Page 52 of Crazy Spooky Love
“Despite your best efforts to the contrary, you don’t know everything about me,” I huff.
“You don’t have a dog, Melody,” he says again.
“Yes. Yes, I do. I got one.” Shit, can someone please wire my jaw together? I lose all reason around this man and his broad, capable shoulders. “I’m going now.”
“To walk your dog?”
I hate him. “Yes. I’m going now, to walk Parsnip.”
Shoot me. Shoot me now, right between the eyes. I just called my imaginary dog Parsnip. I don’t even like the bloody things.
“You named your dog after a root vegetable?”
Christ, can’t he just let it go? He knows I don’t have a sodding dog called Parsnip, or Turnip, or Butternut frickin’ Squash, for that matter. Although, Butternut Bittersweet would be bloody hilarious. If I do ever get a dog, that’s totally going to be its name.
“I can wait for you, if you like,” Fletch says, smirking. “We can walk Parsnip together.”
There is something about his offer that sounds intimate, despitethe fact that we both know there will be no walk, because there is no dog.
He makes no attempt to move, so I dodge around him and half run down the cobbled alley to the back of the building and the sanctuary of my office.
“Go and harass someone else, Fletch,” I toss over my shoulder.
“Just making sure you get home safely,” he calls, still there.
I flip him the V. When I reach the agency door I finally turn back and risk a glance toward the street. He’s gone, and I don’t like the fact that a teeny bit of me is disappointed. I’m definitely going to town with that Sharpie. I might even post it to him at the newspaper office for my own amusement.
Chapter
Fourteen
Back in the office, I chuck the newspaper and the solitary glove down onto the coffee table and flop dramatically into the tweed sofa.
“One glove, and I need to buy a sodding dog.”
“You don’t sound very pleased about it.” Marina looks up from behind the desk where she’s engrossed inTwenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost Hunterby Elliott O’Donnell. “You should read this, it’s interesting,” she says, evidently not taking me seriously.
Artie stops midway through wiping down the whiteboard and his eyes light up at the idea. “Can I help you pick a dog?”
I groan. “I don’t think I’m serious, Artie.”
“You sound as if you are to me,” he says, nodding fast. “Very serious. You said, ‘I need to buy a sodding dog.’ ”
“Yes, I know I did.”
The truth is that I always wanted a dog and my mother wouldn’t let me have one. Now that I’m all grown up it’s on my bucket list. The thing is though, it’s quite a long way down my bucket list, behind train as a movie makeup artist in order to be the person placedin sole charge of applying Robert Downey Jr.’s mascara. It’s that sort of bucket list, i.e., things I’d like to happen but most probably won’t. But a dog…That could happen if I wanted it to, couldn’t it? Now that it’s out there, the idea doesn’t seem too terrible at all.
“Dogs need walking every day. You hate walking.” Marina makes a fair point as she turns the page of the book, still not entertaining the idea.
“I can do that,” Artie jumpsin.
“Hmmm. Maybe you could get a dog and I can pretend he’s mine sometimes? I only really need him to fool Fletcher Gunn.”
That snags Marina’s attention. “You want to get a dog to impress Fletcher Gunn?”
“Not to impress him, no,” I protest too hotly, looking at her as if she’s lost the plot for daring to even suggest such a thing. “But I just sort of told him that I have a dog and he doesn’t believe me so I need to have an actual dog so I can prove him wrong.”
I don’t tell them that I have to call the dog Parsnip too. That’s not going to happen in a million years. But a dog…maybe. Just maybe. The idea is already growing on me at a frankly alarming rate.
