Page 44 of The B!tch is Bad

Chapter 14

Patience

I suppose it happened when Creed gifted me with Arrow.

Creed was highly busy, of course, figuring out how to deal with Oliver Klozov. Sean’s Great Dane Scruffy had returned to his house, so I’d taken him in too. I was grateful for my fenced-in grassy area with a fountain and flowers. Scruffy seemed well-trained, and I gathered some of his poo to take a day trip to see Elektra at her DNAnon lab and hand the feces over. Scruffy came too, so Elektra could swab his cheek. When he sat in my Prius’ passenger seat, he had to fold his neck to accommodate the roof. I rolled the window down about three inches so he could occasionally stick his giant nose out.

Meanwhile, Creed confronted Oliver. He told me about it later as we stood in his kitchen making a quick pasta dish.

“I demanded the missing wine back,” he said. “I couldn’t believe what Oliver said. ‘I was wondering when you were going to deliver the rest of those wines for storage.’”

My jaw hung low. “But the bottles were replaced with something else..”

“Exactly. I’ve got Slushy filing a lawsuit against Klozov. Slayer told me over at our bottling warehouse there’s a lot of equipment missing. I need to get control of what collateral is left.”

“But you still don’t want to evict him?”

Creed sighed. “No. I don’t want to give him any more ammo against me, and you never know who you’re riling up. Plus, it takes for-fucking-ever to evict anyone.” He’d told Grace to deactivate Oliver’s access to the wine unit. Oddly, there were no security videos of him removing wine, just like the nonexistent videos at Sean’s place.

I treated Creed with a light hand, demanding nothing, doing my job. He was distracted, understandably, with the drama Oliver had caused. Now some of Sean Wildstar’s children were milling about Screaming Eagle, probably claiming ownership. I saw one of them filling her SUV with boxes of candle wax, scrapbooking albums, and balls of yarn.

Having an early midlife crisis, I discovered I was longing for a baby. Of course I was immensely happy I’d never become pregnant with Fingerhut. Now, instead of being gifted with a child, I had doctors labelling me a “drug seeker.” In other words, an addict. Well, yes, I was seeking drugs, true, because I was addicted to the sensation of not being in pain. Was that unusual? So I kept to the medications Gudrun gave me.

Listening to her suggestions for avoiding pain and sadness, I got my allotted sunlight therapy every day, sunning in the yard or walking around the vineyards. I avoided negativity, meaning basically any news story, any movie. And I had to forgive myself for my actions, or non-actions, of the past, like not killing Fingerhut, and somehow becoming infertile. Gudrun asked me, “What if Creed was telling himself the same things you tell yourself? That he’s worthless, a pile of crap? You’d freak, tell him he’s wrong. Depression is fooling you, and it’s a trickster.”

Anemia made me dangerously low on vitamins necessary for life. The lab work Gudrun showed me said I was missing blood. Misplaced blood in itself was serious, like when you have a giant blank in your memory of a chunk of time. That’s normally due to alien abductions, which makes more sense than missing blood.

Gudrun advised me to love an animal, so when Scruffy returned, I simply took him in. I didn’t contact any of those random kids, alleged spawn of Sean’s, raiding Screaming Eagle. No one would care about Scruffy like I did. He sat on the couch with me when I read books, mostly memoirs, books on neurology, or American history. He was infinitely patient with me, nudging my arm with his fat nose when I forgot to feed him. He reminded me of a giant Scooby-Doo, so I called him Scooby sometimes.

The Bernedoodle came to me a few days after the Wine on Main discovery.

I was approving the payroll on the office computer when Creed knocked quietly at the front door. I wasn’t expecting him, so the place was a bit trashed. Seeing him on my security cam, I raced around picking up clothes from the floor, tossing paper plates with bits of food into the trash. Who wanted to use real plates when it was just me?

“Be right there!” I shouted, as Scruffy barked at the door. I couldn’t do anything about the braless T-shirt I currently wore. No time to fix that. Or put on makeup.

Creed absolutely glowed like a sexy as hell businessman in his button-down shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. Opening his arms to me, he embraced me as though I wore a revealing strapless dress and heels, not yoga pants and flip-flops. I couldn’t stop myself from licking his Roman nose, which slid into a mushy, silken kiss.

He made me feel like a sex queen no matter how I was dressed.

“I got you a gift,” he murmured against my lips.

I ran the back of my hand over his shiny head. “Oo.”

With Scooby sniffing Creed’s hand for biscuits, he strode to his car in the driveway. Was it something wrapped in the passenger seat? I found myself striding ahead too, my heart uplifted at his thoughtfulness.

But a dog bounded out of the seat! He resembled my Brutus, except curlier, with camel brown eyebrows slashing his forehead like fluffy dashes, an unsolvable math problem. Instinctively I opened my arms to him and he raced right at me, nearly knocking me over.

A puppy!

“Ooph!” I cried, squatting on my heels to be licked and pawed at. He was in love with me! Burying my face in his neck, I breathed in that puppy smell. He couldn’t be a year old. Why had someone not wanted him?

“Is he for me?”

Hands on hips, Creed watched us with appreciation. Scruffy batted the Bernedoodle too, who occasionally took time out from me to lick Scruffy’s mouth. “If you want him. Tanner took him in at his Hang Town Ranch.”

I kissed the dog loudly all over his face. “Why did no one want him?” The ranch was a rehoming and adoption place for unwanted dogs. Standing, I took his leash and walked a few steps to see if he was leash trained. He was. He followed, prancing happily, watching my face the whole time.

“Well,” said Creed, and I knew it was coming. “He’s got hip dysplasia already. The breeder knew they couldn’t honestly sell him, so they gave him to Tanner.”