Stepdog Page 2

  She opened the outer door, then pivoted left in the hallway to open the inner one. The dulcet tones of an NPR commentator droned from within.

  “That’s a feeble deterrent for burglars,” I told her. “I put right-wing talk radio on really loud when I go out—that stuff would scare anyone off, even the most zealous vandal.”

  She gave me a skeptical look.

  “Not really,” I admitted immediately. “I don’t even lock my door, to be honest. I believe what’s meant to be mine will remain mine according to karmic law, and whatever I’m meant to lose, I’ll lose with or without locks on my door.”

  “That’s a bit fatalistic,” Sara said, fishing in her purse for her keys.

  “Of course it is, I’m Irish,” I said.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” she said.

  As Sara opened the door inward, she made a cooing noise and stooped down to greet the dog I had forgotten about.

  I’d have taken Sara for a rescue-dog type, but this mutt held itself with the grace of a pedigreed champion. It was typical dog size, I s’pose, with a warm golden coat, and intelligent, bright brown eyes. Its entire torso was wiggling with excitement, but it hardly made a noise beyond an urgent, suppressed whimper of joy. It spun gleefully in rapid, tight little circles anticlockwise, keeping its eyes peeled on Sara as it circled, its backside wagging as much as its tail.

  Sara bent down like Diana Spencer talking to a kindergartner; the dog stopped circling so it could meet her nose to nose, its arse still shimmying a Motown beat. Sara cooed and spoke as if it were a kid, like most Yanks do with dogs: “Halloooo, puppeee, I’m home! Were you a good girl? I bet you were a good girl”—all that bollocks. Suddenly I could see her both as a little girl and as a mother—both lovely aspects of her personality but neither one fitting the moment’s mood. She scratched the dog’s face. The happy whimper deepened and the body slightly stilled. Then Sara rose, stepped away, and said formally, as if the dog could really understand English, “Cody, I want you to meet Rory.”

  “Hiya, Cody,” I said in greeting, and squatted down to be closer to eye level. In fairness, it was a lovely dog. It sprang to me, tail and backside wagging, damp nose raised hopefully toward me. I held up a hand to cover my mouth. “No kisses,” I said, “but aren’t you a lovely little fella.”

  “Cody’s a girl,” Sara said sweetly.

  “Lovely girl,” I said. I brushed her head with my fingertips. Beautiful coat. I scratched her ears. Her hair was silky as a baby’s. I started to massage behind her ears.

  Cody’s mouth moved into an actual grin. She collapsed submissively onto her back on the floor as if her bones had suddenly gone all jelly, her legs splayed—a very tarty position, even for a dog. She gave me an expectant look and her tail thumped the floor like a metronome.

  “Aw, she wants you to pet her belly,” said Sara approvingly. “She likes you.”

  So the dog and I had a grand time bonding right inside the door. I rubbed her chest, which made her eyes roll back ecstatically. She suddenly leapt up and began spinning around in the tiny circles again (the dog, not Sara), stretched into a perfect Downward-Facing Dog, then flopped on her back again into the tarty-dog pose, all the while her hopeful dark gaze glued to my face, her tail flinging itself side to side. She was hilarious. This would be easy. I liked that pooch right away.

  But I liked Sara more. So after those few minutes, I rose up, and looked around the place. It was small but chic, with Sara’s organic-fair-trade/art-school-grad aesthetic. Sara was doing her coming-home routine: turning off the radio, checking the dog’s water bowl, bolting the front door.

  “Oooo . . . boss lady’s taken me captive,” I said, pleased. “Even after she fires me, she’s still got me under lock and key. Bet you’ve got a lash hidden around here, too?”

  “And a gang of tenth graders ready to leap out and make fun of your fiddle playing. There’s a secret escape hatch,” she said over her shoulder, smiling as she pulled a batik silk curtain closed against the light from the street. “But you’ll have to torture me to learn where it is.”

  We stood there, at opposite corners of her coffee table, taking in the moment. I was starting to believe that this was, really was, A Moment. It truly was nothing either of us had seen coming, and yet here it was, so fast and so natural.

  It’s easy enough to describe a first kiss, because it’s a specific action. It’s harder to describe those few moments of chitchat, of tentative body language and bits of touching and little noises, that let two people tell each other: right, we’re going to bed together. Not to “get laid,” but because you seem fantastic and it would be such an honor—not just a pleasure but an honor—to be intimate with you. I looked her all over. She was curvy, with a graceful neck, and how could I ever have looked at those legs and not thought about wanting to run my hand down them? She gave me a drowsy contented look and took the lead, moving around the table like flowing caramel, leaned against me, and slipped her hand into my back pocket, casually, naturally, as if we were a couple. She tipped her chin up toward me with an inviting smile.

  Snogging aside, I was dizzy by the time we reached the bedroom, and we hadn’t even got our clothes off yet.

  We didn’t bother with the lamp; streetlight streamed through a window, leaving her in silhouette. She stepped out of her sandals. Her arms began to reach behind her to unzip her dress.

  “Let me do that,” I said quietly.

  I stepped toward her, rested one hand on her cool shoulder, tugged the zipper, the green fabric falling away from itself, revealing a smooth, pale back. Then I stepped away so I could watch her silhouette as the dress slid to the floor. What a gorgeous silhouette she made. She stepped closer to me, reached for my waist, and shyly began to lift my shirt. I raised my arms to help her.

  “Over here,” she whispered. Tossing my shirt aside, she settled onto the bed, and with a gentle tug on my belt loops, invited me to join her.

  Wow, this was happening. Almost fainting with pleasure, I began to unzip my jeans, then remembered my boots were still on. I leaned down to take one off, and dizzy as I was, began to lose my balance; I toppled to the side and stumbled, my still-booted foot landing hard on a hairy rope—

  —that YELPED—

  Sara sat bolt upright. “Cody?” she cried, just as I said, hopping around for balance, “Fucking dog! Jesus—”

  Sara hurriedly turned on the bedside lamp. It threw a warm fuzzy light on her gorgeous naked body—which I was seeing for the first time under not-ideal conditions.

  The dog was standing wide-eyed by the open door. Its tail thumped the doorjamb cautiously and it looked back and forth between us, unhurt but wildly alert, looking almost as if it were expecting praise for having survived getting its tail stepped on.

  “I forgot about you,” Sara said with affectionate apology to the dog, who used this as an excuse to move farther into the room.

  “The dog’s going, right?” I said.

  Sara gave me a sheepish smile. God, she was gorgeous. “She normally sleeps on the bed with me.”

  I know Americans do that. I know Londoners do that. I know back in the Middle Ages, everyone did that, for warmth. But I couldn’t make the algebra work out here. Either the dog was on the bed, or I was on the bed, but not both. I did not want to ruin the moment but I’m not into being watched (unless I’m onstage, getting paid for it—and dressed).

  “Can we negotiate this?” I asked.

  All of the air got sucked out of the room and there was a giant, bedroom-shaped vacuum that kept either of us from speaking for a moment.

  “She’s a lovely dog,” I added, in case that made it easier. “Just having her here in the room with us—”

  “Right, yes, I’ve never had to think about it before, that’s all,” Sara said awkwardly. “I haven’t had anyone over since I left my ex.”

  That news made me very happy, especially being delivered by such a beautiful and very undressed woman who had just peeled my shirt off me. �
�Well, there’s a first time for everything,” I said. “Her bed in the living room looked comfortable, she can sleep out there.”

  “She’ll be confused,” Sara said, looking a little confused herself.

  “She’s a dog,” I said, in a tone clearly implying that a dog was a fantastic thing to be. Which I’m sure it is if you’re a dog. “She’ll figure it out.”

  Sara had grown a little furrow between her eyes. I was surprised how much it changed the shape of her face, although the rest of that lovely naked body was unaffected, as was my interest in it. “All right, then,” she said. “Come on, pup.” She got up off the bed and patted her bare knee.

  The dog looked at her, cocked its head in confusion, then checked me out and wagged its tail. It gave me an imploring, hopeful look, as if I could maybe save it from Sara’s inexplicable deviation from routine.

  “Puppy, let’s go,” she said, and grabbed a robe from the back of the door. Throwing it over her shoulders, she backed out of the room, gesturing the dog to follow her.

  The dog looked up at me. Up at the bed. Up at Sara. Its tail wagged harder—and then it turned and leapt joyfully, gracefully, onto the bed, and having landed, glanced between us as if expecting praise.

  “Come on, now,” I said, “Get off the bed.”

  “Come on, Cody,” Sara said firmly. The dog cocked its head again for a moment, then jumped up as if on a trampoline, and landed bowing, as if starting a game, then renewed its industrious tail wagging. It was so cheerful that I felt a bit of a prat for wanting it to leave.

  “Go on,” I insisted. More wagging. I steeled myself against the dog’s gleefulness, scooped it into my arms, bent down, and plopped it gently on the floor. I wasn’t rough, but I was firm. The dog yelped and so did Sara, who was still distractingly naked: “Rory!”

  I straightened. “Doesn’t she listen to you?” I asked, more huffily than I wanted to.

  On the floor, the dog swooned into her tarty-dog pose, dark eyes beseeching, tail still wagging. Even in submission, she fucking radiated joy.

  “Stop that,” I ordered. “Or we’ll sell you to the North Koreans.” I slid my foot under one hind leg so I could lift it and scoot her over onto her side, but before I could—

  “Rory!” Sara shouted. “Stop! Don’t kick her!”

  I stared at her, shocked. “I wasn’t going to kick her!”

  “You were! Your foot—”

  “I was only—”

  “Come here, puppy,” she said desperately. The dog scrambled up and leapt toward her, and she knelt to cradle it protectively against her nude paleness. “Good girl, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “I wasn’t going to kick her,” I said again. “Even she knows I wasn’t going to kick her, that’s just in your head. What kind of prick do you take me for?”

  She gave me a wary look. “I’m going to go settle her in,” she said. She led the dog back to the living room, closing the door behind herself.

  I threw myself supine onto the bed, shirtless, jeans half unzipped, boots still on, libido fading. “I can’t believe this is how the evening ends,” I growled to the ceiling.

  Chapter 2

  Sara came back into the bedroom looking distressed, and I thought, Bollocks. The mood was probably ruined for good now.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I really wasn’t going to kick—”

  Her rushed nod silently interrupted me. I sat up. Without looking at me, she clutched her robe tighter at the throat, covered her face with her hand as if suddenly self-conscious, and said, “This was just all so unexpected—”

  “I know,” I said in a conciliatory tone.

  After a moment, she moved her hand away from her face to untie her robe, and let it slip down to the ground so that she stood there naked before me again.

  That meant she really liked me. Thank God. Maybe the mood wasn’t ruined. But just to make sure, before the mood got moody again, rather than just jumping up to grab her . . .

  “The whole thing is a surprise to us both and there’s no rule about what happens,” I went on. (I do go on.) “Twelve hours ago—six, even!—if you’d told me I’d be sitting on Sara Renault’s bed right now, I’d have said bollocks, or at least I’d say, well, that must be due to there’s something wrong with her ceiling and I’m helping her fix it like a friend would do. If you need your dog sleeping on your bed—”

  “Rory—”

  “I mean, sure, I kissed you, and it was a gorgeous evening and I could so easily fall in love with you, but I wasn’t planning on it—to be honest, if you hadn’t sacked me, I’d be home in my own bed right now watching footy highlights, and the dog—”

  “Rory—” She tried again.

  “And I don’t want to pressure you into anything and you don’t owe me a thing ’cept my final pay—”

  “Rory, shut up!” she said, almost laughing with frustration.

  “It’s not like we’ve got to work out a living arrangement here or anything. It’s just a kiss that ran amok, it shouldn’t cause any upset—”

  She actually threw herself on top of me on the bed.

  That felt amazing.

  So at least we had an understanding. Enough that we could complete the removal of clothes with the kind of shy intensity that’s full of mischief, not insecurity or worry.

  She was gorgeous. I don’t even mean physical beauty, although she had that, too . . . but she had a glow to her, it surrounded her, like an egg, like an aura, and I wanted to be inside of it with her. She let me in. I’ve never felt that with anyone before. When we made love I felt my entire body climax. She was luscious. And unselfconscious for a woman who had not been naked in front of anyone else lately.

  And in the morning, everything was fine. Even with the dog, who was sleeping on the floor right outside the bedroom, and was just as happy to see us as when we’d come home last night. No sulking, no timidity. As if sleeping outside the door was the most comfortable thing in the world, and greeting Rory in the morning was an established part of the routine of Being Sara’s Dog.

  Still, Sara bent over and spoke in a coddling, cooing way, which wasn’t really necessary for anyone but Sara, because the dog was fine. But Cody was no idiot—her lot dines out on affection, so when it’s offered, of course she’s going to take it. Her tail whacked the wall steadily, she gave Sara an adoring look with those pretty dark eyes, and made a feint of licking Sara’s cheek without actually touching it. There was something Little Match Girl–ish about the meekness of that incomplete kiss—it was absurdly endearing, so I made a mental note to try it myself sometime. Sara kissed the dog between the eyes and then straightened up.

  Then Cody, suddenly more Tom Sawyer than Little Match Girl, approached me, her mouth a lolling grin, tail wagging; I patted her head and said, “Hey, pup,” and that was that. The interspecies equivalent of a casual high five. Sara looked mollified.

  So it was all good. We moved into the kitchen, where Sara sat me down at the small table, and tied on an MFA apron with Japanese irises on it.

  “Scrambled eggs okay?” she asked.

  “Deadly,” I said approvingly.

  After sitting there a few moments trying to ignore the dog’s quizzical gaze, I caught another aroma, and for a brief shudder thought I was back in my family’s dismal flat in Dublin.

  “Are you . . . frying a tomato?” I asked, incredulous.

  She pressed down the handle of the toaster. “Yep,” she said, pleased with herself. “I would have made you black pudding but I didn’t have any congealed pig’s blood handy.”

  “You don’t have rashers by any chance? Not that crap American bacon.”

  “Sorry. Next time.”

  It took all my self-control not to punch the air with a great cry of triumph: Yes! Next time! There would be a next time!

  Instead I stood and moved around the counter to embrace her. “Actually I don’t eat Irish breakfast,” I confided. “Fried tomato is like an acid flashback to my da making us breakfas
t after the nightshift at Cadbury’s.”

  “Your father was a chocolatier? I thought—”

  “Factory job. After Ma died he had to do everything. He was a shite cook.”

  She was still a moment. “No fried tomato, then.”

  I kissed her forehead, and then hugging her tighter, nuzzled the nape of her neck. “You’re a darling anyhow,” I said.

  So we skipped the tomato, but Sara scrambled perfect eggs, and she had Lyons tea—and Kerrygold butter for the toast—what are the odds of that? So it was a gorgeous breakfast. “I think I’ll keep her,” I said to the dog as I set down my fork.

  “I think you’d better let me keep you,” Sara corrected. “You’re the one without a job. Sorry about that,” she said again, as she’d said five times or more yesterday.

  I shrugged. “You don’t control the funding,” I said. “Anyhow, my visa is for acting, not music. I’m surprised no one from Immigration ever showed up to snap my fiddle strings. And my sponsor went under, so I’ve no way to renew the visa. I’ll be undocumented again, and you’d have to sack me anyhow. This tea is deadly.”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “I bet the museum could renew your visa, if we could just find the money to keep you on.”

  I laughed and set down my mug. “I’m not a bad fiddler but I’m a crap violinist, Sara, and you know it. If Jefferson heard my version of the Corelli, it would never be his favorite. Unless you were planning to have a special exhibit on the Folk Art of the Potato Famine or something, you’d do better going to Boston Conservatory for a guest musician. I’ll go back to what I did before.”