If a man wants to date Leah Burgess, he’d better be rich, handsome, and dress to kill. Kevin ticks precisely none of those boxes, but when a surveillance operation goes wrong, Leah’s forced to spend more time with him—and his unruly dog—than she’d like. Can Kevin convince Leah to take a chance on a regular guy?
Hydrogen is a Blackwood romantic comedy novel with a bit of suspense.
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Excerpt – Leah:
I stretched out my icy limbs, and I’d just gotten stiffly to my feet when a blur of…of something hit me dead centre and knocked me on my ass. Something wet. Something hairy. Something smelly.
The dog slurped at my face as footsteps came running.
“Brian!” A guy grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck and hauled the thing off me. “I’m so sorry. He slipped his collar and jumped in the duck pond, and that green stuff got all over him, and…”
The stranger looked me up and down, his lips twisted in an odd mix of fascination and disgust. For a moment, I thought he was going to vomit, but then I realised he was trying not to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” I snapped. “I’m filthy.”
Strands of slimy weed hung from my hair, my pants were covered in mud, and the beast had shaken water all over me. The stink of rotten eggs wafted past my nostrils. This was karma finally catching up, wasn’t it? I’d made a small miscalculation while trying to find my friend Sloane a date, she’d ended up being stalked by a weirdo—okay, weirdos—and this was my reward.
Dog Guy studied me, assessing. What was I, a damn science project? His gaze paused on my chest, and I was almost ready to slap him when his eyes snapped back up to my face. Not to my eyes, though. He avoided looking straight at me.
“Uh, your shirt’s gone…uh…”
I glanced down at myself. Mental note: Never wear a white top on surveillance. Ever.
“Ohmigosh! It’s freaking see-through.”
He started to peel off his T-shirt, and three ladies stopped to watch. Way to go, Leah. This was totally how to stay incognito on an undercover operation.
“Stop,” I hissed. “Just stop.”
Dog Guy dropped the hem and chewed the edge of his bottom lip. He did have rather nice lips, and it was a shame they were half-hidden by a scruffy beard. Somebody should teach him how to use a razor. And give him the number of a barber—his light brown hair was several months past needing a cut.
“My apartment’s nearby. I can give you a new shirt, then call you a cab.”
“I’m not sure—”
Dan’s voice interrupted me. “Go with him, sweetie. Tanner sent me a photo, and you look like a swamp monster.” Oh, great. That picture would be on the home page of the Blackwood intranet before I made it back to the office. “And the dog dude’s cute in a messy sort of way.” A pause, and she must have sensed my hesitation. “Don’t worry, I put a tracker in your purse. If he turns out to be an axe murderer, just scream and I’ll send someone.”
Excerpt – Dog Guy:
“Who’s Leah?” Tally wanted to know.
“Len’s dog walker.” Kevin added a wink, and Lennox had an urge to take the laser to his assistant’s eyelid.
“His dog walker? Is that a euphemism I’m not familiar with? Something to do with dogging, perhaps?”
Thanks, Kevin. “No. No, to the power of infinity squared.”
“You understand that infinity squared isn’t actually possible?”
“Yes, of course I do, but I’m trying to make a point. I have a dog, and Leah walks him.”
“I thought the dog walker moved to South Dakota?”
“It was South Carolina.”
“Different person,” Kevin added. “This one’s practically living in Len’s apartment, and she thinks he’s me.”
“I’m sorry, what? You’ll have to back up. Start at the beginning.”
When Tally fixed her gaze on him, Lennox understood he had no choice. She was like a dog with a bone. Or Brian with a carrot. So he told her the whole sorry tale, plotting Kevin’s laser-induced demise as he spoke. Put into words, the story of Brian and Leah sounded even worse than the lived experience, and when he got to the part about regulatory hormones, Tally began shaking her head.
“And the Nobel Prize for idiocy goes to…Hayden Arthur Lennox. Congratulations on a well-deserved win.”
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“And yet it did. Look, if you like this girl, you’ve got to come clean about your identity.”
“She’s merely a paid employee.”
“Which is why you took a cab halfway across the city to buy her a sandwich and a muffin for lunch today?”
“I just wanted to check she was okay.”
“So you’d have done the same for the South Carolina girl?”
“Well, that would have depended on a number of variables, such as—”
“No. The answer is no.”
Kevin gave Lennox a look that could have been amusement or pity. “Take Dr. T’s advice, Len. You know she’s never wrong.”
“From a statistical point of view, the chances of her being right all the time are negligible.”
“We’re not talking statistics, we’re talking the inner workings of the female mind.”
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