“Fair enough. I’ll go out and get her things. I thought I’d start upstairs today, work my way down. I won’t vacuum up there until you take another break.”
“Fine. You know this was an ambush. And you know I know you know.”
“I do.” She took his face in her hands. “It was, and I do know.” She laid her lips on his, soft and lingering. “I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you.”
“That’s pandering.”
“It is!” She laughed and kissed him again. “Now I have to make it up to you twice. Go on back up to work,” she suggested as she started out. “I’ll show Barbie around.”
Eli studied the dog; the dog studied Eli. Then she lifted a paw in invitation. Only a heartless man would have refused to take the offered paw in his for a shake. “It looks like I’ve got a dog named Barbie. For a couple days.”
When he started out, Barbie fell in at his heel, tail wagging enthusiastically. “I guess you’re coming with me.”
She followed him up, into his office. When he sat she moved up to sniff at his keyboard. Then she wandered off, her toenails clicking lightly on the hardwood.
Okay, Eli thought, so she wasn’t pushy. A point for Barbie.
He worked through the morning, then sat back, held an internal debate before taking the plunge.
He e-mailed his agent, a woman who’d stuck with him since his law school days, to tell her he thought he had enough for her to take a look. Struggling to ignore all the whining voices in his head, he attached the first five chapters. Hit send.
“Done it now,” he said, and sighed.
And since he had, he wanted to get out of the house, away from those whining voices.
He stood up, and nearly tripped over the dog.
Sometime during the last couple of hours, she’d come in silent as a ghost, to curl up behind his chair.
Now she lifted her gaze to his, bumped her tail politely on the floor.
“I guess you’re a pretty good dog.”
The tail picked up its beat.
“Want to go for a walk on the beach?”
He didn’t know the key word, or if she just understood whole sentences, but she scrambled to her feet, a gleaming joy in her eyes. It wasn’t just her tail wagging now, but her whole body.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
She trotted downstairs with him, gave another wiggle when he picked up the leash Abra had left on the counter, then added a happy yip when they stepped into the laundry room where Abra was unloading the dryer.
“Hey there, how’s it going?” Abra set the laundry in the basket to give Barbie a rub. “Good day so far?”
“I was going to take a walk. She opted to come.” He pulled a jacket off the peg. “Why don’t you?”
“I’d love it, but I’m on a schedule today.”
“Your boss says you can take a break.”
She laughed at him. “I’m my own boss—you just pay me. Go bond with Barbie. You can have some lunch when you get back. Oh, take this.” She plucked a red ball out of a basket of dog toys on the washing machine. “She likes to fetch.”
“Right.”
She was right, too, about being her own boss, he thought. He liked and admired that about her, her ability to find and do work that satisfied her on so many levels. Once he’d thought he’d found that with the law, and his writing served as a kind of creative perk.
Now he was all in, and his life—on so many levels—depended on the reaction of a woman in New York with a colorful collection of cheaters, a broad Brooklyn accent and a sharply critical eye.
Not going to think about it, he told himself as he led Barbie down the beach steps. And because he couldn’t stop thinking about it as they walked, as the dog trotted and wiggled with joy, he stopped and scanned the beach.
Technically, she should stay on the leash, but hell, nobody, or hardly anybody, was out there.
He unclipped her, pulled the ball out of his pocket and winged it.
She charged, sand kicking, legs blurring. She clamped the ball in her teeth, raced back to him and dropped it at his feet. He winged it again, and again. Lost count of the number of times. When he timed it right, she was fast and accurate enough to leap, snatch the ball out of the air.