Though I honestly wasn’t sure I cared. Five hundred bucks to spend fifteen minutes with James and his adorable dog? Not exactly a hardship.
“It does. Her name is Amelia now?”
“Yep. Close enough, but different. So you’ll be here tomorrow, right?”
It was tempting. I would rather be with a puppy and a hot guy than cleaning bathrooms. Hard to believe, I know. But I didn’t want to just give in to him. Besides, I was trying to get a promotion. I couldn’t call off last minute. “I can’t just take the day off. I’ll get in trouble.”
“Can’t you get someone else to work for you?”
“No one is going to want to take my shift the day before.” I swiped rapidly on my phone. “We have an app for work. I can offer my shift, but if no one takes it, I have to go in.”
I posted it and showed him the screen. “See? No one is going to take it last minute.”
“I think someone just did,” he said.
“What?” There was no way. No one ever responded that fast. Ever. I yanked the phone back away and stared at it. “Nina took my shift,” I said, stunned.
“That’s awesome. Now we can take Amelia for her walk. I think your car is here,” he said. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
I was still staring at my phone. Did James somehow arrange for that to happen? Or was he just that lucky that everything worked out the way he wanted it to?
He opened the car door and leaned in to talk to the driver. I didn’t hear a word either of them said. When he pulled back and gestured for me to enter the car, I just did, thoroughly confused. I wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened but it felt like I might have lost a game of chess.
James had outmaneuvered me.
“Noon,” he said. “See you then.”
The door slammed shut.
Totally outmaneuvered.
And yet… his maneuvers had just solved my financial woes for the week. Hell, the month if I was careful.
I leaned back and sighed, relaxing my shoulders.
I could go grocery shopping. I’d been living off of oatmeal the last few days.
“You’re in a good mood,” Flores commented when I got to work.
I was. I gave her a grin. “I got to walk a very cute puppy today.”
* * *
That night when I got home, I was trying to puzzle through what exactly had happened with James, but when I tried to talk to my roommate, her son didn’t like the interruption to his very important efforts to dominate his mother’s attention. He gave me a frustrated look and a growl and hit my leg.
We were still in the leg-hitting phase.
“Hey, Kadin, I bet Auntie Mia has a sucker for you,” Christina said. “Help her look in her purse.”
I gave her a grateful look. That could easily burn up twenty minutes. There was so much shit in my purse that Kadin would get distracted and probably forget about the sucker or the fact that he wanted no one else to be allowed to speak to his mother ever.
He immediately brightened up. I set my purse on the couch and opened it for him. Running a hand over his soft blond hair, I was glad I had moved my vibrator back to my nightstand. I’d never meant for it to be in my purse but had tossed it in there in a cleanup effort when our shower was leaking and maintenance needed to come in the apartment.
“Oooh,” Kadin said, pulling out a straw. He waved it back and forth like a sword.
“I had the craziest day,” I told Christina. “My walk today was for JJ Beckett’s new puppy.”
Christina, who had been in the midst of washing dishes, dropped a plastic plate in the sink, causing suds to splash up her arms. “What? That is crazy. How did you know it was his puppy?”
“I didn’t. Not until I saw him.”
“You saw him?”
“Yep.” Saw him, was attracted to him…
“What is he doing here in Vegas?”
“He lives here.”
“Oh, right. Why is that so hard to remember? I keep thinking he lives in Miami.”
“Because he said he did. I have a hard time with it too. I don’t think of him as a football player.” Even though out of curiosity, since finding out his true identity, I had watched a game from the previous season. It still didn’t seem like him. That was just a dude in a helmet running around on artificial turf.
“It just sucks so hard you were hooking up with a pro player and didn’t even know it. What a missed opportunity to feel awesome about yourself.”
There were several things here that sucked. “It sucks so hard that he lied to me.”
I watched Kadin pull out a fuzzy chick toy. Where the hell had that come from?
“Quack,” Kadin said.
“Yes, sir. Quack. Good boy.” I glanced over at Christina. “Plus, like I said, he was there. He brought the puppy to me and insisted I walk her with him. He named the puppy Mia.”
“Are you serious? That’s so romantic!”
This was where we totally differed. “I don’t think that’s romantic.”
“What would you call it? He got a puppy, that I’m sure he adores, and he named her Mia. That is not a coincidence.”
No. Obviously not a coincidence. I’d seen him right around the time he’d gotten the dog. “Hmm. True. Maybe it’s not as creepy as I first thought.” But I honestly wasn’t sure why he had given his puppy the same name as me.
“It’s hot. It means he’s in love with you.”
That made me laugh. “That’s a stretch. He thinks I’m a thief.”
“God, that’s so rude. Who would ever think you’re a thief? It’s ridiculous!”
“I know.” I glanced over at Kadin and my eyes bugged out. “Um, Chrissy,” I said. I pointed to the wallet in Kadin’s little hands. “Look what your son found in Mississippi.”
“What is that?” Then her jaw dropped. “Oh, shit, that isn’t James’ wallet, is it?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Shit, I didn’t mean to swear. I’m trying not to in front of you-who-know.”
Fortunately, Kadin dropped it on the couch, bored with the leather wallet. I opened it, hoping somehow that it was someone else’s wallet entirely, even though it looked exactly like the wallet James had in December. In other words, expensive. Not to mention, who else’s wallet would be in my bag? I saw James’ ID. His image stared up at me in judgement. “Whoops.”
“How the heck did you end up with that?” Chrissy asked.
“I don’t know! Oh my God, this is so bad. What am I supposed to do? He’ll never believe I didn’t know it was in my bag.” I glanced toward our front door, like I expected the police or James to storm through.
“Do you have the ring too?” she asked, drying her hands off rapidly and rushing over to me.
“No!” Then I realized I couldn’t say that with any certainty. I hadn’t thought I had the wallet either.
Christina took the wallet from me. She eyed his ID and pulled out his credit cards one by one. “This is a lot of plastic.” She removed the cash and counted it rapidly, her lips moving. “This is eighteen hundred dollars. Does that seem right?”