“No, you’re not.”
“I was in a meeting, Vanessa. You can’t come to my office door and do your little excited dance and wave your arms around when I’m trying to secure a grant for the shelter.”
She kept tugging on my arm. “They couldn’t see me.”
“I could.” I snatched my arm back. “What are you doing? Quit manhandling me.”
“You have got to see this.”
We came around the corner to the meeting room, and I skidded to a halt.
Four giant, beautiful men were sitting on the floor, playing with Scout and Daisy.
“What is happening right now?” I whispered.
She leaned in. “Archer brought friends. Aren’t they pretty?”
“I’m not sureprettyis the right word,” I answered absently, tilting my head as Archer rolled to the side of one hip to snatch a toy and toss it across the room for Scout. Those jeans, and what they did to his ass, should have been illegal. “When did they come in?”
“About an hour ago, hence the dancing in front of your window during a donor meeting.”
“Ah.”
“One guy was here and adopted Razor. He’s already gone. But these guys have taken their sweet time. They played with a few others, took some videos and stuff on their phones, but Scout and Daisy seem to be the winners of the dog lottery today.” She lifted her chin. “Look at them.”
Daisy was in her element, prancing around with her fluffy tail in the air. They were tossing a ball across the room and playing tug with a frayed rope toy she always kept in her kennel. Scout, sweetheart though he was, was a bit more reserved with strangers. He was often overlooked because he was missing a leg and didn’t give out affection quite as easily. I was completely convinced he had a doggy eight-date rule, too, which was probably why we got along so well.
“This is amazing.”
“I know,” Ness replied. “I guess Archer was talking to them at practice, and a couple of them said they were interested in adopting a dog, and he convinced them to come here today so they didn’t turn an adoption day into a circus.” She gave me a sidelong look. “I still think it’s a circus we could handle, but you cannot fault that man’s listening skills.”
There was a knot buried under my sternum, and my hand rubbed uselessly at my chest to see if it would disappear. The other guys were just as big as Archer, and even if they all looked different—different eyes and smiles and skin color and hair, some with ink, some without, some laughing and smiling, one a little bit quieter, like Archer—it was overwhelming to see them as a group.
To be perfectly clear, I was not the kind of woman who got weak-kneed by a group of celebrities, but it was entirely possible that seeing him play gently with Scout for the first time, then scratch behind Daisy’s ears and smile at the play bow she gave in return, made my knees a teeny bit wobbly.
Worse, it wasn’t just my knees. My entire body—head, heart, and all my instincts—was freaking Jell-O at seeing him finally let his guard down with the dogs.
“I don’t understand,” I admitted quietly. “I don’t even know him all that well, Ness. And I feel ...”
“Seen? Pursued?”
My eyes fell closed. “Maybe.”
Her shoulder nudged mine. “Good. You should be seen and pursued.”
“I don’t have time. It’s a horrible idea.”
“Bullshit,” she said lightly. “I call complete and utter bullshit.”
I rolled my eyes. “Easy for you to say. Muriel didn’t leave you in charge.”
She ignored that. Ness didn’t like for things like logic to get in her way.
“Would you allow me to prove a point? Even if nothing comes from it.”
“What’s that?”
“Try—just for one day—to give the man the benefit of the doubt.” She said it so gently, which was a word I’d never used to describe her, and it was enough to pull my attention from the scene in front of us. Ness smiled. “You give everyone the benefit of the doubt, Remi, but not him. It’s not like my friend to do that.”