Dare to Stay (Puppy Love Romances Book 3) Read online

  CHAPTER TWO

  “So? How is it?”

  Sydney Taylor sighed softly at the question, torn between telling the truth and pacifying her best friend. Laura’s voice was curious and cheerful, with a tinge of wistfulness. She was still in Pennsylvania and, though she understood Sydney’s job would take her possibly all over the country, as she told Sydney often: she didn’t have to like it. “It’s fine. It’s a nice apartment. It’s not big, but it has hardwood floors and a huge clawfoot tub. And the windows are big, so it’s pretty bright in here. There’s that.”

  “Well, that sounds nice. I’m glad you found something that’ll work. Are you unpacked?”

  “Not yet.” Sydney looked around the room, at the small collection of boxes stacked against a wall, and her desire to open them, to fish out what meager belongings she’d chosen to bring, was all but nonexistent. “I will.”

  “You start on Monday?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go in, get introduced to my fellow newbies ’cause my boss told me they’d hired a handful of new, younger employees.”

  “I’d think they’d have to. Television news must be getting trounced by the Internet.”

  “It is. But the problem there is, you can’t always believe what’s online. You really need to investigate and fact-check. People believe whatever you tell them or whatever they read on whatever website they happen to find, which is just irritating.”

  “So you’ve told me,” Laura said with a chuckle. “About fifteen hundred times.”

  Sydney gave a half-hearted laugh as well. Laura was right. They’d had this discussion over and over, as it was a sticking point for Sydney that Americans were too lazy to double-check the authenticity of what they read online.

  “Did you check in with your parents?”

  “I sent a text. They’ll see it eventually. I think they’re in the middle of the Caribbean right now.”

  “Again? Didn’t they just go on a cruise?”

  “A couple months ago, yeah. They loved it, so they’re off again. They left earlier this week.” Sydney could almost hear Laura shaking her head in disapproval, but she made no comment. This was not new territory. For either of them. Sydney was used to her parents doing their own thing, and since her father had retired at fifty-five, they’d been even less present. And while Sydney, their only child, pretended it never bothered her, Laura gave voice to enough indignation for the both of them.

  But not today.

  Today, she simply let it lie, and for that, Sydney was grateful.

  “All right,” Laura said after a beat. “I’ll let you get to unpacking. Keep me posted on how things are going there, okay? And get out and explore your neighborhood.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ve met you, remember? You won’t unless I prod you about it. Consider yourself prodded. There’s more to come.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Sydney said, feigning annoyance, but in reality was touched by Laura’s concern.

  They hung up and Sydney tossed her iPhone onto the coffee table and flopped back onto the couch, which seemed to almost hug her, it was that worn and soft. It was slate blue, the fabric some distant cousin of microfiber, the cushions shaped with age. It had started in her parents’ basement rec room. They’d given it to Sydney when she got her first apartment away from home after college. Now, it had traveled with her to upstate New York, to a small city she wasn’t thrilled about. At all.

  Too small. Too far north. Too boring.

  All the things she’d concluded about the small city that had been last on her list of options she thought she’d had coming off her last job near home in Pennsylvania. She’d wanted a mid-sized city. Austin. Raleigh. Chattanooga. Someplace warmer than Pennsylvania. And not tiny. Instead, the Universe had given her upstate New York. Cold, small, boring upstate New York, super close to Canada, with average highs in the 80s and average lows in the teens, depending on the month you looked at.

  Sydney groaned in frustration for the four hundredth time over her relocation, but then told herself that Laura was right, that her boxes weren’t going to unpack themselves. With what seemed like Herculean effort, she pushed herself up and went into the small kitchen to unpack her dishes. A glance at the small counter reminded her that the landlord was nice and had left her a bottle of wine to welcome her and a stack of menus and information on local establishments. A well-timed rumble of her stomach told her she’d forgotten to eat today.

  “A pizza sounds good right about now,” she said aloud, picking up a menu. She made the call, testing out how her new address sounded, then continued to unpack.

  An hour later, she sat on her couch, her stomach uncomfortably full of pizza, a half-empty wineglass on the coffee table, and her laptop open in front of her. With no cable yet, her television was useless, so she plugged in her mobile hot spot, checked e-mail, scanned Facebook, skipped through Tumblr, and told herself that was the last time she was going to be able to gorge herself like a teenage boy. She couldn’t go on the air looking like a bloated version of herself.

  Channel Six was going to put her on human interest to start out with. To “get her feet wet” was how Brad Hyland, the GM of the station, had phrased it. He “wanted to see what she could do,” is what he’d said. Sydney’d had to bite her tongue to keep from asking, wasn’t that what my clips were for? To show you what I could do?

  Human interest. Ugh.

  She so did not want to be here.

  Turning on the couch, she stretched to the end so she could get a close-up view of the small fish tank on the table against the wall. Marge and Homer swam around languidly, Homer’s rounder, puffier body the only way Sydney could tell the goldfish apart. They’d made the trip all the way from Pennsylvania in the car with her and she was disturbingly happy about it, given that they were…well, fish.

  “I guess I need to quit the complaining for now, huh?” she said to the glass as she reached for the lamp nearby and clicked it on. The filter in the tank hummed quietly, sending tiny bubbles through the water and helping keep things clean for her finned companions. “What do you think, Marge? You’re the reasonable one here.” The fish actually seemed to look at her, its tiny mouth opening and closing in a little O. “Yeah, I see your point. That’s kind of what I thought, too. Put my head down, do my job and do it well, and in the meantime, keep adding to my reel, sending it out to bigger stations. Somebody will bite. No pun intended.” She nodded and reached for the remainder of her wine. “Yeah. That sounds like a plan. Thanks, Marge.” She gently tapped the edge of her glass to the glass of the tank. “You’re the best.”

  Sydney hadn’t been lying to Laura. The apartment was really nice. Small, but modern. And small was fine with Sydney, as she wasn’t home all that often and didn’t have a lot of stuff. She’d learned early on that television news was a tricky business, and you could be called on to up and go at any time. Being tied down—to people, places, or things—never worked in this world. Channel Six in upstate New York was her fourth stop since college graduation, and there would be more. She was sure of it. So she limited her belongings to the necessities: clothes—her wardrobe was of utmost importance—kitchen essentials, basic furnishings, and a car. That was pretty much it. Aside from Homer and Marge, and a box of books, she had no knickknacks, no dust-collecting sentimentalities. There was one framed photo of her with her parents and one of her and Laura from their college graduation. That was enough. She didn’t need attachments.

  The other benefit of having so little was that unpacking in a new place was a pretty quick job. One day was enough time. She looked around now, happy with her surroundings. The windows all came with mini-blinds, so she felt no need to go buy curtains—a blessing, as she’d rather set her own hair on fire than have to shop for window dressings. The neutral off-white of the walls was just fine with her. No need to paint. The hardwood floors were a light oak, polished to shiny perfection and kept the small space bright and sunny. Tilting her head to the side as she studied, she came to
the conclusion that an area rug for the living room and another for the bedroom might make sense. Hardwood was cold on bare feet and she spent almost all her time at home shoeless, thanks to her love/hate relationship with her work heels. She’d have to think about it, though. Spending the money on such things might prove to be senseless if she moved again as soon as she hoped to.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, and she planned to spend the day exploring to begin looking for some ideas to pitch to her boss for stories. She needed to prepare a bit for her meeting with him about that animal shelter—the name of which escaped her at the moment—and the possibility of her hosting their telethon. Maybe she could find the place while she was out wandering.

  A quick glance at her phone told her it was after ten. While she was used to keeping odd, late hours, the excitement of the day had caught up with her and with no television to lull her into couch potato comfort, she decided to shower off the moving dirt and turn in early. Tomorrow was the first day of her short—hopefully very short—stay here. She was ready.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sydney was just shouldering her bag to leave her apartment, on Thursday morning of her first week at her new job, when her cell rang. Seeing the name on the screen, she grinned and answered it, despite not having a ton of time.

  “Hey, you.” She tossed her bag onto the couch and flopped down, waiting to hear Laura’s voice.

  “So? Your first week is almost over. How do you feel?”

  Sydney could hear her smile, sense her concern and curiosity wrapped up in one. “I’m okay,” she said honestly. If there was one person in her life she could never fool, it was Laura. She’d stopped trying after living with her for a semester. There was something about her, something about their connection and the way they related, like they were meant to be best friends from the beginning. Lying to Laura was literally something Sydney couldn’t bring herself to do, no matter what. “The station is nicer than I thought it would be and everybody seems competent.”

  Laura scoffed. “Well, then. I’m so glad you’re finding your new colleagues worthy of you.”

  Sydney heard the tease—and also the underlying rebuke. “And they’ve all been nice so far,” she hastily added. “I got my first two assignments.”

  “Fantastic! Tell me about them.”

  “Well, the first is I have to interview the owners of a local microbrewery. They just won some major beer award or something. It’s basic human-interest stuff, but it’s good. I can make it work.”

  “Don’t knock the human-interest stories, Walters,” Laura admonished, using the nickname she’d given her after they’d spent their first evening together in their dorm room and Laura had told Sydney she wasn’t talking to her, she was interviewing her. “The news is heavy. It’s depressing. It brings people down. They look to the human-interest stories to be lifted up again, ’cause the world kinda sucks. You know?”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d said something similar to her. “I know. I know. And I’m glad you feel that way because the second one is pretty big.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Brad touched on it when he first hired me, but he’d labeled it a possibility. But Monday, he told me he for sure wants me to host the annual fundraising telethon they do at this local animal shelter. I guess it’s a pretty big deal. Their regular anchor used to do it, but she retired last year and they want me to help bring in a younger audience.”

  “Seriously? That’s awesome!”

  “Still human interest. Not really anything gritty, but—”

  “What did I just say?”

  Sydney laughed. “I know. You’re right.”

  “I usually am. When will you just accept this as fact?”

  “Probably never. What’s on your agenda today?” Sydney smoothly changed the subject. “How many days until summer vacation? Because I know you’re counting.”

  “No, I am not counting,” Laura said, her voice laced with indignation. “Thirty-three.”

  Sydney laughed. Laura was a home economics teacher at a small school in Pennsylvania and she loved her job. Which didn’t mean she didn’t also love summer vacation.

  “It’s closing in…”

  “Yeah, well, it needs to close in a little faster. I’ve got a couple students who might end up dead a lot sooner than thirty-three days. A lot sooner.”

  “They probably just have crushes on you.”

  “Duh.”

  Sydney laughed.

  “Okay, Walters, I’ve got to run. Just wanted to check up on you. Make sure you’re eating, okay? I don’t want to have to drive up there and feed you, embarrass you in front of your new television colleagues.”

  “Oh, how I wish you would.”

  “Careful.”

  With them both chuckling, they said their goodbyes.

  Sydney pushed the End button and was surprised to feel a pang of homesickness. She sat there and let it roll through her, tried to analyze it. It didn’t scare her, and it didn’t make her sad. Rather, she felt…melancholy, tinted with a bit of confusion because it wasn’t something she’d expected. Her parents had never been the kind to hover. Helicopter parents, they were not. She’d gone to college fairly close to home, close enough to drive back on occasional weekends here and there and get anything she needed, even though nobody was there most of the time, so homesickness wasn’t really something she’d been hit with. Then she’d gotten a job at a station near her hometown. Then another, a bit farther away, but still not that far. She wanted to travel. She want to work someplace bigger, more glamorous, and yes, farther from home. It was what she’d always intended, and with her acceptance of this job, it had begun. So this twinge, this little prick of pain, wasn’t a thing she’d prepared for, as she’d never experienced it before. But she missed Laura. She even missed her parents a tiny bit. She missed home.

  She turned to look at Marge and Homer, swimming around their tiny world, not a care. “Well. That was new,” she said to the glass. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that before. Weird.” Homer opened and closed his little mouth at her. She slapped a hand on her thigh. “Okay. Time for work.” She stood, pushed the unfamiliar emotion into a corner, shouldered her bag once again, and headed for the door.

  Sydney’s apartment building had once been a very large house, and what would be considered the “hallway” was actually a grand foyer. There were three apartments on the second floor, like hers, and four on the first floor. The staircase in the middle of the foyer was wide and covered with a deep burgundy carpet, the railings polished oak. A large, twinkly chandelier hung from the center, its light enough to see by, but not so bright as to be obnoxious at night. Sydney was pretty sure it had been a gorgeously elegant one-family house in its time.

  As Sydney headed down the stairs, she passed a small, elderly woman with three recyclable shopping bags. She was dragging them very slowly from step to step as she made her way up. Sydney made it all the way to the front door, actually had her hand on the handle, before her feet stopped and wouldn’t move. She closed her eyes and blew out a quiet breath as she allowed instinct and manners to shoulder their way in.

  Setting down her bag next to the bank of mailboxes and returning to the stairs, she asked, “Hey, can I help you with that?”

  The woman looked up and seemed surprised to see her. Then she gave a self-deprecating smile. “Oh, thank you, dear. I can do it, but it’s going to take me longer than I thought.”

  “I’m happy to give you a hand. It’s no problem.” Sydney looked up the stairs at the three doors. “Which is your apartment?”

  “Number seven.”

  “Ah, lucky number seven.” Sydney took two of the bags and ran them up the stairs, set them outside the door to number seven. When she returned to get the third bag, the woman had only climbed one more step. “Here. Let me help.” Sydney took the bag, then held her arm out so the woman could take hold of her elbow for extra support. She wore a mid-weight raincoat and her white hair was covered by a scarf, which she�
�d tied under her chin. She reminded Sydney of her great-grandma Ethel, who’d passed away three years before.

  “Thank you,” the woman said quietly, and Sydney got the feeling—judging from her slightly pink skin and lack of eye contact—that the woman was embarrassed to need the help. They moved slowly, the woman holding Sydney’s arm with one hand and the oak railing with the other.

  “So, you’re my neighbor, huh? I just moved into number six over the weekend.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d heard somebody was going in there.”

  Trying to ignore the woman’s labored breathing, Sydney said, “My name is Sydney Taylor, by the way.”

  “Sydney. That was my husband’s name. Is yours spelled with an I or a Y?”

  “Y.”

  The woman nodded, silently concentrating on the next and final step before saying, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Sydney.” In the upper hall, she let go of Sydney’s elbow and held out a hand to her. Sydney shook it, noting the gentle softness of the papery thin skin that covered delicate bones and lines of blue veins, but surprised by the firmness of the grip. “I’m Dr. Vivian Green. Thank you for your help.”

  “It was my pleasure.” Sydney nodded at the door. “You going to be okay now? I can take these bags in for you if you want.”

  “Oh, no, no.” Vivian waved a dismissive hand at her. “I can take it from here.”

  “Okay. As long as you’re sure.” Sydney hesitated to leave her.

  “Really, dear, it’s fine. I do this all the time.” Vivian Green smiled at her, but her rheumy blue eyes flashed with a sharpness that told Sydney she was tougher than she seemed.

  “All right. I’m off then. It was nice to meet you.”

  Vivian nodded as she pulled her keys from her pocket.

  *

  The morning went by quickly. Sydney made several phone calls, including to Old Red Barn Brewcrafters to set up an appointment with Rick Foster, one of the owners. She got him on the phone and they went over a few details. He seemed very gracious and accommodating, not to mention proud.