on board with this?” Curly asked of Tyler’s wife as he stepped back.
With a snort, Tyler shook his head. “Fuck that. I got shot of her about two years after you went away.”
Thank fuck. He’d never liked her. She was a whiny, manipulative shrew who’d run around on Tyler since day one.
“Guess we got a lotta work to do now, huh?”
“Damn straight,” Curly said. “I’ll catch you up on everything tonight. Sound good?”
“Hell yeah. Where you off to now?”
Curly smiled. “I’m off to get myself a best friend.”
CHAPTER FIVE
BROOKE HEFTED THE first of three fifty-pound sacks of dog food from the back of her Jeep. “God,” she muttered to herself as she staggered backward under the weight of the bag. “I swear these get heavier each time.”
With her arms wrapped around the bag, she hoisted it higher and settled it on her hip as though it were a heavy child. At least she got some use outta those hips of hers. By the time she’d sweated her way through her large yard to the kennel, her arms ached, and the thought of going through that two more times had her groaning. If she were smart, she’d get a wagon to lug the food instead of straining, but she used this chore to justify skipping the gym.
The dogs yipped and bounced around their kennels as she ripped open the bag. A huff had her peeking over her shoulder. “Hey, Ray,” she said to her German Shepherd. Most of the time, he stayed in the house while she was out, but today he’d been insistent on hanging out with the rest of the dogs. He seemed to have fallen head over paws for a little lab/boxer mix she’d rescued a few days ago. The pup had been left outside David’s clinic with her leash tied to the door.
With a shake of her head, she squashed the anger threatening to rise. If she allowed herself to get pissed every time someone abandoned a dog at the vet clinic, she’d spend most of her time in a furious state. But, over the years, she’d learned to turn that anger into motivation. Now she used it to fuel her in fostering as many dogs as possible.
David guessed this pup to be somewhere around eight or nine months. From a note tucked in her collar, Brooke had learned the puppy’s owner had passed, and no one in his family wanted the dog. She couldn’t figure that one out to save her life. The puppy was an adorable chocolate color with two white toes on a back paw and a little strip of white fur on her head. She was also smart as hell and sweet as could be. Ray certainly seemed to think so, even if she had boundless amounts of energy.
He sat outside the pup’s kennel whining as he thumped his fluffy tail. “Give me a minute,” she said as she managed to dump the contents of the bag in a food storage bin. “I’ll let your girlfriend out as soon as I get the rest of the food in here.”
Ray whined again.
“Seriously, buddy, chill. Don’t you know us girls like a little bit of chase? You can’t seem too eager, or she’s gonna get bored with you.”
Another whine.
She laughed as she shook the food bin to even out the kibble. “All right, all right. Geez, can’t imagine what you’d be like if you actually had your balls.”
“I imagine he’d be a whole lot happier.”
Brooke yelped and spun around to find a man standing in the open door with a bag of dog food under each arm as though they weighed five pounds instead of fifty. Ray sat at his feet whining, not in distress or because an intruder threatened her space, but because the man didn’t have a free hand to pet him.
“Us guys tend to appreciate our balls.”
“Uh, what?” Her face heated to molten hot. She could do nothing but stare at the round bulge of the man’s tanned biceps as he stood just ten feet away. A vein ran down the left one while the right had a tattoo ringing it. Some sort of saying she couldn’t make out from her distance.
“Where do you want these?”
“Huh?” She blinked. Had he asked something?
“You want this dog food over by you? I can just drop them here if you want.”
Her gaze finally went to his face—more specifically his mouth, and she sucked in a breath. Those lips. Holy crap, those lips were smooth and