Tall, Dark and Divine by Jenna Bennett Page B

wanted to dole out. He stepped around the trashcans to where she was. And stopped. “Oh.”
    “Isn’t he beautiful?” Her eyes shone.
    “Um.”
    “He” was quite possibly the homeliest dog Eros had ever seen, and given his millennia of walking the earth, he’d seen more than his fair share.
    And yeah, maybe he was exaggerating, but this dog would never win any prizes for beauty.
    He was about the size of a small fox, but his legs were short and his body shaped like the sausage Annie had likened herself to last night. But unlike Annie, who went in and out in all the right places, the dog really was barrel-shaped. He had a broad head, a square snout, and big ears, one of which stood straight up, bat-like, while the other flopped over on itself. His eyes were big and worried—one brown, one so pale blue it was almost white—and his tail was long and almost naked. The very tip of it twitched back and forth. Hard to tell whether it was a wag or just a nervous tick.
    Annie was kneeling on the ground a few feet away from him, with what looked like a biscuit in her hand.
    “What are you doing?” As if he couldn’t guess.
    “What does it look like I’m doing?” Annie said, turning her attention back on the dog. “C’mere, sweetheart!” She waved the biscuit enticingly and added to Eros, over her shoulder and in her normal voice, “I saw him when I came to work this morning. I left him a cookie.”
    “A cookie?”
    “One of yours,” Annie said. “Sorry. I figured he needed it more than you did. He must have eaten it, too, because it’s gone now. But I wanted to see if I could get him to take a biscuit.”
    “I’m sure he’d be happy to take a biscuit.” Who wouldn’t? Especially if it came with that melting voice.
    She shot him a look. “I saw you talking to Harry earlier.”
    Shit .
    “I was civil,” Eros said.
    “You didn’t threaten him or anything, did you?”
    “Of course not.” He did his best to sound insulted, while he tried to determine whether anything that had transpired between him and Harry could be deemed a threat. “Why would I do that?”
    “Because yesterday you asked me if I wanted you to hit him,” Annie said, her attention on the dog. “He asked me out.”
    “He did?”
    She glanced up at him. “Didn’t he tell you? You spoke to him.”
    Right. For a second his mind spun, and then he settled on a story. “He wanted my advice.”
    “About what?”
    “You,” Ross said.
    “Me? Why?”
    “Because I run a matchmaking service. And because he’d noticed us talking yesterday.”
    “What kind of advice?” Annie wanted to know.
    “He regretted being so harsh last night. He’d had too much to drink and wasn’t thinking straight—felt bad about it all night. Couldn’t get you out of his head.”
    It was impossible to tell from Annie’s expression whether she believed him or not. But her attention was on him now and not on the dog. Sensing it, the dog crept closer, picked the biscuit out of her hand, and retreated a few feet with it. “Good boy,” Annie said, and folded her hands in her lap while the dog crunched. “Did you believe him?”
    “What’s not to believe?” She’d damn near taken up permanent residence in his own head; it was no stretch to believe that someone else could have thought about her all night, too.
    There was silence for a moment, only broken by the dog’s chewing. “I said yes,” Annie said.
    He already knew that, but hearing it still annoyed him. “He told me.”
    The annoyance must have shown in his voice, because she tilted her head back to look at him. “You don’t mind, do you?”
    Yes! “Why would I mind?”
    “No reason,” Annie said, her cheeks warm. “I mean, last night was a fluke, right?”
    “Sure.” A fluke he wouldn’t be repeating, now that he’d stuck her with Harry. Somehow he took no pleasure from that knowledge.
    “You’re still on the rebound. Not ready to move on yet.”
    “Right.”
    “Right.” She got