Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Ivy

“Oh, my God!” Evie squeals. “She’s so fluffy!”

“Easy, baby,” I tell her as she moves to the kennel.

But I should know my daughter better. She’s smart and gentle and knows how to behave around animals (something that’s mostly due to a rambunctious and mischievous pug named Steve that Lake’s girlfriend, Nova, owns).

She slows down and drops to her knees. “Hi,” she whispers.

Knox moves next to her, reaches for the latch on the kennel, and I’d have to be dead to not feel the little tail wag the pup gives him.

“This is Winter,” Knox murmurs, opening the cage and reaching to lift the pup out.

I nearly gasp at how tiny she is, at all the shaved spots and healing cuts, at the cast on her leg.

Knox said she’d been hurt, been close to the edge, but…

This was bad.

Really bad.

She must have been so scared.

My heart squeezes again.

Knox had saved her—I’m certain of that much. Just like I’m certain the pup knows it as well. I can see it in the adoring way she stares at him, in the trust she gives him when he maneuvers her into Evie’s lap.

“Will I hurt her?” Evie whispers, holding so still, her face an expression of concern.

“Not if you’re careful,” he tells her, taking her hand and gently placing it on Winter’s head. “She likes to be scratched behind her ears. Like this, see?”

I hold my breath as I watch them pet Winter, Knox calmly explaining her injuries, and what he’s learned about her so far.

And when Winter glances up at Evie, little tail wagging, tongue darting out to give Evie a kiss under her chin, honest to God, I feel my eyes well up.

“She’ll be so happy to be going home with you guys.”

I wrench my gaze away from the sight in front of me and see one of the veterinarians has come up next to me. “Oh, I’m not—” My throat tightens. “That’s to say… we’re not. Knox is just— My daughter…uh?—”

The brunette gives off a no-nonsense vibe, but she’s gorgeous, naturally pretty with the longest, thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on another human being. “Winter’s a fighter,” she says, saving me. Then she sticks out her hand. “Tammy Karlson.”

“Ivy Pierce,” I say, pulling myself together. “Knox and I work together. My daughter”—I nod at Evie—“loves animals. Knox was nice enough to let her meet Winter and help him get her settled at home.”

“Winter’s a lucky pup,” Tammy says quietly. “In more ways than one.” She tilts her head to the front of the clinic. “I’ll just get the paperwork together so you guys can get out of here.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

I jerk slightly, not realizing he’s come so close.

She puts her hand out for him to shake. “I’m just glad that we finally got here. Bring her back in immediately if there’s anything that worries you, but otherwise, we’ll see you in a month to get that cast off.”

He nods.

“What’s wrong with the kitty, Mom?”

I turn my gaze to Evie. She’s carefully cradling Winter against her chest, but her eyes are on a kitten in next cage over.

And, dammit, but there my heart goes again.

“She’s okay,” Tammy says. “Just sad and a little small for her age. Her siblings all went to their forever homes, and she’s still looking for hers.”

Evie’s eyes come to mine…

And I feel that sinking sensation in my stomach.

The same one I felt when I was trapped with Knox in the weight room, when Evie invited him to dinner, when we came here tonight.

I exhale.

I could fight it, dig my fingers into the slippery hillside and do my best to cling to the grass, to not slide way, way down.

Or I can look at my daughter with her black eye, with all she’s been through…

And I can just…

Let go.

I grunt as I begin to slide the box off the shelf.

“I told you I would get that down for you.”

I turn to see Knox standing in the door to my garage. “Where’s Winter?”

“She, Snowball”—what my daughter named the fluffball of a white kitten—“and Evie are bonding.” He walks toward me, reaching around me and snagging the box with ease.

I’m strong enough to lift it, but he has the height to make it easy.

A flutter between my thighs.

A softness in my belly.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

He sets the box down and opens the lid, standing aside so I can pull out the empty litter box and food dispenser I had from my old cat, Olive.

He passed when Evie was a baby, and life has been too lifey to get another cat…

Until today.

Slip. Slip. Slide. Right down that grassy hillside.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“No,” I say, and he snaps on the lid, hefting it back onto the shelf then snagging the litter box and food dispenser from me. “I can?—”

But he’s already moving inside, striding through the kitchen and setting the box down in the corner of the kitchen where I left the bag of litter I picked up on the way home and filling the container.

I do the same with the dispenser and bag of food, placing the former, once it’s full, along with a bowl filled with water on a towel in the opposite corner.

We need toys and likely another litter box.

Treats and a cat tree or scratching post.

Vet appointments?—

That, at least, halts my inner list-making. Vet appointments are covered for the first year—paid by the adoption fee.

I roll my shoulders. “Okay, what else?” I ask, more to myself.

“Food, litter. Maybe some treats and toys, but those can wait until the next time you go to the store,” he replies, clearly ticking off a mental checklist, same as me. “The doors to the outside are closed so she won’t get lost.” His eyes come to mine. “And she has Evie and Winter.” A beat. “And you.”

It hits me then. The decision I made.

It’s impulsive and beyond dumb and so totally not like me.

I groan quietly. “What the hell am I doing?” I whisper.

He exhales as he comes next to me, leaning back against the counter. “The same dumb thing I did?”

“You didn’t just bring an animal home with no warning.”

“No,” he says. “But only because she was too sick to come home that first night.”

My eyes widen as I turn to face him.

“I tried to lie to myself.” He shrugs. “But it was never going to be anything but this.”

I think about Snowball huddled in the back of that cage, alone and sad and tiny…and I know he’s right.

This was never going to end any other way.

“Winter’s really sweet,” I whisper.

Fingers on my cheek, my jaw, running forward, his thumb brushing along my bottom lip. “So’s Snowball. Her siblings were terrors, always trying to scratch the techs, but she always hung back and supervised the chaos.”

I chuckle. “Why do I feel like that’s going to happen here too?”

One big shoulder shrugs. “Probably because you’re right?”

“You just wait until Winter has four working legs,” I tell him. “Then you’ll have to watch out.”

His lips twitch. “It’s funny because you’re right.”

The giggle slips out of me.

It feels strange, sounds even stranger to my ears. I’ve never been much of a giggler, and fuck if I’ve had all that much to laugh about over the last years…

That this innocuous discussion triggered it?

Slip. Slip. Slide.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.”

Every muscle in my body goes taut, every nerve becoming radically sensitized, desperate for his touch.

And he doesn’t disappoint.

His thumb brushes over my lips again, and he shifts until he’s facing me fully, until our bodies are so close that one deep breath would bring our fronts together.

“Knox,” I whisper, “this is a bad idea.”

“Because you hate me?”

I inhale, and, yup, I’m gifted with the sensation of my breasts dragging along the hard muscles of his chest. My bra and shirt are no protection, lightning bolts of need shooting from my nipples down between my thighs.

From one breath. One touch.

God, this man is dangerous.

“I don’t hate you remember?” I whisper.

“Then why?” he murmurs, cupping my jaw fully, tilting my head up, leaning so close that I can feel his breath on my lips.

“Why what?” I ask on an exhale.

“Then why do you act like you do?”