I’m sure you two will be happy together? What the hell, Hart?
Her face falls, but like a rubber band, it snaps right back to a radiant smile.
“Oh, I didn’t adopt her for me.” Scarlett looks up at me, all wide-eyed innocence, and I’m instantly on alert, the muscles of my back and shoulders bunching with tension. “Oreo is the new office pet. She’s perfect, right?”
My mind goes blank. A literal blank slate. Or maybe it’s figurative. Fuck if I know, because did she just sayoffice pet?
“Excuse me?” I shake my head and hold up my palms in aback it upgesture. “You’re going to need to run that by me again. I don’t think I heard you correctly the first time.”
“Oreo is the new office pet.” She presses her cheek to the dog’s like they’re long-lost friends. “Just like we talked about at dinner Thursday.”
“What? I never said—” I rake a hand through my hair, searching for words. Searching for reason. “You can’t just—” What is happening here? Control is slipping through my fingers like sauce from a taco. “You don’t have the authority to do that. I didn’t approve this.” I jab a finger at the dog to drive the point home, and the little hairball smiles at me. Actually freaking smiles.
“Miles approved it, and technically he’s my boss, not you.” Her delivery is completely matter-of-fact as she scratches the dog behind its oversize batwing ears. “Besides, you said I should do my thing.”
“I meant do your thing with the survey, not this.”
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and I’m ninety percent sure it’s a farce. Scarlett is a bright woman. There’s no way she misunderstood my instructions. Unless she did so willfully.
“What the hell made you think I wanted a dog trotting around the office?”
“Be nice.” She shoots me a dark look, one that might cow a kinder man. “You’re going to hurt her feelings.”
“Her feelings?” I echo, my volume rising. “What about my feelings?”
Namely, shock at the fact that I’m being undermined and outmaneuvered.
Scarlett snorts, and the look on her face says we both know I don’t have feelings. Not real ones anyway.
Hartless.
“I was thinking about how you wanted to improve morale and drum up good press, and an office pet is the perfect solution. Two birds, one stone, so to speak. I ran it by Miles on Friday and he agreed.”
Traitor. How could he approve this without consulting me first?
One problem at a time. I’ll deal with my brother later—if he ever shows up.
I close my eyes and count to five, reaching for my sanity. “So you just went out and got a dog?”
“That is how pet adoption works,” she says, speaking slowly as if to a toddler.
Because I’m the one who’s completely lost it here.
“I never agreed to an office pet.” They’re messy. Loud. Distracting. “You realize that, right?”
Once again, her brows knit together in confusion—fake confusion. “Is that not what you meant when we discussed it?”
“I said I’d think about it. I didn’t say we were doing it.”
The corner of her mouth twitches, and it’s clear she knew exactly what I meant when I said I’d think about it.
So much for progress.
She’s enjoying this way too much for it to be anything but revenge.
“Congratulations on finding your fur-ever home, Oreo!” Scarlett coos as she steps forward and thrusts the dog into my arms. I have no choice but to take her. It’s that or let the squirming ball of fur crash to the floor. And even I’m not that big of an asshole.
The dog is full of energy and immediately starts climbing up my shoulder, her little nails digging into my shirt as she pulls herself up to lick my face. Her tongue glides over my cheek, warm and wet and—
