Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1)(24)
“Crap.” She pulled out the charred biscuits and placed them on the stove top, then opened the window, hoping it would combat the smoke.
It didn’t help.
Jabba lifted his head to sniff the air, then the floor around the entire room until his nose led him back to the stove, where he sat and looked up adoringly at Shay, giving her a few big doggie eye bats.
“They’re burnt,” she explained, but Jabba only snorted as though he thought they were at the perfect state of cookedness, and that he was more than willing to take one for the team and be the official taste tester. “Sorry, buddy, but you already ate an entire plate of cream cheese and cucumber finger sandwiches when I wasn’t looking.” Which were far from dog friendly. “The last thing you need is to add a lump of coal to the mix.”
Jabba gave it one more hopeful minute, wishing beyond wishes that Shay would reconsider, then waddled over to the doggie bed in the corner of the spa’s lunchroom and lay all the way down with a huff, his bow tie shifting in the process.
Shay knew how he felt. Today was the monthly Paws and Claws High Tea at the spa—and she couldn’t afford any mistakes. News that she was running a puppy mill had gone viral, racking up two hundred comments on Nora’s Facebook page alone. Peggy, concerned about Shay making her thirty-day time line, had offered to let Shay bring all of her adult fosters to the event.
“What better place to find them a family than around a bunch of dog lovers who know other dog lovers?” Peggy had said. Only her boss forgot to mention that this month’s tea had been sold out for weeks, leaving Shay with twenty-five animal attendees—and only food and seating for twenty.
And with Foxy Cleopatra taking the number one spot on the VIP list, today had to go perfectly.
Shay had spent the past two days molding her dogs into well-behaved and respectful hosts, hoping that seeing a new-and-improved side to them might be enough to persuade Estella to reconsider her stance. Not on the citation, that was out of her hands the second Jonah filed the report, but the pet-peddling ban. Shay thought that if Estella saw the best in her fosters, then maybe she’d have a change of heart. She’d almost changed it once—then Shay’s thoughtless statement had ruined it.
Today was her chance to fix her mistakes, mend fences so to speak, and get her dogs re-invited to Bark in the Park. She wasn’t going to let her impulsive nature, or severe lack of cooking skills, screw up this opportunity. Which was why when she looked up from her mutt-loaf squares to find three smiling Booty Patrol members dressed like they were going to the Kentucky Derby in flowered bonnets and pearl catch gloves, carrying foil-covered plates, Shay nearly cried.
“Thank God you’re here,” Shay said as Clovis, Ida, and Peggy set their plates of finger sandwiches and dog bones on the prep table, then walked around to get a better look at Shay’s contribution.
Clovis leaned way in, gave the black pucks a few pokes, and grimaced, her cane clicking against the cabinet.
Jabba zeroed in on the wooden stick, tail twitching, breathing nonexistent, while he patiently waited for her to drop the stick in the horizontal “game on” position. Shay shot him a single look and, when that didn’t deter him, tapped her foot.
Jabba reluctantly disengaged with the stick and called off the attack, but he wasn’t happy about it.
“How did you know I’d need help?” she asked, peeking inside of one of the plates to find peanut butter-dipped bones.
“Smelled the first batch you put in.” Ida poked at one of the biscuits. It gave a little sizzle, then burst, sending bits of burnt dough onto the floor—and Jabba skidding across the tile to do his part of the cleanup.
“At the second smoke signal we packed up and headed out,” Clovis said, pulling an apron from her bag and tying it around her waist. She tossed one to each of the other ladies, and Shay’s chest warmed when she saw the St. Paws logo on the pocket.
“Where did you get those?” she asked, running a finger over the pink paw print.
“Ordered them from my guy yesterday,” Clovis said. “Told him we needed a rush order and he dropped these off this morning.”
Shay didn’t know why Clovis had a guy or what her guy did exactly, but she did know that this was one of the sweetest things someone had done for her in a long time. It was just the thing she needed to get her back on track after the standoff with Estella and her hit squad—a heartfelt reminder that not all people sucked.
“Figured if you were going to show that Estella and her yap dog a good time, then you needed backup,” Ida said. “Banning you from her event is one thing, but calling the fuzz? Now that is about as un-neighborly as one can get.”
“And here in St. Helena we pride ourselves on being good neighbors,” Peggy added.
Deeply moved in so many ways, Shay found it hard to speak but managed a shaky, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank us yet, this act of neighborliness comes with strings,” Ida said, and there went all of Shay’s warm fuzzies.
“I’m not big on strings,” Shay admitted.
In her experience, strings were a lot like expectations, tying people together, and when not reached the connection was forever severed, sometimes even destroying lives. Something Shay had experienced firsthand at the unexpected death of her mother and then again when her father was a big fat no-show. And from what life had shown her so far, Shay understood that connections came at too high a price for her heart to handle.