Page 13

Ewww. Not sure I’d consider those admirable features, but maybe orcs had different standards of beauty.

“I think that I might love her. And I hope that one day I can convince her to love me as well.”

That was the end of the clip. Which was a good thing because Bwat’s last words were like being knifed in the chest. He was in love with some women with dirty hair and weird eyes. I hated the thought of that, and the only reason I could attribute to my immediate negative reaction was that Bwat would be less marketable if he was in love and had a girlfriend.

Yeah. That was the reason. It couldn’t be anything else. He wasn’t anything like the romance novel heroes who had me reaching into my bedside table drawer for an electronic assist. No, Bwat was a lot like the sweet guys I’d dated who had done absolutely nothing for my heart or my nether regions.

Except…that smile. And the animated way he’d told me about his childhood.

I clicked through another video. This one was a fan-shot clip from what looked like a local animal shelter. Bwat was in jeans and a very wet t-shirt, holding the ugliest little terrier I’d ever seen. The dog was equally wet and wrapped in a towel, it’s prominent underbite jutting even more forward as the thing growled and shivered violently.

I couldn’t hear what Bwat was saying under the music someone had layered over the clip, but the text announced that a large number of dogs had been seized from a puppy mill with terrible conditions, and that Bwat was one of the volunteers helping with the filthy, sick, and injured animals.

Tears clouded my vision. I swear my ovaries damn near exploded. This guy was too good to be true. Maybe we could pretend he wasn’t in love with some swamp female, because women all over the country were going to be throwing their panties at this guy.

He was social media gold…if marketed properly, that is. Not polished. Not conventionally charismatic. But there was something there. A sort of… earnest intensity. Like a golden retriever had become enormous, green, and deeply committed to history and culture.

I made a note in the margin of my notepad.

BWAT – Ugly tiny dog lover. Volunteer at animal shelter. Humble and wholesome.

I underlined wholesome twice, then immediately annoyed myself by doing so.

My office phone rang and I snatched it up. “Abby Anton.”

“Hey girl, look at your darned texts,” said Stephanie.

“Hang on, hang on.” I did as she said, then grinned. “Awesome. Where and when?”

“The Owl Bar on Chase Street at seven. But you are not going to leave me hanging here. What’s this amazing news you’re teasing me with?”

I couldn’t resist spoiling my surprise. “I got the Tusks account.”

Stephanie shrieked directly into my ear.

I winced and held the phone away. “You are thirty-three years old. Congratulations would have sufficed.”

“No, it absolutely would not have. Do you know how huge this is?”

“Yes,” I said, because I did. “Though I’m trying to temper my joy with the knowledge that I now have two weeks to double stadium sales for their next home game, and ninety days to reshape public perception of an orc hockey team before the owner steals my soul, and upper management decides I’ve lost my mind and kicks me to the unemployment curb.”

Stephanie made a “pfft” noise. “I have complete faith in you to pull this off. If I ever had the money to pay for a professional marketing campaign, you’d be my girl.”

I felt myself blush. “You just say the word, and I’m there.”

“You sound so happy,” Stephanie said.

I twirled my pen between my fingers. “Of course I’m happy. This is the highlight of my day. My year. Probably my life.”

Stephanie was silent for a beat. “Oh honey. Your life? I get it. I’m all about my job too, but we need more than work. We need challenge. We need amazing sex. We need impossible men with smolderingly sexy eyes.”

Unbidden Bwat’s smiling gaze with the dimple rose into my mind. Not smoldering. Not what I would call sexy…except maybe sexy in a very unexpected way.

I banished the image. “I need billable success. And I don’t care about smolderingly sexy eyes.”

Stephanie snorted.

“I’m done with the whole man thing. Done. It’s not that I haven’t met wonderful guys because I have. I just don’t….” I tried to think of how to word the lack of zing or longevity in any of my previous relationships. “It’s my fault,” I told her. “I’m broken or something. The love gene did not make it into my DNA. Instead I got a double dose of the career gene.”