She laughed. “Unfortunately you could be right.”
Kurt sat down with his roast beef sandwich. The dog sat at his side and watched him hungrily.
“Could she still be hungry?” Laurie Ann asked. She hopped up and brought over a bowl of water. The dog barely looked at it.
He smiled and nodded. “After so long without food, she’ll probably overeat for quite a while, until she figures out that there’ll be a continuation of food in her world.”
“I can’t imagine what she went through,” she murmured.
He took another bite. Once he swallowed, he said, “And that’s what makes you so special too.”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t feel like it,” she said, sitting down beside him. She sighed, looked over at him, and said, “Any thoughts about moving here permanently?”
“Well, there weren’t before I came,” he admitted, “but now I can’t think of anything else. I gather you don’t want to leave this area?” he asked.
“I’d just as soon not,” she said. “It’s taken me a long time to build up the business, to get the jobs at the clinics that I have,” she said, “to have patients who count on me, but I can also see that you have a problem with your history here.”
“Yes, but we don’t have to let that stop us from having a life here.”
She looked at him with a gentle smile. “It seems like it stopped us a lot over the years.”
“No longer,” he said. “The thing is, just like back then, I’m still not a good prospect.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“Your family will be quick to point out that I don’t have a real job. Don’t have any job as far as they’re concerned. No way to support you or to look after you.”
She shook her head. “You’ll fix that,” she said firmly.
He burst out laughing. “Maybe,” he said, “but that does not mean that I have an answer right away.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but you currently are working, even if it’s unpaid, which I understand is more of a volunteer position.”
He nodded.
“And I appreciate the fact that you’re doing that because of the War Dog,” she said, looking down Sabine. “So that’s not a negative in my book.”
“Not in your book maybe, but in a lot of people’s books,” he said. “Although I have a few ideas about what I want to do with my life, but I haven’t exactly locked anything down. Plus, your family will also consider me a washout because I got injured. So they’ll be afraid that you’ll spend your life looking after an injured man who is incapable of supporting himself.”
“Which would all be lies,” she said. “You’re not the kind to sit on the couch and play video games, while your wife works.”
He didn’t say a word about the wife part, but she was right. He wasn’t, but her trust in him was touching. Misguided, because she didn’t really know who he was anymore, but still very touching. “They’ll still scream.”
“They can scream as loud and as hard as they want,” she said. “I don’t have anything to do with my parents anymore. And I gave up trying to please them a long time ago.”
“Good,” he said, “but, for the purposes of keeping peace in the family, you know very well how hard it is to go against all that.”
“I am only close to my sister, and as long as I keep her in my life, I think you’re right. I’m sure she’ll come around.”
“If I had a good job,” he said with a smile, “then I’m sure she’d be easier to come around.”
“It’s sad, isn’t it?” she said.
“No, it’s called love. She worries about you. You’ve been in a tough spot before, and she doesn’t want to see you in that same spot again.”
“I know,” she said, “and I love her for it. At the same time, it’s frustrating.”
“That’s family for you,” he said, chuckling.
She smiled and nodded. “Have you thought about what you want to do?”
“Like I said, I have a few ideas,” he said easily. “But I don’t have anything locked down because I was thinking about what I would do in Santa Fe.”
She winced at that. “I guess I hadn’t considered that. If you move here, you have to start all over again, don’t you?”
“Which, in a way, is the right time to do this then because I’m basically starting all over again anyway.”
She nodded and smiled. “So any time you get any ideas about what you want to do, I’d love to hear them.”
“When I figure it out, I’ll let you’ll know,” he said, keeping a close counsel, because he really didn’t have a clue. Not here. Not now. He knew the detective had pissed him right off, and that would be a bit of an issue, but he didn’t know if law enforcement was something he wanted to do and whether he could even do it physically.
“What about working with the dog?” she asked, looking down at Sabine.
“Maybe. I don’t have the same training that her handlers had,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean that I can’t get it.”
“Oh, I never even thought of that. I guess you do have resources, benefits, don’t you?”
He smiled and nodded and said, “I have a lot of resources. If I want to go back to school, I can. If I want to get extra training, I can.”
She brightened at that. “That’s a huge gift then.”
“It is, as long as you know what you want to do,” he said in a droll tone. As he picked up the last piece of his sandwich, Sabine barked. He looked down at her, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “Was that a question, or was that a request?”
She barked one more time, and her tail started to wag. He took the roast beef off the bread and held it out to her. Totally ignoring the ketchup, she wolfed it down and then dropped her chin on his knee, while he popped the bread into his mouth. He reached down and gently scratched her.
“She’s already such a character,” Laurie Ann said in wonder.
“That she is,” he said with a bright smile. “We just have to see what kind of character she’ll end up being.”
“But you’ll keep her regardless, won’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I will.”
She beamed. “Good.”
“Well, that answers that question,” he said. “I was afraid to ask how you felt about it.”
“Well, of course, we want to keep her,” she said. “How could you possibly let her go now?”
He looked at Laurie Ann, wondering how he’d ever thought that leaving her was a good idea. He shook his head. “I do get upset when I think about all the time we’ve wasted,” he murmured. “I don’t even know how we’re back here again—as if all the years, the goodbyes never happened.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said. “That’s the path for disaster.”
“Well, I can agree with that,” he said. “I just don’t want to miss any more.”