Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1)(15)
“I’m not selling them.” On average, she lost a few hundred dollars with each adoption, which was why she’d come up with the calendars to begin with. Every calendar sold helped to pay for vet bills and keep her fosters fed and housed until they went to their families. “And she can’t do that, not so close to the event,” Shay said, rereading the ad but knowing there was nothing she could do to change it.
Bark in the Park was run by the Companion Brigade, and Estella was their long-standing and much-respected president. If she said no peddling, then Shay was out of luck.
“Bark in the Park is my biggest adoption event of the year.” Shay felt her throat begin to close.
“That’s why she did it,” Peggy said, laying a hand on Shay’s.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Cutting out breeders and rescues cuts into the event’s profits.” Unlike pet owners, who could participate for free, people like Shay had to pay to play—a hundred dollars a pop. “She’d have to refund everyone’s money.”
“She already cut the reimbursement checks. Justified it by saying distinguished organizations deserve distinguished members,” Ida said, and that got a big quack out of Norton.
“She’s punishing all those pets because I didn’t put Foxy in the calendar.”
“She’s doing this because she thinks the dogs in your calendar have an advantage to be named this year’s Blue Ribbon Barker and will upstage her Foxy Cleopatra,” Peggy explained.
Shay snorted. “I wish, but every year a purebred wins.” Usually it was Estella’s. “There is no way one of my mutts would take the crown.”
“Every woman in this town has a calendar hanging on their wall, telling them just who the finest tail is in wine country,” Peggy said.
“She’s right,” Ida agreed. “Not even Estella’s reputation and pull can compete with mutts with trading cards and coordinating man candy.”
“Yeah, well trading cards and man candy will only find the calendar dogs homes. I was hoping to capitalize on the draw of the calendar to place other animals.”
“You still have the big signing,” Peggy offered.
She closed her eyes, because no, she realized painfully, she didn’t. “My guys aren’t available the weekend before.” They’d all made it clear that they needed advance notice to make sure they could get the time off work. “Some guys had to take personal days to be there. So if I change the date, a bunch of them won’t be able to come, and if I keep the date I am competing with Bark in the Park. It’s like this whole calendar thing was for nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, dear,” Peggy said, placing an arm around Shay’s shoulders. “You have the money to help dozens of animals get their shots.” But if she couldn’t find her animals homes, then the money was worthless. “And don’t forget those cute kittens back there. You’ll find them a good home.”
It wasn’t the kittens or the pinup pets Shay was worried about. It was the older pets, the awkward ones with special needs who were hard to place. Those were the ones who needed Bark in the Park. Needed a little extra exposure to show how wonderful and loving they could be.
Those were the ones who people like Estella Pricket always overlooked.
Jonah was done.
Done with this shift. Done with the weather. He was done with the whole damn day.
That it should have been his day off only made it worse, but with the department desperately understaffed, three rookies on the schedule, and Mother Nature flipping them the bird by dumping three inches of rain before lunch, Jonah had been called in.
He’d spent the morning doing traffic control and dealing with tourists going faster than the weather permitted, and the afternoon fielding a bunch of BS calls. It turned out the St. Helena Sentinel had sold a record number of copies, even doing a rush second print after lunch. Which meant that three out of every four calls he’d responded to after that had been female—single ones, married ones, widowed ones, ones with walkers—all wanting to know if the deputy made house calls and if his gun was really as big as it looked.
Soaked through to the bone and wanting nothing more than to get out of his wet clothes, Jonah dropped his hat on the back of his chair and made his way to the locker room, surprised to find half the squad standing around as though the rest of the team weren’t out in the storm, busting their asses trying to keep up with the high call volume.
It was weird. They were all geared up and ready to head out, only they weren’t moving, just standing there shooting the shit. And, in a stellar example of what not to do on the job, Warren sat on the bench, clicking away on his phone.
Telling himself that it wasn’t his business how Warren handled his shift, Jonah opened his locker, took one look at the pair of pink fuzzy cuffs dangling from the hook, and that twitch—the one that had started behind his right eye the second he’d seen the morning paper—gained ground until his whole head throbbed.
Warren was looking for a fight, and after Jonah’s day he wanted to give him one. Only he wasn’t that guy anymore, couldn’t afford to be, so he plastered on a laid-back grin that he sure as hell didn’t feel. “I think your girlfriend left these in my locker.”
He tossed the cuffs to Warren, who caught them midair, and with a grin that was more shit-eating than good-natured, the prick pulled out a twenty and waved it. “For the record, how much will this get me?”