Chapter
1

This was not my day.

First of all, it was drizzling. Which would have been just fine if I'd been curled up on my couch watching Sex and the City or Desperate Housewives reruns. Or buying shoes on eBay. Or even working on my thesis.

But I wasn't doing any of those things. Instead, I was being yanked down East 86th Street by six furballs eager to reach the dog run at Carl Shurz park. So far, both Poopsie (aptly named) and Precious (definitely not aptly named) had left little steaming presents on the sidewalk for me to retrieve with the plastic grocery bags I'd shoved into my raincoat pocket before leaving the Kirkguard Towers.

Second of all, immediately after depositing steaming package number two in a cheerfully labeled Keep Our City Clean! trash can, I ran smack into my ex, Todd. Or rather, little Daisy, Mrs. Oppenmeir's Lhasa apso, ran smack into Todd. I managed to skirt gingerly to the right, avoiding him but hopelessly tangling him in six leashes.

"For God's sake, Melanie," he said. "What the hell are you doing?"

Now, see, that's one of the reasons Todd and I broke up. I mean, how hard is it to remember that I prefer "Mel" and hate "Melanie"? And, frankly, it was perfectly obvious what I was doing. I really didn't need to be reminded. "I'm maxing out my credit for Manolos, Todd." I shook the handful of leashes at him. "What the hell does it look like I'm doing?"

"What happened to the job with Josh?" Unperturbed by my annoyance, he looked up at me from a bent-over position, talking even as he struggled to loosen the ever-tightening leash-noose. Part of me was tempted to plant the heel of my left Prada sneaker on his gluteus maximus and give a little shove. But that would have upset the dogs, so I managed to stifle the urge.

"It didn't work out," I said stiffly. Right after we'd broken up, I'd become a victim of university budget cuts and had lost my not-so-lucrative-but-still-handy-for-rent job as a teaching assistant. In what I'm sure Todd had considered a supreme act of chivalry by the male exiting stage left in my life, he'd arranged for me to get a flex-time receptionist job at a tiny little public relations firm on Madison Avenue. What Todd had neglected to mention was that his friend Josh was a prick who, when he hadn't been talking about my tits, had filled in the conversational blanks with comments about my ass. The man clearly wasn't acquainted with Title VII, and I didn't intend to be the one who introduced him.

"You could have called and told me," Todd said, picking Daisy up and lifting her over a crisscross of nylon leashes. He shot me a look that could have been recrimination or a request for assistance. Not sure, I just stood there and shrugged.

Once I'd discovered Josh's more endearing qualities, I wasn't about to call Todd. For one, we'd been quite broken up by then (if we hadn't been, introducing me to Josh would have been grounds, that's for sure). For another, I like to fight my own battles. So I'd called Josh a chauvinistic, Neanderthal prick, and then I'd quit. (Unfortunately, the name-calling was all in my head, but it had made me feel better.) Then I'd fallen back on my old standby of answering ads posted in the student newsletter or on the bulletin board in the grad student lounge.

I've used this method to earn extra cash on and off since my first day on the NYU campus as a wide-eyed and innocent freshman from Texas. The results have never been fabulous, but the experience has certainly been varied. In addition to the wonderful world of pet care, I've also worked as a short-order cook, a Circle Line ticket agent, and a cocktail waitress at a restaurant with food so horrible it went out of business a mere five days after it opened. To mention just a few.

Todd always looked askance at my revolving-door job situation, but so far I haven't minded (well, the dog thing is a bit much). With an undergraduate degree in math and a master's (soon!) in history, I figure I'm going to be spending the rest of my life behind a podium trying to get teenagers to listen to me upon threat of failing their midterms. Either that, or I'm going to be perpetually in academia, taking the degree train to Ph.D.-ville and then settling down to an assistant professorship while I try to think of something brilliant to publish so that I can snag tenure.

With all that to look forward to, is it any wonder I like a little variety in my life? Or at least that's what I told myself when I slogged outside this morning, ready, able, but not entirely willing to escort a group of little poop machines on their morning constitutional.

The sad truth is that I flat-out need the money. I'll do (almost) anything to make the rent on the tiny one bedroom I share with my roommate, Jennifer. Each month, I barely squeak by. Yet somehow, I have enough left over for shoes, cocktails, Starbucks, and food. (Yes, in that order.) Tuition, thankfully, is covered by scholarships and grants.

Beside me, Todd finally managed to extricate himself from the web of leashes, and the dogs were straining, their collars pulling tight around their little necks as they whined for the park. All except Gomer, who looked poised to produce another package. I winced. That's it for me. No more dog-walking. Even the adorable pair of hot pink Jimmy Choo wedge sandals I saw online at designerexposure.com aren't worth the indignity. Not until they're marked down by at least 20 percent, anyway.

"Well," I said brightly, tugging on Gomer's leash in the hopes of distracting him. "You probably have somewhere you have to be."

"I took the day off," he said. "I've got nowhere to be."

A finger of worry snaked up my back as I squinted at him. "Did you come here looking for me?" A stupid question, really, since what are the odds I'd just happened to bump into him? I'm a math geek. Trust me. The odds aren't good.

At least he had the good grace to look sheepish. "I called your apartment. Jennifer said you might be here, and since I wanted to talk to you…" He trailed off, flashing that endearing little smile that always got me in trouble.

I fisted my hands around the leashes and mentally dug in my heels. No, no, no. I did not want to date Todd Davidson again. But more than that, I didn't want him to broach the subject. If he asked me out, I knew I'd say yes. It's stupid, but it's my nature. Ask me to discuss Euclidean domains or couture shoes, and I'm all over it. But put me in a room with a man, and my fortitude dissolves. Sad, but so very true.

He rummaged in his shopping bag and brought out a brightly wrapped shoe box topped with a big pink bow. "I saw these and thought of you." He passed me the box, and I took it, exchanging my leashes for my present as my heart raced. "Go ahead," he said. "Open it."

I didn't. Opening it would be like tempting fate, sealing a pact in blood. Silently telling him that this was okay and that there was still a chance things could be good between us.

Copyright © 2005 by Julie Kenner