Page 80 of Puppy Love

“Oh,” she said and, with dawning understanding, “oh.”

“If you don’t like it, you have nothing to blame but that shirt,” he added. “Why can’t you wear sweatpants like a normal person? Have you ever noticed that no matter what you have on, there’s always at least one part of your body on display?”

She giggled and allowed herself to be pulled across the field, Bubbles trailing happily in their wake. “Do I? How strange.”

“Not strange,” he grunted. “Torture.”

The Department of Natural Resources didn’t employ very many full-time employees. It was something he’d often lamented in the past, especially when trying to get any kind of equipment budget passed, but he could only be grateful for it today. Everyone had already gone home for the evening and, given the time of year, weren’t likely to return until morning.

“I didn’t know you had an office here,” Sophie said as he let them in the front door and flicked on the reception lights. “Poor Oscar only has a tiny room, so I figured space was at a premium.”

“I should probably warn you that my office is more like a dark hole I’ve claimed as my own,” he said. He still had her hand firmly in his—and had no intention of letting go anytime soon. At her look of surprise, he released a gruff laugh, “I’m the guy they send out to the front lines, Sophie, not some goddamn executive. Between July and October, I’m lucky to sleep in my own bed for more than a week at a time. And the season can last through the end of the year if they loan me out to California, which they almost always do.”

“I know, but you said—”

“I lied.”

“Well, that wasn’t very nice of you. I was hoping for a quickie on your desk. You implied there would be a quickie on your desk.”

He’d just lied. He’d just admitted that for six months out of the year, he was practically nonexistent. And Sophie’s only disappointment was that she wasn’t going to get tossed over his desk?

“Oh, there’s not going to be anything quick about what’s about to happen to you,” he promised, and hoisted her over his shoulder.

Bubbles took instant exception to this action with a bark of protest, but Harrison wasn’t about to unload such a delightful burden. Sophie’s upper half hung over his back, her ass in the air and right on level with his head. She kicked ineffectively at him, laughing and protesting to be put down, but Harrison only tightened his hold.

“I’m getting really tired of the two of you telling me what to do,” he said. He tried to keep his voice authoritative and stern, but it was impossible. He’d never felt less authoritative or stern in his life. He lowered himself—and Sophie—just enough to scoop Bubbles into his arms and carried the pair of them to the far end of the hall. “For the next hour, you’re both going to do exactly as I say.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a laugh that made it impossible for him to buy her obedience. She proved it two seconds later when he set her down and tugged at a cord dangling from the ceiling. A pair of seldom-used stairs floated down, beckoning the pair of them into an open panel above their heads. “Wait—are you about to lure me into an unused attic where no one can hear me scream? I should probably warn you…I’ve read that horror story. I know how it ends.”

“Itispretty dark up there,” he admitted, suddenly feeling unsure. “And dusty. And not…glamorous.”

“Hey.” Her hand touched his arm. “You don’t have to do that. What is it? Some kind of storage?”

He nodded, more grateful than he could say that she was making this easy on him. Shealwaysdid that—pushed when he needed it, stopped pushing when he needed it more. “It’s where they keep a lot of the out-of-date equipment that the state refuses to get rid of.”

She smiled. “That sounds promising. Hefty hoses and fire poles and all that.”

“It’s not that kind of equipment. It’s mostly filing cabinets.”

The mention of filing cabinets and dust should have had Sophie running for the hills—and taking Bubbles with her—but she seemed to sense that there was more to that upstairs hole than he was letting on. “I’d like to see it. May I?”

He nodded and watched as she swung a leg onto the bottom step and fearlessly made her way up the rickety contraption. It creaked and groaned a protest, but that didn’t seem to stop her. Harrison had a nice view of her ass as she neared the top, and then a quick glimpse of her ankles before she disappeared altogether.

She didn’t appear to be making any sounds of disgust, so he grabbed Bubbles and followed her up the steps. They creaked in evengreaterprotest to his weight, but he’d been coming here for close on sixteen years now. They’d always held him before.

He paused on the landing to allow his eyes a moment to adjust. A skylight provided a beam of sunshine in one corner, highlighting dusty motes that danced in the air, but other than that, there was no lighting up here. No electricity, no running water, no real walls, even. Bare studs and rough floorboards were all that had been done to make this space usable.

“You have a bed up here,” Sophie said without looking over at him.

He grunted. It wasn’t a bed so much as an old mattress laid in one corner and heaped with blankets, but he’d slept in it enough for it to count.

She drew closer to the sunlit corner, her head tilted at a curious angle as she took in the rest. “You have books. And a flashlight. And snacks.”

He grunted again, but it was more of a chuckle this time. Sophie didn’t sound the least appalled at how pathetic that list sounded for a grown-ass man of thirty. She cast a look back at him over her shoulder. “Why, Harrison Parks. Is this your secret clubhouse?”

He set Bubbles on the ground and gave her permission to sniff out the area. “I know. It’s pretty sad, right?”

Her eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? Ialwayswanted a secret clubhouse. My dad built a playhouse one year and put it up in the backyard, but there was nothing secret about it. Either Lila or Dawn or, most of the time, one of Dawn’s boyfriends, was holed up inside. God, they used to smoke so much pot in there.”