a hand here?”
Rory dug right in, not shying from getting wet or dirty. She took on half of the wayward pups, and in a few minutes they had all of them out of the tub, dried, and back in their baby pen.
One through Five had fallen into the instant slumber that only babies and the very drunk could achieve. Six stayed stubbornly awake, climbing over his siblings trying to get back into Willa’s arms.
Laughing, Willa scooped up the little man. His legs bicycled in the air, tail wagging faster than the speed of light, taking his entire hind end with it.
“Not sleepy, huh?” Willa asked.
He tried to lick her face.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said. “Don’t think I don’t know where that tongue’s been.” She carried him out front to the retail portion of her shop and set him into a baby pen with some puppy toys. “Now sit there and look pretty and bring in some customers, would you?”
The puppy pounced on a toy and got busy playing.
Willa shook her head and moved around, flipping on the lights out here. As she did, the shop came to life, mostly thanks to the insane amount of holiday decorations she’d put up the day before.
“It’s only the first week in December and it looks like Christmas threw up in here,” Rory said, coming into the room behind her.
Willa looked around at the shop that was an absolute dream come true for her. “But in a classy way, right?”
Rory sucked on her lower lip as she eyed the myriad of strings of lights and more boughs of holly than the North Pole could ever have. “Um . . . right.”
Willa ignored the doubtful sarcasm. One, Rory hadn’t grown up in a stable home. And two, neither had she. For both of them, Christmas had been a luxury that, like three squares and a roof, had usually been out of their realm of possibility. They’d each dealt with that differently.
Rory didn’t need the pomp and circumstance of the holidays.
Willa did, desperately. So now at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, when after five years she finally had her shop in the black—well, mostly in the black—she went just a tad bit overboard for the holidays.
“Ohmigod,” Rory said, staring at their newest cash register display. “Is that a rack of penis headbands?”
“No!” Willa said on a laugh. “It’s reindeer antler headbands for cats and small dogs.”
Rory stared at her.
Willa grimaced. “Okay, so maybe I went a little crazy—”
“A little?”
“Haha,” Willa said, picking up a reindeer antler headband. It didn’t look like a penis to her, but then again it’d been awhile since she’d seen one up close and personal. “These are going to sell like hotcakes, mark my words.”
“What are you doing—don’t put it on,” Rory said in sheer horror as Willa did just that.
“It’s called marketing,” Willa said, rolling her eyes upward to take in the antlers jutting up above her head. Huh. “Do they really look like penises?” She paused. “Or is it peni? What’s the plural of penis?”
“Pene?” Rory asked, and they both grinned.
“Clearly I’m in more need of caffeine than I realized,” Willa said. “Tina’s caffeine.”
“I’ll get it. I caught sight of her coming through the courtyard at the crack of dawn this morning wearing six-inch wedge sneakers with her hair teased to the North Pole, making her like eight feet tall. Can’t wait to get a closer look at the perfection up close.”
Tina used to be Tim, and everyone in the five-story, offbeat historical Pacific Heights building had enjoyed Tim—but they loved Tina. Tina rocked.
“I’ll take one of her It’s-Way-Too-Early-For-Life’s-Nonsense coffees,” Willa said, pulling cash from her pocket. Puppy treats bounced on the floor.
“And to think, you can’t get a date,” Rory said.
“I can get a date, I just pick the wrong ones. Hence the man-embargo. You know what? Tell Tina to make mine a double, I’m bonking already and the day hasn’t even started.”
Nodding, Rory headed toward the back door, where she’d run through the courtyard to Tina’s coffee shop.
“Oh, and grab us each one of her muffins too.” Willa paused. Tina made the best muffins on the planet. “Wait, make it two each. Or three. No. Shit, that’s like the entire day’s calories. One,” she said firmly. “And make mine blueberry so it counts as a serving of fruit.”
Rory was grinning. “So a coffee and a blueberry muffin to go, and a straitjacket on the side then?”
“You’d be in it right alongside of me, babe,” Willa responded