One Snowy Night (Heartbreaker Bay #2.5)(6)

“She’s been with me for six years—-”

“Working in your shop, I know,” he said, impatient to get out of the snow, back in the truck and on the road.

“But what you don’t know is how she came to me.”

Actually, he did. Rory had pretty much ran away from home and—-

“It was late one night,” Willa said. “I was on a walk through the Marina Green when I found a girl in the park, sick as a dog from a drug someone had dumped in her drink.”

Max froze. This was something he didn’t know, although he wished he had because he’d have gladly hunted down the * who’d drugged her and he’d have—-

“I’m not telling you this to make you mad,” Willa said quietly. “I just want you to understand the chip.”

He let out a long, purposeful breath. “What happened?”

“I took her to the hospital, helped her recover from events that she can’t remember to this day, and gave her a job. But it wasn’t easy. It took her a long time to learn to trust me.”

Imagining what she must’ve suffered and reeling from that, Max couldn’t even speak.

“Basically, I bullied her back to life,” Willa said. “And lately she’s been really . . . okay. Even happy.”

Max knew this to be true. He’d seen Rory in the courtyard of their building, smiling and laughing with friends. He’d seen her with the animals in Willa’s shop, specifically with Carl, who loved and adored her. And the reason he kept seeing her was because in spite of himself, he’d been drawn to her and he’d made sure their paths crossed. Often.

Shit.

He peered inside his truck, expecting to see Rory hunched over her phone, but there was no phone in sight. Instead she had her head bent to his dog, who was in her lap. All 100 plus pounds of him, big head on her shoulder.

He went back to the overhang. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked Willa.

“Because I know there’s something between you. A chemistry. We’ve all seen it, Max, the way you come by the shop with Carl for more groomings than you need, making sure to do it when Rory is there.”

“Maybe I just love my stupid dog,” he said, not happy to hear that he’d been that transparent when it came to his uncomfortable and complicated feelings for Rory.

“Oh, I know that’s also true,” Willa said smugly. “But that’s not why you tip her so much. Look, I can tell by your tone I’m annoying you, so let me make it count. I know that you’re trustworthy or you wouldn’t be working for Archer. I guess I’m just hoping you can also be . . . gentle.”

Max pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets. “Willa—-”

“I know. You’re big and badass and tough, and I get it, you don’t do gentle. But maybe, for Rory, you could try.”

Once again he looked in the truck. Rory was talking to Carl, smiling while she was at it. But once upon a time, not so long ago, she’d been hurt. Badly. And that killed him. Fuck. “Yeah. I guess I could try.”

He heard Willa suck in a breath clogged with emotion. “Merry Christmas, Max,” she said softly. “You deserve it.”

Actually, there was someone who deserved it far more and the hell of it was, it was the last person he’d expected it to be, and she was sitting in his truck hugging his big, silly dog.





Chapter Three


WHEN MAX OPENED the truck door a few minutes later and found Carl in his seat, he gave the dog a long look.

Carl hefted out a huge sigh and got into the back.

“Thank you, Carl,” Rory said pointedly with a glance at Max that said he was clearly an idiot.

Max was an indeed an idiot, but not for not thanking his dog.

He was going to do as Willa had asked. He was going to be . . . Christ . . . gentle, even if it killed him. And it might. He was also going to get his own emotions under control, because at the moment he was filled with a cold fury over what Rory had suffered and he had nowhere to vent it.

“You were on the phone,” Rory said.

“I was.”

She looked at him, clearly waiting for more, her pretty eyes not giving much away. She was so petite a good wind could blow her away, but that analogy implied she was fragile.

Rory was anything but fragile, and in fact her inner strength was even more attractive to him than her beauty.

“It was Willa,” he said, willing to give her that. Besides she was more curious than a cat and he wanted to appease that curiosity and fast, before she figured out the rest.

She looked at him, surprised. “What did she want?”

Shit. On top of curious as a cat, she was like Carl with a damn bone. He twisted around to buckle Carl back in and then put on his own seatbelt. He turned the engine over and cranked up the radio.

Rory turned it off. “She already made you drive me, so what now?”

“Nothing.”

Rory turned in her seat to fully face him. “Was she checking to see if we’d killed each other?”

He smiled at that, a thought that had been so close to his own, but she narrowed her eyes, not amused. “What did she want, Max?”

He went to put the truck in gear but she leaned into him to turn off the engine and grab his keys. Her breast brushed against his arm, giving him another zap of awareness.