Joke’s on You by Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,78

range of the house. She’d explained that service dogs weren’t like other house pets. They were working dogs that had a job to do. And since they had a job to do, they couldn’t just ‘be a house dog’ like normal pets. At least not when she was training them.

They have to have a structured routine. They have to have their own space. They have to have strict rules, because when they go to their people, they need to be solely and entirely focused on their charges. I am not their charge. I am their teacher.

I walked out through the garage door and took the covered pathway outside and to the added-on building that was the kennels.

There, I grinned when I saw all the dogs.

She had four all together right now, and each one of them was cute as hell.

After talking to each one of them, I went to the garage door and closed it with the button. Once it was closed, I once again spoke to each dog, rolling my eyes when I saw the brand-new pet beds in their kennels, as well as a fucking television that was across the room giving them some noise.

After leaving, I winced when the wind hit my face, making my hair blow this way and that.

I’d tried to get it tamed into some semblance of containment, but it just wasn’t in the cards for me, apparently.

My hair was much too long. I was about two months past needing a cut, but I just didn’t have fuckin’ time to get it done.

If I wasn’t working, I was taking SWAT calls. And if I wasn’t doing either of those things, I was doing a family dinner, helping watch Asa, or trying to catch up on sleep.

When I made it back inside her place, the rain finally started.

And it was fucking raining.

Big fat drops so plentiful that I could no longer make out the kennels that I’d just come out of.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“What?”

I didn’t jump, but only because I’d been trained not to.

Over the years, my brothers and sisters had done their level best to scare each other.

If it wasn’t my own twin popping out from around the corner that I was nearing, it was my younger brothers, Heath or Garrett. Or my sisters, Bell, Priscilla or Daniella.

Hell, there was nothing worse than being scared by your baby sister.

Nothing.

So though Delanie’s sudden appearance had scared me, she hadn’t seen the outward effects.

I turned so that my body was sideways and I wasn’t taking up the majority of the window in the door, then gestured to the rain.

“Wow,” she said. “Do you think they made it before it started?”

Just as she asked that, my phone beeped.

I pulled it out to see two words in a text from Booth.

Booth: Made it.

I showed it to her, causing her to smile.

God, was she beautiful.

And right then, with her hair swaying around her chin, I was struck momentarily speechless.

She was so fuckin’ beautiful that it hurt.

I wanted her.

I wanted her bad.

But I couldn’t have her.

Brother’s baby mama.

Brother’s baby mama.

I chanted those words in my head as I took a few steps back from her.

When my hips met the counter, I nearly cursed.

I needed space.

I needed room to get away from her before I did something stupid like tell her that she was pretty.

Or that I wanted to fuck her face.

“It’s slowing,” she said. “Wow. The weatherman was right for once.”

I didn’t even glance out the window.

Couldn’t.

I just couldn’t look away from her beautiful face.

Her beautiful blue eyes. The way that her lips curved up just the smallest amount at the edges.

I wanted to lean forward and kiss her.

“And it’s stopped,” she said. “Amazing. What the hell was the point?”

I practically had to peel my eyes away from her as I glanced out the window.

“Rain is rain in the middle of the summer,” I admitted. “We didn’t get as much rain in the winter months as we normally did, and our spring was kind of light, too. Meaning that we’ll take what we can get. Even if it’s a fifteen-second rainstorm.”

She grinned and turned her eyes up to me. “True.”

I needed to get out of there.

Now.

“Do you have a towel that I can borrow to wipe off the seat of my bike?” I asked.

She nodded, walking to the laundry room that was right off the kitchen and coming back with an old looking towel.

It’d definitely seen better days.

“Nice,” I said at the multitude of stains on it.

“It’s a dog towel.