Page 55 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

He looked at me for a long moment, and I realized I was holding my breath in anticipation of his response.

Finally, his eyes narrowed and he took a step closer to me, leaning on the desk. “What if I don’t agree to that?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Then that’s it. We go back to…”

“To pretending we don’t gravitate to each other? To pretending we don’t want to rip each other’s clothes off? To pretending we’re not making excuses to see each other?”

“I haven’t made excuses to see you.” Had I? I didn’t think I had.

“Oh.” He grinned. “Okay, I guess that was just me then.”

Despite myself, I felt myself grinning as I tried to stay focused on the conversation at hand. “We go back to the way things were.”

“So there’s no room for negotiation, on any of them?”

Part of me was really curious to see which rules he didn’t agree with. Another part of me was terrified, because the truth was, there was a good chance the man standing in front of me could easily persuade me to his side.

I took a deep, fortifying breath. “No.”

“Fine. I accept.”

“That easily?”

“Sure.”

I stared at him suspiciously. “Why do I feel like I’m missing something?”

“Because you are.”

My heart pounded in my chest. “What?”

He leaned closer. “You made a lot of rules about what we can’t do, sweetheart. I’m just thinking of all the things we can.”

With that statement, he turned and walked out the door, leaving me hot, bothered, and my mind filling in the blanks of what he might mean by that.

19

SHOPLIFTING THE POOTY

Dean

Maverick was already balanced on the split-rail fence by the time I slogged across the muddy pasture, his boots swinging as if he was testing the laws of physics. He tried to whistle through the gap in his teeth, produced something that sounded like a dying smoke detector, and looked proud about it.

That’s when the goats descended.

They mobbed him like paparazzi on a red carpet, and he greeted every single one of them by name, pointing with the authority like some visiting dignitary to the United Nations of barnyard animals.

“Hi Vincent, hi Goatie, hi Nanny, hi Chew-Baaa-Ca, hi Selena!”

Vincent Van Goat, Goatie Hawn, Nanny, Selena Goatmez, and Chewbacca all nosed at his hands and legs, sniffing for breakfast.

Once he’d said hello to everyone, we loaded their troughs together. Afterward, he asked if we could check the chicken coop, because Princess Laya had been “looking sad,” which mostly meant she’d lost a few feathers and now wore the hunched, paranoid expression of a retiree expecting home invaders.

I found myself kneeling in the straw for twenty minutes, listening to Maverick talk about his new preschool friend “Scooter” (real name: Iggy), and how they were building a secret fort behind the sandbox, and how the big kid, Caden, was maybe an alien, and how if I ever needed backup in a “spy mission” I should let him know.

“You’re really good at sneaking,” he observed. “You don’t even make noise when you walk.”

It was supposed to be a quick animal feed before work, but Maverick needed to talk to each animal and make sure they ate enough. I checked the time on my phone and saw I was going to be at least thirty minutes late to the office. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. Every morning I shouldered a little more responsibility for this kid’s happiness, and every morning it felt less like a chore and more like the most natural, inevitable thing in the world.