Page 174 of The Locker Room

themselves comfy.

“Are you proud of yourselves?” he asked rhetorically. “You

frightened the poor abused cheerleader. Seriously—if you were any more

ferocious, I"d have people-pee on my kitchen counter. That"s

disgusting—you guys would have been sniffing it for years.”

Max, the long-boned one with the big floppy ears looked at him

soulfully, and Mercury grinned a crooked dog smile, and parked his chin

on top of Max"s head. Neither of them looked particularly contrite, and

Xander sighed as he stripped off his slacks and his jacket and went

rooting around for some sweats.

He was pulling a sweatshirt over his head when there was a knock

at the door, right before it opened. He looked at Penny reprovingly.

“I could have been naked!”

“Which would have been more uncomfortable for you than it

would be for me,” she told him amiably. “I got your cheerleader settled

down with a snack and the television, and one of those giant stuffed lions

that the franchise gave you that one year, and I think she"s going to be

okay. You clocked her boyfriend on the head with your crutch?”

Xander shrugged and chucked the crutches down next to the bed

before throwing himself on top of the covers ass first. With a grunt, he

rooted around for the remote so he could watch the big screen on the

wall. Yeah, yeah, sometimes fame and fortune had its perks. He"d trade

everything including the dogs to have Chris in the bed next to him, and

that wasn"t an exaggeration. Hell, it wasn"t even a sacrifice. (Okay—the

dogs would have hurt, but not as much as Chris.)

“He was being rough with her, and she was fighting back. He

didn"t see me.” He thought about that for a minute, and blushed. “Which

makes me a big cowardly douchebag myself, I guess. But Mandy was

pretty intent on getting me out of there. I guess a big thugly asshole who

would beat up on his ninety-two-pound girlfriend might try to take me