Grey has a grip on Jitter’s collar and is tugging him back closer to us.
The primitive sex beast in my vagina wants to know if his muscles are bulging under his coat.
The rest of me is smart enough to tell her to shut up if we want to survive this without a quill to my dog or to any of our faces.
The porcupine isn’t moving at all.
“Good boy,” Grey says to Jitter. “Good puppers. Back. Back we go.”
Jitter eases back onto Grey’s legs and whines.
Grey gets a grip around his body like he can hold back my hundred-pound dog if Jitter decides to charge.
I’m panting.
Grey grabs one of my hands and squeezes through our gloves, still clutching Jitter. “Gonna be okay.”
“I’m supposed to be the experienced mountain woman telling your beach bum ass that,” I whisper back.
“Quit being funny.”
We sit in silence for what feels like an eternity, Grey squeezing my hand and holding my dog until the porcupine eventually decides we’re not a threat and lumbers around the gazebo to climb under it.
“Time to go,” Grey says.
“Sotime to go,” I agree. “Thank you. For—just thank you.”
He drops my hand and grabs my coffee tumbler, which has leaked all over the ground. I untie Jitter’s leash from the picnic table leg and hold him tight while we scurry back to our cars.
Grey insists on seeing me into mine first, but he holds my door open after both Jitter and I are in the car.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.
I hold his gaze. “Likewise.”
“You’re playing dirty now?”
“Change might be inevitable, and I might have the utmost respect for you wanting to find peace and closure, but Bean & Nugget serves a vital purpose in our community. I won’t let it go without a fight.”
What he does next startles the crap out of me.
He leans into my car, pecks my cheeks, murmurs, “I hope you find what we need, but even if you don’t, looking forward to every minute of the next twelve days,” and then shuts me inside my car.
My breath whooshes out of me.
It’s game on.
And I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
For either of us.
19
Grey
Sabrina Sullivan has invadedevery one of my thoughts at every moment of every day, and it doesn’t matter what I do to try to shake her, she manages to cement herself in there even more firmly.
Worse?
