I look back down at her. "You know, you sure are sweet, aren't you? I'd love to keep you, but my landlord has a strict no-dogs policy. Plus, I work so much I'm rarely home, and that wouldn’t be fair to you, would it?"
She whines at me as if understanding and slumps down to her belly, chin on her paws.
A door opens and a middle-aged woman comes to the counter; she's short and plump with a bouffant bottle-blond bob and chunky costume jewelry, wearing mom jeans and a baggy T-shirt, with a blue vest emblazoned with a cat and dog logo and the words "Three Rivers Animal Rescue."
"Hi!" She's loud and effusive. "I'm Gloria." She leans over, resting her prominent chest on the counter. "And who do we have here?"
"She literally knocked me over just now. I was walking near my house over on Elm near First Street. She's a stray, but she's been trained. Good on the leash, jumped right in the car. She's a sweet girl, I just can't have dogs where I live."
Gloria comes around from behind the counter and approaches the dog carefully, letting her sniff before crouching to say hi. The dog greets her with kisses and a puppy grin.
"Oh, sheisa darling, isn’t she? Too bad you can't take her, huh?"
I give the dog a ruffle of her ears. "I really wish I could, but my landlord has a very strict policy."
"Well, don't you worry. We have plenty of space, and I think I know someone who just might be a good home for this girl." Gloria clips a collar around the dog's neck and then a short lead. “I’ll take her back."
"That's it? I don’t need to do anything else?" I ask.
"Nope, we're good."
A digital bell chimes as the door behind me opens. I feel…I don't know. A tingle down my spine. A frisson of something electric.
Frowning, I glance over my shoulder to assess the source of the feeling.
"Oh." I blink in shock at the mammoth, terrifying human being standing just inside the doorway. "Um. Hi."
"Mmm." He juts his chin up with a terse grunt that barely counts as communication.
At five-seven, I’m not exactly pint-sized, and nor am I diminutively built. So I'm not used to feeling tiny.
But this man.
Dear goodness.
He's a colossus.
At least six inches taller than me, maybe even more like eight, he's not just tall. I mean, heistall, but he's just…freaking enormous. His shoulders are titanic boulders bulging at the seams of his dirt-smeared black T-shirt, which bears the logo of Crowe Demolitions on the left breast. The shirt is so big I could wear it as a nightgown, and I’d probably swim in it. Yet on him, it's skin-tight.
His arms?
Lordy. Literally the size of my thighs. His chest is massive and hard, bulging with muscle and tapering to his waist. I've read the term "tree-trunk legs" before but never really visualized it until now. They're veritable sequoias sheathed in dirty, faded denim. His boots are probably as long from toe to heel as my arm is from fingertips to elbow.
The shock doesn’t stop there.
He’s a ginger. Bright red hair, and alotof it. It's loose and wild and in desperate need of care. It's obvious he just let it grow and doesn’t really know much, if anything, about caring for it. If I had to guess, I’d say he either washes it with bar soap or has one of those all-in-one bottles.
And his beard. Dear goodness, his beard. It's a real-deal mountain man thing, bushy and chaotic, hanging to his chest in an explosion of red.
My fingers itch to get all up in his business, washing, trimming, braiding.
Yet, behind and beneath the wildman hair and beard, he has deep, probing hazel eyes somewhere between green and gray. He gazes down at me, assessing me—he seems almost…shy? Not fearful, but…I can't place it.
"Didn't mean to startle you." His voice is the rattling rumble of an approaching freight train, low and quiet and powerful.
"I…no, you didn't. Well, you did, but it's fine." I smile up at him.
His brows knit at my smile as if he's puzzled by it. And that's when I get it—given his size and shocking appearance, he's probably used to people shying away from him. The tattoos wreathing his forearms and disappearing under his sleeves probably don't help, either.
