Luxe Glamour (The Glamour Series Book 5) (10 page)

“You know that this is exactly what I want for Pawtown. I was totally on board with the reality show idea when Dillon told me about it. But now?” She shook her head and wheeled back toward the oven. She stirred the pasta. “I just didn’t think we’d have to deal with a spoiled brat supermodel to get this deal done. I know her just enough to know I do not want to spend any time with her.”

Angie turned back from the stove and looked at me. “You know this could be dangerous for you. Things didn’t end well the last time we worked in TV.” She ran her fingertips over the chrome of her chair.

She was right. Our TV years hadn’t ended well. She’d lost the ability to walk and I ended up in rehab and then jail for a year.

“The reasons were different then.” My voice was soft. “I was doing it for the fame and the money and eventually the drugs and the girls. You were doing it to keep track of me. This time, we’ll be doing it to raise money for the animals, to expand, to find forever homes.”

“Fame is a beast.” Angie took a long deep breath. Her lips were a hard thin line. “You can’t control fame. You can ride it and protect enough of yourself so that it doesn’t devour you, but what happens if this show gets big?” Angie shook her head. “Then we’re in the exact same spot we were a few years ago. Have we changed enough not to let it affect us like it did before?”

The question behind Angie’s question was whether
I’d
changed enough. Angie never seemed to have had a problem with fame. She was who she was no matter what. She didn’t start in with the drugs and the sex and the parties. Sure, she clubbed and had fun, and maybe there was some recreational drug use, but Angie was always the one who wanted to go home and run lines, be ready for the next day on set.

It was totally messed up that I, the fuckup, was the guy who had ultimately shut down her career.

“I can handle it.” I said.

“Those words prove to me that you can’t.” Angie pulled on the wheels of her chair and rolled out of the kitchen and toward the living room.

“I don’t mean I can handle it alone, Angie. I’ll work my program. I have you and the dogs and everyone here. I have Pawtown. Those are the reasons I can handle it. I’m not stupid.” I leaned against the wall. Delilah pressed her nose against my hand and I scrubbed my fingers across her fur. Damn, petting a dog made me relax. A deep breath and my gaze locked onto Angie. “I’m not cured. I’ll never be cured. Why do you think I stay so far away from Los Angeles?”

Worry brushed through Angie’s eyes. “Right, and with a show like this Los Angeles and entertainment and everything that goes with it comes to us.”

“Not everything. The clubs. My former drug dealers. The hangers-on. The models and parties, none of that would be here at Pawtown. There’d still be pups to water and feed and poop to pick up. Picking up poop is a humbling experience.”

“You got this?” Angie tilted her head. She didn’t even attempt to hide the doubt in her eyes.

I nodded. “I got this.”

“And if you don’t, you’ll let me know.”

I nodded again. “You’ll probably know before I do.”

Her lip curled into a smile. “True.”

Big sis always seemed to know when I was about to get my ass into a jam. Warnings? She’d doled out about a million before the car accident. I hadn’t listened. My gaze traveled over Angie’s nonfunctioning legs. Yeah, I hadn’t listened to Angie and look what had happened.

“Fine.” Angie turned her chair back toward the kitchen counters. “Then if Sophia Legend says yes to Pawtown, I’ll say yes to her.”

Done deal. As much as I liked to believe that I was in charge at Pawtown, I was smart enough to know I wasn’t. Saving pups was my original idea, but Angie was the driving force behind this place. Without her, everything, including me, would collapse into a horrible heap.

“Want me to make the garlic bread?” I walked to the sink, flipped on the water, and squirted soap into my palm.

“Yes, please.” Angie said. “About time you made yourself useful when it comes to this meal.” She rolled up behind me and reached out her hands for the soap. “You already told Choo yes, didn’t you?” The corner of Angie’s mouth pulled upward.

A half smile crossed my face and my head ducked.

“Unfuckingbelievable, it didn’t matter what I just said, did it?”

“Of course it matters.“ I reached for the loaf of bread and walked to the cutting board. “You do the bills and you know how much it takes to run this place, so I kind of figured that no matter how badly you wanted to say no, your ability to calculate operating expenses would override your inherent dislike for brunette models with self-entitlement issues.”  I slipped a knife from the cutting block.

“You’re pretty much right. I’ll call Amanda after dinner. Maybe she can give me some insight on how to deal with her pain-in-the-ass half sister.” Angie sprinkled fresh parmesan over the salad. “I do not like anything about Sophia Legend. Do you know she called me a cripple.” Angie wheeled her chair toward the refrigerator and opened the door.

Burning thrummed through my chest. Sophia had called my sister a cripple? I might have to lock her in a pen with Rose.

“Under her breath, and to her sister. She didn’t think I could hear her. First she insults me and then she runs over a dog. That girl is a loser.” Angie opened the oven and checked the lasagna. She closed the door and looked up at me. “Why couldn’t it be her sister, Ellen, who needs to come to Pawtown? I liked her. We talked for a long time. She’s nice and genuine and wants to be a doctor.”

“The reason is because it’s always the problem child that needs the rehabilitation.”

“It was that way in our family, too.”  Angie pulled two plates from the cupboard beside the stove and rolled toward the table.

“I did my rehab. Three times. I finally got it right. Now look where we are.”

Angie glanced around her two-bedroom ranch-style home. “The highlife.” A smile cut across her face. While it wouldn’t work for a lot of people—living out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of furry-footed critters that needed forever homes—after all we’d gone through together it worked for us.

“So you’re on board?” I sliced the bread. “It’s a yes from you? Because I can’t do this if you’re not on board. There are going to be cameras and possibly press and questions and—” My hand gripped the wooden handle tighter and I sucked in a deep breath. Questions. So many questions that I’d dodged and avoided and, after a while, everyone seemed to lose interest. But now? If we sought out the public, if we had a show that focused on our lives here, wouldn’t we have to answer questions? I searched Angie’s face. She’d rolled over from the table and was now beside me.

“We got this.” Angie grasped my hand.

I understood needing to be forgiven. I understood accidentally hurting someone when you didn’t mean to. My eyes glanced over her legs. Legs that couldn’t move, hadn’t moved in years.

How did Angie do this every day? How had she forgiven me? I was asking her to go back into that world. The world of cameras. A world that I hadn’t been equipped to manage back when I was in it. I was bringing the fame and the attention into the sanctuary we’d created. A tiny place in the world where we could live, and help creatures and humans, and do our part to help the world. Now I was talking about including a semi-crazy, damaged woman into this special place? What the hell was I thinking? 

“We can do this.” Angie said.

The anxiety sat in my stomach like a loaded trip wire. I wasn’t so certain, but I forced a smile onto my face. I’d asked Angie for the yes. She was the voice of reason, had always been the voice of reason, so if Angie said all was good then I had to believe her. She rolled backward and took down two water glasses from the cabinet.

“She gets to shovel shit for the first week, though.” Angie’s eyebrow lifted. “And scrub kennels. Then, maybe I’ll think about forgiving her for the cripple comment.”

A supermodel shoveling shit and scrubbing dog kennels? I pressed the garlic under the flat of the knife blade. Yeah, Angie knew just how to put people where they needed to be. She’d saved my ass and I didn’t doubt that she could save Sophia’s, too. “Sounds more than fair to me.”

Sophia

How did people allow these beasts into their homes? The bitter smell of dog pee had seeped into my pores and no matter how hard I scrubbed my skin each night I couldn’t get this stink out. I wheeled my bright yellow bucket across the cement and through the metal gate of kennel number two, across the hall and into kennel number three. Wretched. I finally understood what that word meant. Ack. The dog poop was cleaned out of all four kennels. I’d scooped the poop before mopping. The routine was scoop, scrub, and then spray. Disgusting. Every bit of this “job” I’d been assigned when I’d arrived at Pawtown was utterly disgusting.

I dropped the mop into the graying water. My throat tightened. Oh, that smell. Wet dog mixed with the ammonia of pee. My nose crinkled. My gag reflex had been on overdrive since I arrived. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. Strands of hair fell out of my bun and a cold drop of sweat trickled between my shoulder blades.

I hadn’t eaten since I’d arrived at Pawtown. My appetite had remained in Los Angeles. I could be thankful for that; I would still be model-size when I went back to work.
If
I went back to work. If there was work for me to go back to. My numbers were horrid. My approval rating was in the tank. There were absolutely no offers for any work. 

This was the worst experience of my life. How did I deserve this? A long stream of air passed over my lips. Fresh water. I had to get fresh water and some air. I plopped the mop back into my bucket and rolled it out the metal door of the kennel and down the hall to the front door. Each of the four kennels had a doggie door that led to the outdoor pens, but the only ways in or out of the kennel buildings, for humans, were the doors at either end of the hall.

Once outside I sucked in a big breath of fresh air, turned my face toward the sky, and let the sun beat into my skin. Much better. I wheeled the bucket across the small gravel path to the side of the building, turned my head away from the oncoming stench, and dumped the water into the sand. The smell wafted up to me. I swallowed and again pressed the back of my hand to my mouth.

Was my career worth this?

I walked to the back of the building and grabbed the hose. A cool breeze brushed my forehead. Only three more days before the crew arrived to begin filming
Pawtown: A Dogumentary
. This was my penance. My payback. My hard time. Scooping poop and scrubbing kennel floors. I’d seen the wicked smile on Angie Williams’s face as she’d described to me the work I’d be doing until the crew got here. “Learning about Pawtown from the ground up” was how she’d put it. What a bitch. There’d been pleasure in her eyes just this morning when she’d wheeled by me and yelled good morning as I hefted a plastic bag full of poop into the poop bin.

Fine. I got it. They were punishing me. All of them. Choo, Dillon, Angie, Trick, the entire staff at Pawtown. Punishing me for not being canine-crazy like they were. This, the job I was assigned, wasn’t just research. I placed the hose into my yellow bucket. Research would have been me following the trainers around and seeing how Pawtown worked. Research wasn’t the same as indentured servitude. Servitude that included me picking up tons of dog poop and scrubbing kennel floors, sleeping in a dorm with some woman from Istanbul or Austria or whatever country she was from where they spoke no English. Take that back … Lisel spoke no English to me.

No. Choo and Dillon and Lane and even my hosts Trick and Angie were punishing me for not loving dogs … and for hitting that barky brat that had jumped in front of my car. Both were not my fault. Not at all. Clean water slowly filled my bucket. Not liking dogs was because of the damn Boxer that bit me for no apparent reason. And the dog I’d hit had darted in front of my car. I didn’t do a damn thing in either case.

I leaned against the adobe wall of the kennel. Warmth pressed through my shirt and loosened the tightened muscles in my back. They couldn’t possibly treat me this badly once the cameras began to roll, could they? I pressed my forearm to my forehead. Maybe they could. Maybe that was what the public wanted, what they needed to see. My penance. My servitude to the dogs. Helping the very animals I’d hurt.

I bent down and turned off the hose. I rolled the bucket and the mop back toward the kennel door. At least all the dogs were gone from the kennels when I was cleaning. The one bright spot in my dark and abysmal existence.

“Hey, Sophia, how are those kennels coming?”

A tremble rushed up my spine and not because Trick had startled me. Why lie? He wasn’t what I was after in a man, but my body? My body definitely responded to him. There was this deep want that claimed the pit of my belly when he was nearby.

I turned. A giant dog lunged toward me.

My heart burst in my chest.

“What the hell!” I bolted toward the building and pressed my back to the adobe wall. The dog barked and slobber flew from his mouth. He jerked at his leash and strained to get to me.

“Austin just wants to say hi.” Trick bent down and petted the beast. How could Trick possibly trust that the giant wouldn’t use those teeth to take out his jugular? “Don’t you, big boy?” The disgusting creature took his tongue, the same tongue that every dog I’d ever seen used to lick their own business, and slapped it against Trick’s cheek.

“See!” Trick called, as though that slimy little moment was a sign of affection when really it could be called an appetizer. “He’s so gentle. He loves everyone.” Trick turned back to the dog and placed a hand on either size of his giant head. “Don’t you big guy? Don’t you?” Trick used the voice that dog lovers reserved only for talking to dogs. Of course the beast’s tail started to wag.

I stayed by the building. Austin might like Trick, but he wouldn’t like me. My disdain for canines was mutual. I preferred their absence and they preferred mine. Kind of a problem now, what with the puppy that Ellen had adopted taking up residence in my condo.