Page 31 of Only Between Us

BROOKS:What for?

PARKER:I’m at the gym before you for once. Which is saying something, seeing as they pay me to be here.

PARKER:Is Pete okay?

BROOKS:Pete’s fine. Sound asleep on the couch according to the doggy cam.

PARKER:So that’s a no to alerting the authorities?

The world’s smallest white dog emerges from the low-rise apartment building I’m parked in front of. It’s a cute little guy, a fraction of the size of Pete.

To my surprise, the small white dog is followed out of the door by Siena. She’s wearing the same pair of overalls she had on the day I met her, with her dark hair floating freely in the breeze, holding a red helmet.

I’m not typically in the business of showing up at people’s homes unannounced, nor staring at them from my car like a creep. But Iplan on making my presence known eventually, and this woman has dangled the enigma of her life in front of me enough times that I can’t help but take a couple of minutes just to see.

To try to understand what the fuck Siena Pippen has done to me, in the days since I met her.

She kissed me yesterday, and it took everything I had to keep the shock off my face. To keep up the act. Remember the boundaries, instead of pulling her back in for another, longer one.

That kiss is all I’ve been able to think about since.

And it pisses me off.

I don’t know her. I don’t trust her. And I should know better than to be distracted by stunning girls with joy-filled blue-gray eyes, laying one on me just for show.

Fake. Clout. NFL girlfriend. Beloved, social-media-famous Cece Pippen and the Seven Yards.

Naomi 2.0.

Siena leads the little dog to a patch of grass at the edge of the parking lot, letting it do its business before returning up the front steps toward an elderly woman who hovers with a walking cane. She hands the woman the leash before dropping to her knees and kissing the little dog, enthusiastically petting its belly when it flips over to offer it to her.

Something hums in my chest. My body goes warm—actually tingles. And it’s fucking infuriating.

So she likes dogs. So she wasn’t fake-fawning over Pete up in the coaches’ booth.

Big fucking deal. Everyone likes dogs, and Pete is the best boy there is.

Upright again, Siena waves the elderly woman and her little pup into the building and heads for the parking lot.

I lower my window. “Pippen, over here.”

Siena does a double take when she spots me, clearly struck dumbby my appearance, and I can’t help the twinge of satisfaction. It’s nice to be doing the startling for once.

“Whose—” I start as she approaches, but Siena holds up a hand to stop me.

“No, no. I need time to enjoy the fact that after all that talk about me being a stalker,you’rethe one showing up at my place uninvited.” She chuckles to herself when all I do is glower. “How’d you find me, Stalkwood?”

“You said you live in an apartment building. This is the only one in town.” She opens her mouth, no doubt to humiliate me for tracking her down. I quickly interrupt. “Whose dog was that?”

She peers over her shoulder. “Mrs. Robbins has a hard time with the stairs. I let her dog out every morning, but she still insists on walking with us to the front door so that I don’t have to take Spike all the way back up to her apartment. Her dog walker doesn’t come until lunch and her son can’t come by to help until after work.”

“That little thing’s name is Spike?”

“Don’t underestimate Spike. I once watched him douse a neighbor’s pant leg in urine while looking him straight in the eye, just because the guy denied him a French fry.”

My chest pinches at the thought of her running this puppy routine for her neighbor every morning before work.

And I’m pissed off at myself all over again.

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