Lou kept walking.
I almost told him then. Almost said,Shane called. Almost said,I told him to put my name in for B-shift, Engine 295, end of the year.Almost said something that would have ended the morning where Duke and I were just two guys talking about Maddy from the library.
I didn't.
I got off shift at six and was home by six-twenty. Penny met me at the door. I dropped my bag, scratched her ears, and went upstairs to get out of my uniform. I came back down in sweatpants and opened the refrigerator to figure out what I had to work with for breakfast.
That was when I heard the first bark.
It wasn't Penny. Penny had given me one tail-thump from the rug and gone back to sleep. This was coming from outside in the yard, but moving fast, the way a dog moves when it's having the best time of its life.
Then a woman's voice came through the door, sharp and mortified, laughing all at the same time.
"Moose. Moose, no. Moose, I will end you."
I stood there with the refrigerator door open.
"Moose, oh my god, get back here."
I let the refrigerator door fall shut.
The barking did a loop of the yard. I could hear it pass the back fence, come around the roses, and head for the shed.
The woman's voice followed it, closer this time, half a laugh and half a sob.
"Moose. I'm wearing a towel!"
I went to the back door and put my hand on the knob.
Penny had lifted her head all the way up now and was looking at me with the look of a dog who had already decided whatever was happening in the yard wasn't her problem.
I opened the door.
The yellow lab was tearing across my lawn in tight loops, tongue out, having the time of his life. The yellow lab. The one who'd been letting himself in for a week and a half.
The woman was barefoot on my grass, her back to me, chasing him past the roses. Long legs. Wet hair stuck to the back of her neck. Bare shoulders I'd never seen. Freckles across them. A white towel knotted somewhere at her chest, held in place with one fist.
She was too focused on the dog to notice I'd opened the door.
I let myself look. I let myself look longer than I should have.
She heard me eventually and turned.
Collarbones. Throat flushed from running. A face I'd been catching myself watching for two weeks.
Astrid Matthews.
In a towel. In my backyard.
CHAPTER 3
Astrid
Moose had my bra in his mouth, and from the look on his face, he wasn't planning to give it back.
I'd just stepped out of the shower with a towel around my body, a second towel wrapped around my hair, and water still beading on my shoulders. He must have come in while the water was running, because by the time I reached for the bralette I'd set on the counter, the spot where it had been was just a damp patch of laminate.
I turned my head.
