Evan Cummings, the school principal, came by with a flower arrangement from him and his wife, Lisa. He apologized to Bo over and over, as if the whole thing were his fault for talking her into letting Tricks ride on the float. Bo was so grateful he hadn’t brought more food that she almost hugged him; instead she reassured him they were all right, asked if he’d heard from Mrs. Simmons how her husband was-he was fine, had spent the night at the hospital but was released yesterday morning-and tried to press some of the overflow of goodies on him. He took a chocolate-filled doughnut for himself, then escaped.
After Miss Virginia Rose finished her shift at the supermarket she brought a box of chocolates; by this time even Morgan looked as if he’d had his fill of junk food, but Bo enthused over the chocolates anyway. They might not get eaten right away, but they would eventually, for sure. And the more people who came in, to ask how she was and to pet Tricks, the more touched and teary-eyed she became. These people cared about her, about each other, about their town. She wasn’t alone, hadn’t been alone for far longer than it had taken her to realize.
If she hadn’t had such a wall around her in high school, would she have made close friends then? She’d never know, she couldn’t redo the past, but she had to wonder. People were pretty much the same, big city, small town, or rural; they made friends, and they protected their own.
Eventually the procession dwindled and she settled down to work in earnest. Morgan took Tricks out for a walk. As soon as they were alone, Loretta got up and left her cubicle, coming over to give Bo a pat on the arm. “Congratulations,” she said.
Startled, Bo looked up. “What?” she asked in bewilderment.
“Morgan. That’s more man than most women could handle, though if it weren’t for Charlie, I wouldn’t mind giving it a shot,” she mused and went back to her cubicle.
Well, hell. Evidently that was something else the entire town was clued in on. She thought about it for a minute, then shrugged mentally. She wasn’t embarrassed. She hadn’t even thought of telling Morgan to keep their new involvement on the down low, which said something about how drastically things had changed for her.
The days slipped from May into June, easing from late spring toward summer. The wheels of law weren’t in any hurry and Kyle was still in jail, waiting arraignment so he could enter his guilty plea. Bo half-expected Warren Gooding to pay her another visit, but all of the Goodings seemed to be making themselves scarce. Melody wasn’t seen shopping in town, and neither was her mother. The people who worked at the sawmills had no gossip to report, nothing overheard, no threats made. Perhaps Kyle had stepped so far out of bounds this time that his parents knew there was no making this go away; Bo wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but she’d take what she could get.
Morgan began working out like a fiend. He swam every day that it didn’t rain, and some days when it did. His reasoning was that “wet’s wet.” As long as there was no lightning, he swam. He ran; he started out with what he called an “easy hour,” which seemed to extend every day by five or ten minutes. Of course she knew he’d already been doing some running, but it was astonishing how fast he built his endurance. She could almost see the difference every day as he began packing on hard-toned muscle.
One day he took Tricks out for a walk to give Bo some uninterrupted time to finish a tech job. She pushed hard, her concentration aided by caffeine, and finished just in time to grab a bite to eat before leaving for town. She got up from the desk, stretched, turned to say something to Morgan-then noticed that they hadn’t returned. She checked the time; they’d been gone well over an hour.
Alarm shot through her, her stomach bottoming out. Had Morgan tripped, maybe hit his head or broken his leg? Had Tricks gotten hurt? The ideas of eating and work vanished, and she ran to the door, only to skid to a stop so fast she almost slammed into it. Through the glass she saw Morgan and Tricks in the yard. Tricks was nosing around, her tennis ball forgotten on the grass, and Morgan was doing push-ups.
Just that fast Bo went from panic to admiration as she watched his shoulders and arms bulge with each rep. His gray tee shirt was dark with sweat, which meant he’d either been running with Tricks or he’d been doing push-ups for a while. While she watched, he stopped, lying on his stomach, and called Tricks to him. She pranced over and when he patted his back she seemed to know what he wanted, because she daintily stepped onto his back and lay down. Morgan began doing push-ups again.
Bo’s mouth fell open. Tricks wasn’t a huge dog, her weight staying around sixty-two or sixty-three pounds, but still-that was sixty-two pounds! Push-ups were tough enough, at least Bo thought they were, but Morgan was popping them off as if he could keep going for hours. How long had he been using her dog as added weight?
Long enough for Tricks to be comfortable with it, evidently. Her tongue was lolling out to one side as she half-closed her eyes in bliss. She liked new things, she liked Morgan, she liked going for rides. Being on his back while he did push-ups hit a lot of her likes.
Bo opened the door. She was intending to just stand there for a few minutes-the scenery was fine-but as soon as she moved, Tricks noticed her and gave a welcoming bark. She shot straight off Morgan’s back and over his head, her paws digging into him for purchase, as she rushed to get to Bo. Morgan yelped, because those paws had to hurt, not to mention that he was startled by the way she bolted over his head. Bo laughed as she knelt down to welcome Tricks into her arms, hugging her and receiving a few enthusiastic licks.
Morgan rolled to a sitting position and used his sleeve to wipe off his face. His dark hair was black with sweat, all visible skin glistening. He’d smell pretty rank, she thought, and didn’t care. She wanted to throw herself against him despite how sweaty he was, wanted him to take her down to the ground and get on top of her. Her lower body clenched at the thought and she tightened her muscles against the temptation to do exactly what she wanted to do. She had to go to work.
“How long have you been using Tricks as weight?” she asked, getting to her feet and stepping to the edge of the patio.
He squinted up at the sun. “A week or so. She caught on fast. I need to up the weight, though, so you’re on board next.”
She gaped at him. He wanted her to get on his back while he did push-ups? “Are you nuts? I weigh a lot more than Tricks!”
“You don’t think it’d be fun?”
Okay… that put a different slant on the idea. She gave Tricks one final pat and tilted her head. “I’ll think about it. How many push-ups do you do?”
“You don’t want to know. Hell, I don’t want to know. A lot.”
“More than a hundred?”
The look he gave her as he got to his feet and strolled toward her told her she’d underestimated by a lot. “A thousand?” She couldn’t imagine doing a thousand push-ups. She was healthy and strong, but push-ups had always challenged her.
Again the look.
“I can’t deal with this,” she muttered. “The idea of that many push-ups makes my head hurt. What am I supposed to do while you rip off fifty thousand push-ups with me on your back? Nap? File my nails? Read War and Peace? You should go to the gym and lift weights like normal people.”
“Not quite the same thing, but I see your point.” He went past her into the house and she realized she’d been right about his smell. She was also right that it didn’t matter at all.