Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance by Jasinda Wilder Page A

place with a couple of phone calls. “I gave her a bath.”
    “There’s a strict no-pets policy, sir. I’m afraid I’ll have to charge you a room-cleaning fine.”
    Two doors down, a door opens. An older guy with a belly stretching the confines of a stained wife-beater and greasy, baggy khakis leaves the motel room, digging in his hip pocket. He peels a few bills off a roll, and extends it. A woman of indeterminate age—probably middle to late thirties, if I was forced to guess—accepts the cash. She doesn’t stuff it into a pocket or a bra, because she doesn’t have either. She’s got a thin silk robe on, hanging from her shoulders, loosely tied, which means it’s sagging open and thus covering precisely zero percent of her naughty bits.
    I look at her, she looks at me, and the day clerk looks from her to me and back again.
    I smirk at him. “I assume there’s a strict no-hookers policy, too?”
    The woman just glares. “Fuck you.”  
    “ You’d have to pay me , sweetheart,” I say.
    She turns a little, facing us both, and lets the robe fall open even more, lifting a knee in a pose meant to be provocative, probably. “There’s a policy, all right.” A wink. “But Ricky likes to live on the wild side, don’t you Ricky?”  
    I laugh. “Ah, I see.” I punch good old Ricky in the arm, not exactly gently. “She gives it to you for free, and you turn a blind eye to the tricks.”
    “She pays rent,” Ricky mumbles, rubbing his arm.
    “I bet she does.” I jerk open the door of my truck. “You won’t be charging me cleaning fees or anything else.”
    Ricky turns away, but I can tell his attention is on the hooker. Anticipating the turn-a-blind-eye BJ he’s probably about to get. “No…nothing extra.”  
    “Didn’t think so.”  
    I drive away, but in the rearview mirror I can see the hooker dragging the clerk into her room while undoing his belt. Not a bad gig, if you don’t mind stinky hooker-poon.
    Not my thing, personally. I like it fresh and wild, not… that . Whatever the hell that is.
    I don’t have any nice words to describe it, and in the name of turning over a new leaf, I’ll keep the unkind ones to myself.  
    Just…yuck. I’ll leave it at that.

      *   *   *

    I’ve never owned a dog before, and I have to admit that having a dog is fun.  
    She sleeps for a while as I drive, and then hops into the front seat beside me. I lower the window for her and she sticks her head out, enjoying the wind in her face. I like watching her have fun, shaking her head, drool spattering the side of the truck and the back window.  
    When I feel like stopping, I pull over onto the shoulder. There’s nothing but brown in every direction, so I let Utah hop down and I toss the ball for her, hurling it as far as I can. She hauls after it, finds it, and brings it to me, dropping the slobbery tennis ball at my feet, barking for me to throw it again. So I do, and thus I spend a good half an hour, throwing a damp, gritty tennis ball for a big wolfhound, and having more fun than I’ve had in a long time. Feeling good. Feeling…okay.  
    She accepts me without question. Doesn’t need to know anything about me, doesn’t care about anything except that I’ve taken care of her, fed her, cleaned her, and I give her attention.  
    Back on the road, she somehow curls her absurdly mammoth body onto the front bucket seat, her head on the console between us, and I get to rest my hand on her head and scratch her ears while I drive.  
    Windows down, music up, sun in my face, a dog beside me.  
    I’ll take this.

    *   *   *

    GPS says I should make it from Humboldt County, California to Ardmore, Oklahoma in around thirty-two, thirty-three hours. But I’m in no hurry, so I make it in just shy of three days.  
    Ardmore, Oklahoma is flat, dry, and hot. The downtown area, though, is cute and quaint, a throwback to when this area was the real-deal Wild West. You can see it in the layout, the way the