Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1) - Jill Shalvis Page 0,71

to.”

“It’s a good stress reliever,” she said.

“Uh huh. As good as sleeping with the guy you haven’t been honest with and then shoving him bare-ass naked into your dumbwaiter to avoid your ex, your boss, and your best friend?”

The air left her lungs in one big whoosh. “Who told you?”

“Eddie would snitch on his mama for food or cash, you know that.”

“And how did Eddie know?” she demanded. “I didn’t tell anyone!”

“Didn’t have to. Eddie was in the basement at a very intense poker game with a select few when the dumbwaiter opened and out stumbled your boy, pants in hand.”

“Shirt!” she yelled. “He had his shirt in hand. He was wearing his pants!”

“Just tell me you told him.”

“I’m working on that.”

“Dammit, Pru, it’s like you want to self-implode your own happiness. Promise me you won’t do anything that stupid again until you tell him.”

She closed her eyes, knowing he was right. Hating that he was right.

“Pru—”

“—I hear you,” she said.

“Promise me. I know you would never break a promise, so right here and now, promise me that—”

“I promise,” she said. “I’ve always intended to tell him and I will. I get that it’s been two weeks but I’m working up to it, okay? I’m going to tell him soon as the time is right.”

“Just don’t miss your window of opportunity, chica, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I hear you.”

They disconnected and Pru closed her eyes. Hard to pretend something hadn’t happened when everyone in the free world knew.

She didn’t linger after work like she usually did. Instead she hightailed it out of there. Needing to clear her head, she and Thor walked. Well, she walked. Thor got tired about halfway and stopped. He planted his little butt on the sidewalk and steadfastly refused to walk another step.

“You’re going to get fat,” she told him.

Thor turned his head away from her.

“Come on,” she cajoled. “I want to walk out the Aquatic Park Pier and watch the sky change colors as the sun sets.”

Thor sneezed and she could have sworn she heard “bullshit” in the sound. And the sad thing was that her dog had more brain cells than she did because he was right.

She was stalling going home. It was just that she’d come to count on Finn’s company so much. Too much. He made her smile. He made her ache. He made her want things, things she’d been afraid to want. He made her feel . . . way too much.

Thor hadn’t budged so she scooped him up and carried him out to the end of the long, curved pier. She watched the water and thought maybe this wasn’t so bad. Yes, she’d made a mistake. She’d been with Finn a few times.

So what.

Other people, normal people, slept with people all the time and she didn’t see anyone else angsting over it. For all she knew Finn hadn’t given it a second thought, and in fact would laugh off her worries.

But you’ve slept with him now, as in actually slept, snuggled in his arms all night long . . . And that was more intimate than anything else and it changed things for her. “Maybe I’m just being silly,” she said hopefully to Thor.

Thor, lazy but utterly loyal, licked her chin.

She hugged him close. “I always have you,” she murmured. “You’ll never leave me—”

But he was squirming to get down so desperately she did just that. “What’s gotten into you?” She stopped when he bounced over to a fellow dog a few feet away.

A small, dainty, perfectly groomed Shih Tzu. The dog stilled at Thor’s approach and allowed him to sniff her butt, and then returned the favor while Pru glanced apologetically at the dog’s owner.

The woman was in her thirties, wearing running tights and a tiny little running bra, the brand of which Pru couldn’t even afford to look through their catalogue.

“Baby,” the woman said. “What have I told you? You’re a purebred not a disgusting mutt.”

“Hey, he’s not disgusting, he’s just—” But Pru broke off when Thor lifted his leg and peed on Baby.

By the time Pru got to her building, Thor had fallen asleep in her arms, which were nearly dead. Seemed nothing stopped him from catching his beauty sleep, not snooty little dogs with snooty little owners, and certainly not the squealing of said snooty little dogs’ owners about the cost of dog grooming and how Pru had let her heathen ruin her “baby.”

A low-lying fog rolled in to join dusk as she entered through the courtyard,