Until We Touch (Fool's Gold #15)(59)
But in her quiet moments, when she was alone, she wondered how she was supposed to move on with her life. How was she supposed to fall out of love with Jack and in love with someone else? Score sucked up all her time. While she hung out with her friends a lot, she rarely saw any man who didn’t work at Score, and the ones she did were engaged or married to her friends. While it seemed Fool’s Gold had a few good men around, she wasn’t meeting them. If only she’d been more excited about cowboy Zane.
Larissa confirmed Jack’s foursome for the Pro-am, answered a couple of emails from previous recipients of Jack’s largess on the transplant front and was about to start on putting away the clean linens that had been delivered when her cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Larissa? It’s Dan. We have an emergency. Remember the lady in Stockton with the chiweenies? We finally got in and it’s as we feared. We have a hoarding situation. It seems like she started out with the best of intentions and then it all got out of hand. We’re heading down within the hour.”
Larissa closed the linen cabinet and walked into the hallway. “What do you need?”
“Help with the dogs. We’re going to take the rescue van with us. That should hold most of the dogs. Two other people are bringing SUVs so we have enough cargo space. What we need is help walking, feeding and watering the dogs. It’s only going to be a day or so. We’ll meet in north Sacramento tomorrow morning at seven and then drive down. Her place is east of Modesto by about thirty miles. We’ll collect the dogs and drive them back here. Once they’re evaluated, we’ll get them into foster homes. We’re going to need help with that, too.”
She nodded. “I can be there at seven, no problem. As for fostering, just tell me how many dogs we’re talking about and I’ll find temporary homes.” She’d had great luck a couple of months ago with placing cats.
“You’re a lifesaver.”
Nothing that dramatic, she thought, but it was nice to be needed.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Larissa was on the road by six, heading to Sacramento. She met up with the small caravan that would make its way down to Modesto to rescue forty chiweenies and they started south. She was a little tired from not having slept that well, but she must not have been the only one who was lagging a little. Halfway to their destination, they all pulled into a Starbucks for a pick-me-up.
“It’s always the same,” one of the women was saying as Larissa joined the group. “Somebody thinks he or she can start breeding dogs, with absolutely no experience, of course. They get overwhelmed and suddenly they have fifty animals running around.”
“Are they charging her with something?” a man asked.
Dan shook his head. “No. She’s surrendering all the animals voluntarily, so she won’t be charged. The court will insist she not have more than two pets at any given time. If she has more, she can be charged with contempt.”
“If you ask me they should stick her in a too-small cage for a few months,” another woman said, her expression fierce. “Then we’ll see how she likes it.”
Larissa understood someone being overwhelmed. She just wished the woman in question had asked for help sooner.
The small caravan got back on the road. Larissa was the last car in the group. Radio reception wasn’t great but she managed to find an oldies station. The songs made her think of Kenny, who loved that kind of music. He would be in heaven.
Twenty miles from Stockton, her car started to make a strange knocking sound. She made it through Stockton and down to Modesto where everyone turned east onto a very narrow two-lane road. According to what she’d been told, they still had about twenty-five miles to go. She glanced down at her temperature gauge and saw the needle all the way in the red band. Seconds later steam or smoke or something equally upsetting started to pour from the hood of her car. She pulled over as best she could on the tiny road and watched the caravan drive away. Before she could turn off the engine, it stopped on its own and everything was ominously silent.
She couldn’t believe it. Really? This had to happen now? Not when she was driving in Fool’s Gold where she knew she could easily get her car fixed? She thought she was done messing up when she tried to help. After the whole incident with the snake and Angel, she’d vowed to be more careful with the type of creatures she got involved with. She was helping with chiweenies, for heaven’s sake. How could they hurt anyone? And her reward was a car breakdown?
But that was all distraction and she knew it. If her car wasn’t working right it was because she hadn’t bothered to keep up with servicing.
Her cell rang. She answered it.
“Hey, you okay?” Dan asked.
“I’m having car trouble,” she said. “Just go on without me. I’ll get back to Fool’s Gold somehow.”
“Will do. You still up for taking in dogs to foster? They won’t be ready for about two days.”
“No problem. Call when they are. I can place about eight with no problem.” There were plenty of people in town who had helped with her last cat rescue. She suspected they would be willing to foster cute chiweenies. She also thought Shelby might enjoy a temporary pet to make her feel at home. And Jack’s house was huge, so he could take several, especially with Percy to help her with the care.
Dan said he would be in touch and hung up. Larissa sat alone in the quiet of the Modesto wilderness and knew there was only one way out of her predicament.