Samantha’s only vehicle was a giant white van with colorful decals on the side and the wordsSamantha’s Sweetsemblazoned on the side in swirling letters.
“Even your furniture?”
“No. I got a storage unit for that. Which, come to think of it, Poppy and I probably could have slept in if we’d gotten desperate.”
“Yeah, right, like I would have let you sleep in a cold, mouse-infested storage unit.”
“Mice?”
“I mean, I’m not that heartless, Sam, not even when it comes to dogs.”
“Mice? As in actual mice?”
“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need.”
“Are they going to have babies in my couch?”
“What?”
“The mice,” she said, hazel eyes round.
“You sound concerned. I thought you liked vermin.”
“I like dogs,” she said. “And cats. And...fluffy vermin like hamsters. I draw the line at anything with a naked tail. No mice, rats or possums.”
“Hairless cats?”
“Ew, no.”
“See, I think I could get on board with a hairless cat. The kind of pet that doesn’t leave pieces of itself all over your house.”
She smiled, that impish smile that took him straight back to high school. And made his heart and body react just like the boy he’d been, not the man he was. The man who had decided, years ago, that Samantha was his friend and nothing more, in spite of occasional lapses in sanity.
Like when she stuck her hand into a bowl of popcorn that happened to be positioned on his lap.
“Yeah sure, but it’s a cat. So it would probably bring pieces of other animals into the house for you to find.”
The idea disturbed him, which was doubtless what she intended.
“The dog doesn’t do that, right?”
She cocked her head to the side, her smile widening. “Not usually.”
“If it brings a rat into the house, I’m throwing it out into the barn.”
“The rat?”
“The dog.”
“The dog isn’t anit. She is a she and she has a name. As you well know, since I have owned her for five years and you’ve been in my life for every single day of those five years.”
“Fine. If Poppy brings a rat into my house, I won’t hesitate to kick her furry, purebred behind out to the barn. How about that?”
“You would let her in your barn?”
She had him there. “The stable. In a stall.”
“What if she barked and scared your horses?”
