She stilled, hands dropping back to her sides, expression falling right along with them. “Yeah, that.”
I took her by the shoulders and leaned down to look into her eyes. From this close, they were as blue as the Mediterranean. “Ella, we’re friends now, right?”
“I hope so,” she answered.
“Then as my friend, I’m asking you to please stop worrying. Sometimes I need a push, or even a swift kick in the ass.”
She chewed her lip for a second as she thought this over. I had a sudden desire to lean forward and pull it out of her teeth with my mouth. For once, I didn’t suppress the thought. Her lips weregloriously full, a dusky shade of pink that would probably darken with use.
“But you’ll still tell me if I’m too much?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, hating that she thought I’d ever think that about her. I needed to find some way to fix our dynamic. Brian was right; this wasn’t fair to her. “Now can I please have my damn present?”
As I hoped, she grinned. She practically vibrated with energy beneath my hands, so I let her go. She bounded back toward the truck, her long legs eating up the ground. I followed after her, letting my gaze slide up those legs. The woman had a great ass. I’d noticed it the first night we met and had avoided looking at it since. The fact that I’d had to avoid looking at it spoke volumes.
Instead of opening the door, Ella stood on her toes and peered in through the window, waving me over. I joined her, confused.
“They fell asleep on the way over,” she whispered.
“They?They?Ella, what did you do?”
At the sound of my voice – which was elevated because of my surprise – the two little balls of white fluff on the backseat stirred. A small head with triangular ears rose from the one closest to the door. A pair of black eyes blinked open, and a little jaw dropped in a wide yawn, exposing a pink tongue and tiny razor teeth.
“Did you get me puppies?” I asked, tugging on her coat sleeve. I sounded like a little kid. Hell, Ifeltlike a little kid. Because puppies!
She smiled. “I did.”
I nudged her sideways out of the way with my hip and carefully pulled open the rear door. She laughed at me, but I was too far gone to care. The puppy already awake sniffed the air. The one beside it remained conked out. I tugged off a glove and reached forward to pet the one looking at me, and it immediately started whining as it tried to lick my fingers.
“They’re Samoyeds,” Ella said. “My friend Jen and her husband raise sled dogs, and right now, they have more puppies than they can handle. I offered to take a couple off of their hands for a few days. If you don’t want to keep them here, Jack has already offered.”
“I don’t have stuff for them,” I said, gently petting the puppy. “But yeah, I want to keep them.”
“I stopped in town and bought all the supplies you should need.”
Of course she did. “What are their names?”
“Jen’s kids named them, so don’t feel like you have to stick with them. The one you’re petting is Boots, and the other one is Doodle.”
“Boots and Doodle,” I said, testing the names out. As silly as they were, I didn’t hate the sound of them. “How can you tell who is who?”
“The collars. Boots’ is purple and Doodle’s is green. They’re both boys.”
“Hi, Boots,” I said, gently lifting him up. He was so small, and so warm, and so ridiculously fluffy.
Ella leaned past me to wake Doodle with a few gentle pets, then scooped him up too. We stood there next to each other in the driveway for a few minutes, cuddling the dogs and grinning like fools.
I shifted Boots to one arm and wrapped the other around Ella’s shoulders, pulling her in for a sideways hug. “Thank you so much for this, and for bringing everything they need. You fucking rock.”
Her smile was blinding. “You’re welcome.”
I released her, even though I didn’t really want to yet, and together we got the puppies and all their supplies into the house. She’d bought puppy food, dog bowls, toys, a pet brush, and something she called puppy pads, which were supposed to help with housetraining them.
“Jen said they’re already pretty good at letting you know when they have to go to the bathroom,” Ella said, laying a pad out by the front door while Doodle sniffed a circle around our discarded boots.
I side-eyed her. “You mean go pee-poop?”
She turned away. “I hate you forever.”
