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Betty was beside herself. The kids’ golden retriever that I’d inherited when they’d gone off to college and beyond was a blonde, shivering blur under Vonn’s affectionate hands.
His luggage was stacked up in the kitchen, where it had been abandoned in favor of Betty’s exuberance.
I was spending the night with Vonn Barlowe.
A man I’d had a crush on for the better part of thirty years. A man who’d single-handedly ruined my chance at my dream job. A man who was currently sprawled on his back on the kitchen linoleum as my dog did her best to French kiss him.
It was official.
This was the weirdest Christmas Eve ever.
I stepped over Vonn’s legs and turned on the lights. My kitchen had been renovated a decade ago when there had been a busy family of four in the house. We’d done bright white cabinets and dark green counters. The fridge once crowded with pictures and report cards now just held a simple calendar that tracked the comings and goings of one. On the opposite side of the eat-at bar was a round dining table in front of a set of doors that led to the patio and backyard.
My stomach growled, and I realized I was supposed to go to dinner with Mark after the concert. Mark, who had yet to notice or care that I hadn’t texted him back.
If I was hungry, I guessed the man who’d just spent two hours rocking out on stage was ravenous.
“Are you hungry?” I asked, opening the refrigerator door and stifling the moan as my muscles protested.
Vonn turned his attention away from my dog and looked at me. It was the first time I’d ever seen him smiling. Really smiling. He had a dimple in his left cheek just barely visible above his beard.
“Starving,” he rasped.
Something fluttered in my core, and I decided it was safer to look at the contents of my refrigerator rather than directly at the punk rocker.
I heard him get to his feet and then felt a wave of heat at my back. “You’re not cooking,” he said in my ear. Our bodies weren’t touching, but the thin buffer of air between us was charged with an electric awareness.
“I don’t think we’re going to have any luck getting delivery in this storm.”
“I’m cooking.”
Betty nosed at my hand, reminding me she needed to go out.
“You cook?” I asked, taking a deliberate step back.
He assumed my position in front of the fridge. “Man can’t live off takeout on tour without there being consequences.”
It made sense. I’d only spent two weeks behind-the-scenes, but it was enough time to know that that sculpted body was the result of healthy habits. “Are you any good?”
Vonn leveled me with a look, one dark eyebrow arching. “Babe, I’m the best.”
Betty dashed over to the back door and barked. I followed her and opened it. Cold hit me in the face, which I didn’t mind since being that close to Vonn had significantly raised the temperature of my blood. The wind had picked up, howling as it whipped around the back of the house.
I could only faintly make out the lights from the Milton Estate across the field.
There was a good six inches of snow on the patio already. A fact that delighted Betty. She let out a triumphant bark and pranced into the thick of it, shoving her nose into the white stuff and racing into the yard.
I turned on the backyard lights. “I’ll be back,” I called over my shoulder to Vonn, who was unloading the contents of the refrigerator.
I pulled on the boots I left at the back door and followed Betty into the snow. The walk to the tiny barn seemed longer than usual with all of my muscles vehemently protesting, but I made it.
Betty sprinted inside ahead of me and went directly to Whinnie’s stall.
“Hey, girl,” I greeted the horse.
She was a pretty little thing, dappled gray with a dark mane. My daughter, Addison, had starting riding lessons when she was seven and stuck with the hobby. On her sixteenth birthday, we’d gotten her her very own horse.
The horse, like the dog, was now mine by default.
Whinnie went nose-to-nose with Betty, their usual greeting, before snorting at me to let me know she was ready for dinner.
I fed her, gave her an evening rub down, and with some only minimal bitching and moaning added some more straw to the stall.
“Last thing you need to be doing right now, babe.”
I jumped, then winced at the chorus of ouch that rolled through my body.
Whinnie swung her head toward the man in the door and snorted.
Vonn pushed away from the doorway and approached. He ran one of those big, competent hands down the horse’s velvet nose. “You ride?”
“Only when I have to. She belongs to my daughter, who’s in college. Addison left me a thirty-six-page manual on the care and feeding of Whinnie. A neighborhood kid comes out a few times a week to exercise her.”
