Page 32 of Ruff and Tumble

“I think that’s the last one.” Penny rubbed a hand blearily over her eyes. Her perfectly winged eyeliner didn’t smudge, so Hailey could only assume she’d either made a pact with the devil or resorted to permanent marker. They’d been hard at work since six that morning. “What time is it?”

Hailey looked at the clock above her desk and groaned. “We have ten minutes until he shows up. How’s my hair?”

Penny’s grimace said it all.

“Oh dear.” Hailey sighed and lifted a hand to her head. “It looked fine this morning, but my hair is too thin to hold its shape for long, and—”

“I’ve got you.” Penny whisked the ponytail holder from her own long, perfectly shaped coiffure and reached for Hailey’s oversized bag. Hailey was about to protest this breach of privacy, but Penny was a woman on a mission. “Sit down and close your eyes. Do you have any dry shampoo in here?”

Hailey wordlessly shook her head. Ever since Cole had caught her carrying around one of his jerseys, she’d been packing light. There wasn’t even an old Lumberjacks ticket stub to give her away.

“Never mind. I’ll just use your brush. This might hurt a little.”

In reality, it hurta lot. Hailey had no idea what Penny was doing to her head, but it involved wrenching her neck into strange positions, teasing every strand until it stood on end, and otherwise yanking her hair this way and that. Penny snapped the elastic band with a flourish and stood back to survey her handiwork.

“I’m a genius,” she murmured before reaching for the nearest desk drawer. After rummaging for a few seconds, she pulled out…a permanent marker.

“Iknewyour eyeliner couldn’t look that good on its own,” Hailey muttered, shrinking back as Penny loomed close. “Is this hygienic?”

“Not even a little,” Penny replied cheerfully. “But desperate times call for desperate measures. Hold still.”

Under normal circumstances, Hailey would have fought this attack on her eyelids, but these were strange times. Any minute now, Cole Bennett was going to walk through that door so they could pick puppy teams in front of an audience of twelve different newspaper outlets. The reporters were excited about it. His people were excited about it. Her people were excited about it. At this point, she was one small step away from being carried through the city on a golden litter.

So yeah. It might be nice to look a bit more like Penny. Just this once.

As if in agreement, Penny capped the marker and started to undo the tie at the waist of her casually elegant black jumpsuit. When Hailey didn’t make a move to strip off her own outfit—a carefully selected floral wrap dress that was the same color as Bess so it wouldn’t show any dog hair—Penny nudged her with her foot.

“Come on, slowpoke. Off with it. You can’t be nationally syndicated in a dress that looks like my grandmother’s couch.”

Hailey ignored the slight on her dress to focus on the more immediate problem. “Uh, Penny?” She gestured first at Penny’s hips and then at her own. “Are you sure about this?”

Penny slipped out of the pantsuit with the unselfconsciousness of a woman who’d come of age in a ballet dressing room. Even her underwear was perfect, a matching set with black lace that wouldn’t have lasted one cycle in Hailey’s ancient washing machine.

“Oh, I’m sure. Your waist is the size of a kitten. This will look so much better on you than it does on me.”

Hailey had no choice but to believe her. Well, shedidhave a choice, but it seemed cruel to leave Penny standing in the middle of the office in her underwear. With a quick look to make sure the door was firmly shut, she stepped out of her dress and handed it over.

“I think I hear someone coming,” Hailey hissed as the sound of voices in the hallway started to pick up.

Penny had already cinched the wrap dress at her waist and lost no time in helping Hailey navigate the jumpsuit. It was made of some kind of stretchy, forgiving material, so ittechnicallyfit, but Hailey would have preferred a moment to check herself in a mirror. The waist might have been the right size, but she was acutely aware that the bust and the butt areas were stretched to their limit.

“Damn,” Penny said, taking her in with a blink. “You can thank me for this by inviting me over for drinks sometime, okay?”

“Drinks?” Hailey echoed blankly.

“Yes, it’s that thing normal friends share after a long day of work. Alcohol and relaxation and maybe even a few laughs.” Penny gave her one more appraising look before nodding once. “Now switch me shoes and get out there.”

Hailey did as she was told, trading her beige flats for a pair of strappy sandals that were wholly inappropriate for the weather. She wished there was more time to unpack Penny’s statement—They were friends? She wanted to hang out outside work?—but she’d just managed to secure the final buckle before the door was pushed open.

“Welcome to draft day,” Cole said, sweeping inside just as Penny kicked Hailey’s half-open purse underneath her desk. “Are you ready for this?”

Nothing could have been more calculated to make Haileylessready than the way he looked as he stood in the doorway, his chest and arms straining at a button-down shirt that looked as though it had been woven with strands of moonlight, his face relaxed and gorgeous. The sight of such a perfect specimen of manhood should have made her swoon—and from the way her blood was pounding, that was a likely possibility—but it also made her acutely aware of the differences between them.

Even in this, he was her master. It didn’t matter that this washerworkplace and that today’s event washerdoing—every instinct she possessed was warning her to run and hide, to cast this job onto Penny’s more capable shoulders and salvage what remained of her ability to protect herself.

But Penny nodded at her from the doorway with a smile and a wink. And the binder in front of her fell open to a puppy that had been living in an overcrowded dog shelter for seven of the eight months he’d been on this earth.

Some things were more important than her weak, stupid pride.