Read All I Want for Free Online

about her, but it was the truth, every word of it. She was a great person.
    Before she could answer, Isabel walked in and eyed the two of them knowingly, then said, “Sorry to interrupt, but since you two are done, why don’t we all grab a quick lunch and let the paint dry some more. Then maybe you wouldn’t mind painting another spare bedroom upstairs? Phil, Ryan, and Mac are going to start hanging the crown molding with Drew and Andy. We’re making a lot of progress.”
    “Sounds good,” Sean said, then turned to Carly. “Think about it and let me know tomorrow when you drop off Droopy.”

Happy Thoughts
     
    So Carly thought about it all night long. It’s not like she had anything else she could be doing, like sleeping. No, that would be the normal thing to be doing at midnight, except Droopy was having none of that.
    He’d been whimpering, then crying, before going to full-blown howling in his crate since they went to bed two hours ago.
    It all started out just fine. She’d left Brynn’s house after painting for a few more hours, loaded Droopy and his crate in the back of her car and drove home. Brynn had dropped off food a few days before, so all Carly needed was Droopy’s favorite blanket, a few toys and his leash.
    It seemed to be going so well that she was trying to figure out where things went so wrong. They’d gotten home around dinnertime, Carly took Droopy for a walk, let him do his business and then fed him while she threw together her own dinner.
    Once they were both done eating, Droopy settled down on his blanket in Carly’s living room while she got to work on her lesson plans. For hours Droopy lay there sleeping, barely moving.
    At one point she walked over and nudged him to see if he was breathing. He opened one sleepy eye at her and then closed it back up. She even had to pick him up to bring him outside to do his business before bed. He absolutely wanted nothing to do with being woken up at that point.
    She climbed the stairs to her bedroom with Droopy in her arms because he tried to walk up them, but his little legs just weren’t able to do it. Either that or he was playing her. She wasn’t quite sure, but she was positive the dog looked at her and begged each time he tried to lift his paw, just to have it bang into the step.
    She was trying to figure out if the dog was really too stupid to figure out how to climb the stairs, since she knew Brynn’s bedroom was on the second floor, or the dog was just plain lazy.
    Anyway, she cradled Droopy in her arms like a baby, then made her way to her room. Not surprisingly, the dog fell asleep in the short one-minute walk, so Carly felt it was going to be all right. She placed Droopy in his crate next to her bed, shut the door and went into her bathroom to get ready.
    The minute Carly climbed into bed, the little whimpers started. Carly had rolled to her side and gazed down at Droopy looking up at her with a sad pleading look in his eyes. At least she thought it was that; there were so many wrinkles on his face she still wasn’t positive his eyes were open at all. “It’s okay, buddy, go back to sleep.”
    That seemed to work, so she shut her light off, lay back down and closed her eyes. Only five minutes later a few more whimpers escaped. Carly tried to ignore them, hoping he would settle down. She was a schoolteacher after all, so she was used to tuning out whining.
    But he didn’t stop. Almost an hour later the whimpering turned into crying, and slowly her ever-present patience reached her breaking point. She’d grown up being able to shut loud noises out of her brain, but for some reason she couldn’t do it tonight.
    So she dug within herself and turned her thoughts to Sean and his invitation to dinner. Did she want to go on a date with him? That was easy enough: sure, why not? He was nice, sweet and seemed harmless. All the things she looked for in a guy.
    Just because he was bigger than the normal man she was attracted to didn’t