Page 94 of The Spice Play

Her eyes went impossibly wider. “Sebastian!” she huffed, smacking my arm with the back of her free hand. “You’d better be joking. Forty-fivegrand? That’s… are youinsane?”

I couldn’t bite back the cackle rising from my throat, the sound echoing through the parking lot as we neared the doors. “Relax, Nell. It’s insured. Worst case, you misplace it, and I have an excuse to propose to you all over again with a new one.”

She groaned, but I caught the faintest twitch of her lips, her body betraying her and showing the smile she was trying to hide. “You’d better hope I never find out the real number because I will lose it,” she mumbled, her fingers squeezing around mine.

“Lose it, or lose the ring?” I teased.

Matty pushed the door open excitedly, and I reached out my hand, catching it and holding it open for both of them before slipping in behind them. Nelly’s only response was an exaggerated eye roll and the ghost of a grin.

“Seb? Nell?”

Luke’s gaze met mine across the lobby, his confusedexpression trained on me as he paused with his hands around either top of a broom or a mop.

“What the fuck are you guys doing here?”

“Luke, language,” Nelly hissed, a chuckle coming at the tail end of it as she hoisted Matty up in her arms.

“Oh,shit, sorry — I mean, sorry,” he laughed. “Don’t say those things, squirt.”

Matty grinned, the stretch of it almost comical as it almost reached from ear to ear. “I know!” he said. “We’re getting a dog!”

Luke’s brows shot straight up on his forehead. “You’re getting a dog?” he repeated, putting down the mop-broom and walking up to the opposite side of the counter. “You mean you didn’t come here just to see me?”

Matty shook his head ferociously. “Nope.”

Luke had mentioned a handful of times that he spent his weekends volunteering here when he had the time, and considering we had a weekend free from practice, I’d made the correct assumption that this was the place to find him — and he was the perfect person to help us pick out the ideal dog for Matty.

“Well, you’re in luck then, 'cause we just got a few puppies in yesterday,” Luke grinned. “They’re about ten weeks. All vaccinated and ready to go. They’ll need to be spayed and neutered, of course, though.”

Matty squirmed in Nelly’s arms, his excitement too much for his small body to handle. “Can I play with them?”

“Of course!” Luke chirped, slipping out from behind the counter.

————

“So, we don’t know their exact breed, but we think they’re either labs crossed with golden retrievers or just slightly longer-coated labs,” Luke said, leaning back on the door to the extra-large kennel they kept the litter of puppies in.

Matty lay flat on the floor, surrounded and swarmed andcoveredin five golden-colored pups, all wagging their tails and licking him head to toe. His laughter was infectious, all giggles and shrieks and giddiness.

“Daddy! Look!”

“I’m looking!” I insisted, chuckling along with him.

“Those are both good with kids, right?” Nelly asked, her gaze flicking between Luke and the pile of puppies on Matty.

“Oh, absolutely,” Luke grinned. “Labs are, like, the most popular family dog. And golden retrievers are close behind. So whatever they are, they’ll be great. And if they’re neither…” Luke watched as one of the puppies sat directly on Matty’s chest. “Well, they’re certainly well-socialized, so it shouldn’t matter too much. They seem pretty bomb-proof.”

“How old are they?” I asked.

“I want this one!” Matty exclaimed, his hands cupping the head of the one that was sitting on him.

Luke’s head lolled from side to side. “Somewhere between eight and ten weeks. Hard to be super certain when we don’t know where the mom is.”

Matty gasped, sitting upstraight and letting the puppy slide down into his lap. “Where's your mommy?” he said, his eyes wide in wonder as he looked down at the slobbery little guy in his lap. “You can have Nell too!”

Oooh.I wasn’t expecting that to hit me right in the goddamn heart.

I swallowed past the ache in my throat and turned to Luke, trying not to overthink Luke’s expression — he’d clearly caught that, too. “We’ll take that one, then.”

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