Page 72 of Forget That Guy
“I can take him…” I trailed off when Boone shook his head. “We don’t know how aggressive he is, Holly. He seems okay with you and the rest of the women. But what if you wake up in the middle of the night and he’s attacking you? You’d have no way to defend yourself, and you live all alone. Until we know his temperament, we’re going to have to play this safe.”
“There are too many men here to try anything out,” I pointed out. “We need another shelter for them where there are only women.”
“I think I might be able to help with that,” Denver drawled.
We both looked toward the entrance of the emergency bay and saw Denver standing there with his arms crossed over his chest staring at the crowd in front of him.
“How?” Boone asked.
“Place next door is for sale,” he answered. “It was a daycare. Rooms are also all concrete floors and have drains in them because it was a rent-a-kitchen type thing long before it was a daycare. Plus, you and Ma were talking about starting a non-profit shelter already. We could turn it around pretty quick if we had Koen’s help.”
“Koen’s busy as fuck,” Boone pointed out. “He hasn’t even done your apartment shower yet.”
“Koen’ll become unbusy for this. His clients will understand.”
When he put it like that, it made sense.
The entire community would rally around these dogs.
A sudden knocking at the door had us all turning to the glass at the front entrance.
A frantic-looking woman was there, tears streaming down her face.
She looked familiar somehow, but I couldn’t figure out why.
Then it hit me. “Hey, that’s the nurse, right? She just moved here.”
“Yeah.” Boone went to the door and opened it, allowing her to all but fall inside.
“Oh, my god. I heard that he might be here. I need to find out,” the woman blurted.
“We have a lot of dogs here, ma’am. Who are you…”
“He’s a Malinois/Shepherd mix,” she whispered. “His name is Neo. He has a black face and tan body. He has a microchip.”
Boone grimaced because the description fit the one dog that none of us had been able to get near. Every time we did, he fought the cage so damn hard that he was hurting himself.
We hadn’t been able to get him out of the cage he’d been placed in yet because he was so aggressive.
At the taut silence, the woman glanced around. “Have you seen him?”
“Ma’am,” Boone started, but Denver, bless his sweet little heart, said, “This one fits.”
The woman gasped and went running.
She let out a guttural cry and fell down to the cage in front of the dog.
Boone caught her just in time before she pressed her hands to the cage.
He attacked the moment she was close.
The little nip the dog was able to get caused the woman to cry out, but it was like a switch was flipped with the dog.
The moment he smelled the blood, he froze.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Shit, are you okay?” Denver asked, reaching down for her hand.
