An American Werewolf in Hoboken (7 page)

He held up a hand. “Say no more. I’ll move right away.”

And he was nice, too. Nice and gorgeous.
Damn. You. Universe
. “No, no. It’s fine. I’m sorry for jumping down your throat. It’s been a long day and I’m a little cranky, and apparently rude. Not very neighborly.”

“You wanna make it up to me?”

Does it involve more touching?
“Does it involve baking you a neighborly cake?”

Max laughed, the sound coming from his throat rich and deep. “I’m joking. I’m almost done. If you’d do me a favor and grab that box and take it inside with you, I’ll have one of the guys move the truck and I’ll put
your
car right where it belongs.” He grinned again and her knees jiggled like D-cups.

Down, libido, down girl.

JC found herself digging around in her purse to hand over her car keys, and then grabbing the box. The least she could do was help a neighbor out. “Which apartment is it?” she asked as she headed toward the steps.

“I think I’m right across from you, 2-C.” He winked at her.

Aw, hell.
She pondered the ramifications of this roughly hewn Greek god moving in next door to her as she climbed the steps. He probably had too many girlfriends to count and a revolving door to match. Men who looked like Max had a steady diet of beautiful women to keep their muscled bellies full up.

Dropping the box he’d given her on the floor by his door, she surveyed the large living room. His sectional couch was covered in boxes but she was still able to make out the rich, masculine colors of red and gold.

Pictures were stacked in a corner beside a pile of blankets, and a king-size mattress was propped up against the bedroom door. A single massive bookcase lined one entire wall, filled with an assortment of books of all shapes and sizes.

Courteous, gorgeous, and he read. A hunk that actually read books with words, real books not involving pictures of topless, thong-clad women.

Time to go before she stripped naked.

JC’s cheeks flushed when she heard his heavy feet coming up the steps and approaching his apartment door.

He pointed to the interior of his apartment with another luscious smile. “Just need to squeeze by you,” he said, body brushing hers as he inched past. His muscled chest pressed against her breasts for a brief moment, and her pulse seemed to think that was A-Okay.

Pathetic.

She sucked in a breath of air and let it back out discreetly. Max stopped, staring down at her, his nostrils flaring. Upon closer inspection, she noted a small scar just above his lip, whitened over time and jagged. It fascinated her.

The space between them pulsed with something she couldn’t identify but definitely existed. It overwhelmed her, pulled her like a magnetic force.

Looking up at him, she knew she’d better speak or be accused of gawking. “You’ve got quite a collection of…of books.” JC squirmed. Her tone of voice had taken on that breathy quality—the one that only whooshed out of her mouth when she found a man attractive.

Max’s shoulder nearly reached the top of her head as he leaned into her. Lord, he was fantastic. He smiled that oral hygienist’s wet dream of a smile and said, “Yep. I love to read. Nothing too heavy, mind you, but I like a good mystery, some horror, too. Do you read?” He tilted his head to the left and cocked one eyebrow with apparent interest.

She gulped, clutching her hand at her side to keep from fanning herself. “When I have the time.”

His eyes twinkled with apparent interest. “Romance novels?”

When he formed the words, he made it sound as if he were guessing she read Nietzsche. Max was beautiful and articulate, and watching his lips move was like viewing an art form.

Speaking of Max’s lips, how had they gotten so close to hers? They were so close, she saw right past those pearly whites and straight to his fillings while his toothpaste-fresh breath fanned her face.

JC ran her tongue over her lips. “Periodicals and biographies.” She sagged back against the door, trying to make herself small enough to somehow keep their bodies from touching.

Affirmative. He was frosting her Wheaties.

Time to go.

“Hey, how about joining me for a beer? I did steal your parking space. It’s the least I can do.”

Or she could stay.

No, Fluffy was waiting. Safe, steak-stealing, loyal, non-Snookie-tossing Fluffy.

She gave him a quick smile but avoided his inviting eyes. “As tempting as that offer is, maybe another time. I have a new dog I just adopted and he’s probably starving by now. He’s big. Like, enormous. The shelter said he might be part wolf, so he’s probably eating my furniture as we speak.”

God, Fluffy was the most perfect excuse in the universe not to throw this man down on the floor and have unbridled sex with him. She’d shower him with treats galore upon her arrival home because he was likely saving her from lusting for a man who’d end up all wrong for her.

“Big? Is he gray? Kind of roughly majestic, once you get past his Cujo-like size?”

JC paused. How odd he should make the very comparison to Cujo she had. “How did you know he was gray?”

“Me and the guys were all talking about how damn scary-looking he was. He was out in the alleyway while we were unloading the truck. Biggest dog we’d ever seen.”

Panic began to settle in the pit of her belly, making her grip her purse tighter. “How did you see him? He’s an inside dog.”

Max’s eyes flashed concern. “Well, I can’t say for sure it was him—
your
him. But our neighbor from upstairs told me you had a new dog that looked like a hound from hell. The dog I saw sure fits that description, and it would be a weird coincidence to run into two dogs so similar. I saw him in the alley when I went to the Dumpster to ditch some of these boxes.”

Oh, shit. Fluffy roaming the streets of Hoboken was suicidal. “Are you sure?” She squeezed out the door past his big frame and flew across the hall to her apartment.

Max followed closely behind and jingled her keys. “You forgot something.”

Grabbing them from him, she thrust the key into the lock and flung open the door, fear crawling along her spine.

“Fluffy! I’m home. C’mere, boy! C’mon, buddy!” Max was right behind her when she crossed the hall into her bedroom.

“The window’s open. Maybe he got out?” The cool night air rustled the curtains, confirming Max’s statement.

She didn’t even stop to wonder how the window had gotten open. Her panic turned to frenzy. “Damn! How did he get out? I have to go find him. Why would he run away? What if Animal Control catches him again? Worse, what if he hurts someone? He’s really not properly socialized. I was the only one who could get him to calm down, if you believed what the people at the shelter said.”

Her heart sank in her chest and tears burned the back of her eyelids, making her swipe angrily at them. Jesus, she’d only had him for a day but she’d already become crazy attached to the idea of having him here when she came home.

Maybe he just wasn’t meant to be inside. Manny had said they thought he was part wolf. Wolves liked to roam free, didn’t they? Howl at the moon? Maybe he’d felt smothered? No clingy, single, lonely woman ties, thank you very much.

JC leaned out the window and yelled Fluffy’s name, worry burrowed deep in her gut, but Max’s strong hands grabbed her waist and pulled her back inside, turning her to face him.

“You might fall,” he scolded, his handsome face frowning. “Look, maybe he’s just the kind of dog who likes to be outside and he got impatient waiting for you to get home.”

“Does impatience give you the power to open a window when you don’t have opposable thumbs?” She’d never left her apartment with the windows open. Not once in the entire time she’d lived here.

Max stared back at her and shrugged his shoulders. “You have a point.”

“It makes absolutely no sense that the window’s open. I’ve never, ever left the windows open. These apartments are pretty safe, but it’d be easy for anybody to climb up the fire escape and rob me blind. That window sure didn’t open itself.”

The thought made her shiver. Had someone broken in and let him out? All the stories Viv had shared with her about animal rescue whizzed through her brain. Had someone seen Fluffy and decided he might make a good bait dog? Or worse, wanted to turn him into a fight dog? It happened all the time—people who fought dogs stole them from backyards and scooped them up off Craigslist.

Fear—real fear—raced along her veins. Fluffy’s size alone would certainly appeal to someone as bloodthirsty as that. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming her horror. Composing herself, she asked the worst out loud. “What if someone stole him? For fighting, or—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not go there just yet, JC. Don’t panic. I’ll call some of my buddies and we’ll get a search party together, okay?” Max’s eyes instantly soothed her, his grip lying loosely on her hips as his amber-flecked eyes searched her gaze. He reached into his back pocket and held up his phone.

There was the nice again. She hated to admit it, but right now, it was like a balm on her chapped lips. “You’d do that? You don’t even know me.”

“But I’m an animal lover just like you. So give me just a sec, okay?” He wandered out toward the hall while she searched her entire apartment, hoping against foolish hope Fluffy was just hiding. But where? He was so enormous, there was nowhere for him to go.

JC circled back around and pushed her bedroom door open once more, dropping to the floor and lifting the bed skirt to see if by some crazy chance, he’d managed to squeeze under it.

Nothing. More panic swelled as she rose to her feet to kick off her heels and grab her sneakers, shoving her feet into them.

She ran into Max just as she exited her room, crashing into his brick wall of a chest. He steadied her by gripping her upper arms. “I’ve got some of my friends out looking for him now. C’mon. We’ll head downstairs and meet them. Fluffy, right?”

She swallowed hard, her body at war with her immediate need to find her dog. “Yes, Fluffy.”

“Can I ask, why Fluffy?”

“Well, he
is
Fluffy… It was the first thing that came to mind after he was clean, and it sort of stuck,” she defended.

“You named a dog as big and unconventionally handsome as that
Fluffy
?”

“Well, nobody seems to think he’s all that good-looking but you—and of course, me. I figured when we go to the dog park, or if I have to go out of town to do a client’s hair and leave him at a doggie daycare, Fluffy sounds much less like he’s drooling, snarling, and out of control as does, say, Killer or Death. His size alone is intimidating. I’ve only had him a day and there’ve been plenty of ‘Oh my God, he looks like he could swallow me whole’ comments already. I’m just trying to protect him from the onslaught of discrimination I’m sure we’ll experience because of his size.”

“Really? People said that out loud to you? Well, there’s no accounting for taste. I happen to think he’s magnificent.”

JC’s heart fluttered in her chest as she let Max take her hand and lead her toward the door. Why should she care if he liked her dog? “So do I. Do you really think he’ll come back? If he gets caught again… They were going to euthanize him at the shelter.”

“So you saved him from canine death row?”

JC fought the sob rising in her throat. “In his very last hours before the shelter closed. He was unsociable, difficult, wouldn’t eat, but somehow… I guess we connected, and I couldn’t walk away.”

He grinned at her, as wide and charming as a man so roughly hewn could. “You’re a true animal lover to take on a dog who not only has issues, but from the looks of him, probably outweighs you. I like it. It means you have a good heart.”

That heart Max mentioned thumped harder in her chest when he pulled her out the door and down the steps to meet up with his friends.

Chapter Six

No Fluffy. Not a single sighting of him.

Max had been true to his word, and he’d gathered up three of his buddies to help search for him. They’d been up and down the streets of Hoboken, in alleyways, across the street at the park, and no one had seen him.

After a phone call filled with JC’s hoarse sobs, Viv had joined them. Dressed in sweats and an old Fordham University T-shirt with matching ball cap, she’d barked out orders to Max and his friends to search some of the likely places Fluffy might hide.

The moment she was able to get JC alone, she’d pulled her aside and the interrogation began. She reached up and wiped the fresh set of tears streaking JC’s face. “Explain Rock Hard Man and the Rock Hard Man-ettes. Hurry, before I pass out from all that beautifully hard.”

She sniffed. “He’s my new neighbor and those are his friends.”

“Why does
your
new neighbor rival Gerard Butler and mine rivals Mr. Whipple?”

JC clucked her tongue, mocking her friend. “You didn’t see him when he filled out the app for the apartment? You do own the building.”

Viv flapped a hand at her. “I do. I own a few. But I have apartment managers for that. So he moved in next door to you?”

“He did.”

She whistled her appreciation. “And he’s been there all of eight hours and now he’s out helping you look for your dog? What is your magic, guru? Share with the mortals.”

JC sputtered a laugh. “You mean the same kind of magic that manages to summon up guys like Jess and Ethan? Oh, and let’s not forget Ned. Remember him? The guy who invited me to his wedding but forgot to break up with me first?”

Viv shook her head, her nose twitching. “No. Let’s definitely forget Ned. What a douche. But this Max doesn’t seem at all like them.”

JC tugged on the long length of her friend’s blonde hair, offering her a tissue that Viv waved away. “Like them?”

“You have a type, my friend. They might come wrapped in different packages, but at the core, they’re all the same—dickknuckles. Selfish mirror mongers who need little emotionally to survive but a blowjob and a beer.”

“Which is why Max is off-limits.” Even if he was gorgeous.