him as soon as you get him home?”
“No.”
“Are you going to shoot him before you get him home?” Dante looked guilty, and I said, “Thought so.” And then I noticed the clock on the stove and sighed. “Damn it. I need to be at work in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll take care of the dog,” Dante told me. “You go ahead and go.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, that you’ll take care of the dog.”
“I’m not going to shoot him. Not if you don’t want me to. I’ll just keep an eye on him for you.”
“You don’t have to stay with the dog,” I told him, loudly, over the constant growling. “We can just lock him up in here until I get home.”
“He’ll destroy the entire apartment if we do that,” Dante said. “I don’t have any pressing business to take care of today anyway, so I can stay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Go to work, Charlie.”
I hesitated for a long moment. I really couldn’t blow off my job, I’d only been working there a few days and didn’t want Jamie to think I was a total flake. And Dante had a point about the dog destroying everything in sight. “Well, ok.” I went and grabbed my wallet and keys, and Dante walked me to the front door and kissed my forehead.
The dog let out a long, moist-sounding fart, and I pressed my eyes shut and said, “That would be the gluten allergy. The diarrhea train’s going to be pulling into the station sometime in the next two minutes. I’d better call in to work.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
“Seriously?”
“Karma’s a bitch,” Dante said with a little grin, and pushed me out the door.
“Don’t kill the dog!” I called over my shoulder as I hurried down the hall.
Chapter Eight
Ok, so that had been pretty mean of me, leaving Dante with the dog from hell while I went off to work. I’d texted him repeatedly during my shift, and he kept assuring me that everything was going fine.
Still, I braced myself as I pushed open the door to my apartment four hours later. Since I wasn’t immediately rushed by a crazed canine, I stepped into the apartment calling, “Aw man! You killed the dog, didn’t you?”
My living room was filled with gorgeous furniture, but I turned my attention to Dante instead. He was coming out of the kitchen dressed in an old practice jersey and sweat pants of mine, both of which were soaking wet. He was barefoot, his dark hair tousled, and he wore huge leather gloves on each hand that extended up to his elbows. “Are those blacksmithing gloves?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face.
“Falconry, actually.” He put his gloved hands on his hips, a grin on his face. “Go ahead. Laugh. I know you’re dying to.”
“Nah. It’s too mean.” I crossed the room to him and kissed him, then stepped back and said, “Oh boy.”
Dante frowned at me. “I smell like wet dog, don’t I?”
“Big time. Don’t tell me you drowned Peaches in the bathtub.”
“I wish. But no, I washed the disgusting little zombie instead. I couldn’t take the smell.”
“The bath didn’t help at all, did it?”
“Not even a little.”
“Told you that smell was his breath. So where is the little shit?”
“He’s in his pen,” Dante said, inclining his head toward the kitchen.
“He has a pen?”
“Yup.”
“What kind of pen?”
“I think it’s meant to hold small livestock,” he told me.
“And you found a livestock pen where?”
“Same place I found the gloves,” Dante said as he tried to peel one off with some effort. Apparently falconry gloves shrunk up a bit if you got them wet.
I went into the kitchen and surveyed the situation. The whole room reeked of wet dog. Peaches was damp and dejected, behind bars in a little metal corral in the breakfast nook, the kitchen floor beneath him lined with some type of disposable kennel pads. There was a space heater pointed at him from outside the corral, and the window was open to let out some of the smell. I grinned and turned to Dante. “How did you do all of this? Did you leave Peaches unattended after all while you went and ran these errands?”
“I couldn’t, he’d destroy your home. I researched this stuff online, then texted a couple of my men and they picked up the supplies.”
“You have men?”
“Employees.” Dante swore and gave one of the gloves a hard yank, and finally it peeled off.
“Yeah, I get that part,” I said with a grin. “Is the kitchen table in the living room now? I didn’t notice.”
“It is.”
“Along with an awful lot of new furniture.”