A leather jacket tight across his shoulders met the top of a trim waist.
Then he pulled the dark helmet off, hanging it on the handlebars of the motorcycle.
Fletcher.
He’d shaved the scruff from his face and had gotten a haircut, trimming up the shaggy edges. I stepped away from my car and shut the door.
“You have a motorcycle?” I asked with a laugh as he walked toward me. An easy stride that ate up the concrete. He stopped directly in front of me, stepping into my space and placing his hands on my hips.
“It feels so good to be back to myself,” he said with a sigh as he leaned down and kissed my lips.
“So, how much of the real you am I going to be surprised about?”
He pulled back and smiled. “The bike is probably the only thing you’ll be surprised about.”
“Says the man who kept his job a secret for months…” I teased.
He backed me up until my back pressed against my car. “You’re the only one I’ve been able to be myself with. You’ve been the only real thing for me these past few months.”
He reached a hand up and brushed his fingers through my hair. “You got me through this job. I don’t think I could have done it without you.”
I sighed and leaned into his hand. “You’re right. You need me. I mean, you can’t even do your own laundry…”
He growled and grasped my sides. “Okay, sassy, you asked for it.”
I shrieked with laughter as he lifted me off the ground. “Wait! Wait!”
I wiggled, trying to slide out of his hold. I slid down his thighs to the ground. “I have a surprise for you. You have to go inside and wait in the living room with your eyes closed.”
Although he’d set me down, he didn’t release his hold on me. He raised an eyebrow at me and smirked. “Oh, really? What kind of a surprise?”
I laughed as he wagged his eyebrows up and down. “Not that kind of a surprise.”
“Well, damn.”
Pushing him back, I spun him around to face the house. “Go inside.”
I smacked his ass and his laughter filtered back to me.
I waited until he was inside before I turned around and opened my car door, grateful that the tinted windows hid the surprise from Fletcher’s eyes. Sitting on the floorboards chewing on the handle of my makeup brush sat a twelve-week-old boxer puppy. It stared at me with big, innocent eyes as I tried to convince it to let go of the makeup brush. My purse was spilled across the floor, and it looked as though the puppy had sampled a few other things—my Chapstick precisely.
It spit out the makeup brush and stood up, wagging its body from side to side as I picked it up.
“Come here, cutie. Let’s go meet Fletcher.” The puppy climbed up my chest to lick my chin. I pressed my cheek against the top of its head, and it snuggled under my chin. I only thought about it biting my throat once because I was too distracted by the sweet thing practically melting against me.
I walked up the sidewalk and opened the front door a crack. “Are your eyes closed?” I asked. I could see the outline of his body standing in the center of the living room, his back to me. I elbowed the door all the way open and stepped inside.
“No peeking!” I said as I kicked the door closed.
I stopped directly behind him.
“Okay. You can turn around and meet your gift.”
“Meet?” he asked as he turned around.
My only regret was that I hadn’t taken the time to video the moment. His eyes widened and his jaw slacked open. “You bought me a dog?” he asked, still staring at the adorable little bugger.
Grinning at the happiness in his voice, I nodded.
“You bought a dog.”
“I know you’ve been dying to have one. So I did some research, and I think this could be a perfect one.” He leaned forward to take her out of my hands. It was hard to let her go.
Fletcher looked at me in surprise. “You like her!” he accused with a smile.
I cleared my throat. I knew this was going to be an uncomfortable conversation. He’d never let me live it down. “Okay, fine. She’s not all that bad.” I snuck in another little scratch under her chin before Fletcher took her from me.
He proceeded to baby talk to her for the next five minutes.
No one else but the two of them existed in this room. And it was so ridiculously cute to see this biker wearing leather and helmet hair, coo and whisper to a puppy. I wished I’d gotten one for him sooner. He needed a dog.
“A boxer, isn’t it?” he asked as he let the puppy cling onto his shoulder and lick his chin.
“Yes, interestingly it was one of Grandma’s bridge friends who had a litter. Both the parents were nice and didn’t even try to bite me when I went to pick her up,” I explained.
“The people or the dog?” Fletcher teased as he rubbed the puppy’s ears.
“Very funny.” I brushed a hand against my eyebrow with the scar running through it. Biting dogs were no joking matter.
Fletcher tucked the puppy under his chin and looked at me with big, fake, innocent eyes. “Well, what are we going to do with it when I’m at work?”
“You can’t leave this sweet baby girl alone all day while you’re at work!”
“Well, my girlfriend doesn’t like dogs…”
I rolled my eyes at his obvious conniving. “It’s coming with me. My work is flexible enough that I can take it for walks in between projects and I’ll take her to a park to play at lunch time. It would be a crime to get a dog, then lock it up in the house all day. Besides, I have a big yard here. In the evenings it could run around here and be much
