A Scarred Soul: A Small Town Love Story (Safe Haven Book 2) (2 page)

Marlo laughed. “And how do you feel about him?”

“I won’t lie to you, the guy’s hot. Scorching, damaged, and I don’t have a savior complex, unless it’s a dog. Did I mention he’s hot?”

“No, tell me about that.”

Lulah grinned. “Misty has fallen deeply in love with him. She won’t leave his side, even tries to leave with him each afternoon. I’m trying to encourage him to take her with him, but he won’t. A dog could help him, you know. You can tell he has issues.”

“Do you think he’s safe to have around?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. When he gets edgy, he leaves. And it’s weird, because the other side of him, when he’s not wired, is kind of peaceful. He’s artistic, too. Yesterday I needed name tags for the kennel doors of the new dogs and I asked him to write them out. He did their names, then these gorgeous caricatures of each of the dogs. They’re fantastic. And I noticed he did a new one for Misty’s door; he’s renamed her Calliope, says she’s his muse. Today I’m going to have another go at getting him to take her when he heads off.”

Like every lunchtime when Vince left, Lulah wondered if it would be the last they saw of him, but the next morning he’d be back. No explanation, just ready to roll up his sleeves, expose his muscular forearms that made all the women pause and appreciate, and get on with the day’s tasks.

He watched her sometimes, but she watched him often. In those moments when their eyes first locked, his guard down because he thought she wasn’t looking, she caught a quick glimpse of longing; not necessarily for her, but for what she was.

Lulah noticed he had the same effect on Calliope. The dog watched Vince and did her best to always be near him. What’s more, her confidence had grown with the task she seemed to have set herself, making sure he was never left alone.

Stories of an animal connecting to a single person, as if they were the mate they’d spent their life waiting for, were common to sanctuaries and shelters around the world. Lulah never questioned why Calliope had attached herself to Vince, but unfortunately Vince didn’t appear to be quite so enamored of the dog.

That afternoon when Vince left, Lulah decided to watch from a distance, rather than help him out by calling Calliope back to the kennels. Perhaps if there was nobody available to take the dog away, Vince would allow her to accompany him.

Vince had been quieter than usual that morning, and Lulah had really felt for him because she could see the way he struggled, and the effort it took for him to get through. He looked short on sleep, and all but dropped to the floor when one of the girls tripped over a metal bucket and sent it flying.

She noticed his clenched fists, muscles bulging beneath the ink on his arms. When she sidled up to him to quietly ask if he was okay, he looked to her with a dog’s beseeching eyes.

“God, Lulah, sometimes a sudden noise takes me back there.” There was a break in his voice, short, like a finger-snap, before it returned to his usual controlled measure. “I’m sorry, I’m not usually this pathetic.”

She reached up and placed her hand on his shoulder. His t-shirt was warm, damp with perspiration, and he tilted his head back, closing his eyes for a moment before sucking in a breath, then aiming a rare smile at her.

“It’s almost midday,” she said. “Why don’t you head off.”

“Thanks, but I’ll finish up my work first.”

Reluctantly, she left him to his task of scrubbing out the food bowls. Lulah paused at the kitchen door, to check one last time, and saw that Calliope had leaned against his leg, her head stretched up over his knee, ready to be his emotional sponge and soak up whatever troubled him.

An hour later Lulah stood at the edge of the courtyard watching as Vince, followed by Calliope, headed along the back path towards the mountain trails.

He ignored Calliope for the first twenty yards, and Lulah hoped he’d finally decided to allow the dog to walk with him. Then she heard his voice, raised, telling her to go back. Calliope stood on the path, her head lowered, tail tucked, but making a slow, short pendulum movement.

Vince turned and started walking, and Calliope immediately raised her head and trotted after him. This time when he stopped he shouted and flung his arms at her, trying to shoo her away. Calliope rolled to her back and showed him her belly. He’d frightened her, but he kept shouting at her to get up and go back.

The dog refused to move. She wouldn’t give up on him.

Lulah sighed. It was time to rescue Calliope and she headed after them at a jog, but before she got near, Vince suddenly dropped to the ground, lying alongside Calliope and pulling her into his chest.

She saw the shudders run through his body, the dog licking his wet face, and backed away to allow Calliope to work her magic.

“Those two need each other,” she muttered to herself as she withdrew to a place where she could observe them unseen. Vince had rolled to a sitting position, and Calliope crawled into his lap. That sat like that for a while, before Vince got to his feet and took his familiar path into the hills with a small blue-and-white pit bull, not following him, but at his side.

L
ulah dropped into a chair
, propped her feet on the low table, and scrolled through the phone messages that had come in during her last session training the Dog Haven Sanctuary interns. From the office kitchen Marlo called out, offering tea or coffee, but Lulah remained stuck on the first message, her emotions polarized.

Three short words:
Help me, pls.

“Crappity-crap, we got us a Vince bomb!” Lulah called out.
Geez, here we go again.

Vince was not the guy for her. Not even close. Lulah knew that all the way to the depth of her heart and soul. Still, that hadn’t stopped her spending each spare moment through the morning imagining herself hard-up against totally hot Vince who had promised to stop by this evening and help with her course work.

“What’s up?” Marlo asked.

Lulah tapped out a quick
Where r u?
message and hit the reply button, muttering at the phone. “Can’t help, buddy, if I don’t know where you are.” She rocked back into the armchair. “SOS from Vince.”

“Uh-huh.”

“In trouble.” She passed Marlo the phone. “But he
is
asking for help, so breakthrough, maybe?”

“Or a breaking point,” Marlo replied as she read the short message and handed the phone back. “Where is he?”

Today, Lulah had no idea where he was, because despite their friendship, when Vince moved into self-isolation mode, he never told her where he went. He would arrive at her cabin, his usually steady eyes filled with distress as he asked her to take care of his dog, Calliope, for a few days. When he turned up in that state she couldn’t refuse him.

Each time he climbed into his pickup and drove away, he left her as disillusioned as the dog sitting at her feet. Left her to work through an infuriating mix of anger and sympathy, vowing this would be the last freaking time she’d collude with his
can’t cope so I’m shipping out
stunt.

What really annoyed her was that when he fixed her with that pain-filled gaze, her resolve dissolved into a messy heap that saw her step up to help him out, one last time.

Combat PTSD from his second tour in Afghanistan kept him teetering on the edge of being permanently broken, and if that latest text message was anything to go by, he might have reached his tipping point.

Despite Lulah spending the past few months training Calliope as a service dog to help Vince with his issues, he had yet to agree that he actually
wanted
a service dog. He said it would define him as a broken person, dependent, when in reality he expected to improve.

Except he wasn’t improving. If anything, he was becoming worse.

Lulah ran her hands through her hair. “You see, that’s the problem. I’m presuming he headed out into the wilderness somewhere, because he looked exhausted when he dropped Calliope to me last night. About crisis-3.”

“Crisis-3, which is…?”

“Oh, a three sits around mid-range, so it isn’t too bad. Elevated stress but recently showered and shaved, wearing clean clothes. Still capable of driving, but couldn’t ride the escalator in a shopping mall.”

“Lulah!”

“Hey, those are Vince’s words, not mine. Anyway, I’m guessing he’s up in the mountains somewhere, but…” She shrugged. “I’m just wondering at what stage we call out a search team. If Vince is in the mountains, he could have fallen, cozied up with a bear, or—” Lulah’s phone rang. She reached for it, and her heart tripped, hoping the caller was Vince. “It’s Dad; I’d better take it. Can you contact Adam and see if he can pin a location on Vince? There’s been no response to my text.”

Adam was Marlo’s boyfriend of almost a year. Recently, to be closer to the woman he couldn’t walk away from, he’d transferred from his position as a New Zealand police officer to a job at Dog Haven. Perhaps his understanding and experience with PTSD could help steady Vince now.

Lulah ducked outside to take her father’s call.

“Hey, Dad, did you find your phone charger?” she joked. Most times she called him his phone went straight to voicemail. Ray rarely called her, and the fact that he was now made her uneasy. Her mind tossed up between health issues and money issues, unable to settle on which would be preferable.

“Lulah-la, how’s my girl?” His voice was gravelly, liked he’d been singing a lot, or cheering at a football game. Or maybe it was age-related from a life spent hunched over a card game in a smoke-filled room.

Lulah-la.
Her heart sank. That was the name he used when he either wanted something, or felt guilty. She supposed he thought it would butter her up, take her to the happy place that existed before all the shit came down. Fat chance; if anything, the use of his pet name for her was as alarming as a warning bell.

“All good here, Dad. But I’m guessing you’re not. Hit me with it.”

“What? A dad can’t call to make sure the best daughter in the world is doing okay?”

Lulah sighed and waited. When Ray’s life ran okay, he seemed to forget the ‘best daughter in the world’ even existed.

She listened to him clear his throat. “I’m in a bit of bother, Lulah.” All the cheer had left him.

“Go on.” Lulah’s chest tightened.

“I lent some money to a mate who needed to get his car fixed, and he can’t pay me back. Now I’m short; can’t make rent this month.”

She knew it was bullshit, and for once she was going to call him out on it. “Tell me the truth.”

“It’s the truth, honey.”

“How much do you need?” Thing was, Ray would give his last dime away, he was that generous. But that defensive edge to his voice meant one thing.

“It seems like a lot, but I’ll get it back to you by the end of the month. I can pay you interest. Just fifteen-hundred…two thousand if you can manage it. Ha. My friend’s car—I don’t know if you’ve met Jack—well, his car just blew up on the backroads behind Pahrump. The engine, kaput. You should have seen him after he spent the night trying to catch a lift back to town. He was on a dirt road…”

Lulah waited as the story gathered speed, her silence encouraging Ray to embellish his lies, until she couldn’t listen any more. “Stop there. You’re gambling again, aren’t you? Be honest?”

“Lulah, honey, I gave that up.”

“You know what I’m hearing right now? The sound of a liar and a gambler. Convince me I’m wrong.”

His breath was coming in short excited bursts over the phone. She could picture the lines on his forehead deepening, his left eye screwing up that way it did when he was thinking up a story. She didn’t want to catch him out, hoped he wouldn’t confess to the lie, and that the story about the car was true. But the longer it took for words to replace the sound of his breath, the faster her hope drained away.

“I’m in trouble.” His voice had deepened, softened.

“Uh-huh.” Lulah’s heart felt caught in her throat.

“I got debts. Big ones.”

“Gambling ones?” God, she could all but see him nodding. He had an addiction and so long as she paid his debts, she enabled him to continue with it. But since the last time, she’d hardened up. He wasn’t going to wreck her life again.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, it was just one game. I was doing great but I couldn’t stay in without—”

“I can’t help you, Dad. You know that. I’ll call you later in the week.”

“Just like your mother,” he said, his tone hard and accusing.

“No, Dad, don’t do this. I’m at work, I have to go. Like I said, I’ll call you.”

She switched off her phone and thumped her forehead.
Jesus wept.

She re-entered the office just as Marlo finished talking to Adam.

“Don’t worry about Vince. I’ve just spoken with Adam, and he’s going to try and locate him. What’s up with that father of yours? Sounded to me like he’s gambling again.” Marlo said.

Lulah dropped into the chair and dragged the fingers of both hands upwards through her short hair, so that it stood on end. She pointed to her head. “Ta-da, Nutty Professor.”

“Lulah!”

She smoothed her hair back down, twirling one end. “You see, here’s the thing about men. They drive me freakin’ nuts. They’re unreliable, they break promises, they tell lies, and when their boat starts sinking, they don’t even have the common sense to carry a life jacket. I’m expected to drop everything and turn up with the lifeboat. It’s not enough to be their lighthouse, pointing out the rocks and hazards for them, because they sail about with their heads up their asses, thinking everything is going to be just fine. And even if it’s not, good old Lulah will make it right for them.”

“I’m so sorry Ray’s slipped again.”

“He broke his promise to me, again. I’m not helping him out, and I should feel good about standing up to him, so why do I feel like such a cow?”

“Because being the strong one is so difficult. You did the right thing, Lulah. He’ll thank you one day.”

“He hates me right now.” She was probably last on his list to phone for money. In fact, she was probably the only person on that list.

“That won’t last.”

Lulah sighed. “Dad
and
Vince—double-whammy Wednesday.” She checked her phone again then slapped it against her thigh. “Why won’t Vince respond to my text? Hell, he reaches out for help, then nothing! If whatever crisis he found himself in has improved, surely he’d have let me know.”

“I know this waiting is difficult...”

“I can’t just sit here. Maybe I should go to his house.”

“Adam’s on his way there now, and if Vince isn’t there, he’ll phone.”

“If he’s not at home, how will he find Vince?”

“Oh, you know Adam, super-powers, secret contacts, and all that. I don’t know how he does it, he just does.”

Lulah knew Vince had his own super-powers, because occasionally she caught a glimpse. Like magically arriving at the Sanctuary on a day he wasn’t scheduled to be there, bringing a sandwich and some fruit for her, and somehow knowing she’d rushed out that morning and missed packing a lunch. He loved to tease her until she laughed. When he joined in, lighting up a room in a way that drew her like a moth to his very unreliable flame, she could scarcely keep her breathing calm or contain herself to the perimeter of the fourteen inches of physical distance that made them friends. But his darker side, his inconsistency, meant that flame could flare, burn, and hell...

“Vince, he’s a no-go guy, isn’t he?” Her feelings for him were such that sometimes she needed the reassurance of a friend she trusted to keep her on her stated track.

Marlo handed her a mug of tea. “Using your analogy, he’s probably going to need a lifeboat and crew for a long time yet—maybe forever. Judging by what you just said, I don’t think that’s what you’re after.”

The others at the sanctuary had been wary of Vince—dark, brooding, and blazing hot—but Lulah and he had struck up a friendship that went deep and close in no time. They regularly explored the trails in the parks that bordered the Sanctuary, and she loved the easy way they teased and competed with each other; Vince’s strength countered her agility and knowledge of the area.

Recently, a dramatic landscape or something like a small, hidden lake on the trail would pull them to a halt, fueling a new kind of connection between them. On those occasions, her heart rate increased as she studied the bow of his mouth and the heat in his eyes, but right when something threatened to snap, one of them would make a joke or a challenge and the moment vanished.

“He is hot, though. You have to give him that.” Lulah grinned.

“He’s hurt, is what he is.”

“Hurt, hot, tempting.” Lulah faked a shiver.

“Go there at your peril.”

That’s what she loved about Marlo. That’s why she was a friend rather than a boss, because she never lectured. Instead she threw out a few words that reminded you what you’d vowed in more sane moments. And sometimes her clear thinking made her as annoying as Adam. “You know your problem? You’ve lived with that Kiwi guy for too long. You’re starting to soak up some of his common sense. It’s…icky.”

Marlo laughed. “Icky? Is that your new word this week?”

“This week’s word is ‘disconsolate’.”

“Oh, save me. Drink your tea.”

Lulah took a sip. “I’m not staying long; I want to be away early today if I can. That assignment’s giving me the usual troubles.”

“How’s the course going?”

“Fantastic.” Lulah tried for a look that brimmed with confidence. The coursework was a freakin’ nightmare, if she was honest.

“Liar.”

She grinned. Unlike her father, she hadn’t mastered the art of the poker face. “I know the theory. And you know how well I’m doing with training Calliope. What’s a degree, huh? Who really needs one?”

“You do, within the next two months, if you want to apply for the promotion.”

L
ulah raced
the dogs up the steps to her cabin porch. As usual, they beat her and blocked the door so that she wouldn’t enter without them, showering her with wet kisses as she bent to remove her shoes.

Home. Her home…almost. It would be hers once she saved the final ten grand to buy it. The promotion at the Sanctuary would give her a better chance of reaching that target before another buyer turned up.

She grabbed a cold drink from inside and returned to the porch, settling into her favorite hickory rocker. For much of the year she virtually lived on the porch. Out here, she had a small table with a couple of chairs, her bed, armchairs, and the biggest view of one of Washington State’s finest national parks. Why, she’d often thought, would one want to live inside? The porch was great until the snow came.

She drained her glass and thought about her assignment, but her father and Vince crowded her mind, killing her enthusiasm to open her laptop. Damn her father and his lying. There she was, believing that he hadn’t gambled for the past two years, and now he was back in debt. Lost everything.

Not my problem, Dad. This is your mess, and you have to crawl out of it.

He told her the debt collectors were threatening him. She thought of his grey eyes, so like hers. How they could look like two inanimate stones perched on his poker face and how they could light up, glittering with joy at treating her to something special, something he’d promised, that on a rare occasion he was actually capable of delivering.