“Don’t you have a meeting with your publisher?”
; “Not until lunchtime. I was going to catch up on some jobs, pick up a gift, but that can all wait. If I move fast, I should still make my appointment later. But I need to take Brutus.”
“Okay. But as you’re going to be spending one-on-one time with him, there’s something else you should probably know.” Harriet glanced at Fliss, who rolled her eyes dramatically.
Molly braced herself for more revelations. “What?”
“His name isn’t actually Brutus. It’s Ruffles.”
Nine
“Daniel, there’s a woman in reception to see you. She says it’s urgent.”
Snowed under with the complexities of the case he was handling, Daniel didn’t even look up. “She needs to make an appointment.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“If it’s complicated, then she definitely needs to make an appointment.”
“This isn’t business. It’s, er, personal.”
Daniel looked up. He never, ever, allowed his personal life to intrude on his work. It was one of the reasons he’d never hooked up with anyone from the office. “What’s her name?”
“She didn’t give her name, but she has a dog with her. And this is the weird part—she says it’s your dog.”
“A dog?” Daniel’s internal radar sounded several loud alarm bells. “What sort of dog?”
“A boisterous German shepherd who is creating havoc in reception.” Marsha smiled. “When you were asking all those questions the other day, I wondered what was going on. Were you worried it would make you seem more human? Because honestly, that would be a good thing. You should have told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That you have a dog.”
Tension spread across his shoulders and down his spine. “Are you telling me one of my sisters is in reception?”
“Your sisters? No. I know Fliss and Harry. This woman has dark hair. Very pretty.” Marsha looked intrigued. “I assumed you knew her.”
He knew her. The description sounded like Molly, and if she was standing in reception with a German shepherd it meant he was in more trouble than he could possibly have imagined.
She’d found out the dog wasn’t his.
He pushed away from his desk and stood up just as his cell phone started to ring and Harriet’s name popped up.
He ignored the phone. If it was a warning, then she was too late, and right now his priority was handling Molly, not finding out how she’d discovered the truth.
The annoying thing was that he’d been intending to tell her that morning, but she hadn’t shown up. He’d assumed that whatever had made her run from him the day before was still bothering her. He’d dropped Brutus back with his sisters and told himself he’d try one more time tomorrow.
Marsha’s voice stopped him at the door. “She said to give you a message. Said she hoped she wasn’t ‘ruffling your feathers’ by showing up here. Does that mean anything to you?”
Yes. It meant she not only knew the dog didn’t belong to him, she also knew his name wasn’t Brutus.
Ruffles.
“How angry is she on a scale of one to ten?”
“Why would she be angry?”