Crazy for You Read online

  “Be practical, Quinn.” Bill sounded sympathetic but firm. “Animal Control is a clean, warm place.”

  Her coat was a clean, warm place, too, but that would be a childish thing to say. Okay, she couldn’t keep the dog, that wouldn’t be practical, she had to give it to somebody, but there was no way in hell it was going to Animal Control. So who?

  The dog looked at her with trusting eyes. Almost adoring eyes, really. Quinn smiled down at it. She needed to find somebody kind, somebody calm, somebody she trusted absolutely. “I’ll give it to Nick,” she told Bill.

  “Nick does not want a dog,” Bill said. “Animal Control—”

  “We don’t know that.” Quinn cuddled the dog closer. “He owns his apartment over the service station so he won’t have a landlord problem. I bet he’d like this dog.”

  “Nick is not going to take this dog,” Bill said firmly, and Quinn knew he was right. As Darla had once pointed out, the best way to describe Nick was tall, dark, and detached from humanity. She was grasping at a particularly weak straw if she thought Nick was going to put himself out for a dog.

  “Take it to Animal Control,” Bill said, and Quinn shook her head.

  “Why?” Bill said and Quinn almost said, Because I want her.

  The thought was so completely selfish and felt so completely right that Quinn looked at the dog with new eyes.

  Maybe she was meant to keep this dog.

  The thrill that ran through her at the thought of doing something that impractical was almost sexual, it was so intense. I don’t care that it’s not sensible, she could say. I want her. How selfish. How exciting. Quinn’s heart beat faster thinking about it.

  Just a little selfish. A dog was such a small thing to want, not a change of life or a change of lover or really a change of anything much. Just a little change. Just a little dog. Something new in her life. Something different.

  She held the dog closer.

  Her mother’s best friend, Edie, had been telling her for years to stop settling, to stop being so practical, to stop fixing everybody else and fix herself. “I’m not broken,” she’d told Edie, but maybe Edie was right. Maybe she’d start small, with a dog, with this dog, with a little change, a little fix, and then she could move on to bigger things. Maybe this dog was a Sign, her destiny. You couldn’t argue with destiny. Look what happened to all the Greek heroes who’d tried.

  “You can’t keep the dog,” Bill said, and Quinn said, “Let me talk to Edie.”

  Bill smiled, his handsome face flooding with relief and good will. One happy Viking. “Great idea. Edie’s all alone. She could use this dog for company. Now you’re thinking.”

  That’s not what I meant, Quinn wanted to say, but there was no point in starting a fight, so she said, “Thank you, good-bye,” instead. She rolled the window up, looking into the dog’s dark eyes. “You’re going to be just fine.” The dog sighed a little and rested her head on Quinn’s chest, keeping eye contact as if her life depended on it, trembling a little bit in her intensity. Smart, smart dog. Quinn patted her to slow her quivering and smiled. “You look like a Katie. K-K-K-Katie, just like the song. A pretty, skinny K-K-K-Katie.” She bent closer and whispered, “My Katie,” and the dog sighed her agreement and burrowed back to shiver into the dark warmth of Quinn’s coat.

  Outside the window, Bill waved at her, clearly pleased she was being so practical, and she waved back. She could deal with him later, but now she was late to eat pizza.

  With her dog.

  Across town, in the brightly lit second bay of Ziegler Brothers’ Garage and Service Station, Nick Ziegler leaned under the hood of Barbara Niedemeyer’s Camry and scowled at the engine. As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with it, which meant Barbara had an ulterior motive, and he had a pretty good idea what it was, given Barbara’s taste for married blue-collar men. His brother Max’s number must have come up. This was going to be a problem for Max, but nothing for Nick to worry about in general. People needed to go to hell in their own way, he’d decided long ago when he’d gone to hell in his, and if he had some scars from past screwups, he had some interesting memories, too. No point in getting in the way of Max’s memories.

  He slammed the hood shut on Barbara’s Trojan horse, pulled a rag out of his back pocket, and wiped the gleaming paint to make sure he hadn’t left fingerprints. Then he walked over to the third garage bay to inspect his next problem, Bucky Manchester’s muffler.

  “Did you find a leak in the Toyota?” Max asked Nick from the door to the office.

  “There is no oil leak.” Nick stood under Bucky’s Chevy, wiping his hands on the rag, surveying the damage. The b-pipe looked like brown lace. He’d have to call Bucky and tell him there would be significant money involved. Bucky wouldn’t be happy, but he’d trust him.

  “That’s what I told Barbara,” Max said. “But she said, ‘Look again, please.’ That woman is just overcautious.”

  Nick considered warning Max that Barbara was not interested in a phantom oil leak, but he didn’t consider it for long. Max wasn’t a cheater, and even if he lost his mind and actually contemplated it, there was Darla. Darla was not the kind of wife a man messed around on and lived to tell the tale. Barbara was a nonproblem.

  “She’s never been that fussy about her car before,” Max groused on as he came out of the office. “You’d think she didn’t trust us anymore.” He stopped to squint out one of the windows in the door of the first bay. “Did Bill knock Quinn up when we weren’t looking?”

  Nick’s hand tightened on the rag, and he stared at the b-pipe for a couple of seconds before he answered. “Doesn’t seem like something Bill would do.”

  “She’s going into the Upper Cut.” Max squinted through the window. “And she looks like she’s holding her stomach. Maybe she’s sick.”

  The door was on Nick’s way to the office anyway, so he walked over and ducked his head to look past Max’s ear. Quinn did look awkward as she struggled with the door to the beauty parlor, her navy peacoat bunched bulky around her stomach, her long, strong, jeans-clad legs braced against the wind, the auburn swash of her pageboy swinging forward as she bent over. Then she turned to lean into the door, and he saw a dog poke its head up from the neck of her coat. “Forget it,” he told Max. “It’s a dog.”

  “I am not adopting another dog,” Max said. “Two is more than enough.”

  Nick stopped at the sink to get the last of the oil off his hands. “Maybe she’s going to give it to Lois.”

  “It’s Wednesday,” Max said gloomily. “She’s meeting Darla over there for pizza. She’ll talk her into it, and then we’ll have to get used to another one.” Then he brightened. “Unless Lois kicks her out for bringing the dog in. She’s awful particular about that beauty parlor.”

  Nick nudged the tap with his wrist. “If Quinn wants to take the dog in, Lois will let her.” The hot water splashed over his hands, and he scrubbed gritty soap into them, paying more attention than usual because he was irritated with Max and he didn’t like being irritated with Max. Nick turned the taps off and dried his hands and heard Max finish a sentence he’d missed the beginning of. “What?”

  “I said, Lois would have to be in an awful good mood to let that happen.”

  “She probably is.” Nick’s annoyance made him go on to add a little grief to Max’s life. “She’s probably heard that Barbara dumped Matthew.”

  Max looked as startled as possible for somebody with a permanently placid face. “What?”

  “Barbara Niedemeyer set Lois’s husband free,” Nick said. “Pete Cantor told me this morning.”

  Max pointed a finger at Nick. “Anything else Barbara wants checked, you’re doing.”

  “Why don’t you just run a full check on the damn car now so she doesn’t have to come back?” Nick walked over to the office to call Bucky. “Save us both a lot of trouble.”

  “She’s a good-looking woman,” Max said. “Good job at the bank. You check the car.”

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