Page 28 of Shortcake
I held my breath. Maybe she wasn’t going home yet. Maybe she was meeting someone here. Or worse, going home withthem. Possessiveness that I had no place feeling rolled up my throat.
Her laugh rang out through the quiet, inky night. Beautiful. Healing.
With one leg already inside the car, she paused looking at me from over top. “Don’t worry, Sheriff. I’m going home, too.”
“Conrad,” I called out as she opened her driver’s side door. “Call me Conrad.”
Grinning, she climbed into the driver’s side and shut the door.
That smile of hers did more to me than I cared to admit. A jolt surged down to the base of my pelvis, but I ignored the feeling as I’d done so many times in my life. Dating, sex, love… it wasn’t just a challenge as a single, working dad. It was nearly impossible.
And a girl like Addy? She didn’t want an old man like me.
Except she did want you, a little voice said. Once upon a time, she chose you from a sea of drunken costumed men in a bar.
“There,” she said, leaning out of the open windows. Windows that had been down all night. Just one out of a million tiny differences between living here and Brooklyn. In New York, you don’t leave your windows cracked, let alone entirely down. “Happy now,Conrad?”
My name coming from her was weird and felt a little hollow. Like I missed being called Brawny by her. “I’d be happier if you locked your doors,” I said.
She rolled her eyes, a playful smile still splaying those full, red lips. “Okay,Dad,” she said quietly, almost so quietly that the wind could have carried the word away with it.
I froze at the word. Did she not remember?
Did that role play not mean the same to her as it meant to me?
Oof. Gut punch. Maybe more than she even knew.
Whatever attraction I’d been feeling toward her was clearly one-sided. Not that I needed the reminder, but she gave it to me anyway.
I got in my cruiser, ego slightly bruised and shut the door. But not before I heard her doors lock.
Beside me, Harper snored quietly, curled up in the passenger seat.
Maybe that was the dose of reality I really needed. I didn’t have time to date. Especially not a twenty-something bar owner who had clearly moved on from me and liked to party.
My priority was Harper.
And something told me I had my work cut out for me enough as it was.
ChapterFour
Addy
The next morning, I woke up feeling hungover even though I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol last night. Stress and dehydration were apparently an equation that resulted in less than four hours of solid sleep.
With a yawn and a stretch, I was greeted by two beady black eyes, blinking back at me from within her cage. “Morning, Eleanor,” I said and put my finger between the bars, booping her nose.
My hedgehog fluffed out her quills as a morning greeting to me and she chittered a hello. I’d rescued her from Haylee’s aunt who happened to be a bit of an animal hoarder—her words, not mine.
“I hear you, girl.” I said to Eleanor, standing up. “But you know the routine. You have to eat breakfast and poop first, then you can come hang out with me outside the cage.”
As soon as my feet hit the floor, I grabbed a few pieces of romaine and set them in her bowl. “Breakfast of champions, huh sweetpea?”
If only I could be as healthy as Eleanor. Instead, as I heard the crunch of lettuce behind me, I stuck a Pop-Tart into the toaster, then filled the coffee maker with water.
Yep, my hedgehog was healthier than I was.
Whatever.
