Page 63 of I Hate You More

“No…oh, no,” she murmured. “Ruby made us throw out all the chocolate in the house weeks ago. The chips and cookies, too.”

Spencer hid a smile at the outrage in the woman’s voice. Ruby hadn’t been pleased with his initial dietary advice, but it was obvious she’d been determined to see it through, even against a sweet old lady’s wishes. Which was just like Ruby. Although she might not like a thing, she gritted her teeth and pushed through.

Even the way she was sitting on the bedroom floor, her whole body vibrating with the need to scratch at her red-welted skin, made him want to pull her in his arms and kiss her. She was uncomfortable and unhappy, and her day was about to get a lot worse, but not by so much as a flutter of her eyelashes did she let it show.

“Well, the good news is, Wheezy isn’t going to die,” he announced.

In true Ruby fashion, she was quick to pick up his real meaning. “What’s the bad news?”

“He isn’t going to like my recommended treatment.”

“If things are that bad, why are you smiling at me?”

He smiled wider. “Because you’re not going to like my recommended treatment, either.” He reached for his veterinary bag. “How are you at giving enemas?”

Chapter 17

Ruby itched all over. Her face was a splotchy mess, she was urine-soaked and sitting on a bathroom floor, and she was holding a syringe that Spencer had just pulled out of Wheezy’s butt. There seemed no possible way for this day to get worse.

“I came as soon as I heard what happened,” a male voice said—a whining, nasally,walrus-y male voice. “How could you let this happen, Ruby? What were you thinking?”

Ruby closed her eyes and prayed for the floor to open up and swallow her whole.

It didn’t.

Aware that Spencer was watching her with the intensity of a man who was trained to diagnose problems on sight, she stretched her lips into a smile and turned to face Harry. She had no idea how he knew about Wheezy’s mishap or why Mrs. Orson had allowed him inside the house, but he’d obviously come running the second he heard.

He would. The man was drawn to drama like a serial killer to the scene of his own crime.

“Hello, Harry,” she said, using the same sweet voice she always used to placate him. It was harder to do now that her hands and arms felt like they were on fire, but this was what she’d been training her whole life for. There would be no fidgeting, no sign of distress; she was nothing but a perfect smile and inherent grace. “I’m so sorry you had to come all this way. If you’d called first, I could have saved you the trouble.”

“Fuck me!” A grimace twitched the bushy ends of his mustache. “What happened to your face?”

She ignored him. She’d had plenty of time while tryingnotto watch Spencer flush out Wheezy’s digestive track to examine herself in the bathroom mirror. The sight wasn’t a pretty one. Either her allergy to chrysanthemums had gotten worse with age, or there was something particularly potent about Mrs. Orson’s crop, because it looked as though she belonged in the infectious ward.

Unlike Harry, however, Spencer had yet to say one word about it. He was much too busy for that. In addition to the enema—which would, he said, need to be repeated in about eight hours—he’d administered active charcoal to settle the dog’s stomach and absorb the worst of the toxins.

“I know I’m off the clock, but I felt it was my duty to stay and offer a hand,” she said. At a nod from Spencer, she handed the syringe back to him. “This is Dr. Wilson, Wheezy’s vet.”

She’d hoped that the introduction would stop Harry from asking questions and pushing himself in where he didn’t belong, but like the bathroom floor remaining intact, it didn’t work.

“I’m going to need you to take a drug test before you head home,” Harry said. “In case you’ve forgotten, it’s against policy to indulge in narcotics with the residents.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what the policy was regardingstealingnarcotics from the residents, but Spencer had tilted his head and was staring at her. He was far too intelligent a man not to pick up on the pedantic way Harry was treating her.

So this is it, then.The dark confession, the ugly truth, the way it all would come to an end. Ruby was finally going to be outed as a liar and a fraud, and Harry motherfucking Gunderson was going to be the one to do it.

It was that thought more than anything that pushed her into action. Her stomach felt like she’d eaten twelve lead weights, and her heart skittered worse than the first time she’d set foot on a stage, but she could not,wouldnot allow Harry to push her around anymore. It had been wrong of her to mislead Spencer, and there was a good chance a man like him would never forgive her for it, but she was no longer content to sit back and let life happen to her.

Ruby Taylor was officially back.

“It’s weed, Harry, not meth, and what I do on my own time is none of your business.” She snapped her latex gloves off with the ease of long practice—of thousands of catheters cleaned and baths given, of temperatures taken and wounds dressed. Nothing she’d done in the past decade had been particularly glamorous, but ithadmattered. The only shame was that it had taken her so long to realize it. “I’m not going to explain myself to you or apologize for my actions. And I’m definitely not letting you administer a drug test unless you can show me where in the employment contract it says you can.”

“It’s common sense, Ruby. Anyone with half a brain would know that you can’t just sit around rolling joints with the residents. You work here, remember? You work forme.”

“Not anymore, I don’t,” she said. She tossed the gloves into the trash bin with a satisfying swish. “I quit.”

It should have been a moment for triumph—and in many ways, it was—but Harry looked down at the welted red skin of her hands with something like horror. She didn’t know why that upset her more than all the rest, but it did. She’d just put this man in his place and quit her job. She’d taken a stand. Andstillhe only focused on her exterior. She could spend three decades working here, and Harry would never see her as more than her outward parts.