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3
Lila
Threehourslater,Islumped over the reception counter. Simone, wearing a headset, explained the adoption procedure to someone on the phone while she typed away, her immaculate pink nails clicking on the keys.
I looked at my own hands. Chipped nails, all at different lengths. Red splotches on my knuckles from washing the cages with harsh soap and cold water. What was the point of spending money on manicures when I’d ruin them every week?
I shrugged it off. Stuff like this wasn’t my priority. Besides, I wasn’t into the whole makeup and heels thing. And I rarely went out to bars or parties, so there was no need to be so dolled up.
I much preferred spending my downtime in sweatpants in the company of animals. After a long week at the clinic, providing psychiatric treatment to the city’s richest, silliest, and sometimes most messed-up people, I self-prescribed playtime with the dogs for my own therapy. This was the best stress relief in my expert opinion. Nothing wrong with a thirty-five-year-old professional career woman volunteering her time by playing around with a bunch of adorable puppies.
Simone took another call and gave directions to the shelter. Thick-winged eyeliner and long, curled eyelashes with golden mascara styled her dark eyes. She wore more makeup at her volunteer shift than I did at a New Year’s Eve party. I’d never seen her without her face done up, but I knew a natural beauty hid behind it with her dark brown skin, high accentuated cheekbones, and a perfect smile.
I bet she had men lining up to date her. I wondered if that hot volunteer guy with stormy eyes was one of them. Yep, he’d probably do anything for a date with Simone. She had everything I didn’t—beauty, grace, and perfect curves. A couple of dress sizes smaller than me, she was closer to a size fourteen, but she squeezed into a twelve magnificently.
Oh well, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t on the market anyway. My career was my lover, and that was how it would stay. And unlike the men from my past, I trusted my career.
With a sigh, Simone ended the call by tapping a button on her headset. “I can’t believe in this day and age that people still ask for directions when everyone, and I mean everyone, has a map app on their phone.”
She swiveled in her chair, grabbed a paper from the printer, and held it up for me to see. “Apart from this, today is off to a great start. One adoption already, and we haven’t even opened to the public yet.”
“Did you adopt another dog? Simone, that’s what, now? Five? You can’t take them all.”
She waved my words away. “Not me. Hawk. He adopted Rambo. You must have seen him back there. He usually has the Sunday morning shift.”
Hawk? That couldn’t be his real name. But it did suit him. He had those intense, piercing eyes and the way he moved, with such agility and precision and strength, he really was like a hawk, except with way more muscles. Mouth-watering muscles that tensed and flexed against my body when he’d held me—I mean, steadied me.
He had to be at least six-feet-two. And that hair…I had stared like an idiot when he had run his fingers through his thick hair. It was a rich brown with red undertones, and it had a wave to it that appeared natural, but he seemed to want to tame it, pushing the strands out of his face. As soon as his fingers left his hair, his locks slid out of place. The stubborn strands swooped down over his forehead and covered part of his eyes.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I saw him.”
“Isn’t he gorgeous? In a dangerous bad boy kind of way.”
Bad boy? I hadn’t gotten that vibe from him. Rude, for sure. Brooding, hell yeah. But not dangerous. Maybe Simone was referring to the scars on his face, but he could have gotten those in an accident, for all we knew.
She twirled a pen around her fingers while staring absentmindedly at a spot on the ceiling. “I don’t usually like the strong silent type. I prefer a refined man I could debate with for hours, but that Hawk is fine to look at.”
Fine to look at? Sure, if you can call someone who had a scrumpialicious-fuck-me-sideways-till-I-howl kind of hotness as something so mundane asfine. My mind happily reminded me what his hard body had felt like when I hugged him.
Damn it, I had to stop doing that. Not hug. I was bracing myself. I didn’t have a choice.
I groaned inwardly, remembering how he had to tell me to let go when I’d held onto his frame. The man for sure worked out but not like one of those professional weightlifters. He was strong but also lean as if he was built for both fighting and running.
I shook the delicious thoughts out of my mind. “Silent type, huh? He spoke plenty with me.” Or I should say, talked down to me, the arrogant jerk, peering at me with those gray eyes of his, the swirly brewing tempest in them reflecting the intensity amplifying between my thighs. A celestial choir had chanted in my head, and I practically had to reel in my jaw from the floor.
I’d never been so thankful for someone’s rudeness before because if he hadn’t barked out orders at me, I would have probably still been ogling him like a dumb fuck, my mouth gaped open like a blowfish.
So, thanks for being a jerk, Hawk. I wasn’t really angry at him, though. The man was a volunteer and had adopted Rambo. He couldn’t be all bad under that sexy, muscled, steely exterior.
Especially not after I caught him in the reptile wing when I had decided to check on him to find out where he’d gone. To my surprise, he had actually gone to take care of the snakes. I spied on him while he had a snake coiled around his hand. The snake’s head rested on his tattooed knuckles. Hawk had cooed at it as if it were a baby telling him that everything would be okay.
Not the actions of a jerk…
Wait a minute.
What was I doing?
Finding good qualities about him? Why? It didn’t matter. He’d go back to his usual Sunday morning shift, and I’d never have to see him again. And I was perfectly fine with that.
