by Lucy Gilmore
Sophie paused, aware how strange all this must seem to her sisters, but she didn’t know how else to explain it. “I know it’s weird, but I can’t get started on any real work with him until the wall comes down.”
“So you’re smashing through his walls?” Lila asked. “With what?”
She couldn’t help but grin at the disbelief in her sister’s voice. Sophie was hardly known for her ability to ride a wrecking ball through other people’s lives. “Well, I can’t smash them, obviously. I doubt I could even pick up a sledgehammer that big. But if I push him far enough, he does it for me.”
“Does that mean you pushed him today? Enough to get the wall down, anyway?” Dawn propped her chin in her hand and watched Sophie with a gleam in her eyes. “How?”
Sophie’s grin turned into a giggle. “I threatened to take away his puppy.”
It was a credit to both her sisters that she didn’t have to explain the joke. The idea that Sophie could physically wrest anything away from a six-foot tank of a man was preposterous in the extreme. The fact that they were talking about a two-pound Pomeranian puppy only made it that much funnier.
“But I can hardly do that every day. Especially not now that he knows what I’m doing. That’s why I’m asking for your input. I don’t have enough experience with men like Harrison Parks.” Or, if she was being perfectly honest, with men in general. “What else can I do that will send him over the edge?”
Dawn opened her mouth to respond, but Lila forestalled her with a stern look and some advice of her own. “Correct him when he’s wrong and don’t be modest about it. Tell him to smile more. Talk about religion and politics every chance you get, and always act like you’re an expert. Critique his driving. And above all else, never apologize for anything, even—especially—if you’re the one at fault.”
Sophie eyed her oldest sister with a growing sense of wonder. “You didn’t even have to stop and think about any of those.”
“Of course I didn’t.” Lila picked the napkin out of her lap and daintily dabbed the corners of her mouth. “Those are all the things that men do to annoy me. It’ll serve one of them right to have the tables turned for a change. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to run to the ladies’ room.”
Sophie didn’t dare look at Dawn until their sister had woven through the tables and disappeared around a corner. And a good thing too, because the moment their eyes met, they fell into a peal of laughter that drew the attention of every patron in the place.
“Well, crap,” Sophie said. “How long do you think she’s been harboring that particular grudge?”
“Years, at the very least. Poor Lil. She’s too good for ninety-nine percent of the men on this planet. Then again, so are you. The only difference is that you haven’t realized it yet.” The gleam was back in Dawn’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re only interested in driving him the bad kind of crazy? I wasn’t kidding about how attractive he is, Soph. Men like that don’t come around every day—believe me, I know.”
“Um.” She bit her lip. “Maybe you’d better go over that exposed-shoulder thing before Lila gets back. Just so I know I understand it.”
The irrepressible dimple broke out in Dawn’s cheek. “Oh, Sophie. The shoulder is only the beginning. Just wait until we get to the midriff.”
Chapter 7
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?”
At the sound of Oscar’s voice, Harrison glanced up from the kitchen table, a scowl on his face and a sharp pair of scissors in his hand. If it weren’t for the puppy napping blissfully on his lap, he might have jumped to his feet and used the scissors as a makeshift shiv.
Relentlessly. And with absolute glee.
“You heartless bastard,” he said. “I’m surprised you dare to show your face here after what you’ve done to me.”
“What I’ve done to you?” Oscar tsked gently and lowered himself into the nearest chair. It spoke volumes about their history together that he’d willingly put himself so close to a potential stabbing. “You mean when I called in a personal favor and laid out a huge chunk of my annual DNR budget to keep your sorry ass alive and on the job? You’re right. What was I thinking?”
It was a rhetorical question, so Harrison didn’t bother answering. The next question, however, was more pointed.
“Is that the infamous puppy?”
Harrison glanced down at Bubbles, who was showing signs of waking. It was always a production with her, her tiny limbs twitching, her tinier tongue stretching as she yawned. Awake she might be, but she wouldn’t move from his lap, that much he knew for sure. It was warm there, and the damn dog wouldn’t stop shivering.
And who could blame her? There was a faulty latch on the back door that caused it to swing open at the first sign of a gust of wind, so the blasted thing had been open half the night. The baseboard heaters were older than Harrison was, and the fireplace obviously wasn’t an option. He had no other choice.
“Bubbles, meet the man who betrayed me. Judas, meet the ferocious rescue puppy you’ve saddled me with for the rest of my life.”
“Aw, she’s a cute little thing, isn’t she?” Oscar said, ignoring Harrison’s commentary. He turned his attention to the project Harrison had laid out on the table. “Why are you cutting holes in your socks?”
He waved the scissors at Oscar. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t ask that question.”
Oscar shrugged. “Suit yourself. Is Wallace around?”
“No, he went into town to run a few errands.”
“And by that, you mean he’s sitting alone at the bar in the bowling alley?”
Harrison glanced at the clock above the stove and snorted. “At eight thirty in the morning? Of course he is. The alternative is to sit around the house all day with me.”
Silence descended over the pair of them, broken only by the snuffling sounds of Bubbles coming to full awareness. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but it was heavy. Long before Oscar had become his boss, he’d been his father’s best friend. He knew all of their secrets, all of their problems—including the toll a long period of enforced inactivity was having on a man like Wallace Parks. Without the promise of his job, his dad had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to do it with. And for the first time in his long, miserable life, he was forced to realize it.
It was what made this whole you-can’t-come-back-to-work-until-you-get-a-service-dog thing so cruel. Oscar knew what kind of a toll it would have on Harrison too.
“How’s he doing, by the way?” Oscar asked. “Enjoying retirement?”
Harrison measured out a length of three inches on the sock and made another cut. “No.”
“How are you doing?” was the next question. “Enjoying your leave of absence?”
“No,” he said again.
Oscar wasn’t put off by monosyllables. “How about Sophie? I hope she’s not a disappointment, at least.”
Harrison eyed his boss warily. The question might sound casual enough to an outsider, but everywhere he considered stepping was riddled with land mines.
She’s great, thanks. She somehow got me to allow her free rein to push and pull and make me generally uncomfortable in my own skin, but that should be fun, right?
I can’t stop thinking about her laugh, thanks. Or her smile. Or the fact that those two things have made me reconsider anything and everything I’ve ever known.
“She’s fine,” Harrison said, hedging. “Bubbles likes her.”
“I’m sure she does. The question is, do you like her?”
Of course he did. He had a Pomeranian puppy in his lap and he was doing crafts at his kitchen table before nine o’clock in the morning. If that wasn’t a clear sign of how far he’d fallen, he didn’t know what was.
When he didn’t answer, Oscar cleared his throat in a way that didn’t bode well for the conversation to follow. “Harrison?”
“She seems like a very capable dog trainer,” he said.
“That’s because she is a
very capable dog trainer. She’s also kind and generous and has overcome more pain and suffering than most of us see in a lifetime. I like you, Harrison, I really do, but if you hurt that girl in any way, I’ll make sure you regret it for the rest of your miserable life.”
Harrison’s head snapped up.
“I can, you know.” Oscar’s voice was calm, but his expression was one Harrison knew from experience meant it was better not to cross him. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it needs to be said. So I’ll ask you one more time: How about Sophie?”
For the first time in Harrison’s life, he didn’t react poorly to being challenged. A few days ago, that question might have boiled every frustrated nerve, sent him off on a tangent that would have Sophie resolutely squaring up to him. Today, he could only find himself in complete agreement. Any asshole who broke that woman down deserved the worst the world had to offer.
Including him.
Especially him.
“I don’t think you need to worry about her.” Harrison held up his finished product and sighed. “If she wasn’t enjoying herself before, I promise she will today. All right, Bubbles. Let’s see if this does the trick.”
Oscar didn’t say a word as Harrison stretched out the sock and slipped it over the puppy’s head. It went easily. There was so much fur on her, she could be decompressed to half her size. Gently guiding her limbs to fit through each of the holes he’d made was more difficult, especially since some of his measurements had been a little off, but the end result was about what he expected.
In other words, Bubbles was wearing a sock. One of his favorites too, the sweat-wicking kind he wore when he was out fighting fires for long stretches at a time.
“What the hell did you just do to that poor creature?” Oscar demanded.
“What do you mean? She loves it.” Harrison set Bubbles down on the table. The puppy wriggled once, scratched twice, and decided she’d never been so pleased in all her life. With a toss of her head, she began prancing along the table’s edge, just in case they hadn’t noticed her the first time. “Look at her—she’s preening.”
Oscar scratched his chin. “Well, I’ll be damned. She does like it.”
“Hello, boys.” A soft, feminine voice arose from behind them. “Sorry to barge in, but I rang the doorbell three times. No one answered.”
Harrison’s pulse leapt at the sound of Sophie’s arrival. It wasn’t a scared leap or an alarmed leap—it wasn’t even a wary one, which should have been his reaction given how far she’d managed to push him already.
No, this was the most dangerous kind of leap of all—attraction.
His heightened pulse didn’t lessen when he turned to find her standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He’d been more grateful than words could express when she’d showed up yesterday wearing sensible pants and a shirt with a Puppy Promise logo embroidered on the front. She’d still looked amazing, of course. The playful wisps of her short hair set off her pretty features, and the simplicity of her attire only enhanced her neat figure. But the uniform had helped.
I’m here to do a job, that uniform said. I’m here because of the dog.
Today, she’d gone back to wearing her own clothes. He wasn’t sure why the sight of her in faded jeans and a loose gray top should be so alarming, but he suspected it had something to do with the gentle curve of neck exposed on one side of her shirt. He’d seen women wear similar clothes before, but there was something about the sight of Sophie’s bare clavicle that made it difficult for him to breathe.
He wanted to kiss her there. He wanted to run his fingers up and down that slope of perfect skin until she shivered under his touch.
She shifted slightly, the shirt shifting with her. As if aware he was watching, the material slid even farther, giving him a glimpse of the rounded softness of her shoulder, broken only by a thin pink bra strap.
Shit. What was he doing? He couldn’t lust after Sophie. Not when she showed no signs of reciprocation. Harrison might go numb at the sight of her dressed in casual wear, but he doubted his jogging pants and decades-old Pink Floyd T-shirt were doing anything in return. Nor was she likely to lose herself at the sound of his rough grumbling.
“Sorry,” he said in a voice that was, unfortunately, both rough and grumbling. “The doorbell doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked in years.”
“Nothing around this place has worked in years,” Oscar added with a cheerfulness that seemed inappropriate, given how recently he’d been threatening Harrison’s life and livelihood. “Except for Harrison and Wallace, of course. Two more dedicated workaholics I’ve never met in my life—it’s the only thing they’re good at, if you want the truth.”
He wasn’t wrong. As much as Harrison would have liked to leap to his own defense, there wasn’t much to say. He wasn’t a man with varied interests or a whole hell of a lot going on in his personal life. Fighting fires was literally the only thing he was good at—the only thing he’d ever been good at since the summer he’d turned fourteen and made friends with a group of delinquent kids from around town.
His dad had been working around the clock at the time—his default for as long as Harrison could remember—so when he’d caught his son in the middle of a tractor-stealing incident, he’d handed him over to Oscar with plea that he do something with the blasted boy.
Oscar had done it, of course, and in the process, created a monster. An irritable, overworked, firefighting monster who had nothing to offer a woman except a newfound talent for making dog sweaters out of socks.
“Speaking of, when can I expect to have him back?” Oscar asked. “I’ve got a contract to start training a team from Fairchild Air Force Base with his name written all over it.”
“Right now.” Harrison almost shot out of his chair in his enthusiasm. Work would get him away from this house. Work would distance him from Sophie and her goddamn shoulder. “Pull the crew together, and I can start the training as soon as you want. You know how valuable the air force support can be for the flyovers. We’ve been after a contract with them for years.”
“I do know, which is why I’m going to delay the training until you’re free to run it.” Oscar turned his attention to Sophie. “What do you anticipate? What’s the expected timeline?”
Sophie glanced down at the puppy, considering. Not by so much as a flicker of a long, curled eyelash did she betray that she noticed anything out of the ordinary about Bubbles’s appearance.
Harrison couldn’t decide whether to be grateful for her tact or outraged at her disinterest. He’d worked really hard on that sock.
“Well, I set aside a total of six weeks, but there’s natural chemistry between Harrison and Bubbles, so it might go faster.”
“Natural chemistry?” Oscar said.
“Oh yeah. It can take some dogs months to warm up to their new owners and vice versa. But I don’t think I could tear this pair apart now even if I wanted to. Isn’t that right, Bubbles?”
Bubbles yapped an affirmative.
“See? She agrees with me. She took one look at Harrison and fell hard.” Sophie glanced up at Harrison, a challenge in her dark eyes. “It doesn’t always happen that way, unfortunately. A lot of times, canine attraction is a one-sided thing.”
Harrison might not have been an expert on canine attraction, but he knew enough about the human kind to realize he was on shaky ground.
“She’s not bad, as far as puppies go,” he said. The frankness of Sophie’s gaze made him more flustered than usual, which was the only reason for what he said next. “Except for the fact that her very existence is going to keep me from properly doing my job. She’s scared of fire.”
The smile vanished from Sophie’s face.
At the sight of that stricken look, Harrison felt as though he’d been sucker punched, all the air leaving his lungs at once. He would have taken it back—said something to smooth over his misstep—but his chest felt too tight to let air in or words out.
Like it usually does.
“I did tell you Bubbles was skittish, Oscar, remember?” Sophie said. There was a plea underscoring her voice, a desperation that hit Harrison on a visceral level. “We’re having a few minor issues where she’s concerned, but it’s not a big deal, I swear. I’m fully confident that we can get through them. Harrison might not ever be able to work the front lines again, but that was going to be the case no matter which dog we chose. All I can promise is that we’ll get Bubbles as close as we can.”
“Then there you have it,” Oscar said with maddening calm. “We’ll get Bubbles as close as we can, even if that means Harrison has to stick to training from here on out. His health and safety are too important to risk.”
“Like hell they are,” Harrison said.
He may as well have not spoken. In fact, his terse defiance had Sophie squaring her shoulders and lifting her head, confidence radiating from every part of her.
“I’ll need to see how Bubbles reacts to different stimuli and in different environments,” she said. “Including places like the wildfire training grounds and the DNR office. We can work up to those though. It’s better to start in more low-key social environments—parks, libraries, bars. Wherever you go for fun.”
That last bit was directed at Harrison, who echoed her with a monotone, “For fun?”
“Sure. If you belong to any clubs, play any sports, that sort of thing, I can easily work them into the rotation. It’ll be good for Bubbles to get a feel for her routine.”
He continued staring at her, more fixated on her mouth than was good for him. He hadn’t played a team sport since a brief flirtation with basketball in high school, and he’d never belonged to a club of any sort unless you counted grocery store memberships. As for parks and libraries, she had to be kidding. He was a grown-ass man with a demeanor that scared children. Not exactly who they wanted showing up at story time without an actual kid in tow.