by Lucy Gilmore
Well, no one was protecting her right now, and she was doing just fine. In fact, she’d never felt less like collapsing in her entire life.
“Everything’s great,” Sophie said.
Harrison’s dad glanced back and forth between them. “Does this mean we’re keeping the damn dog?”
Harrison turned to Sophie for the answer. He was still holding Bubbles, one finger running up and down her spine while she lolled against him. “I know it’s not going to be easy to make this work. Her fear of fire, the hazards of my job, my own goddamn temperament…” All of the fight drained from him at once. “I get it—believe me, I get it.”
Sophie opened her mouth and closed it again. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, complete and utter capitulation wasn’t it.
But there was more of it coming. Harrison took a deep breath. “Whatever you decide, I respect your judgment, of course. But if it’s at all possible, I’d like to keep trying.”
Sophie was too surprised to do more than goggle at him. No one, not even her sisters, had ever told her they respected her…anything. She wasn’t the type of woman to inspire that kind of emotion in others. Pity and concern, sure. Love, of course. But never respect.
“Please,” he added. “I know it sounds silly considering everything that’s happened, but we’ve reached an understanding, Bubbles and I.”
As if realizing she was the topic of conversation, Bubbles gave a happy yap. Even though Sophie had doubts aplenty, and she was questioning her own judgment something fierce, Harrison’s confidence caused something to shift inside of her. It was a new sensation and a liberating one. She felt strong. She felt capable.
She felt happy.
“Where did she sleep last night?” Sophie asked.
Harrison’s dad laughed, but a glare from his son cut the sound short.
“There wasn’t anything in the instructions about it,” Harrison said, his tone defensive.
“I know.” Sophie had done that on purpose. Some families felt the need to crate their animals or put them in outdoor pens overnight. Which was totally fine when you were talking about a pet, but not at all ideal for a service dog. Bubbles needed to be able to alert Harrison at all hours of the day and night, which meant she had to be inside and as close as possible.
“It gets cold out here overnight,” he said. “And she’s so small.”
“Hence the fire,” Sophie said.
Harrison’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Hence the fire,” he agreed.
Harrison’s dad seemed unable to control his delight any longer. “That dog slept curled up on his chest like a goddamned baby. I took a picture, if you want to see it. I’m putting it on my Christmas card this year.”
The swift stiffening that took over his son’s body seemed not to affect Harrison’s dad in the slightest. “You’ve never sent a Christmas card in your life,” Harrison muttered.
“Well, it’s a good year to start, isn’t it? Now that I have a granddog and all.” His father winked at Sophie. “If you’ve got things in hand here, I’ll take myself off. Don’t let him scare you. I’ve got that picture tucked away to use as blackmail the second things get out of hand.”
“I won’t, Mr. Parks,” Sophie said warmly. She liked this man—he reminded her a lot of Oscar. Her own father was a mild-mannered history professor doted on by his wife and daughters. As much as she loved him, she found herself drawn to these gruff, unabashed men. They made her feel almost normal. “And thank you.”
Harrison waited until his dad disappeared down the stairs before turning his stiffness on her. “She wouldn’t sleep anywhere else,” he said, his tone between apology and accusation. “I made her a place on the floor, and gave her all my pillows and then wrapped her in a blanket, but none of it worked. She…”
“Yes?”
He turned a flushed scowl her way. “She looked so lonely, that’s all, shaking and shivering and looking at me with those sad raisin eyes. What kind of rig are you running at that kennel, anyway?”
Sophie nearly choked. “She looked at you with what?”
His stiffness became even more pronounced, but he didn’t back down from the challenge. “Her eyes.” He held the dog out as if for her inspection. “They’re like sad, wet raisins.”
“You mean grapes.”
“What?”
“Wet raisins—those are grapes. You literally just described the fruit that raisins are made from.”
He chuffed his annoyance with a swell of his powerful chest. “You’re missing the point. Look at her. Take a good look at her, and tell me what you see.”
Sophie wasn’t sure how he expected her to reply, but she took a moment to inspect the animal. To be fair, the puppy’s eyes were rather woebegone, but that was because Bubbles was exceptional at luring people in with her innocence and adorable fluff. Harrison was living proof of it—he’d had the dog for one day and was already becoming putty in her paws.
If only it were that easy for me. Innocence and fluff might work well in a puppy’s favor, but they weren’t the qualities a girl liked to advertise when attracting a partner, especially not one as intense and virile as this one.
Not that she wanted to attract Harrison, of course.
“They look more like obsidian, if you ask me. Like she was forged in a volcano.” She smiled down at the puppy and then up at Harrison. “You did the right thing, by the way. It’s better that she sleeps close to you. She needs to be able to smell your breath to distinguish your blood sugar levels while you sleep, and your chest is an ideal place to do that.”
He blinked. “It is?”
“Absolutely. And you knew it, didn’t you, Bubbles? That’s why you were upset when he tried to make you sleep so far away. You weren’t being given a chance to prove yourself.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you tell me all this yesterday?” Harrison ran a hand through his dark-brown locks, casting them into even further disarray. “A warning would have been nice. You could have saved me a lot of time and trouble. Not to mention sleep.”
He words were harsh again, but Sophie was no longer fooled. My bark is a lot worse than my bite, he’d said yesterday, and she was beginning to realize he hadn’t been exaggerating. His bark was loud and fierce, but if there was one thing in this world she knew, it was dogs.
Dogs barked because they were nervous, because they were issuing a warning, because their instinctive urge to protect themselves—and others—was strong. They barked because they felt threatened.
From there, the conclusion was a natural one: Harrison was threatened by her. This big, fierce, firefighting hero of a man had taken one look at little old Sophie and decided he was the one at a disadvantage.
This must be what power feels like.
“I could have, but it was more important for you and Bubbles to forge a natural relationship.” She smiled gently. “I’m not going to be here all the time to help you. This is your life we’re talking about—yours and hers. You two have to find a way to make it work between you.”
Once again, his strong emotion seemed to wash away, rendering him almost boyish. “That sounds fair.”
“And it’s not going to be easy, getting her over a fear like this one,” she added. “If it’s even possible in the first place. I’m not going to lie—if Lila were to hear about this, she’d probably pull the plug on the whole project.”
He swallowed.
“Hey,” she said and laid a light hand on his arm. “It’s not as bad as you think. I’ll be here to help you every step of the way. Yelling, if I have to. Pushing.”
A rueful grin touched his lips. “You do seem to do an awful lot of that. Oscar should have warned me how combative you are.”
Sophie almost laughed out loud. Before yesterday, pushy and combative were two words that no one would think to associate with her. Yet here she was, standing tall, asserting herself, getting results.
“You like it,” she said.
He grunted a soft assent.
They both looked down at the puppy, who was staring adoringly up at her new owner. Sophie decided right then and there that nothing—not even the flames of hell—would stop her from making these two happy together. It would be a hard road, convincing a man who loved danger as much as Harrison that a creature as small and vulnerable as this one was worth the effort.
But she was. She was.
“Okay,” Harrison said. His assent came so suddenly that Sophie had to ask him to repeat himself. He did with another of those hesitant, almost apologetic smiles.
“It’s not going to be easy, you know,” he added. “I’m not used to being pushed. I’ll fight you every step of the way.”
She nodded. “I look forward to the challenge.”
“It could get ugly. I could get ugly. I usually do.” He hesitated, his eyes anxiously watching her own. “Most people give up on me long before we get to this point.”
“Yes, well. I’m not most people.”
“No, Sophie Vasquez.” His voice dropped so low that her name sounded almost like a caress. “I think we can safely agree on that.”
She had no time to follow up on this promising turn of events. At that exact moment, Bubbles decided she’d had enough of playing second string to the pair of them. With another of her small, plaintive barks, she demanded that she be pet, made much over, and otherwise coddled as befitted a lady of her stature. And Harrison, proving himself a pushover of the highest order, gave right in.
As much as Sophie appreciated the picture made by a large, attractive man and his tiny canine overlord, there was still quite a bit of work to do if she was going to make a success of this.
Clearing her throat, she cast a look at Harrison’s bare feet and officially started the day. “If you want to hand her over, I’ll set up the morning training while you get dressed,” she said. “Did you two eat?”
He blinked at the sudden shift in the conversation but accepted it with a shrug. “Only half of us. Bubbles has been fed, but I didn’t have time, not with the fire situation.”
“Then I suggest you do that first.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine.” His stance indicated that the topic wasn’t open to negotiation.
And so it begins.
“I have no doubt that you are, but you need to make sure your blood sugar level is as normal as possible before we get started,” she said, her voice clipped. “We have to establish a consistent and stable baseline, or she’ll get confused later on.”
“But I—” he began before stopping himself with a nod. “Okay. You’re the expert. You’re in charge.”
Sophie was so startled by that—me, the expert; me, in charge—that she almost dropped the puppy being placed in her arms. She might have done it too, but Harrison handed over his precious burden with so much trust that she didn’t dare let go. Now that she’d accepted the challenge he’d offered, she was beginning to realize the enormity of it.
He hadn’t just given her his puppy to hold; he’d given her his entire life. His career, his future, his happiness—all of it now depended on her.
She gulped as she watched him turn on his heel and trot easily down the stairs. He paused just long enough to cast a glance over his shoulder, a slightly mocking lift to one of his heavy brows.
“You coming?” he asked.
She nodded, unwilling—and unable—to commit the folly of speech. She was on her way, all right. She was in this now.
She had to push. She had to fight.
But most important, she had to win.
Chapter 6
“I need you to tell me everything you know about driving a man crazy.”
Sophie slid into the vinyl booth of her favorite diner, pleased but not surprised to find a generous slice of cherry pie with a scoop of ice cream melting into an ocean around it. If she knew her sisters, they’d already asked the waitress to bring her a Cobb salad afterward. For now, dessert came first.
Childhood habits were hard to break that way. When every day’s survival was questionable, eating pie before vegetables was just common sense.
“Why, Sophie, you beautiful little hussy. I thought you’d never ask.” Dawn swiped a bite of pie and licked her fork clean. “Step one is all about the wardrobe. What you want to do in the early days is expose just one body part at a time. Pick something that’s normally innocent, say, a shoulder—”
“No, no. Not the sexy kind of crazy. The other kind. The annoyed kind.”
“Why did you look at me when you said that?” Lila demanded. Unlike Dawn, she would never presume to eat from someone else’s plate. Her own dishes were arrayed in front of her in a perfectly square pattern—fruit, vegetable, protein, carbs. “I don’t annoy men. Men love me.”
Dawn snorted.
“It’s true!” Lila protested. “I don’t always love them back, that’s all. I have high standards.”
Neither one of them could argue with that. Nor, Sophie reflected, would they want to. Lila deserved her high standards. Not only was she the best-looking of the sisters, her thirty years worn like a diamond tiara, but she was the smartest too. She had a master’s degree in animal behavior—a valuable tool for training dogs…and, Sophie hoped, for training men.
“This is serious, you guys,” Sophie said. “Harrison and Bubbles and I had a very productive day. I know how I’m going to make a success of them.”
“And the answer isn’t hard work and the tried-and-true practices of dog training we’ve been instilling in you for years?” Lila asked.
“Well, yes, obviously.” Sophie squirmed, not quite able to meet her sister’s eyes. If she had any idea just how far from the tried-and-true practices Sophie planned on going, she’d yank this entire project out from under her. A puppy-mill puppy was bad enough. A puppy-mill puppy who was afraid of fire and a firefighter who was afraid of his puppy-mill puppy was another thing altogether. Her head whirled to think of it.
“Of course I’ll follow all the regular training techniques,” Sophie said primly. “But it’s going to take a little more than that. You have to admit this case is special, Lila. Not only is Bubbles unlike our usual puppies, but Harrison is unlike our usual clients. Most of the time, they’re the ones coming to us, eager to adopt a dog and willing to do whatever it takes to train it. Harrison is only doing this because he has to.”
The waitress came by to whisk Sophie’s now-empty dessert plate away and replace it with the leafy salad—her usual. The Vasquez sisters had talent to spare when it came to academics and training dogs, but none of them were any good at cooking. If it weren’t for the Maple Street Grill across the street from their house, they’d probably all starve.
“So, your grand plan is to annoy him?” Lila asked.
“Yes.”
“Every day?”
“If I have to.”
“For six weeks?”
“I told you I needed help.” Sophie cast her most-pleading look up at Lila’s face. The one good thing about having overprotective sisters was that they were highly susceptible to begging. “Please? I know you didn’t like Harrison, but he’s really quite sweet once you get to know him. And he’s already agreed to this alternative approach. In fact, I think he’s enjoying it.”
Lila’s brow came up. “What about the puppy?”
“You should have been there today, Lil.” Sophie was unable to keep the enthusiasm out of her voice as she leaned over the table, waving her fork all the while. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It takes her one time to learn something, two to make it routine. I mean, she could barely keep her eyes open by the end of the day, but she wouldn’t even lie down until she’d been given permission.”
“If the dog’s so obedient, why do you need us?” Lila asked.
“I told you already. Because the man isn’t.”
Dawn cracked a laugh, her eyes crinkling around the edges. “The ones worth having rarely are. What did he do?”
Sophie paused, stabbi
ng at her lettuce in an attempt to stall. It wasn’t that she was afraid to tell her sisters about her conversation with Harrison, but it felt…disloyal somehow. He was clearly a man who protected his private life—who protected himself—at all costs. Opening up to her, even that tiny bit, must have been painful for him.
She wouldn’t betray that. Not now that she knew he respected her.
“Let’s just say that he doesn’t play well with others,” Sophie said. At the shared look of alarm that passed between her sisters, she rushed to add, “Not in a bad way. Just in a closed-off way. It’s like he’s got this wall up and he refuses to let anyone past it. But if I push him just enough…”
She paused, struggling to find the right words.
“You can sneak past the wall?” Dawn ventured.
“Not sneak past it,” Sophie said. “Demolish it entirely. He was super awkward with you guys at the house yesterday, right?”
“He said all of three words to me,” Lila said.
“I managed six, but that was only because I was trying really hard,” Dawn said. “He definitely perked up when you walked in though.”
Sophie nodded and did her best not to blush, but Dawn wasn’t done putting her on the spot.
“He’s not a handsome man,” she said, tapping a french fry in ketchup. “Not in the classical sense, anyway. But the second he saw you, I couldn’t help but think that he’s a hell of an attractive one, if you know what I mean.”
Sophie did. She definitely did. Harrison’s features might not be regular, and he might grumble and stomp like a giant atop a beanstalk, but he still managed to radiate virility. Even now, miles away, she could feel his magnetism.
“I can’t imagine why you’d want to annoy someone who looks at you like that,” Dawn added with a swooning sigh.
“That’s because you don’t know him,” Sophie said. “He only likes me because I annoy him. I mean, when he saw Bubbles for the first time, it was as if I’d just shown him the moment of his own death. But then I told him to crawl inside the pen and cuddle with her, and he was so outraged at the prospect that everything flipped over. He started laughing and joking, finally willing to give her—to give me—a try. The same thing happened today. It’s like he can’t move forward unless he reaches some kind of breaking point first.”