Love in a Nutshell - Janet Evanovich [61]
“You’re doing the right thing,” Matt said. He pocketed the paper and hoped this was the very last time he’d see Dognapper Dick.
Fifteen minutes later, after a call comprised of some detailed poodle negotiations, Matt stepped back into the party. Kate was at the merchandise table. She gave him a smile, but it wasn’t up to her usual wattage. Mayor Mortensen and his wife, Missy, stood behind the beer table with Harley and Junior. Missy was as thin and cheery as Torvald Mortensen was rotund and generally glum. After saying hello to Torvald, Matt turned to Missy.
“Kate and I need to go take care of a few things,” he said.
“I do?” Kate asked.
“You do.”
Kate looked confused. “Okay, then.”
“Do you think you could cover the merchandise table?” Matt asked Missy. “The party wraps up at eight.”
“Absolutely. I’d love to help,” Missy said. “Just let me get with Kate and learn the ropes.”
While Kate and Missy talked, Matt made sure the rest of his troops knew what to do: all spare beer in the bins below the table, merchandise boxed and stowed, and everything wiped down and ready to roll when they opened again tomorrow at eleven.
“Come on,” he said to Kate when Missy and she had finished. “We’re going to sneak out on the boss.”
Her smile was a little brighter. “That should be a challenge, especially for you.”
“I’m pretty good at it.”
Now if he could just pull off the rest of his plan.
After giving Kate some lame excuse about picking up supplies, Matt headed his truck out of downtown Royal Oak and south on Woodward Avenue. When they merged onto the freeway heading west, Kate started getting suspicious.
“What kind of supplies are we getting? They must be pretty exotic if you couldn’t have picked them up someplace in Royal Oak.”
“They’re one of a kind,” he said.
“Gotta be,” Kate said before lapsing into silence.
Matt exited the freeway and, a few minutes later, turned into the subdivision he’d been told to look for. Two blocks down, first house on the left, he pulled into a driveway and parked.
“Friends of yours?” Kate asked.
“Not exactly.”
She looked at the unassuming beige brick colonial with its perfectly clipped shrubs. “Okay, this is weird. I feel like I’ve been here before.”
“It’s possible,” he said. “These are friends of Richard’s.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Your ex-husband and I had a talk. The usual guy stuff. We shared, we laughed, we bonded.”
“No, really,” Kate said.
“And he told me where your poodle is.”
“Stella? Here?” She opened the truck door.
He settled a hand on her arm. “Before you go all Rambo, here’s the deal. These people have had your poodle for almost six months. They love her and think of her as their own. They’ve even renamed her Bitsy.”
“Bitsy? Granted, living here is better than what I’d imagined for her, but Bitsy? They probably have her in a pink ruffled collar and clipped with a little ball at the end of her tail. I need to go get her.”
Matt held his palms toward her, trying to slow her down a little. “In a second, but first you have to listen. The only way they’re going to let her leave with you is if she does it of her own free will.”
He didn’t add that if the poodle picked Kate, he’d be buying the couple a replacement dog. That was his bargain and his responsibility.
“You mean I have to sweet talk my own dog back to me when we haven’t seen each other for over a year?”
He nodded. “That’s the deal.”
“It’s insane.”
“I know, but it was the best I could do.” And that had taken some major persuading.
She drew in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “Okay. I can do this.”
They walked to the front porch, and Kate’s finger hovered over the doorbell as she asked, “How am I going to handle it if she doesn’t choose me?”
Matt spoke from the heart. “How could she not?”
As Kate stood waiting for the door to open, she finally recalled who would be on the other side—Myrna and Ed Savage. They were a nice couple about twenty years older than she. Ed was an accountant and one of Richard’s clients. Kate had been to a dinner