Harlequin Romance March 2021 Box Set Cara Colter (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📖

“Make what work?”

“You know. Fake mate.”

So he didn’t want whatever had sprung up between them to end, either. Which made the potential for complications seem extremely high.

And at the moment, Krissy, bathed in moonlight and laughter and dog kisses, found she just didn’t care.

CHAPTER SIX

“I THINK MY sister and Mike would find you believable. A girl with a dog.”

Oh. It was about Mike. And his sister. And the dog. In a roundabout way, the car. It was about everything except what had just leaped in the air, sizzling, between them.

There was no reason to be insulted by that! It reduced the possibility of complications, didn’t it?

“Plus, it’s evident to me,” Jonas said, “you need some help with the dog. There is nothing funny about such a big dog being so poorly behaved. You could have been badly hurt when he knocked you down. What if you’d smacked your head on the pavers? What if that had been a child he leaped on like that?”

These were, of course, valid points, but Krissy’s feeling of being insulted grew.

“Crusher is a rescue,” she said defensively. “I haven’t really had him long enough to work on his, er, issues.”

“Well, start with the name. Because a dog will always live up to whatever name you give it.”

“He came with that name.”

“You can change it.”

“I thought that was bad luck.”

“For boats!”

“What would you suggest? Pansy?”

“Better,” he said, deliberately missing her sarcasm.

He moved away from her and over to Pansy-Crusher, who was wriggling in anticipation of attention. Jonas studied the dog, touching that one ear torn off in a long-ago battle and taking in that the face was badly scarred.

Jonas turned back to her. “You know it’s a possibility this dog is too much for you, don’t you?”

That very thought had been niggling at the back of her mind almost since Crush—Pansy’s—arrival. But she hated that he saw it.

“I’m prepared to do what it takes,” Krissy said firmly.

Jonas studied her, then lifted a shoulder. “I guess we’ll see,” he said. “It would be a trade. I could show you a few things about handling the dog, and if it looks like we’re compatible, you could be my fiancée at the reunion. It happens to coincide with my thirtieth birthday.”

Krissy had never been to a family reunion. Neither her mother or father had enjoyed good relations with their extended families. Their family of three had lived on a desert island, but not the idyllic kind. Aunt Jane had been the only respite, the only rescue.

So this casual reference to happy family events made Krissy feel an uneasy sense of longing.

He cocked his head at her. “It’s at our family resort in the Catskills. My sister and Mike run it now. It’s always a fun time.”

That uneasy longing grew in the pit of her stomach.

“Family and fun going together,” she said, before she could stop herself. “There’s a novel concept.”

“Your family wasn’t fun?” he asked, as if it was shocking news to him that families weren’t fun.

Shut up, she ordered herself. “Just Aunt Jane. The rest of it was pretty much a war zone.”

His gaze was deep and stripping, loaded with unwanted sympathy. Krissy tilted her chin proudly at him. “Your family doesn’t fight?”

“Of course they fight. My sister is downright mean with a water balloon.”

That kind of fight seemed so innocent. Krissy felt a longing she had suppressed push against the lid she had put on top of it.

“I’m not sure about the reunion,” she said.

“We’ll take it one step at a time,” he said, his surprisingly gentle tone making another longing leap up deep inside of her.

“Homework,” Jonas said, as if it were all settled, “Find a new name for the dog. I’ll drop by Saturday. Early afternoon. One-ish, okay?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. “If things go well, we’ll take a walk downtown with him for ice cream at Moo-Moo’s. Who knows? Maybe you’ll order something exciting.”

He said that as if there was hope for both her and the dog.

Say no, Krissy ordered herself. If she didn’t, Jonas would take over her whole life before she even knew what had happened. She’d be renaming her dog and breathlessly anticipating going for ice cream with him and even thinking about ordering something different. She’d be looking forward to a family reunion, to that tantalizing glimpse of what normal was.

She didn’t say no.

Instead, she watched in silence as he turned away from her, stopped at his car door to remove the jacket tied at his waist, then slipped inside and drove away.

“I feel as if I’ve just survived a hurricane,” Krissy confided in Crusher.

And that, she told herself, explained the euphoria. Completely.

A few days later, on Saturday, getting ready for Jonas’s arrival, Krissy told herself firmly it was not a date.

So how did she explain the pile of clothes on her bed, tried on, reviewed, discarded? The dog was now nestled in the middle of them.

“Get off the bed, Hans,” she said to Crusher, trying out yet another name. The dog did not respond, and she shook her head. “Maybe better for a German shepherd,” she decided.

The explanation for the number of clothes discarded was actually quite easy.

“It’s like a job interview,” Krissy told herself. “If you’re going to be a fake mate to a man like Jonas Boyden, you have to look the part.”

Of course, it was complicated, just as he had somehow known all along it would be. Because it was very difficult to find an outfit that was absolutely beguiling while looking like it was not trying to be, and that was also appropriate for a session of dog training.

And added to all that, it had to be appropriate for eating ice cream afterward, the outfit of a girl who was not afraid to be bold in her choices.

Krissy finally settled on a pair of wildly flower-patterned end-at-the-calf leggings and an oversize white T-shirt. She put on a pair of hot pink running shoes that matched one of the flowers in the