dogs, and Luke gave him a little extra attention. He was an old Scottish terrier with some health problems and had been there for several months. Angela told Luke somebody had just dropped him off by the front gate one day, so they took him in. Luke couldn’t imagine that. Had somebody just looked at the dog one day and said, Okay, we’re done with you now. Time for you to go?
Luke accepted the fact that Angus might be around for a while. At least at this shelter, even if he was never adopted, he had a home for life. But as for the rest of them, they seemed like perfectly normal dogs. Why hadn’t somebody adopted them?
A few minutes later, Luke looked up to see Shannon coming down the path with a little brown dog on a leash. She’d just brought the pooch back from the vet, and now she released him into an adjoining run. Luke stepped back inside the kennel with her.
“Walt said the skin thing isn’t contagious,” she said. “He just needs a bath every few days with some special shampoo.”
She held out a bottle, and Luke took it from her. He should have been thinking about bathing dogs. Instead, he thought about standing in the parking lot of a small-town honky tonk kissing the daylights out of a woman who was way hotter than her rigid, all-business body language was telling him now. She didn’t seem inclined to bring up the issue, which was exactly what he would have expected. He doubted there was an uncomfortable, foolish, or ill-advised moment of her life she couldn’t put into a box, then close the lid, tape it shut, and stick it on an out-of-reach shelf so she wouldn’t have to deal with it. He wondered just how thick a layer of dust was on the box that contained that summer they’d worked together. The hinges were likely rusted shut.
He decided he’d stick with the all work and no play thing, at least during business hours. But he’d meant what he’d said last night. After business hours, all bets were off.
“Question,” he said.
“What?”
“I get why you still have a few llamas hanging around, and horses may be hard to place, but the dogs and cats? What’s the deal there?”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of these dogs seem perfectly nice. Why haven’t they been adopted?”
“Well, let’s see. Samson has his skin condition. We’ll get it worked out, but until we do, it’s hard to get people to even look at him.”
“But he’s a great dog.”
“People won’t look past that. And Ginger, the Chihuahua, barks. And barks and barks and barks. Lots of sound comes out of that tiny package. If you’re in here and not paying attention to her, she’s usually going at it.”
Luke was learning to tune her out, but Shannon was correct. Right then she was definitely going at it.
“Then she needs somebody who’ll pay attention to her,” he said.
“A lot of people work during the day. She’d probably tear a sofa to shreds if you left her alone too long. And has it escaped your attention that Barney, that little mutt over there, is missing a leg?”
“So what? He runs faster than most of the dogs in this place. Throw a ball and you’ll see just how handicapped he is.”
“You’re not being realistic,” Shannon said. “People want perfection. And that usually means puppies. They like to get them before somebody else has messed them up.”
“So convince them otherwise.”
“That’s a hard sell.”
“It shouldn’t be. That little brown dachshund, for instance,” he said, pointing to one of the dogs. “No problems there that I can see. And the other two with him? Perfectly sane and adoptable.”
“Sometimes it’s just supply and demand.”
“Yeah? Maybe it’s more than that. What about that family that came through here a few days ago looking for a dog?”
“What about them?”
“Did they go home with a dog?”
“Well…no.”
“They were interested in that boxer over there,” Luke said. “Why didn’t they adopt him?”
“Nobody would have been home with him on weekdays. He’s a little neurotic to start with, so—”
“They said they have a huge backyard. He would have gotten along just fine.”
“I didn’t think Dad was too thrilled about getting a dog.”
“Dad wasn’t the type to be thrilled about anything. You need to stop second guessing everybody’s motives.”
“It just wasn’t a good match.”
“So which one would have been a good match? God knows we have plenty to pick from.”
“They weren’t interested in any of the other dogs.”