“I’m here to pick up my dog.”
She frowned. “Which dog?”
“My German Shepherd. She’s been here for a while. I left him with your dad, actually. Gertie.”
Her face completely closed down.
“You can’t have him,” she said plainly.
I tilted my head. “What do you mean I can’t have him?”
“He’s been here for four years,” she said. “He’s my dog now.”
The bones in my jaw started to creak.
“I paid for four and a half years of boarding before I left. That’s over ten grand. I know that it’s been four years. I didn’t have any choice about going away, unfortunately. Civil said he’d take care of him for me. He wasn’t boarded. He was taken to his home. And he also took care of my horses at my friend’s place.”
She sniffed at me. “I know. I was the one taking care of him.”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I appreciate everything that you did, but now that I’m back, I’d like to take him home.”
I could see by the stubborn set of her jaw that she wasn’t going to give him to me.
“No.”
My stomach started to tighten as anger started to swirl through my veins.
The dog was barking up a storm now, and I could tell that if he was let out, he wouldn’t want anything to do with the woman.
I didn’t care who she was, or what she’d done for me the last four years. I’d paid her father, the vet. I had a fucking contract in my back pocket. Which I gave her next.
She took it with a look of disgust on her face.
“What is this supposed to be?”
A guarantee that this very thing wouldn’t happen.
“A contract between this clinic and me,” I said. “That they would watch my dog for four years, while I was in prison, and that when I got out, he’d be given back to me.”
“We don’t do this,” she snapped.
I laughed. “Your father did it. And it was signed by both him and me. Him for his business, Civil Veterinary, and me, the dog’s owner. Trust me when I say, you won’t win this one.”
She hissed out a breath.
“How about you let him choose,” she snapped.
I laughed. I knew who Gertie would choose.
“There’s loyalty, and then there’s destiny, Ms. Larrex. Gertie was mine from when he was a year old, until we both retired from the Marines together when he was five years old,” I informed her. “We saved each other’s lives countless times, and I’ve never spent a day away from him, intentionally, since he was given to me.”
She pursed her lips.
“I’ve fed him for the last four years. He’s slept in my house,” she countered back. “I’ve cared for him. And ownership is nine tenths of the law.”
I laughed at her.
“Ma’am, with all due respect, ownership ain’t shit,” I said. “You can refuse to give him to me now, but I can guarantee that the first chance he gets, he’ll leave your house and come straight to mine now that he knows I’m back.”
She looked at me like she didn’t believe me.
“He’s a dog. He won’t know better,” she informed me.
“You hear him going crazy?” I asked.
We both did.
The moment that he’d been left back there, he’d started going fucking nuts. Scratching, throwing himself against the wall. Anything that would help him get out here, he’d do, until he was back with me.
That was the kind of friendship we had.
I’d pulled him out of a pile of rubble when a building had collapsed on him. He’d saved me from taking a sniper bullet in the eye.
And that was only two examples of the hundreds of times we’d saved each other.
Time and distance were nothing compared to the bond we shared.
I didn’t care if it’d been eight years.
You didn’t forget a bond like that.
“Go get him,” I ordered her.
She shook her head. “I’m not giving him back to a criminal. You can call your lawyer…”
But she forgot about her staff that were in the same building as her, and when they heard the commotion, they came out of the very door that Gertie was practically tearing down, just to see what was wrong.
The moment he was set free, he vaulted over the counter and sped toward me like a speeding bullet.
Gertie was a huge German Shepherd. He was nearly a hundred and twenty pounds, and he was also the size of a small Great Dane.
The moment he got to me, he launched himself at me, and I could do nothing but catch him in my arms and wrap my arms around him like he was a person.
His whimpering, as well as his excitement, was enough to cause tears to spring to my eyes.
“God, Gert,” I groaned. “I’ve missed you so much.”
He was literally shaking with excitement in my arms, and I closed my eyes, burying my face into the scruff of his neck like I’d done so many times before.
“Gertie, heel.”
Gertie didn’t even react to the woman’s voice, and I chose to leave without saying another thing to her.
“This isn’t over!”
I ignored that, too.
It was over, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Not only was the dog mine, but I now had possession of him.
There was not a damn thing in the world she could do.