“Bingo.” Just then, the little guy started to whine and nip at the tip of my finger. I hissed and yanked my hand back. His puppy teeth were like tiny little razorblades. “Speaking of, I think it’s time to feed this gremlin again before he takes my finger off. You ladies have fun. This round’s on me. I’ll swing back around as soon as I get a chance.”
It took fifteen minutes and three metaphorical fires that only I could put out, but I eventually made it back to my office, and just in the nick of time. Apparently the puppy decided it was fed up with waiting for his supper and let out a high-pitched noise somewhere between a howl and an angry bark right as I got my office door open.
“All right, I hear you, razor fang.” I reached into my apron and lifted him out, bringing him up to my face. “You’re going to be all kinds of trouble, aren’t you?” His response was to swipe his velvety pink tongue across the tip of my nose and puff his puppy breath in my face. I let out a small laugh and shook my head. “You’re lucky you’re so damn cute. I can’t possibly stay mad at you when you’re this adorable.”
“Is that all it takes to get on your good side?”
I whipped around with a gasp to find Raylan leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. “Uh... hi.” I tucked the puppy against my chest, where he promptly started to bathe the underside of my chin with kisses.
Raylan moved into my office, pushing the door closed behind him and shrinking the normally decent-sized space with his presence. As he grew closer, I noticed his wheat-colored hairappeared a little darker than usual, the strands damp from what I could only assume was an earlier shower. He closed the last two steps between us, his distinctive leather and pipe tobacco scent invading my senses.
“Hey,” he returned in that smoke and sin voice that always made my insides turn to liquid. “I see the little guy’s feelin’ a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw him.” He reached out to stroke beneath the puppy’s chin and earned himself a nip for his trouble.
“Careful,” I warned, barely suppressing my smile as Raylan shook out his injured finger and shot the dog a scowl. “He can be a vicious little gremlin when he’s hungry.”
I bent to place him in his bed so I could free up my hands to prepare the tiny bottle I got from Hardin, and the second I let go, he started in with those pathetic, gut-wrenching cries.
“You aren’t kiddin’. He is a little gremlin, isn’t he?” Raylan crouched in front of the puppy, and the second he was close enough, the little guy launched himself into his lap. He lifted him up so they were eye to eye. “Maybe that should be your name, huh, little man?”
I quickly turned my back on the sight of the sexy man holding an adorable puppy before I could melt into a puddle right there in the middle of my office. What was it about big men holding tiny animals that made a woman’s ovaries start working double time?
Clearing my throat, I shook off the stupor and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to help.”
I glanced over my shoulder just as Raylan rose to his full height with the puppy in his arms. He held him a few inches from his face, chuckling as the dog squirmed and nipped like crazy, trying his best to attack Raylan’s stubble-covered chin. “Help with what?”
“With our little terror.” He pointed a finger at the dog he’d just tucked under his arm like a football. “I said I would, remember? That he was both our responsibility?”
I blinked, my mind slow to grasp what he’d just said as his use of the wordoursunk in and sent a spark through parts of me thatshouldn’tbe sparking. “You... you came all the way down here to help with the puppy?”
Raylan’s brows pulled together as his head canted to the side. “Well, yeah. I went by your place first, but when I realized you weren’t there, I came here. After all, we’re in this together, right?”
Damn it. He was being sweet, and I didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to keep my guard up against sweet. It was so much easier to protect my heart when he was being an asshole. As it was, I could already feel the burn starting in my sinuses, warning me that I was about to get all soft and weepy. I didn’t do soft and weepy often, and when I did, it was usually over some poor, defenseless animal, but I felt the pressure building against the dam in my eyes. It was at serious risk of bursting if I didn’t pull myself together.
I lowered my eyelids and shook my head, giving myself a moment to silently shore up my defenses.
“Um, y-yeah. Okay... thanks.” I went back to preparing the bottle, keeping my focus on the task with the intensity of a person defusing a bomb. Anything to keep from looking back at a puppy-carting Raylan Bradbury. Hell, I could have made a killing, taking pictures of him with that dog and turning them into a calendar.
Christ, I needed to get my head screwed on straight. I went back to the task at hand, doing everything to tune the man out. If only it were that easy. That soft spot I’d always harbored for Raylan was still very much there, no matter how much I tried to ignore it.
“Hey, you all right?”
“Jesus!” I whipped around, damn near jumping out of my skin. One second he was across the office, and the next he was standing right behind me, so close I felt his breath caress the back of my neck. “Where did you come from? You’re like a freaking ninja.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up in a teasing smirk, the gunmetal flecks in his eyes dancing with mischief. It was a look I hadn’t seen on him in a long time. Not since we started fighting like cats and dogs over every little thing. “What’s got you so jumpy, Chaos? It’s almost like... you’re nervous or something.” He tilted his head to the side, his grin growing into a cunning smile. I was so busy watching those blue eyes swirl that I didn’t notice his hand coming up until his fingers brushed lightly across my temple, tucking a piece of loose hair behind my ear and setting off a flurry of butterflies in my belly. “What could you be nervous about, huh?”
Oh, that sexy, rugged bastard. He was playing games again. I was usually a hell of a lot better at giving as good as I got, but I hadn’t been prepared for this. I was struggling to keep from falling under whatever spell he was trying to weave, and that damn adorable puppy wasn’t helping matters one bit.
Fortunately, someone chose that very moment to knock on my office door, bursting the bubble surrounding us and saving me from myself, because a few more seconds and I wasn’t sure what could have happened.
The door swung open a second later. “Hey, Boss Lady—” Davis’s words cut off the instant he saw Raylan and me standingwaytoo close. I took a quick step back, nearly stumbling over my own feet. Raylan’s free arm shot out, wrapping around my waist and yanking me to him before I could fall on my ass.
Davis’s brows pulled together as I pushed against Raylan’s hold and put some distance between us, but it was too late. Thepress of all that hard, warm muscle against me penetrated my senses in the blink of an eye, muddling my mind more than it already had been.
“Everything good, Lenni?” Davis asked, his gaze darting between Raylan and me, the furrow between his brows deepening with his frown. Raylan’s scowl closely matched that of my bartender, and the air in the room suddenly grew sticky with toxic masculinity.
“Yep. All good, Davis. Is, uh... is there something you needed?”
