answer that.” She pulled out a plaid thermos and held it up to him. “It’s hot chocolate. Do you like hot chocolate? I mean, you don’t have any weird allergies to chocolate or anything, do you? It would crush Baxter if I had to cancel this rescue because you totally ruined everything by being allergic to chocolate.”
He pressed a hand to his heart as if he’d been mortally offended. “I would never ruin this for Baxter. I do like hot chocolate and I have no weird allergies. And if I did, I wouldn’t admit to them because that,” he said, pointing with two fingers at the two dogs, “is a match made in heaven.”
“Exactly,” Carly said with a grin. “We should all be such lucky dogs.” She pulled out two paper cups, opened the thermos, and poured. She handed one to Max, then picked the other one up and tapped it against his. “Thank you again. Seriously. He’s been so depressed.”
Max looked into her eyes. He wanted to speak, but words had drifted out of his mind, almost as if he had frontotemporal degeneration. Which he did not.
“Cheers!” she said and tapped her cup to his.
“Cheers.” Max sipped. The taste of rich, warm chocolate hit his tongue and a hint of his childhood came rushing back at him. Which was quickly followed by a hint of his college years, because this hot chocolate was laced with alcohol, and he coughed, then looked at Carly with surprise.
She burst into laughter and sat on the picnic bench. “It’s Friday! And there’s a nip in the air. I’m actually doing you another favor by keeping you warm.”
“I like the way you think, Carly Kennedy. This was a favor I didn’t even know I needed.” He sat next to her.
“That’s high praise coming from an actual brain scientist.”
“All right, get it out of your system,” he said, gesturing. “You don’t have to say brain scientist like I’m creating Frankenstein’s monster in my backyard.”
Carly laughed.
“What made you believe me, anyway? It couldn’t have been my analytical calculation of how to get you out of that skirt.”
“Definitely not that,” she agreed. “Google made me believe it.”
Max sputtered another sip of his hot chocolate.
“What? Are you surprised? Don’t you google people?”
“No! I mean, sure, professionally speaking I have googled people. But nonacademics?” He shook his head.
“You should! You need to know who you’re dealing with. Seriously!” she said to his dubious smile. “I wasn’t kidding—you could have been a legit dognapper.”
“You googled me before you met me?”
“No, but I should have, and that’s the point,” she said. “At the time I was too flustered to think.”
“Your theory is that if I’d been a legit dognapper, I would have posted it on the Internet?”
“My theory is that your long rap sheet of dognappings and social media posts about dognappings or other awful behavior would have given you away.”
He laughed. “Social media posts about awful behavior? What does that mean?”
“It means, if I googled you, and checked out your social media accounts, and found out you were a big game hunter, eew, or liked some racist posts, I mean, come on, I couldn’t hang out with you in a dog park.”
“Aha, I get it now.” He sipped. “Just out of curiosity . . . what did you find?”
“That you really like dogs and brains.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He smiled. “There’s a flaw in your theory, you know. I’m rarely on social media, so there is very little information about me.”
She squinted a moment as she considered that. “You’re right. You could still be a dognapper. I guess I’ll have to go about this the old-fashioned way and interrogate you.”
“Great!” Max grinned. “Nothing I like better than a good interrogation. Hey, did you ever google Brant?”
“Now you’re getting it! And you just proved my point—we both should have googled Brant. I didn’t, because he had a card and everything, and, frankly, I was a little desperate. But I learned from my mistake, Max. So when a guy unzipping my skirt randomly announced he was a brain scientist, I knew immediately it was worth a google.”
Max laughed. “When you put it like that, I guess so. Did I really randomly announce it? I usually wait for someone to ask.” What he remembered about that night was the feel of her skin. Soft and pliant, warm and—
“Anyway, I read your profile on the university website.”
“Oh.” It felt a little weird, knowing she’d googled him. “What did you, ah . . .” He hesitated, not