Page 7 of Paws for a Minute

“Civil,” Cohen finally repeated. “But only for the benefit of Mason and Lila.”

“And whatever children they might have, yes.”

For a reason Cohen would never know, he lifted his hand over to Alana. She eyed it with suspicion, but after deciding that he wasn’t trying to poison her with his own limb, she shook his hand.

The second their fingers touched, Cohen lost all sense. Time stood still, and there was no other sound in the world than his beating heart and Alana’s little gasp of shock.

She felt it too.

“Stupid electricity in this town should really be fixed,” he grumbled, hoping to explain away the way his fingers were still tingling from her touch. Of course, this kind of oddity was precisely why he disliked Alana Wixx so much.

He immediately rubbed his hand on his pants to remove the sensation, but somehow, it went right down to his bones. Cohen wanted to punch something to finally be done with Alana’s touch. If she noticed that he was completely affected by her, he didn’t show it.

“So that’s it then,” she said, her voice barely audible as if the shame of putting aside their bad blood was costing her a whole lot. “We are not going to fight.”

“No name-calling,” he agreed.

“You do know that you call me all kinds of terrible things, right? I only ever call you by your name.”

It was his turn to arch a brow. “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, it’s true. I call you Mr. Pierce.”

“But you know that I prefer to be calledSheriffPierce,” he cut in, not letting her finish her thought. “You omit that on purpose.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Does it matter anymore? I’m going to call you Cohen, and you call me Alana. It will remove the desire to tease each other.”

Fuck me.Did she have to use those specific words? Desire to tease? He could show her teasing, all right …

Of course, he couldn’t say that. It would only fuel the fire of their hatred, amongst other things. “I don’t feel any desire toward you,” he bit out roughly.

Alana rolled her eyes. “Well, thanks for clarifyingthat.” She took another deep breath. “This isn’t a good start, you know.”

He ran his hands back through his hair. “Shit. You’re right. It’s gonna be hard, huh.”

“It really will be,” she agreed.

“You know, I think it’s the first time we have the same opinion. It’s never happened before.”

“Well, it’s happened before, but not often.” She couldn’t help arguing with him, or so her little shoulder shrug told him.

“Okay. How do we do this?” Cohen blew out a breath. “We’re bound to fuck up and fight.”

“But I really don’t want to mess up any of their wedding events. Can you imagine? Us ruining their wedding because of a silly fight?” She rolled her eyes again. “No. I don’t want to hurt my best friend. We’re both in this wedding party, and we’re going to make it work because we are damned adults. And we can do this.” She gave a resolute head nod. “There.”

“We will still need some guidelines,” he pointed out. “Or at least some kind of safe word.”

“Safe word?” she asked, skeptical, though her cheeks turned red.

“Yeah. A safe word. When I feel my anger toward you mounting to the point where I know I am going to say something hurtful, I will say …” He closed his eyes and pondered on this. “I’m gonna say carwash.”

“Carwash,” she snorted. “When you say carwash, I’m supposed to drop whatever I am saying?”

“Yup. And I’ll make sure to walk away from the situation. Now, what about you? What will your safe word be?”

He watched as Alana thought about it. “If you hear me saypuffed-up rooster, you are to stop.”

Cohen tried not to laugh. “Is that what I am to you? A puffed-up rooster?”

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