“His name is Chuck, and he’s my dog,” Culhane said, suddenly standing in the open doorway. “Well, the real one is. That one’s tile, so I don’t think he’ll be answering you.”
She couldn’t work up a single word in reply. The man was flat-out gorgeous. A muscled, dark-haired, blue-eyed, one-dimple-that-he-could-apparently-produce-at-will kind of gorgeous. She’d noted this yesterday, too, but anxiety had kept her on her game. If she’d babbled in the face of male hotness, she would have walked away empty-handed. Today, she had a job and her words were fleeting.
“I-I like dogs,” she finally managed. She thought of her former dog, Stella, and felt a little lump forming in her chest.
“Good. And I like dog people. Why don’t you come on in?”
Kate did, trying hard to cut back on the staring. She was sure he was wearing the same slightly faded chambray button-down shirt and pair of well-fit jeans as yesterday afternoon. New to his features was the shadow of a beard. His dark brown hair looked either tousled with sleep or the lack thereof.
“You’re seriously tall,” she said.
He laughed. “To you, maybe.”
Pull it together, Appleton, she thought. Get a grip!
“Point taken,” she said. “From the vantage point of just over five feet, pretty much every guy’s a giant. You look tired, too.”
Matt ruffled a hand through his hair. “We pulled an all-nighter.in?nighter01D;
“An all-nighter doing what?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t, because the answer might be personal. Her long-dormant libido stirred at the possibilities.
“Come this way and I’ll show you,” he said. “It’s not all that exciting.”
Cross orgy off the list.
“We just got into bottled beer in addition to kegs and growlers, so we don’t have a regular bottling line yet,” he said. “That means we have to rent a portable line every couple of months until I think sales justify the expense of a permanent one. It will take another addition or a move of the whole facility to do it, so for now, we make do. And we also do it after hours so that our regular business can cruise on.”