AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m in trouble. I’ve grown to enjoy Evan’s company too much. Case in point: the four-and-a-half-hour drive to Miami feels more like a fun road trip than a chore.
Before we reach our destination, Evan states that he wants to grab a quick lunch.
As we pull up to the place, I look it up online and frown. “This is a three-Michelin-star restaurant.”
“That’s why I picked it.” Evan parks the car. “We don’t have restaurants of this caliber in Palm Islet, so I want to take advantage of this opportunity while I can.”
I look from my casual clothes to his. “I don’t think we’re dressed for it.”
“It’s lunchtime. They don’t expect you to get fancy until dinner.”
I sigh. “It also just sounds pricey.”
He waves my words away. “Even if I spent a grand in fancy restaurants every day, it would still take two thousand seven hundred and forty years for me to run out of money.”
I try to wrap my brain around that math and get a headache for my trouble. “Fine. Let’s go.”
He holds the door for me, and I step inside.
Yep. It looks amazing, like a restaurant version of the hotel we’ve just left. Our waitress, though, looks exactly like a poodle—a fact that makes me chuckle into my fist.
“What’s so funny?” Evan asks when she leaves after seating us at the table.
I explain that I find it extra funny that our server looks like a poodle.
“Why?” he asks.
“When I think ‘poodle,’ I think ‘French,’ which is the cuisine here.”
“French Bulldog sounds more French,” Evan says. “But anyway, I was asking why you compare people to dog breeds.”
I shrug. “Because I love dogs?”
Evan cocks his head in a very canine way. “What breed am I?”
I admit that his eyes remind me of a Siberian husky and his hair of a Golden Retriever.
“The latter makes sense,” he says. “I am, after all, a Golden Retriever’s dad.”
He really is a good fur dad, and thinking of him in a fatherly role again tugs on something ineffable in my chest.
I do my best to shake it off. “By that logic, you should resemble Sally in some way too, but that’s not even remotely the case.”
Actually, he is as good at licking body parts as a cat—especially my favorite body part named after a cat.
And now I’m blushing.
“That reminds me.” Evan checks something on his phone, relaxes, and then looks back at me.
“What was that about?” I nod at the phone.
“I’ve been having Boone check on Harry and Sally,” Evan explains. “So I just checked his latest report. He’s already walked Harry, played with Sally, and fed them both.”
Ah. He might just be a better fur father than I am a human mother because I haven’t checked on Reagan at all today, let alone made sure that someone has fed him or played with him.
Feeling suddenly guilty, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and call the camp from there.
A counselor who sounds like a child herself informs me that my son is too busy having fun to come to the phone, and that he’s been thriving at the camp. “His only concern seems to be that he has to leave soon,” she says in conclusion. “Have you thought about extending his stay?”
