It’s a tough day of work, and I only do a full Saturday once a month, but it’s my pleasure to do so to give Alyssa and Brody some time together away from The Haven. They devote their entire life to their work here, so their Saturday’s off are well deserved.
Just as I finish cleaning out the stalls, I hear a vehicle pulling up behind the kennel. I decide to leave the horses out a bit to stretch their legs in the small paddock, and head out to see who it is.
Possibly Gavin?
As soon as I step outside of the stable, I see, with utter disappointment, that it’s Brody pulling up. Not that I’m not happy to see him, because, hello… it’s Brody, but because I had been hoping—in my heart of hearts—that Gavin would come and spend the day with me.
I wanted to get to know him better, because his dark allure was pulling at me hard. He also has me fascinated by this concept of how he views me, and I feel the burning need to make him see that I’m so much more.
Brody gets out of his car as I walk across the grass that is just starting to turn brown with the cooler weather. “What are you doing here?” I call out to him.
“Alyssa’s getting girlie shit done to her nails with Gabby and Casey, so thought I’d come hang out here today,” he says with a smile.
I follow him into the kennel and he heads for the office he and Alyssa share at the front of the building. “Come on, Brody. It’s your day off. You should be out having fun.”
“Yeah, like what?” he asks as he sits down at the desk and fires up the computer.
“Oh, I don’t know… get your brother and go surfing.”
“Yeah… sorry, but when it gets chilly enough you have to wear a wetsuit, I don’t go in the water anymore.”
“Wuss,” I tease him.
“Absolutely,” he affirms, clicking on the Outlook button to pull up his mail. “So what all still needs to be done today?”
“Most everything. I just got the animals fed and the stalls cleaned.”
He browses the emails for a moment, and then turns to me with a serious look. “Go ahead and clean the litter boxes and then run those errands for me. I’ll handle washing the dogs.”
“No freakin’ way, dude,” I tell him with a stern look. “I’m volunteering my precious time here, and you are not taking away the one fun thing I look forward to all week.”
Brody gives a bark of a laugh and stands up from the desk. Chucking me under the chin with his knuckles, he says, “Fair enough. Didn’t think I’d be able to pull that one over on you. Let’s go split the work, and then I’ll take you out to lunch before we run our errands.”
I follow Brody out of the office, back through the kennel, and out a side door that takes us to the cats’ building. “We need to stop by the feed supply store and pick up some probiotics,” I tell him. “That new lab mix, Nelly, has some loose stools.”
“Got it. And we need to hit the lumber supply store. I saw one of the fence posts on the paddock is cracked near the bottom. I think one of the horses kicked it.”
We start to work cleaning out the litter boxes, and yeah, I get sidetracked playing with the five new kittens that came in last week. It takes so little to amuse them, nothing more than the string from my hoodie that I wave in front of their fuzzy little faces.
“So, what was the deal with that English dude you were talking to at the bar last week? He said something that pissed you off.”
Picking up one of the kittens, I hold it above my face and watch its little paws try to swipe at me. “That’s Gavin Cooke. I clean his house, and he can be a bit prickly.”
“What did he say to you that made you practically run out of the bar?”
“I didn’t practically run out,” I grumble, although I did have an insane urge that night to flee from his sexual innuendos. “He just asked if you and I were lovers.”
“No way,” Brody exclaims as he dumps fresh litter into on one of the boxes. “Why would he think that?”
“I don’t think he really did. I think he was just trying to get under my skin, which is something he apparently enjoys doing.”
“Maybe he was trying to get under your skirt and was checking to see if you were single,” he muses.
“Not his style,” I tell Brody adamantly, and I’m amazed I know Gavin well enough to know exactly what his style is. If he wanted to get under my skirt, he would have said something like, I want to f**k you, and I could care less if you’re f**king someone else.
Yes, that was Gavin’s style.
“Well, he seems kind of full of himself,” Brody says casually. “Besides… he got under Tanya Stokes’ skirt that night, so I’m sure he was a happy camper.”
I spin toward Brody fast, bringing the kitten down to my chest to cuddle. “How do you know that?”
“Because she was hitting on him pretty hard prior to that. He bought her a few drinks. They left together that night. Pretty obvious, right?”
“I guess,” I mutter as I put the kitten back in his cage.
Man, that bothers me. I mean, I sort of figured Gavin was a player, but he’s kind of a grumpy recluse, so I never figured him to hit a local establishment and then hit the local talent so quickly. I know deep down that there’s really nothing special he sees in me. He’s a man with certain proclivities. I fascinate him for some reason, and he wants to exercise those proclivities because I was opportune. And I have no right to a feeling of betrayal, because we have no relationship… no exclusivity… no expectations to be broken. In fact, I’m betting if anything were to ever happen with Gavin, it would only be on the terms that there was no relationship… no exclusivity… no expectations.