Her eyes went soft for a few long seconds before she sighed. “It’s okay. It’s not like we would’ve worked out, anyway.”
I frowned. “What? Why?”
I for sure needed to know the answer because I wanted her in my bed. I wanted her in my life.
I’d learned my lesson.
She shrugged, suddenly looking uncomfortable.
“No reason.” She shrugged.
CHAPTER 8
I love your personality, but that dick is a huge bonus.
-Text from Carmichael to Croft
CROFT
Her phone went off, and she dove for it, looking for all she was worth as if she was desperate for something to change the subject.
Her face fell the moment that she read what was on the screen.
“What is it?” I asked quietly.
She frowned hard at the screen.
“A week or so ago I paired Danger, that malamute I told you about months ago, with a prospective owner. The owner just contacted me, telling me that they don’t think that they can keep her. That she’s too skittish, and every time they get near her, she pees all over the floor.” She sighed. “Shit. That poor dog.”
The thought of her business venture, the one that paired dogs with their owners, usually made me smile.
But hearing that her dog that she just paired, the one that she’d taken a liking to, had been rejected, stung.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now they bring her back to me.” She shrugged. “They said that they would drop her off tomorrow, and they’d like to try again with another dog.”
She grimaced.
“Is that okay with you?” I asked.
She made a face. “It’s fine, it’s just that I’ve found that usually when they give up one dog, they’re not really sure what they want, and they’re just trying to try them all out without really intending to keep one. That’s what happened to Sally’s previous owners.”
“Sally?” I asked.
“Sally is a Doberman. She’s a little rambunctious and likes to dig. She also can scale a six-foot privacy fence, so she either needs lots of land to roam, or an owner that’s not going to let her out and forget about her. Because you do that with Sally, and she’s gone. She’s just a curious little toot.” Carmichael lit up when she spoke about her dogs.
“Where’s Sally now?” I asked. “I know that you were keeping Danger at home with you, right?”
She nodded. “I am. Was. Will be again, I suppose. As for Sally, I have her staying with a friend.”
“What friend?” I asked.
“Schultz,” she answered. “I think that I might try to convince Schultz to keep her, though. They’re really good together, and even more, the kids are really good with her, too. She doesn’t wander when they’re around to keep her entertained.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Do you have feelings for Schultz?”
I shifted uncomfortably once the words left my mouth, not because of the gunshot wound to my shoulder, but because I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that.
One, I was kind of scared of the answer. Two, I didn’t want to hate Schultz, because he was a great workout partner and beginning to become a really good friend.
It was the expression on her face that had my abdominals loosening.
“Schultz is a friend,” she answered. “That’s it. That’s all he’ll ever be. I’m not saying that I don’t want kids, but I think that everything that comes with Schultz would be a pain in the ass thanks to who his sister is.”
Nivea, Schultz’s sister, had once dated Flint, Carmichael’s brother.
Things had gone fantastically wrong, and at the end of the day, every time someone ran into Nivea, she made it a very, very big deal.
Just last week I’d heard about Camryn and Flint running into Nivea and the kids at the grocery store.
Apparently, it’d been a rather large blowout on Nivea’s part, to the point where the cops were called.
And Schultz, being one of the responding officers, had to deal with a family dispute that involved his own family.
Nivea and Schultz shared custody of their nieces, but Schultz was currently taking her back to court to get even that small amount of time she got to spend with them revoked.
“The only reason you’re not dating him is because of his awful sister?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink.
“Not the only reason, no,” she admitted. “Schultz is nice to look at and all, but he’s just not… it for me.”
Was that a deep breath I could take? Or was it just because I’d repositioned my body?
“Oh,” I said. “So, you’d be willing to go out with me?”
She looked at me oddly.
“Croft,” she said softly. “I’m not doing this with you right now. You’re high on pain meds, you’ve just been shot, and neither one of us is thinking very clearly right now. Can we just please eat, watch a movie, and not talk about this?”
I’d give her that out.
For now.
Until the pain meds had worn off, and I wasn’t currently falling asleep.
But when I woke up in the morning? Game on.
We finished our dinner in relative silence, but every once in a while, we would laugh at something that was said on the television program she was watching.
However, by the time that I was finished with my food and was leaning into the couch with my head lolling to the side, I couldn’t stop myself from succumbing to sleep.
The thing was, I wasn’t mad that I did.
Because a few hours later when I woke up to her laughing, it was one of the best feelings in the world.
When my eyes opened, it wasn’t just the pain that had me waking up. It was the smile on Carmichael’s face as she read something on her phone.
“What
