Page 9 of Game On

“I’m aware. And speaking of dogs... you going to get involved with a rescue organization in Vancouver?”

“Maybe once I get my own place?” Jamie fell back against the pillows. Working with rescue organizations and fostering dogs had been the bright side of a shit-tastic few months. His parents had fostered for as long as he’d been alive; it had been only natural for him to pick up the baton, so to speak. “My housemate has a no-pets policy, so I can’t foster while I’m here.”

Niall brought the phone up to his eyes and very seriously said, “Only sociopaths don’t like animals.”

Jamie chuckled. “No pets isn’t the same as not liking animals.”

“Close enough. Listen, I’ve got to go and I don’t know where Mom disappeared to. I’ll have her call you back. Let me know what time you think you’ll arrive on Sunday.”

“Will do.”

They hung up. Feeling on slightly more solid ground after speaking with his family, Jamie went to find his new housemate.

* * *

“Be nice, they said,” Dorian muttered to himself as he pecked away at InDesign in his home office. “I’m nice.”

His phone pinged with a notification. On autopilot, he tapped it open.

A text from his sister.

Adriana

Hi Dorian. How are you? It’s been a while.

Was she joking? Oh, the fucking gall.

The previous text in their thread had been from him about two weeks ago.

Unanswered.

The one before that? Also from him, in early January.

Unanswered.

The one before that? A Merry Christmas message.

Unanswered.

Huffing out an unamused laugh, Dorian blanked the screen and flipped his phone upside down. Adriana could wait a week. Tit for tat and all that.

“I’m nice when it matters,” he muttered to no one.

Adriana—or as Dorian called her in his head, Overachieving Sibling Number 1—was the founder and director of an organization that facilitated the delivery of leftover food from restaurants to food banks and shelters. She was based in Toronto, but her business was Canada-wide.

Dorian had last seen her... a year and a half ago? She’d been in Vancouver for a couple of meetings and had treated him to lunch, where she’d grimaced at his choice of attire—fitted slacks in cerulean blue, a T-shirt with a graphic of a tie, and a tweed blazer in Burgundy plaid—told him his hair was too long, that he’d need to work off the bread they’d been given as an appetizer, and that he needed to get his life together and start seriously thinking about his long-term goals. Didn’t he know that he couldn’t keep flitting from job to job?

No. In fact, he did not know that. Plenty of people did it. If a job wasn’t holding his attention, he moved on to something else. What was so wrong with that?

Never mind that she’d conveniently ignored that he’d designed an app in university that he’d sold for millions.

He’d invested wisely too, so he didn’t have to work if he chose not to. And he often didn’t want to—he hated working for other people. The main reason he’d applied for the job as social media coordinator? He’d been bored.

Turned out, Mark was one of the best bosses he’d ever worked for, so Dorian had ended up not hating it as much as he’d thought he would. More importantly, it was great experience for when he finally launched his own business.

The shower turned on upstairs, and Dorian got back to work. He owed Mark the graphic for the Orcas’ next 50/50 draw benefiting a local children’s charity, then he could call it a day on the social media stuff and concentrate on his own business.

But the sound of the shower was a distraction. He wasn’t used to other people in his space, especially ones who were all angle jawed and sharply cheekboned, capped with messy light brown hair and a mouth that didn’t smile as easily as Dorian suspected it should. Not to mention the broad shoulders and trim hips, or the blue-grey eyes that were a touch sad despite the laugh lines.

---