Anatoly lifted a wineglass. “Hello Beatrix. Don’t worry, Arthur knows he needs to behave.”
“I’m not that much younger than you, Anatoly,” Arthur growled. “I wouldn’t be so casual about issuing challenges.”
Anatoly was unbothered. He tipped his wineglass at Zan and Rissa. “Unlike you, I have them. That makes me much stronger.”
There was some weird subtext she wasn’t getting here, but honestly, she didn’t care because there was a dog waiting for her.
“Guys, enough!” Rissa said, slapping a hand on the counter. She gave Beatrix a smile. “Sorry about that.”
“Right, yeah, no worries,” Beatrix said, unsure what else to say.
Rissa pulled a phone out of her back pocket. “I’m going to call a friend. He runs a rescue. If you can’t catch the dog, don’t worry, Titan’s amazing with animals. He’ll be able to catch the dog, just don’t let it run out of the alley, okay?”
Relief and disappointment warred inside Beatrix. She knew she shouldn’t try to sneak another dog into her apartment, especially after the Rottweiler incident. But still, she felt sad at missing out on doggo company for the night.
“Great, thanks,” she said to Rissa with a forced smile. She turned to leave the bar with Arthur right behind her. When she stepped outside, she noticed her car and winced. It was way further out in the road than she thought it was.
“Here,” she said, shoving the treat bag at Arthur and pointing at the mouth of the alley. “The dog’s down there, hiding in the stack of recycling. I have to move my car.”
“No,” he said, even as he accepted the bag of treats. “Give me your keys.”
She was already searching for them and realized with absolute horror that she hadn’t pulled the keys out of the ignition.
“Oh shit, I left them in the car,” she said with a shake of her head.
Arthur didn’t say anything, but he did look slightly relieved. “That makes it easy.”
“Wha—”
Before she could finish asking what he meant by that, he stepped back and stuck his head into the bar. “Zander, please move Beatrix’s car to your parking garage. The keys are in there.”
Zander grinned and jumped over the bar with an impressive level of athleticism.
“Sure,” he said cheerfully, brushing past them to head to her crooked Toyota. “I’m guessing it’s that one.”
She probably should have protested about this man she barely knew driving her car away, but honestly, she felt a strange kind of peace being around Arthur. It was almost like she instinctively knew he was trustworthy and wouldn’t make any bad decisions when it came to her and her things.
Then Arthur took her hand and cemented that thought.
Normally, she hated when people touched her without warning, but this felt different. It was as if they’d known each other forever instead of a few minutes.
“Down here?” he asked as they got to the mouth of the alley.
She pointed to the stacked recycling. “Yeah, over there. Poor little guy is scared to death. It’s probably my fault, I almost hit him.”
“You did nothing wrong,” Arthur said quickly as he walked down the alley. “It’s the fault of a careless human.”
He must be involved in rescue because that’s the type of stuff she said all the time with other volunteers. There’s no such thing as a bad dog, only bad humans or owners.
“That’s true,” she agreed.
They got to where the dog was hiding. Arthur leaned over to peer at him and the dog growled low and threateningly. Beatrix quickly pulled him away.
“I think we should give the sweet thing some space until that Titan guy gets here,” she said.
“I’ll bow to your superior knowledge," he said as he let her lead him a few steps away. She put them between the dog and the mouth of the alley.
She couldn’t believe how the dog had growled at Arthur. The thing had only been scared with her, but maybe past abuse made the dog reactive to men. She’d seen it at the shelter before.