Nightingale (14 page)

I leaned over to get a better look, and a small whine greeted my ears. The ball of fur lifted up its head and stared at me with two, liquid brown eyes.

“A puppy? Where did you get a puppy?”

“I found him wandering the streets right before the blizzard hit,” Piper said, grinning. “He’s the cutest thing, but you know I can’t keep him because of my allergies. I can’t even wear faux fur without sneezing for two hours afterwards …”

Piper’s voice trailed off, and she gave me a pointed, hopeful look.

“Oh no,” I said. “Don’t even
think
about it. No way. I can’t keep him. I can’t have a puppy around. I’m not home enough to take care of one.”

She beamed at me. “But that’s the beauty of this little guy. He’s small enough right now to fit in a purse. Surely, you can hang him on your vest somewhere.”

I looked down at the squirming ball of fur. “Hang him on my vest? He’s not a water bottle, Piper.”

“Listen, it’s just for a few days until I can find him a good home. I just can’t bear the thought of taking him to the pound. Please, Abby.
Please
?”

Piper looked at me with her big brown eyes—eyes very similar to the puppy’s.

“All right.” I sighed, knowing I was beaten. “But only for a few days. And you’re buying the dog food. Got it?”

“Got it.”

She reached down and petted the squirming ball of fur—and sneezed all over him. The puppy didn’t seem to mind though, wiggling closer to her.

“Here.” Piper shoved her purse at me. “Pick him up. Let him get used to you before we leave.”

I put the bag on my lap. The movement excited the puppy, who stood up and put his paws on the side of Piper’s purse. Sandy brown fur covered his back, but his belly was pure white fluff. His big, triangular ears pointed up over his head and were rather large in proportion to the rest of him, like rabbit ears on an old TV.

“What kind of dog is he?” I shoved my finger into the purse so he could sniff it.

“A Welsh Pembroke corgi.” Piper blew into another tissue. “They’re supposed to be very intelligent.”

The puppy certainly seemed smart. He was already trying to find some way to get out of Piper’s purse, but his paws kept sliding off the slick fabric. I put my hand on him, and he calmed down. He nestled into the blanket, put his head on his paws, and went back to sleep.

“So does this furball have a name?” I asked, wondering how much this was going to complicate my life.

“No,” Piper said. “I’ve just been calling him
dog
and
boy
. Why don’t you name him? You’re the one who’s going to be taking care of him.”

My eyes drifted back to the poster of Talon on the wall. That name was already taken, but another good one came to mind, one that made me think of the superhero.

“Rascal,” I said. “Let’s call him Rascal.”

Chapter Ten

The waiter returned with our check. It was Piper’s turn to pay, and I let her, particularly because she’d foisted Rascal on me. The waiter brought me Chloe’s sandwich and pie, stuffed in a white bag bearing Quicke’s logo—a winged, Hermes-like foot. Then, he went back into the kitchen to retrieve a large cardboard box for Piper. The waiter grunted as he set it down on the table.
 

I stared into the box, which contained dozens of containers of soups, salads, sandwiches, fries, drinks, and desserts. “Fiona must really be hungry today.”

Piper shrugged. “She’s
always
hungry. How that woman eats the way she does without blowing up like a blimp, I’ll never understand.”

Fiona had an appetite that would put a horse to shame—and a body a supermodel would envy. Blond hair. Long legs. Big boobs. A disproportionately small waist. She was a live, walking, talking doll.

Anytime Piper came to Quicke’s for lunch, she took something back for Fiona—usually about half the menu. Today, Piper ordered enough lunch for ten people, but I knew Fiona would eat every single bite—and that Piper would be lucky if the enormous meal kept the fashion designer satisfied until dinner.

“You still think she has an eating disorder?” I asked.

“There’s got to be something wrong with her,” Piper replied, opening a container of creamy potato salad. “Now get Rascal out of my purse before you leave.”

I grunted, reached inside, and grabbed the puppy. He barked with happiness at being out of the bag. A few of Quicke’s other patrons shot me disapproving looks for having a dog inside the restaurant, but none of the staff batted an eye. Fiona—and by extension Piper—spent too much money in here for them to treat Piper like anything but a queen, even if she wasn’t dating Kyle anymore. Piper could strip down, dance naked on the tabletops, and smash out every window in the joint, and they wouldn’t lift a finger to stop her.

“All right, dog,” I muttered, holding the squirming puppy with one hand. “Let’s see how I can carry you back to the office without dumping you in the snow.”

Piper was right—Rascal was small enough to fit inside a pocket on my vest, the big one I usually stashed my water bottle in. That compartment lies to the left side of my chest, which meant I could zip my coat up most of the way, and Rascal could stick his head out the front and breathe.

“Okay, guys, I need to get back to work before Fiona eats the furniture,” Piper said. “Call me later, and let me know how he is, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” I grumbled.

Piper gave Rascal a final pat, sneezed, grabbed the box of food, and headed outside.

“Well, I guess it’s just you and me now, dog,” I said, staring down at the furball.

Rascal licked the bottom of my chin with his wet, rough, stinky tongue. Ugh.

#

I’d walked about a block when I realized Rascal was going to be more trouble than all of my clients put together. The puppy barked at every single car and person we passed, his squeaky
yip-yaps
rattling inside my skull. He wiggled so much I finally put him on the ground. Rascal tried to hop over the snow without actually touching it. Evidently, the cold, wet sensation didn’t feel too good against his tiny paws. After half a block, the corgi stopped, plopped down on his butt, and stared up at me, his brown eyes expectant.
 

“Come on.” I walked a few feet ahead of him. “Let’s go, dog. I have florists to badger.”

Rascal barked. It might have been my imagination, but I thought there was a rather defiant tone to the sound.

“Come on. Come here, dog,” I said, trying to get him to follow me.
 

That was what dogs were supposed to do, right? I didn’t really know, since I’d never had one before. I’d never really had any sort of pet—or never one that lasted very long. The goldfish my mom bought me for my seventh birthday went belly-up the first time I changed the water in their bowl. The hamster she purchased for my eighth birthday ate his way through his plastic cage and got locked in a closet we rarely used. I found Scruffy two weeks later, toes up. The turtle I got the next year made it a month before I took him outside to play and let him wander into the path of an oncoming minivan, and Shelly got shellacked. After that, I didn’t get any more animals as gifts, but my mom did make a generous donation to the Bigtime Humane Society in my name every year.

I plowed a few feet ahead, but Rascal didn’t move. Instead, he whined, so pitifully that an elderly couple walking down the street stopped to stare at us.
 

“I think he wants you to pick him up,” the old woman said.

I opened my mouth to tell the lady I knew that already when I caught a glimpse of her face underneath her rose-colored hat. White hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks—Grace Caleb, one of the bastions of Bigtime society. More importantly, one of my clients. We’d worked together planning the doomed benefit for the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art.
 

“Oh, Grace, I didn’t recognize you.” I turned to the man standing beside her. “Or you either, Bobby.”

Bobby was Bobby Bulluci, another bastion of Bigtime society and the grandfather of fashion designer Bella Bulluci and her brother, Johnny.

“That’s all right, Abby,” Bobby replied. His face was red and ruddy from the cold. “It’s obvious you have other things on your mind. Like this little guy.”

Bobby leaned down and held his gloved hand out to Rascal. The puppy sniffed it suspiciously for about half a second before he decided Bobby was friend material. Bobby responded by scratching Rascal’s pointy ears. The puppy grunted with pleasure, his tiny tail sending up sprays of snow.

“I didn’t know you had a dog, Abby,” Grace said.
 

“He’s not really mine. I’m just babysitting until I can find him a good home.” I smiled at them. “What do you say? Would you like him? He’s a very sweet dog.”

Lying was another skill I’d perfected as an event planner. I’d had the puppy about ten minutes, but
sweet
wasn’t the word I’d use to describe him. Rascal had proven himself to be stubborn, difficult, and demanding.

“Unfortunately not,” Bobby said, straightening. “We’re a bit busy to bring a dog into the house right now.”

Grace nodded her head in agreement. “We’re tied up almost every night.”

“Literally,” Bobby added.

They both chuckled, amused by some private joke.

Busy? Tied up? What did the two of them do at night besides attend society soirees? Go out on the town and fight evil? Jeez. It wasn’t like they were Granny Cane and Grandpa Pain, the two seventy-something superheroes who suckered bad guys into mugging them before kicking their asses all the way to the police station. Grace and Bobby could have just told me no. They didn’t have to make up some lame excuse about being too busy.

“We’d love to stay and chat, but we have a lunch date with Bella and Devlin,” Grace said, referring to her grandson, Devlin Dash.

“Of course. Don’t let me keep you.”

Bobby held out his arm, which Grace took, and the two of them walked on. Rascal watched them go. When he realized they weren’t taking him with them, his head swiveled back around to me—and he whined again.

“Fine,” I muttered. “I’ll carry you, you little con artist.”

I picked up the dog and stuffed him back inside my vest. He wiggled closer to me, his scent filling my nose—an aroma my supernose particularly loathed.

“Now, you’re wet. And you know what wet dogs do? They smell bad. Really bad. Especially to me.”

Rascal just barked and licked my chin again. Ugh.

#

By the time I got back to the office, it was after two. The elevator whispered open, and I walked over to Chloe’s desk and dropped her food bag on top of it. She looked up from her monitor.
 

“Thanks, Abby—a puppy!” Chloe yelled, catching sight of Rascal. “You have a puppy!”

I winced. First Piper, then the dog, now Chloe. Didn’t anyone in Bigtime know how to modulate their voice? I plucked Rascal out of my vest and handed him to her. Chloe hugged the puppy to her chest, and he barked with happiness.
 

“When did you get a dog?” she asked, stroking his sandy fur. “I didn’t think you liked dogs.”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

Chloe gave me a sideways glance. From the tone in her voice, you’d think I was a serial killer who mutilated small animals in my basement. I didn’t
hate
animals—just the messes they made. I loathed planning any event that involved them. They were worse to work with than kids. Give kids enough sugar, and you could keep them happy, but animals were a wholly unpredictable lot. I still hadn’t recovered from having a llama spit in my hair during Pistol Pete’s Petting Zoo at Paradise Park last summer.
 

“He’s not mine,” I grumbled. “I’m just watching him until Piper can find him a good home. She found him wandering the streets before the blizzard.”

“Well, he is just the cutest thing ever!” Chloe squealed in that high-pitched, singsong voice people use with their pets—the one that made my head pound.

I grunted. “Yeah, he’s adorable.”

Rascal seemed to know we were talking about him because he wagged his tail back and forth. He started squirming, so Chloe set him down. The puppy bounded along the floor, stopping every few feet to smell the carpet.

“Why don’t you take him?” I suggested.

“I’d love to …”

Maybe Chloe would get that promotion sooner than she thought—

“But I can’t.”

Maybe not.

“My building has a strict, no-animals policy,” she continued.
 

“Well, do me a favor then,” I said, handing Chloe the hundred-dollar bill Piper had given me before we’d left the restaurant. “Run down to the pet store on Fifth Street and get him some food and one of those cushioned baskets to sleep in.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll go as soon as I finish lunch.”
 

I tried to get inside my office before Rascal could follow me, but he was strangely quick for a puppy. At least, he was on dry land. He bounded in just before I closed the door. I opened it back up, trying to shoo him outside where Chloe was, but Rascal trotted over to the couch, intent on jumping up on it, even though he was too tiny to hurdle the high cushions. He stared at the sofa, then at me. Then, he started barking, whining, and prancing around.