Yeah. A Very Big Deal. Max sighed and looked at his phone. He felt a smile curling his lips. Was this a text from Carly Kennedy? It damn sure was. Nothing at that moment could have been better for him.
“I better get back,” Drake said, and stood up. He looked at Max. “Everything okay?”
“Hmmm?” Max looked up from his phone. “You’re taking off? Hey, thanks, Drake. As always, thanks for being my mentor.”
“Dude,” Drake said and, grinning, flicked his wrist at him. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Umm . . . I need to take care of this,” Max said, holding up his phone.
Drake nodded, said he’d see him later, and walked on.
Max zipped his jacket against a north wind and responded to Carly’s texts. They agreed to meet tomorrow after work. He was smiling when he stood up, the CNN van forgotten. Everything was forgotten. Whatever worry and angst that had begun to build had been effectively tucked aside, shoved into a back pocket in his brain. He was thinking only of Carly as he walked back to his office. He’d been thinking about her for days.
* * *
When Max arrived at West Austin Neighborhood Dog Park the following afternoon, he heard Baxter before he saw the hound—his deep baying bark was rather distinctive. Hazel heard it, too, and began to prance excitedly at the gate, answering with a couple of barks of her own. Max opened the gate; Hazel charged in the direction of a picnic table at a speed that did not seem physically possible given her girth and the length of her legs, and just when Max thought she would crash into the concrete table, she leapt at Baxter, knocking him off-balance. The two of them rolled once, then took off, nipping at each other in a game of chase.
That’s when he noticed Carly standing behind the picnic table. She waved.
Max waved back. He was privately relieved that she was not wearing one of the weird outfits. Not that he minded what she wore—he thought she probably looked good in anything—but more that he didn’t know what to say about them. Today she was dressed in tights and boots, a long-sleeved T-shirt and puffy vest, and a knit cap with a fluffy white ball at the crown. Her long black hair was braided and hung over her shoulder. An image of that braid wrapped around his fist popped up in his mind’s eye, and he felt a bit of a flutter in his chest, a telltale sign that the hormone norepinephrine was coming together with the rest of him to brighten his day.
She smiled as he walked across the park to reach her. Max would swear to the gods of men that he could see her blue eyes from this distance. She was attractive to him in a way that slipped into his blood and spread, turning each and every molecule pleasantly warm. He noted, as he quickened his pace, that he didn’t normally have thoughts like this. But he was definitely attracted to her, and by the time he reached the picnic table, he’d lost all sight of his dog and didn’t care.
“Hey!” she said cheerily. “Did you hear Baxter? He has it so bad for Hazel.”
He hadn’t noticed anything but her.
She turned her head, and her braid swung a little. “Look at them.”
Max watched her watch the dogs a moment. Then she looked back at him, smiling with such delight that the skin around her eyes crinkled. “The difference in him is amazing. They’re so cute!”
“So cute,” he agreed. But he was looking at Carly.
She gestured to a thermal bag on the table. “Guess what? I come bearing gifts.”
“You do?” He was surprised by this. Carly had not seemed the type to bear gifts. So far, she’d presented as the type to knock your block off if necessary. He sincerely hoped it would never be necessary.
“I do, of course I do. I have manners, sir. You don’t ask a gentleman and his dog to save your dog from the depths of doggie depression and show up empty-handed.” She slanted a look at him as she unzipped the bag. “Also, I owe you an apology for not believing you were a scientist. I thought you were making a joke because you got busted for telling me to calm down.”
Max smiled. “For the record, I totally believed you were a supermodel.”
She laughed with surprise. “With that muffin top? Wait—don’t