Chapter One
LEILA
I press my phone against my ear with my shoulder as I take a sip of my coffee. It’s a beautiful, sunny Los Angeles afternoon, and I’m out with my dog Shiloh for a long walk through the park to try and ease up on some of his energy. It’s the perfect time to catch up with my best friend, Abby, who still lives on the East Coast.
“I’m serious, Abs; it’s been crazy. I’ve been in LA for six months now, and I’m not closer to fixing things at the new California branch of Frills. I’m starting to wonder if this whole thing was a mistake.”
Abby huffs in my ear. She exercises for fun, going for runs before work every morning, which is what she’s doing now. These walks with Shiloh, a rambunctious golden retriever, are enough exercise for me, thank you very much. There’s a reason one of us is a personal trainer, and I work as an interior designer.
“You’ve only been there six months. I think you need to give it at least a year. I mean, how much can you actually get done in six months?”
“We’ve had exactly ten clients in that entire timeframe. Ten! We’d do that many in a week out of the Boston office.”
“Well, you knew the market would be more competitive there.”
I sigh, switch the coffee cup to the hand holding Shiloh’s leash, and move the phone from my shoulder. The screen is slimy with my sweat.
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be this hard. I assumed Rebecca would’ve had more clients lined up. She expects me to build an entire list out here from the ground up. I don’t know anyone in Los Angeles! How am I supposed to network when I have no friends or contacts out here? I miss home.”
Tears well up in my eyes, but I fight them. I’ve seen plenty of girls crying on the streets of LA, most of them done up nice and pretty, probably getting rejected from yet another interview. I’m not about to be one of them. Six months hasn’t changed me into an LA girl yet, though I get closer every day.
Which is yet another reason I’m convinced I need to go home. I miss the introverted lifestyle of hiding in my cheap apartment and only going out when my ex-boyfriend wanted to. Since he was working on his residency, he rarely did, which worked out just fine for me.
“You’ve never been the type to give up,” Abby points out.
I sigh again. “Is it really giving up if the situation is hopeless?”
“It still counts. Give it another six months at least.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re supposed to come to visit me in four.”
Abby laughs. “Maybe.”
“I do miss you. I wish you could come sooner.”
Before Abby can answer my desperate plea, Shiloh catches the scent of something he wants to chase and pulls the leash right out of my hand, causing my coffee to spill all over the sidewalk.
“Shiloh, NO!” I call after him. “Shit, I’ve got to go, Abs. Shiloh is getting away!”
“Call me later!” she yells as I’m hanging up. The phone slips out of my hand and onto the sidewalk, but I can’t bother picking it up right now. Shiloh is darting through the crowds of people in this Los Angeles park.
I guess I’m going to be getting a run in today after all.
I weave in and out of innocent people out for a lunchtime stroll, yelling apologies over my shoulder and ignoring their griping about my loose dog.
“Shiloh, please, stop, stay, wait, sit!”
The dog looks back at me with his perfect brown eyes and a smile on his face, his tongue dangling from his lips, but he doesn’t stop running after who knows what.
“Watch it!” a woman wearing a pencil skirt and a blouse with perfectly coiffed hair shouts at me. “Keep your dog on a tight leash, moron.”
I shoot her a dirty look, not bothering to apologize. I understand this is entirely my fault, but people in Los Angeles are incredibly rude. Not that the folks in Massachusetts are much better. This same thing happened before Shiloh and I moved three thousand miles across the country, and the people in Boston were just as upset about it.
I try shouting my dog’s name again, but he doesn’t even turn around this time. He’s far in front of me, and his four legs are much faster than my two.
I should’ve taken Abby up on her morning runs, I think as I huff and puff, not willing to stop and risk losing Shiloh forever.
Thankfully, this park is over a mile long, and we were only an eighth of the way through when Shiloh shot off. That also means I could run an entire mile and still not catch up to the dog.
What if I have to call animal control or something? Worse, what if someone else does? I can’t lose Shiloh. He’s the only good thing about this town. We live together in my tiny, one-room apartment. I splurged for the first floor and a place with a dog park to make it easier on both of us, but I’m struggling to make rent every month. If things don’t pick up at Frills LA, I might be moving home despite Abby’s assertion that I stick around. I’m not about to be homeless in Los Angeles.
Shiloh stops to sniff a tree, and I blow out a relieved breath. I approach him slowly.
“Good boy, Shiloh! We’re going to finish our walk now, okay?”
Just as I’m reaching for his leash, he takes one look at me and thinks we must be playing a fun game of chase. He takes off again, and I fall over, missing his leash handle by just an inch.
“No, come on, buddy, not anymore …”
I get myself up, ignoring the scrapes on my knees and wishing I’d worn longer leggings instead of the workout shorts I put on before leaving the apartment. It feels good because of the heat, but my legs are bloody from the fall.
“Shiloh, please …” I call after him. I look around in a panic, not seeing his golden fur anymore. “Shit, shit, shit …”
His familiar bark around the bend catches my attention, and I run in that direction, catching him jumping on a man with a black baseball cap and sunglasses. The man is holding Shiloh’s leash in his hand, preventing my dog from causing any more trouble in the park.
“Shiloh, no!” I say as I approach. The man looks at me through his sunglasses with a cute smile. He’s got the most adorable dimples, and I’m struck by how strong his arms are. Abby always said I would fall in love with a man’s arms before I fell in love with him, and she’s absolutely right. This guy looks like he follows Abby’s upper body routines, the ones I can’t get through more than a few minutes before I’m too sore to continue.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man says. “He’s just being friendly.”
I blow out a grateful breath. “Thank you so much for grabbing him. If only someone else had been that kind when he first ran off … Come to think of it, at least ten of those people easily could’ve stopped him.”
Annoyance rises up in me, and I push it back down. There’s no use getting angry at the strangers who didn’t help when I have a cute one who did right in front of me.
“I’m Leila, and this is Shiloh.”
He pets Shiloh, still holding tight to the leash. I try to get my dog to stop jumping on the handsome stranger, but the guy doesn’t seem to mind. He’s scratching Shiloh’s head vigorously while my dog’s tongue lolls out of the side of his mouth.
“You’d think he never gets any attention, but I definitely pet him constantly.”
“These guys can be high-energy. I don’t mind giving him a little love and attention. I’m sure he’ll sleep great tonight after all that running around.”
“Here’s hoping. He’ll probably still wake me up early for his morning walk, though. He’s my alarm clock.”
The guy looks at me again, but I can’t make out his eyes. There’s something oddly familiar about him, but he very well might just look like every other man in the universe. I tend to have a type, and Abby would call it ‘plain’, but I think it’s just the right amount of hot. My heroic stranger fits the bill, at least from what I can see of him.
I keep quiet for a few moments, thinking maybe the man might finally introduce himself since I told him my name, but he doesn’t say anything. He keeps scratching Shiloh’s head until my dog jumps down and starts sniffing the ground again.
“Here, I guess I have to give you your dog back.”
I take the leash and grip it nice and tight in my hand. “Thank you so much, seriously. You saved my ass by catching him. I am sorry he jumped on you. He got your shirt all muddy!”
His blue V-neck T-shirt has two distinct paw prints right over the man’s rock-hard chest. I’ve learned that it doesn’t rain much in this part of the country, but it did sprinkle yesterday, and apparently, the ground was still wet enough for Shiloh to track mud around.
“Don’t worry about it; I have other shirts.”
“Are you sure? I can pay to have it dry cleaned or whatever. I hear that’s what people in Los Angeles do.”
The guy chuckles. “You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
“Maybe she should go back to wherever she came from,” an older man says as he approaches us. “Do you have any idea what trouble you could’ve caused with that dog of yours? It should be locked up!”
I tug Shiloh close to me. He loves people and tries to greet the angry old man who recoils like Shiloh is going to attack.
“Relax, man; he didn’t hurt anyone. He just wanted to run around.”
My eyes widen, and I stare at my hero again. He’s standing up for me? I think back to a time when this situation happened with my ex, and he was too embarrassed to ever walk Shiloh with me again. Maybe the people in LA aren’t all terrible.
The older man grumbles under his breath and walks away, cursing me for daring to bring a dog to a dog-friendly park.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
My new friend shrugs. “He was being a jerk for no reason. You can’t help that your dog took off running. He probably saw a squirrel or something.”
“I definitely won’t be talking on the phone, drinking coffee, and walking Shiloh all at the same time ever again. Multitasking is my strong suit, but probably not the best when it comes to a dog who likes to take off running.”
“Yeah, that’s probably true, but no harm, no foul. All Shiloh did was greet a few people. I saw him running toward me for a while. I figured I’d grab him before he could get into any more trouble. We’re not far from a busy street.”
“Thank you again. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. If something happened to Shiloh … I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
He flashes me another million-dollar smile. How is it possible for someone’s teeth to be so straight? His parents must’ve spent a fortune on braces.
We stare at each other, me only seeing his sunglasses and him getting to enjoy my entire sweaty, beet-red face.
My breathing gets ragged. For the first time since I got to Los Angeles, I feel a connection with someone. Aside from being super attractive, he seems nice and funny. Maybe I’ve just made my very first friend.
And then Shiloh jumps on the stranger again, changing everything.
