Chapter 19
“Are you tired,girl? Why don”t I just take you back to the house to get you some water? See? She’s tired. She has short little legs like me.” Amber blinked up at him and Theo just shook his head.
It was Saturday morning and Theo had showed up bright and early with Puddin’ in tow because Amber had begged him to bring the dog to run with them. He frowned at her while she smiled angelically, her hazel eyes warm and pleading as she looked up at him. The early morning light cast her face in a soft glow, highlighting the flush on her cheeks and the slight sheen of sweat that made her skin glisten. Strands from her ponytail had escaped and clung to her neck, tempting him to reach out and touch her throat.
He sighed, knowing the two of them had bested him this morning. “I”ll finish the run. You bring her back to your apartment and I’ll meet you there.” He ignored the relief on her face. They still had a month to train for the race, and he was going to make sure she ran it, even if he had to drag her the whole way.
Truthfully, she had done better over the last two weeks than he had ever expected. Despite her complaints and delaying tactics, she was just stubborn enough that if he teased her and made it into a challenge, she kept up for the most part.
“I knew you had a soft spot for us,” Amber teased. She held his eyes, and the familiar rush of lust shot through him. He’d been doing an admirable job of training her without giving into the urge to touch that soft, sweet body again.
His hand ached with the desire to touch her, day in and day out at the office. It was a unique form of torture, one he was prolonging with these early morning runs, when she looked so soft and sleepy that he wanted to take her back to her bed and sink between her thighs and feel all that wildness moving beneath him.
There was nothing easy about her. She was like a hurricane in his life, disrupting even the most routine, mundane parts of his day with her laughter. He found himself looking forward to work for entirely different, much less noble reasons, than he’d had all his life. The tip-tap sound of her high heels when she inevitably came in late and tried to sneak into her office, the shape of her beautiful body standing in his doorway with a nonsense note and a teasing smile on her lips.
The desire to know her, had taken him by surprise with its intensity. He had known many beautiful, more accomplished women in his life, but none had taken a hold of him so thoroughly.
Theo finished his run and was doubling back to pass the village green when he saw Amber with Puddin’ in her arms talking to a group of women holding yoga mats. He squinted, recognizing a few of the ladies as regular commenters from the town’s Facebook page. Todd usually kept him informed of the chatter, but even Neal kept an eye on this particular group of women. They were in the coveted twenty-five to forty-year-old age range that were mostly undecided. It drove Neal nuts that they hadn’t managed to get through to that demographic while Beckerman seemed to have gained their support early on.
For an instant, unease gripped him. Lord only knew what Amber could be saying to them.
”Mr. Mayor!” Amber called, and he steeled himself for the worst before crossing the street.
Whatever it was, he would deal with it. She just didn”t know the rules of politics. He could fix anything that she managed to fuck up for him, he told himself as he joined them.
“Hi, Mr. Mayor,” Amber said as he approached. Theo studied her for signs of mischief, but she looked excited. “I was just chatting with my new friends about where they got their green juice, and wouldn”t you know, it’s right next to Lily’s new studio.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering where she was taking this. “Is that right?” he said pleasantly enough. Puddin’ howled, and he automatically reached out his arms to hold her. The old girl rubbed her face alongside his in ecstasy and swiped at his cheek with her tongue. Theo absently petted her. She didn’t like to be ignored.
”We were just chatting about how much you enjoy green juice too, and I thought how fun would it be to do a juice date with the mayor?” she said, her eyes twinkling. “That way you could hear about what matters to your constituents on a more casual, regular basis.”
Theo saw where she was going, and he was impressed.
”Oh, yes, we love going to the juice bar, and I”ve been meaning to ask you about that petition we had going around to put a dog park next to the canal.” A woman with a yoga mat strapped to her back nodded approvingly at him. “I can see you’re a dog lover too, Mr. Mayor.”
“Yes, and we’ve been saying for years that Northfield needs a Little League complex for our kids,” another woman chimed in while her friends nodded. “We tried to get to a community meeting to talk about it, but evenings are hard for me to leave the house with kids’ sports and getting them to bed on time, you know?” Theo didn’t, but he nodded, fascinated.
Amber smoothly made plans for a weekly juice date with anyone who wanted to come to talk with him informally, all the while Theo was internally shaking his head. He had walked over thinking he was going to clean up a mess, and Amber had single-handedly created an authentic way to connect with a whole demographic he had never talked with before.
“Wait! Before you go, let’s take a selfie for the mayor’s new social media channels.” Amber herded them all together, and Theo found himself grinning at the phone while Amber snapped away.
He shook his head silently as they walked away. A dog park? A baseball complex? How was this the first he had heard of this?
Amber looked up from her phone. “There. Posted. You totally thought I was going to ruin things for you, didn”t you?” she asked with a sly look on her face.
Theo smiled. ”Race you back to the apartment.”
”Nope,” she said immediately. She stopped walking and crossed her arms. “I already did my two miles.
“You walked the second one.” He held her elbow and herded her into a fast walk.
“I’m tired. It”s the end of the week. Don”t I get a rest day?” She sounded so woeful that Theo couldn’t help but laugh.
”You get a rest day tomorrow. Come on. I’ll make you carrot juice this time.”
“Oh, goodie.”