Chapter 6
NOLAN
“Gary, you know you aren’t allowed in the front seat.” I don’t know why I bother with the speaking at all. Now that Gary’s fallen instantly in love with Bree, he doesn’t hear a thing I say anymore.
“But he fits so perfectly in my lap,” Bree counters in her special sweettalking voice, mostly to Gary, as she rubs both hands along his cheeks.
The traitor eats it up. “Are you really so concerned about getting dog hair up here that you’d exile him to the back?
” This, she says in a normal unimpressed tone to me.
“He’s safer in the back,” I point out, reluctantly putting the truck in drive and heading down the rutted dirt road back toward the highway.
If I wait to win this argument, we’ll be here until Monday.
But that doesn’t stop me from adding to my justification.
“If a moose steps out onto the road and I have to slam on my brakes, he could get seriously hurt sitting up here.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t let anything happen to your precious baby boy,” Bree promises, hugging both her arms around the husky. He melts against her, head on her shoulder, and those big eyes—one brown, one blue—point right at me. See, Dad? You can’t make me sit in the back seat now, can you?
The sight melts the outermost layer of ice around my heart. My ex-fiancé told me she was allergic to dogs—another lie. But seeing Bree treat Gary as though he’s her own has me picturing more moments like this one with the three of us. It feels so…normal. As though it was always a part of my life.
I scrub a hand through my hair. What the fuck is happening?
It’s way past Gary’s bedtime.
Mine too.
That’s it. I’m fucking tired and not thinking straight.
But what was supposed to be a quick check on the dog who spends most of his days sleeping now that he’s retired from mushing turned into him throwing a tantrum.
He went full stubborn old man dog when I tried to call him back inside the house so Bree and I could head back to town.
He only wanted to be where Bree was, which is why he hopped right over the center console and into her lap before I’d even buckled my seatbelt.
I give up the argument completely when I reach the gate, hopping out to shut it behind us.
Gary, seeming to realize how late it is, ends up curled in Bree’s lap, fast asleep by the time we return to the city limits.
“How opposed would you be if I borrowed Gary for a few days? Brought him back to my hotel—”
“You can’t kidnap my dog.”
“But you left him at home—”
“Only because The Iceberg isn’t dog friendly. But Caribou North will be.”
“Oh, good to know,” Bree says, gingerly pulling her phone out of her pocket without disturbing Gary. At a stop sign, I glance over and catch her texting notes into an app. In the middle of her typing, chimes sound like rapid fire, and her otherwise bright expression turns sour.
“Problem?”
“Nope,” she says, petting a roused Gary until he drops his head back into her lap while simultaneously slipping her phone into her pocket. “Just some spam I need to deal with.”
The fact that I want to ask more irks me.
I’m not here to get to know Bree Harper.
Even if we weren’t complete opposites or she wasn’t in North Haven specifically to complete a job for me, she’s not staying.
Monday morning, I’ll be giving the most important presentation for this project yet, and she’ll be boarding a plane.
And yet, the curiosity eats at me.
“Just spam?”
“That’s putting it nicely, but yes. Just spam. Nothing that’ll effect my ability to create the most jaw-dropping website you’ve ever seen—on time.”
I’m not satisfied with that answer or the way she deflects. My Spidey senses are on high alert. Well-trained senses I’ve learned never to ignore. But because it’s clear Bree isn’t going to be pushed on this right now, I force myself to put my protective instincts aside and leave it be. For now.
“Is this it?” she asks as we pull off the road and onto the dirt-covered construction site with a lone excavator parked off to the side.
“This is it.”
I put my truck in park and wait, expecting her to be unimpressed by the site that is little more than freshly disturbed earth.
Expecting her to tell me this was a waste of time before requesting to be dropped off at the hotel.
Instead, in some acrobatic ninja move, she gently lifts Gary off her lap and places the sleeping pup in the seat before pushing open the truck door and hopping out.
Gary doesn’t stir.
Bree, however, rushes toward the stakes with bright orange surveyors’ ribbon that mark the corners of the future building. One we hope to break ground on next week if all goes well with our investors’ meeting.
I glance at a sleeping Gary and sigh. “Guess it’s my turn to follow her around, huh?”
“Is this the outline of the building?” she asks when I get within earshot.
“You’re standing in the brewery side,” I explain.
“Walk me through the layout.”
So, for the next hour, I do.
I walk her through the layout, the vision of the combined brewery and restaurant, and the new expansion for the interactive kids space we hope to get additional funding to include.
All the while, Bree types furiously into her phone, asking the occasional question but otherwise allowing me to do all the talking.
For the first time since she admitted to not having read the itinerary, I feel the tension in my shoulders uncoil.
She’s got this. Why did I doubt that?
“How did you get involved in all this?” Bree asks.
“I came up to visit Jasper a few months ago, and he pitched the idea. I wanted in.”
“You came up to visit in winter?” She makes a scrunched up sour face that is so fucking adorable I want to kiss her. Full on pull her into my arms and kiss her until her body goes limp with bliss.
“I wanted to see the northern lights,” I say, leaving out the part about my life imploding despite how badly I seem to want to tell her.
Fuck, I need to get to bed. I’ve been running on fumes, and it’s messing with my cognitive abilities.
“Did you?”
“Oh yeah. They’re out a lot in winter. You’ll be able to see them from the sunroom.”
“The room with the glass ceilings?” Bree confirms, sliding the phone into her back pocket.
“Yeah.” I pretend not to notice the way her hand slides against the curve of her perfectly round ass, but the simple, innocent movement has me thinking about more than kissing her until her toes curl.
My dick twitches against my zipper as the image of taking her from behind dances through my filthy imagination once again.
“You should stare. I worked really hard to get this ass,” Bree says when she catches me, the look she gives me nothing short of devilish.
“I wasn’t—”
“Oh, you were, Boss.”
“Sorry, that was unprofessional—”
“Geez. Relax, Nolan. You rile so easily.”
The sound of my name on her lips has an unexpectedly powerful effect on my ability to think straight.
“I’m relaxed,” I counter.
Bree rolls those emerald green eyes at me. “You’re wound tighter than most website’s password requirements,” she says, moving past me, her tropical scent catching on the breeze.
When I don’t immediately follow her back to the truck, she turns toward me, feet shuffling backward in the dirt.
If I was unsure about whether she was flirting before, the mischievous twinkle in her eyes now erases all doubt.
She cups her hands around her mouth and calls back to me, “You should probably do something about that.”