Page 82 of Spiced!

“I bring food everywhere. My abuela trained me right.”

“I know she did.” He took the box. “I’m not complaining.”

Brendan then walked through the post-vaccine instructions, including what to watch for, when to call, the timeline for the next round. I listened and nodded and tried to look like a man paying full attention to discharge instructions from a medical professional rather than one who was thinking about the fact that this was almost over and I was going to have to leave in approximately ninety seconds.

I had never before in my life stood in an exam room trying to slow down a vet appointment.

I had also never stared at a vet’s lips so much.

Who knew vets had sexy lips?

“Any questions?” Brendan asked.

“Uh, no,” I said. “I think I’ve got it.”

He pecked one last note into the computer file, then turned back toward us. I clipped Mofongo’s leash and did a quick check of the room the way I always did before leaving anywhere, the automatic inventory of a man who had left too many things behind in too many places.

“All right,” I said. “Thank you. Same time in three weeks?”

“Three weeks,” Brendan confirmed. “That should round out his shots. We can drop back to every six months from there.”

I nodded once and turned toward the door. My hand had just touched the handle when I felt Brendan’s fingers gripping my arm. I turned, not sure what to expect, and he was right there, closer than I’d registered. Before I could say or think or do anything at all, he kissed me.

There was no question on his lips, no hesitation, just his mouth on mine, warm and sure, the touch of a man who had been thinking about doing this for a while and had finally run out of reasons not to. I forgot what my hands were for.

Mofongo sat on my foot, which was the only thing tethering me to the room.

I don’t know how long it lasted. It was long enough that I became aware, at some point, of breathing in the same air he was breathing out, long enough that when it ended, I needed a second before I could locate my thoughts, which had scattered in several directions and were only slowly returning to my body.

Brendan pulled back just enough to create space between us. His hand reached up and brushed my hair back, setting my skin alight.

“I missed you,” he whispered, another shared breath.

In that moment, something happened in my chest.

I was suddenly aware that I was not speaking. And I was a person who spoke . . . a lot. Speaking was something I did constantly and well. I spoke to bread dough and dancing shoes and my abuela and rooms full of strangers. I had never once in my adult life been unable to locate words; and yet, there I was, in an exam room with a beagle on my foot, completely wordless.

Brendan’s mouth curved, left-side dimple and everything. If I’d been capable of forming sentences, I might’ve said something about the fundamental unfairness of that smile.

“Can I see you tonight?” he said. “After work? I don’t care what we do. Dinner, coffee, a walk, anything. I just—” Something shifted in his gaze, and his smile grew into something deeper. “I just need to see you.”

I tried to speak. I really tried. At least my eyes still worked, because I don’t think I could’ve blinked any faster than I did right then.

Mofongo chose that moment to whine, a trigger of sorts, returning me to my senses.

“Si,” I said. “Obviously. Yes. Of course. Dinner or coffee or whatever. Please. Yes.”

He stared at me for a moment longer with the warm, steady attention that had been dismantling me since our first glance, then he leaned forward and kissed me again, soft this time, unhurried, the kind of kiss that didn’t need anything except to be received.

He then stepped back, opened the exam room door, and looked at me with one eyebrow slightly raised. I stepped through the door, though I wasn’t entirely sure my feet were on the linoleum. Mofongo trotted out ahead of me, completely unbothered, his nails clicking on the tiles with the purposeful energy of an animal who had handled his appointments and was ready to move on with his day.

In the waiting room, Diane looked up from the front desk. She looked from me to Brendan, who had followed us out and was standing in the hallway with his hands in his lab coat pockets and his expression professionally composed. She looked at me again.

“Have a good afternoon, Mr. Voss,” she said, in a voice that contained nothing and was therefore the loudest thing I had ever heard.

“Thanks,” I said. “You, too.”

The October Tampa air smacked into me as we stepped out of the office, hot and sticky, the moist, dank armpit equivalent of weather. I stood on the sidewalk outside Brendan’s clinic for a moment. feeling the unguarded, slightly ridiculous feeling of a man who had not seen whatever that was coming.