“Really, Harrison?” his dad asked, shielding his pint glass as if fearing puppy contaminants. “You brought her with you? To a bar?”

“That’s how it works,” he said. He turned his attention to the bartender, an energetic, outspoken woman who could pass for fifteen or fifty, depending on the lighting. The dingy bar fluorescents softened her to somewhere in the thirties. “And before you say anything, Meg, Bubbles is a service animal, so you can’t kick us out. See what her vest says? I need her to save my life.”

“Save your life?” she echoed. “From what? A squirrel attack?”

Next to him, his dad guffawed. “Fat chance of that. My money’s on the squirrel.”

Harrison placed his hand on the puppy’s back and glared at his father. Bubbles ruined the gesture’s efficacy by turning her head into his caress and licking his thumb. He maintained his pose anyway. At least one of them was going to have a little dignity.

“She’s very sensitive about her size,” he said. “She’s also tired after a long day. What do you have that might perk her up a little?”

Meg leaned on the counter and stared at the puppy. Her eyes, heavily lined in black, moved up and down between Bubbles and Harrison, as if she was waiting for the catch.

She could wait forever as far as Harrison was concerned. He knew it was ridiculous to saunter around a town like Deer Park with a designer dog wearing a red training vest layered over a sock. He’d grown up here, gone to school here, worked here. Almost everyone knew him as the hard-ass at the Department of Natural Resources who lived like a hermit on the outskirts of town and liked it. The last thing he needed was for any of them to point out that he was more likely to tattoo daisies on his eyelids and take up, well, knitting as a hobby.

“Maybe she’d like some whiskey?” Meg eventually suggested.

It was Harrison’s turn to guffaw. He could only imagine Sophie’s reaction if she found out he’d even considered giving Bubbles hard alcohol. She’d yell again. Either that, or she’d kiss him.

With that woman, it was hard to tell.

“Water will be fine,” he said. “For both of us. I mostly just needed to get out of the house.”

“That girl still there?” his dad asked with a surprising show of astuteness.

“No,” Harrison admitted. She’d left at exactly five o’clock with a promise to return the next day at nine. She was a consummate professional from head to toe—well, except for the part where she made out with him in the kitchen and filled up his calendar with a whirl of social activities that he in no way, shape, or form wanted to take part in. “But she did make a few changes around the place.”