The sound of heavy wheels rolling over gravel rumbled up to meet her as she walked the short path back to her car. She wasn’t fully prepared to make conversation with Dell again this early in the morning, so she rushed to open her car door before Dell opened his.
And she almost would have made it, too, if she hadn’t been interrupted by a dog headbutting her thigh.
“Well, hello there.” She held out a hand for the panting, amber-haired pup to smell before she crouched down to give them a proper ruffle behind their ears.
“Crosby,” Dell’s goosebump-inducing voice called. “And Nash—dammit.”
And then there were two.
Mae’s grin grew as she extended her pets to the new dog, their broad, solid body covered in mostly gray fur but for the white on its chest and three of its paws. One of its ears appeared to have been mostly torn away at some point, or perhaps it was a birth defect. Either way, barking wake-up call or not, the soul in their eyes wrapped around Mae’s heart at once.
“Nash, Cros, come on, give them some space.”
Mae stood, facing Dell, who?—
Who stood with his hands on his hips, wearing a faded University of Michigan T-shirt, darkened with sweat at the collar, and black athletic shorts that were just short enough on his thick legs to look indecent.
Just short enough to reveal that Dell McCleary had a thigh tattoo. What looked to be the roots of a tree, spread out beneath his sandy leg hair.
Mae blinked her gaze away from Dell’s thigh to his face and found that she had absolutely nothing to say.
“Sorry,” he said. “Hope the others didn’t wake you up this morning. Young’s still relatively new around here. Barks every time a bird flies too close to the house.”
Dell’s hair was damp with sweat, too. He wiped the back of his wrist over his forehead. His T-shirt clung to his belly in the most perfect of ways. A way that made Mae want to lift up the cotton and dig her fingers in.
“Gotta go,” she eventually got out.
Dell nodded as he stepped back. Whistling for his dogs, he headed toward the house before he paused, turning toward where Mae still stood frozen.
“Hey. You need a recommendation for a plumber?”
“Oh, no.” Finally finding her voice, Mae waved her phone, which she’d been clutching in her hand. “I already asked Liv for all her preferred contractors two weeks ago.”
Dell frowned, staring into the treeline.
“Who’d she say for plumbing?”
Mae consulted the list she’d copied into her notes app.
“Art Greenwood.”
Dell harrumphed in seemingly reluctant agreement.
“Send me the estimate,” he said after a beat. And then he turned and took his sweaty ass self into his gorgeous house.
Mae huffed as she got into her car, picturing Dell scowling down at Art Greenwood’s estimate, that dangerously attractive face coloring her dream with disdain.
* * *
The IGA on Hastings was easy to find after all the studying of Greyfin Bay Mae had done over the last month, which was a good thing, considering her cell service was absolute shit out here. Google Maps had said “no thank you” when she’d attempted to call it into service for reassurance.
But she’d found the IGA anyway. And she was attempting to take that as a good sign.
The moment she spotted Liv, though, and Liv spotted her back—a wide, crooked grin splitting open her face—a muscle in Mae’s gut she hadn’t even known she’d been clenching let go.
She had confirmed Liv’s queerness in one of their very first text exchanges, three weeks ago.
My wife would’ve loved to have your store, Liv had said.She was a huge reader.
