Chapter Thirteen

Caleb had three new stitches and a beauty of a shiner thanks to a high stick in the Detroit game when he walked into Fido’s Café on Forty-Third Street and Westin Avenue for date number four.

Calling it a café was a local joke. It was a dog park surrounded by benches, and some entrepreneurial food truck vendors had set up on the street beside it. Every Saturday morning, the place was packed with dogs in the fenced-off play area making furry friends and their human counterparts milling around, trying to do the same.

He scanned the massive outdoor brunch crowd for a short redhead with a giant dog, spotting Anchovy first—or was it that the Great Dane spotted him? Either way, the beast came galloping across the green space outside of the fenced-in section, pulling Zara behind him. Bracing himself, Caleb prepped for the onslaught as an older woman next to him let out a squawk of alarm and a pair of young dads yanked their toddler out of the way. Anchovy was clueless to all of it. The dog didn’t stop until his paws were on Caleb’s chest and the dog’s wet nose practically touched his.

“Hey there, fella.” He scratched Anchovy on his special spot behind his ears. “Miss me?”

It was a rhetorical question when it came to the dog, but he really wanted an answer from Zara, because he sure as hell had missed her. The air around them was electrified as he watched her, wondering if she was wearing black panties again today. Were her nipples already straining against the material of her bra? Had she woken up wet, knowing they were in a countdown to getting to see each other again? Fuck, even thinking those questions had his dick getting thick against his thigh as he adjusted his stance before he embarrassed himself.

The dog must have realized there was an undercurrent, because Anchovy went back down on four legs, then sat down on the ground.

“Oh my God,” Zara gasped, taking off her sunglasses and peering up at him. “Your face.”

His hand went to the bandage covering his stitches. It looked worse than it was. “It’s nothing.”

Raising herself up on her tiptoes, she took a closer look. “It was that asshole who got away with that high stick, wasn’t it?”

He was about to answer when the meaning behind her words sank in. “You watched my game?”

“It might have been on.” She took a half step away and slid her sunglasses back on. “You know how Anchovy likes to sit on the remote.”

“Don’t try to cover it up,” he said, his ego growing twelve sizes in three seconds. “You interrupted your Law and Order binge to watch my game.”

“Fine. I was curious,” she said. “Before I met you, I’d never watched a game before.”

He almost fell over. “Never?”

“I’m more of a baseball person.” She fanned her face with both hands. “There’s nothing like those pants.”

Caleb had spent his life in locker rooms; he knew when someone was busting his chops. “I’m going to take this as a challenge to win you over to the hockey side of things.”

They spent the next half hour talking hockey while Anchovy played with a bunch of other dogs in the park. She’d just finished a question about the point of icing when a guy in a T-shirt emblazoned with the Doghouse Boot Camp logo on it blasted a whistle.

“Bramble daters! Bring your good boys and girls over here—it’s time for Doghouse Boot Camp.”

“I’ll give the Bramble app one thing, the dates are definitely not your typical dinner and a movie,” Zara said, getting up from their bench and holding out her hand. “You ready for date number four?”

He took her hand, entwining his fingers with her much smaller ones as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “I don’t know about Anchovy, but I am.”

…

Zara fought to hold in her laugh as Anchovy broke down Caleb one treat at a time.

Hands on his hips, ultraserious expression on his face, Caleb told the dog to sit. Anchovy just stared at him and wagged his tail.

Caleb nudged the stubborn dog’s hind end. “Sit.”

Her devious little beast didn’t sit. Instead, he did that whole puppy-dog-eye thing, and the big tough hockey player folded like a half-cooked pancake and gave him the treat anyway.

“You can’t do that,” she said, doing her best to sound serious because she was right. “He’ll never learn.”

“It won’t hurt anything,” Caleb said as he fed the dog another biscuit.

Zara scoffed. “You saw how people scattered when he came sprinting over to you—he scared them half to death. He needs to learn some manners.”

“He’s got some, it’s just that they’re his own.” Caleb reached out and patted the dog on the head.

Anchovy, traitor that he was, immediately sat down, gazing up adoringly at them both. What in the world was she going to do with them? They were both nothing but trouble. Of course, she only had Caleb for one more date. The fizzy little champagne bubbles popped one after another, leaving her deflated when she should have been elated.

She was nearly to her goal of completing five dates to help her dad get his SAG card (he was already filling out his paperwork) and to get her as Gemma’s plus-one to the Friends of the Library charity ball. Plus, she had the added bonus of her vagina cobwebs being utterly and thoroughly cleaned out—which sounded gross when she thought it out loud in her head that way, but what the hell, it was true.

Caleb continued. “I just know that some people—and dogs—learn a little differently than others.”

Her chest tightened as she pictured him alone in front of that classroom. If she had access to a time machine, she would love to go smack that teacher up side the head. “So what was your mom’s reaction to that teacher who was such an ass?”

“She told me to buckle down, try my best.” He squatted next to Anchovy, keeping all his attention on the dog, as if looking at her and saying the words was too much. “That’s Coach Britany’s answer to just about everything—figure out your goal and work harder. The thing was that I hadn’t been slacking. It’s a processing thing, not a lazy thing. I don’t know that she understands that even today.”

Emotion clogged her throat and her chest burned as she took the three steps over to him. For once, she towered over him, but she’d never felt more helpless. The lasting hurt of old wounds was something she knew all too well, and if she understood how to heal them, she would have done so by now. But she didn’t. So she did the one thing she could to try to help—she ignored the little voice in her head warning her that she was on the edge of breaking the no-relationship rule and reached out to him. She combed her fingers through his thick hair, pulling his head close so he leaned it against her waist. They stood like that, her, Caleb, and Anchovy, an unbreakable triad if just for that minute, before breaking apart.

“Our parents make us who we are and they make us crazy,” she said, wishing there was more she could do.

“Yeah,” Caleb said, standing up and flashing a grin at her that almost reached his eyes. “We’re completely well adjusted.”

Okay, she could play along. “Which is why your mom picked out your date and my best friend blackmailed me into coming.”

“Do you regret it?” he asked, dropping the act, his gaze searching her face.

They were on some sort of edge here; one move either way and they’d go straight over. He wasn’t hers to fall for, though. They were total opposites in more than just mashed potatoes or dog training philosophies. They were opposites where it counted. He went by his gut and trusted his instincts. She couldn’t help but admire that faith in the universe he seemed to have, but that wasn’t her. It never would be. They couldn’t work, and she needed to remember that. They both did.

“No. It’s been fun,” she said, putting enough cheer in her tone that it almost sounded genuine. “Now we have to get to teaching Anchovy the basics of rolling over.”

She went straight to the handout the trainer had given them with step-by-step directions. Caleb, however, dropped into a plank position on the grass next to Anchovy. The dog, no doubt sensing fun was afoot, immediately did his best to copy the move. Then Caleb rolled over and the dog did the same.

“Sometimes you have to take a chance on something fun,” he said. “It almost always works out.”

And as they got back to getting Anchovy to work for his treat biscuits, she couldn’t shake the idea that he might be right. How many times had she heard the same advice from Gemma or her dad? Maybe this time, taking a chance on something fun was just what her rigid, workaholic self needed—if only for the date and a half of time that was left with Caleb. As long as she kept remembering that, she’d be okay after it was all over.

…

Caleb spent the next forty-five minutes with Zara trying to teach Anchovy some manners. It went about as well as could be expected for a dog who thought he was a human and didn’t need any learning. The best part was watching him think around the trainer’s tricks and doing just what needed to be done long enough to get a biscuit and a pet before going back to trying to start a mutiny among the other dogs to get back to the play park. By the time the session was up, even the trainer was laughing as Anchovy led the rest of the dogs in a game of chase.

“I definitely went wrong somewhere,” she said, shaking her head.

“No way, that dog is golden.” And so was this opportunity.

This time he took Zara’s hand as they walked back toward the bench near the play park, but instead of stopping there, he led her behind a tree next to it. Hands on either side of her hips, he bent down to kiss her, but she stopped him with the palm of her hand against his chest.

“Hold on.” She stepped up onto a gnarled exposed root that gave her a few more inches off the ground. “Now you need to make up for making me wait so long to properly welcome you home.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice—especially not with that look on her face. Closing the distance between them, he dipped his head down and captured her mouth in a kiss that was the best he could do considering they were both dressed and in public. Her lips parted, and he slipped his tongue inside, tasting her, teasing her until she was pressed against him. It wasn’t that the rest of the park disappeared, it was that it didn’t matter anymore. He had Zara and she was making those sweet, needy sounds, and he could give her exactly what she wanted.

But not here.

He couldn’t afford the bad headline of Hockey Player Arrested For Public Indecency, but more importantly, she didn’t deserve to be at the center of all that. It took just about every last ounce of his self-control, but he pulled back from the edge. They were both sucking in deep breaths as they disentangled from each other.

“Welcome home,” she said, her voice breathy.

Unable to stop himself from touching her, he brushed a strand of bright-red hair behind her ear. “Glad to be back.”

Holding hands again, they walked back around the tree to the bench. Judging by the looks the other dog owners gave them, they hadn’t been as discreet as he’d been hoping. Some people were amused, others openly curious, and a handful were staring hard, looking at him as if they knew him but just couldn’t place how. All the attention made the back of his head itch and his lungs tighten.

All of a sudden, Zara’s grip on his hand tightened and he looked down. Her face was serene, the sun highlighting the sixty billion freckles covering her face, but the tight lines of her mouth told him she’d noticed.

“So, what’s the post-date video plan for this one?” she asked as they sat down on the bench with a perfect view of Anchovy playing with another dog. “Do you know?”

The question yanked him out of the panic zone, and he tapped his fingertip against his thigh three times, the old routine settling him.

“The instructions Bramble sent the team PR guru about this date was that we were supposed to do a casual video of ourselves, talking about the process and what we were hoping to get out of date five and beyond.”

The last word hung in the air between them, a finish line he really didn’t want to cross anymore.

“I guess it would be kinda mean to let them in on our rule number one of no actual relationship after all this,” she said. “They really do have something cool here. I might try it again after the ball next week. Gemma is never going to let me hear the end of that, though, after she and a regrettable amount of tequila got me here in the first place.”

If any part of him had been wondering—and to be truthful, all of him had—about what was beyond date five for them, that pretty much answered it. There would be no more adjusting the rules—and he fucking hated it.