I said to the dogs sprawled out at my feet. “Wanna play bodyguards?” The dogs stared back like I was too stupid to understand that they lacked the power of speech.
My eyes lifted to find Scott’s gaze laser focused on my chest. The long t-shirt I’d worn to sleep had slipped off my shoulder and exposed my cleavage. I pushed it back up. “How did you wind up with these two?”
The small smile Scott had been wearing up until this moment slowly melted away. “I…” My smile dropped as well. Whatever the story was, it wasn’t a pleasant one. He sat up and leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, absently running a thumb back and forth over his lower lip. He did that a lot when he was thinking something over. And right now I could see he was considering how much to tell me.
“Do you remember my friend Charlie Hewitt? He was at Devyn’s wedding.”
I racked my brain for a face to attach to the name and it finally dawned on me. “Didn’t he work at Blackstone for a short while? In property management?”
Scott nodded.
Then I recalled the rest of the details. The dude was never on time. Never. We had to assign someone else to follow up on the properties he handled because we were getting so many complaints. I only knew this because Frank had cursed up a storm when he’d been made aware. Then he showed up to work drunk one day, which was obviously a fireable offense.
“He had a substance abuse problem, didn’t he?”
With a pained look on his face, Scott nodded. “Charlie and I had been best friends since the fourth grade. And yeah, in hindsight he probably did.” His gaze flicked away briefly. “We both partied hard back then.
“He was infatuated with this girl I’d gone out with a handful of times. I had no interest in her so…I…I set them up, thinking I was just helping a brother out…”
The sinking feeling in my stomach said I was going to regret asking about the dogs. Scott looked off, into the snowfall as if he could escape his own memories.
“I thought I was doing a good thing…For a while, they seemed happy together––I mean, he was still partying a lot, but we all were…”
His gaze met mine again.
“We were at a wedding in the Hamptons…at some point in the evening, I ended up on the beach, drinking. Meghan found me and started coming on to me.”
I sucked in an audible breath.
“Charlie caught her trying to kiss me, but he also saw me push her away, so he started in on her immediately, calling her a slut, a whore, you name it…It wasn’t the first time I’d seen them fight. And it usually got ugly fast. But this time it got even uglier…she told him she’d settled for second best, that she’d always been attracted to me and only went out with him to kill time until I was ready to settle down. Which…was a ridiculous fantasy.”
His Adam’s apple quivered as he swallowed.
“What happened?” came out a rough whisper.
“Charlie pulled out a ring box, said he was going to propose that night but he couldn’t find the right moment. I had no idea. He hadn’t said a word to me––probably because he knew I would’ve tried to talk him out of it.
“Anyway, I left them on the beach yelling at each other and figured they’d work it out like they always did. Next morning, I got a phone call from his brother. The housekeeper had found Charlie hanging from the pipes in his loft.”
I felt sick, close to throwing up the milk I’d savored only minutes ago.
“He’d bought these guys from a breeder in the UK. When he told me he was on a waiting list for two puppies, I told him he was a dumb fuck who could barely take care of himself…They were delivered the day after his funeral. His brother didn’t want them, so I kept them.”
Cupping both furry faces between my hands, I planted a kiss on each one of their big heads. “I’m sorry, Scott.”
“Yeah,” he said with a faraway look on his face I didn’t like one bit. “Me too.”
I watched the snowfall, digesting everything he’d told me. The picture was finally coming together.
“Is that why you left? Because you didn’t want to be reminded?”
He took his eyes from the snow and placed them on me. “Because I didn’t want to wind up like him.”