Page 74 of Lulu

I nodded. “Do you have any siblings?”

I felt him shake his head. “Nope. I was an only child.”

“I bet you were spoiled.”

“Don’t know about spoiled, but I had a good childhood,” Brody admitted. “Dad was a scientist at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and mom was a school teacher.”

A scientist and a school teacher. Wow. Brody came from intelligent stock. “Are they still alive?”

“No.”

I could tell that he was hesitant to continue, and I thought maybe the memory was too painful for him to rehash. I waited patiently for him to decide.

He took a deep breath. “They were stopped at a train track. The crossing gates were down. Some drunk came speeding up behind them. He was unable to stop in time and he crashed into the back of their car, pushing them through the gates and onto the tracks right in front of the oncoming train. They were killed instantly.”

“Oh, Brody! I’m so sorry!” A sob escaped me, and I didn’t realize that I was crying until he began to wipe my cheeks down.

“It was a long time ago, babe.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “So we’re really are going to spend the night out here, huh?” he asked with amusement in his tone.

I laughed and climbed off his lap, and quickly did up my pants. “I thought maybe you might want to go another round,” I teased.

He zipped up and snapped his jeans closed. “You’ll get your second round, baby, and a third and a fourth. But first let’s get a drink.”

He took my hand and we walked into the clubhouse. I heard familiar laughter, and looked in the direction that it had come from. Millie, Lissa, JoJo, Bobbie, and Holly were clustered around a table with drinks in front of them. Millie waved me over when she noticed me. I slipped my hand from Brody’s.

“I missed visiting with them the other night.”

“Go ahead. I want to talk to Demon anyway.”

A quick glance at the bar revealed Demon and the others whose old ladies’ table I was about to crash were there. It appeared the men were having a serious pow wow at one end of the bar. Heads were bent close together and they were talking low. Not everything made its way into church. I watched my man’s tight ass walk away, licking my lips.

Life was good for me right now.

I hoped it stayed that way.

Chapter 29

Lulu

“Megan, will you please give Mrs. Jenkins a call and reschedule Little Man’s surgery for next Tuesday? Something has come up and Dr. Bowers won’t be in tomorrow. Everything else on the schedule we can handle. Also, see if you can schedule Millie to spend that night and the next in case we need someone to stay.”

I hadn’t had to ask Millie to come in again since the first disastrous time when she’d come to stay with Buttercup, and since then we’d added a security system, thanks to the donation from the Desert Rebels. I also knew that Loco had insisted she learn how to handle a gun, and she now carried a permit. During our visit at the clubhouse the other night, she’d told me that she and some of the old ladies were also going to take self-defense classes and wanted me to come. I thought it was a good idea.

“Will do. Does that mean I can take tomorrow off, too?”

I smiled, handing her the folders of the last three patients of the day. “Good try, but no.”

Stephanie came out from the back, blowing the bangs off her forehead, her shirt soaked. “What a day! Hugo’s bath was a breeze, but that Birdie was a little bitch! She scratched the hell out of my arms!” She held her arms out from her body to show us the damage. She looked like a druggie.

Hugo was a huge St. Bernard, Birdie a tiny little cat, but Stephanie was right, she was a little bitch. No matter what she came in for she fought us like a little demon. My first reaction to Stephanie’s swearing was to glance around to make sure the lobby was empty. Some day she was going to slip up, but I’d warned her, and until it actually happened I didn’t care if she said what was on her mind.

“You better make sure you clean those scratches.” She knew that, but a reminder wouldn’t hurt. Stephanie had a habit of getting side-tracked.

I turned my attention to Megan. “What do we have left for this afternoon?”

She pulled up the appointment schedule on her computer screen and I leaned down to glance over it. Unless we had any walk-ins, it looked like we had four clients coming in. Three of them I knew, the fourth was someone new.

“I better go get Birdie ready, I see Mrs. Rodriguez coming in,” Stephanie quipped, leaving the room again.