She eyed his utility belt with the Glock, the mace, the spare ammo. “Only trained staff is supposed to handle the dogs.”
“I know what I’m doing.” He knelt down to talk to the husky. “You giving her a hard time, boy?”
“Girl,” Nadine corrected. And then, under her breath, “And here they call you an expert.”
“Hadn’t gotten the back view yet, Nadine.” He rubbed the dog’s head and straightened again. “An expert what?”
She went still, her face flushing, and she frowned some more. “Nothing. Never mind.” She turned and started in. “I’ll call Amber to see if she gives permission.”
Shohn watched the jiggling of her rounded rump in the snug shorts until the husky gave an impatient jerk of the leash. Following behind her, he asked, “You think I’d lie about it?”
“I think I have liability to consider.” She held the door open for him.
Two steps up the porch and he heard the din of a dozen dogs playing. “You’ve known my family forever, Nadine.” Deliberately he sidled in close to her, his chest brushing her...chin. At five-four, she was so much shorter than his six-one that he’d have to bend down to rub against her breasts.
“Your family is terrific,” she said in that slightly shrill voice again. “Lovely, even.” She let the door drop on him and hurried along.
Meaning his family was lovely, but he wasn’t? Not that he wanted to be lovely, for crying out loud. “I don’t lie. If I tell you that Amber sent me, then she—”
“I’ll give her a call to confirm it.” Nadine led the dogs down a hallway and into a penned area at the rear of the house.
Shohn surveyed the room. It was spacious with dog toys everywhere, watering stations, stacked beds and various play stations. Even with so many dogs inside, it looked clean, which had to mean she worked on it nonstop.
“Come on, then,” Nadine grumbled. “She wants to get back in.”
Shohn brought the husky up close and Nadine let her into the pen and then unleashed her. She took off at a run.
An assistant was in the penned area, tossing balls, rubber chew toys and raggedy stuffed animals from a big basket. She was young, slim, cute...
Bristling, Nadine stepped in front of him. “Don’t even think it, Shohn Hudson.”
Leaning away from that venomous tone, Shohn lifted his brows. “Think what?”
“About hitting on my assistant, that’s what.” One hand on his chest, she backed him up two steps. “She’s off-limits to you.”
“Hey, I’m armed,” he teased.
“I noticed.”
Her gaze dipped down his body again, but it didn’t seem to be his gun that held her attention. “Keep that up and I’ll be packing a different type of heat.”
She shook her head as if to clear it. “I mean it, mister. I like Roxi. She’s doing a great job. I do not want you corrupting her.”
What the hell? Shohn planted his feet and refused to back up any farther. So Nadine not only wasn’t interested in him, she also had a very low opinion of him. It didn’t make any sense. As a general rule, women liked him. “How the hell would I corrupt her?”
Her flattened hand turned into a pointing finger that poked, poked, poked with her every word. “The last girl you played with started calling in sick, leaving early and, instead of working when she was here, she was forever checking her text messages, hoping you had contacted her.”
Shohn caught her finger and held on.
She pulled, and when he didn’t release her, she beetled her brows over her big brown eyes. “You hadn’t.”
With her looking at him like that, he had a hard time keeping up. “Hadn’t what?”
“Called her,” she said with exasperation, and again tried to free her pointy finger.
It took some thought before Shohn recalled the girl she meant, and then he was the one scowling. “I’d had one date with her and she turned into a damned stalker.”
“Oh, poor you. How tragic that a woman wanted a second date.”
Worse and worse. “I have second dates.”
She snorted.
Actually he’d had fourth and fifth dates, but he never got serious about anyone because he liked his life too much to want it to change. With Nadine so unaccountably hostile, he didn’t bother trying to explain any of that to her. “So I’m not allowed to notice when you hire new people?”
“Sure you can.” She gave a final, more furious yank and freed her hand, which she then tucked behind her back, out of his reach. “I hired Fred weeks ago. He helps keep up the grounds. Go around back and you can visit with him all you want while I try to get hold of your cousin.”
He didn’t want to visit with Fred, damn it, and he didn’t want Nadine to brush him off. He preferred to stick around and maybe...win her over.
Why, he didn’t know, since she wasn’t very high on his list. But it could have something to do with the heated scent of her sun-warmed body and all those ripe curves. He had the overwhelming urge to nuzzle the soft skin of her neck, her breasts...those lush thighs.
“Shohn,” she warned in a shaky voice.
Right now, with her hand behind her like that, her breasts were sort of jutting toward him.
With a low growl, Nadine turned and flounced away.
Pulled from his carnal thoughts, Shohn followed her. “You can call Amber, but you might not be able to reach her. She’s on her way home from a book fair or something.”
She ignored him and snatched up her phone. “If she’s not home yet, why are you picking up Rookie?”
“Amber said she’d be home tonight.” Shohn leaned on the counter and watched as Nadine hopped up onto a stool, the phone to her ear. She’d left her flip-flops on the floor and hooked her heels over the bottom rung of the stool. Cute toes. Really sexy legs, different from the model-thin girls he was used to seeing in bikinis at the lake.
Wondering how Nadine would look in an itty-bitty bikini, he studied her thighs and murmured, “I guess she misses the big lug.”
After the call went to voice mail, Nadine said, “Amber, this is Nadine Moest from Animal House. Call me, please. Your cousin Shohn is here to pick up Rookie, but I need your verbal permission before I can turn over the dog.” She hung up and looked at Shohn.
Shohn managed to drag his attention from her legs to her face. “Well?”
“Well, what? You heard what I said. I can’t give him to you until I hear from her.”
They’d known each other since grade school. She was well acquainted with his lovely family. She had no reason to distrust him. But she looked as if she meant business. “You’re serious?”
“About my responsibility to these dogs? You betcha.”
Though ceiling fans whirled overhead, it was still too warm inside. The muggy heat nudged Shohn’s temper, but he sought to keep it under wraps. He supposed with that many dogs coming in and out, it’d be tough to adequately air-condition the place.
Pushing back from the counter, he paced three steps away before facing her again. “Be reasonable, Nadine. You know me. You know Amber. We’re close.”
“I know you misbehave and for some insane reason, Amber finds it endearing.”
He