“This is what you do for work?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yep.” She lowered to her haunches, embracing them. She even allowed them to lick her face.
Christ, he couldn’t think of anything worse. But they clearly made her happy. “How the hell are you such an angry person if you love what you do so much?”
She threw a glare his way. “Look in the mirror and you might figure it out.”
Then she looked back at the dogs, and her scowl turned into a smile. It was so wide and uninhibited that his chest suddenly felt too fucking tight, and he couldn’t drag his gaze away if he tried.
Shit, she was gorgeous.
An older woman stepped up to them. “And who do we have here?”
Sky rose. “Pearl, this is Becket, the town fire chief. His team found this little guy, and he’s going to have a stay with us until his owners are found.”
“The Humane Society’s working on it,” Becket added.
The woman nodded, then looked at Sky. “Okay. So, separate him until we know he plays nice?”
Sky nodded. “Thanks.”
Pearl took the dog from him, and Sky went back inside without even sparing a glance his way.
He followed her. “This is a nice place you work at.”
“That’s kind, coming from a dog hater. And I own it.”
Wow. Impressive. But he should have figured that the neighbor who’d made it her life mission to hate him would start a business around the one animal he disliked.
“I don’t hate dogs. I just don’t—” He stopped and frowned. “Do you smell that?”
“The only thing I smell is the stink of your oversized ego.”
He grabbed her arm. “Sky—”
She spun. “Hey, what are you—”
“Smoke. Do you smell it?”
Her frown dropped and her eyes widened as her gaze flew behind him. Then she took off toward the end of the hall.
That’s when he saw it—a kitchen. And the damn oven was on fire. Flames roared behind the window in the closed door.
Becket cursed and jogged after her.
Sky turned off the oven and went to open the door, but he grabbed her wrist. “No. You’ll just feed oxygen to the flames.”
“So what do we do?”
He scanned the room, spotting the small, rectangular box mounted to the wall. Circuit breaker. He ran over to it, opened the metal door and flicked off the switch labelled oven.
“We wait,” he said as he moved back to Sky. “With no power or air, it’ll die out.”
“Should I open a window?”
“Wait for it to completely go out first, just as a precaution.”
She nodded.
