Page 1 of Ruff and Tumble

Chapter 1

If there was a way to hide a heavily pregnant golden retriever under a desk, Hailey had yet to discover it.

“Bess, love. This would be so much easier if you’d just sit.” She paused and watched as the dog panted, squirmed, and licked the top of her favorite red Converse shoes. There was no sitting of any kind. “Okay, then stay. Lie down. Heel. Didn’t your previous owners teach you any commands?”

Bess wriggled out from between Hailey’s legs and began pacing the length of the office. It was a small room, a windowless hole that held the floor’s air-conditioning unit in addition to Hailey’s desk, so the dog didn’t have far to go. Her swollen belly swayed and undulated with each step.

“Jasmine is going to eat you alive if she sees that dog.” A smiling face appeared at the office door. As usual, Penny looked perfectly put together and amused to find Hailey in what could only be described asa mess. Which, to be fair, was daily. “Quick… Give her a football to play with. Maybe Jasmine will think she’s here for a photo shoot.”

It wasn’t, as her coworker’s irreverent tone suggested, the worst idea in the world. They—along with a dozen other people currently staffing this office—often performed photo shoots. With dogs. And footballs. In fact, one might argue that wasallthey did. As the official offices of the Puppy Cup, the canine counterpart to the professional football game held every February, making dogs look adorable for the camera was Hailey’s stock-in-trade.

Well, she was technically just a production assistant on the show, so her stock-in-trade had more to do with grabbing coffees and running errands than anything else, but the idea held true. Someone had to help wrangle the fifty different puppies that appeared on-screen every year to play with stuffed balls, chase one another, and otherwise adorably simulate the game of football during the Kickoff Cup’s halftime.

Hailey Lincoln was that someone. In fact, Hailey Lincoln had been that someone for six years. While other people were promoted and celebrated and otherwise applauded for their professional choices, she remained exactly where she was.

On the floor. With a dog.

Hailey sighed as she dropped to Bess’s level. “I know how Jasmine feels about having animals in the office, but I didn’t have a choice.” She put out a soothing hand, but the dog had no intention of being soothed—which was fair, considering the half-dozen puppies taking up the space where her intestines were supposed to go. “I couldn’t leave her at home. Not this close to her due date.”

“You should have called me for help,” Penny said. “I know people.”

As was almost always the case when Penny made an offer like that, Hailey wasn’t sure how to take it. On the surface, it seemed legit, and Lord knew she could use the help. Bess wasn’t Hailey’s dog, but she was her responsibility. As her foster placement until the puppies were born and could be found good homes, Hailey had signed on to keep the animal safe and happy—and the more hands on board with that, the better. But Penny was nice toeveryone, and always with that same friendly smile and air of unconcern, regardless of how obnoxious they were. She was even nice to the guy who delivered sandwiches from the deli down the street, and he’d once followed Penny home and keyed her car because she wouldn’t go on a date with him.

“Thanks, but I don’t want to be a bother.” Hailey forced a note of cheer into her voice and added, “Besides, it’s more exciting to live on the edge like this. Will Jasmine fire me? Will I be thrown out without a reference? Tune in at eleven for the update.”

Penny chuckled obligingly, but like the friendly overtures, it could just as easily be a sympathy laugh. Hailey was about to let her coworker off the hook with a smile and a wave, but Bess began panting anew. From her vantage point on the floor, Hailey could detect the light scent of acetone assailing her nostrils—a warning sign the dog wasn’t getting all the nutrients she needed.

“Uh-oh,” Hailey said. “Before you go, would you mind smelling her breath? I hope she’s not developing toxemia.”

Penny’s response to this was a gasp. “Don’t move,” she warned from her position in the doorway. “Scratch that. Don’t blink. Don’t even breathe.”

Assuming Jasmine was heading their way, Hailey cast a panicked look around the small rectangle of her office. There was nowhere to hide—not herself and not Bess, whose breath was really starting to worry her.

But then Penny spoke again, this time with a slight squeal. “You’ll never guess who’s walking down the hall. Hailey, I told you not to blink. You’re blinking.”

It was true. Shewasblinking. She was also breathing and moving, but only because she enjoyed her life on this earth, however little it might appear to someone as glamorous as Penny.

“Cole Bennett,” Penny said. “It’s Cole Bennett. My heart is leaving my chest. My blood is on fire. I might die.”

At the mention of the quarterback of the Seattle Lumberjacks, local celebrity and football god, Hailey’s body underwent a similar change. Her pulse leaped and a hot thrumming filled her veins, but she fixed her attention on the dog instead. She wasn’t going to fall for that trick again. Her coworkers liked to pull it out at lunches and meetings and pretty much anywhere Hailey could make a fool out of herself—which, to be fair, was a lot of places. The last time one of them had faked a Cole Bennett sighting, Hailey had actually stood up so fast she’d nearly fainted.

“Well, maybehecan get down here and smell Bess’s breath,” Hailey said. The dog panted in agreement, sending another hot blast of that worrisome smell her way. “Do you think anyone would notice if I slipped out for an hour or so?”

A body lowered itself to the gray carpeted floor next to her. Much to her surprise, it wasn’t the long, lean figure of her coworker. In a former life, Penny had been a ballerina, and she had both the posture and the waistline to prove it. This figure, however, was much bigger. Broader. Built like the kind of man who—

“What are we smelling for?” he asked.

All the air left Hailey’s lungs at the sound of that voice. Lots of men were big and broad, but only one of them spoke with that low, dulcet richness. She barely had time to register what was happening—or, more to the point,whowas happening—when a pair of impossibly large hands came up to cup either side of Bess’s head and pull her muzzle close.

“No, don’t…” Hailey began, but it was too late. Cole Bennett’s face—that gorgeous, flawless, famous face—was pressed against the nose of an unknown golden retriever in the final days of her pregnancy. Bess was an absolute darling of an animal, and her sweet disposition made her about as easygoing as they came, but there were certain rules to this sort of thing.

The most important rule was that when it came to mothers and their babies, all rules were off. Bess was 100 percent within her rights to view this oversized stranger as a threat and act accordingly.

Fortunately for them all, Bess took one look at him and began to enthusiastically lick.

“Well, hello there,” Cole said, laughing as the dog’s tongue explored his cheeks and chin. “I normally like to buy a lady dinner before things get this far, but I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

Hailey doubted he’d appreciate the same level of enthusiasm from a lady likeher, so it was a good thing she’d long ago memorized the exact angles of his face. His cheeks were wide-set and well sculpted, his chin a perfectly chiseled square. Sometimes, when he stood in profile, it was like looking at a statue of a man rather than the real thing.