Stevie knew from the deepest recesses of her soul that she was so going to regret this. “Come in.”
While he opened the screen, she picked up Jäger. He was doing a full-body wiggle, excited about a visitor. At least one of them was.
Stone walked in, his gaze shifting over the space. She was grateful she’d taken the time to clean up. It hadn’t been on her list of things to do (because it never was), but with Jäger, she was finding either she kept her stuff off the floor, or he ended up with it in his mouth. They hadn’t had him a full month yet, and she’d already had to toss three socks (none of them matching), a pair of flip-flops, one slipper (she still hadn’t found the other one), and what had been a perfectly good hairbrush before Jäger chewed the handle off.
“Beautiful place.”
“Thanks. You can hang your coat on the rack.”
He turned to look in the direction she was pointing as he shrugged out of his coat.
“It’s Nico’s. The house, I mean. He bought it when he was with Melanie. His ex. She wanted somethin’ big and fancy. All about perception, that one. And Nico … well, he was tryin’ to convince himself he could be happy with her.” Stevie spread her arms wide. “He ended up with this.”
“Does it make him happy?” Stone asked as he hung his hat beside his coat and removed his boots, leaving them near the door.
“I think it’s growin’ on him. I love it. It’s huge. Almost four thousand square feet. Open floor plan.” She was rambling, but she couldn’t help it. He made her nervous. “There’s a huge game room upstairs. We turned it into an office. Plus, it sits on five acres with no one behind us. What’s not to love?”
Now that his hat was off, she could tell he’d gotten a haircut since the last time she saw him. With the sides and back shaved short and the top stylishly messy, he looked much more like the boy she’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
Damn him.
“Can I get you somethin’ to drink? I was gonna make hot chocolate. But I can make some coffee.”
“I wouldn’t say no to coffee.”
Funny, that was the same thing Nico always said when she tried to get him to have hot chocolate. Was she the only one in the world who loved hot chocolate?
“What’s up, little guy?” Stone crouched down to pet Jäger. “I think you’ve grown since I last saw you.”
“He eats like a horse,” she said as she opened the cabinet to pull out the coffee. “Ihatethat he’s eatin’ processed food, but the fresh stuff is so expensive. I told Nico I wanted to create my own recipe and make it for him. I know I can come up with somethin’ that’s healthy and a helluva lot cheaper. But I wanna talk to the vet first. I’ve never had a dog before. Wouldn’t wanna give him somethin’ that’s not good for him. Or, you know, toxic.”
Realizing she had verbal diarrhea, Stevie pinched her lips shut and dumped the coffee grounds into the filter before flipping on the switch.
“You can have a seat anywhere,” she said when she turned around to find him standing in the kitchen, Jäger in his arms.
“Is he allowed on the couch?”
“He now owns the place,” she told him, grabbing the milk from the refrigerator and a glass measuring cup from the cabinet. “Nico just pays the mortgage.”
Stone laughed.
Stevie put the measuring cup, now filled with milk, into the microwave and grabbed the bucket of powdered cocoa. It was one of her guilty pleasures. She even kept some on hand all year round.
“Plus, he sleeps in Nico’s bed,” she continued. “I snuck him in mine one night, but when I woke up, he was gone. Since he won’t jump down on his own yet, I know Nico stole him. Freaked me out at first. I thought I squished him. We got him a kennel”—she pointed to the medium-sized cage with the padded mattress—“but it’s takin’ some time to get him used to it. I read somewhere that they feel safer in there, so that’s what we’re tryin’ to do. Get him to sleep in it.”
Andshe was doing it again.
Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself she hated this man.
Although hate was a pretty strong word. She’d definitely hated him fifteen years ago, back when he shattered her heart into tiny fragments that had rattled around in her chest for years. Now, she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about him. It really sucked that he’d gotten better looking with age. He was still big. Muscular and ridiculously tall. He made Nico look small in comparison, although he wasn’t.
She scooped a generous amount of cocoa into her cup and stole glances at Stone. It irked her that he was sitting on the floor playing with Jäger. Only good guys played with dogs like that. In her mind, she’d built Stone up to be this total asshole. The kind who snapped at old ladies and snatched the last gallon of milk when a single mom and her scraggly little kid were about to reach for it. It’d been the easiest way to deal with the residual heartache she felt. But she should’ve known Stone would still be the same, fun-loving, nice guy he’d always been.
“How do you take your coffee?”
Stone looked up. The moment his eyes met hers, she felt a blast of heat. He still looked at her the same way he had back then. Like someone just rang the dinner bell, and she was on the menu.
“Little sugar, splash of milk.”
