He didn’t wait for an answer to his question—he spun on his heel and headed for the hangar, Colonel still his shadow. He knew there was peanut butter, jelly, and loaves of bread in the hangar because Glen Echo stocked things right. There was also a bag of apples, and Spencer came out ten minutes later with a bread bag full of sandwiches and another bag full of apples, and he pressed food into everybody’s hands. People ate fitfully—and more than one bite of sandwich got fed to a dog—but when he gathered with the lot of them in the shade of the hangar, he saw that Glen and Damien had pulled out camp chairs so they were all able to sit for a moment. The dogs had calmed down in the shade with water. All they had to do now was watch.
They saw the plume of dust first, and for a heart-stopping moment they thought it was smoke. But then Colonel started to bay happily, and the other dogs did too, and Spencer imagined that inside the cab of the truck that appeared shortly thereafter, Preacher was giving his own version of the hallelujah chorus.
The truck skidded to a stop by Belinda’s minivan and Oscar’s truck, and everybody sprang up, opening the big crates and helping the dogs out so they could carry the crates to the shady side of the hangar.
Almost everybody was doing that.
Damien and Preston were hugging each other. Not kissing, because that’s not what they did in public, but hugging each other, hard, and Damien was murmuring calming nothings into Preston’s ear.
Spencer couldn’t watch them do that for long. It hurt. The only person on the planet who would miss him if he disappeared into a cloud of smoke was Elsie.
Who was passing by him, one medium-sized crate in each hand. “You know,” she said, “that may have been the stupidest thing we ever did—but I’m not sorry we did it.”
Spencer winked at her. “Wasn’t the stupidest thing we ever did….” And then he let her fill in the blank with all of the stupid things they’d done between them.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I was worried about us for a minute.”
He laughed softly and went to work, trying hard—so hard—not to think about what they’d do with all of Preston’s dogs if the ranch was destroyed.
THEY wouldn’t have been able to rebuild the houses so quickly if Cash hadn’t helped. He’d made Preston’s dog shelter and training facility a cause célèbre on the pop-music circuit. Within a month he and his band had helped raise millions of dollars to go toward the food and housing of the dogs, and the food and housing of the dog owners too.
They’d converted one of the unused hangars into a dog kennel for a while—it had cost them a fortune to keep it cooled so the dogs didn’t get sick, but Glen insisted. And then they had needed to hire contractors to build the old ranch house and the newly refurbished mother-in-law cottage, both from scratch.
Oscar and Belinda and Preston and Damien had lived in two single-wide mobile homes until the houses were rebuilt. Spencer wasn’t sure how Preston and Damien had dealt with the lack of space, but by the time they were ready to move in again, Belinda was pregnant once more, so that couldn’t have been too bad a thing, he figured.
He also assumed Preston and Damien would have been having all the sex they could have when they weren’t working, because he was pretty sure that’s what they did anyway. How would he know? He hadn’t even had time for a hookup since the fires. He’d been working his ass off on Preston’s ranch, trying to get things back to normal.
Which was why he was surprised when—the day after moving day, when the two single-wide mobile homes were made vacant and returned to the rental company from whence they’d come—Preston had him come out of the dog kennels to take a look at a double-wide that was being backed in, a piece at a time, to a far corner of the property.
“What in the hell is that for?” Spencer asked grumpily. He’d slept on Oscar and Belinda’s couch the night before. It was a new couch, and not quite broken in, and the only reason he didn’t hate it was that Colonel had slept on it with him. Colonel may not have been a good hookup, but he was good company.
“You,” Preston said, no bullshit.
Spencer gaped. “But… but… I live in the city, with Glen!”
“And six months out of the year, Cash is there, and you look like shit because you can’t sleep,” Preston said.
“That’s not true,” Spencer argued. “I look like shit now, because I can’t get laid—”
Preston turned his no-bullshit blue eyes on Spencer’s face, and Spencer stopped talking because that’s the dynamic that had evolved since Spencer had started working at Gecko Inc. “You’re lying. You’re telling bullshit and lying,” he said, like Spencer might not have known that. “You are lonely. You need Colonel, but you can’t keep Colonel in that apartment. And you don’t need guys to hook up with. You need a guy to love. So shut up and help Glen move you in.”
“Help Glen—”
“You’ve been helping me all week. It’s your week off, Spencer. Glen and Damien grabbed your stuff today. Once the home is hooked up, you’re living there. You and Damien can commute in the same helicopter. It will be very special and like a television movie. I think Cash is having furniture delivered tomorrow. This way, you always have a home with us.”
And with that, Preston turned away and started ordering the guys driving the giant scary flatbeds that carried Spencer’s new home on them.
Spencer watched in awe for a few moments and then called Elsie and laid out the sitch. To his surprise, he heard her voice quaver, almost in the same way it had when they’d been fighting the Black Hawk to land in the middle of a raging property fire so they could rescue some dogs.
“Oh, baby,” she said. “Look at you. You’ve got a home.”
Spencer’s breath caught. He looked around, biting his lip. The dog kennels were much the same—clean and dusty at once—and the training field had been faithfully watered and seeded so it was green. The surrounding forests were still charred, although the winter rains had started some grass growing around the skeletons of the trees. Spencer had purchased over 100 trees from a local nursery. Their next project, while the rains were still heavy, was going to be to replant some of the ones that had been destroyed.
This place wasn’t perfect. It had been hurt and was still bleeding. But there were people here who cared about him. And dogs. Elsie had been living with Josh for three years—they were happy. He didn’t think he could have that kind of happiness. He’d been kicked out of his parents’ house at eighteen, but they’d disowned him in their hearts long before that. It hadn’t mattered. He’d made himself not care.
But looking around at the homestead that had been razed to the ground and was rising up through hard work and love, he found himself caring very much.
“Well,” he said, working hard to keep his own voice under control so he didn’t gush like Elsie. “Colonel’s happy here. Can’t leave Colonel.”
Elsie was hitting dog-whistle pitches as she explained the situation to Josh, and Spencer took the opportunity to sink to his haunches again and hug his dog.
Colonel licked his face, once, twice, a third time, and then waited patiently until Spencer could talk again.