Unexpected Encounter

Harry

I went to pull the car out of the driveway. For once, it looked like we were actually going to make it to school on time.

“Are you sure you have everything?” I asked Winnie again, certain that I was about to be caught up in my tracks and realize that we had forgotten something fundamental.

“Harry, look out!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. My eyes darted to the side mirror, and I saw something just behind the back wheel of the car—a little bundle of brown fluff, practically quivering in my line of vision.

“What is that?” I muttered as I climbed out of the car to go check it out. I had no idea what had managed to get so close to the car this early in the day. We lived in a gated property, so whatever it was must have slithered in between a gap in the fence.

Winnie was quick to follow me. I considered telling her to stay where she was, but I knew that wasn’t going to fly. She was too curious, just the way her mother had been.

“Oh my gosh, it’s a dog!” she exclaimed as she got a little closer to it.

I grimaced. She was right, and the poor little thing looked like it had had a hell of a day. It was curled up around itself, shivering slightly, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for it. It looked up at me with big, brown eyes and jerked when I got close to it. I crouched down in front of it and extended my hand.

“Hey, buddy,” I murmured. “I almost ran you over. You can’t be hanging around behind my car, all right?”

I checked it for a collar, but it didn’t have one. Winnie came up and extended her hand toward it, letting it sniff her, and then she gave it a quick pet on the head.

“It’s so pretty.” She said, and I could hear a dangerous amount of want in her voice. I knew I had to get her to school, but I couldn’t just leave this thing here.

“Go inside,” I told her. “Look up vets in the area. We need to get this little guy checked out.”

She did as she was told, and I pulled a blanket from the back seat and put it around the dog. It was midsized with scrubby black fur and a greyish patch that could have passed for a beard. It was limp in my arms, apparently not much caring that I was heaving about this way and that, and I cradled it close to me, feeling protective already. It had come to us for help. The least I could do was make sure that it got it.

Winnie came running back out a few moments later and told me the address of the nearest vet’s office. It wasn’t far, and even though it would get us both running late, it was worth it to make sure that this little guy got the help that he needed.

We arrived at the vet’s a few minutes later, and Winnie followed me worriedly into the building, like she was our security escort. I couldn’t help but find it a little funny. She was taking such good care of this little creature, and she barely even knew who it was. She had that compassion in her, deep down to her core, the kind that could only come from genetics. The kind my sister had given to her.

“Hi, is there any chance we could speak to the vet on duty?” I asked the receptionist, a youngish woman with mousy brown hair, when we arrived at the desk. She glanced up at me, at the dog, and at Winnie, and nodded.

“She’s just had a cancellation, so I think you’re in luck right now,” she told me with a smile.

I sighed my relief. Thank fuck. I was so glad that this thing was going to be off my hands in just a few minutes. A moment or two later, another door opened, and in it stood one of the most stone-cold gorgeous women I had ever seen in my life.

My jaw nearly dropped as soon as I set eyes on her. I had seen plenty of hot chicks before—of course I had—but she was something else entirely. My entire body prickled from top to bottom as I took her in. She was dressed in a pair of lavender scrubs, but they didn’t do much to obscure the gorgeous shape of her curvy figure. Her long blonde hair was pulled up into a bouncy ponytail on top of her head, and a smattering of freckles on her face set off her green eyes.

“Is this the patient?” she asked as she approached us.

I nodded. “My niece here spotted him next to the back wheel of our car this morning,” I explained. “I don’t know who he is or where he came from, but we can’t keep him, and he doesn’t seem like he’s in a good state.”

“We can’t keep him?” Winnie asked, her voice wavering dangerously.

I offered her a quick smile. “We need to let him get all fixed up first, don’t we?”

I didn’t want to get her hopes up, but I knew I couldn’t just shoot them down like that.

The vet offered me a quick smile, obviously used to dealing with stuff like this. “Right, of course,” she said, and she gently eased the dog out of the blanket we had wrapped around him and carried him into the examination room. She laid him down on a small metal table, and the dog perked up a little, glancing around this way and that.

“Ah, he’s already looking a little more awake,” the vet murmured, and she glanced at Winnie and me and gestured for us to come in. “You’re allowed to step over the threshold.”

I glanced at my watch again. I knew that I had to be getting Winnie off to school, but she was already tugging on my hand so that we could get a closer look at the dog.

“I’m very happy to find this little buddy a home for you guys,” the vet explained to me. “I have contacts with shelters across the city. They’d be able to find someone who was happy to take him in for you.”

“But we can take him in,” Winnie protested, and I winced again. I wanted to tell her that we just couldn’t, but I didn’t have the heart to shut her down quite so bluntly. The vet smiled at me sympathetically.

“How about you head out and meet with one of the cats outside?” she suggested to Winnie.

Winnie jumped at the opportunity at once. The vet turned toward me again and smoothed her hand over the dog’s head. It already seemed to have calmed down just being in her presence. I supposed this was the kind of effect that she needed to have on animals, doing the job that she did.

“There are plenty of places that we can take him, and I only work with no-kill shelters,” she explained to me. “He seems in pretty good shape. We’ll keep him here overnight to make sure that there’s nothing latent, and then we can go about trying to find somewhere for him to stay, if you’re sure you don’t want to hang onto him.”

“I’m sure,” I replied, even though I wasn’t. I had never had a dog growing up, and I had always wanted one. This little guy had come scurrying into our lives like he knew we could use a little extra love, and there was a part of me that just wanted to grab him and tell him that he could stay. But there had been enough change recently as it was, and I didn’t want Winnie getting attached to a dog just for us to have to get rid of him because we couldn’t handle him down the line.

“Whatever you think is best,” she said. “You did the right thing, bringing him in. A lot of people would have just ignored him and made it someone else’s problem.”

“Yeah, I don’t think my niece would have let me get away with that,” I replied.

She laughed, tickled by the comment. “I get that,” she said. “Kids can be so much more compassionate than adults sometimes, you know?”

“I guess they can,” I said. “Though her compassion has me running late for work right about now.”

“You’ve done everything you need to do,” she told me. “You’re more than welcome to get out of here.”

“Thanks,” I replied, and she quickly handed me a card before I headed for the door.

“Call me if you find any other stray dogs hanging around under the back wheels of your car,” she suggested.  “I could do with more people like you actually giving a shit about animals in this city.”

“Will do,” I promised, and she grinned at me as I headed for the door. I glanced down at the card she had given me. Raina Walters. It was a name that seemed to suit her somehow, something sweet and nature-y.

“Hey, Winnie,” I said as she hung out with some of the cats at the reception desk. “We have to get going now, okay? I have to get you to school.”

“What about the dog?” she asked hopefully.

I shook my head. “He’s better off staying here,” I replied. “These guys know what’s best for him.”

She pouted impressively, and I just shook my head at her, laughed, and took her hand to take her back out to the car. That kind of thing might work on me once in a while, but I was getting hip to the way she tried to twist my arm, and I knew that a dog wasn’t going to work out in the long run.

Still, she managed to keep up the silent treatment as we headed to school, and even as we walked into the office so I could explain to the receptionist why we were running late. She finally broke her silence when I started to talk-

“We rescued a dog!” she explained happily, a big smile on her face.

I ruffled her hair and sent her on her way. She was clearly pleased that she had a fun story to tell her peers while she was in class today. It would make her the talk of the playground, which was just what she needed to distract herself from all of this.

I headed to work, glad that I wouldn’t have to make the same excuses. Nobody really cared what time I got into the office. Yara would be there to tell me off, of course, but only because I hadn’t been around to bring her the coffee she always had around this time. And when I told her why I had been running so late, I knew that she was going to think it was totally adorable and let it slide.

I grabbed my keys from my pocket and closed my fingers around the card that the vet had given me before I had left her office. I pulled it out and looked down at it, a smile on my face. I knew nothing was going to come of it, but so what? I was allowed to be happy that I’d gotten a beautiful woman’s number. She was sweet and hot, and she had about the best smile I had ever seen in my life.

And after the rush that this morning had already been, I figured I owed myself a little indulgence in the tiniest crush in the world.