“What the fuck is that?”
Watching the creatures with a smile on her face, Lottie sighed, “I’ve called them Burt and Ernie. Aren’t they adorable?”
Looking up at my brother I saw a matching look of horror to the one I knew for sure was on my own face. “You bought yourself pet rats?”
Standing up, Ariana walked slowly over to where Archer was still balanced. “No, brother, she bought them for you.”
This time, I aimed the look down at Lottie. “You bought me rats?”
I hated rats. I wasn’t afraid of them, but they were nasty bastards who reproduced at an unnatural rate. When I was a kid, I was in the stables helping clean out the horses – one of the few times I ever did it – with one of Dad’s friends. He was digging with his fork in the corner of the box when a freaking massive rat jumped out at him and he raised his fork just in time to protect himself. To this day I swear it was going to attack him, but it ended up impaling itself on one of the tines of the fork. At the time Ariana had a pet rat called Rastus, and I never looked at it the same way again. Ironically, Rastus escaped, so these might even be related to him.
Getting up, Lottie walked over to them and bent down to pick one up before I could stop her.
“They’re not rats,” she murmured, cradling it to her chest and walking back over to where I was sitting. “They’re miniature Daschunds.”
I started to lean backward as she held it out to me until this tiny little face peaked over her fingers and I saw what she was saying. As soon as it saw me, it tried to climb out of her hands to get to where I was sitting staring at the adorable little guy now. I’m a man, just a normal man, but inside I was kind of melting at the cuteness overload in front of me.
Reaching out to touch its ear, I chuckled when it quickly turned to lick my finger. “You should have told me you wanted a dog, Lottie. Wait, did you say you got two? Where did the other one disappear to?”
And there began the hunt for the missing Daschund. When it didn’t answer to everyone calling its name, we split up into teams and started searching inside and outside. It wasn’t until an hour later when I was walking out of the second search in my den for it, that I heard little whimpers and found him underneath the couch.
I could only just get my hand under it, so I had to lift it up and balance it with one hand while I grabbed it with the other.
Holding him up in front of my face, I muttered, “How did you get under there?”
“Holy shit, you found it?” Archer rumbled behind me. “You need to call that thing Red October or something, because even Sean Connery couldn’t have pulled that off.”
“Hey, Lottie,” Bonnie called, seeing us looking at the puppy who was now trying to lick my face. “We found him.”
What Archer had suggested gave me food for thought. He did have reddish brown fur that was dappled with white like his brother’s, and if my math was right he’d been born in October or thereabouts.
As Lottie joined us still carrying the other rug rat, I made my decision. “This is Red October, Red for short.”
A frustrated noise from the doorway was followed by, “See what you’ve done, Lily? You’ve broken everyone with your weird names.”
Not taking offense at what Ariana was saying, she just laughed. “I kinda like the name.”
Now we just had to think up a new one for the other one. I was thinking Rambo.Chapter FifteenCharlotteI was sitting on the floor with Red and Rambo, watching them both pulling on the same little rope toy. It was like tiny canine tug of war.
“Don’t you just love them?”
We’d only had them for three days, but in those three days I’d fallen head over heels in love with them. It was going to suck when Eric was caught and I had to go back to my own apartment. I’d get to see them and maybe I could babysit them on my days off, but it wasn’t the same as having them around.
Running his finger down the middle of my forehead, Levi picked up on my change in mood. “What’s causing that face?”
“Can I babysit them on my days off when I go back to my apartment?”
Pulling his hand back, he thought about what I’d just asked. “You can’t go back, Lottie. Not while Eric’s still hiding.”
Yup, all of this time, all the people out there looking for him, and the ass breather still hadn’t been caught. Somehow, through the haze of drugs in his system he’d managed to evade everyone. The guy couldn’t stop himself getting caught fucking my best friend, but he could hide from the law?