She seemed perilously close to stomping her foot at him, but Spencer knew she wouldn’t. Ruby was no stranger to maintaining her composure under pressure. “Spencer, it’s not any better. Don’t you get it? Whether you’re offering to hand me a trophy or resigning from the judging panel, it all boils down to the same thing. I don’t want you to change your principles for me. I don’t want you to change anything.”

His heart gave a lopsided thump. “You wouldn’t change anything? Anything at all?”

A small grunt of irritation escaped her lips. “You’re a stubborn, judgmental, competitive neat freak, but that’s what I love about you. Loved,” she corrected herself hastily, but it was too late. The word had escaped. It was in the air now, pulsating between them, stripping every other human and animal in the room away.

“You’re such a bastard, you know that? You were supposed to be the one man who didn’t give me a free pass because of how I look, who didn’t smooth my path because you wanted to sleep with me. For the past two months, I’ve woken up every single day determined to make the most of every minute—to beat you at your own game, to force myself to match you stride for stride. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt that way? Since I’ve been anything but resigned and bored with my life?”

He shook his head. “No. Tell me.”

That pushed her even closer to the brink. Tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, she took a step toward him. It was a step of intent and challenge, and it made every nerve ending he had vibrate at once. “Ten years. Ten long, flat, wasted years.”

“They weren’t wasted,” he said and meant it. “I think you’re pretty amazing just the way you are.”

“No.” She flung a hand up and stepped back once again, but the distance didn’t matter. His nerve endings hadn’t stopped reacting to her presence. She didn’t want to change him. She liked—no, loved—him the way he was.

Spencer Wilson, veterinarian and former dog-show judge, a little stiff upon first meeting but not a bad guy once you got to know him.

“You don’t get to say that and then refuse to judge me and Wheezy,” she said. “You don’t get to say that and then resign. I can take whatever you have to throw at me. I will take it. And then I’ll come back next year and try again—and the year after that and the year after that. It might take me another decade, but you’ll see what I’m capable of.”

His heart swelled at the fierce determination that tightened her jaw and pursed her lips, caused the skin underneath all that glitter to glow.