Page 9 of Duty

The woman grinned. “That’s what you got?”

Andino just shrugged.

What the hell else could he do?

“I only speak the truth,” he said.

The woman looked him up and down. “Do you often wear a suit when you walk your dog on running trails?”

“Sometimes.”

“Huh.”

Andino cocked a brow. “Do you often question random people on the trails?”

“Sometimes. Is that a problem?”

A smartass.

Fantastic.

“Not a problem at all,” Andino settled on saying.

“Good,” the woman told him, her full lips curving into a smile and making her dainty features all the more beautiful, “because I was starting to wonder what kind of guy wears a three-piece suit, and walks a dog on the running trails.”

“Were you?”

The woman stared Andino right in the face—it was the first time he got a good look at her eyes, and it shocked him. Bright blue like the sky, but stormy like the sea.

“Was I, what?” she asked.

“Wondering what kind of man I am,” he clarified. “You know, because of the suit, the dog, and the walking thing.”

She cocked a brow, but dropped her gaze to Snaps who had been progressively moving closer to her throughout the conversation. She didn’t look bothered by Snaps even as he rubbed his muscular body against her legs, and sniffed her with his short snout. She petted Snaps’ large head with her palm as she peered back at Andino.

“Bad things happen to people who aren’t paying attention,” the woman said.

Andino nodded. “That’s true.”

She gave him another look, adding, “I guess the bad guys probably don’t wear three-piece suits, or walk their dogs in the middle of broad daylight.”

Funny.

Hadn’t he just killed a man a couple of days ago? Didn’t he have a gun hidden at his back? Wasn’t he just told he would be the heir to a criminal empire?

That all spelled bad guy to him.

Just in different ways.

“Life is busy,” Andino said, whistling after for Snaps to come back. Unquestioningly, the dog left the woman’s side, and came back to his master to sit patiently at Andino’s leather loafers. “Too busy for me, maybe. I don’t like change, but someone decided something recently that changed everything for me. Walking Snaps clears my head.”

The woman crossed her arms over her chest, and it drew Andino’s attention to the colorful artwork tattooed up her arms. Full sleeves on both arms, ink covering her throat, and traveling down to where the baggy tank top dipped low on her chest.

Damn.

He wondered what kind of stories her ink told.

Something amazing, probably.