Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(26)

“Look, maybe they were talking business. It was just coffee.”

Just coffee could lead to something else.

A truck rumbled up the driveway and Connor stood. He motioned the truck to where he was working and the driver answered with a wave. “My mulch is here. You helping, or you gonna stand there and sulk a while longer?”

“I’ll get a shovel,” Donovan said, not bothering to argue. He was sulking. Sulking because Scampi was sweet and kind and not only bighearted but all-hearted. She had no business having coffee with a dipshit like Scott Torsett.

With anyone.

Deciding to shake it off, he stalked behind the house and across the backyard to the shed. As he opened the padlock keeping the doors shut, he heard a whine come from the other side. He dropped his hand from the door and peeked around the shed to see the same dog he’d seen skulking around the house the night he’d arrived. He hadn’t spotted it since and had assumed the mutt had gone back to wherever it called home. Guess not.

“Go on,” he said, raising his voice. “Get out of here.”

The dog wasn’t as big as he’d first thought, skinnier than he remembered. It whined again. Throwing his arms wide, he brought his hands together in a loud clap.

“Get!”

The dog’s back legs trembled, which made him feel like a jerk for yelling, then it turned and started to limp away. Its fur was matted, the white filthy, the brown patches filthier. Pale blue eyes turned back to Donovan before it took what appeared to be another painful step.

Great.

Just what he needed.

Lowering to his haunches, he looked left, right, then behind him. Connor was chatting with the driver and gesturing hither and yon, paying them no attention.

“Guess you’re my problem, then?” he asked the dog.

From this vantage point, he could tell by the lack of equipment she was a she.

“Come on.” He snapped his fingers and she turned, one paw hovering in the air, and studied him warily. He was getting the idea females didn’t like him much. Seven years without experience in that endeavor, he supposed.

Softening his voice, he tried again.

“Come on, dog. Let me look at your leg.”

He lowered his head, coming eye-to-eye with her, then remembered how that was a threatening posture and lowered his face. He watched her feet as she crept over, one limping step at a time. She stopped about a foot away, stretched her nose forward, and cautiously sniffed.

He lifted his hand and let her sniff there, too. She did, the look in her eyes so forlorn, it cut him a little.

“See? Harmless,” he said of himself.

He scratched her under the chin, petted the front of her chest. He’d read somewhere dogs didn’t like to be patted on the head any more than humans, so he tried to respect her boundaries.

She responded by taking two steps closer. Running a hand down her flank, he felt ribs, a lot of them. A wad of white hair came out in his palm and he wondered if the amount of shedding was due to malnutrition, or because summer was coming. Either way, she needed brushing and was likely undernourished.

No collar, either. “Whose are you?”

She crept closer, nudging his other hand with a wet, black nose. After he stroked her coat a few more times, he risked inspecting the paw she’d been favoring. Sure enough, a jagged cut slashed across one pad. He couldn’t tell until he cleaned the wound if there was anything in it, or if it was a clean cut. She wasn’t actively bleeding, which meant the gash could be surface. To keep infection away, he’d have to pour some peroxide or alcohol on it.

Which would hurt like a bitch.

He knew all too well. The phantom sting of the burn echoed in his memory. How many times had he patched himself up after his father laid into him? Too many times. Made him somewhat of an expert at cleaning and dressing wounds, though knowledge of scar prevention had come later. A little too late, he thought as he looked at the star tattoo on his index finger. Most of his scars showed through the ink if anyone bothered to look closely. Most people didn’t.

“My loss, your gain,” he told the dog, giving her another scratch. She would have done better wandering into a veterinarian’s backyard, but he guessed he was the second best choice.

“You found the right guy.” Go figure.

Now to get her into the house. The back door was a good thirty yards from the shed. If he waited to coax her inside a few inches at a time, it’d take all day. He’d have to carry her. For several minutes, he sat on the ground and stroked her, talking to her gently and earning more palms full of fur for his efforts. She began to trust his touch more and more.

Shockingly, when he stood to his full height she didn’t bolt, and even more shockingly, when he bent to lift her, an arm under her rump and one under her chest, she let him.

The bones protruding from her wasting body pressed against his chest. Poor thing. Hungry. Dirty. Bleeding. And at first, he had tried to scare her away.

His heart lurched.

She whined against him as he approached the back patio door.

“I know, girl,” he soothed as he carried her into the utility room and closed the door behind him.

Minutes later, he hunched over the shower with a sliding door in the utility room, dunked a cup into a bucket he’d filled with warm water and poured it over the shaking, skinny dog.

She was thin, hungry, and now that her foot was wet, bleeding heavily. A trail of red swirled off her paw and down the drain. He’d be quick about the bath, then bandage her.