Page 63 of Leave a Mark
Wren doesn’t either, he told himself. And even if he knew this was true, it didn’t stop him from wanting the job to be his.
“C’mon, boy.” Lee stepped out of the Jeep and set Victor down by his feet. The pup sniffed the ground with intense attention, but he stayed even with Lee’s heels as they crossed Wren’s drive. When they reached the foot of her stairs, Victor sniffed the air and whined.
“You can do it,” Lee encouraged, pointing up to the landing. Victor whined again and sat. Lee mounted the first step. “C’mon, Victor."
The pup stood and wagged nervously, but he didn’t follow. Lee had weighed the little guy the day before, and he still hadn’t hit twenty pounds. The staircase loomed above him. Lee took another step, squatted down, and patted his thigh. “C’mon, Victor. Come up the stairs.”
Victor gave a distressed grumble and clawed at the bottom stair. He looked up at Lee, backed up a step, and to Lee’s surprise, he barked sharply.
“Victor, really? It’s just a step.” Above him, Lee heard a door open. He glanced up, and there she stood. Cut-off jean shorts showed him sights he’d never imagined, and he knew at once he’d need hours to take it all in. Wildflowers. Birds. Branches. Every color in nature. He’d fall into them if he didn’t look away, so he pulled his eyes up. Above the shorts, she wore a long-sleeved madras in faded plaid oranges and blues. It was buttoned low, and Lee thought he caught the hint of a bikini top beneath it. A vivid flash of red peeked out behind her open collar, but, from the bottom of the stairs, he couldn’t make out what was there.
“Hey, Victor!” she squealed. Before his eyes, Wren dropped to her knees, and Victor flew up the stairs. He crashed into Wren, paws flailing, tail whipping. Wren went backward and caught herself, laughing as Victor licked her face in with uncontained joy. He watched as she sat back and took the puppy into her lap, looking just as elated.
Yes. This.
The sight of them filled his happiness quota for the week, and still Lee wanted more. He climbed the stairs slowly… slowly to take in the sight and slowly not to disturb the moment.
“Victor, you’ve gotten so big!” Wren scrubbed the dog as she tried to dodge his kisses. In spite of himself, Lee envied Victor his proximity.
“He wouldn’t go up the stairs until he saw you,” Lee said, reaching the top step and catching her eyes. She wore a tiny butterfly barbell in her left brow. It had blue wings that matched her hair. He noticed that her blue streaks were sharper, her black layers darker. She’d touched up her color. He knew better than to think it was for him, but he wanted her to know he’d noticed. “Your hair looks great. And I love that butterfly.”
Her cheeks colored, and she reached a hand up to him. “Help me up.”
Lee gladly took her hand and pulled Wren to her feet while she cradled Victor with her other arm. He kept nuzzling her in his excitement, so she drew her hand out of Lee’s grasp to steady the puppy.
“He’s excited to see you,” Lee said needlessly. “He’s not alone.”
She fought her smile and looked away. “Let me just get my stuff, and we can go." Wren moved toward the door and set Victor down. The puppy had no intention of being left behind, and when she opened the door to her apartment, Victor stepped inside. Lee followed just in time to see Agnes arch her back and hiss at the canine intruder.
“Whoa,” Lee called, and Victor froze in his tracks, his tail tucked.
“Agnes, shoo!” Wren scolded, and the cat darted out of the room.
At the sight of her retreat, Victor broke his stay and was about to tear after her when Lee reached down and caught him.
“Oh, no, you don’t. She’d cut you to ribbons.”
“Sorry,” Wren said, picking up a floppy blue hat and what looked like a beach bag from her coffee table. “I didn’t think about that.”
“No problem,” Lee said, eyeing her bag and hat. “You… uh… you know we’re not spending the day at the beach, right?”
Wren crossed her arms and cocked a hip. Her brows lowered over her eyes. The closest beach was three hours away.
“I burn easily,” she said. “You, of all people, should support healthy skin,Dr. Leland Hawthorne.”
That name — and the way she said it — stabbed like a knife.
“Please don’t call me that.”
Her brows bunched, and her look morphed from censure to confusion.
“Call you what?” she asked, blinking at him.
“Leland,” he said, swallowing the bile that crept up his throat.
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
Lee sighed. Would she understand if he tried to explain it to her? The name — his father’s choice — had always chafed. And despite his wishes, Thomas Hawthornealwayscalled him Leland.“It’s a refined name,”he said whenever Lee had protested. Marcelle, too, had preferred it, once telling him that Lee was“the name of a barrel racer at the parish rodeo.”
