Free A Bad Day for Pretty by Sophie Littlefield Page B

just once around the backyard to pee.”
    Roxy, though, had other ideas; she stopped to sniff at every rock, plant, fallen leaf, stick, and hole in the yard. Her white-whiskered black snout sniffed delicately, but when something interested her, she pawed and scratched with abandon, the low whine in the back of her throat expressing pure interest and delight.
    Stella realized she was letting the dog lead her around. “That’s enough,” she snapped, and yanked on the cord, dragging Roxy back toward the house. She debated tying the dog up to the back porch, but the cords’ knots didn’t look like they’d hold. “Look here. You can come back in, but you’re sleeping in the garage tonight.”
    Roxy gave her a quizzical look, the whiskers on one side of her face tilting up curiously, and sat still while Stella untied her in the kitchen. When Stella got a broom and dustpan, Roxy’s jaunty expression deflated and she slunk to the corner of the room, where she lay on her belly and rested her chin on her paws. She tracked Stella’s every move, her long-lashed eyes mournful and, if such a thing were possible, apologetic.
    “Don’t give me that look,” Stella grumbled, but once she had the floor swept and the trash rebagged and hauled out to the garbage cans in the garage, she gave the dog another look, hands on hips.
    Sighing, she wet a washcloth and dabbed a bit of her good lavender-scented liquid hand soap on it. “Hell,” she sighed, “if we’re going to hang out, you got to keep up your end. No need to look low-class just ’cause you’ve traveled a rough road … know what I mean?”
    She gently sudsed up the dog’s snout, then washed the grime off her paws and legs and a few spots here and there where bits of pasta sauce were stuck to her fur. She rinsed the washcloth and carefully dabbed the soap away from the dog’s soft coat, finishing up with a fluffing from a fresh dishcloth. She surveyed her handiwork, Roxy regarding her solemnly in return.
    Then Roxy picked up her paw, deliberately, almost delicately, and laid it on Stella’s forearm—and Stella knew she was done for.
    “Shit,” she said. “I don’t need a dog. I don’t want a dog. You got owners already, don’t you? Some nice family somewhere?”
    There was a noise behind her, the door from the garage opening, and a gentle cough. Roxy tensed up and started making a low rumble in her throat, and the fur stood up along her back. Stella whirled around, and found herself staring at the woman who’d interrupted her evening with Goat Jones.
    “Brandy,” she said. “Did you miss out on the knocking lessons when you were a kid?”
    “Oh, excuse me,” the woman said. This evening she was wearing a shimmering red pantsuit, a whole lot of ruching in the jacket making it fit as close as if she’d wrapped herself up in red florist foil. “I saw the lights on, and the door to the garage was open—”
    “That’s because I was taking out the trash,” Stella said, emphasizing that last word.
    Trash . It was on the tip of her tongue to describe the teased-and-sprayed high-heel-teetering woman in front of her, but Stella was uncomfortably aware that she was in range of breaking one of her own rules, and that was a place where she’d sworn off loitering.
    There were plenty of men in the world who were ready to call decent women terrible things: whores, sluts, skanks. Why was it that the insult that came first to some men’s mind when describing a woman had to do with their willingness to give up exactly what these same men spent most of their waking hours trying to get their nasty hands on?
    Stella recalled something a client had once said, once she’d shed herself of a boyfriend whose jealousy took the form of choking her half to death when she put on a short skirt and high heels to go dancing: some men get agitated by women who look like they can make their own fun. And now Stella was dangerously close to being guilty of the same thing.
    If she was