Page 119 of Wag More Bark Less

That might make me a fucked man, but I no longer cared.

I plunged harder, faster.

Two weeks.

Maggie called out my name, her nails digging into my shoulders.

She came apart first, and my ability to hold back shattered. I buried myself deep, deeper, deeper, and let go.

I had two weeks to make the woman I loved realize she was already home, and I was going to give it everything I had.

FORTY-TWO

LUKE

A shrill ring cut through the early morning quiet, and I cursed myself for not silencing my phone. It was too fucking early for my family to be bothering me. Too early for there to be an issue with the parade float. Until the sun crested the mountaintops, no one had a good enough reason to disturb what little sleep I’d gotten.

The ringing didn’t stop.

And I couldn’t find my damn phone.

“What’s happening?” Maggie asked with a groggy yawn.

“I can’t find my phone,” I grumbled.

“I think it’s mine, actually.” Maggie rolled to her side, reaching for the face-down phone on the nightstand. The screen lit up, the name Mom in big bold letters. Maggie sent the call to voicemail and dropped the phone on the bed. “Ugh, doesn’t she know it’s too early to call?”

Her phone rang again, and panic seized my chest.

Something’s wrong.

“You should answer that,” I said, keeping my voice even as to not alarm Maggie. But I recognized this sixth sense of mine well enough to know something was off.

With a dramatic sigh that only made her more adorable, she hit the answer button and put the phone on speaker. “Mom, it’s two hours earlier in⁠—”

“Violet’s in labor.”

Maggie shot up to sitting. “What? But how? She’s not due for three weeks. And she’s always late.”

“Well, someone forgot to tell her baby that.” The woman sounded exasperated, which I recognized easily enough as concern. Something else was wrong. “There’s been some . . . complications.”

“What kind of complications?”

“She’ll be okay. Baby, too . . . But how soon can you get here?”

I didn’t let myself think about what this call meant. I couldn’t. I tossed the covers aside and got into action, gathering Maggie’s things.

The priority was getting her on the road as soon as possible. Her family needed her, and I wouldn’t get in the way of that. With a twenty-hour trip ahead of her, she couldn’t drag her feet.

Ellie trotted after me, whining as I collected stray clothes, a hairbrush in the living room, a romance novel in the kitchen. There were socks all over the house, of course. I picked them up and dropped them in Ellie’s wicker basket.

She nosed me hard in the back of the knee.

“Don’t worry, Ellie Belly,” I said, kneeling down to give her some affection. “I’m keeping the ones you gave me.”

“How many socks did she give you exactly?” Maggie asked.

“A few.”