AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Me neither.”
He wraps his arms around me beneath the jacket, holding me close. Our heartbeats slam against each other. I want so much more.
“Let’s take this up again Friday night,” he says. “When there isn’t work the next day. The things I want to do to you might last until morning.”
I shiver against him. “Okay.”
He holds me a moment more, then shifts forward to help me down.
I slide off his lap and stand.
We walk tightly together back to the car. I feel incredibly alive, and the cold doesn’t penetrate.
So this is how the magic happens. Why women fall. He works them, makes their bodies sing. There’s undoubtedly been a long line of them who’ve taken this walk with him. I’m not sure I’ll be any different in the end, a hit-and-run, loot-and-scoot.
But I have one thing they didn’t.
Threedates.
Chapter 24
DREW
I am playing with a brush fire named Ensley James.
Focusing on my veterinary work the next day is impossible with Ensley so close. We have a slew of annual exams, so I am tasked with entering room after room, facing pet owner after pet owner, smiling, talking, making chitchat while I do the part that I prefer, greeting their animals and making sure that they are healthy.
It’s exhausting.
By lunchtime, I can’t stand it. Even though the lobby is not ordinarily on my walking path in the back rooms of the clinic, I pass through just to get a look at Ensley.
When I pop out of the hall, Ensley’s on the phone. Maria told me she loaned Ensley a pair of scrubs to see if she liked them, and sure enough, she’s wearing a pale-blue set. I smile inwardly that they’re blue. But they’re notnavyblue. I remember her sayingI look like deathwhen she wears that color.
I’m generally ambivalent about whether the receptionist dresses like the rest of us or wears street clothes. But I have to say, she rocks the scrubs. Even in my brief walk toward her desk, every asset that I felt in my hands last night seems accentuated by the soft fabric.
I have to clench my jaw and will my body to obey me as I pass by.
She’s busily scribbling a note, the phone receiver in her hand, but she glances up. That moment our eyes lock is like an electric shock.
I’ve never felt this way merely by being in the same room as someone. This is voodoo.
I head into an exam room to finish out the circle. Apparently I’m just in time. Todd is muscling a nearly two-hundred-pound bullmastiff out the back door.
The owner is apologizing. “I’m so sorry. Calamity hates shots.”
“Don’t worry,” Todd grunts. “We’ll get him done.”
I jump in behind to help steer the massive dog to the treatment space. It’s going to be all hands on deck to tame the overweight beast who seems afraid of everything and keeps skittering about the floor, trying to get purchase with his claws. “Maria,” I call. “We could use your help.”
She sets down the folder she’s writing in and hustles over.
I kneel on the floor in front of him, trying to connect with his warm brown eyes. He’s scared, that much is clear. “You’re okay, Calamity,” I say soothingly, running my thumb across his brow. Massive strings of saliva drip from his mouth.
Todd folds over his back, holding his chest and front legs. “I set the shot on the counter. There was no way to do it alone.”
Maria fetches it and closes in near the dog’s massive hindquarters. She touches random spots, trying to get him desensitized so that the needle prick will be less noticeable.
“Look at me, you big lug,” I say to the dog. “You’re okay.” I press both thumbs into the pressure points that will calm him.
