She was thinking that now. She was so close to her house—what would it add, another fifteen minutes to this impossible day? She glanced at the clock. It was already a quarter past six and traffic was still crawling. This dog exchange had thrown a huge wrench in her plans.
Carly picked up her phone to text Gordon and let him know she’d come by tomorrow in regular clothes. She hated making him wait, but this was the overextended life she’d been living for a little over a year, since she’d walked out of the door of DBS carrying her cardboard box of personal belongings and had to create her own livelihood.
Nevertheless, Carly remained optimistic. She just refused to look at her savings account until she absolutely had to.
Megan said to always look forward.
Five
Max was beginning to fear she’d ditched him. Maybe she’d decided Hazel was a better dog than Baxter, and who could blame her? Baxter was great, but Hazel was amazing. Why the hell hadn’t he gotten Carly’s full name? At the very least, her number? Why hadn’t he asked more questions? Why hadn’t he gone with her? What was the matter with him?
He could be so naïve at times, so distracted by a pair of pretty eyes. He was like a seven-year-old kid in a toy store.
It was half past seven when he finally saw the sweep of car lights into the drive. He stalked to the front door and threw it open, prepared to give her a piece of his mind. But that piece of his mind crumbled into ash when Carly got out of her car. She’d changed out of her costume and was wearing yoga pants that fit her very well, a zip-up hoodie over a T-shirt that said Back in my day we had nine planets. She’d pulled her sleek dark hair into a ponytail at her crown and he guessed the thing that startled him the most was that not only did she look normal, she looked delightfully curvy. Curvy in all the best ways, his testosterone receptors whispered.
No wonder it had taken her so long. She probably needed a team of people to extract her from the contraption she’d been wearing.
She gave him a wave from the drive and then opened the back door of her car. Hazel leapt out with the agility of a show dog and raced to the front door.
“Hazel!” Max exclaimed and went down on one knee to accept the lash of her tongue and to hug her for a long moment. “I missed you, girl,” he said, scratching her behind the ears. That’s when his brain registered the fact that Hazel was wearing a tutu. He stood up and frowned as Carly strolled up the walk.
She grinned, her eyes sparkling. “Cute, right?”
Cute was not the word that came to mind. “Umm . . .”
“It’s a tutu.”
“I noticed. Is it a joke?”
“A joke! Ha! Of course not. They make clothes for dogs other than bandannas, you know.”
“Yeah, but why is—”
From somewhere in the house, Baxter let out a deep bay that startled them both. That was followed by the sound of Baxter running. Not just running—racing at full bore.
“Baxter!” Carly went down on one knee, prepared to accept the eager greeting of her dog. But Baxter didn’t race for her, he raced for Hazel. He ran so fast that he couldn’t stop himself on the slick Saltillo tile floors and crashed into Hazel. The two basset hounds spilled out into the yard, tumbling over and around each other, running together in the grass with Hazel in that ridiculous tutu.
Carly and Max watched a moment in mutual stunned silence as the two mounds of black and brown and white fur tumbled over each other before righting themselves and racing again. “Wow,” Carly murmured. “I didn’t know Baxter had a turbospeed.”
“Same here,” Max said. “I guess they’re friends?”
“I guess? I didn’t know he had those sorts of feelings about . . . anything.”
“Same again.”
Hazel raced in a circle and headed toward the front door, Baxter in hot pursuit.
Carly and Max hopped out of the way just before they were bowled over by the dogs. “Curious . . . what is the deal with that tutu?” Max asked as the two dogs blundered past them and into the house.
“She was a bridesmaid.”
Max shifted his gaze from the dogs to Carly and caught her looking at his hair. “A what?” He self-consciously put his hand on