“Meaning I’d better be on my best behavior.”
His eyes lightened to sky-blue, and the strain around his mouth eased, lessening the gravity of his expression. When he looked like that, it was harder to ignore the fact that this was the man she’d had a secret, desperate crush on for so many years....
But that was in the past. She was years past being a silly teenager crushing on the hotshot high school football star. He was a client now—the most important client she’d ever had. She couldn’t let herself lose sight of that just because he had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
“You’d better believe it. Are you ready to meet your new partner?” A lot of thought had gone into the pairing of dog to man and man to dog, and she was proud of what she’d accomplished. She couldn’t wait for Eli to meet his new partner, and her eagerness bubbled over in her voice. She recognized that this was one of those defining life moments she’d look back on, either with delight or utter mortification. It was all on Eli to make that call. If he lightened up, this could be good—maybe even fun. Working with a K-9 was every bit as much about enthusiasm and reward as it was about effort and exertion. Perhaps more so.
“Sure. Whatever.” He shrugged offhandedly, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other whether or not he met his partner.
Mary sighed in exasperation. Even if he wasn’t thrilled about working with her, she thought he’d display a bit more interest in his new dog. His cavalier attitude was going to have to change, or they would never be able to work together. Where was the man with the happy-go-lucky smile for the world? Who had replaced him with Mr. Chip-on-His-Shoulder? Was it just because of Natalie, or was something else entirely wrong here?
Mary hadn’t a clue. And it wasn’t as if she could ask. How did one even broach a subject like this?
She paused and tilted her face up to his, her gaze lingering on him, questioning him without words. Rather than meeting her eyes, his gaze wandered to somewhere in the vicinity of her chin.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.” It was an adamant denial, even though she hadn’t accused him of anything. He gestured toward the den. “I’m trying to follow orders here. Please. Lead the way.” There was an element of pleading in his tone that hadn’t been there before.
He was giving off mixed signals all over the place—which he clearly wasn’t going to acknowledge. And if he wouldn’t, she couldn’t.
“So we’re good, then?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was low and gruff, and his gaze turned so dark that his stormy blue eyes took on an almost black hue to them.
She wasn’t going to solve any of their problems this way. Maybe the best thing to do was to bring out the big guns—
—or more specifically, the Bullet.
Chapter Two
Eli’s chest tightened almost painfully as he followed Mary through the front room and into the den. In his opinion, it was more of a kennel than a living space. There were several crates, the smaller stacked on the larger, but they were all empty. The dogs who’d greeted him at the door were lounging on fluffy pillows of various shapes, colors and sizes, all of which looked as if they had been haphazardly tossed around the room. Chew toys, ropes, tennis balls and rawhide bones littered the floor.
The whole place was messy. Lived-in. And distinctly feminine. Everything from Mary’s choice of floral wallpaper to the soft pastel curtains screamed woman, unlike his own apartment, which was meticulously clean and simply furnished with only the bare necessities in mahogany and stainless steel. Not much in the way of decor, other than a couple of family pictures on the wall. Eli didn’t require too many things to live comfortably.
Besides, he liked clean. Uncluttered. Mary apparently felt differently.
He didn’t know what he’d expected the inside of Mary’s house to look like, since he knew she shared her space with all her dogs. He supposed he hadn’t really considered it at all.
In any respect, this wasn’t it. These pups looked as if they were living the lives of royalty, not as if they were working animals. He surveyed the dogs. The Chihuahua wasn’t a K-9, formidable attitude notwithstanding, but he supposed some of the other dogs could be.
In addition to those he’d seen in the front room, there were three other large canines—one a creamy yellow color but otherwise identical to Sebastian, a gray dog with whiskers and a lot of fluff on its legs and another that looked a little like Lassie from the old television show.
He wondered which of them would be his. To his relief, they were not overly intimidating. None of them seemed as if they could be a police-trained K-9, either, not that he really knew how to assess one.
“If you’ll follow me to the back patio, I’ll introduce you to your new partner. He’s in the yard getting some exercise with some of the other pups.”
“There are more?” The question was half tongue-in-cheek jesting and half utter bemusement. “How many dogs did you say you have again?”
Mary glanced back and smiled. “Too many. I’ve lost count.”
Eli shook his head and chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”
She stopped at the sliding glass doorway and turned to face him, gesturing back toward the den. “You’ve met Goliath,” she said, pointing to the Chihuahua. “The gray one is a standard schnauzer—Periwinkle. I call her Perry.” Upon hearing her name, the schnauzer pricked her ears. “And of course I have my SAR dog, Sebastian. He’s a Labrador retriever, and he pretty much never leaves my side.” She took a breath and smiled, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed both the den and the yard. “The rest of this sorry lot I’m either fostering or training.”
“SAR?”
“Search and rescue,” she elaborated.
“I see. And my dog?”
“Bullet. He’s a Dutch shepherd. That’s him right there,” she said, aiming her finger to the far corner of the yard.
Eli’s gaze shifted to where she’d pointed, his shoulders tensing as he silently observed Bullet, a mostly black-furred dog with a bit of tan on his face and legs. He was trotting around the perimeter of the wooden security fence as if he were staking his claim on it. The dog circled a few of the obstacles in the yard—a balance beam, a chute and a couple of jumps—punctuating his sniffing with an occasional ominous bark.
Bullet was definitely more what Eli had imagined in a K-9, both in aggression and demeanor. Eli was pretty sure bad guys wouldn’t want to run into the sharp-toothed end of this dog. He wouldn’t.
He steadied his breath, trying not to think of another dog, another time, a terrifying episode that had resulted in permanent bite marks and gashes on his right forearm and shoulder. He had many scars on his body, everything from the sharp edges of an angry bull’s horn across his ribs to the ragged pucker of a knife wound on his chin. Yet comparatively, those had been easier to heal, emotionally speaking. He didn’t dwell on them.
Not like his inexplicable, irrational fear of dogs. Experts even had a scientific name for it—cynophobia—which didn’t help him a bit. He couldn’t get over it, no matter how hard he tried.
He swallowed hard, his muscles rigid as Mary called for the K-9 to come forward.
“Bullet, volg.”
Bullet obeyed the command immediately, coming to heel next to Mary’s left side and sitting on his haunches, looking up at her expectantly for his next instruction. She reached down and scratched him under the