Page 77 of Ruff and Tumble

Hailey felt a bizarre urge to rise to Cole’s defense. “Technically, he didn’tabandonthe puppy. I sort of…walked off with him in my arms.”

Jasmine glanced up. “But he didn’t try to stop you?”

“Well, no.”

She nodded and rose to a standing position once again. “Then it amounts to the same thing. When you want someone in your life—really want them—you don’t let them walk away like that.”

Hailey didn’t fail to understand what her boss was saying. If Cole wanted her in his life—really wanted her—he wouldn’t have let her walk away, either. Jasmine’s approach might not have been orthodox, but it was kind.

“If, for example, you tried quitting on me after this, I’d have something to say about it,” Jasmine persisted. She even cracked a smile. “Do the best you can with what you’ve got, Hailey. That’s all I ask. Find a way to make it work, and we’ll get you that producer credit for real next year. We couldn’t do this show without you.”

With that, she walked away, her pristine white heels clicking in the distance. Hailey could only stare, unblinking, as she went. Even Philip seemed to sense that something monumental had just happened, because he looked a little less depressed than he had for the past couple of days.

“Ohmygod.” Penny appeared in a doorway toward the back of the room just as Hailey staggered dazedly to her feet. “Did she really say what I just think she said?”

“How long were you listening?”

“She smiled at you. She was nice to you. Shelikesyou.”

“Isn’t that a janitor’s closet?”

Penny moved a finger across her lips in a gesture of silence. “I wanted to be on hand in case she fired you. I thought you could use the moral support.”

“I’m glad you were,” Hailey admitted. “I needed a witness to that. No one would believe me otherwise.”

She and Penny shared a knowing look. For what was probably the thousandth time since Cole had said those terrible things to her, Hailey was grateful for the other woman’s presence. Without fail, Penny had come over every single night to drink and commiserate and take long soaks in Hailey’s bathtub. At this point, she’d seen Penny naked from every possible angle, but that was okay. She didn’t think she’d be here, dressed and functional, if it weren’t for her friend.

My friend.

It still felt strange to think about—even stranger to say—but there was no denying that Penny was exactly that. She was everything Hailey had ever wanted and hoped for in a female companion, and she’d been here this entire time.

All it had taken was for Cole Bennett to waltz into her life to give her that final push to make it happen. Even after everything he’d done, the way he’d rooted out her biggest source of emotional pain and squeezed it, she still had something to thank him for.

It was almost enough to make her scream. He even managed to make being an asshole a way to shine.

“What are you going to do now?” Penny asked, voicing the exact question that had been pressing on Hailey’s mind for days. “He’s going to be at the warehouse for filming in less than an hour.”

As if sensing that a reunion was imminent, Philip perked to a ridiculous degree. So did Hailey, which made her so annoyed that she responded with the only thing she could think of.

“The first thing I want is for you to do my hair,” she said. “And if we have time, I think we should revisit the permanent marker too.”

* * *

Cole wasn’t at the warehouse when Hailey and Penny arrived. Hailey’s hair looked incredible, pulled back in some kind of twisty cascade that made her feel like a goddess, and Penny had done things with the marker that were probably going to result in a staph infection—but that were worth it, because she looked freaking amazing.

The puppies, however, were present and accounted for. All fifty of them. No sooner had they walked in the door than Philip located his new friend Cleopatra and bounded off after her. Nala was there, too, lingering around craft services in hopes that someone would drop a platter of snacks while she was ready to catch them.

Big and small, well behaved and wound-up, exhausted and only recently awakening from their naps, puppies were everywhere.

Hailey normally loved days like this, where the chaos cast all other thoughts and considerations aside. No matter how empty her own house and life might be, moments like these made her feel like it was impossible to be alone. Today, however, she wasn’t in the mood to look on the bright side.

“Well, I guess that solves one of your problems,” Penny said. “If he’s not here, you can hardly work with him. Not even Jasmine can expect you to manifest a football player out of thin air.”

“Can’t she?” Hailey sighed as she ran through a mental checklist of her options. They didn’t have a formal contract with Cole, but he was on all the promo items and had verbally committed to seeing this project through. It would look very bad for him if he failed to show up now—worse, probably, than it would for her. He was still listed as questionable on the injury report, and rumors about whether or not he was going to play in the Kickoff Cup were pretty much all that anyone could talk about. If he bailed on the Puppy Cup now, people would be sure to assume he was in much worse condition than the Lumberjacks were letting on.

Which, Hailey knew, was the truth. Getting the great Cole Bennett to publicly admit it, however…

“I’ll call Reggie,” Hailey decided with a nod. “She’s the one person who can get him to do things he doesn’t want to.”