Ever After (Love to the Rescue Book 3) (24 page)

“That would be awesome. Thank you.”

“You got it. Wish I could come visit. I miss you.” Cara sounded wistful.

“I miss you too. You’re coming down for Christmas, right?”

“Yep. We’re spending Thanksgiving here with Matt’s family and Christmas in North Carolina.”

Olivia smiled. “Good. We’re overdue for a girls’ night at Red Heels.”

Cara laughed. “We certainly are.”

Olivia hung up the phone feeling a tiny bit better. Friends had a way of doing that for each other. For a little while, she’d forgotten that it was Saturday night and she was sitting home moping about the fact she’d been dumped by the man she loved yesterday and her entire life’s work had just been erased.

And…
oh God
, she was pathetic.

This wouldn’t do. She changed into jeans and a sweater, fastened her hair in a messy bun, and freshened her makeup. Maybe she’d go to The Watering Hole and listen to some live music. Maybe she’d go to Jordan Lake and meditate. But she was definitely
not
going to mope around on a Saturday night feeling sorry for herself.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard someone knocking at the front door. Bailey danced in the entranceway, barking and wiggling her nub, but Olivia didn’t share her excitement. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with reporters, disgruntled Halverson employees, or anyone else tonight.

She tiptoed to the front door and pressed her eye to the peephole.

Pete stood on the other side.

P
ete stood on Olivia’s doorstep, feeling like his heart was going to jump out through his throat. He had no business here, not after the way they’d left things last night. But he missed her, especially tonight when she was sure to be smarting over what had been done to her website.

The door opened, and Olivia stood there, looking at him with eyes not nearly as warm or vibrant as usual. “What are you doing here, Pete?”

Good damn question. Since he had no answer, he pulled her into his arms instead. Then he was kissing her, and his chest loosened for the first time since he’d left here yesterday. She let out a little moan, her hands tangling in his hair as she stumbled backward into her house and kicked the door shut behind them.

She dragged her mouth from his. “This is stupid.”

“I know.” His arms tightened around her. “I just needed to see you.”

“You dumped me, remember?”

He flinched. “Yeah, I remember.”

She pulled back and stared at him for a long time in silence, waiting for him to make the next move. He could take it back, tell her he’d made a mistake. But as much as he needed her—and he needed her
so fucking much
—he still couldn’t offer her the future she wanted.

She chewed her lip and looked away. “My website is gone.”

“What?”

She nodded. “Gone. The Facebook page too.”

“The hacker deleted them?”

“Yep.”

“Dammit.” He pulled her back into his arms.

She sighed against his chest, and the sadness in that one sound stabbed deep into his heart.

“I’m sorry. The sheriff’s office has really let you down.” He ran his fingers through her hair, burning with the need to find justice for her.

She peeked up at him with a wry smile. “It looks like Halverson Foods might get their wish after all. I’ve lost all my blog posts and all my followers. There’s no recreating that.”

“Come on, now. The Olivia I love wouldn’t give up, no matter how tough things get.” He heard the words leaving his mouth, but his brain was too sluggish to stop them. A hot, prickly sensation came over his face and spread through his chest.

She sucked in a breath, her eyes locked on his. Seconds ticked by, punctuated by the pounding of his heart and the electricity shimmering in the air between them.

It was just a phrase, it doesn’t mean
…but he couldn’t say the words out loud.

He cleared his throat. “You’ll fight back. Start a new blog, do one of those kick-ass posts you’re so good at. Call the news to run a follow-up story about what happened to your last site.”

She blinked. “I could do that.”

“You will.”

“I will,” she whispered.

They were still standing in the entrance hall, her arms around his neck, his hands tightly anchored at her waist. She buried her face against his neck. “Stay with me tonight.”

“I shouldn’t.” Because in the long run, he’d only end up hurting her more.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight. Please.”

“Then you shouldn’t be.” And he walked with her toward the stairs.

Olivia woke in her own bed, one arm draped across Pete’s chest and a kitten purring in her hair. She shouldn’t have asked him to stay, but she didn’t regret it either.

The Olivia I love.

Maybe it had been merely a slip of the tongue. Or maybe he did love her. He might not even know it yet. For now, she was going to hold on tight and hope he came to his senses before it was too late.

His cell phone buzzed from the bedside table, reminding him to get up and get ready for work. She gave him a nudge, and he grunted, rolling toward her.

“Hold that thought,” she whispered against his lips. “But it’s seven.”

He groaned and buried his face in her hair. Hallie bopped him on the nose. “Goddamn cat.”

“She likes you,” Olivia told him.

“Mm hmm.” He rolled out of bed and dressed in his clothes from yesterday. Then he bent over the bed and gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll call you later.”

She nodded.

For a moment, he just stood there, staring at her, guilt heavy in his eyes, so heavy she had to look away. Then he went downstairs and left.

“What are you looking at?” she asked the boxer in the corner.

Bailey gave a dramatic sigh.

“Don’t judge,” Olivia told her. “Someday you may find yourself in this position with a man. Probably not though, seeing as how you’re missing some of your girl parts. What you need is a family.”

Merry had already been talking about sending Olivia a new foster dog, since Scooby had been adopted. Olivia had put her off since things had been so crazy, what with losing her job and moving in with Pete. But today was Sunday, which meant she started her new job at the thrift store tomorrow, and things seemed to be back to normal here at home too. So it was probably time to face the inevitable.

Not that she hated fostering. It just didn’t bring her the same joy it brought her friends Merry and Cara. Olivia would take a picket line over a foster dog any day.

“You’re growing on me though,” she told Bailey.

Then she got out of bed, dressed, and put Bailey out back. She hadn’t had an accident in over a week now, but Olivia didn’t want to push her luck.

She fixed herself a green smoothie and sat in front of her laptop. Today was all about damage control. She needed to get her website back online with a message about what had happened, a scathing blog post that made it clear she refused to be silenced.

Facebook wouldn’t be as easy. Sure, she could start a new page. But there was no way to bring back the thousands of people who’d followed the old one.

But as Pete said yesterday, Olivia had never been one to back down from a challenge. And with that thought, she called Channel Two news and left a message for Diana Robbins, the reporter who’d covered the protest on Friday.

Take that, Halverson Foods.

She typed Citizens Against Halverson Foods into Facebook and was told it was already taken. Yeah, it was.
By her.
She growled and punched the couch. But what if, since she had to start over from scratch, she made this bigger than Halverson Foods?

On a whim, she typed in “The Face of Factory Farming,” and
ding ding
, she had a new Facebook page. For a cover photo, she uploaded the picture she’d taken of the chicken that had fallen off the Halverson delivery truck the day she’d washed off her graffiti. A worker held the bird by its feet, with a truck full of birds visible behind.

She wrote a post describing her efforts to gain better protections for factory-farmed animals, chickens—and Halverson Foods—in particular and then set about creating a brand new website for her project.

Around noon, as she was elbow deep in her return-to-the-web blog post, her phone rang. Olivia didn’t recognize the number.

“It’s Maggie,” Maggie said when she answered. “I got your number from Pete.”

“Oh, hi, Maggie. It’s great to hear from you.”

“I was wondering if you wanted to get lunch?”

“That sounds great.” Olivia smiled. She liked Maggie a lot.

“Cool. I’ll stop by and pick you up so I can meet your foster dog, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.” Olivia glanced at Bailey, lounging in the sun by the front window. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

She hung up the phone and snapped her fingers at Bailey. “Someone’s coming over to meet you. Let’s get you primped.” She brushed the dog’s teeth and trimmed her toenails, then gave her an appraising look. “You’re cute. I’m not sure if she’s actually interested in adopting you, but it never hurts to make a good first impression.”

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang. Bailey barked, dancing in circles in the foyer while she waited for Olivia to open the door.

“Hi.” Maggie stood there in a red pea coat and jeans, her dark hair pulled back from her face in a matching clip. She looked down at Bailey. “Oh, you’re adorable!”

“Come in.” Olivia stepped back, motioning her inside. “This is Bailey.”

“How in the world could you not keep her?” Maggie asked. She squatted and rubbed Bailey’s chin while the dog wiggled with glee.

“I just treat them like I’m dog sitting. I like them, but they’re not mine.”

“Hmmm. Interesting.” Maggie stood. “I’ve been wanting to get a dog. Figured I might go by the shelter sometime and check them out. I don’t really know breeds.”

“You should do that,” Olivia said. “I’ve been volunteering there as part of my community service. They have a lot of great dogs.”

“When will you be there next?” Maggie asked.

“This afternoon actually. I’m scheduled to walk dogs from two to four.”

Maggie’s eyes brightened. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”

Pete was winding down an uneventful shift when his phone showed an incoming call from Olivia. His stomach tightened, excitement or dread, he couldn’t say. Had something else happened? Or was she just calling to make plans after work?

“Do you know someone named Justin Wendell?” she asked.

“Yes. Why?” Warning bells clanged in his head. There was no good reason for her to know the name of the president of the Omega Chi fraternity.

“He’s the one who hacked my website.”

“How the hell do you know that?” he demanded.

“A friend of a friend is a private investigator who specializes in cyber stuff. He checked into it for me.”

“Fuck.” He slammed his fist into the steering wheel.

“So who is he?” she asked.

“I really can’t discuss it with you, but since, as you probably know, the information you’ve gotten isn’t admissible in court, he’s connected to the fraternity. And I don’t want you going anywhere near him. No phone calls, no protests outside the frat house. Are we clear?”

“Don’t go all alpha cop on me.” Her tone snapped with irritation. “I don’t want to go to his house. I just thought
you
might want to know in case, you know, it helped solve the case.”

“Let me call you back.” He hung up, an uneasy feeling churning in his gut.

There was no reason for Justin Wendell, or anyone at Omega Chi, to hijack Olivia’s website. This had nothing to do with their chicken mascot or any kind of stupid prank. People didn’t do shit like that without a motive, and Pete needed to know what it was. Justin’s last words had been haunting him ever since he left the frat house.

“Funny thing, you asking about this. I would have figured you guys at the sheriff’s office would be thanking us.”

At the time, it had made no sense. But now an uncomfortable suspicion had taken hold in his gut. On a hunch, he turned to the laptop in his cruiser and pulled up Linburgh’s bio on the sheriff’s office’s website. Sure enough, he was a Carolina University alumnus and a member of Omega Chi. A search of the fraternity’s website listed Donny Linburgh as a longtime supporter.

Funny how Linburgh’s name kept popping up where Olivia was concerned, except he didn’t think there was anything funny about it. He’d been out to the Halverson plant a number of times and never gotten the prickly feeling he’d felt when he visited the Omega Chi frat house.

His gut said the frat boys had indeed been behind all the vandalism at Olivia’s place, but it had little to do with their chicken mascot and everything to do with Sheriff Linburgh. If Pete’s gut was right, Linburgh had asked, or even paid, his buddies at Omega Chi to hassle Olivia in an effort to shut her up, all to keep his good favor with Halverson Foods before the election.

And that meant Linburgh had broken the law. He’d dirtied his nose to win the election, that no-good piece of scum. Pete would spend the rest of the day gathering what evidence he could. Tomorrow morning he’d pay a visit to the district attorney’s office.

Linburgh wasn’t getting away with this. Not on Pete’s watch.

Olivia and Maggie volunteered together until the shelter closed, walking dogs and cleaning out their kennels. Olivia helped another couple pick out a dog to join their family. She’d done it several times now, and while it wasn’t part of her duties as a volunteer, no one at the shelter seemed to mind. Plus, it was fun.

“Wow,” Maggie said, as they headed for the front door. “That was kind of horrible and awesome at the same time.”

Olivia nodded. “It can be hard seeing all the homeless animals, but I like to think of the situations a lot of those dogs came out of, being abused, or starved, or homeless. Now they have kindness, a warm bed, and access to food and water.”

“That’s true.” Maggie opened the passenger door of the Prius.

“It’s not for everyone.”

“But it doesn’t bother you.”

Olivia shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that. But it’s a hell of a lot better than what goes on at the Halverson plant, so that puts it in perspective for me, I guess.”

Olivia drove them back to her house, and Maggie played with Bailey for a bit before going home. Olivia felt twisted in knots inside over her relationship with Pete and his sister. She wanted them both to stay in her life. And yet she feared she was fighting a losing battle.

The next morning, she got up, got dressed, and headed to the Dogwood Thrift Store for her first day of work. The owner, Bruce Henneby, was an older man and not much of a talker. He showed her how to work the register and gave her a rundown on the workings of the store, then retreated to his office in the back.

There was a steady stream of customers throughout the day, and Olivia enjoyed helping them. She rearranged a few displays and dusted off a tray of antique earrings that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years. All in all, it was a good day. She’d be happy here until something better came along.

And oh how sick she was of waiting and wondering what that something better would be, in her personal and her professional life. She was ready for all of it, now.