Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
He’s also my boss, my first crush, and—three months ago—my one and only one-night-stand.
I’m pretty sure I’m already addicted to his body, but that doesn’t matter. After an empowering solo trip to the other side of the world—during which Barrett made no attempt to contact me or discuss said one night stand—I’ve realized I have to let go of this crush and move on. I’ve wasted enough time pining for a man who doesn’t feel the way I do.
Now that I'm home, I’m determined to keep the walls around my heart high and impenetrable.
Then Barrett adopts the world’s ugliest dog because he knows how much I love animals. He also texts to say how much he missed me, then shows up at my house simply to devour my lady parts (while saying naughty things that give me a new appreciation for his bossy side).
He tells me he wants to change, to be what I need, then proves it with the most romantic “just one bed” weekend ever.
But can Barrett and I make it work in the real world?
Or will the scars on his heart ruin our second chance the way it did our first?
Welcome to Bad Dog where the men are incredible, the animals are ridiculous, and the happy ever afters are super emotional and steamy. Not Today Bossman is a Standalone Romance with Spice!
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
WREN MARIE BAXTER
Three months earlier
A cautious, considerate woman about
to veer seriously off course…
Context.
Sometimes it isn’t a big deal.
Example: You open a gallon of milk, and it smells like ass.
Perhaps memories of all the spoiled milk you’ve encountered before flash through your head. Perhaps you have theories as to how the milk came to spoil—your little sister left the fridge open a crack overnight or your boyfriend didn’t check the expiration date when he went shopping last week—but in the end, it doesn’t really matter.
The milk is nasty and down the drain it must go.
No context required. Anyone with a nose knows that’s the logical next step.
Now, if you were to smell the milk, run outside to fetch a machete from the shed, and run back inside screaming “Vengeance will be mine!”
Well…some context might be required.
That’s where I am right now. In the middle of a spoiled milk and machete moment, losing my cool in a way that probably seems ridiculous considering Barrett McGuire is doing his best to rescue me from a forced dance encounter with Marvin the Not Marvelous.
Marvin is a stone-cold oddball who’s had a crush on me since kindergarten. In sixth grade, he gifted me a basket of rocks for Valentine’s Day because it was “what a penguin does when trying to woo a mate.” A few years later, he crept into the girls’ locker room during my gym class and stole the hair from my brush. When he was caught and hauled into the principal’s office, he confessed he had plans to make a voodoo doll that he would use to make me fall in love with him.
Now that we’re adults, he shows his affection mostly in loud shouted greetings across the town square and song dedications on the “Friday is for Lovers” show on the local radio station.
It’s discomforting, that’s for sure. A girl can only have “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys dedicated to her so many times before it starts to feel ominous—What is “that” way? Why does he want it so much, but simultaneously never want her to say that she wants it that way? Was that an accident in the lyrics? Yet another case of the double standard for men and women in love, romance, and pop music? A hazard of the song being written by Swedes, who seem to be an enigmatic people? Will this mystery ever be solved?—but oddly enough, Marvin isn’t the part of this that requires context.
Marvin is just Marvin.
No, he’s never physically lifted me off my feet or hauled me out onto a crowded dance floor before, but I’ve never seen him this drunk, either. I’m not afraid for my safety, however. In all the years I’ve known him, Marvin has always respected my boundaries.
When I told him I didn’t want to be his penguin mate, he was disappointed, but respectful. When I said making a voodoo doll stuffed with my hair was creepy and would be grounds for immediate social media unfriending if he tried it again, he apologized and vowed to shun witchcraft in matters of the heart.
I’m sure, if I’d had the opportunity to ask him to put me down, he would have done so.
But before I can get more out than, “Geez, Marvin, you scared the crap out of me,” Barrett is on top of us.
Barrett, who I’ve been in love with for nearly as long as Marvin has been in love with me. Barrett, who still thinks of me as a little kid in need of his protection, even though I’m thirty years old and the senior nurse at his OB-GYN practice, where I’ve worked for six years.
Barrett, who always seems to know just how to cut me to the quick, without even trying.
I’m sure he doesn’t mean to hurt my feelings when he grabs Marvin’s arm and shouts in an authoritative voice, “Put her down, Marvin. Wren doesn’t dance. And even if she did, you’re supposed to ask first. She’s a person, not a sack of fucking potatoes.”
“Oh, dude, I’m sorry,” Marvin says, glancing down at where I’m still a captive in his arms, my feet dangling several inches off the floor. Marvin is barely five seven, but even in my dancing heels, I’m the shortest woman in the honky-tonk. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t know what?” I ask, pushing at his chest.
“That you didn’t dance,” Marvin says, looking genuinely upset. “Why don’t you dance? Dancing’s the best.”
I push at his chest again, huffing as I add in a louder voice, “Will you put me down, please?”
“Right, sorry,” Marvin says again as he sets me free.
I scoot back several steps, smoothing my skirt.
“Why come to Bubba Jump’s if you don’t dance?” Marvin continues, clearly nonplussed. “It’s like…all there is to do here. They don’t even have darts.”