Brett shook his head. “Did that husband of yours teach you nothing about this dog?”
She laughed. “No, because it was like they shared the same brain! Bear just did what Sam wanted him to do, like they had some silent communication thing going on, and he went everywhere with him so it wasn’t like I was ever in sole charge.”
Brett sighed. “Fair call.” He followed her inside and stood back as she locked the doors. “How about you tell me what you’d like to do with him?”
She checked the side door was locked before gathering Bear’s lead from a drawer and facing Brett.
“I guess I want to be able to walk down for a coffee and sit without worrying how to handle him if there’s another big dog coming toward us. And walk through the park, throw a ball for him and know he’ll come back when he’s off the leash, that sort of thing.”
Brett opened the front door and held it open for her, waiting as she clipped the leash to Bear’s collar.
“He’s too well-trained to have a fight with another dog, and he will never, ever chase a ball and not bring it back to you. It’s why he made the squad in the first place.”
“Were you with Sam the day he chose him?”
Brett shook his head. “No, but I remember him being so excited that he’d finally found the perfect partner. Bear was with a family who loved him, but they were moving overseas and had put him up for adoption. When Sam went to see him, he tested him out with a ball and he knew straight away that the black giant was going to be his sidekick.”
They fell into a comfortable rhythm, walking side by side.
“Is it okay to talk about him?” Brett asked, his voice an octave lower.
The question took her by surprise. “Yes.” They walked for a bit more before she continued. “I mean, it’s hard, it’s always hard, but it’s nice talking about him with you.”
“I half expect him to be at the house when we get back,” Brett said with a smile. “Waiting to give me a telling off about hanging out with his wife.”
“Yeah.” Jamie was smiling, too, but it was bittersweet. “I guess I’d become so used to him going away on tours, so for me it just seems like this has just been an especially long one. Like I’m just waiting for him to fly home and pick up where we left off.” It had been the same when her dad had never come home from deployment—like one day he’d just walk through the door again and everything would go back to normal.
“If it’s too hard having me here...”
“No,” she blurted. “Having you here is the only good thing that’s happened to me in a long while, so please don’t think you’re making me uncomfortable. It’s the complete opposite.”
* * *
Brett was pleased she wanted him here, but every time they talked about Sam made him feel plain weird for being with Jamie, just the two of them. Lucky they had the dog as a distraction, because it meant they had something to focus on other than the fact that nothing was like it had been the last time they’d seen one another.
“So you just give him a gentle reminder if he walks ahead of you by pulling the lead back,” he told her, closing his hand over it and showing her, “and telling him to heel, but you’re probably not going to need to do that very often.”
Brett didn’t move his hand when Jamie’s brushed past it, fingers almost closing over his before she realized. It was stupid—they’d touched plenty in the past—but having her warm skin against his reminded him of all the reasons why he shouldn’t have been here. Because there had been a time when he’d wished he’d asked Jamie out, before she’d met Sam, and they were dangerous thoughts to be remembering now that she was his friend’s widow.
“Brett, I don’t want to bring up what happened again, but I need to ask you one question.”
He cleared his throat and turned to face her. “Shoot.” So long as he didn’t have to relive what had happened again, he’d tell her what she needed to know. Those memories caught up on him enough without voluntarily calling on them.
“I keep thinking about the army sending Bear back, once they’d made the decision to retire him. Is it normal for them to care for a dog like that, even though their career is over, and then pay to send them home?”
Brett couldn’t help smiling at her. Trust Jamie to have figured out that it wasn’t exactly protocol, especially when the handler was no longer alive and able to fight for his dog.
“Let’s just say that me and the other boys put a fair amount of pressure on our superiors to make sure Bear had a good retirement. I didn’t know he’d be given back to you, but there aren’t that many dogs in the world capable of what he did on a daily basis, and it wasn’t exactly a tough call to send him home a hero.”
Jamie reached out to him, took him completely by surprise as her hand stayed in place on his shoulder.
“Well then I guess I owe you a pretty big thanks,” she said, throwing him a smile that made him want to look away, because that smile had always teased him and he didn’t want to think about her like that, not now. “It means a lot to have him here, even if I’m kind of hopeless at the whole business of looking after a dog.”
Brett fought not to shrug her hand off, and was pleased when it just dropped away.
“So which café are we going to?”
* * *
“Skinny latte?”
Jamie looked up. “How did you guess?”
He chuckled and ordered, before peering into the cabinet with her. “And I’m also guessing that you want something sweet. Maybe the chocolate peppermint slice?”
Jamie kept staring at the rows of food, trying to ignore the slice so she wasn’t completely predictable. In the end she gave in to her sweet tooth. “Okay, how about we share a piece?”
She walked back outside to where they’d left Bear, not liking the idea of just tying him up and leaving him beside a table.
“He’s fine,” Brett said, pulling her chair out for her and then taking the seat opposite.
“I can see that. It just seems foreign to me,” she told him.
“This dog won’t let you down. Trust me. His manners will be better than most of the people in here.”
Jamie rolled her eyes, but she knew he was probably right. And she also knew that Brett pulling her chair out for her was the kind of gentlemanly thing that not many guys did anymore. Her husband had, so she was used to it, and she liked being treated like a woman.
Brett’s mobile rang and he punched a button to silence it before answering and mouthing sorry to her. Jamie touched Bear’s head, stroking his fur, not looking at Brett. But she couldn’t help but take notice of what he was saying. The fact that it was Logan, her husband’s other best buddy, made her want to frown and smile simultaneously.
Part of her was liking being with Brett, but another part of her, like a pang of hunger gnawing at her stomach, wanted Sam back here, too. So she could sit and listen to them talk and laugh and be boys, like she always had. Her husband, Brett and Logan.
Brett cleared his throat and Jamie’s eyes snapped up to meet his. She had no idea whether he was waiting for her to say something, or whether he was just watching her.
“Jamie, what do you say?” he asked.
She raised her eyebrows, wishing she hadn’t been daydreaming. “To what?”
“Logan’s in town for the next week and he wanted