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“What are you still doing here?” Sorren barks as he stomps into the lobby and scowls.
“I’m single and my kid is with his mom so I’m getting caught up on emails,” I say coolly, knowing he’s not talking about work at all. “What are you doing here?”
“One of the dogs is having a hard time. Bodhi is coming to sit with him for a while.”
“I can wait till he gets here.”
“Good, and in the meantime you can tell me why you won’t go out with Deacon.”
“I don’t know how that’s any of your business,” I snap before regretting it immediately. I know he’s trying to help, but even I don’t know what I need.
“It is my business when the guy is here all the time and looking at you like you hung the damn moon. You’re either too oblivious to notice or too scared to just admit that you want to be with him.”
“It’s not that easy, okay?”
“Bullshit.” He points an accusatory finger at me. “You saw what I went through with Rhea, you watched as almost losing her ripped me apart, and now you’re doing it to yourself instead of learning from my mistakes.”
“It’s not like that.”
“It’s not? Because I saw him staring at the closed office door like whatever just happened sealed his fate.”
“That’s ridiculous, I…”
My words trail off as I go over everything leading up to that moment and after I’d finally gotten Cal back out the door.
Deacon was gone and I didn’t blame him. Cal was a lot and he was in crisis mode.
But why would Sorren say he saw him staring at the closed office door like whatever just happened sealed his fate?
I try and rack my brain, all the words and moments blending together in my mind. Did I say something? I can’t think of anything but then again, Deacon’s presence always kind of scrambles my brain.
The first time I saw him I’d been tongue-tied.
He’d come into Vetted Paws with his brother, Jude, to look at a dog, and I’d been unable to make words happen.
He was the first man I was attracted to on a visceral level—the heart pounding, whole-body flushing kind of level—and it scared the hell out of me.
Just looking at him made me feel like he could make or break my world.
It was too much.
It still is.
Every time I see him, I have the simultaneous urge to offer myself to him and also run and hide because I’m so terrified to take the leap.
The worst part is I’ve been on a couple of dates since Fallon and I divorced, but absolutely none of them came close to the way I feel when Deacon just looks at me.
How could I possibly explain that to him without chasing him away?
Hey, Deacon, I’ve never been with a man, but you make me forget my name and I get hard just seeing you.
Yeah, no, that’s not creepy at all.
“Well, on that note,” Sorren drawls and I wonder how long I’ve been staring at nothing across the room, “I’m heading home. Let me know if something comes up.”
“I will.”
He grunts a goodbye which is practically like a hug for him, and it makes me smile.
A marine vet and an air force vet walk into a bar—it’s definitely the start of a joke.
But what’s not a joke is what we’ve built here at Vetted Paws, and so even though I’m tied up in knots over a man I can’t have a full conversation with, I’m proud as I look around the lobby.
We’re making a difference.
And for now, that’s enough.
“Dad!” Briggs yells as he rushes in the house after school. His eyes are bright and he’s out of breath like he just ran a marathon instead of from the bottom of the driveway to the door.
“Hey Buddy,” I answer, amused. “Did you have a good day at school?” He nods and hefts his backpack onto the high-back chair at the island.
I liked the chairs when I got them, but now that Briggs is bigger, he likes to see how fast he can make them swivel back and forth, and I’m waiting for the day he flings himself out of it and onto the floor.
“Yeah!” he whoops. “I’m so hungry.” I raise one eyebrow as he rolls his eyes and slips from the chair and heads toward the fridge.
“Mom still makes me a sandwich after school.”
“That’s because you bat your eyelashes at her and she sees the little boy who still pronounced ‘library’ wrong.”
He snorts as he pulls a mountain of things from the refrigerator and sets them on the counter, his criminally long eyelashes brushing against his cheeks when he blinks. It’s the kind that women pay good money for, but he complains they get tangled and poke him in the eye.
Tough life.
“I have to think of something to do for the science fair.”
“Do you have anything you want to focus on or are we starting completely from scratch?” I ask, watching as he lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. He’s somehow gotten mayo all over his plate despite only putting it on one slice of bread.
The rules and regulations side of my brain coupled with growing up in a strict military household is screaming inside me, but I keep my expression relaxed because it’s not a big deal.
Briggs is loud and messy, but he’s a great kid and still carefree despite the divorce and moving across the country to start a whole new life.
Preserving that innocence is one of my greatest accomplishments, and I’ll be damned if I let a little mess turn him into a thirty-year-old man afraid to talk to the person he likes.
Now is not the time.
Grabbing a glass from the cabinet, I fill it with water before drinking half and refilling it. I don’t need every thought bringing me back to Deacon. He’s distracting enough when he’s in front of me, but now he’s creeping into the residual effects of my childhood trauma.
“I dunno,” Briggs says, bopping along as he gathers all his snack materials and puts them away before taking his plate back to the island to settle in. “Everyone has something cool already.”
“Well, you could bake or do something with flowers or—”
“Baking?” He wrinkles up his nose as he takes a massive bite, his jaw working overtime in the process.
“You know Uncle Hank makes bread. And artisan breads are always a big hit—people love something homemade.”
“I guess but I want to think of something else.”
“What about plants and soil pH? I know that the color of hydrangeas is dependent on the pH of the soil.”
“Flowers are boring.”
“I’m telling Uncle Case you said that,” I tease and he shakes his head, his eyes widening in horror.
“You can’t! He’ll be so sad and then he’ll make me follow him around the greenhouse again.”
I laugh, because that’s exactly something Case would do. He thinks flowers can fix anything, and honestly, his track record is pretty good with that theory.
“Well, start throwing out some ideas and we’ll see what we can do before your deadline.” Pausing, I narrow my eyes. “It’s not due tomorrow, is it?”
“No,” he huffs but it’s playful as he hops off the chair and puts his plate in the sink. “I have a few weeks.”
“Okay, well, let’s not wait until the last minute.”
“I know, Dad,” he replies, dropping onto the couch and stretching like a cat. “Can we have pizza for dinner?”
Conceding defeat, I down my glass of water and decide there’s no use fighting him right now because his brain has already jumped to six different topics that have nothing to do with science projects.
And that’s fine. I’ll just have to make sure we don’t end up sitting at the kitchen table until midnight like we did last time…