Page 4 of Worst in Show

“No, come on.” He puts his arms up for protection. “Tilly!”

His pathetic attempts at fending them off makes a laugh bubble up my chest. Serves him right. I hope those are expensive jeans.

“A little help,” he pleads, stretching a hand my direction.

“I think you’ve got this.” I smirk.

“Please.”

I roll my eyes but give in. “Fine.” I manage to put a foot on Cholula’s leash. Then I lean forward to give him a hand while Cho jumps at my leg, the happiest I’ve ever seen the tiny beast.

The guy’s hand is large and warm, his fingers closing tightly around mine as I pull him up, but he’s only halfway off the ground when Cap sees his chance to get in on the action and jumps between us. I have no time to further ponder the sensation of actual male skin-to-skin contact before Tilly follows Cap, and Cholula circles behind us, pulling my legs from under me. It’s a people and dog pile-up, and instead of helping the guy up, I end up using him as a cushion for my fall. Dogs bark, sunglasses go flying, and hands find purchase in unknown places.

“Oof,” he grunts as we hit the ground, me on top of his (very solid) chest.

If this was one of my roommate-slash–best friend Micki’s beloved Hallmark rom-coms, now would be when he’d look up at me, a twinkle in his sparkling eyes. My long, dark hair, loose from its bun, would be framing our faces. He’d reach up to place a hand against my cheek. We’d kiss—gently at first and then with more intent.

“Do you mind?” he says instead, jolting me back to the present moment.

There’s no string quartet playing, and my hair is not so much cascading gracefully around us as it is smothering him. He wipes at his face to get my strands out of his mouth.

“Sorry,” I grunt, trying to heave myself off him. “So sorry.”

When we’re finally free of each other, and all the dogs are accounted for, I brush off the sleeve of my grandma’s shirt and peer up at him, expecting a stranger. Instead, I find a vaguely familiar face angled toward me. Somewhere in my distant memory, students cheer from packed bleachers as our team obliterates the competition thanks to the guy before me.

“Leo?”

He squints.

“You are Leo Salinger, right? Batavia High School?”

“Yeah?” He says it like he doesn’t understand why I’m asking. Tilly pulls at her leash, but he tightens his grip on it and puts his sunglasses back on.

“You were a year ahead of me. I’m Cora Lewis. Go Bulldogs?” I try.

No reaction. So much for the old school spirit. I would have thought the guy who had been voted homecoming king three years in a row by his peers would have easy access to a smile and a friendly word, but I suppose a lot can happen in twelve years.

I swallow the sting and clear my throat. “Um, there’s an off-leash dog park if you take Main Street west past Randall. They’ve actually gotten pretty strict about leashing your dogs here in town the past few years. I assume you’ve been elsewhere?”

He looks away and ignores my question. “Like I said before, it wouldn’t have been an issue if that thing hadn’t gotten Tilly riled up.”

Heat flushes through me, building pressure. On second thought, I didn’t really know him in high school. Maybe he was always like this—kind of an asshole. Where does he get off? “This thing has a name. It’s Cholula. And she wasn’t anywhere near you when Tilly took off after her. They clearly like each other. They’re dogs.” Sure, I should have had a better grip on Cho’s leash, but I have two other dogs, too, and ice cream is her catnip.

“Fine.” He cuts his gaze between me and Cholula one more time. “What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

“What’s wrong?” I gape at him. I’ve had just about enough of this. “Not everyone is as perfect as you and yours, I suppose. Let’s leave it at that and pretend this never happened. Have a fantastic day.” With that, I turn on my heel and march back toward the store.

I’m sure my face still looks like a storm cloud as I escort my band of misfits through the door because Harvey takes only one look at me before he puts down the bag of kibble he’s stacking and comes to relieve me.

“You look like you’ve been run over,” he says, astute observer that he is. “What happened?” He squats to unleash the dogs, who set off upstairs to their water bowls and beds.

I lean against the counter and relay the incident in as few words as I can, leaving out that I recognized Leo. “He was such a jerk about it,” I say to wrap things up. “Sweet dog, though.” I rifle through my purse for some gum to calm myself with.

Harvey squints out the window. “An Aussie you say? And the young man, what did he look like?”

A freaking Calvin Klein ad. “I don’t know. Tall, blond, chin dimple.”

“Good looking you’d say?”

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