Page 266 of Daddy's Pride

So I did, half expecting him to change his mind and get bored the whole time.

But it never happened. And when the dog got out of surgery and they told us she didn’t have a microchip so they didn’t know who she belonged to, Daddy said she could go home with him when I started to panic about my parents’ no-pets rule for my house. He said he’d take care of her, even though that meant checking on her a few times during the night and maybe not getting much sleep.

So I… I asked him if maybe I could come home with him, too.

To help.

Just for the one night.

So it wasn’t so much of a bother.

And it made my stomach do that weird fluttering thing all over again when he smiled at me, his eyes definitely the color of magic, even if that didn’t make sense… and said yes.

Chapter 8

North

During our teens, Juan and I worked our assess off for his uncle, learning the ins and outs of every aspect of the construction business. I’d loved everything about it, and Juan had quite literally been born to it. So we’d both rebelled a bit when Tío Carlos had told us in no uncertain terms that we would both be going to college after we graduated high school instead of joining one of his crews full time.

He’d shut our bitching down fast, telling us flat out that we had two options, either go to college and get business degrees, or go to college and get business degrees.

We chose to get our damn business degrees… and Carlos signed the business over to us when we graduated, happily “retiring” even though it was another ten years before we got him to stop coming in to the office every day.

It also took about that long for us to shift our focus from residential construction to commercial, and to grow the company to the point that we felt like we didn’t have to go in every day.

Until we were doing… really fucking well, actually.

At which point, we each built our dream home—Juan’s near his family, down in Woodburn, and mine a bit closer, in Lake Oswego. But somehow, I hadn’t realized until Owen followed me through my front door, his arms laden down with a brand new fluffy dog bed and some other essentials we’d been able to purchase from the vet’s office and mine full of a beagle with more stitches than fur, two legs in casts, and her third and final remaining leg twitching in her medically assisted sleep, that I realized the dream “home” I’d built for myself hadn’t been that at all.

It had just been a house. A really nice house. But nothing more than that.

It hadn’t actually felt like a home until he was here, too.

“I’m so fucked,” I whispered to the little beagle, chuckling softly to myself as I watched Owen fuss with getting the dog bed set up to his satisfaction. He was… fucking adorable. All big golden eyes and messy chestnut hair that I had to almost physically restrain myself from running my fingers through. As sweet on the outside as I already knew he was on the inside, and I wanted nothing more in life than to keep him.

“Is that okay?” he finally asked, turning to me a little anxiously.

“Perfect, baby,” I said, drinking in the pretty sight of his flushed cheek and swollen, puffy lower lip.

If he were truly mine, I’d get on him about not chewing on it so much, but for the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn’t sure how to navigate our…

Friendship?

Relationship?

I’d left the club with a newfound certainty that all I needed in my life was him, and that I’d happily take him any way I could get him, which I assumed meant completely platonically.

But then I’d seen him and instinctively pulled him into my arms when he’d broken down about the dog, not just wanting him there but needing him there, and he’d…

Christ. He’d fucking melted.

Fit there like he shouldn’t ever be anywhere else.

And crumbled the solid “hands-off” foundation that I’d built my whole story on, the story about what we could and could not be to each other, into dust.

But that’s all it was right now. A story, and all mine. I had no idea what he wanted, and knew for sure this wasn’t the time to ask. This was the time to set my own wants and needs aside, and simply take care of him.

I helped him get the dog settled, and it was only once he’d fussed over her for a good ten minutes, making sure she was comfortable and everything needed to care for her during her recovery was at hand, that he finally seemed to actually take note of his surroundings.

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