Puppy Love. Kelly Moran

be such a turn on.

      “I'm very okay with hiring you.” Suddenly, he had the strongest urge to prove to her not all men were dicks. But he'd been an ass the night they'd met, so her opinion of him couldn't be that high. It didn't sit right in his gut. “I'm sorry for the way I behaved when you brought in Seraph. Truly, I am.”

      Her lips parted and her breathing grew deeper. “You said that.”

      Forcing his gaze to hers, and not dropping it to her mouth like he wanted, he swallowed. “Bears repeating. I'm sorry.” He studied her another moment. “Can you do the job?”

      She blinked. “Yes.”

      One corner of his mouth quirked in a grin, the one he knew drove women crazy. Charming her had just become his mission. Damned if he knew why. “Then stop worrying about it.”

      * * * *

      Two hours into her new job on Monday, Avery knew she'd been handpicked for the position by the divinity himself. To use the term clusterfuck would be putting too much of a positive spin on the lack of organization.

      They were going by a paper chart system, and there was no rhyme or reason to where they were stored. Some were in the back room, some on the front desk, others in the doctors' offices. It made her brain hurt. There was a small storage closet off the patient room hallway that wasn't in use.

      After she'd finished her new employee paperwork, she turned to Rosa. “Can I do some organizing?” She didn't want to overstep her boundaries, especially on the first day, but to continue this Dr. Seuss system would waste patient time. Rosa would only be training her for two weeks before she retired, so now would be the best time to get anything done while someone was around to man the desk.

      A slow grin spread over Rosa's face. “Organize, you say?”

      “Um, yes.” Why was she grinning like that?

      Squawk. “Crazy.”

      Avery eyed the cockatoo on the perch by the window. She didn't know if the bird was calling Rosa crazy, Avery's attempt to organize crazy, or if it meant in a general sense. Either way, the feathered beauty was growing on her. It said the most random things and only spoke in song lyrics. She'd laugh if she could breathe among the clutter.

      “You go right ahead, my dear. Organize to your heart's content.” Rosa's grin was calculating, and after what Cade had told her a few days ago, Avery figured she'd best not ask.

      Without a word, she made her way down the hall and propped open the storage closet, deciding to start in Cade's office. She eyed the two tall filing cabinets before chancing a peek inside the drawers. Empty. Shaking her head, she moved them into the storage closet along the wall, and proceeded to do the same thing with the empty filing cabinets from Drake and Flynn's offices.

      She went back up front. “Which charts are for deceased patients?”

      Rosa waved her hand behind her to the stack teetering by the printer.

      Avery found a tote in the back room and dropped those charts inside before dragging it to the storage room in a corner. With one wall lined with filing cabinets, the other was bare, so she moved a few filing cabinets from the front desk area into the storage room and got to work putting charts away and labeling the drawers. By the time lunch rolled around, she was to the M's.

      Cade walked past the room, stopped, and turned. He eyed her handiwork and put his hands on the top of the doorframe, stretching his light blue scrub top over his muscles. “Whatcha doing?”

      Caught between filing cabinets and, well…a hard place, she pressed her lips together, trying not to stare at his yummy body. “Charting.” She paused. She had asked Rosa first, but Animal Instincts belonged to Cade, Flynn, and Drake. “Are you mad I moved things?”

      Humor infused his eyes, igniting all that blue. “Nope. Why don't you go to lunch? Or better yet, head over to the deli with me.”

      She bit her lip. “I was going to pop over to Hailey's school. You know, stalk her to see how she's doing.”

      His grin was slow and knowing. “Nervous, Mom? I'm sure she's doing fine.”

      She rubbed her forehead. “I know. It's just, she's…”

      “Never been away from you this long?” He dropped his hands from the doorframe, still smiling. “Go on then, mama bear. We'll get lunch another time.”

      Mama bear? His tone was amused, low, raking over her skin. She shivered. Shivered, damn it! And why was he asking her to lunch? Before she could say more, he stepped away, leaving her to fan herself with a chart.

      Brent walked past, chuckled as if the tech knew she was having a hot flash, and sashayed away.

      Like it was her fault Cade was so lick-able.

      Donning her coat, she walked the few blocks to Avery's school to get some air and chewed on a granola bar. It tasted like cardboard with chocolate chips, but she swallowed it to get something in her stomach.

      Breathing deep, she inhaled humid air infused with pine and salt. The temperature remained in the upper thirties, but the stiff breeze was chilling. A low fog hovered in the distance, and Avery was learning it never really dissipated. Through rays of sun or storm-drenched clouds, it was always there, like a protective bubble for Redwood Ridge.

      She passed many of the storefronts, figuring she'd make some time over the weekend to swing into them and check things out. The town square, set up more like an I-shape, was perhaps two miles long, with the vet office being near the southern end. The town catered to the tourism market with a café, bakery, bookstore, herbal cooking, and a candle shop, but there were also accounting offices, an attorney, and a dentist.

      At the end of the street, she cut left and strode to the chain link fence encompassing the playground. She searched for Hailey, and found her off to the side with another little girl perhaps a year or two older. A teacher was helping Hailey bounce a rubber ball to the girl in a game of catch.

      She stilled, fingers gripping the cold metal fence. Tears sprang to her eyes at the grin on Hailey's face and the bark of laughter that floated across the playground. Her chest swelled. Hailey had made a friend. On her first day! She wasn't distressed by the commotion of the other kids, but instead she…played.

      “Is she yours?”

      Avery turned to the woman next to her she hadn't noticed and swiped her eyes. She cleared the emotion from her throat. “Yes. We just moved here.”

      The woman nodded, tucking a stray piece of reddish hair behind her ear. Her gaze trained back to the girls. “That's my daughter, Jenny. Grew up my whole life here, but I still come by every day at recess to check on her. I can't help it. I work at the pharmacy. I'm April, by the way.”

      “Avery, and that's my daughter, Hailey.” She glanced at the girls again, noticing the characteristics of Down syndrome in Jenny.

      “Heard you fainted at the—”

      Avery groaned, earning a laugh from April. “Who hasn't heard? I'm so embarrassed.”

      April's smile transformed her thin, regal face into something more approachable and friendly. “Did you faint because of the hot docs or something gory?”

      She breathed a laugh. “Gory. I walked into the surgery room and down I went. Though the vets are attractive, aren't they?” She immediately bit her tongue at the unprofessionalism, her cheeks heating.

      “Yep, all three of them. Smokin'. You'll learn soon enough the tactics some women will go to just to get their attention.” April tilted her head. “Not many single options here in Redwood Ridge, never mind selections that delicious. You're a lucky woman, getting to work with them.”

      She shook her head at the tease.

      April shoulder bumped her. “Oh, come on. You wouldn't be admitting anything the rest of us don't know.”

      “True. So what tactics have you used?”