by Jill Shalvis
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.”
“You always say that and you’re lying. You’re not supposed to lie to family.”
Sadie found a laugh. “Tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny,” she said, and at her mother’s gasp, she gently disconnected, squelching her grimace because she’d most definitely pay for that later, big time. Her mom 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 was also talented at drinking tequila in the form of margaritas, preferably frosty lime.
Slipping her phone away, she went back to window, gazing 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 knew a few things about him. Such as he was physically appealing with his height and build, and that women tended to fall over themselves when he smiled. He had lean muscles everywhere a woman wanted a man to have muscles. His eyes were a beautiful caramel, with flecks of gold. They sparkled when he laughed and he laughed often. 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 close 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 in to lust, animalistic or otherwise. Personally, she attributed it to one simple fact—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 turn her way or glance over. He didn’t do anything except say, “Shh.”
Oh, no. No, he did not just shush her. Clearly, he was asking for a blast of her temper and all too happy to give it to him, she stepped out the door.
Keeping his gaze on whatever was in front of him, he held up a hand, 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 he 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 reached up and wrapped his hand around her wrist, bringing the phone down to her side. “You’ll scare it.”
“Better that than getting eaten.” She shrugged off his warm hand but went still when the growling upped a notch.
“I think it’s hurt,” Caleb said just 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 way-too-skinny, tan-colored body and a black face with black eyes. “Looks like a young, oversized pug,” she said.
“Too big for a pug. It’s got some bullmastiff in it though.”
A bullmastiff with three legs, Sadie realized as it shifted closer, and her entire heart melted. “Oh my God.” Moving towards it now without hesitation, she got only a few steps before the dog took a leap in Caleb’s direction.
With a surprised grunt, Caleb fell to his ass on the wet cobblestones. “Okay,” he said, backing up on his very fine butt cheeks as if suddenly terrified of the dog. “Okay, see? You’re safe now, right? Stay. Stay and sit.”
The dog didn’t stay. Or sit, for that matter. Instead, it leaned on Caleb, leaving dirty, beige fur sticking to his coat.
Caleb sucked in a breath and seemed to hold it. “I’d really like be your person, but I can’t.”
The dog looked up at him and gave a single bark, like too late, you’re totally my person . . .
“No, you don’t understand,” Caleb told it. “I literally can’t.”
Undeterred by this news, the dog continued to lean on his new human, even as that human shifted back, trying to avoid contact.
Finally, Caleb lifted his head and looked at Sadie. “Help.”
Fascinated by this unexpected show of weakness in the man who’d always come off as invincible, she shook her head. “I think he or she 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 Caleb’s foot.
“I hear you,” Caleb said. “And we’re going to help you, I promise.”
“We?” Sadie shook her head. “Because we are most definitely not a we.”
Sliding her an unreadable look, he got to his feet. Ignoring her now, he lifted his hands at the dog, giving the universal gesture for stay, but the minute he raised his hands, the dog squeaked and leapt back as if Caleb had propelled him with a push.
Off balance with only three legs, the dog fell to its back, exposing its underbelly and the fact that it was most definitely a she.
Sadie didn’t easily attach. In fact, she hadn’t attached in a very long time but right then and there she fell in love. Not partially, 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’s eyes were flashing total fury, though his voice remained low and calm. He once again squatted low, as if trying to get his six-foot-plus frame as nonthreateningly small as he could. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “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 before slowly scooting back towards Caleb, head down but her hind-end a little wiggly.
The sweet hope of it had Sadie’s heart pretty much exploding 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,” Sadie said.
“I’m allergic.”
He said this so nonchalantly, she blinked. “Is that some sort of euphemism for ‘I hate dogs’?” she asked.
“No.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Re
ach into my front left pocket.”
She snorted. “Are you kidding me? Does anyone actually fall for that?”
“If I pass out,” he said, still all quiet calm, “the EpiPen is in my pocket.”
She paused, staring at his face. No sign of joking—very unusual for the charming, easy-going Suits she knew.
“I’m trusting you to use it before I die,” he said as if he was discussing the weather.
“Stop it.”
He met her gaze, his own serious, more serious than she’d ever seen him. “Listen, if you don’t use the EpiPen, 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.”
“Okay, I’m starting to think you’re not kidding,” she said.
“I never kid about dying.”
About the Author
New York Times bestselling 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.
www.avonromance.com
www.facebook.com/avonromance
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
By Jill Shalvis
Heartbreaker Bay Novels
Sweet Little Lies
The Trouble with Mistletoe
Accidentally on Purpose
Chasing Christmas Eve
About That Kiss
Hot Winter Nights
Coming Soon
Playing for Keeps
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 OCTOBER 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 and tip-in photographs by Shirley Green (couple); iStock/Getty Images; © Shutterstock
Avon, Avon & logo, and Avon Books & logo are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
HarperCollins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
