6. Deirdre

6

DEIRDRE

D eirdre found Dean in the bathroom, begging Aaron to stop splashing out of the tub and the dog to stop squirming. There were at least three gallons of water on the floor and Dean's clothing was soaked. He sat on the floor trying to dry out the dog's damp cast on the lowest setting of her hair dryer. The dog immediately began barking at her.

"I think the water's getting cold," Dean admitted over the din. "But if I let go of the dog, it's all over."

"Nah cold! Nah cold!" Aaron protested, knowing what was coming. He put as many toys and as much distance between him and his parents as he could, like a frantic beaver building a dam.

Deirdre had kicked her shoes off at the door, and her socks were immediately soaked as she waded in to help. The dog continued to bark and struggle, and Aaron shrieked in protest as Deirdre leaned over and lifted him out of the water, getting kicked for her trouble.

She wrapped him in Dean's towel, as the dog was half-swaddled in both hers and Aaron's .

Aaron and the dog howled in unison as she toweled the little boy and he arched away from her and beat on her with tiny fists of rage.

"Welcome home, honey!" Dean called helplessly.

"Thanks, honey!" Deirdre chimed back.

Aaron calmed down with the promise of a granola bar, and the dog finally stopped barking when Dean finished with the hair dryer and released him.

The dog stood and shook himself, scattering drops of water around the bottom half of the bathroom. He scampered around while he was still shaking himself and ran nose first into the toilet, tripped over the sodden towels, and tried to eat the bathmat, growling playfully. His tail, less dirty than before but no less ratty, wagged merrily.

Deirdre wrangled a diaper and a onesie onto Aaron and got the promised granola bar into him, and then sat in the rocker to read him a story while Dean tackled brushing the dog with a cheap plastic comb in the middle of the living room.

Aaron, clearly worn out by the whole ordeal, fell asleep on her while he was in the middle of protesting that he wasn't sleepy, and the dog's tail wagged slower and slower against the rug until it stopped.

Dean put the comb, now missing a good portion of its teeth, aside in defeat. "He still needs a lot more work," he admitted.

"You could say that about a lot of us," Deidre agreed. "Let me get Aaron down."

The boy gave a wail of protest when she put him in bed, but didn't actually open his eyes, and as soon as Deirdre tucked the teddy bear into his arms, he was asleep again.

"Aaron wants to name him Bingo," Dean said, gathering up the wet towels to put them in the washer. Deirdre doubted that the dirty smudges were going to come out.

"That is a very classic dog name," Deirdre said. "I could get on board with that."

Dean's expression got as hopeful as the dog's. "Are we keeping him?"

The dog—clearly a Bingo—was considerably cuter when clean, even if Deirdre thought he could probably use a second bath, and maybe a third. The places that Dean had successfully brushed were soft, and his ears flopped adorably around his face. Was he a collie mix? Lab? Retriever? The nose was a little long, and the fur was slightly curled. He wasn't quite a puppy, but he definitely wasn't an old dog. He was good-natured, and it was hard not to feel sorry for any dog in a cast.

His feet were twitching in his sleep.

"Deirdre…"

Deirdre wasn't thinking about the dog. Her thoughts had wandered again, and she was thinking about the man in the store with the golden eyes, wondering what kind of shifter he was, and whether he was good-natured. Which wasn't fair to Dean, or to their son, or to the dog they might adopt. "I'm sorry, I was a million miles away."

Dean squelched to his feet. "I've got a bathroom disaster to clean up."

Deirdre could have left that chore to him, but she trailed after, stewing in her guilt, and she wrung out the bathmat and hung it on the shower rod as Dean rinsed the toys. She got the mop and bucket, and Dean took them from her and sopped up the floor.

"That could have been worse," Dean said cheerfully. His pants were so wet that they clung to him, and Deirdre might have found that sexy if she hadn't been thinking about someone else's pants. It was awful of her to think of anyone but her husband. She'd never been the slightest bit tempted by anyone but Dean, and now this stranger—she didn't even know his name!—had upended all her ethics. She couldn't cheat on Dean, she never would, but it felt disloyal to even think about her mate, and her thoughts kept straying back to that moment of meeting his eyes.

"Deirdre…"

"Boy, am I beat," Deirdre said quickly, forcing a smile. "I'll switch the laundry to the dryer and then let's go to bed."

Dean couldn't be oblivious to her inner conflict, but he nodded and went to lock the doors and turn off the lights.

Deirdre was undressed and under the covers by the time he came upstairs. Dean slipped in behind her and snuggled up against her, clearly looking for more than a cuddle, and Deirdre could not keep from freezing unhappily.

How could it feel so wrong?

Not our mate, her deer said with a sigh.

Meeting our mate was the worst thing that could ever happen to us , Deirdre flared back. It ruined everything.

Her deer fled to a far corner of her head, hating conflict more than anything.

Deirdre lay very still, feeling sorry for herself, until Dean's breathing went even and slow, then slipped out of his embrace. She grabbed her bathrobe from the chair by the bed and padded downstairs.

Bingo greeted her at the bottom of the stairs with a happy whine, but didn't offer to bark, to Deirdre's relief. She picked up the broken comb and began to work on the remaining tangles. The dog was patient with her, though at one point he yelped and snapped at the air when Deirdre got to a particularly painful knot. He had chewed on the cast because they hadn't put his cone back on, but Deirdre thought it was still solid, despite its soaking and slobber. When he tried to lick at stitches, she distracted him, and he let her pet him with one hand and brush with the other. His tail wagged against the floor.

She couldn't go back to bed.

She was exhausted and emotionally drained, and could not imagine crawling back in with Dean like nothing had changed.

Everything had changed, and she hated herself for causing him this pain. She'd never see her mate again, but she would never stop wanting to, and that wasn't fair to Dean, or to her. Bingo struggled to his feet and pushed his way into her lap, licking her face and neck when she put her arms around him and hugged.

His whole body wiggled in happiness and Deirdre could not help but laugh through the tears she hadn't realized were streaming down her face. After a while, she wiped them—and the dog drool—off her face and pushed him back. He fell over and waved both legs in the air, writhing joyfully.

Deirdre stood and stretched, then pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and lay down to try to sleep. Bingo immediately jumped up to join her.

"You shouldn't be on the couch," she scolded him. "Couches aren't for dogs!"

But Bingo snuggled close, and Deirdre told herself that she was just making sure he didn't lick his cast off during the night as she curled around him and pulled the blanket over both of them. It was chilly downstairs, and he was warm.

She fell asleep and dreamt of someone else entirely beside her.