Page 65 of Reluctantly Yours

“Fine,” I mutter.

“You say that like you’re allowing it, not like you had no choice.”

I follow Chloe back into the kitchen where our food is still sitting at the table. She sets the dog on the floor, then opens the bag Jillian gave her with his food in it.

I grab our plates to reheat the food that is now ice cold, thanks to Baxter’s arrival.

He moves to follow me, obviously thinking I’m going to feed him.

On my way to the microwave, he gets tangled under my feet and I almost drop the plates on the floor.

“Chloe, why is the dog next to me? There’s all this space.” I motion to the open concept chef’s kitchen around us. “It doesn’t need to be right underfoot.”

Chloe bites her bottom lip, trying not to laugh. “I think he likes you.”

While the food reheats, Baxter sits near my feet, looking up at me and wagging his tail.

“This is not for you.” I point toward the food in the microwave. “In fact, none of this is yours,” I motion to our surroundings, “so don’t get used to it.”

He just stares back, mouth open, and with that dopey look on his face.

“Don’t let the cranky man scare you, Baxter,” Chloe says, coming around the island to set his bowl of food on the floor near the table. “His bark is worse than his bite.”

She knows nothing about my bite. If she did, she’d take those words back.

Baxter busies himself with eating the food in his bowl while I set our plates on the table.

While we eat, Chloe’s attention wanders to the curly-haired dog slopping food out of his bowl.

“Isn’t he cute?” she asks.

“Cute? More like messy.”

Chloe laughs. “Do you ever plan to have kids? Because if you think Baxter is messy, you’re in for a real treat.”

“Kids get older, then they take care of themselves.”

“Sure, but there are a lot of messes in there before that happens. You do remember being a kid, don’t you?”

“My father was much older than my mother when they married and had me. He liked things to be in their place. Kids were to be seen, not heard.”

“He would have hated my house. Five different voices, all trying to talk at once.” She pauses a moment to take a bite of the salmon. “How old were you when he died?”

“Fifteen.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been tough.”

“It was fine. I hardly knew the man. He worked all the time. It was mainly my mother and me, and nannies when my mother was working.”

“Still. Losing a parent can’t be easy.”

My throat tightens, making the bite of food I just chewed difficult to swallow. I don’t want to talk about my father. There’s nothing to say. I need to shift the focus back onto the task at hand, our upcoming weekend in the Hamptons with Fred and Frankie.

“What are you going to do with the dog when we’re in the Hamptons?”

“The dog? His name is Baxter. And we’ll bring him with us.”

“What? We can’t bring him.”