Hot Winter Nights (Heartbreaker Bay #6)
Page 26
Then he abruptly stopped between the day spa and the Canvas Shop, which was only twenty feet from her.
He didn’t move.
“Mom, I’ve gotta go,” she said.
“But—”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Yes, but you always say that and you’re lying. You’re not supposed to lie to family, Sadie—”
“Tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny,” she responded, and at her mother’s gasp, Sadie disconnected the phone, squelching her grimace because yes, she’d most definitely pay for hanging up on her mom later, big time. The woman had a lot of talents, and one of them was the ability to hold a grudge for a hundred years.
Sadie had a few talents herself, such as not sleeping at night and enjoying chocolate just a little too much. And okay, she also was talented at drinking tequila in the form of margaritas, preferably frosty lime, sue her.
Slipping her phone away, she craned her neck to see what Caleb Parker was up to. He’d crouched low, easily balancing on the balls of his feet, looking at something she couldn’t quite see as the wind and now rain pummeled his back, seemingly unnoticed.
What the actual hell.
She didn’t know much about him other than he was some sort of tech genius and used to work at a government think tank. He’d invented a bunch of stuff including a series of apps that he and his business partner had sold to Google, and more recently the two of them had created a way of getting meds and medical care into remote developing nations via drones.
Oh wait, there was something else she knew as well; that the two of them didn’t like each other. She wasn’t even sure how it’d started. They had a lot of mutual friends, which often landed them at the pub together. She couldn’t explain it, but there was an energy between the two of them she didn’t understand. At best it made her uncomfortable. At worst, it sometimes kept her up at night.
Her best friend Ivy, who ran the taco truck parked outside the building, said it was unrequited animalistic lust.
But Ivy was wrong.
It wasn’t lust, because Sadie no longer gave into lust, animalistic or otherwise. Personally, she thought the supposed mystery was far easier to explain. It was simply that she and Suits didn’t like each other and never had.
But what was he doing all hunkered down like that in the rain? Was he hurt? Driven by curiosity and the inability she had of letting anything go, she unlocked and opened the front door of the day spa and stuck her head out. “Hey.”
Staring at the brick wall, Caleb didn’t react. He didn’t turn her way or glance over. He simply said “shh.”
Uh, no. No, he did not just shush her. Clearly, he was asking for a blast of her temper and she stepped out the door to give it to him.
He held up a hand in her direction, silently ordering her to stop where she was.
No, really, what the actual hell?
Then he reached out towards the wall and she realized through the wind and rain she could hear him talking quietly to something.
Something that was growling at him fiercely.
“Don’t be scared,” he said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
The growling got a little louder, but Caleb didn’t back away, he just held eye contact with what sounded like a huge dog that she couldn’t see in the dark shadows.
“Okay,” Caleb said. “Come here. Slowly.”
Sadie realized with a start that he was talking to her. “What? No way. What is it?”
“Come closer and you’ll see.”
Dammit. She stepped out from beneath the spa’s overhang and immediately got wind and rain in her face. She pulled out her cellphone and accessed her flashlight app, which she aimed at the wall.
“Don’t—” Caleb said and reaching up, wrapped his hand around her wrist, bringing the phone down to her side. “You’ll scare it.”
“I’d rather that than being eaten,” she said, shrugging off his warm hand but going stock still when the growling upped a notch.
“I need you to check for injuries,” Suits said. “I think it’s hurt.”
“Are you crazy—” she started but then stopped as the matted, drenched shadow scooted away from the wall. She could see now that it wasn’t nearly as large as she’d thought. Not a young puppy, but not a grown dog either, it had a too skinny tan colored body and a black face with black eyes. “Looks like an oversized pug,” she said.
“Too big for that. It’s got some bullmastiff in it though,” Suits said.
A teenaged bullmastiff with three legs, Sadie realized as it shifted closer, and her entire heart melted. “Oh my God.” Moving toward it now without hesitation, she got only a few steps before the thing backed away from her and took a leap in Suits’ direction.
With a surprised grunt, Caleb fell to his ass on the wet cobblestones. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands at the dog as if suddenly terrified of it. “Okay, see? You’re safe now, right? Stay.” He gestured with his still raised hands. “Stay and sit.”
The dog didn’t stay. Or sit, for that matter. Instead, it took a few uneven steps on its one front and two back legs, and then wound its way around Caleb’s body, brushing up against him, leaving dirty, beige fur sticking to his wet suit.
He sucked in a breath and seemed to hold it. “Listen,” he said. “I’d really like be your person, but I can’t.”
The dog looked up at him and gave a single bark, like you’re totally my person . . .
“No, you don’t understand,” Caleb said. “I literally can’t.”
The dog, undeterred by this news, continued to rub up against him. His new human shifted back, trying to avoid contact, but the dog went with him.
Caleb lifted his head and looked at Sadie. “Help.”
Fascinated by this unexpected show of weakness in the man who always came off as invincible, she shook her head. “I think it thinks you’re its mama.”
He glanced around the courtyard as if to see who the dog might belong to, but there was no one. In the meantime, the dog gave another loud “ruff” and sat on his foot.
“I hear you,” Caleb said. “And we’re going to help you, I promise.”
“We?” Sadie shook her head. “We are most definitely not a we.”
Caleb slid her an unreadable look and got to his feet. Ignoring her now, he lifted his hands at the dog, giving the universal gesture for Wait Here, but the minute he raised his hands, the dog squeaked and leapt back as if Caleb had propelled him with a push.
The poor thing, off balance with only three legs, fell to its back, exposing its underbelly and the fact that it wasn’t an it, but a she.
In Sadie’s experience, getting attached was hard and took a long time but in a blink of an eye, she fell in love. Not partially in love, but all the way in love because neglected and mistreated meant they were soul mates. “I’m going to kill her owner,” she murmured, absolutely swiping a drop of rain and not a tear away.
“Not if I get to them first,” Caleb said, his eyes flashing absolute fury, though his voice remained low and calm. “Okay, forget finding your owner,” he told the dog, squatting low again as if trying to get his six-foot-plus frame as nonthreateningly small as he could. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
The dog imitated a turtle for a beat but finally figured out how to roll to her feet, still keeping her distance.
“It’s okay,” Caleb told her. “We’re together now, for better or worse, even if you’re going to kill me.”
“She wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less kill you,” Sadie said.
The dog had listened to all this intently and then slowly scooted back towards Caleb, head down but her hind-end a little wiggly. Sadie’s heart pretty much exploded in her chest as the dog crawled into Caleb’s lap and set her oversized head on his broad shoulder.
With a sigh, he wrapped his arms around the dog and hugged her close.
“Yeah, that’s some killer,” she said.
“I’m allergic.”<
br />
He said this so nonchalantly, she blinked. “Is that some sort of a euphemism for ‘I hate dogs?’”
“No.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” she asked.
“Look, If I pass out, the Epi-pen is in my pocket. I’m trusting you to use it before I die. If you don’t, at least make up something really good for my funeral, okay? Like I died heroically saving your sexy ass, and not because a sweet dog like this one hugged me.”
About the Author
JILL SHALVIS lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental. Look for Jill’s bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold and visit her website, www.jillshalvis.com, for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
By Jill Shalvis
Heartbreaker Bay Novels
Sweet Little Lies
The Trouble with Mistletoe
One Snowy Night (novella)
Accidentally on Purpose
Chasing Christmas Eve
Holiday Wishes (novella)
About That Kiss
Hot Winter Nights
Women’s Fiction Novels
Rainy Day Friends
The Good Luck Sister (novella)
Lost and Found Sisters
Lucky Harbor Novels
One in a Million
He’s So Fine
It’s in His Kiss
Once in a Lifetime
Always on My Mind
It Had to Be You
Forever and a Day
At Last
Lucky in Love
Head Over Heels
The Sweetest Thing
Simply Irresistible
Animal Magnetism Novels
Still the One
All I Want
Then Came You
Rumor Has It
Rescue My Heart
Animal Attraction
Animal Magnetism
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Playing for Keeps copyright © 2019 by Jill Shalvis.
hot winter nights. Copyright © 2018 by Jill Shalvis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-274184-4
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-274183-7
Cover design by Nadine Badalaty
Cover illustration by Aleta Rafton
Cover photographs by Shirley Green (couple); © LockieCurrie/iStock/Getty images (front of house); © YinYang/iStock/Getty Images (Christmas tree lights); © Aleshchenko Oleksandr/Shutterstock (snow foreground); ©Jediworks/Shutterstock (Christmas Lights on House); © OlegAlbinsky/iStock/Getty images (Christmas lights)
Tip-in photograph by Shirley Green; © bluejayphoto/iStock/Getty Images (background); © LockieCurrie/ iStock/Getty images (front of house); © Milkovasa/Shutterstock (Christmas Tree); © Aleshchenko Oleksandr /Shutterstock (snow foreground); bluehill75/iStock/Getty images (fire pit); © Lipsett Photography Group/Shutterstock (foreground snow); © ewg3D/iStock/Getty Images (house side wall); ©
OlegAlbinsky/iStock/Getty images (Christmas lights); ©Jediworks/Shutterstock (Christmas Lights on House)
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