The Boyfriend Project Read online

  Thinking of U. ☺

  Smiling, I sent him back the same message. He was always texting me with little reminders about how much he loved and thought about me.

  Chocolate was happy to see me, his entire body jerking back and forth with the enthusiasm of his wagging tail. He knew what it meant when I was holding the leash. When I opened the door, he jumped up, his paws landing heavily on the shoulders of my five-foot-four frame and nearly taking me down to the ground. He licked my neck and face. “Okay, okay.” Here was another dog that I wished like crazy I could take home.

  Heck, if I could, I’d take them all.

  “Hey, Kendall,” Terri, the shelter’s director, said as she walked in carrying what looked like a Lhasa apso mix.

  “What a cutie!” I ran my fingers over his silken hair. He was beautiful, looked to be recently groomed.

  “His name is Fargo. His owner just surrendered him because she can’t take care of him anymore. It was hard on her. She went through half a box of tissues while she filled out the paperwork.”

  Difficult for the dog, too. He wouldn’t be able to understand why he was here. But he had such a sweet face. “How old is he?”

  “Four.”

  “Then he won’t be here long,” I assured her. The small, cute, young ones always went quickly.

  “Hope not, but then I hope that for all of them.” She walked off to get him situated in his temporary home, and I led Chocolate outside. Once I unhooked the leash, he bounded across the open expanse. I could see Bogart still sunning himself.

  I brought out two more dogs before lifting Bogart into my arms to carry him inside. He could walk, just not that well, and I felt like loving on him a little. I’d just gotten him settled in and was moving on to take a golden to the play area when I heard the door to the reception area open and glanced back. Avery and her six-year-old brother walked in.

  I grinned when Tyler immediately squatted down in front of the first kennel and pressed his hand to the door. He had so much energy and excitement that I knew he would make a wonderful friend for a dog. For Bogart.

  I started striding toward them. “Hey!”

  Avery smiled. “Looks like love at first sight here.”

  “You should look around,” I told her. “Make sure.”

  “Oh, we will,” she assured me. “We’re not taking a Pyrenees home. My mom made it clear she’d veto anything too big.”

  “Avery, look!” Tyler cried out as he hopped over to the next kennel where a Jack Russell terrier was showing off by leaping onto the windowsill. “I want him.”

  “First of all, him is a her,” she said patiently. “But we want something a little less rambunctious.”

  “What’s ram . . . ?” He screwed up his face.

  “Rambunctious means energetic. You run around enough for ten dogs.”

  “This one,” he said, and dashed across to another cage.

  She just shook her head.

  “We have a room where you can take a dog and play with him for a while, figure out if you mesh,” I told her as we joined her brother outside another kennel.

  She studied the sheet clipped to the door that provided all the stats we knew about the dog and some of our guesses. The dachshund had been a stray so we could only guess age, and as far as we could tell he wasn’t housebroken. As though to prove the point, he lifted a leg—

  Avery snatched her brother up out of the incoming stream. “Definitely want one that’s housebroken,” she said.

  “There’s a really sweet basset hound over here,” I told her, and directed them toward Bogart.

  Bogart struggled up and limped to the door. Sometimes I felt like the dogs knew exactly what was going on, that they were on display, that people were trying to determine whether or not to provide them with a home.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Tyler asked, squatting down until he was practically eye level. “Does he have an owie?”

  “He has arthritis,” I said. Tyler blinked at me. Right, he probably didn’t know what arthritis was. “Yeah, he has an owie.”

  “Oh.” He pouted out his lower lip in sympathy and turned back to Bogart.

  I looked at Avery expectantly but she was shaking her head as she read his paperwork. “What’s the life expectancy of a basset hound?” she asked really quietly.

  I couldn’t lie to her, no matter how badly I wanted him to have a home. “Ten to twelve.”

  She arched a brow. “That’s going to give Tyler a really quick life lesson.”

  I grimaced. “I know.” Since he’d been in the foster care system before Avery’s parents adopted him, Tyler had enough life lessons under his belt already.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But we want something a little younger.”

  “No, it’s my fault. I wasn’t thinking. We did just get in a younger dog, adorable. Trained. His owner had to give him up.”

  I took them to where Terri had placed Fargo. Tyler laughed and clapped when he saw the Lhasa. Grinning, Avery took his paperwork and read it over.

  “Oh, he seems perfect,” she said.

  “Do you want to take him to the playroom?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  I opened the door. Eagerly, Fargo raised up on his hind legs, placed his paws on my thighs. He was a smaller dog, with tan-and-white curling hair. I slipped the leash on him and led the way to one of our playrooms near the reception area. As soon as we were inside, I released my hold on the tether and he raced over to Tyler.

  Tyler giggled, dropped down on the floor, and began to play with the dog.

  “Well, that’s a good sign,” Avery said as she leaned against the wall, watching as her brother became engrossed in petting Fargo. “So I guess we’re getting a dog.”

  “You won’t regret it, I promise. Just give him some tender loving care.”

  “Dot said that was pretty much all I had to give her dogs while she was away. Tell me you’ll be there to help.”

  “Yep. I got the all clear from my mom for going to the beach. And Jeremy is in.”

  “Great. We’re going to have so much fun.”

  I hoped so. Pressing my back to the wall, I was close enough to Avery that I could whisper. “So just to be clear, when you mentioned the bedrooms—you and I aren’t sharing one, right?”

  She shifted her gaze over to me. “No. I figured Fletcher and me, you and Jeremy. Are you okay with that?”

  “Oh, yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page, or in this case, not in the same bed.”

  Turning, she rolled along the wall until only her shoulder was touching it. “That night when you told your mom you were spending the night at my house—”

  “Nothing happened.”

  Avery furrowed her brow. “Nothing at all?”

  “Very little. We kissed some, but mostly we sat out by the lake and served as a buffet for mosquitoes. I thought we’d do more. . . .” Avery was my best friend. I could tell her anything, but this was so personal. I felt the heat warm my face. “We chickened out.”

  “You weren’t ready. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “It’s more like Jeremy wasn’t ready. He’s so cautious, wants to make sure we don’t have any regrets.”

  “Again, nothing wrong—”

  “Avery, look, he thinks I taste good!” Tyler crowed, interrupting our conversation. Fargo had settled on Tyler’s lap and was licking his hand.

  I knew even if Avery’s brother had heard what we were saying, he wouldn’t know what we were talking about. I knelt down. “Those are dog kisses,” I told him.

  He beamed. “He loves me.”

  I knew being loved was important to Tyler. Avery had shared with me some of the challenges of dealing with her brother’s insecurities when he first came to live with her family. “I think he does, yes.”

  “Guess we found our dog,” Avery said. “Will they hold him for us until Mom can come by and get him after work?”

  “Absolutely. Come on, T