Accidentally All Of Me

by Parker, Ali

  I slipped into bed, and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. As cheesy as it might sound, I totally dreamed about him all night long.

  I couldn’t wait to see him again, and I knew that I wouldn’t have to wait long. Of course, we would have to fit things around Winnie, make sure that she didn’t bust us in the act again, but I knew that he was as excited to see me as I was to see him. It was so nice, knowing that his attraction was as strong as mine. I wasn’t second-guessing myself or wasting time trying to determine what he was thinking. I knew it. For sure. And nothing else mattered.

  When I woke the next morning, it was to a text from the man I had been dreaming about all night long. I grinned as I opened it and scanned through the words that he had sent me. It was nothing special, just a good morning text and a question of when we were going to meet up once more, but to me, it felt like the most exciting thing in the world.

  I had never had this with anyone before, not really, and now I got to experience it with one of the most eligible bachelors in the city. I knew that there were dozens of women who would have killed to be in my position in that moment. But I was the one he wanted. Me, me, me. It was almost enough to go to a girl’s head.

  I texted him back with a promise to check out my schedule and let him know, and with that, I got ready for work and headed out the door to meet Reed for our coffee. I tried to brace myself as I headed down there. I knew that he was going to launch himself full force in my direction the first chance he got, interested to hear every detail, and I didn’t even want to know what I wanted to tell him yet, if anything at all.

  He waved me down as I headed through the door, and much to my relief, there was a big smile on his face. So he wasn’t too pissed about what had happened the day before, then.

  “Well, well, well, she returns!” he exclaimed as I got closer to him. “Wasn’t sure that I was going to see you after you skipped out on me yesterday.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I replied as I sank into the seat to join him. “I was... otherwise occupied.”

  “Oh, I bet you were,” he replied, practically waggling his eyebrows off his face at me in amusement.

  I had to stifle a giggle. He could be such a big ball of goof when he wanted to be, so different from the guy he was when he was at work. I knew that for sure.

  “So, tell me about it,” he said.

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing much to tell,” I replied.

  He raised his eyebrows at me pointedly. “Oh, okay, so you didn’t spend the night with your date?”

  I grinned and glanced away from him. “A lady never tells...”

  “Good thing I know you better than to mistake you for a lady, then,” he fired back. “Come on. Spill. I know that Lizzie’s going to be grilling me for this as soon as she gets the chance.”

  “Then she can ask me herself,” I replied.

  He groaned as though he could hardly believe that I was being so obstinate. “You can’t hold out on me. I’ve been waiting for you to deliver something for years.”

  I laughed. I didn’t mind the interrogation. I knew that it came from a good place. He was just letting me know that he cared and that he was happy for me.

  And he had no idea just how happy I was at everything that had gone down just a couple of nights before.

  Chapter 26

  Harry

  “And I like that she’s so smart,” Winnie continued, gushing on about Raina as though she was the most spectacular being she had ever come across in her life. “You know you have to be so smart to work with animals. You have to be able to tell what’s wrong with them as soon as you see them.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, and I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to my niece talk about the woman I was already crazy about. I knew that I should have put a stop to her intense adoration of Raina, given that I had only actually been on one date with her, but damn, it was nice to just let myself linger in the fun of knowing that Winnie liked her as much as I did.

  “And she brought us Tink,” Winnie said, craning around in her seat to look at the dog who was laid out across the back of the car. “She knew that he would be the perfect fit for us, and she was right.”

  “She certainly was,” I agreed, and I wondered how much longer I was going to have to listen to Winnie list all the pros of dating Raina. She had done it all the way home from school the day before, and now that we were driving in again, she seemed to have picked up right where she had left off. She was a one-woman hype team for Raina, and it was clear that she was already as nuts about the vet as I was.

  “And when she moves in, she can take care of Tink all the time,” she continued.

  I raised my hand to stop her in her tracks. “Okay, okay,” I warned her gently. “I don’t think that she’s going to be moving in anytime soon.”

  “I think she will,” Winnie replied happily, and she grinned at me widely.

  I smiled back. I knew that through her little-kid lens of the world, Raina and I were practically married by now.

  But if that meant that she approved of the woman that I was dating, I would take it. No, it wasn’t exactly how I had imagined I would break the news to her, but it wasn’t as though I had had much choice in the matter. She had just rolled up and seen the two of us undeniably together, and since then, she had frequently and without fail declared that she thoroughly approved of whatever it was that we had going on.

  I dropped her off at school, and I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She hugged me tightly, ruffled Tink’s head, and then headed into class. I watched her go. There was a girl who could take hold of anything that the world threw at her and make it her own. She had been through so much, but she still came out of it like she couldn’t wait to see what was coming next.

  Maybe Raina would move in with us sometime. Yes, I was getting way ahead of myself, but it was clear that she liked me, and I had no doubt in my mind that I was utterly crazy about her. I could imagine her helping get Winnie up in the mornings while I took Tink for a walk, the two of us working in a hectic tandem to make this work.

  Okay, maybe I was getting a lot ahead of myself. Yes, I liked the thought of having her around, and yes, I enjoyed having her stay the night. Making breakfast for her had been a bunch of fun, and driving her into work and getting to give her a goodbye kiss at the clinic had been everything I wanted it to be. But we had really only been on one proper date, and I would have been crazy or stupid or both to start jumping to the conclusion that this meant something more serious than it did.

  I had sent her a text that morning, and she had replied, and I swear my whole day had lit up as soon as I saw that she said she wanted to see me again. I kept on waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen that would get her reeling away from me, but it just... didn’t.

  She liked me. She really liked me. And I liked her. And Winnie liked her. And Tink? Well, Tink might still see her as the woman who cut open his stomach, but soon enough, he would come to adore her again.

  I arrived at work, and it took me a hot second to remember that it was a Friday, the very day I had deemed the office dog friendly. And it seemed like I had been taken up on that offer.

  The place was packed with dogs of varying shapes and sizes, dogs that were sniffing around and meeting new friends, dogs that were sitting at their owners’ feet with no intention of going anywhere else. Tink practically sprang out of my arms, and I knew I had no chance to hold him back as he started to meet a bunch of new friends all at once.

  “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite so chaotic,” I remarked to Yara as I gestured around the office at all the dogs inside.

  “Yeah, well, people are nuts about their pups,” she replied, and she raised her eyebrows at me pointedly.

  “Okay, if that was an attempt to come up with a tagline for these days...”

  “Oh, come on,” she protested. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. You’ve got to admit, it’s kind of catchy, no?”
r />   “No,” I agreed. “And besides, I don’t think we need to be giving anyone any more encouragement.”

  “You can’t tell me that this doesn’t make you a little happy,” she said, waving her hand at the room before us. “It’s amazing. I didn’t even realize so many people had pets around here. You know Marlena has a parrot?”

  “Yeah, I think I’m going to keep it dog only for the time being,” I replied with a chuckle. I couldn’t imagine the chaos of having a bird fluttering around here on top of everything else.

  “Spoilsport,” she replied, making a face at me.

  I watched as Tink started running around and making a bunch of new friends, and it made me so happy to see him like that. I would have to take a picture for Winnie so she could see how well her little guy was doing, even being around a bunch of new scary dogs.

  I headed to the office to work and left the door open so that Tink could wander in and out at his leisure. I was surprised at how much I was enjoying having the dogs around. I had imagined that they would be more of a distraction than this, but they meant that everyone seemed to be working double-time so they could get their time away from the office to take them out on walks or run them downstairs for a pee break.

  Yara was in her element. I knew it wouldn’t be long until she adopted a dog of her own. She might have played at being the heartless bachelorette to the rest of the world, but I could see from the way she got down to play with these dogs that she was already falling in love with the idea of having one of her own.

  Maybe I could ask Raina to find one that suited Yara. Or maybe I was just already looking for ways that I could spend time around her again.

  I had to remind myself that I didn’t have to bend over backward to get a chance to see her again. She liked me. She had made that pretty clear. I didn’t need to come up with excuses to see her. In fact, I was pretty sure that I could have rolled up to her office right about now and asked her for a coffee and she would have said yes.

  Though there were far more exciting things that I could think of for us to do that didn’t involve being in public.

  I pushed Raina as much out of my mind as I could manage. She was just so present. Everything I did, everywhere I looked, it felt like she was there, waiting for me. And it was so, so tempting to just give in and let the fantasies about where I wanted to go with her next take hold.

  I was more than a little into her. I wanted to be around her more than I wanted anything else in the world. I missed her. Was that crazy? I already missed her. We had only been apart a day, if that, and yet I wanted nothing more than to get the chance to see her again and remind myself just what it was that was driving me so crazy about being apart from her.

  Well, if I couldn’t get her out of my head, the least I could do was turn that into something productive. I drafted a letter for the next marketing meeting, regarding the donation to the shelter. I didn’t want that to be where our involvement with them ended. Quite the opposite, I wanted to do more to help them keep their heads above water.

  I had seen the work they did there, and I knew just how important it was to the dogs. And I could see that my office pretty much agreed wholeheartedly about how important dogs were to their lives. I wanted to do something more than just hand over some cash to them and hope for the best. I wanted something more practical, groundwork that I could be proud of. And in the midst of it all, I wanted to show Raina just how much I cared.

  The rest of the day went by so quickly, I hardly had time to keep track of it. It was having those dogs around that made it so fast, I would have bet, because everyone seemed in a better mood, having their little furry friends around.

  I was starting to understand just how much of an impact these animals could have on the people who took them in—not just looking around the office but in my own home, too. Winnie had brightened up so much since Tink had come along, and their bond was only going to get deeper with time.

  It made me so happy to see what they had already given to one another, as though the world had been waiting to bring them together and give them what they had both been lacking in the last few years.

  And of course, without these dogs, I never would have met Raina.

  If it wasn’t for the little guy who’d hidden under the wheel of the car, I’d never have come across her in the first place. And if not for Tink, I’d never have had a chance to see her again.

  I had a lot to thank these creatures for, and the least I could do to start was by supporting the shelter where the strays from this city got the treatment that they deserved.

  As I headed out of the office, I had to drag Tink away from the new friends he had made. I couldn’t wait to tell Winnie how well he had done with all the other dogs. I knew she was going to be begging to come in one of these Fridays to see them all herself.

  As the cool late afternoon air hit me, I couldn’t help but smile. Everything was good.

  For now, at least, everything was good.

  Chapter 27

  Raina

  I leaned up against my truck and waited, a little nervousness flooding around my system. I didn’t know how this was going to go, but I knew this was going to be a make-or-break date, and I wanted to do everything I could to ensure that it ran as smoothly as it possibly could.

  I hadn’t been sure about suggesting something like this to him. I had thought that he might shoot me down in favor of something more traditional. But he had agreed as soon as I had suggested it—as long as he could bring Winnie along with him, of course. I told him that the more hands we had on deck, the better, and I had been able to hear his smile even from the other end of the line.

  I was picking them up in my truck, and it looked a little out of place outside the nice house that they stayed in. The truck seriously needed an upgrade, though I was in no rush to get one. I had had her for years now, and it would have felt odd carrying out my job in anything else.

  I smiled and waved them down as soon as I saw them heading out of the house, and Winnie practically galloped toward me and gave me a big hug as soon as she saw me. The last time I’d laid eyes on her, she had been busting Harry and me in the middle of a morning-after situation, but she didn’t seem to hold that against me.

  “I’m so excited to work at the shelter with you today!” she said. “Tink’s at home with the housekeeper. She said she’s going to take great care of him.”

  “So you can take great care of these other dogs,” I said. “That’s good to hear. Harry, you feeling up to this?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” he replied with a smile.

  I couldn’t help but grin back. God, just being this close to him again.

  “All right, I’m driving,” I announced. “Come on, hop in, and try not to sit in too much dog hair.”

  “Is that possible in this truck?” Harry teased me.

  I shrugged. “Legends have told that it might be,” I replied. “Come on. Let’s get going. They need us down at the shelter.”

  Winnie looked out the window and hummed to herself as we headed across the city to the shelter, and Harry and I chatted all the way down.

  “You know, I wasn’t sure if you would be up for something like this,” I remarked.

  He shook his head at once. “Of course, I would be,” he replied in protest. “You know how much Tink has turned things around for us. We wouldn’t have even met him if it hadn’t been for this shelter, you know? Least we can do is give a little back.”

  “Well, get ready,” I warned him. “We don’t get a lot of volunteers around here, and I think they’re going to want to take advantage of your good nature.”

  “Let them,” he replied warmly. “I want to do everything I can. And get a chance to see where my money’s going, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  We pulled up outside the shelter. Winnie dove out of the truck before it had rolled to a full stop, and I hurried to catch up with her.

  “So, are these our volunteers for the day?” Marjo
rie asked as she emerged from the main building.

  I nodded. I’d let her know that I had suggested this, and she was just pleased at the thought of people sticking around to help her out a little. I knew how much she struggled sometimes, just keeping on top of everything, and this was the least I could do to help out.

  “And this must be Harry,” she said, greeting my new man warmly. She extended a hand to him. “You know, we really can’t thank you enough for your donation. It’s going to change the lives of so many dogs in this city. I really hope you’ll come back and visit often so we can show you what an impact your money is having around here.”

  “I hope so too,” he agreed then rolled up the sleeves of his jacket and clapped his hands together. “So, what do you need me to do today?”

  “Well, I think we should get the two of you set up with badges first,” I replied. I grinned as I saw Winnie gazing adoringly down the rows of cages that held all the dogs that hadn’t been lucky enough to find a home yet. Her eyes were so wide that they looked like they were going to pop out of her head. She must have been so excited.

  “Winnie, come here, and let’s get ourselves sorted out,” he called to her, and she reluctantly dragged her eyes away from the dogs to come with us instead. She was really just the sweetest girl. I could still remember when I was her age, when I had looked at animals like that, knowing for sure that a time would come when I would take care of them for a living.

  We got them set up with overalls and badges that announced their volunteer status, and after that, they got down to work.

  Winnie stuck with me, and I had her in the room with me while I carried out vaccinations. She would comfort the dogs during, and she had a really sweet, gentle way with all of them. None of them seemed even remotely troubled by her presence there, and dogs knew this stuff better than anyone else. I knew that I could trust dogs to sniff out when someone was anything less than totally upright, and none of them had a thing to say about her. Which was a relief.