hear it, because he was about to ask her the most outrageous favor, and it helped if she wasn’t holding a grudge against his dog. “I’m more than happy to reimburse you.” He shoved a hand through his hair and knocked some of it loose over his brow. He resisted the urge to brush it back like a nervous Nellie, but what he was doing suddenly seemed ridiculously absurd. So absurd that he almost talked himself out of it. But then Jamie’s face flashed across his mind’s eye.
“Carly, I need to, ah . . .” Get hold of yourself, man. “I would like to ask you a favor.” There, he’d said it.
And just as he suspected, Carly instantly frowned with suspicion. “That doesn’t sound good. What sort of favor?”
“So here’s the deal. I am taking my brother to the Midwest Regional Dog Show in Chicago tomorrow. It’s a special gift for him, and we’ve had tickets for a long time.”
Carly said nothing, but her brows sank deeper into a frown.
“Brant was supposed to dog-sit for me.”
“Eew.” She wrinkled her nose.
“That plan is definitely dead,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “But as everything happened last minute, and I didn’t have the right dog, and . . . well, I can’t find anyone who can take Hazel at a moment’s notice.”
Carly stared at him. Her brows went from a deep vee to arching high over her eyes as understanding dawned in her lovely eyes. “No way.”
“Hear me out,” he begged her.
“I rescue your dog for you and now you want me to keep her for you? I don’t even know you. I’m still getting over the fact that your name isn’t Tobias.”
“Well, it is Tobias, but it’s also Max, and if you think about it, you actually know all of my names—”
“You aren’t going to ask me to take your dog this weekend, are you? You aren’t really going to do that.”
“I get it,” he said, holding up both hands. “I know this is the last thing you expected when you saved the day, and I swear to God, I would never ask if I didn’t find myself in such a bind.”
“This is crazy!” she said with a disbelieving laugh. She stacked her hands on top of her head and twirled in a circle. “You want me to dog-sit?”
“I’ll pay you,” he said. “And you can stay here if you want. Baxter, too, of course.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen—I would never stay in a house with a kitchen in that state,” she said, pointing to the mess in his kitchen. “I’d need search and rescue just to find the fridge.”
“Fair point,” he said. “It’s been a long week . . .” He decided not to delve into the reasons behind his haphazard housekeeping. “I’ll clean it—”
“Max! For all you know, I could be an ax murderer.”
“Oh,” he said with an inadvertent chuckle, “I think I know you’re not an ax murderer.”
“How?” she demanded. “How could you possibly know?”
“I have a pretty good feeling that someone who is into high fashion and calls it art is not going to get blood on her clothes.”
She considered that for a minute. “True. Okay, fine, I’m not an ax murderer, but you know what I’m saying, and, besides, isn’t it a rule of thumb that you’re supposed to wait until you’ve at least had dinner with someone before you ask for a favor?”
“There’s a rule?” he asked, surprised by this.
“If there’s not, there ought to be. I can’t believe you are asking me this.”
“Carly, I know—it’s beyond,” he said apologetically. “It’s an audacious and gross abuse of our very meager acquaintance. And I wouldn’t ask, but this is so important to my brother, and my dad is going fishing—”
“Come on—surely you’ve got someone else. What about your mother? Another sibling? A friend? You’ve got to have one or two of those lying around. You’re a good-looking guy. You must have some girlfriends who would do it.”
He would save his pleasure at being called good-looking for later. “My mother is dead, my aunt is allergic to pet dander, and my dad desperately needs a break because my brother, the one I am taking to the dog show, is profoundly autistic and has to have someone with him all the time.” He strode across the room and picked up a picture from the mantel of his dad and Jamie. His dad was grinning, leaning against an old car he’d refurbished. Jamie was standing close