Page 81 of Pretty Lies

FOURTEEN

“THE FIRST THING I saw when I opened my eyes this morning was your dog’s gigantic head,” Della said.

“Oh?” Cory asked.

Across the kitchen, he worked on setting a coffee pod into the machine. In nothing but sleep pants that hung low on his defined hips and ink that painted his skin, he looked entirely too tempting with messy morning hair that he ran his fingers through before pushing the button on the machine.

“Yeah,” she said, looking down at the dog in question. “I thought I was dreaming for a second.”

She was also currently petting said dog. On the Rottie’s collar was a tag in the shape of a diamond that read his name, Mace, and a note that he was chipped alongside a tagged number. Likely his register number with the National Kennel Club to verify he was a purebred dog with a verified bloodline. She remembered Cory mentioned the pup in passing a couple of times, and she’d seen a picture or two.

None of those things had given Della any insight to how sweet and playful the Rottie was. The more one petted him, the happier and wigglier he became. She hadn’t expected to wake up that morning with a dog looking at her considering—when she finally fell asleep the night before after crying her eyes out—there was no dog in Cory’s apartment.

Nonetheless, the dog made her smile though she’d woken up ready to cry.

Wasn’t that something?

“But,” Cory said, glancing at her from the side with those blue eyes of his—icy or dark like storms depending on his mood—that always had her breath catching hard, “did he lick your face?”

“No.”

“Or get close enough that his nose touched you?”

A grin started to form on Della’s lips. “No, he didn’t.”

Cory’s gaze dropped to the dog who was staring at his master expectantly with his black, furry bum wiggling against the floor. “Good boy—come get it.”

With a sweep of his hand across the counter, Cory placed a plate of scrambled eggs covered in ketchup to the floor at the side of the island. Right beside the dog bowls with Mace’s name spelled out in fire-engine red block lettering. The pup wasted no time going to his dish.

Cory shrugged at Della’s light laugh. “Eggs are his weakness. Make him a plate of eggs and he’ll be the best dog alive until you give it to him. I know, because I’ve recorded how he gets in the bed to wake me up in the morning just so my brother could laugh at me. He’s barely over a year old, so he’s like an unruly teenager on his best days. With an attitude to match.”

Ah, Della got it.

“And that’s why you love him so much—he’s still a free spirit.”

Cory nodded, pulling his steaming coffee away from the machine and moving down the island a bit to where he had sugar in a bowl and a spoon waiting. “He’s my dude, yeah. Until I cave and give my mother her second grandchild. Joe swears he’s one and done. Monica better not look at a guy until she’s at least thirty. So, you know, Mace is basically like my kid until I have one of my own.”

“Hmm.”

His stare snapped over to her, a spoonful of sugar hovering over the steaming mug. “What?”

“You want kids?”

“A couple someday. Never saw life without it. Having a brother that—” Cory stopped talking, the amusement and happiness lighting up his handsome features dimming instantly. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Please keep saying what you were saying. It’s easy, you know? And I’m just starting to realize how easy this is.”

Cory swallowed hard. “What’s easy?”

“Us. This. When we have five seconds together to just be. How you talk to me about anything and everything. The world disappears, and it’s just you and me talking in a kitchen. So, please, keep talking for a minute. Because I don’t want to rejoin reality right now.”

“Okay.”

She noticed he didn’t disagree with her. Not about what she wanted or how she called this thing between them out.

Cory dropped the sugar into his cup, saying, “Growing up close in age with Joe made me kind of want to have a pair of rowdy boys that did the same.”

Della smiled. “What if you had girls?”