Dropping The Ball - A New Year’s Billionaire Romance - Weston Parker Page 0,24
join us too. She was talking about getting in more running time just yesterday.”
“Let’s see how it goes first. Keeping you safe is my number-one priority. We shouldn’t tempt fate by adding another possibly daily target to the mix.”
She paled and bent over to scratch Max’s head again. “I think I’ve fallen in love with this one already. It will be fun to take him out every day. I’ll talk to Tani. Don’t worry about it.”
And now she loves my dog. That’s just great too.
Strangely enough, he seemed to reciprocate the feeling. His breed were typically one-person dogs. It was unusual for him to take a liking to anyone else.
He tolerated Bart just fine, but he’d never wound around his legs like he was doing to Rylee now.
She giggled, and the lightness of the sound was like a stroke to my balls. “He’s a bit like a cat, isn’t he?”
“They’re actually known as cat-dogs,” I said, stopping behind her at a door near the end of a richly carpeted hall. “This it?”
She nodded. “Yep. Make yourself at home. I’ll be outside with Max when you’re ready.”
Without waiting for me to reply, she gave me a friendly smile and took off back to the staircase with Max happily in tow. I heard her murmuring to him as they went, and rolled my eyes at the way he was practically smiling up at her.
We’re pathetic. Both of us.
The thought flew out of my mind when I opened the door to my room. It was bigger than my entire apartment, with a bed that was about as big as my bedroom.
Billowy white curtains hung in the windows, the bedding was white and a deep royal blue, and there was a desk with a workstation, a dresser, and a door leading to an en-suite bathroom. If I added a kitchenette area, I could move in here for good and never have to leave.
Moving slowly while I tried to process that this space was mine for the time being, I unpacked and stowed my suitcase in the top of the closet. Once I was done with that, I went back to the truck to fetch Max’s stuff and got that set up in my room as well.
Carrying up his spare bowls with some food and water to leave in the garden, I pushed the door open and paused when I saw them. Rylee had found some kind of toy for him and was throwing it while he fetched.
The garden wasn’t huge, but there was enough space for him to run around a bit. There were patches of grass, a bench, pallets with what looked like herbs and vegetables growing in them, and some trimmed hedges.
Plastic covered the plants, protecting them from the cold, but I could still envision how it would look in summer when everything was green. Too bad you’ll never see that.
If I hadn’t secured Rylee against the current threats by then, I’d have to seriously consider a different profession. As disturbing as that thought was, it still wasn’t enough to distract me completely from her playing with my dog.
It would be dark soon, and it was freezing out here, but none of that seemed to bother her. Her head dropped back as she laughed when he licked the sleeve of her shirt. “I’m getting kisses already, huh? I must be doing something right.”
For the first time in my life, I was jealous of a dog. He might only have gotten to kiss her shirt, but he’d still kissed her.
It was then that I realized I might just be in real trouble. This might not only be the start of a hard-on but the start of a relationship with someone I actually really like
“Steer clear, Carter,” I muttered to myself before walking over to join them. “I don’t know what you did to win him over. He’s usually not overly friendly to new people.”
Her eyes sparkled in the early evening light when she glanced up at me. “I might be new, but I think both of us fell in love at first sight.”
There was a pause between us after she said it. A moment during which I wanted nothing more than to cup her cheeks, slide my hand around to the nape of her neck, and lower my lips to hers.
I knew she was talking about love at first sight between her and Max, but the words hung in that way they seemed to when they meant something more. She shivered and her