Page 7 of The One Who Never Left: Colter

“So, neuter him but keep him scary.”

“If you neuter him, he won’t lose his edge, right? He’ll still look scary? You won’t sand down his claws or anything?”

Colter forced a laugh. “No, neutering doesn’t turn him into a plush toy, and those claws won’t be touched. He’ll still be terrifying enough to keep the mailman on his toes.”

Hargrove grinned, completely satisfied, while Colter silently considered switching careers to taxidermy. He swore the iguana smirked at him.

A guard iguana. A neutered, scary, plush-adjacent guard iguana. This was his life now.

“Irma will set up the appointment,” Colter said, setting the iguana back on the floor. It meandered over to its owner and curled up at Mr. Hargroves’s feet like a fucking lapdog.

Muttering under his breath about the fainting goat waiting for him in exam room three. He started toward the door but froze mid-step.

Someone was behind the front desk, someone who was not Irma.

His stride cut off as his brain stalled. The stranger moved with precision—answering phones, sorting papers, typing, all with the efficiency of someone who had been running the place for years. She was comfortable and competent, commanding that front desk like she belonged.

Then she turned and⁠—

“Fuck me,” he said under his breath, his heart thumping loudly, sending sharp knocks against his ribs.

It was her.

The woman from Granny’s Grocer and Grain. The woman who had looked him dead in the eye over a box of tampons and thrown verbal punches without missing a beat. The one with the teal lace he had absolutely tried not to think about and failed. The one who had lodged herself in his mind against his will. And the one who was a too-young, too innocent looking, single mom.

Because of his brothers, he’d started referring to her as Dream Girl in his fantasies, which he’d had several since meeting her last week.

Sometimes in teal. Sometimes in nothing. But always screaming out his name.

A grown man, thirty-three years old, reduced to a teenager with a crush and, apparently, no self-control whatsoever.

His stomach tightened and his pulse climbed. Suddenly, the iguana didn’t seem like the most dangerous creature in the clinic.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard, phone cradled between her ear and shoulder while she transferred a call and slid a form into a labeled tray like she had been running this entire operation for years.

She ended the call cleanly, set the handset down, and glanced up at him, cool and composed as if she was expecting him. “Oh, hey.”

His throat felt raw and his palms slid to his hips like he needed somewhere to anchor his hands. “What are you doing?”

“Running your front office like a boss.”

“No, I mean what are you doing here? In my place of work?”

“Dropping off my HR papers to Irma. But when I got here, no one was at the desk. So, I figured why not save the day.”

That was not an answer he was looking for.

“I never got your name.”

“Sutton. I’m your new intern.”

His brain tripped over itself. When he said yes to a new vet tech, he did not know what he expected—but it sure as hell was not a young woman, let alone this woman. A pocket-sized wet dream with the exaggerated curves of America Ferrera, and the eyes—oh, the eyes—were all Grace Kelly: cool, luminous, and unreadable, like they were holding trade secrets.

Her red hair was darker than her daughter’s, more auburn than light red. But she had the same smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, which stood out against her soft, light complexion.

Those ocean-blue eyes flicked up, catching him staring. She offered the faintest polite smile, one that was nothing and yet punched straight through his rib cage.

Intriguing enough to be a problem, he thought. The kind of intriguing that set off alarms everywhere a man ought to have common sense.