Page 34 of Rory Rides Her Fake Fiancé
“Shut up. And please tell me you have a guest bed.”
“Well . . .” He scratches his cheek and turns, stalling by grabbing my favorite beer from the cooler.
“Morgan.”
“I only have one bed. And it’s a twin.”
His lip twitches. The fucker is lying.
“And I don’t own pajamas.”
“You’re a bad liar,” I tell him.
“And the heat is off. We’ll have to snuggle for warmth. I bet you’re a great cuddler.”
“I do not cuddle,” I growl. I reach over the bar to smack his shoulder.
Morgan evades me, laughing, and someone else down the bar calls to him for a refill. I swipe my beer off the counter and stalk over to a booth. I read until the bar closes, and then I follow his truck home, wondering what I’m getting myself into.
He lives on one of the streets off Main, in a rustic-looking one-story house with a driveway that runs through the property to a setback garage and a fenced-in backyard. The porch lights are on, but there are no streetlights in this part of town, so most of the house is shrouded in shadows. Morgan drives all the way back and stops in front of the garage, so I park my bike right behind him on the driveway and shut it off. When I pull my helmet off, I hear barking.
Morgan slams his truck door. “Shit, I should have asked. You aren’t allergic to dogs? Or afraid of them?”
“No.” I eye the house. The barking is loud.
“Good. Okay, come on in.”
We enter the backyard first, which triggers a motion sensor light to come on, through the chain-link gate and up to the back porch. “Hang on,” he tells me. “I’m going to let her out. Normally when I get home she’s sleeping, but your bike must’ve woken her up and she’s all hyper now.”
He opens the door and a dog rockets out, smashing into the side of the deck and rebounding to take the stairs in one giant leap and sprint toward me.
“That must’ve hurt,” I say.
“You’d think so, but she does it all the time. Broke the damn thing once.”
The dog does a lap, then runs between the two of us, bouncing and cavorting with her tail wagging all over the place. In the harsh floodlight, I can see that she’s a golden retriever.
“Rory, meet Princess. Princess, meet Rory.”
I stare at Morgan. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Your dog’s name is Princess?”
Morgan kneels down and starts talking to his dog, who couldn’t stand still if her life depended on it. “That’s because she is a princess. Who’s my good girl, who’s a princess, who’s the best dog ever?” He’s regressed to baby talking to his dog, but then he looks up at me and says in a normal voice, “Her full name is Princess Buttercup Law, Collector of Tennis Balls and Defender of Pine Lane.”
Of course it is.
The dog has calmed down enough to lean against Morgan for butt scratches, momentarily forgetting about me, until she remembers and bounds over again. This time she sniffs circles around me.
“Hi.”
She keeps sniffing, finding something particularly interesting on my right boot heel.
I look up at Morgan, who tilts his head at me. “Have you never had a dog?”
“No. No pets except for Bartholomeow, and definitely no dogs.”
“Sad,” he remarks. “Dogs are the best. Okay, girl, let’s go inside.”
We step through the back door into a tiled room with a rowing machine and a TV. Morgan leads me into the next room, which is a kitchen-living-room combo that stretches all the way to the front door. There’s a small kitchen table in the middle and a tiny alcove to the right.
