More Than a Hotline Fling

-10-

My thoughts drifted to the animal hospital, if June's night was as crazy as ours. I didn't have much time to think because my phone buzzed from the front desk.

"Sir, you have a visitor," Evie's voice cracked through my speaker phone.

"Unbelievable." I groaned out and held my forehead in both hands. "Of course I do."

My head slacked back against my seat and I sighed up to the ceiling. With my luck tonight, it was a previous offender I'd locked up too many times and stockpiled their resentment against me.

With a lean forward that creaked my wood seat, I tapped my phone's call button. "I'm coming."

"Not yet you aren't," the sweetest voice my ears needed to hear called from my door frame.

My feet shot up so fast, my chair wobbled. June clicked the door shut when my arms hugged around her. Bleach cleaner and dog shit wafted into my nose. "What are you doing here?"

"Doctor Harris let me take an extended break tonight. It was mostly slow..." Her head shook and she blinked, clearing out her own New Years' Eve memories. "For us."

I pulled back and pointed to my desk chairs. "Hit me."

For added privacy, I clicked the door lock behind her. My eyes dropped to her backside as she walked to my desk with a slight sway in her hips. As many times as I admired June's curves, they grabbed my interest every time. Her heart-shaped ass was accentuated by the cinch in her waste and a small amount of fat on her outer thighs.

"Well..." With a sigh, she sank down into one of the two desk chairs that faced my desk. "I was bathing a dog someone abandoned into a dumpster when he got explosive diarrhea all over the sink, the walls, me... Don't worry, I changed."

My forehead relaxed tension I didn't realize I held onto. With one hand, I turned my second chair so it faced hers and sat down. June moved hers similarly, then leaned forward, elbowed her thighs, and cupped her chin in her palms. Tipping her chin down swept a few loose strands over her forehead, so I scooped them over her ear.

"Thanks." Her back lifted and deflated with a sigh. "We had an emergency removal of an owner's three pairs of underwear from his golden retriever's stomach."

"Oh fuck." I rolled my lips inward, choking back a laugh.

"Dog was fine. We threw the underwear out, obviously. An elderly woman came in around eleven. Her yorkie had a prolapsed eye." June gestured her hand pulling her own eye out. "Which freaked her out so much that she rushed right to AMC. Poor thing, she was so worried about Teddy that she showed up in top layers, including a coat, but her bottoms were her, umm, adult underwear."

My eyebrows tried to fly off my face but I sat, clasped my hands, and listened to what came next. Even bracing myself, I didn't expect her next words.

"You should have seen her," June's voice softened and the brown in her irises darkened. "She was ice cold and shivering but all she cared about was Teddy. She kept saying, 'poor Teddy, poor Teddy, you have to help my Teddy.' His surgery went fine but she was too far gone at that point."

June's kind eyes welled up with tears, which she brushed aside with the tips of her fingers. I sat back, digesting what she told me and what she hadn't.

"Wait." My eyes shifted down to where June pulled off her coat, then the yellow-banana pants that mismatched her black top with a small pink and green animal-print. "You... gave a stranger your pants?"

Only June.

"Damian, I couldn't let her go cold." Her eyes rolled and she clicked her tongue against her teeth. "She was freezing, upset, old, and in Depends."