The Cop, The Puppy And Me. Cara Colter

      “It’s better than nothing. And one person acting on an idea might lead other people to action.”

      Sullivan considered his sister’s words and the earnest look on her face. Had he been too quick to say no? Strangely, the chief going after him had not even begun to change his mind. But his sister looking at him with disapproval was something else.

      It was also the wrong time to remember the tears sparkling behind Sarah McDougall’s astonishing eyes.

      But that’s what he thought of.

      “I don’t like dealing with the press,” he said finally. “They always manage to twist what you say. After the Algard case, if I never do another interview again it will be too soon.”

      Something shifted in his sister’s face as he referred to the case that had finished him as a detective. Maybe even as a human being.

      At any other time he might have taken advantage of her sympathy to get hold of those cookies. But it was suddenly there between them, the darkness that he had seen that separated him from this world of cookies and children’s laughter that she inhabited.

      They had faced the darkness, together, once before. Their parents had been murdered in a case of mistaken identity.

      Della had been the one who had held what remained of their family—her and him—together.

      She was the one who had kept him on the right track when it would have been so easy to let everything fall apart.

      Only then, when she had made sure he finished school, had she chosen to flee her former life, the big city, the ugliness of human lives lost to violence.

      And what had he done? Immersed himself in it.

      “How could they twist what you had to say about saving a dog?” she asked, but her voice was softer.

      “I don’t present well,” he said. “I come across as cold. Heartless.”

      “No, you don’t.” But she said it with a trace of doubtfulness.

      “It’s going to come out that I don’t even like dogs.”

      “So you’ll come across as a guy who cares only about himself. Self-centered,” she concluded.

      “Colossally,” he agreed.

      “One hundred percent pure guy.”

      They both laughed, her reluctantly, but still coming around. Not enough to take the cookies out of the cupboard, though. He made a little bet with himself that he’d have those cookies by the time he left here.

      Wouldn’t that surprise the troublemaker? That he could be charming if he chose to be?

      There it was. He was thinking about her again. And he didn’t like it one little bit. Not one.

      “You should think about it,” his sister persisted.

      It occurred to him that if he dealt with the press, his life would be uncomfortable for a few minutes.

      If he didn’t appease his sister—and his boss—his life could be miserable for a lot longer than that.

      “I think,” Della said, having given him ten seconds or so to think about it, “that you should say yes.”

      “For the good of the town,” he said a little sourly.

      “For your own good, too.”

      There was something about his sister that always required him to be a better man. And then there was a truth that she, and she alone, knew.

      He would do anything for her.

      Yet she never took advantage of that. She rarely asked him for anything.

      Sullivan sighed heavily. He had a feeling he was being pushed in a direction that he did not want to go in.

      At all.