“We have two more stores opening, one in Milwaukee and one in New Orleans,” she says, and I turn in my chair and look out the floor-to-ceiling window. It’s a sunny day today, and the water looks almost blue. You would never know you’re in New York.

“Did we confirm the leases for those two locations yet?” I ask her. Fifteen years ago when I first started out in the NHL and was drafted fifth overall for Nashville, I moved out there on my own. At only eighteen, I had my own little studio apartment, but I was lonely as fuck. My mother is Italian, and my father is Greek, so to say I have a big family is an understatement. It’s also expected that they’d be in my business. No matter how many times I told my mother it was a secret, her sisters or her cousins always found out somehow. Now here I am all by myself. My family is in Canada, so I have myself an English Bulldog I call Brutus. Except I didn’t think about what I would do with him when I was gone. I needed someone to come over and feed him and walk him. Getting someone was impossible at times, and more often than not, he ended up spending a week in a kennel.

It was while I was taking him to the vet for kennel cough that I came up with an idea to get a dog walker. I created an app with the help of my brother to connect people who could walk the dog with people who needed the service. So here I was, starting the Walk ’N’ Licks Dog Walking App. It blew up right before my eyes, so then I opened my first doggy daycare in Nashville under the same name. The demand just kept coming in from all around the world, so now I’ve opened fifty locations all across Canada and the US. And as of two years ago, I even added a grooming service.

Getting up from my desk, I walk over to the window and look out at the boats in the water. “So is that a yes?”

“What?” I turn and see Tracy sitting there, tapping her pen.

“You went off in your head again.” She shakes her head and laughs. “The SPCA is throwing a huge event, and they would love the support of Walk ’N’ Licks.”

“Send me the email, and I’ll look it over,” I tell her. As she makes a note, my cell beeps in my pocket at the same time the phone rings.

“Hello, GM,” I say, laughing. “To what do I owe the honors?”

“Very funny,” Matthew says. “You still busting my balls over that title.”

“I don’t think it’s busting balls if that’s your title.” I laugh.