Page 57 of Only and Forever
“You’ve got this, okay? We’ve got this. I won’t let you down when you open.”
A smile lifts his mouth. “Yeah. I know. Thanks, Lula.”
I pop the last of my sandwich in my mouth, then clean my hands with my napkin. “All right. Want to walk me through anything else in the store this afternoon?”
He smiles sheepishly. “Well... not so much walk you through. More... introduce you.”
I narrow my eyes. “Viggo Bergman. What have you done?”
—
“Jesus. Christ.” Sighing, I fold my arms across my chest. Two Labrador retrievers, one brown, one black, both gray at the snout, doze, curled around each other on a plush dog bed placed in a patch of thick, hot sunlight that spills through the bookstore’s large front window.
“Not even close,” he says, pointing. “That’s Romeo. And that’s Juliet.”
My gaze flicks toward Viggo. “You’re kidding me.Thoseare their names?”
“I’m trying not to let it bother me,” he admits.
I stifle a laugh. “This is hilarious. The guy whose bookstore is devoted to happily ever after gets two dogs named for the main characters of the most famous tragic love story.”
“Pff.” He waves a hand. “Not that. I’ve got a whole section in the store devoted toR and Jretellings with happy endings.Thatdoesn’t bother me.”
“Then, what does?”
He sighs. “They’re brother and sister.”
A snort sneaks out, then a cackle. I bend over, laughing so hard my stomach hurts.
Viggo glares at me. “Seriously, that’s messed up. I’ve got open arms for all sorts of ‘taboo’ romance tropes, but incest is not one of them. And they’re so old, it’s not like I can change their names; they’d never answer to them. I’m stuck.”
Now I’m wheezing, slapping my thigh.
“Oh, yuk it up, pipsqueak.”
Goddammit, that nickname. My laughter dies off abruptly. I poke Viggo’s side, right where I remember Oliver got him after I found him, Ren, and Seb in the closet. Viggo yelps and hops away, betrayal in his eyes. The dogs perk up, observing us curiously.
“Hands to yourself, ma’am,” Viggo says sternly.
“Stop. Calling. Me. Pipsqueak.”
He grins. “You know that just makes me want to call you that even more, right?”
I roll my eyes, bending and offering my hand to the brown one, Juliet, who’s more alert. She rolls over, shamelessly begging for a belly rub.
Viggo crouches beside me and rubs Romeo’s side, patting his flank in that way dogs love.
I smile to myself when Romeo pushes up and noses in under my hand, greedy for affection from me, too. Viggo reaches over me and gently scratches behind Juliet’s ears. Her eyes slip shut as she leans into his touch. Relatable content.
Not that Viggo and I have been touching. The past week we have been very pointedlynottouching at all, as if, having said whatwe did the night I moved in and we both got drunk, having acknowledged the next morning our attraction to each other, even the most chaste and platonic of touches is fraught with risk.
But it doesn’t even matter. I still remember that hug outside the Chinese restaurant; I’ve gotten myself off tothatmemory more than to any filthy fantasy involving his wet hands working a pottery wheel, his rough fingertips gliding down just-watered plant leaves, every flexing muscle and animal grunt as he put together IKEA furniture.
I haven’t even needed my vibrator the past week. Just my hand slipped beneath my underwear, where I’ve had an ache so sharp by the end of each day, it’s only taken a few swirls of my fingers before I’m going off like a firework to the memory of his hard, lean arms tight around me, the heady scent of his skin, that soft shirt against my cheek, my ear pressed to his heart hammering inside his chest.
It’s bad news.
“Well,” he says quietly, wrenching me from my thoughts. He nods toward the dogs. “What do you think of them?”