When Pigs and Parrots Fly (6 page)

“No. I ate too many cookies. You?”

“Same. Helen said she'd donate a couple of dozen. There had to be over a hundred cookies in the first box. I have no idea how many she brought after that.” They'd even been still warm, which increased the sales of cookies even more. Which also meant, he'd had to make even more coffee.

Neither of them spoke, which was a welcome silence compared to the ruckus they'd just experienced. In addition to the noise level of so many conversations going on at the same time in one building, they'd also escaped too many dogs barking at too many cats. He thought he'd been very specific when he'd worded the poster that of the two hours, one hour was for dogs, one was for cats. But they'd all come together. Fortunately, the dogs stayed in the dog section, and the cats stayed in the cat section, and there was no trouble except for the noise.

Once more, the couch shifted, and he knew from the panting and hot breath on his arm that Scruffy had just jumped up into Sarah's lap.

“I think you're famous,” he said, still without moving or opening he eyes. This was surely one of the strangest conversations he'd ever had. He couldn't move a muscle if he tried, and he suspected Sarah felt the same.

“I'm only famous within the customer base of your store. Which is fine with me.”

He didn't remind her that besides the feed and tack store, only one other pet food store did business in Bloomfield. That other small mom-and-pop operation only sold organic food and natural health products for animals, and therefore only held a small client base. Previously, his only competitor in town had closed when the owner retired. Unless anyone went out of town to the larger cities, he pretty much had the whole house-pet supply market for the town of Bloomfield. “Whatever my market base, we had hundreds of people in the store tonight.”

She groaned again. “Can you believe some of them asked for my autograph? Someone asked me when my book is coming out. I can't write a book. I had enough trouble writing my brochure.”

He felt himself smiling. He'd seen one of the times someone had asked her for her autograph. She'd turned as red as a beet and about as coherent. She'd actually stammered. In all the years he'd known her, he'd never seen her so rattled. Of course, as soon as the woman asked a question about her cat, Sarah shook herself out of it, and once again became the esteemed veterinarian everyone had come to see.

“You did fine.” In fact, she'd done so fine that they'd raised a considerable sum for the animal shelter. So much, between the percentage of sales he'd donated, and Helen's spectacular cookies, plus people simply putting money in a jar after listening to Sarah's great advice that he wanted to celebrate their success. He cleared his throat but didn't open his eyes. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

That must have grabbed her attention because the couch jiggled, indicating she now sat upright, forcing him to do the same.

Begrudgingly, he opened his eyes, straightened, and turned to her.

“I'm going out with Hayden again tomorrow night. Why?”

Something in his gut ached like he'd been sucker-punched. “I thought you said that you weren't interested in Hayden.”

“I never said that. In fact, what I believe I said was that if he asked, I'd probably go out with him again. And he asked. So I said yes. Why? Is there something about him I should know? I know he wants to get married again.”

“I thought you weren't interested in getting married.”

“I never said that either. A few years ago, I said I wanted to get a good foundation for my clinic before I started to think about more than just casual dating. I've thought about it. Maybe it is time to start looking toward the future. I'm not that far from thirty, and I've never had a serious relationship. If I wait too long to start trying to find that elusive Mr. Right, it might be too late. What about you? You're three years older than I am. Any prospects? Crystal?”

He nearly shuddered at that thought. He didn't have anything against smart women—in fact, he preferred to spend his time with intelligent people. But with Crystal, even though she was a nice woman, once they got past the weather, they hadn't had much to talk about, and the conversation drifted to what happened at the high school that day. He didn't have many good memories of high school, so he wasn't exactly held captive listening to the adventures and misadventures of the current generation of students.

When he was with Sarah, on the other hand, they never lacked for conversation. That hadn't changed since the time she was eight years old and had lost her front baby teeth. She'd told him all about how, unlike people, a beaver's front teeth never stopped growing, and then before he could think of what she was doing, she'd grabbed both him and Tucker by the hands and, yakking constantly, she'd dragged them to the creek, hoping to see a beaver. For an entire hour, during which time no beaver had dared show its teeth, or its face, or any other part of its body, they'd sat there with Sarah holding tightly onto his hand, squeezing it every time something moved as they waited for that elusive beaver.

It had been the first time he'd ever held hands with a girl, and come to think of it, the most memorable. Tucker's twerpy little sister, at the time probably half his size, had held him captive.

He strangely hadn't been bored or impatient. After listening to all her beaver factoids, he'd also wanted to see a beaver, and he'd been disappointed that they had to go home for supper before they did. In fact, she'd got him so interested in beavers, he'd built a beaver dam, complete with a plush beaver he'd bought with his allowance, as his science project in school, and he won first place for the nature segment at the science fair.

When he started looking for his Ms. Right, he was going to look for exactly that same thing, as corny as it felt—friendship and compatibility first, meaning someone he didn't get bored with, even in the silent moments. Someone with whom he would share common interests, growing into an attraction that zinged, just like in the movies, before the happy couple rode off into the sunset.

He looked at Sarah, who stared at him as if he'd sprouted alien tentacles.

“What?” he asked, barely holding back on telling her to close her mouth.

“You had a really strange look on your face. I've never seen you like that before. Are you overtired?”

He wasn't about to admit that the reason he probably looked zoned was because he'd just imagined a high point in his life to have the same ending as one of the sappy chick flicks she enjoyed watching so much—except this movie had a beaver in it.

He was obviously more tired than he'd thought.

Sarah shook her head. “We should really get motivated and add up all the totals and do your bank deposit. No insult to your company, but I really need to get home and go to bed. From what I just saw, the same goes for you. We both have busy days ahead of us.”

Josh pushed himself up and reached for the bag on the coffee table containing the day's cash and receipt log. Truer words were never said, but still, he was in no rush for Sarah to go home.

The sooner he went to bed, the sooner she'd be spending another evening with Hayden.

Instead of grabbing the deposit bag, he stood. “I think I'm going to make some good, strong coffee. I'll be right back.”

Sarah had just put
the clip in her hair when the doorbell rang.

She smiled. Hayden was right on time. She liked that.

After one last adjustment to make sure it was right, she turned to answer the door. At the same time as she reached to open it, a male voice echoed through the door.

It wasn't Hayden.

She opened the door to see Hayden and Josh facing each other, talking. On her doorstep.

“Josh? What are you doing here? Hayden and I were just about to leave.”

Josh's cheeks darkened, and he cleared his throat. “I phoned but you didn't answer, so I thought I'd take a chance. I didn't want to miss you. I have kind of a situation.” He turned and glanced at his car, parked on the street, in front of Hayden's car.

Crystal sat in the passenger seat, checking her watch.

Josh lowered his voice. “I think I told you that Crystal just took over as the head of the drama club at the high school. It seems she was given a last-minute invitation to go to a play at the elementary school tonight to see a friend's daughter, who got the leading role. She wants to go really bad, and she thinks that watching is going to help give her some ideas of what to do at the senior high level. She was so insistent, I couldn't say no. But I really don't want to go. So I was wondering if you two would come, so I could have someone to talk to.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “Talk to? You're not supposed to go to a play and talk through it. You're supposed to be quiet and watch.”

Hayden smiled, somewhat diffusing her annoyance. “I think he means before and after. It sounds like Crystal might get lost behind the scenes for a long time. I've been out with her a few times, so I know what she's like. I don't mind going. We were just going to see a movie, anyway. How about if we go to the movie tomorrow and tonight we can go with Josh and Crystal to the school play?” He waggled his eyebrows. “I know they're having coffee and free donuts, and some great door prizes to entice people to go. My boss's daughter is also in the play, and he asked me to go with them. I turned him down because I didn't want to be a third wheel, but I'm kind of curious about the backdrops. Frank told me that he helped the drama group with the mechanics, and that he did something special for a scene change. If you ask me, it sounds far too complicated for a group like this, but he insists it's going to work, and he's piqued my curiosity.”

Sarah couldn't think of anything she wanted to do less than watch children of people she didn't know. But Josh looked so desperate. As to Hayden, she could almost see the gears whirring in his head as she imagined him trying to figure out what his boss had done on the allegedly intricate scene change.

Besides the garden club, Hayden had told her that he was also a member of a dominoes club. She hadn't known such a thing existed, and she couldn't imagine the mental energy it would take to calculate the multiple trajectories, then sacrifice hours to set up little rectangles that were destined to fall down within minutes. She supposed that if watching wooden shapes getting knocked over interested him, he probably saw his boss's stage setup as having the potential to be a larger version of the same thing.

Inwardly, she shuddered at the thought, but at the same time, it piqued her curiosity too.

She honestly didn't know why it hadn't worked out between Hayden and Crystal. Maybe between the two of them, it was simply too much math.

When she'd been a child, their school plays had no other backgrounds than bad paintings done by the students and taped to the wall. A decade later, the bar had been raised, but she didn't think that the skill levels or available resources had changed. Not that she wanted to see Hayden's boss fail, but now she wanted to see the difference a decade had made in the technical details of a children's drama production.

She turned to Josh. “I suppose we can go. I guess you were on your way there right now, weren't you?”

He nodded. “Yes. It's a small parking lot. We'd best go in one car.”

Following Josh to the car, Sarah reached for the front passenger door out of habit and yanked her hand back. Tonight, she wasn't really with Josh. Officially, she was with Hayden. And that meant sharing the backseat with him.

She hadn't been in the backseat of a car with a member of the male species since high school when her father drove her and her boyfriend to the prom.

How long ago those days had been.

Yet, she was still single when most of her friends were either married or about to be married.

As soon as both back doors closed, Crystal turned around and smiled brightly at both her and Hayden. “I'm so glad all of you decided to come. To make it up to everyone, I want to take all three of you out for dinner tomorrow night.”

Hayden smiled politely. “That's okay. Sarah and I had plans for tomorrow night. We're going to see, uh . . . that new movie at the Bloomfield Cinema.”

At the risk of smearing off her lipstick, Sarah clenched her bottom lip between her teeth to prevent herself from laughing. Hayden had forgotten the name of the movie already, telling her that he wasn't really interested in it. Taking her to see it was his way of trying to make it up to her that he'd been so snowed by Crystal's behavior and completely forgotten that Sarah was supposed to be his date at Burger Heaven.

“Oh!” Crystal's face lit up. “I want to see that one!” She turned just enough to rest one hand on Josh's shoulder while he steered the car away from the curb and into the street so they could be on their way. “Josh, can we go with them?”