“Tell me what you did today besides hauling a stump out of the woods.”
Before he could speak, the dogs wandered back in. Jaws scented the air and bulleted for the table. He plopped his paws on Fiona’s leg and whined.
“Off.” She snapped her fingers, pointed to the ground. He sat, but the tail swished and the eyes shone with anticipation. She shifted her gaze to Simon.
“You feed him from the table.”
“Maybe. He keeps at me until—”
He broke off when she huffed out a breath. She rose, walked to the pantry. She got out small chew bones. One for Jaws, and one each for the three dogs who looked at the pup with pity.
“These are yours.” She laid the bones across the room. “Go ahead. Distract,” she said to Simon. “Replace, discipline. As long as you give in and feed him from the table—and people food isn’t good for his diet—he’ll keep begging. And you’re teaching him to be a nuisance by rewarding bad behavior.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Keep it up, you’ll raise a counter-grazer. I’ve had more than one student who’s chowed down on the Thanksgiving turkey, the dinner party rack of lamb or the Christmas ham because they weren’t taught proper manners. One stole a neighbor’s steaks right off the grill.”
“Was that a fetch/retrieve? Because that could be a good skill.”
She shook her spoon at him. “Mark my words. Anyway, other than the stump?”
“Nothing much. I had some work, and I took some pieces into Syl’s, which is why I’m eating soup.” It wasn’t a chore after all, he realized, this dinner conversation with candlelight and dogs gnawing on rawhide. “She’s buzzed because a couple of women were in there when I came in, and they walked out loaded down. She’s shipping the wine cabinet because it was too big for their car.”
“The wine cabinet.” Her spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. “You sold my wine cabinet.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
She sulked a moment, then shrugged. “Well, hell. Congratulations.”
“It suited her.” He shrugged back when Fiona’s eyes narrowed. “Susan from Bainbridge Island. Canary diamond, good leather jacket, stylish boots. Subtle but expensive Susan from Bainbridge Island.”
“What am I? Obvious and cheap?”
“If you were cheap we’d be having sex now, soup later.”
“That’s supposed to be funny. It is, but only a little.”
“What do you do when you’re out with your unit like today? Don’t you just know all the stuff anyway?”
“It’s essential to practice, individually and as a team. We work a different problem, over different terrain, at least once a month. Then we can go over any mistakes, any flaws or any room to improve. We worked a cadaver find today.”
Simon frowned at his soup. “Nice.”
“Happy to change the subject if you’re sensitive.”
“Where’d you get the cadaver? Corpses Are Us?”
“They were out. We use cadaver material—bone, hair, body fluid—in a container. Mai, as base operations, plants it earlier. Then we set up, just as we would for a real search, assign sectors and so on.”
He tried to think if he’d ever had a more unusual conversation over minestrone. Absolutely not.
“How does the dog know it’s supposed to find a dead person instead of a live one?”
“That’s a good question. Different command. For mine, I use ‘find’ for a live search and ‘search’ for cadaver work.”
“That’s it?”
“There’s more, but most of it deals with the cross-training, the early work, the advanced work.”
“Jaws might be good at it. He found a dead fish today. No problem.”
“Actually, he could be. He can be taught to differentiate between the scent of a dead fish, or animal, and human remains.”
“And not to roll in it when he finds it?”
“Definitely.”
“Might be worth it just for that.” He glanced over to see Jaws bellying toward the table. Fiona simply turned, pointed. Jaws slunk back to the other dogs.
“He responds well, see? Not only to you but to another handler. That’s another essential skill.”
“I think he responds better to you, and I’m not sure that’s all that helpful.”
She nudged her bowl aside. “Maybe not, but this has been. I wouldn’t have brooded because it’s against the rules, but I’d have come close on my own.”
He studied her while the candlelight flickered. “You don’t look like hell tonight.”
“Oh my goodness.” She fluttered a hand at her heart. “Am I blushing?”
“I figured you would,” he added, unperturbed. “A full day out on maneuvers, or whatever they are.”
“Unit training.”
“Sure, and the fallout from the article. But you look good.”
“Wow, from not looking like hell to looking good in one leap. What could be next?”
“Your smile. I also figure you have to know it’s your best feature—the most appealing, the sexiest thing about you. That’s why you use it so often.”
“Really?”
“See, like right now.”
Still smiling, she rested her chin on her fist. “I’m still not sleeping with you tonight. This wasn’t a date. I may want you to take me on a date before we sleep together. I haven’t decided.”
“You haven’t decided.”
“That’s right. It’s one of the privileges of the female to decide these things. I don’t make the rules. So I’m not going to sleep with you yet.”
“Maybe I don’t want to sleep with you.”
“Because I’m not your type,” she said with a nod. “But I’ve already seduced you with my smile, and softened you up with Sylvia’s soup. I could lay you like linoleum.”
“That’s insulting. And provocative.”
“But I won’t because I like you.”
“You don’t really like me that much.”
She laughed. “I actually do, and I’m not altogether settled tonight, so it wouldn’t be what it should be. But I’ll take this.”
She rose to walk around the table. And slid into his lap. She grazed her teeth over his bottom lip, then soothed it with her tongue before sinking them both into the kiss.
Comfort and fire, she thought, promise and threat. The hard body and thick, soft hair, the rough stubble and smooth lips.
She sighed into it, retreated, then locked her eyes on his.
“A little more,” she murmured, and took his mouth again.
This time his hands slid up her sides, skimmed her breasts. Possessed. Small and firm, with her heart thudding under his palms.
“Fiona.”
She broke the kiss to lay her cheek to his. “You could convince me; we both know it. Please don’t. It’s so unfair, but please don’t.”
Some women, he thought, had the power to turn a man in the opposite direction from what he wanted. It seemed his fate to run up against them. And, damn it, to care.
“I need to go.”
“Yeah.” She drew back again, this time cupping his face in her hands. “You do. But thanks, because when I’m restless tonight it won’t be over some damned article in the paper.”
“Just call me Samaritan.”
For a moment, she rested her brow to his. “I’ll give you a container of soup. And a bigger collar for Jaws. He’s outgrown that one.”
He didn’t argue as she gave him time to settle.
And still, all the way home while the pup snored in the seat beside him, he could taste her, smell her.
He glanced at the dog. “This is your fault,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t be in this situation except for you.”
As he turned into his own drive, he reminded himself to go buy a damn tree and plant it.
A deal was a deal.
Ten
She got through it, got past it. Work and routine pushed her hour to hour. She channeled excess nerves into workouts, shedding tension with sweat until an article rehashing her ordeal, her loss no longer mattered.