Jules ended the call before she blushed again. The front door unlocked, and he strode in. Metallic clinks trailed him. Two dogs trotted behind Rhys, their name tags jangling on their collars.
Jules dropped to her knees. “You have dogs?”
They beelined for her as though she were holding steaks in each hand.
She jerked her chin up and caught Rhys’s half-hitched grin, then scrubbed her hand over their fur as they jumped and licked for attention. “You have the cutest fur babies alive and never told me?”
“I haveadog. Clyde.” He crouched next to her and petted the wavy brown-and-white bundle of energy with big eyes. “But Clyde stays with Pickles”—Rhys scratched the other dog under his chin—“when I travel for work. Pickles wanted to go for a ride when I picked up Clyde, so we’re all here.”
“Does Pickles have a human?” she asked.
“Two humans. Callum and Grace Hale. I work with Callum. They don’t live too far from here.”
Rhys had a totally adorable dog that she had never heard of before. He had friends she didn’t know. Yet he knew almost everything about her. Uncertainty wrapped around her chest like an invisible rope, squeezing just tight enough that she noticed—but underneath it, something felt almost like possibility.
The list of unknown details about Rhys daunted her. There were probably a lot of things she didn’t know about him. Did he sleep in? What did he do for fun? “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
Pickles knocked her onto her butt and, along with Clyde, clobbered her with doggy attention.
“Now you do.” He yanked her to her feet. “I have to go back to the office. This time with you, but afterward, if you’re up for it, Pickles’s dad is grilling out.”
Pickles’s dad. God, Rhys was cute. “I thought I was hiding.”
He shook his head. “We’re not telling the world where you are. But the people I work with? They’re solid. No one’s running to a gossip blogger with details on your location. They’re normal. You’ll like them.”
People didn’t treat her like they treated everyone else. That was a lesson she’d learned a long time ago. Then again, she already knew some of his coworkers. “Will Scarlett be there?”
He nodded.
“Yay. What about Vivian Maddox?”
He nodded again. “There’s a good chance.”
“I’ve always been curious about her, to be honest. Is she scary?”
“Depends on who you ask.” He winked. “I think you’ll like her. Though… she had questions the other day.”
“What kind of questions?”
Rhys pointed between them. “The personal kind.”
“Ah. What’s the office policy on…” She pointed between them like he had. “Personal situations?”
The corners of his dark eyes crinkled. “Let me figure that out later.”
She understood. Bodyguards weren’t supposed to sleep with the people who hired them. That made more sense than how people who lived on opposite sides of a continent might manage to date. “Speaking of questions, Abigail and Wes are a little gossipy. Just so you know.”
Rhys rubbed a hand over his scruffy jaw. “I’ll handle Wes.”
“Okay.” This would be the perfect segue for a conversation about what they were doing. Or not doing. Rhys had called her his. What did that even mean? “I handled Abigail.”
His lips quirked. “Does anyone actually handle Abigail?”
Nope. He knew that just as he knew everything else in her life. And Jules knew nothing about his.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The dogs clambered up the tailgate and raced around the bed of the pickup as though they rode around town with Rhys all the time. He opened the door and lifted Jules in. She wasn’t short and never claimed to be a helpless woman or a needy celebrity, but after he settled her in the front seat, she couldn’t ignore the silly little grin that tugged on her cheeks.
