opportunity to kiss her had slipped past. He’d blown it. “I would love some, but if I have more, I won’t be able to drive. What did you put in that, anyway?”
“Kahlúa, of course. And maybe a little bit of vodka,” she said, holding up thumb and forefinger to indicate just how little.
He grinned. “This was great, Carly. Thanks for texting me. But I should get going—I promised my brother I’d come by.”
“Yep. I’ve got loads to do myself,” she said, looking down. “I guess we’re all on ye olde hamster wheel.”
Max rounded up the dogs and leashed them while she put her thermos and cups into her bag and zipped it. The four of them walked to the gate and stepped out of the park.
In the parking lot, Max paused and smiled at Carly. He wasn’t ready for this to end. But as usual, he couldn’t think on his feet quite fast enough.
It felt a little like she might have suspected as much. She gave him a charmingly lopsided smile and said, “On behalf of Baxter, I thank you from the bottom of his heart.”
“My pleasure, Baxter,” he said, without taking his eyes from her.
“Well,” Carly said.
“Well,” Max said.
Neither of them moved. Hazel sat. Baxter lay down and rolled onto his back, paws in the air.
Max and Carly kept staring at each other as attraction and general horniness swelled in Max again.
“Okay, this is ridiculous,” Carly said at last. She suddenly stretched one arm out wide and stepped forward. “Bring it in, big guy.”
“Oh.” He was caught off guard—she meant to hug him. He leaned into that hug, his arm going around her waist.
She put her arm around his shoulders and rose up on her toes. “Thank you,” she said again, gave him a couple of hearty pats on the back, then stepped away from him.
Before she took another step, before she escaped, Max blurted, “Maybe we should meet Sunday at the Yard Bar. I mean, if Baxter is free.” Because he didn’t know what else to say, and he didn’t want that hug to be the end, and he was looking in her eyes now and her pupils had dilated and his serotonin was mixing with his norepinephrine, and Baxter was looking up at him so ruefully.
Carly’s dilated pupils sparked with delight, and once upon a time Max may have known the biology behind that, too, but he didn’t care, because the effect on him was to release a truckload of dopamine into his blood. A primal, copulatory smile spread across his face. It shone all through him. He couldn’t help it.
“Heck, yeah!” she said cheerfully. “Baxter would love that place! You and Hazel are so kind to think of him.”
He wasn’t kind. He was one hundred percent male and he was thrilled and filled with anticipation, and once they’d arranged a time and had gone their separate ways, he understood that he could hardly wait until Sunday afternoon and the Yard Bar. He felt like Jamie felt about the dog show. Yard Bar.
Ten
Well that was a grandma move if ever she’d seen one—Carly had hugged Max. She’d put her arm around him, had felt how hard his body was next to hers, and before she buried her face in his collar to inhale his scent, before she’d nibbled his earlobe, she’d patted him on the back like some long-lost cousin. She’d hugged him because her palms felt sweaty and she felt sort of light-headed, and what the hell had just happened?
She drove away with Baxter panting happily behind her, thinking about how good Max had felt, how strong and thick and hard his body was against hers, and, damn it, she liked Max. If ever there was a case of mistaken first impressions, this was it, because once he’d shed a little denim, and had come back from Chicago without lying to her, he was a really nice guy. He was kind. He was obviously compassionate. And he was ridiculously handsome.
Lord, she’d laughed at every little thing he’d said today, just tittering away. She’d found reasons to lean against him, too—in short, she’d reverted to her seventeen-year-old self. But in her defense, it had been a long time since she’d been so attracted to a man.
She could not wait until Sunday.
Unfortunately, Saturday arrived first to obliterate her most excellent mood created Friday evening.
On Saturday, she had two depressed puppies on her hands. One was Baxter, of course, who fell into a state of despondency on Friday night