NFH 02 Perfection (10 page)

"Maybe she'll sit on him," Hank
mused.

"Or eat him," Craig said,
chuckling.

Now
that
had his attention. He looked up
in time to see several of the guys butting fists and grinning like
idiots over the pretty stupid comments.

"Real nice, guys," Trevor drawled,
grabbing his empty water bottle.

"Uh oh, I think we just insulted
Trevor's woman," Hank said, laughing.

"Knock it off, asshole. You know it's
not like that," Trevor ground out. For the past couple of weeks the
guys had been busting his balls with this bullshit. It had gotten
old real fucking fast.

"Come on, man. It's okay. We all
understand that fat chicks need love too," Craig said in mock
sympathy, earning more chuckles and murmurs of agreement from the
rest of the guys.

"Uh huh," Trevor said, grabbing his
shit and walking away. Their bullshit annoyed him, but not enough
to really care.

"Hey, Trevor, hold up!" Hank said,
forcing Trevor to bite back a few choice words as he reluctantly
stopped.

"What?" he snapped, not really caring
that he was an asshole since he knew what was coming.

Hank stopped a few feet away from him,
looking a little anxious. "I was just wondering if you were going
to join the guys tomorrow night for a beer," he grumbled, but they
both knew that wasn't the real reason he wanted to know.

He wanted Trevor to hang out with him
so that he'd have a chance at a higher class of women. If he found
out the jerk used his name one more time to pick up a woman he was
going to throttle the bastard.

"I'm not sure yet," he said even
though he'd already planned on going. He just didn't want to get
this asshole's hopes up and have him hounding him all night and day
about it.

"You should come out," Hank said,
running a hand over his over-gelled hair to smooth it down as he
gave the girl working the coffee truck, who couldn't be more than
seventeen years old, a leering look.

With a snort of disgust he walked off,
amazed that someone hadn't beaten the shit out of the bastard
yet.

"Think about it!" Hank called after
him. "It will do you a world of good to be around some women that
don't outweigh you!" he said, laughing and making Trevor force
himself to keep moving before he did something that would land his
ass in jail.

**********

"Zoe?"

"Yeah?" she said, pulling her
attention away from the computer. Not that she'd been working.
Nope. She'd been too busy trying not to die of embarrassment to get
much of anything done.

Although it was already the first week
of October it was still hot, but not hot enough to run the air
conditioner so she'd foolishly opened all of the windows to let in
cool air and unfortunately heard more than she wanted
to.

"Zoe?" Jared said, drawing her
attention. She looked up at her boss, hoping against hope that he
hadn't heard.

"Yes?" she asked, hoping he wasn't
going to try and comfort her. She hated pity more than
anything.

"Are you going to eat that?" he asked,
looking down at her salad with diced up chicken and licking his
lips as if he were staring at fillet mignon.

Relieved that he hadn't heard, Zoe
sighed as she looked down at her salad. She was pretty hungry, but
maybe she shouldn't overdo it, she thought even as her stomach
protested.

"No. Do you want it?" she asked. She'd
barely finished asking when Jared reached out and snatched up her
bowl. Well, at least she cut out two hundred and fifty calories off
her diet, she thought with an inward sigh.

"Thanks," he said, already picking at
her salad and snacking on a cucumber slice as he made his way over
to the refrigerator. "I need you to run an errand," he said,
grabbing a bottle of creamy French dressing from the fridge and
smothering the salad in it.

She licked her lips hungrily as she
imagined how good that would taste. For the past two and a half
months she'd forgone any type of condiment on her food, telling
herself that she didn't any extra calories. After what she'd just
heard she had to agree.

"Sure. What do you need?" she asked,
grabbing her purse, glad to have a distraction from what she'd
heard.

"Could you run some contracts down to
the animal shelter? They need us to build some new kennels and fix
one of the buildings," he said around a huge bite of
salad.

"No problem," she said, getting to her
feet.

"After that you can take the rest of
the day off," Jared said, surprising her.

"A-are you sure?" Zoe asked nervously,
even though by this point she should be used to Jared's kindness
and generosity. It seemed that nearly three months of kindness
wasn't enough to make up for three years in hell, but she was
working on it.

Jared simply chuckled. "Yes, I'm sure.
Get the hell out of here and enjoy your weekend," he said as he
made his way to the office to get the contracts, but not before he
snatched her ice water up on the way almost as if he couldn't help
himself.

As Zoe followed after him she couldn't
help but wonder if there was a name for this little food obsession
all the Bradford males seemed to suffer from. Although, she wasn't
going to complain about it since it was helping her lose
weight.

Chapter
9

"Please don't look at me like that,"
Zoe whispered, feeling helpless as large brown chocolate eyes
looked up at her pleadingly.

"It would never work out between us,"
she added, wishing Tom, the animal control officer would hurry back
so she could leave.

Toby simply cocked his head to the
side and let out one of the most pathetic whimpers she'd ever
heard, causing her to worry her bottom lip.

"I'm sure a very nice family will come
along soon and take you home with them," she rushed on, hoping
she'd be able to convince him to stop making her feel guilty. "I'm
sure they'll have plenty of kids to play with you and sneak you
yummy table scraps. I'm on a diet so anything I gave you would be
gross and nasty. You wouldn't want that, now would you?" she asked,
sounding hopeful.

Instead of losing interest, he wagged
his tail and let out an adorable little puppy bark. She frowned.
Could a forty pound dog really be considered a puppy? She didn't
think so, but Tom had assured her that the German Sheppard-husky
mixed dog was only a puppy. She'd have to take his word for it
since she knew absolutely nothing about dogs.

"Please don't look at me like that,"
she whispered, feeling herself weaken. "I can't have a dog, buddy.
I'm sorry," she explained, but the look of adoration on his face
said that he simply didn't care. "I rent and my landlord was very
specific in the lease that I can't have dogs and if I take you home
I'll have to find another place to live and I really like my place
so please stop looking at me like that. I'm sure you'll have a new
home really, really soon, okay?" she said, having absolutely no
doubt that someone would scoop up the adorable dog soon.

"Don't count on it," Tom said as he
walked back into the kennel room.

"What do you mean?" Zoe asked,
standing.

"He's scheduled to be put down today,"
he said with a shrug.

"B-but....he's just a puppy," she
said, throwing a nervous look at the dog who was still watching
her.

"I know," Tom said, not sounding happy
about it at all. "But this is a city funded shelter and this little
guy has been here too long. I don't have a choice in the matter,"
he said, frowning up at the clock on the wall. "Actually, he was
scheduled to be put down twenty minutes ago, but you showed up just
as I was getting the room ready."

As if he could understand, Toby let
out a pitiful whine. Zoe tried not to look down at the dog, knowing
she was so damn close to doing something stupid.

"Isn't there any way you could give
him another week or two?" she asked, already dreading the
answer.

"I wish I could," Tom said, gesturing
for her to follow him back out to the front.

She threw one last look at the pitiful
dog before she followed. It was sad, but this kind of thing
happened every single day, she told herself. Besides she really
didn't have a choice in the matter. Trevor had been very clear
about the rules when she moved in, granted she hadn't known that he
owned the house at the time, but there was still a long list of
rules that she'd agreed to and one of them had been no
pets.

Besides she really didn't know
anything about dogs other than they needed to be fed and walked.
Puppies needed to be housetrained and she didn't have a clue in how
to go about that. There really was no choice in the matter, she
decided as she said goodbye to Tom and headed for the
door.

Just as she placed her hand on the
doorknob Toby let out a pitiful howl. It was one of the hardest
things she'd ever done and she knew she'd probably have to cry
herself to sleep tonight, but she left, trying to ignore Toby's
pleas for her to return.

**********

"Where the hell is the food? I'm
starving," Jason complained, again.

Trevor shot his cousin a glare. "Stop
bitching."

"Just as soon as you feed me," Jason
said with a sniff.

"I'm still trying to figure out who
invited you," Trevor said, glaring at his three uninvited guests.
Jason ignored him as he searched through the now empty bags of
chips, mostly relying on his right hand for the job since three of
the fingers on his left hand were still in finger braces. Brad
shrugged and Mitch snagged a fresh beer as he tried to discretely
text message his wife, again.

He was still trying to figure out how
a man as corrupt as Mitch ended up a happily married bastard. He
really hadn't seen that one coming. Not to mention the man's wife
left him a little confused. She was nothing like the women Mitch
usually went for. Instead of the curvy hot little numbers Mitch
used to screw around with, Mary was tall, a bit thin and kind of
pretty, but more plain than anything, but Mitch couldn't seem to
get enough of her.

Thank god he had absolutely no plans
on marrying for love. There was no way he was going to allow
himself to become as pathetic as these three.

"Well?" he asked, snagging the beer
away from Mitch. The man paused in mid-text to send Trevor a glare,
but smartly kept his mouth shut and grabbed another beer only to
have it stolen away from him by Jason.

"Thanks," Jason said, also ignoring
Mitch's sad little glare. After a few seconds the man gave up and
returned his attention to his phone. When he smiled like a love
sick bastard, Trevor had to look away. It was either that or lose
his lunch.

"Since when do I need an invite?"
Jason asked, sounding truly confused as he popped the top off his
beer.

"Whatever," Trevor said, in no mood to
argue. He was fucking starving. The three bags of chips he'd
devoured had barely taken the edge off his hunger. He would have
had more if his cousin hadn't eaten him out of house and
home.

"Maybe we should order some food,"
Zack, one of the new guys from work, suggested.

Jason snorted at that. "No one will
deliver here."

"Why not?" Henry, another guy from
work, asked as he looked inside an empty chip bag and
frowned.

"Because we're banned," Trevor
snapped, wishing they'd all shut the hell up so he could watch the
game.

"How-" Zack started to ask only to get
cut off by Brad.

"You really don't want to know," Brad
stressed.

"But-"

"I'm serious."

"I've never heard-"

"Just let it go," Brad
said.

"But, I don't understand
how-"

"And you really never will. Trust me,"
Brad stressed.

After a short pause Zack shrugged his
curiosity off, which Trevor appreciated. He was starving and in no
mood to explain how the fast food industry had shunned them over a
few minor misunderstandings.

"Hey, I thought you said that fat
chick that works in the office lived next door and was going to
order us some food," Henry said, sounding irritated.

Trevor just barely stopped himself
from defending Zoe. He didn't think she was fat. Curvy? Hell yeah,
but he knew better than to open his mouth to defend her. He had to
deal with enough of the high school drama bullshit at work, he
wasn't about to deal with it at home.

Jason snorted. "Haley will kick your
ass if she hears you talking about her friend," he pointed out as
he doubled checked the empty potato chip bags.

That kind of surprised Trevor, not
that Haley would try and kick someone's ass since he'd heard plenty
of amusing stories about her fighting skills, but that Haley
considered Zoe a friend. Then again there was still a lot about Zoe
that he didn't know about. Something that shouldn't bother him
since she was really just a tenant and an employee of sorts, but it
did.