Man's Best Friend (The Dogmothers Book 6) Read online

  She put a hand on his arm, and this time it wasn’t just a sly way of touching him. “You be careful in that job, Dec.”

  “I am,” he promised her. “What’s next? Happiest moment of the year?”

  “I think…” She narrowed her eyes at him. “When I finished the semester, drove like a maniac from Raleigh to Bitter Bark, and you were in your truck in my driveway, waiting for me.”

  He gave her one of those slow, crazy-cute Mahoney smiles that made her stomach flutter and her knees weak. “I couldn’t wait for you to call, E. I was counting the damn minutes until you got back home.”

  Yes. Everything was different this summer. “So now what was your very best moment of the year?” she asked. “The big one, the highlight, the moment that made the year worth living.”

  He didn’t answer for a long time, but never took his eyes from hers. She could feel the heat, the sparks, the magnetic pull between his body and hers as he leaned over her. “Hasn’t happened…yet.”

  For a few seconds, she couldn’t breathe. He had to hear her heart hammering. Or maybe that was his. They were close and getting closer. It was hard to separate him from her. And she didn’t want to.

  “But we could make the best moment of this year…” He closed the space between them, his lips almost, but not quite, touching hers. “Right now.”

  Oh yes, please. Silent, she reached up and slid her hand around his neck, easing his mouth to hers for their first real kiss.

  They’d kissed before. At an eighth-grade graduation party during a game of spin the bottle. At the post-prom party during a big group date and after a few drinks, but they’d just laughed about it the next day. And when she’d gotten her college acceptance, but that was an accident when their lips brushed.

  But they’d never kissed like this. Long. Sweet. Intentional.

  He scooted closer without breaking contact. His soft lips tasted hot and peppery, like the stolen whiskey.

  With a moan that came from deep in his chest, he angled his head and added pressure, making her dig her fingers into his shoulders. He rolled her onto her back, and with each breath, they got closer, more intimate, and she could feel every firefighter-toned muscle, and one very impressive bulge she’d never felt before, pressing right where she wanted it.

  This was Declan. This was insane. This was perfect.

  He drew back for one second, his eyes closed, his lips parted. With another moan of pleasure, the next kiss grew more explosive when their tongues touched and they both seemed to want more. She bowed her back and spread her legs around his hips and forgot everything in the world but the new and thrilling sensations knotting her up.

  “Evie,” he murmured, splaying his hands over her ribs, his grip tight, like he was forcing himself not to touch her everywhere. “You feel so good.”

  “You have no idea how good I feel.” She rocked against him, nearly crying out from the shock of raw pleasure.

  “You’re sure?” His fingers worked their way down to her T-shirt hem, inching it higher.

  She eased him back enough so she could study his expression. “It’s going to change us, Dec.” It wasn’t a question.

  “About damn time, if you ask me.”

  Instead of answering, she looked into eyes she knew as well as her own. She knew every gold fleck and long dark lash. She knew how to read the expression in those eyes. She’d seen them red from smoke when he got off a terrible shift, and she’d seen them sleepy in an eight a.m. algebra class. And lately, she’d noticed his eyes were constantly on her. And not always on her face.

  Just the thought of how his heated gaze had coasted over her body when she walked to his truck tonight made her ache.

  Silently, she sat up and pulled the T-shirt over her head.

  “Oh.” His gaze dropped down to her lacy black bra. “Pretty fancy for camping.”

  “I had a feeling…”

  “You did?” He pressed his hand to her breastbone, his palm grazing the lace. “Probably the same feeling I had when I packed some, uh, extra gear.”

  He’d brought a condom.

  Biting her lip, she looked up at him. “I’ve always hoped it would be you.”

  His whole body went still, eyes widening. “This is your first time?”

  “Don’t you think I’d have told you if I’d slept with someone?”

  “Um…I didn’t tell you.”

  She started to respond, then closed her mouth. She couldn’t be surprised at that. Declan was twenty-one, super cute, and a Mahoney, for God’s sake. Girls were always floating around him and his younger brother Connor. Plus, she’d spent most of the past three years at NC State, three hours away. Up until tonight, they’d simply been the best of friends and she’d had no claims on his body. Yet.

  “Well, I haven’t,” she admitted. “Does that make a difference?”

  He considered that, silent as he so often was when his wheels were turning and he wanted to make the right decision.

  “Like you said, everything is going to change. But you being a virgin?” He took a shaky breath. “I’m not sure—”

  “Declan.” She fisted his T-shirt. “I waited for something. Someone. You.”

  “I’m not sure anything has ever made me happier,” he finished, putting a hand on her cheek. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, his breath already tight. “We’ll take it slow and easy and—”

  She pulled him down for a blistering kiss on the mouth.

  “And like that.” He chuckled into the kiss, sliding his hand around to unclip her bra. “Happy birthday to us, E.”

  “Happy birthday to us, Dec.”

  Chapter Two

  When the sun came up and bathed the world in a soft golden glow, Declan awoke deep in the sleeping bag they’d hardly needed for the oppressive summer night, his arms painfully empty, his whole body on fire with an unfamiliar sensation. What was that ache, other than what he woke up with every morning?

  He blinked into the light, then squinted at a silhouette down on the dock, where Evie stood peering over the rolling hills and navy blue water of the lake.

  Evie. That was the feeling pressing on his chest. Evie, when she lost control, and when he was finally deep inside her, and when they fell asleep, knotted together.

  His navy BBFD T-shirt skimmed her bare thighs, which were long and lean, and holy God, he’d never known anything could be that insanely smooth.

  He took a full minute to drink in the sight of her, still reeling from the discovery that the girl he considered his closest friend was now the woman who’d given him everything last night.

  And then he knew what that unfamiliar burn was. Declan Mahoney was completely, totally, and undeniably in love with Evie. She had everything he wanted—a wacky sense of humor, a brain like a damn computer, a body that drove him absolutely crazy, and she was the best friend he’d ever had.

  Did Evie know that this was it? Game over? It was them, together, forever and ever, a-freaking-men. She would, eventually.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” His voice came out sleepy and gruff. “Come back to…bag.”

  She turned, silent for a long moment, but he couldn’t see her expression with the rising sun behind her.

  “You okay?” he asked when she didn’t say anything, pushing up to his elbows.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” She walked over the wooden dock and to their campsite hidden in the trees, finally reaching the blanket. She dropped to her knees next to him, her blue-fire eyes too bright for her to have just awakened. “Was that weird? Last night?”

  Weird? “I’d use a lot of words to describe what happened in this sleeping bag, E, but ‘weird’ would not be one of them.”

  She pulled her long black hair back to look hard at him. “I mean…we had sex, Declan.”

  “Oh, is that what we did? Good addition to the birthday traditions, don’t you think? Gives new meaning to pin the tail on the…” He let the joke go and put a hand on her bare thigh. “Please tell me you’re not having second though
ts or morning-after regret.”

  She didn’t answer right away, and that made his chest clench. “Can we still be friends?” she finally asked.

  “What kind of question is that? We’ll be friends forever. Best friends. I tell you everything.”

  She lifted a brow. “Apparently not.”

  “Everything that really matters. I haven’t been with that many girls, if that’s what you’re thinking. And no one was…” He shook his head. “There’s only you now. There’s only ever been you, honestly. And there only ever will be—”

  She quieted him with a finger to his lips. “You do realize what’s ahead of me, right? Like, eons of school, graduate school, specialty training, residencies, and rotations. I don’t want to be a country vet, Declan.”

  “I know. You want to be a veterinary neurologist, a surgeon, a top-notch specialist, because you have the blood of Thaddeus Bushrod in your veins, and you don’t do anything halfway.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Not this time. I totally respect what you want to do with all those brains God gave you and those talented hands.” He inched back. “And whoa, they are—”

  “Declan, I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” he shot back. “But does all that talent and ambition leave no room for a future for us?”

  “It’s daunting for me to think about the future,” she whispered. “I want…all that, but I can’t really think about our relationship.”

  “You’ve never had to think about our relationship,” he countered. “It’s like…breathing.”

  “After last night?” she challenged.

  “Heavy breathing,” he joked. But for once, she didn’t laugh, her eyes downcast, her pretty mouth nowhere near forming the smile he expected.

  “Hey.” He lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “We don’t have to…do that again.” Which would be a damn shame. “Our friendship isn’t contingent on sex or anything else, to be honest. We’ll be friends for the rest of our lives. I will always be there for you, in whatever capacity you want. You believe that, right?”

  “I believe it, but you have a lot to do, too. Make captain by the time you’re thirty, then chief when your dad retires. We have plans, Dec.”

  He took her hand and rubbed her knuckles. “I know this is who you are, Evie Hewitt. You aren’t happy if you don’t have a schedule and a long-term plan and short-term strategy and lists of pros and cons.”

  “True, but that long-term plan is long. Would you really wait all those years?”

  “For you? Of course.”

  She gave a dry, disbelieving laugh. “You’re going to wait, like, a decade? Declan Mahoney, one of the best catches in Bitter Bark?”

  “You say that like I’m a fish and girls are casting their hooks at me.”

  “Well?”

  “I won’t bite.” He inched closer and took her chin between his fingers, holding her pretty face steady. “Unless you want me to.”

  “Declan.”

  “Listen, I’d wait until I’m ninety, and then I’d come right back up here on this mountain and play the Birthday Game in a sleeping bag with you.” He closed the space and put his lips against hers. “Maybe by then I’ll get that whole pun thing right.”

  He felt her sigh against his lips before returning the kiss. But when they parted, he could still see doubt darkening her blue eyes.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Do you have any paper?”

  “I have index cards in my backpack left over from school.”

  “Get me one with no organic-chem notes on it.”

  “No promises.” She pushed up and grabbed her bag, fishing out a rubber-band-wrapped pack of index cards, taking one out. “A pen, too?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She came back with both, folding down next to him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m putting my money where my mouth is, as my Irish granny likes to say. I’m writing a, I don’t know, a pact? A guarantee. An index-card contract. Something you can hold on to and believe in when I’m not around.”

  At the top, he wrote DECLAN’S PROMISE in all caps, staring at it for a minute. Taking a deep breath, he started filling in the narrow blue lines with tiny printed words. “I, Declan Joseph Mahoney…” He hesitated, then looked at her. “Not sure what to say.”

  “How about ‘being of sound mind and body’?” She leaned forward and ran her finger down his bare chest. “I mean, it was pretty sound last night.”

  He smiled. “Don’t distract me, woman.” He kept writing, saying the words out loud to be sure he got them right. “Do hereby swear that I will wait for Evangeline May Hewitt…”

  “Don’t say forever,” she whispered. “There’s nothing worse than a broken promise.”

  He gave her a look. “Fine. For…twenty years,” he added as he wrote.

  “That feels like forever.”

  “And anytime in between,” he added, “I promise to be whatever she needs me to be.”

  “Nice and vague,” she teased.

  “You want specifics?” he asked. “Okay.” He continued to write. “I will be her friend, lover, husband…” He looked up to see her reaction, which was wide-eyed.

  “Husband?”

  “I said anything you need. Confidant, partner, provider…” He scribbled the words. “What else?”

  This time when he looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “No.” He stroked her long hair and pushed it back. “You shouldn’t be crying.”

  “You already are everything, Dec.”

  He leaned closer to kiss her for that. “What else, then?” he whispered. “Chauffeur?”

  “But not in reverse, because that’s the way the Mercedes bends.”

  “And she’s back, ladies and gentlemen.” He chuckled, tapping her nose with the pen. “Okay, how about chef, traveling partner, fellow camper, and…handyman?” He leaned closer. “’Cause I nailed you last night.”

  She snorted. “There’s hope for you yet, Mahoney.”

  Laughing, he kept writing. “And father to our…”

  She put her hand over his, making the pen pause and giving him a serious expression. “I get the idea.”

  So he just signed his name and gave her the card. “Keep that. We can revisit it on every birthday for the next twenty years and see what I’ve missed.”

  She reread it, smiling, then handed it back to him. “You keep it safe for us. You can wave it under my nose whenever I have doubts or have to run off to school or an animal hospital.”

  “Fine.” He took it, giving her a look he hoped she understood while he folded it in half. “Now, will you get in this bag so we can seal this deal?”

  “Oh yeah. Wait! What time is it? We have a twelve-year-old mastiff with bladder stones coming in for a procedure at nine. A sick mastiff, Declan.” She bit her lower lip and made what he thought of as her an animal needs me! face. “I have to be there to hold his big paw.”

  “Of course you do, Dr. Dolittle.” But wasn’t her tender heart for sick animals one of the many things he loved about her? He slipped the index card into the side of his backpack. “Looks like I lose to bladder stones.”

  “Hey, you just promised—”

  “Kidding.” He leaned in and kissed her. “I respect the bladder. So much that I’m headed into the woods right now.”

  “Declan.” She took his hand. “I don’t go back to school for a week. When’s your next night off?”

  “Since my dad did me a favor by taking my twenty-four-hour shift because someone wanted to camp on our actual birthday…”

  “That’s part of the tradition,” she said.

  “True, but I’ll have to make it up on Thursday. So, I’m on duty until Friday. Why?”

  “Let’s come back here.” She lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles. “We can start making next year’s best-of list.”

  He kissed her again, wanting so much to tell her he loved her,
but knowing it would send her on an I have a million years of school ahead rampage.

  “It’s a date, E.” He gave her one more kiss.

  They didn’t talk much on the way back to Bitter Bark, but held hands and listened to Tim McGraw because “My Best Friend” was her favorite song. And it sure felt right for this moment.

  It wasn’t until he turned the corner onto his street that Declan reached over to turn off the music.

  “Did I forget a Kilcannon event or something?” he asked, skimming the additional cars on the street and recognizing Aunt Annie’s van and his cousin Liam’s truck. Uncle Daniel was here, too. “Didn’t you say there’s a mastiff surgery this morning?”

  “Yeah. Dr. K should be at the office.”

  The first spark of something worrisome flickered in his chest and then flared when the front porch door opened, and Gramma Finnie walked out.

  “She doesn’t look happy,” Evie said, leaning forward to better see the sixty-something woman, whose graying hair looked wild and her face blotchy. “Think you’re busted for stealing her booze?”

  “I don’t know.” He scanned the cars again, seeing his younger brother’s Jeep parked in the driveway, but not Dad’s Tahoe. And his shift had ended three hours ago.

  As he got out of the truck and reached into the back for his pack and the sleeping bag, he saw Gramma Finnie dart back inside, the screen door slamming. What was going on?

  Evie came around the truck to get next to him, giving him a questioning look and reaching for his hand. “Looks like your entire family is here.”

  His gaze moved to Dad’s empty spot in the driveway. “Not all of them.”

  Just then, Uncle Daniel stepped outside, and right behind him, Aunt Annie. Instantly, Declan let go of Evie’s hand and hurried toward his uncle, who he could see, even from fifty feet away, was…not right.

  “Hey, Uncle Daniel,” Declan called, forcing his voice to be steady even though his throat was closing against his will.

  Where was Dad?