FIVE
After six hours of sleep and a quick lunch at a neighboring deli, Brynn opened her tiny shop and looked around, smiling. Scruffy’s Pet Spa wasn’t much of a business, but it was all hers. She tailored her hours to fit her late nights, and she wouldn’t take a pet twice if the owner was a pain in the butt. The animals were never a problem for her, even though she’d once worried that dominant or aggressive dogs and cats would try to push her around, somehow sensing her inner swan.
Swans weren’t exactly predators, after all.
Instead, it was as if they recognized a kindred animal spirit or were able to understand that she only wanted to help them. In five years of running the grooming salon, she’d only been attacked once, and afterward the vet had discovered a tumor the size of a lemon in the dog’s brain. Poor guy hadn’t been able to help his fear and aggression. She’d always have the scar on her left arm, but at least the experience hadn’t left her traumatized.
Brynn, of all people, understood the dog’s plight. There’d been a time when she, too, had been afraid and angry due to events beyond her control. She was never able to think back to her first several nights as a swan without shuddering.
Pushing the memory aside, she focused on preparing for her workday. She moved about in her usual routine, checking her tools, restocking her inventory of dog treats inside the glass case from the fresh shipment, and getting the cash box out of the small safe. Her cleaning service had done a terrific job as always. A brother-and-sister Fae team ran the cleaning business, and she had engaged their services on the barter system. The two Fae owned four excitable Dalmatians, and the dogs wouldn’t let anyone but Brynn, whom they adored, give them baths. In turn, Brynn always got a kick out of seeing the haughty Fae brought low by a quartet of canines.
As she prepped for the hundred-pound golden retriever mix scheduled to arrive soon, she caught herself humming. She froze, automatically glancing at the giant red clock on the wall, and was shocked to realize that she’d spent at least five minutes rearranging the same three brushes on the table.
Sean.
He’d invaded her fountain, her solitude, and her dreams. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had so much fun doing something as ordinary as eating breakfast, and the tingle of sexual attraction had added a zing to every minute. If only she could be normal for once, then maybe . . .
Maybe nothing. Maybes and if onlys were for fools. She could never have a man like Sean O’Malley, and she shouldn’t even want him. She’d promised herself that she’d never fall in love, never take the chance of getting pregnant and subjecting another generation—her own daughter—to the curse of the black swan.
The bell over the door rang, and Brynn flashed her biggest smile to welcome tiny old Mrs. Mastroianni and her dog. Peaches, as far as Brynn could figure out, was golden retriever crossed with moose. The friendly dog easily outweighed his owner, and could have pulled Mrs. Mastroianni across town—or carried her on his back, if he’d wanted to do it. But he was extraordinarily gentle with his tiny owner and saved all his boisterousness for the Bordertown dog park.
“Let’s trim his fur this time, dear,” Mrs. M. said, patting her dog’s shoulder without needing to lean down even a little. “And please use that apple-scented conditioner that leaves his coat so shiny. He’s looking a little scruffy.”
Brynn smiled, knowing her line. “Then he’s in the right place, isn’t he? We’re here for all the dogs who don’t want to be scruffy anymore.”
Mrs. M. chuckled, as she always did, and toddled off to meet “the girls” for tea and gossip. As Brynn watched her go, a trace of worry shadowed her mood. Her favorite client was walking just a little bit slower than usual. A little bit stiffer.
“But she’ll outlive us all, won’t she, Peaches?” Brynn ruffled the silky fur behind the dog’s ears, and Peaches, who never seemed to mind his silly name in the slightest, grinned his happy openmouthed doggy smile up at her as if agreeing.
* * *
Four hours later, Brynn, tired but content, swept up dog hair and disinfected the grooming table. In addition to Peaches, she’d bathed and groomed a pair of huskies, a chunky little pug who hated to have his nails trimmed, and a young wolverine who’d fallen into a vat of pickles. It had taken three shampoo-rinse-repeats with her special herbal shampoo for Brynn to remove the pungent aroma, and the faint scent of dill still infused the air.
Mrs. Mastroianni graciously had insisted that Brynn take a two-dollar tip, as always, and Brynn had given in, as always, never once letting on that she only charged a fraction of her usual fee for Peaches. Mrs. M. was pretty clearly on a fixed income, and it probably took a good portion of that just to keep Peaches in dog food. With her arthritis, there was no way the elderly woman would have been able to bathe and groom the enormous dog on her own, and it boosted both her pride and her dignity to add in the small tip. Brynn made sure that Mrs. M. never discovered that the shop’s other clients generally tipped ten times that amount.
“Hey, it’s two dollars I didn’t have this morning,” Brynn told the framed photograph of the original Scruffy, a two-hundred-pound Irish wolfhound who’d wandered over to the fountain one night, wounded and limping. He’d curled up at the edge of the water and watched Brynn swim around for the next several hours.
Almost as if he’d been standing guard.
As soon as she’d turned back into human form, Brynn had taken him to Dr. Black, the best vet in town. She’d said Scruffy had probably been hit by a car. After he’d recovered from his injuries enough to leave the animal hospital, Scruffy had lived with Brynn for another three years before he’d died peacefully in his sleep. He’d been the best friend she’d ever had, and although it had been several years since he’d gone, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to get another dog.
The bell over the door rang just after she knelt down behind the grooming table to retrieve a nail file that Theo the pug had kicked off during his valiant struggles to escape.
“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” she called out without bothering to look up.
“I’ve got an emergency.” The man’s voice was deep, rich, and a little desperate. It was also the voice that had murmured to her in her dreams a few short hours before. She slowly stood up, sure that her mind must be playing tricks on her.
It wasn’t. Sean O’Malley stood, large as life—and that was pretty darn big, considering those incredibly broad shoulders—in the middle of her shop, holding a hissing Persian cat.
“You!” Sean and Brynn said at the same time, and then they both laughed.
The cat didn’t appreciate the humor, apparently, because it lashed out with one paw and scratched the back of Sean’s hand. Sean didn’t even flinch, and he didn’t say a word of reprimand to the cat. Brynn liked him even more for that. Most creatures were jumpy when they came into a place that, no matter how clean, would always hold the scent of other animals.
“Do you work here?” Sean glanced around. “Nice place.”
“It’s mine.”
Brynn felt a moment of fierce pride over her neat little shop. The rows of colorful dog and cat accessories behind the counter gave the place a festive air, and framed photos of happy customers and their pets lined the walls. She’d made a success of her business in spite of the challenges that came with the swan curse.