Chick with a Charm by Vicki Lewis Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

shelter. Why?”
    “She acts as if she knows me, and she seems familiar to me, too. But none of my friends have—or had—a golden.” He stood as Lily arrived with Daisy’s leash and a black nylon jacket she held out to him.
    “This is big on me,” she said. “If we’re going for coffee, you should have something.”
    “Thanks.” He had planned to have coffee at her place because he didn’t have a jacket, but Lily had neatly solved that problem. “What about Daisy? Is she going for coffee, too?”
    “There’s a café about a block away. They have outdoor seating and heaters. Daisy will be fine there. I wish we could go to Anica’s shop, Wicked Brew, but it’s not all that close and she isn’t open at night, anyway. She caters to the office crowd. So this is my second favorite spot.”
    Apparently he’d have to drink some coffee tonight, after all. It didn’t really matter. The evening would still end the same, with both of them naked and enjoying a simultaneous orgasm. But that would take a little longer to accomplish than he’d figured.
    They retraced their path down the stairs, this time with Daisy in the lead, Lily coming next and Griffin bringing up the rear. The jacket smelled like Lily, which wasn’t helping keep his mind off sex.
    The dog was a distraction, though. Griffin decided to concentrate on Daisy in order to get through this coffee-date foreplay. “Was Daisy a stray?” he asked.
    Lily took the steps quickly to keep up with Daisy, who seemed eager to get outside. “No, a family left her at the shelter. According to her record, they moved to England and decided not to try and take her.”
    “Hard to imagine anyone leaving a beautiful dog like this.”
    “Their loss is my gain. They didn’t appreciate her the way I do, or they never would have left her.”
    “So your apartment allows pets?”
    “Luckily they do. I didn’t think of that when I moved in, but now I’m really glad.”
    “It’s funny; I made sure my apartment complex allows pets because I wanted to get a golden after I got settled in there. But then I . . . just never did.” He wondered now how he’d let that plan slip away.
    Sure, he worked long hours, but he had the money to afford a pet sitter who could let the dog out once during the day. If he skipped the happy hour habit, he’d have plenty of time to get in a run with a dog each evening. But if he’d skipped happy hour, he never would have met Lily, and he sure as hell didn’t regret that.
    “Maybe you just needed someone to nudge you.” Lily opened the front door and followed Daisy down the concrete steps. “My sister’s the one who convinced me to adopt a dog. I didn’t think I had time, but you make time.”
    “Exactly.” Griffin decided then and there to get a dog, a golden like Daisy. By some twisted logic, he might have been waiting until he met the right woman so they could pick out a dog together, but that was nuts. The right woman would like the dog he chose, or she wouldn’t be the right woman, would she?
    They paused so Daisy could pee in a little patch of gravel about halfway down the block.
    “My only worry is that she doesn’t get enough aerobic exercise,” Lily said as she waited for Daisy to do her thing. “I’m not into running.”
    “I’m surprised.” Griffin remembered his fantasy—tight black Lycra covering her long legs and a black sports bra. “You seem so—”
    “Fit? Well, there are the stairs.”
    “Unless you go up and down them twenty times a day, that’s not enough to keep you . . .” How could he describe the perfection of her body? “. . . looking that good.” Lame, totally lame. She looked more than good. She looked like a centerfold, someone he wanted to lick all over.
    She laughed. “Then I guess it’s magic.”
    He had no problem believing that. Some people were born with the kind of metabolism that kept them in wonderful shape. Lily’s kids could very well inherit that metabolism, which would be a