His place wasn’t exactly big, so it didn’t take long to search all the nooks and crannies. Where on earth could they have gotten to? Jace wandered back out to the garden and found a T-shirt in a crumpled heap outside the door. Not torn to shreds, thankfully, but there was dog drool all over it. Not to mention a decent coating of black fur. Tilly.
Jace tried not to let the burgeoning feeling of panic blossom into a full-blown freak-out. What if one of the people on his street had thought the dogs were homeless and taken them to a shelter? Because that would seem a more likely scenario than anyone who knew Jace assuming he’d agreed to dog-sit.
He walked across the back lawn, his gaze picking over the trees and shrubbery. Maybe they were hiding in the bushes? He glanced over to the small, squat building that sat on the back of the garden. The tiny one-bedroom unit—affectionately known as the “granny flat”—looked relatively undisturbed, except for the fact that the front door was wide open.
“Stay back!” A high-pitched feminine voice cut through the air as a warning growl sounded from inside the unit.
Oh shit.
Jace jogged over and braced his hands against the doorframe. He didn’t want to interrupt his tenant, since they certainly weren’t on the kind of terms where they’d walk into each other’s homes without an invite. Sure, they were friendly. But not that friendly.
He’d rented out the flat for a little extra cash, something steady to offset the highs and lows of creative income. But his tenant was prone to distracting him with her long legs and shiny brown hair and pretty, heart-shaped face. Hence why he kept his distance.
“Angie?” he called into the unit. “You okay?”
“Jace!” Her petrified voice rang out. “There’s a big dog in here and it looks hungry.”
“I’m coming in.”
A few footsteps later, his gaze landed on a black tail hanging out of the entrance to the kitchen. He found Tilly hunkered down, facing off with the woman currently renting from him. Her eyes were wide, her mouth drawn into a thin line as her breath came short and fast, forcing the buttons to strain on her blouse. She’d plastered herself against the kitchen cabinets, and her face was white as a sheet.
“Tilly, sit!” he commanded. Eugenie had taken the dogs to obedience school, so they should know basic commands.
The dog plopped her butt down on the ground and turned her head, looking at him over one shoulder proudly as if to say, Look how well I’m protecting you. He nudged her with his knee, and she reluctantly made way for him to enter the kitchen.
Angie sagged back against the counter. “Thank God. You know this attack dog?”
“She’s hardly an attack dog.” Jace reached down and scratched Tilly behind the ears.
“If you’d given her a few more minutes, you’d be sweeping little chewed-up pieces of human.”
Jace stifled a laugh. Angie had clearly gotten a fright from the sudden canine interruption. Even now, with Tilly’s tongue lolling out the side of her mouth and looking the furthest thing from dangerous, Angie kept her distance. “Sorry about that. I’ll get her out of your hair.”
She nodded but said, “It’s okay. She startled me is all.”
Angie folded her arms across the front of her blouse—which was a pale, summery blue. It was a perfect contrast to her wavy brown hair and sparkly brown eyes. She’d put on a little makeup today, something delicate and pink on her cheeks and that glossy stuff on her lips that made them look totally kissable. Attraction flared deep inside him, as it usually did whenever he was around Angie. Since the day she’d come to check out the flat, he’d found himself unable to stop looking at her.
But, like always, the sensible voice in his head followed up immediately: Not appropriate to be checking out the tenant.
Besides, Angie wasn’t the kind of girl he should be interested in. She talked a lot and was a social butterfly, and chaos stuck to her like she was made of Velcro. A woman who couldn’t seem to go a day without finding some new cause to pour her heart into was trouble with a capital T. The last thing he needed was someone trying to “fix” him.
“I’m not great with dogs,” Angie added. It looked like she was about to say more, but she chewed the inside of her cheek instead.
“Bad experience?” He slipped a finger under Tilly’s collar to make sure she didn’t spook Angie further.
“Explain to me how encountering some hairy beast with more teeth than should be legal isn’t a bad experience? In fact, I’d say that dogs were meant to be earth’s dominant species except, you know…no opposable thumbs.”
“That’s all it took for humans to succeed? Opposable thumbs.”
Her lips quirked. “It sounds scientific, right?”
Jace laughed and shook his head. “Well, we might have to figure something out. This is Mrs. Landry’s dog, and my mother has told her I have ‘plenty of space’ to babysit for the next two months.”
“That’s her dog? When she came to visit her aunt in the retirement home, she described the damn thing like it was some little ball of fluff.” Angie inched carefully along the kitchen counter. “She called her a lapdog, for crying out loud.”
“Given she tried to crawl into my lap while I was working yesterday, I guess you could call her a lapdog.” Jace frowned. “But I imagine she was probably talking about the little one, Truffle.”
Speaking of which, he was still one for two in the dog department. Not a good sign, considering he had fifty-nine days of dog-sitting duties ahead of him.
Angie started to move around the kitchen and reached for the cupboard above her. The cupboards were high for the average person, let alone someone “vertically challenged,” as Angie called herself, and she had to rise up onto her tiptoes to reach the mugs. This caused the hem of her skirt to crawl up the backs of her thighs in a way that had Jace feeling suddenly hungry. Angie rode her bike everywhere and she had phenomenal legs.
Jace cleared his throat and averted his eyes. He was about to announce that he should get going to find Truffle when Angie cut into his thoughts.
“So your mom dobbed you in, huh?” She tilted her head toward Tilly. “You’re on doggy day-care duty.”
“Yeah, she did.” He liked the way she said mom in her American accent. “Nice use of ‘dobbed,’ by the way.”
“Thank you. My Aussie slang vocabulary is growing. I managed to use ‘squiz’ in a sentence today.” She retrieved two cups, without asking if he wanted a coffee, and set them on the bench.
Despite the banter, Angie didn’t seem her usual bubbly self today. Normally, she was the kind of woman who bounced all over the place. She was chatty to the extreme, friendly and warm and sweet like a cup of hot chocolate. But today she seemed a little…off. Maybe it was the fright.
Or maybe it was one of those “people things” he couldn’t figure out.
Jace was good at a lot of things—drawing, surfing, keeping promises. He could chop firewood and put Ikea furniture together without looking at the instructions. But he was not great when it came to what he liked to call the “fuzzy gray.” The “fuzzy gray” was his term for all the things he didn’t quite understand. The comments that sailed over his head, those indecipherable facial expressions that weren’t obvious enough to be put into categories. Subtext and hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Oh, and him saying things that were true but probably shouldn’t be said because it made him sound “blunt.”
All that stuff was the fuzzy gray, and he felt certain he was in the middle of it right now.
“Everything okay?” he asked. The question popped out before he’d had the chance to give it due consideration—he still had Tilly in his hand and one potentially missing Chihuahua—but something told him this was one of those times where his own awkwardness should come second to being a good person. And, like his dad always said, the Walters family helped people.
So maybe he c
ould help Angie.
…
Tears sprang to Angie’s eyes so quickly, they caught her off guard. Oh, hell no. She hadn’t kept herself together all through that meeting this afternoon only to lose it now.
She spun around to face the sink—now more concerned about her emotions than the big black dog in her tiny kitchen. Why did she have to act like a melodramatic teenager in front of Jace now? He was pretty much a level of adulthood she could never hope to achieve. He always had a cool head about him. He was quiet and composed, thoughtful. And hot…so hot.
Like, exactly what you think a sexy Australian guy should look like kind of hot.
Blue eyes, sandy hair. Crooked Hemsworth smile. Tanned skin. Shoulders broad enough to carry the world. She’d seen him in board shorts a number of times and knew that what he had going on under his usual T-shirt and jeans was the stuff of her horny dreams.
Holy freaking physical perfection, Batman.
Except that he most likely thought she was a mess of a human. Which, to be fair, she was. Call it a by-product of the fact that she had only one mode of operation in dealing with nervous energy: grin and bear it. Or, as was more accurate, grin and verbal diarrhea.
In the case of Jace Walters, that meant flitting around with a too-big smile and starting conversations about literally anything that popped into her head. Like that one time she suggested he plant cacti instead of annuals, because they were easier to care for. Except that he should be careful because this one time she fell on a cactus, and pulling the prickles out of her leg was torture. But that it would definitely be worse for a guy because their nether regions were so much more exposed. Which had been super awkward, so then she’d changed the topic and started talking about how strange it was that eggplants had nothing to do with eggs.
She cringed remembering how he’d stared blankly at her. Sometimes it seemed like he had no idea how to react to her or what to say, but who could blame him? She talked sixty miles a minute and changed conversation topics like the wind.
Jace cleared his throat. “Should I go? I don’t want to…intrude.”
“No, stay. Please.” She cursed herself for the desperation in her voice. Warning: stage-five clinger. She turned around and offered him one of her too-big smiles. “I mean…it’s been a long day. I could use some company, actually.”
Falling apart was not an option.
He absently scratched his chest, as if he wasn’t sure what to say next. Then he blurted out, “Want to help me look for the other dog?”
She blinked. “You lost him already?”
“I didn’t lose him,” Jace replied, frowning. “I…misplaced him.”
Angie let out a half laugh. “Sure. I can help with the dog hunt. We’re looking for the little one, right?”
“Right.”
“And you’ll lock up the big one.” She eyed Tilly warily.
“Yes, I’ll lock her up.”
“And you’ll let me make you a cup of coffee after.”
A crooked smile pulled at Jace’s lips, making a dimple form in one cheek. “Sure.”
“Give me a second to change.” She darted off to her bedroom and quickly wriggled out of her pencil skirt and blouse. She wanted to burn the damn things—useless talismans that they were.
She reemerged in jean shorts, a white T-shirt, and thongs…which she still couldn’t say without giggling. Although now, not even the Aussies’ funny word for flip-flops could lift her spirits. The meeting today had left her feeling like a husk. Like someone had hollowed her out and taken a match to her future.
You could always find a bloke to marry. I wouldn’t be totally opposed to the idea.
Paul’s words swirled in her head, but she shut the thoughts down. There was no way she could marry a guy for a visa. She’d always known she would marry for love—because her life would have been very different if she’d had love…from anyone.
No way would she shortchange herself where that was concerned.
Not even for the life of your dreams? Not even for the chance to live anonymously and happily?
No. She deserved more.
“I’m outside,” Jace called, and Angie jogged through the front door, then slammed it shut behind her. “Big dog is locked up.”
“Well, that is a giant relief.” She also didn’t love small dogs. Angie didn’t hate them, of course, but she’d had such a bad experience earlier in life that she’d never bonded with any other dog since. “Okay, Dr. Watson. What’s your read on the situation?”
“How come you get to be Sherlock?”
“Because Sherlock would never have lost the dogs in the first place.”
He stared up at the sky as if he were training to be a meteorologist before finally answering. “Good point.”
Jace’s property was huge. If there was one thing Australia wasn’t short on, it was land. And Patterson’s Bluff had some of the best in the country—rocky ocean views, streets thick with native foliage. The kind of sunsets that could make even the most emotionally remote person shed a tear.
But all of that meant plenty of space for a small animal to explore. The property sloped down at the back, with thick bushes and shrubbery creating seemingly endless hiding spots. There was a huge old tree with a legit tree house. It looked better than some of the houses Angie lived in as a kid.
“Tell me about the dog,” she said, rubbing her chin in what she guessed was a Sherlock-like gesture.
“Chihuahua. Two years old. Male. White fur, big pointy ears. Buggy eyes.”
It pleased her immensely that Jace was playing along. She needed this distraction right now. “There’s no way he could have left the property?”
“No.” Jace shook his head. “The front door and all windows were shut. Gate around the side was also shut and locked.”
“Back door?”
“Not locked. I came outside to think and…I fell asleep.”
Angie raised a brow. Jace was Mr. Diligent. Mr. Always Working. “Rough night?”
“Yeah.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I had a guest.”
“Oh.” For some reason, the thought of Jace having someone stay over sent a hot poker lancing through her. Which was ridiculous, since she never begrudged people’s happiness. But her mind spun on the idea of him naked and sweaty and up all night, torturing her with vivid images of his surfing-honed body. “Well… Uh… Good for you.”
He looked at her strangely. “I had a canine guest. Truffle was crying, and I caved around two a.m. and let him sleep in my bedroom.”
She didn’t know what was worse, the jealousy that was both unwarranted and unexpected…or the fact that Jace suspected she had her mind in the gutter. “Right, well. Yes. I totally knew what you meant.”
Angie marched forward, heading toward a cluster of bottlebrush trees nestled along the fence that ran closest to her unit. The bright-red flowers swayed lightly, their spiny tendrils shuddering in the breeze. Crouching, Angie pushed the branches to one side. No dog.
“He might have been chasing a bird,” she mused. “Dogs do that, right?”
They inched along the fence, checking behind clusters of trees. A small shed was tucked away in the back corner of the property, where Jace kept the lawn mower and other gardening tools. But the padlock was firmly in place, so he couldn’t be hiding in there.
“Truffle!” Jace called. His deep baritone carried across the yard. “Here, boy!”
Nothing. The breeze picked up speed, sending Angie’s hair scattering around her shoulders. Overhead, dark clouds threatened. Summer was like that here—a week of blistering heat followed by a thunderstorm to cool everything down. Then the temperature would start to climb again.
“Shit,” Jace muttered. “I need to get him inside before that storm hits. Eugenie said he can catch a cold easily if he gets stuck out in the rain for too long.”
/> “We’ll find him,” she said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice. “Truffle! We’ve got treats for you! Doggy treats and steak and…pizza.”
Did dogs eat pizza? Probably not. Maybe it was one of those things they weren’t supposed to eat but still enjoyed. Like chocolate.
They went farther down into the more densely wooded area of the property, where trees grew up and out, creating a shadowy patch. They walked quicker, pulling back bushes and branches and calling Truffle’s name. The temperature dropped rapidly, and Angie shivered. Jace let out a sharp whistle.
“What if he got hurt and he can’t move?” he said.
Angie’s heart clenched at the worry in Jace’s voice. “He’s probably having the time of his life. You know, he’s like a little explorer navigating new territory, and he’s probably so ready to come back to the big dog and tell her all about it.”
“Eugenie will kill me if anything happens to them. They’re like her children.” A deep groove settled between his brows. “This is why I stick to cacti.”
If he hadn’t looked so genuinely concerned, Angie might have laughed. That was Jace in a nutshell—he liked living a quiet, low-maintenance life. Cacti were perfect for him, which was why she’d suggested them in the first place. The fact that he’d listened to her and bought a few for his garden had filled her with a soft, squishy kind of warmth in her chest. She got the impression that Jace usually did what he wanted, regardless of what people said.
A fine mist descended over them as they emerged from the trees. The storms here could hit suddenly, scattering people who didn’t know well enough to always have an umbrella stashed somewhere close by. They probably had less than five minutes before the rain turned nasty.
A loud clap of thunder filled the air, and Jace charged up toward the house, calling Truffle’s name. They were almost at his door when the sky opened up, rain teeming down in sheets. And still no dog.
“You go inside,” he said, ushering her toward the door. “See if he snuck back in.”
Angie hesitated a second, terrified at the thought of being stuck in a house with the big black dog…especially since she knew dogs liked storms about as much as she did. But she’d also never seen Jace so worried in the six months she’d lived here as his tenant.
The Aussie Next Door Page 3