We’d made it to Monterey in just under two hours, which was a refreshing change. Whenever Mimi was on a road trip, it always seemed like we had to stop every thirty miles or so for snacks. Once we reached Monterey it was a quick drive up into the hills to Our Gang, a rescue center for abused and abandoned pit bulls. Not knowing much about the breed myself, and only hearing the stories that are usually reported on the news, I didn’t know quite what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect a former beauty queen to be running the joint. Sophia had filled me in on Chloe, and how she’d gotten the gig, and for someone who’d only been running her own business for just over a year, it was impressive.
“Where are the puppies? I want to see the puppies!” Neil said, practically dancing through the barn we were standing in.
“Easy, Neil, they’re just around the corner.” Chloe laughed, patting the dog next to her. Sammy Davis Jr. was gentle and sweet, and obviously the mascot of the entire operation. Every volunteer she had working today stopped to say hello to him. Since I had a cat named Clive, who was I to judge what people named their pets?
“So how many people do you have working here?” I asked Chloe as we headed to where I assumed the puppies were.
“Full time there’s just three of us, but I have six more part-time paid staff, and usually from seven to ten part-time volunteers, depending on the time of year and where we are in the semester. We’ve partnered up with a local veterinary college, and there’s usually someone interning here for credit. Plus my boyfriend, Lucas. He’s a veterinarian here in town, and he’s up here all the time.”
“You mean my cousin Lucas,” Sophia piped up.
“No, I mean my boyfriend, Lucas,” Chloe replied, tilting her head and smiling sweetly back at her.
“He’s my cousin.”
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“Shit, I like you so much better than his ex!” Sophia exclaimed, just as a very good-looking guy came around the corner.
“You picking on my cousin, Chlo?” he asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her into his side.
“I have to. She’s being prickly,” Chloe replied promptly, and Sophia stuck out her tongue. “Lucas, this is Simon and Caroline, they’re friends of—”
“They’re my friends, and I can introduce them,” Sophia interrupted. With as much crap as she was giving Chloe, I could tell she really liked her. “This is Simon and Caroline.”
“Nice to meet you Caroline, Simon,” Lucas said, reaching out and first shaking my hand, and then Simon’s. “I hear you guys are picking out a puppy to take back to the city?”
“Oh no, not us. Those two.” Simon pointed at Neil and Sophia. “We’ve got all we can handle with four cats at home.”
“Four cats? Wow, impressive,” Lucas said as we headed into a separate area. And then we finally saw . . . the puppies. And they were every bit as cute as promised. Neil immediately fell to the floor, letting them crawl all over him in a giant wave of adorable.
“Oh my God! These guys are awesome!” he cried out, now lying down in the pile of waggly tails. They swarmed him, to his delight.
As we watched our friend roll around on the floor, laughing his head off, I had a sudden vision of what Neil would be like as a father.
“You do know that you’ll never get to play good cop with your kid, right?” I whispered to Sophia, who just shook her head as she looked on in amusement.
“Oh yeah, that’s obvious,” she said, then turned to me with a grin. “Besides, I look really good when I’m playing bad cop.”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Simon said, then lay down in the pile with his friend.
And as I watched Simon play with the puppies, I had a sudden vision of him rolling around on the floor in our home, in Sausalito, covered in kittens and babies. Mmm, good vision.
“So, obviously they’re all adorable,” Chloe said, watching the two grown men having a ball with a bunch of dogs. “Any thoughts on which you think you’d like?”
“Good lord, how in the world are we going to choose?” Sophia bent down to pick up a sweet little one that had begun nuzzling at her foot.
Ha! Sophie’s choice . . . I bit it back and said nothing. I did look down to see Simon, grinning up at me with hands full of puppies.
“A hundred percent no,” I said, arching my eyebrow.
In the end, it was the puppies who made the choice for Sophia and Neil. Not one, not two, but three puppies had been adopted. Cute won out over common sense, and even Sophia was excited about the prospect of having a houseful of paws and toddler toes all at once. Truth was, I’d never seen her happier. She still talked a great game, tough as nails and seeming to have Neil by the balls, but she was thrilled with the turn her life was taking. The puppy trifecta was just one more sign that our leggy redhead was being domesticated.
We were all racing toward our thirties, settling down a bit perhaps, but never actually settling.
Lucas and Chloe invited us to stay for dinner. Neil and Sophia were staying the night. Simon and I had made reservations at a little boutique hotel down by the ocean, and I was looking forward to being lulled to sleep by the sounds of the waves. I was also looking forward to making Chloe give me a tour of the crazy house she lived in.
“Seriously, this house is like a time capsule! I’ve never seen anything like it—are you sure you didn’t get a designer to re-create 1958 in here?” I gasped, taking in all the kitsch.