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CHAPTER 1
Hedra was an animal lover. A dyed-in-the-wool, lifelong animal lover.
Which is what made her decision to kill a tiny terrorizing poodle named Alfie so shocking.
Of course, said poodle had just shit in her shoe for the eighth time in three days.
That was grounds for murdering him, right? A jury would take one look at the cold poop smeared all over the bottom of Hedra’s bare foot and between her goddamn toes and declare her innocent.
The very victim of her murderous thoughts, the shoe-pooping vigilante himself, trotted into her bedroom. He had what could only be described as a satisfied grin on his evil doggie face.
“I’m gonna murder you, Alfie,” she said as she held her Croc in one hand and kept her shit-covered foot in the air. “Do you hear me, you little jackass? Your time on this earth has been cut short.”
“I can hear you threatening to kill my dog, you know,” Althea said from their shared bathroom. Hedra had helped her into the tub not ten minutes ago, and she could hear the old tiger shifter splashing around like a little kid.
“He pooped in my shoe… again,” Hedra said. A lock of her bright blue hair slipped from the clip that held it back and tickled her cheek. She blew it off impatiently. “I have poodle poop between my toes, Althea.”
“Maybe you should keep your shoes on instead of going barefoot like a hooligan,” Althea said.
“I was not barefoot,” Hedra said. “These are my extra pair of Crocs that I needed to change into because you deliberately splashed water onto my regular Crocs when I helped you into the tub.”
“Crocs are an abomination, and I will not abide them in my house,” Althea said.
“It’s your grandson’s house, not yours,” Hedra said.
She had the old woman on that one, and Althea knew it. After about thirty seconds of silence, Althea said, “Alfie also hates Crocs.”
On perfect cue, Alfie growled, grabbed Hedra’s Croc that wasn’t currently covered in shit and streaked out of her bedroom.
“He just stole my shoe, Althea,” Hedra said.
“He’s doing you a favour,” Althea said. “You can’t blame him for trying to save you from bad shoe choices.”
Despite her irritation, a grin crossed Hedra’s face. She loved spicy patients, and Althea Jameson was as spicy as they came. The tiger shifter might have been in her eighties and recovering from a broken hip, but she’d kept Hedra on her toes from the moment she took the job. She hadn’t been Althea’s live-in nurse for very long, but every morning, Hedra woke up happy and looking forward to what the day brought for the first time in a long time.
Is that because of Althea or her grandson?
She shut her inner voice down immediately. Thinking about Boone, about her employer, in even the vaguest of ways, always made her flashback to that slightly inappropriate moment they’d shared.
Slightly inappropriate? Girl, you were about to fuck him on his friend’s porch. I’d say that’s a tad more than inappropriate.
Yeah, probably. But what was done was done, and Hedra couldn’t take it back. She could only pretend that the moment had never happened, and she didn’t at all remember what the sexy tiger shifter’s lips tasted like or how good it felt when Boone touched her.
Spread your legs for me, little lamb.
Boone’s voice echoed in her head, and she shivered all over. Her nipples hardened, and her pussy went wet, and dammit, why couldn’t she get him out of her head? Her libido would cost her a job she really liked, not to mention free living accommodations.
She’d been standing with her foot in the air for nearly two minutes, and with a grimace, she hopped toward the bedroom door. “Althea, I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m just going to wash my foot. Will you be okay?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, human, I’m not a toddler. I think I can manage not to drown for the five minutes it takes you to clean your foot,” Althea said irritably, her voice echoing in the small bathroom.
Hedra grinned again before hopping awkwardly out of the bedroom. Using the wall for support, she hopped down the hallway. Her choices were the pedestal sink in the half bathroom near the front door or Boone’s en suite bathroom.
She hesitated before heading towards Boone’s bedroom. She was flexible enough to get her foot into the sink, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to wash her foot in the tub in Boone’s bathroom. He’d met Chase for a sparring match this afternoon and wouldn’t be home for at least another half hour. He’d never know she’d used his bathroom.
She hopped into his bedroom, keeping her eyes averted from his unmade bed. It would be all sorts of wrong to lie in his bed and bury her face in his pillow, even if dog shit didn’t currently cover her foot.
Grunting and starting to sweat a little from the exertion of keeping her foot up, she made it to his bathroom, a soft ‘damn’ escaping her lips. In addition to a walk-in shower, Boone had one of those gorgeous old-fashioned claw tubs in his bathroom. Everything looked brand new, from the hexagon-shaped black and white floor tile to the gleaming white subway tile in the shower, and she had no doubt that Boone had renovated the bathroom himself. She’d quickly discovered that Boone loved home renovations, and he’d purposely bought his house because it was older and required a lot of work.
