Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1)(23)
But mainly he chose to sit because Estella’s last comment had seemed to knock the floor out from under Shay.
“You know that the county only allows four pets per household,” Jonah said, sending his best hard-cop look her way, not that it mattered since she was looking everywhere but at him.
“It’s a stupid rule,” she mumbled to her shoes.
“Then you also know that if you have any over that amount I have to fine you.”
“Okay.” She finally glanced his direction and, man, was she gorgeous. She was tough and independent and passionate and a woman who would stop at nothing to protect what was hers. But the look she was giving him right there, in that second, was one he hadn’t seen before now. It was one that told him she was also breakable. “Just promise that you aren’t going to take them.”
He wanted to say yes he promised, so that she’d start looking at him like he was a good guy, the guy everyone had made him out to be. Only he wasn’t that guy anymore, hadn’t been for a while, and Shay knew that. Knew that he was broken too. She didn’t look at him like the others in town, she looked at him as if she understood his struggle. As if she’d seen through the badge and persona to the dark, ugly truth he kept hidden. And that scared him as much as it got to him.
“I spotted one older dog through the side window, another two napping in the backyard, a kitten climbing the curtain in your bedroom, and this one, for a total of five animals. Did I miss any?”
She shook her head and he would have believed her, was ready to stand up and call this day over, but then her shoulders sank and—shit—she gave a little nod, sending her dark hair spilling over her shoulder. “How many?”
“Four adult dogs, and a litter of kittens.”
“Define litter.”
“Five kittens,” she said quietly. “There were six originally, but one must have escaped.”
“Jesus, Shay.” He ran a hand down the back of his neck, cupping it at the base and trying to squeeze out the weight of the town that had settled there. One pet over he could work out—more than that and there was no way he could get Estella to stand down while Shay handled her business. “What do you want me to do?”
“Give me time to find them families,” she pleaded. “Yodel is going to his home this weekend, and the kittens, as soon as they are old enough to be fixed, they will go fast. And then I won’t go over the legal limit again, I promise.”
Jonah leveled her with a look.
“Okay, I won’t go over the limit unless it is an emergency.” Which could be as simple as her coming across a dog with a cold.
“Do you have any friends who could foster them?” The look on her face said no. Great.
“Shay, you need to call the owner and explain that you have to return the kittens.”
“I can’t.” Shay’s face went pale. “The, um, owner, couldn’t provide a safe place for them so I promised to find them a nice family.”
He was about to ask who the owner was so he could give them a call when Warren stepped off the curb and right into Jonah’s space.
“As much as we’d love to help out, Miss Michaels, the law is there for a reason,” Warren said, rocking back on his heels. “And like I was just explaining to Mrs. Pricket, we can’t pick and choose which ones we follow or the whole system suffers. Right, Deputy?”
Warren’s tone said game f*cking on. His cocky stance said he was stepping up that game and was now in this race to win sheriff. And the son of a bitch had used the last person Jonah wanted to disappoint to make his statement clear.
“What’s he talking about?” Shay asked, unaware of the tension that was arcing between the two men.
“You have been fined in the past for violating the county’s animal-harboring laws,” Jonah explained.
“Once,” Shay argued, looking from Estella to Warren and back to Jonah, and the desperation he saw there killed him. “Once and that was when I was shooting the calendar, which by the way is done and I have found almost all of them homes already.”
Something everybody there knew, but it didn’t make a difference. “It still makes you a repeat offender and means there are limits to how we can handle this,” Jonah said gently, hating what he was about to say next, hating even more how it would impact Shay. “By law, we have to give you thirty days to find them a new home.”
“Thirty days? That’s impossible. My kittens won’t be old enough to place for another six weeks, I’ve been banned from Bark in the Park, and it’s the middle of kitten and puppy season, which means finding families for my older dogs will be more difficult.” Shay hugged her arms around her stomach and Estella had the decency to look ashamed. “I need more time.”
“I wish I could give it to you,” Jonah said, but once he wrote up the report it would be out of his hands—and it was his job to write that report. Not to mention if he didn’t, Warren undoubtedly would—and Warren wouldn’t give Shay any time at all if it meant securing Estella’s vote. “After thirty days this case transfers to animal control and any pet they find over the four allotted will be removed.”
I’m never going to make it in time.”
Shay cracked the oven door to peek at the carrot scones, which were still a few minutes shy of golden. Her cheddar biscuits, on the other hand, were seconds from bursting into flames.