Hound Dog & Bean (2 page)

“
Sarah Jane is not a rat
,” wailed the little girl.

Elaine took a step toward Brubaker. “We won’t have any trouble finding a home for our sweet little baby, and if you don’t just cut your losses now, I will call—” She pulled out her cell phone. “—every single pet rescue service in the greater Kansas City area and give them your name and address. I’ll warn them about you. I think you need to decide if you really want a four-footed friend. Or if Sarah Jane was just an impulse item.”

Brubaker’s eyes popped for an instant. Then his expression turned stony, although there was a flash of danger in his eyes. Finally, he grabbed his sobbing child’s hand and stomped away.

H.D.—H
OUND
Dog to some—Hillary Dameron Fisher to relatives long gone and a foster care system that couldn’t have cared less—realized he should apologize to Elaine. He knew there had probably been a better way to handle the situation, but dammit, he didn’t like most people in the first place, let alone people like Brubaker. His kind were assholes, and they got under his skin fast and in a big way.

But by then he realized that Elaine—a stocky woman with shoulder-length graying hair and a fierce love for the animals under her care—was standing over him, hands on hips, waiting. The dogs were still barking, although they were calming down. He sighed, thinking of their distress. Sitting up, H.D. shook his mane of dreads from his face. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” she asked and crossed her arms over her
considerable bosom.

“For being such a jerk,” he mumbled, cuddling Sarah Jane close. She had finally stopped trembling.

“What? I can’t hear you H.D.”

“For all that,” he said, gesturing toward the retreating Brubaker.

Elaine shook her head.

“Dammit, that guy was a fuckhead,” H.D. cried. “He was
totally
wrong for Sarah Jane.” He scratched said dog down her shoulders and back until he found her spot and her hind leg began to twitch.

“I don’t deny for one second that he was a ‘fuckhead,’” she replied. “It was the way you did it. I’m curious, did you notice the nice young couple that turned around and high-tailed it out of here when you and Brubaker had your little tiff?”

H.D. opened his mouth to respond, but any witty repartee he might have come up with died on his lips. His mouth snapped shut.

“That’s what I thought. I’m glad Sarah Jane didn’t go home with that man. I don’t know how you do it—read people the way you do. At best we might have gotten Sarah Jane back and probably worse for wear. But that couple? They radiated good will. We have to find homes for our friends here.” She spread her arms to indicate the pens and kennels, each with at least one cat or dog. There were a rabbit and a tortoise as well. “Listen, H.D., I don’t like the average Joe any more than you do. Give me a puddy tat any day, but people are—”

“A necessary evil,” H.D. finished with an exaggerated sigh. “I know. I know.” He’d heard her say it before, and the fact that she was right didn’t make him any happier.

“You’ve got to stop acting like a big baby,” she said.

“Then stop treating me like one,” he snapped.

“Then stop acting like one,” she shot right back.

Neither said anything for a long moment. Finally, Elaine broke the silence. “You know I love you with every ounce of my four-footed heart, right?”

H.D. admitted that he did know that. “You mean a lot to me too,” he replied, carefully expressing his feelings and equally carefully not using the L-word.

He could see she hadn’t missed it.

“I suppose that’ll have to do,” she replied. Then: “Come here and give me a hug, you ol’ hound dog, you.”

H.D. unfolded himself and rose elegantly to his feet. He set Sarah Jane down, then went to Elaine and hugged her. “You do know you mean a lot to me, right?” he asked her.

“I hope so,” she answered.

On impulse, he gave her a peck on the cheek, and when he pulled back, he saw she was blushing. “Forgiven?”

“Of course,” she replied, touching the cheek he had kissed.

Good
, he thought. Because there weren’t many people he’d consider calling friends. They weren’t something he squandered.

Of course, he didn’t expect them to stick around either. People rarely did.

Elaine smiled and headed over to an elderly couple who had just stepped in and were bending over a pen with a small German shepherd mix. “Good afternoon,” she said cheerfully. “I see you’ve noticed Dora, then. Excellent choice.
Excellent
choice.”

Meanwhile, H.D. bent over, picked up Sarah Jane again, and kissed her on her strangely blonde forehead. She didn’t mind. She kissed him back, her love completely unconditional. After all, she was a dog.

And give me a dog over a human any day
, he thought to himself.

M
ARA
P
OINDEXTER
watched Dean—better known to patrons and friends alike as “Bean”—from across the room. He was doing something he didn’t get to do all that often anymore: help a customer. Ever since The Shepherd’s Bean had expanded into the failed scrapbooking shop next door, he’d just gotten too busy.

She adjusted her large, round, black plastic glasses and watched the encounter. The customer was very handsome, she thought. And was obviously flirting—leaning over the counter, smiling, and shamelessly eyeing Bean up and down. But as she watched, she saw that her boss was oblivious.

“Dammit,” she muttered under her breath and shook her head.
The dude is a stud,
she tried to mentally beam to her Bean.
Can’t you see that?

Her telepathy must have failed, though, for as soon as Bean was done making the man’s coffee, he smiled politely and headed to the back room.

“Dummy,” she said as Bean passed her.

He stopped. “What?”

“Are you blind?” she asked, looking up at him. She was a short woman, barely reaching five foot three.

“No. Why would you ask me that?”

“That guy was
hitting
on you.”

“What guy?” Bean glanced behind him.

“That guy you were
just
helping. He was flippin’ drooling over you.”

“He was?” Bean asked, apparently surprised.

“And he was studly,” she elucidated, hand on her hip.

“He was?” Bean looked again, but of course the man was long gone. “I didn’t notice.”

“Ugh,” Poindexter groaned in frustration.

“Ugh, yourself,” he replied. “I think you were imagining things.”

“The only thing I’m imagining is that one day you’ll pull your head outta your butt and notice what’s going on around you. Like a hot man
hitting
on you.”

Bean waved the comment away. “He wasn’t my type.”

“So you
did
notice him?” she asked.

“I guess. But I don’t like aggressive men. That’s not my style.” With that, he went to the back room.

Poindexter sighed. She worried about Bean. He was a lonely man, she could tell. He needed someone to ease that. As far as she’d been able to piece together in the seven months she’d worked for him, that and chatting with her coworkers—some who’d known him for years—Bean had never had a boyfriend. At least, not a serious one.

“No time,” she had heard him say on a few occasions.

“Make time,” she would insist. “All work and no lovin’ makes Bean a dull boy.”

“The rhyme is ‘all work and no play,’ not ‘lovin,’” Bean said.

“Yes, but play doesn’t rhyme with boy any more than lovin’ does,” she countered. “And
lovin’
is what you need.”

The “no time” excuse might have been true once. Not all that long ago, Bean had worked for at least one of the “giants”—coffee companies that manufactured shit for java as far as Poindexter was concerned. During that time, Bean had traveled all over a significant part of the world. He’d never been home long enough to meet someone, let alone try to have a relationship. He’d even lived with his parents in those days. What was the point of having his own home if he was never there? But now that he’d finally retired from the traveling life and opened The Shepherd’s Bean? Well, he needed to find someone. Husband, lover, or at the very least, a fuck buddy.

It would also help with the absolutely ludicrous crush she had on Bean. Sure, he was a damned fine-looking man—tall, with those golden-brown eyes and that big, beautiful wide smile. His hair had been cut beyond military protocol because he was so conscious of his receding hairline, he’d decided to just get rid of it all. Even that suited him, though, and somehow added to his sexiness. But Poindexter had realized she liked girls when she was eleven years old and had gotten a glimpse of Elenora Bergamini in her confirmation dress. The pretty girl looked just like a bride in all that white, frilly lace and Poindexter had been completely smitten. Hell, she’d been in love. When she’d asked Elenora to marry her, while the girl’s answer had been “no,” she did say she would kiss Poindexter. And—golly!—hadn’t that been exciting?

They did a lot of kissing that year, especially in the tree house Elenora’s brother and father had built, and who knows how long the kissing would have gone on if said brother hadn’t caught them, faces locked together like a plug and outlet? That was the end of that. Poindexter was exiled from the Bergamini home, never to be welcomed back. Whatever her parents had said or done to Elenora, the girl wouldn’t even be her friend at school. Poindexter had often wondered through the years if her first crush had grown up to be a lesbian, or if that had just been a case of youthful experimentation.

“You need to get over that guy, Dexter,” her pseudo-friend Tiff would tell her. Poindexter didn’t care for the nickname, but it was better than the two previous ones Tiff had come up with: Poondykster and just plain Dykster. Given that most lesbian nicknames stuck forever, Poindexter was lucky to get three tries, and number three was the best of the lot. Her friend Stacy was called Face, all because at some point in the past, she’d been called “Staceface.” Far worse, though, was a girl she knew who had gotten the nickname “Crotch,” all because in college she’d had a wild afro. That had been years ago. But in the world of lesbian nicknames, it made no difference. Once a “Crotch,” always a “Crotch.”

“Maybe you should just fuck him,” Tiff suggested. “Find out if maybe you play for the other team after all.”

Poindexter had shuddered at the suggestion. That would mean having something to do with his… you know… and she really was a rubyfruit-jungle-lovin’, card-carrying fan of Rita Mae Brown all the way.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Tiff said.

“That’s because you don’t know how to read,” Poindexter replied.

“I know
how
to read, I simply choose
not
to.”

“Let’s just say I like girls and leave it at that,” Poindexter said. “I like them a
lot
.”

Yes, from the second Poindexter found out what the word “lesbian” meant, she knew what she was. She had even flirted with—only for a few months when she was a freshman in college—the idea of being a separatist. But having to spell “history” as “
her
story” and “women” as “wo
myn
” got her to giggling so uncontrollably during a meeting that she got kicked out. It was okay. She had six brothers, after all, and she adored them. She really liked men. Just not “that way.”

Which is why she needed to get Bean a boyfriend. Or at least “shepherd” him in that direction.

The bell over the front door tinkled, and she glanced to see if it someone was coming or leaving. It was a woman with bright-blue hair, spiked up in front. “Oh God,” she groaned.

“Hey, Dexter!”

Tiff. Great. Just great.
Poindexter smiled. “Mornin’. And what can I get for you today?”

“A
H
,
SWEET
Mara,” Dean Alexander, aka “Bean,” said to himself. “What would I do without you?”

Yes, of course he’d seen the man she was talking about. Yes, he’d known the man was hitting on him—and “hitting on” was the polite way of saying it. “Drooling,” on the other hand, was exactly what the man had been doing, and that just wasn’t Bean’s style. He liked at least a modicum of subtlety. Why be so bold? So obvious? Not just to Mara, but everyone in the shop. Did that kind of flirting really work for anyone?

Mara,
Bean wondered.
How desperate are you to get me a man? If you thought I’d go for someone like that?
What was it with the matchmaking anyway? If it wasn’t Mara—he refused to use her nickname—then it was a friend, a customer, and of course, his mother. He was happy by himself. He didn’t need anyone to complete him. The very phrase put his teeth on edge. Not that he would mind having a man in his life, he just didn’t
need
one. And he was insanely busy with The Shepard’s Bean, anyway.

Bean headed back to his office. Six months ago, he’d never have thought he’d have his own office—at least not so soon. But what had started out to be little more than a hobby—roasting his own coffee beans out of his garage and selling them to friends and neighbors—had blossomed and grown and then grown more. First, when he’d agreed to roast for a local coffee shop called the Radiant Cup. Then a small restaurant wanted in, and then a second. At that point—at the urging of friends and family—he’d decided he might as well give it a shot and open his own place. Why the heck not?

Plus, it would allow him to show Kansas City how coffee
should
be made. By the individual cup. It took a while to serve a single customer, but there were few who thought it was a waste of time after trying one of his cups of coffee. The usual first time reaction was raised eyebrows and a surprised, “Wow!” It never got old, never ceased to please him.

The
Kansas City Chronicle
had done a little story about him just recently, and overnight his business had quadrupled. The newspaper article got people to try The Shepherd’s Bean; the coffee made them come back again and again.