AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He wasn’t Jamie. Harper wouldn’t admit it to the guys, but he actually did get nervous around beautiful women. Jamie, on the other hand, could strike up a conversation and have a ladies’ panties in his pocket in half an hour. Harper had seen it happen and damn it, he wished he had that skill. Unfortunately, he often put his foot in his mouth.
Harper peered through the lens of his camera. Occasionally he’d snap a shot of a bird or something interesting looking just to give credit to his cover story.
Could he just walk up to her and say hi? Then what? How did he ensure she took one look at him and was interested instead of running away?
Damn it. Why was Jamie in a relationship? This was the perfect job for him, but no. It had to fall to Harper this time around.
Where the heck was Robin going?
She’d taken a bit of a detour today. He’d been surprised when she emerged from her family’s Garden District home with what looked like two cotton balls with legs.
Her stepmother’s dogs.
The file even had that sort of information for him. For all he knew, she routinely walked the dogs in the historic park, but it was the first time he’d seen her with them.
It was odd to him that a family with Muslim roots had dogs. Generally speaking, dogs were seen as an unclean animal to be avoided. Some of the worst insults in Arabic likened people to dogs. It was curious to Harper that the Suleiman's had two.
Harper eyed Robin through some trees. The little floofs were bouncing in opposite directions, yapping their adorable heads off, all while she wrestled with their leashes to pull them back to her or away from other pedestrians.
Yeah, he doubted this was normal.
The dog park was up ahead.
What were the chances he could orchestrate bumping into her?
Harper cut across the grass to close the gap between them and get a better vantage point. It meant losing sight of Robin for a few moments, but he didn’t think anything too interesting would happen.
“No!” a woman wailed.
Wait.
He jerked his head around to peer through the trees just as the same two fluffy mutts bolted away from Robin.
A tingling sensation shot down his spine.
This was it.
His feet were already moving before he realized this was his lightning strike moment.
The dog duo kept pace with each other, making a straight line across the park back the way they’d come, more or less. He seriously doubted they intended to stop at the car, though. These pooches were on a mission.
Shit.
They were really fast.
He ran, arms pumping and lungs burning with the cool air. He gripped the camera tightly and wound the strap around his wrist for good measure.
They were halfway across the park now, and Harper wasn’t any closer.
If he didn’t get his hands on them soon, they’d be out in the road. His stomach knotted up. Nothing good ever came from dogs in the road.
The two canines suddenly split, heading in two different directions around a decorative wrought-iron fence protecting some sort of flower bed.
Two almost identical yelps made him cringe as the dogs snapped the leash tight between them in their excitement to get away.
Harper could have whooped in joy.
The leashes were attached. The dogs had no choice but to go together or get caught up. And they weren’t smart enough to know that. They struggled against each other, buying him the time to catch up he so desperately needed.
