Page 12 of Rescued Love
Hailey giggles and points at my face before making a circular motion. “You like him, but you think you shouldn’t like him because he was an asshole.”
“I don’t know if I’d say asshole. He was definitely a jerk,” my tone is defensive as hell.
She immediately shoots back, “Why are you defending him if you don’t like him?”
“Damn it, Hailey,” I scold her. “Like I said, he was a jerk. One is not supposed to like jerks.”
“But you do,” she points out.
My movements are jerky as I pull the elastic out of my hair and immediately pull it back up into a messy bun. She watches me with a look of pure, unadulterated amusement on her face. When I stick my tongue out at her, she starts laughing.
Hard.
So hard I’m a little bit concerned for her.
“Kimbal and Nathan sitting in a tree,” she’s barely able to get the words out past her laughter.
I stand up quickly and send my chair back against the wall with a lot more force than I intend since my office isn’t that big. “You stop it right now,” I insist, barely stopping myself from stomping my foot.
She’s already acting like a child; I don’t need to join her. Even though I desperately want to.
“You like him,” she singsongs.
All I can do is sit back down with a huff and cross my arms across my chest as she gets herself under control. As she wipes tears from underneath her eyes and takes deep breaths, I roll my eyes. The truth is that I do feel a little better after telling her.
Her reaction could be worse, she could be storming out of the shelter on a mission to kick his ass. Or she could be telling me how stupid I am for even entertaining the notion that he’s not the biggest asshole on the planet and my sworn enemy.
When she has calmed down, she gives me a look filled with love, one backed by years of friendship. “It’s okay to like him, even if he is a jerk. I won’t hold it against you, Kimball.”
I roll my eyes and force the subject to change. “Why did you come by?”
“Oh,” she chirps and stands up before heading toward the door, “I came to tell you that we’ll be seeing you tomorrow night at The Goose for dinner and drinks.”
Before I can protest or say anything, she’s out the door, her giggles trailing behind her.
“Fine,” I shout and she only giggles more.
My best friend knows me too well. It can be hit or miss with getting me to go out with her. Sometimes the week is just too draining for me to muster up the energy, but this week has been a good one. Well, except for one notable exception with the name of Nathan.
There are weeks when work is just awful, and I’m faced with evil that people are willing to inflict on the innocent. There are animals who never find out what it means to live in a happy home and come to me with too much fear, too much trauma, and too much damage.
That’s when this job takes a toll on me, and by the time the weekend rolls around I don’t have anything left to give. Hell, it’s hard to make it through those days, let alone the whole week.
Thankfully, I’m sure I won’t see Nathan at The Goose and can enjoy a good meal with my best friend and her man, who I’m sure will be joining us as long as he’s not on shift at the fire station. A drink doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all either.
I’ve earned one.
CHAPTER 5
NATHAN
As I drink a cup of coffee and finish the eggs I scrambled for Grandpa and me, I hear the sound of a vehicle approaching. It puts me on edge immediately because since Kimball was here a few days ago, no one else has been by. But I’ve been waiting for her or the sheriff to show up.
Why else did she come by other than to find some reason to shut Grandpa down?
The only thing I could hope was that she figured out I wasn’t going to let it happen. But I wasn’t going to assume she’d give up.
I didn’t bring up Kimball’s visit to Grandpa because I didn’t want to upset him. Since there’s no way I’d allow anyone to get in the way of the good work he does, I figured he didn’t need to worry about the possibility unnecessarily.