And then they walked back down the hill to Blair’s house and Jack went inside and brewed another irritatingly large cup of coffee and canceled his flight home.
Chapter 8
Zombies
Twenty-four hours later, Jack had written a thousand words. A pathetic output for twenty-four hours, but they were good words. He thought.
He hoped.
Regardless, they were a thousand words more than he’d written yesterday, or the day before.
He was standing by the microwave reheating a cup of coffee that had gone cold due to its obnoxious size when he heard a strange shuffling at the sliding doors. Upon investigation, it proved to be the dopey canine.
He slid the door open enough to stick his head out, looking for Blair, but she wasn’t there.
“Hey!”
Edward was slipping past Jack’s legs and into the pool house.
“Excuse me.”
Ignoring him, Edward trotted inside and started sniffing around.
“Sir,” he tried.
Edward discovered Jack’s suitcase, which he had yet to unpack, initially because he’d thought he wasn’t staying and more recently because he’d been extremely busy spending twenty-four hours writing a thousand words.
Edward started digging, and soon boxer shorts were flying.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Jack hustled over and grabbed the pair Edward had in his teeth. Edwardlookedlike a dope, but he had stealth strength. “Let go, you menace.”
Edward did not let go.
“Edward Cullen!” Blair’s voice. “Drop it!”
Edward let go, which of course caused Jack, who had been exerting a good deal of counterforce on his underwear, to fall back on his ass.
Blair had that disarmingly low voice. It continued to seem anomalous coming from such a sunny, small person. Apparently it made dogs do her bidding.
“Edward,” she said, “be nice.” Edward immediately sat down and offered Jack his paw.
Jack stared for a moment, hoping the dog would take his inaction for the rejection it was, but alas. He didn’t see any way out of it this time, so heshook hands with a dog.
Was it too late to go home?
“I’m so sorry,” Blair said, quite obviously trying to hold back laughter. “I heard you from outside and I thought you might need rescuing.” He followed her gaze to the slobber-slicked boxer shorts he was holding. She winced. “Edward loves plaid.”
“Edward lovesplaid?”
“Yeah. I probably should have named him after Jamie Fraser instead of Edward Cullen.”
He blinked.
“Jamie Fraser is the hero of the Outlander books. He’s Scottish.”
“We don’t read the same books.”
“We read some of the same books.” She bent over to leash Edward, and Jack considered the part in her hair. Which was odd, he realized. He hadn’t set out to ogle her part, but now that it was in frontof him, he couldn’t look away. She had some gray roots. He didn’t know why that should be so surprising. Itwasn’tsurprising. Lots of people dyed their hair, probably especially in LA.
