Animal Attraction (San Francisco Dragons Book 2)

by Kate Willoughby

  By the end of the meal, it was clear that regardless of how the Martins felt about it, Maya wanted to continue a relationship with her birth mother, and as the owner of a new Toyota coupe, gifted to her by her parents, she had the ability to visit Maggie when she pleased. Since then, they had seen each other several times and after every visit, Maggie blossomed a little bit more.

  “This fashion show is a first for me too,” he remarked wryly.

  Maya giggled. “Um, if you don’t want your goodie bag, can I have it, please?”

  He glanced at the bright red bag he’d found on his seat and pawed through out of curiosity. Along with a catalog of today’s fashions, it was filled with womanly doodads like lipstick, nail polish, face goop, sparkly bangles, and perfume.

  “Sure,” he answered.

  With a grateful smile, she took the bag and set it next to hers on the ground.

  Abruptly, the lights went down and the music got loud. Emma Liu took the stage and did a spiel for the Dragons Foundation, informing the crowd of all the good work they had done and intended to do with the funds raised by the show.

  Spencer glanced at his watch and hoped this wouldn’t take long. He was anxious to get to the airport. He and Maggie had a plane to catch.

  Several minutes later, eight or nine women had come out and none of them had been Maggie. He was starting to wonder if Maggie had backed out after all. She’d been iffy about doing it from the start.

  He leaned over and asked Maya, “Where’s Maggie?”

  “Didn’t you look at the program? She’s the last one. She’ll come out any minute now.”

  Sure enough, a model wearing elegant emerald slacks, a boxy jacket, a dark orange blouse and a fanny pack belt, which he thought was one of the craziest accessories he’d ever seen, completed her walk and disappeared backstage. Then after a brief pause, Maggie appeared. Several spotlights trained on her and he gasped audibly.

  Maggie had told him she was modeling a wedding gown but hadn’t gone into much detail about it. Didn’t matter. Nothing she said would have prepared him for how stunning she looked. Whoever had done her hair and makeup deserved a prize. Somehow she was still the Maggie he knew and loved, but with the volume turned all the way up.

  Looking elegantly bad-ass, she began her strut down the catwalk. Every eye in the house was trained on her. People were talking behind their programs and nodding and smiling. The dress layers shook with each step she took and she appeared outwardly confident, but she hadn’t eaten a bite since breakfast yesterday claiming she was too nervous. He’d done his best to reassure her that she was going to rock it, but Maggie had been doubtful. And now, he noted how tightly her lips were pressed together and the strain around her made-up eyes.

  If only she realized how gorgeous she looked. If only she realized how, today, everyone could see the beauty he’d been appreciating since the moment she showed up in his living room.

  “You were magnificent,” Spencer said after the show. “A breathtaking vision. I wasn’t sure my heart could take it.”

  “Well, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I, for one, am very glad it’s over. That was by far the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done. Do you see why I don’t want a big wedding?”

  “I do.” Then he grinned. “See what I did there?”

  She laughed.

  “From this moment on,” he said, “all you have to do is enjoy yourself.”

  “I started enjoying myself the moment I got that corseted dress off me,” she said with a smile.

  “That’s a relief, he said, kissing her. “A woman should enjoy her own elopement, don’t you think?”

  And Maggie—his gorgeous, sexy, unselfish Maggie—grinned at him and replied “I do.”

  The End

  I hope you enjoyed reading about Spencer and Maggie. Please consider leaving a review of Animal Attraction at your favorite retailer. Reviews help other readers find my books.

  Now, turn the page for an excerpt from Clean Sweep, the first book in the San Francisco Dragons series.

  Excerpt from Clean Sweep

  Cameron Bowes was desperate. Under no circumstances did he want a video crew coming to his house. The very thought made him break out in a sweat. When he pictured the looks on their faces when he opened the door, he shuddered with dread.

  The San Francisco Dragons, the NHL team Cam played hockey for, had a reputation for being aloof and even snobby, and despite all the PR department’s efforts with advertising and game packages, ticket sales were lagging. So some genius decided to institute a series of videos called “At Home with the Dragons” in which players were to conduct a recorded tour of their homes to give the fans a glimpse of their private lives, making them seem more accessible. The execs wanted to start with the most popular players first, and Cam was fourth on the list.

  “I hear you’re going under the video microscope,” Max Stone said.

  Cam scowled as he stripped off his jeans and T-shirt and dropped them on the floor. He and his teammates were suiting up for practice.

  “You heard right,” Cam said. “Unless you want to take my place, Stoner.”

  Dragons forward Max Stone loved being in the spotlight and had the most social media followers. He was the natural choice for this kind of thing, but Max shook his head.

  “I actually volunteered to go first when I heard about it, but they said I already have a solid relationship with the public.”

  “You know, it’s really too bad we all can’t be as perfect as Stoner,” Ian Zappala said with exaggerated sarcasm.

  Max grinned and raised his hands as if trying to ward off unwanted attention. Some of the guys groaned. Others rolled their eyes and laughed.

  “Anyone else want to take my place?” Cam asked. “I will legit pay you five thousand dollars.”

  “Why don’t you want to do it?” Ian asked. “Afraid they’ll discover your inflatable doll collection?”

  Max gave Ian a hearty high five.

  “I heard he has a shrine dedicated to Celine Dion,” someone else quipped.

  “I just don’t like my privacy invaded. If I wanted the world to see my house, I’d invite it.” Hopefully, the team would buy that partially true excuse.

  Team captain Paul Nordbeck, joined the conversation. “It’s the price of fame. The public makes it possible for you to play hockey and demands its pound of flesh in the form of voyeurism.”

  “I happen to know the real reason he doesn’t want to get filmed,” Max said.

  Everyone turned to Max questioningly.

  “He’s a complete and utter slob.” Max nodded at Cam. “Go ahead, try to deny it.”

  Cam had been about to drop the roll of tape on the floor, but put it on the bench beside him instead.

  “Are we talking crack-house dirty?” someone asked.

  “For shit’s sake, no. My place is just…cluttered.”

  There. A much more PC term.

  Max shook his head. “Dude, you forget about that time I stayed with you when my house was being painted. Cluttered is my grandma’s house where there is fifty years of stuff she can’t bear to throw away. Your place is a pigsty.”

  Having seen an actual pigsty once, Cam wanted to protest. Yes, he sometimes left empty water bottles or potato chip bags lying around and flat surfaces tended to be covered with miscellaneous stuff. And yes, his messiness was one of many factors in his divorce, but there weren’t cockroaches or rats or anything.

  “How messy is he, Stoner?” Ian asked. “Messier than me?”

  Max thought about that. “Actually, yes. You do dishes once in a while.”

  “Natalie and I are too busy to clean,” Paul said. “Especially since Nico came along. You have no idea how much stuff comes with having a kid. We just have a maid come weekly.”

  “I do, too,” Max said.

  This was news to Cam. Max had a maid? Actually, that made sense the more he thought about it. Max was a social media addict, constantly on his phone. He had almost two hun
dred thousand followers with whom he shared photos and personal things Cam would never dream of telling strangers. It stood to reason he needed the backgrounds of his selfies to look good too.

  Cam shook his head. “That’s all well and good, but like I said, I don’t like my privacy invaded.”

  “Because of the blow-up dolls.”

  Cam blew out a breath. “For the love of—”

  Paul Nordbeck slapped his shoulder and laughed. “Look, buddy. If you get a real professional, it’s all on the up and up. All they do is clean. The kitchen, the bathrooms, the windows and the floors. If you don’t want them going into your refrigerator or your closet or whatever, all you have to do is say so. However, there is one caveat,” Paul said. “You have to clean before the maid comes to clean.”

  Cam frowned. “What? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Look, here’s the deal,” Paul said. “Whenever our maid comes, Natalie goes into a cleaning frenzy. It makes no sense to me at all but she runs around picking stuff up and neatening the whole house.”

  “Well, if I get a maid,” Cam declared, “I’m sure as hell not picking up shit before she comes over. That’s what I’m paying her for in the first place.”

  “Dude, let me set you up with someone before the film crew comes,” Max said, his face serious. “Because I guarantee you, if they film your house looking like I’m thinking it does, you will never, ever live it down. All your fans will know that you leave empty Red Bull cans all over the house, that a pizza box can lay on your table for so long you could carbon-date the crusts.”

  “All right, all right, fine,” Cam said, holding his hands up in surrender. “Get me a maid—yours, if she’s available.”

  When he got home from practice, Cam took a good hard look at his house, trying to see it as a stranger would. Unfortunately, Max was right. His place was hideously messy. It wasn’t that he didn’t like things clean; he did. He appreciated cleanliness. When on one of their twenty-some annual road trips, he liked how spotless everything was in the hotel. He could usually keep it that way for the one or two nights he was in the hotel room. At home it was a different story.

  As an NHL player, he expended a lot of energy during the games and at practice. There were team meetings and briefings, fan events and charity fundraisers. More often than not, he took his dogs for a run. He also worked out and trained at least two hours every single day. By the time he got home, he was bushed. So, when faced with a choice between kicking back with a bag of take-out in front of the TV versus sweeping the floor or scrubbing the shower, he usually opted for the former. His tolerance level for dirt and disorganization was pretty high.

  But in the back of his mind, he wondered if his resistance toward housekeeping chores stemmed from a desire to strike back at his ex-wife. Marriage to Morgan started out fantastic, but quickly turned into a battle as her uber-controlling nature came to the fore. If he didn’t comply with her wishes, there were consequences—the silent treatment, a moratorium on sex, yelling, tantrums, and even physical aggression. He probably should have gone to therapy after their divorce, but never did. Instead, he went through a period of doing whatever the hell he wanted, just because he could. Finally. That indulgent behavior included not cleaning up after himself, and after a while, it just became a habit.

  Either way, as a public figure, he had a responsibility to the team to keep up appearances and he didn’t particularly want to be that guy, the one who everyone thought of as the slob first and a hockey player second.

  Even so, on the morning the maid Max ordered for him was due, Cam fought the urge to tidy up. From the moment he got out of bed, he questioned himself. Would he normally have thrown that water bottle away, or would he have left it on the counter? He was toying with the idea of making this a regular gig, but only if he didn’t have to perform the pre-visit tidying ritual that Paul’s wife did. As much as possible, he wanted the state of his house today to be “authentic.”

  The doorbell rang and his two dogs erupted in a cacophony of barking. He had an Akita/Shepherd mix, Zeus, and a tan-and-white Chihuahua, Gizmo. Gizmo could be counted on to behave, but Zeus was still a pup at heart.

  Cam checked the front door video feed. His security system allowed him to use his phone to view several spots outside of the house. Holy shit. She was a looker. Mid-twenties. Nice figure. Long brown hair that tumbled to her shoulders. Oddly, she wore makeup that made her look like she was going to a club rather than cleaning his house. Maybe she had a date afterward. She also wore some kind of electronic device about the size of an Oreo on a cord around her neck.

  Holding on to Zeus’s collar, Cam opened the door. Warily eyeing his dogs, she had a gym bag slung over her shoulder and a rolling crate of cleaning supplies. “Hi. I’m Suzette,” she said with a damned pretty smile. “I’m here to clean your house.”

  “I’m Cam. This is Zeus and this little fella is Gizmo. Come on in. They’re friendly,” he said. “They just need to get used to you.”

  Zeus pulled to get loose, but Cam held on. “I hope you’re prepared for a mess,” he said as his dog attempted to inhale all the olfactory atoms he possibly could.

  “I’m used to messes,” Suzette said. “Is there a room where I can change?”

  Change? He flicked his gaze over her—skinny jeans that clung to her superbly rounded ass, a gray T-shirt, a pair of red Converse shoes. Maybe she wanted to put on a smock or an apron or something. Zeus was now sniffing her feet, his tail wagging at a slow enough tempo that Cam risked letting him go.

  “Ah, sure. There’s a bathroom right over there, on the right.”

  “Thanks.” She pulled a piece of paper out of a folder in the crate and handed it to him. “If you could, I need you to sign this waiver thing before we get started.”

  She left the cart of cleaning supplies in the foyer, but took her duffle with her.

  Shit. Now that she was here, he felt even more embarrassed about the state of his house. Despite his earlier intent to leave his house in its raw state, he hustled to the kitchen and attempted to consolidate the dirty dishes into a pile instead of leaving them on every available square inch of counter. Damn it. Shouldn’t he get a pass just by virtue of being a single guy living alone? People knew that single guys were messy. They expected it. He’d just make sure to give her a really big tip. That should do the trick.

  “Okay, let’s get started. Did you sign it?” she asked from the front hallway.

  Shit. He’d forgotten. He grabbed a pen and scrawled his name on it. In his haste, he put his jersey number too, like he’d done thousands of times when signing autographs. Dumbass. He scratched out the number just as she came into the kitchen.

  Wearing only lingerie.

  A black lacy push-up bra, matching panties, a garter belt, thigh high stockings, and some fuck-me pumps.

  What.

  The.

  Ever-loving.

  Fuck.

  If you’d like to find out if Cam cleans up his act in time for the film crew, get your copy of Clean Sweep now!

  Also, if you’d like to find out about new releases, join my mailing list.

  Acknowledgments

  As usual, I owe a debt of gratitude to many people who helped me as I wrote this book. First and foremost, I’d like to thank Lisa B. Kamps for insisting I buy an Alphasmart. That simple device rocked my world and increased my daily word count tremendously.

  When I needed a fun place in Minnesota for Spencer to take Zach and Taylor to, Kaitlyn Faye Penna suggested Glam Doll Donuts. I really must go there some time. Their menu was so tempting! Both Pam Ripling and Penny Kirk-Bowen suggested that the cause of Maggie’s hysterectomy be hemorrhaging.

  As far as solving various other plot problems, I am thankful for Jennifer Lazaris, Jami Davenport, all the gals in Chatzy, and especially Kelly Jamieson, who helped me figure out how to end the damned book. Melanie Ting, as always, caught my hockey errors and pointed out that, alas, Henrik Lundqvist will someday retire. Sarah Va
nce-Tomkins’ unflagging support is priceless and my editors, Melissa Johnson and Kimberly Cannon are rock stars.

  Animal Attraction

  By Kate Willoughby

  © 2019 Kate Willoughby

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  About the Author

  An Uncensored Man Banter™ enthusiast, Kate Willoughby happily, maybe even obsessively, writes her hockey romances in Southern California. She likes cooking and watching cooking shows like Top Chef, The Pioneer Woman and Chopped. She reads all kinds of books—romance, first and foremost; thrillers; biographies; science fiction and fantasy; and hockey non-fiction.

  Kate is also a rabid LA Kings fan. Her collection of memorabilia is getting to the point where she’s going to have to dedicate valuable bookshelf real estate to it. The current piece de resistance is a signed photograph of Dustin Brown with the Stanley Cup raised over his head. Yes, he’s shirtless. Yes, she gazes at it a lot.

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  Also by Kate Willoughby

  The San Francisco Dragons Series

  Clean Sweep – Cam and Dakota

  Animal Attraction – Spencer and Maggie

  The Hockey on Tap Series

  Falling for Flynn – Flynn and Tracy

  Crazy for Cole – Cole and Fedora

  Seduced by Slater –Coming Soon

  The In The Zone Series

  On the Surface – Tim and Erin

  Across the Line – Calder and Becca

  On the Brink (prequel novella) – Hart and Jeremy