The rescue had settled in even better than expected, even though he didn’t even know where she was right now. Hank had told him that since she was a stray, in order to settle in to his place she would also need the opportunity to roam outside to fully establish her new territory. She wandered off a lot – where to he had no idea – and just came back when she felt like it, or mostly when she wanted to be fed. Pretzel lived by her own rules and that was fine by him.

His phone chimed then, and when he flipped it open, he saw it was a text from a Panthers teammate with an accompanying link.

Hey man. You OK?

Frowning, he looked at Shelley. ‘Can I borrow your phone? Something I need to check online.’

He didn’t know what was going on, but he had a bad feeling. Had he been fired from the team and nobody’d told him yet, maybe?

‘Of course.’ She handed the device to him.

Forwarding the message to her number, Ward duly clicked on the link to find an unflattering image of himself on some online gossip site. Beneath the headline ‘McKenzie Back In His Favourite Position’ was a still of him splayed head-first on the ground in the park earlier.

‘Goddamit …’

‘Everything OK?’ Shelley asked, concerned.

‘No. No, it’s not,’ he growled, deleting the message and handing her back the phone. ‘Hey look, you can see yourself out, right?’ Ward stormed past her and into the bedroom. ‘I need to make a call.’

Hannah answered on the second ring.

‘I was just about to—’

‘You’re supposed to be working on rehabilitating my reputation? Well, I’m not the brightest guy in the world but I’ve got a feeling that pictures of me flat out on the ground like some wasted loser might not be quite the image we’re going for here.’

‘Before you say another word, your agent already called about this. I could have told him the truth but I didn’t think that would serve you well, so I sort of fudged as to whether you had been drinking. The fact that those photos are out there has nothing to do with my job, Ward. But maybe everything to do with the fact that you showed up drunk in the park.’

She had a valid point, he knew, so inhaling a deep lungful of air just like Shelley taught him, he forced himself to take a few mental steps back. Trying again not to be an ass to someone he liked.

‘Yeah, OK – I’ll admit that I probably shouldn’t have had that second shot before I left, but I was in kind of a bad place and … ’

‘Seems to me like you’re always in a bad place, Ward,’ Hannah interjected in a tone that brooked no nonsense. ‘And you don’t need to be.’

‘What do you mean?’