Page 39 of Hound Dog
Chapter Ten
Haylee
“You wereseriousabout the hotdog stand?”
We stood on the beach, several yards away from Sarah and Yipper, behind a hotdog cart that Finn was slinging food out of.
He smiled at a customer, handing them a hotdog from the boiling water in the cart.
“I wouldn’t sayserious,” he said, giving me a smirk. “But it’s a good cover. The second this town knows what I’mreallydoing, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“And what happens if someone tries to order a hotdog from you while you’re playing Cyrano de Bergerac?”
His grin widened as he slipped in an earbud and handed me the other one. “That’s whatyou’rehere for. If you’re going to insist on joining me for these days, I might as well put you to work.”
“What?” I shrieked, ignoring the earbud he offered me in his outstretched hand.
“Besides, the way I see it, if it wasn’t for you and Tyson knocking into me and landing my business cards all over the place, Ms. Louise wouldn’t have asked about them and I wouldn’t have had to lie. So, you see, this is kind of all your fault anyway. The least you could do is help me out for a couple weeks while we unload your aunt’s dogs.”
Dammit. I hated to admit that he had a point.
He wiggled the earbud in my face again. “Do you want this or not?” he whispered. “If you want to know what’s happening, you need to be able to hear.”
Not waiting for my answer, he spoke quietly to Sarah. “Sarah, can you hear me?”
Grumpy, I took the earbud from him and slid it into my left ear just in time to hear her say, “Yep! Andlook! Yipperlovesthe water!” She threw a tennis ball into the ocean, and Yipper went diving in after it to retrieve the ball.
“That’s great!” Finn said. “I want you to glance to your left, but don’t do it in an obvious way. There are two guys sitting in beach chairs reading. See them?”
I was impressed with how she carefully looked over her shoulder in a way that looked completely natural and not like she was checking some dudes out.
“Wow, she’s good,” I muttered.
Finn covered the microphone and whispered to me, “She is. You should have seen the meathead I helped yesterday. He wouldn’t know subtlety if he was smacked in the face with it.”
I snickered, knowing the exact sort of guy he was talking about.
“Which guy are you talking about behind me?” Sara asked. “Is it the blond? He’s hot. Our babies would be so cute.”
I swore Finn’s eye nearly twitched when she said that, and I couldn’t help but laugh. He rolled his eyes before answering. “Nope, not him. He’s reading a magazine… and I don’t meanThe New Yorker.”
I squinted, realizing he was right. It was some Maxim-esque trashy magazine. “What’s wrong with guilty pleasure reading?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Finn shot me a dagger-filled look that had me smirking in response. I was getting way too much pleasure from making his life harder right now. “But Sarah stated specifically that she wanted someone smart. An intellectual, driven man. What book is the other guy reading?”
I squinted, trying hard to read the small cover. “Cosmos. By Carl Sagan.”
“Wow,” Sarah said. “You’re good.”
Finn looked directly at me, a smirk tilting his mouth. “Iknow. Now all we have to do is catch his attention.”
I was riveted. I couldn’t help it. There was something absolutely fascinating about watching Finn work. And how he instructed Sarah to work the dog. It only took four fancy tricks of her bouncing around with Yipper on the beach before I saw Mr. Cosmos looking up from his book, his gaze sweeping up and down her body.
And it was roughly two minutes after that, he was on his feet talking with her and petting Yipper.
I gave a low whistle. “Impressive,” I said, grabbing a hotdog bun.
“I told you I was good.”
