Page 9 of Checking from Behind

The dog shit guy.

I was going to have to do something about that.

I drank my iced coffee, then installed the Ring camera above my front door using a drill my father must have slipped into a box. Then I went to bed with my quads still aching and my brain still replaying two things on a loop: the puck hitting the top corner past Ryan's glove, and the coffee hitting her blouse.

One of those things I was proud of.

Tomorrow had to be better.

CHAPTER FOUR

LILLAH

I'd made it home in twelve minutes. The fabric of my shirt clung to my skin. Making it home in record time was probably the only break I was going to get today.

My leather portfolio had a little damage, but the leather had caught most of the coffee saving my presentation. Some of the liquid had seeped onto the corner of some of the presentation, mainly the mood boards. I had spent five hours on those boards. Five hours sourcing fabric swatches and paint chips, along with material samples that I'd arranged into a visual story that would hopefully make the client see exactly what I saw, and now they had splashes of coffee on them.

I pulled into my driveway, grabbed my bag and the portfolio, slammed the car door harder than I needed to, and went inside the house. Cooper came bounding down the hallway, tail wagging, ears flapping, his whole enormous body vibrating with excitement. He pressed his head against my hip and looked up at me with those brown eyes, tail wagging as he licked the front of my shirt while I held up a hand.

"Not now, Coop. Mama's covered in coffee, and she's about to commit a crime."

I raced up the stairs, peeling the blouse off as I went. I held the blouse under the bathroom light, turning it in my hands.

Ruined. Completely, irreversibly ruined. The coffee had soaked through the silk in a pattern that now looked like an inkblot. Silk was unforgiving. Cotton could survive a coffee assault. Polyester would shrug it off. But silk absorbed everything and forgave nothing, and once it set into the fibers, no cleaner on earth was pulling it back out.

I'd paid a hundred and sixty dollars for that blouse. If I wanted to look the part, I had to dress it, so I'd bought it on a whim. That blouse had been an investment, the same way my portfolio case was, and the way my business cards on the heavy cardstock with the gold foiling were an investment. Every dollar I spent on looking professional was a dollar I was betting on myself, and this man, this dog-shit man who existed solely to ruin my things, had wiped out a hundred-and-sixty-dollar blouse with one careless turn.

I dropped the blouse in the trash and watched it sink in the bin.

I had forty-five minutes to get to my meeting with this potential new client, and I was standing in my bathroom in a coffee-stained bra having feelings about a blouse.

I dug through my closet. The navy wrap dress would work for a client meeting. It wasn't the look I'd planned, but plans had to be flexible. I'd learned to build backup options into everything I did, because the world had a habit of rearranging itself without asking my permission.

I got dressed and sprayed some Chanel No. 5 that Mila had gotten me for my birthday. She'd wrapped it in gold paper and handed it to me with the instructions: "This is for days when you need to feel powerful. Use it strategically." I'd laughed, but right now, standing in front of my mirror in a backup dress with a dead blouse in my trash can, I sprayed it twice. If ever I needed to feel extra power, it was now.

I checked the mirror. I looked fine. Not great. This was not the version of myself I'd planned to walk into this meeting as. I'd planned to walk in and let him know I had everything under control, but this was going to have to do. I was still getting in through the door, and whatever happened after that was up to me.

My phone buzzed. I glanced at my screen to see Mila's name.