Man's Best Friend (The Dogmothers #5) - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,4
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 thoughts 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?”