Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1)(14)
“You see this?” Ida asked, waving the day’s issue of the St. Helena Sentinel at Shay while Norton gave Jabba a good butt sniff. “First that woman bans Norton and me from the Companion Brigade, claiming he isn’t a companion. And now this.” Ida pressed her thin lips into an angry line while her gray, spiky hair moved with each flip of the hand.
“Norton is a duck,” Shay reminded her, sending a gentle smile at Norton, who had waddled over to say good morning. Normally that consisted of a few beak nuzzles to the thigh and flopping on his back for a belly rub. But midnuzzle he heard the offensive term duck, and, preferring to be addressed as a companion like his doggie friends, looked up and—
Quark!
Quark! Quark! Quark!
—abandoned his greeting to instead waddle over and poop in Shay’s station.
“A duck who has spent more time socializing with dogs than Estella’s snooty Foxy Cleopatra.” Ida unfolded the paper and jabbed a bony finger at the front page. “Read.”
Shay looked down at the full-page article: MANHUNT TO MAN CANDY: HOW OUR SHERIFF HOPEFULS HANDLE THE CROWD. It had a photo of each candidate posted side by side. Deputy Warren had his arm around the once lost but thankfully found Giles Rousseau and looked as though he were heading up a joint task force with the fire department and Search and Rescue team. Whereas Jonah stood in front of a Cuties with Booties banner, surrounded by a sea of waving twenties, looking for the world as though he were about to rip off his uniform and shake his tail feathers for charity.
The article went on to praise the department in its rescue of Valley Vintage’s lost resident, at the same time promoting Shay’s calendar, which had Deputy Warren featured. It even went as far as to quote Shay about the success of the day.
“Deputy Jonah handled the crowd like a pro,” she read aloud and cringed. Yeah, unfortunately, she’d said that. Not that Nora had told her what the article was for when she’d called—or how bad it would make Jonah look.
No wonder he’d been absent this morning. He was probably handling the fallout of the article, explaining to his boss how he’d ended up in the center of a mob of drunken seniors cheering for their man candy. He didn’t seem to be the kind of guy to get angry over a silly photo. But it couldn’t be good for his campaign.
Jonah was obviously working hard to cement that upstanding superhero persona he had going on. And Superman did not strip for charity. A shame, since Jonah on her cover would have doubled her profits.
“I should go apologize,” Shay said, surprised at the unexpected need to see if he was all right. To make sure he didn’t blame her.
“Apologize?” Ida laughed. “For what?”
QuarkQuarkQuark. This from Norton, who was sitting on Jabba’s back as though trying to hatch him.
“I agree, dear,” Peggy said. “Best press that man’s gotten all year. He’s actually smiling. See.”
She saw all right. A double dose of dimples with a set of lips so kissable that Shay’s body zinged. Silly, since she’d long ago stopped believing in zing. Only there was a definite zinging going on in her belly—and lower.
“Damn.”
Quark!
“Watch your mouth. Norton’s been repeating what he hears and the grandkids are repeating him,” Ida explained, then pointed her bony finger at the bottom of the page with so much force she nearly punched a hole right through it. “But I was talking about this.”
At the bottom of the page was a color ad for Bark in the Park.
“They moved it to the last weekend in August,” Peggy said quietly from over Shay’s shoulder.
“What?” Shay looked at the date and felt her stomach hollow out. “But Bark in the Park is always the third weekend. Always.”
“Now it’s the same day as the big signing here,” Peggy said, resting a hand on Shay’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, dear. I know how much you were looking forward to this event.”
An event that, if this ad was accurate, was now irrelevant. Because, if Shay was honest with herself, and she always was, she knew that given the choice between attending a fifty-year tradition held by one of the town’s oldest families or a cookie and soda mixer with the town’s newest tumbleweed-transplant, Shay and her dogs would come in a cool second.
“I guess I’m going to have to change it,” Shay said as though it wasn’t a huge deal. As though she hadn’t already sent out a few hundred flyers. As though it wasn’t mentioned in the article above. Changing it now would be a major undertaking and Estella knew that. “She did it on purpose, to get me back for the calendar.”
“Oh boy,” Peggy said, her face going soft in that grandmotherly way that always had Shay sweating. Having people care about how she felt was unfamiliar and a little scary, because she was afraid that once she got used to it, the caring would go away. “Keep reading.”
Shay did, skipping past the list of vendors, the photo of Foxy dressed like Cleopatra and Estella like the Sphinx, reading the fine print under the last line.
“No peddling of pets allowed.” Shay looked up, a bad feeling settling in her chest. “What does that even mean?”
“It means that Estella bullied the Companion Brigade to change their policy on allowing breeders and rescues into the event,” Ida said. “She says it is about honoring companions, not selling them.”