by Lucy Gilmore
It took Oscar’s crack of laughter to snap him out of his daze. “You’re out of luck there, Sophie. I can’t remember the last time Harrison went anywhere he wasn’t required to. His idea of fun is to practice digging ditches in the backyard.”
“I can tell,” Sophie said. Her eyes moved up and down his body, lingering on his shoulders and torso with something akin to admiration. Then again, she could also be focusing on the fact that he looked like a man whose idea of fun was…well, digging ditches in the backyard.
“It’s no different than going to a gym,” he said in his defense. In fact, it was substantially better. No man-made machine could emulate the full-body experience of digging in the earth for eight hours straight.
“Except for the part where you have to interact with other people at a gym,” Oscar pointed out. “It’s a good thing this dog-training stuff takes so much time. I was starting to worry about how Harrison would fill the days without work, but I can see you have it covered. Speaking of, I think I’ll go hunt down Wallace at the bowling alley and say hello.”
Harrison had been wishing Oscar to the devil for the past half an hour, but at the hint of departure, a perverse urge to beg him to stay kicked in. Oscar couldn’t leave Harrison alone here with Sophie. It wasn’t right—not after that lengthy speech about doing her no harm. Couldn’t he see that it was only a matter of time before Harrison did something catastrophic?
He might storm. He might rage. He might pitch caution out the window and Sophie into his arms.
“Don’t work him too hard, eh?” Oscar added. “Just look at what he did to that poor dog. I think he’s cracking under the strain already.”
Ha. That showed what Oscar knew. Cracking was an ongoing process, and Harrison was obviously already there.
“Don’t say it,” he warned as soon as Oscar swung out the back door—whistling, of all damn things.
“Say what?” Sophie asked. “I think Bubbles looks nice.”
She was the picture of innocence, standing there with her exposed shoulder and a look of disinterest, but Harrison wasn’t fooled. She was practically vibrating with suppressed laughter. There was something infectious about it. Already, he could feel the bands around his chest loosening.
“I didn’t want to start a fire without your permission,” he said.
“That was wise.”
“And she wouldn’t stop shivering.”
“The poor honey. Their coats aren’t very thick, despite how soft and fluffy they are.”
“And it’s not like I have tiny dog sweaters lying around the house.”
“We’ll start with a knitting circle, I think.” Reaching into her canvas bag, Sophie extracted a notepad and started jotting things down. “That way you can expand her wardrobe however you want.”
“I’m sorry—what did you just say?”
“Once we have that down, we’ll add a trivia night. There’s also family dinner and book club, which might be fun. Oh, I know! Beer choir. And definitely dodgeball practice—you’ll like that one.”
“Those sound like made up things. Why are you listing made up things?”
“For socialization, obviously.”
He held up his hands as if warding off something evil—which, in a way, was exactly what he was doing. “I don’t need socializing. I don’t care what Oscar said—I’m fine the way I am. You’d be surprised how satisfying it is to dig and refill those ditches.”
Her laughter rang through the kitchen like a dinner bell. “Not for you, Harrison. For Bubbles.”
Ah, yes. The puppy. Puppies needed socialization. He knew that. The only problem was that men—at least this man—definitely did not.
He cast a doubtful look at the puppy. “You think Bubbles wants to go to a knitting circle?”
“I think Bubbles will do whatever you tell her to. That’s the benefit of working with a sweet girl like her.”
This was getting out of hand. “No,” he said, his voice firm. He crossed his arms and let his power stance do the talking. “Let’s do the other thing you said first. About the training grounds. And the office.”
His power stance had no effect on Sophie. “You should smile more,” she said.
He jolted as if struck. “What?”
“I was just thinking that you don’t smile enough. You’d be so much prettier if you smiled.”
He glanced around the kitchen, half-expecting Oscar or his dad to pop out of a cupboard, laughing their asses off. “Is this a joke?”
“You’re not bad-looking, you know. I mean, your wardrobe is a little rustic, and I’m not sure what you have against the sharp edge of a razor, but you’d be surprised how much a smile can transform a man. Go on—try it.”
He riveted the kind of stare on Sophie that could—and had—send many a man scurrying for cover. Harsh it might be, but it was a necessary skill set as far as he was concerned. Working as a wildfire firefighter wasn’t for anyone who could only commit halfway. Each contract the Department of Natural Resources offered in the summer was for a minimum of two weeks—two weeks of pain and hard work, of exhaustion unlike most people would ever experience. If a recruit couldn’t make it through a few hours of Harrison’s rigor in the training field, there was no way they’d make it when the harsh realities of Mother Nature’s wrath hit.
And, yes, that applied to his personal life too. Harrison was cold. Harrison was callous. Harrison was closed off in ways that prevented intimacy of any kind. The sooner people learned that about him, the less hurt they’d feel in the end.
And by people, he of course meant Sophie.
“Um. I think we can safely call what you’re doing right now a frown. Your lips are supposed to go the other way—see? Like this.”
Sophie punctuated this statement by demonstrating her own smile. The brilliance of it, the simple and radiant joy, had Harrison’s chest growing tight all over again.
“Now you try.”
A few days ago, the idea of smiling for no reason other than because a woman demanded it would have sent him running for the hills. Today, he only wished these things came as easily to him as they did to other men.
As if recognizing this, Sophie drew forward, enveloping him all at once in a swirl of sensation. She didn’t wear any kind of scent—probably for the sake of the dog training—but he could still smell her as she came near. It would have been impossible not to. Warmth and life radiated off her, the gentle aroma of soap and fabric softener wafting through the air like a cloud.
It wasn’t just the smell of her though. He could feel her, even though she had yet to reach out and touch him. Her presence was that strong.
“Here. Let me help you.”
Even though Harrison knew what was coming, he was powerless to stop her. He could no more have raised a hand to Sophie than he could have to the furry pineapple who’d taken up residence in his home.
“Sophie,” he warned as her thumb started to snake its way toward his lips. The closer that thumb came, the less he felt like smiling. All we wanted was to kiss the wide pad of that digit, run his tongue along her skin until she felt the tug inside her gut as strongly as he did. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can. I’ve seen it.” She paused. “You have a really good smile, Harrison. Probably the best I’ve ever seen.”
“I do not,” he protested.
Sophie made the motion of an X over her chest. “I wouldn’t lie about something that. You have my word.”
“You’re just saying all this as part of your plan to push me.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make it any less true.”
He had no idea whether or not to believe her. Reason told him not to give in to the lure of her, the promise of a woman who could make him feel so big and so small at the same time. The rest of him, however, wanted nothing more than to give her exactly what she demanded.
“It’s just a smile, Harrison,” she said, her voice low. “How much damage could it possibly do?”
She has no fucking idea.
Casting aside all scruples and warnings, he took her wrist and loosely circled it with his fingers. It took almost no strength to hold her that way. Every muscle in her body stilled the moment he made contact, her eyes wide and unblinking as she looked up at him. Even now, with him shackling her wrist, his body thrumming with the roiling sensation of frustration, she didn’t back down.
She had to realize how dangerous it was to poke him. To taunt him this way.
She didn’t.
“We’re getting closer, I think,” she murmured, gazing up at him the same way Bubbles did. Full of adoration. Full of trust. “All you have to do now is—”
He didn’t bother waiting to find out what she had planned. The overwhelming urge to kiss her took over first—and it did so with a vengeance. Not content with sweeping down and crushing his mouth to hers, he began running through a virtual checklist of All the Bad Ideas.
Release his grip on Sophie’s wrist.
Move a hand to her neck, her clavicle, that damnable shoulder just begging for his touch.
Clasp his other hand around her waist and yank her close.
Groan at the sensation of all those soft parts pressed against him.
Groan again when, instead of backing away like a normal person, Sophie opened her mouth to let him in.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to work. The rules of Harrison’s existence were straightforward and had been for years. When he clammed up and broke down, people backed off. Sometimes, they walked; usually, they ran. The results, however, were always the same.
And by the same, he didn’t mean this sweet, terrifying scrap of a woman winding her arms around his neck and kissing him back with an intensity that made his head spin. To look at Sophie Vasquez, with her oh-so-deceptive fragility and claims of dependency, you’d think the demands of his tongue would have her cowering in fear. Instead, she was giving back as good as she got, nibbling at his lower lip and arching into his touch. Even when his hand slipped under the loose neckline of her shirt, his rough hand palming the upper swell of her breast, she did no more than sigh into his mouth and press even harder against him.
He proved to be useless against a supplication like that one.
Sophie was still flush against him in a full-body press, so all he had to do to turn her toward the table was move his own body slightly to the right. Using his free hand, he reached down just far enough to graze the side of her thigh. He had every intention of hoisting her up to the table and using the leverage that afforded to start exploring that enticing shoulder with his lips, tongue, and teeth, but he was forestalled by a sharp yap.
Bubbles.
Harrison almost cried out his relief at the interruption. Had anything else happened—an earthquake, a volcano eruption, the sky literally falling down around them—he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop himself from spiraling out of control.
But at that small sound, Sophie pulled away with a gasp.
“Oh!” she cried. Her color was heightened, and her eyes didn’t quite meet his. With a presence of mind he couldn’t help but admire, she turned her focus toward the puppy. “You poor little love. Did we forget about you?”
Harrison didn’t know about Sophie, but he sure as hell had. If anything should have convinced her that he wasn’t fit to have charge of this puppy, it was this. One kiss, one huge loss of control, and he’d pretty much abandoned his charge.
“Here you are, all dressed up in your finery, and no one is paying you any attention.”
Bubbles barked again, this time with less outrage and more delight, her tongue lolling to the side.
Harrison could hardly blame her for her enthusiasm. Having just had Sophie’s full attention, he knew how powerful it was—powerful enough to throw common sense and decency aside.
“Yes, Bubbles, I know. You look very nice. Not at all like a potato. And I don’t know why your daddy is making that sound. I said you don’t look like a potato.”
There were so many things wrong with that statement, but he settled on one. “I am not that dog’s father,” he said.
Sophie gasped and put her hands over the puppy’s ears. “Harrison, how could you? You’re going to make her cry. Just when she was starting to get used to it around here.”
He tried to stop himself. He used every ounce of willpower he had left. But just as he’d been unable to keep himself from ruthlessly kissing her, so too was there no way to stop his mouth from quirking into a smile.
It was too ridiculous—the puppy and the sock, the fact that he’d just done his valiant best to cop a feel from a sweet five-foot-two-inch dog trainer who terrified him. If Oscar found out about any of this, not only would Harrison be doing paperwork for the rest of his natural born life, but the man would also probably tear him limb from limb while he was at it.
But still, Harrison smiled. Being in the presence of Sophie demanded nothing less.
“Don’t,” he warned as he caught Sophie’s eye. The gleam of triumph was impossible to ignore. “You already made your point. There’s no need to rub it in.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word.”
“Not a single one?” he said. “Not even about the kiss?”
Her color rose again, a spot of pink on either cheek. She looked adorable like that, flustered and unsure, but her chin came up in a gesture he was coming to recognize.
And fear. In moments when any logical person would retreat, Sophie doubled down.
“What is there to say?” She shrugged and tugged her shirt’s neckline back into place. There was still too much shoulder showing for Harrison’s peace of mind, but at least she wasn’t so…disheveled. “It was nice.”
“Nice?”
A gurgle of laughter escaped her lips. She slapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. The damage was already done. “I meant that it was amazing. Earth-shattering. You totally rocked my world, Harrison Parks.”
He didn’t want to laugh. There was nothing funny about a man being rejected in his own kitchen by a woman who should, by all rights, never have been there in the first place.
But laugh he did, and there was no denying how good it felt. It shook his frame and his resolve, made him wish he could take her in his arms again and really rock her world this time.
“Point taken,” he said. “Next time, I’ll smile the first time you tell me to. That way we can avoid another situation like this one.”
“No, don’t.” Her hand dashed out and grabbed his sleeve. “I liked the kiss, Harrison. I, um. Well. It’s just…I also like you.”
His smile wasn’t optional this time. It broke out without his permission, refusing to be held back—refusing to let him hold himself back. “Me too, Sophie. I don’t say that about many people, but you bring out something good in me. Something I haven’t felt in a very long time.”
She hadn’t let go of his sleeve yet, her clutch on the flannel twisting at his words. “So it’s okay?” she asked, peering anxiously up at him. “Pushing this way? Playing a little?”
He remembered what she’d said during the introduction with Bubbles, about how even working dogs needed downtime, that everyone needed to play and be loved, and nodded.
He wished he could think of something else to say—put into words the mass of emotions she was churning up inside of him—but his tongue felt too big for his mouth, his heart too big for his chest. Whether she recognized this and knew that there was only one thing in the world that could save him, or because she was much better at this than him, she let go of his sleeve and nodded.
“Well, that’s good news. Are we ready to get to work now?”
He latched on like a man grasping at his final meal. “Work.” His voice was guttural, terse. “Yes. Work.”
“Good, because we’ve got lots of ground to cover if we’re going to stay on schedule. Knitting circle starts up next Thursday, and you don’t want to miss any meetings. Those ladies do not take well to truancy.”
“Wait—that’s an actual
thing? That we’re doing? Together?”
“Absolutely. It’s all part of the training.” She cocked a playful eyebrow at him. “Unless you have something to say about it?”
He stared at Sophie, hoping to find some loophole, but it was futile.
“Fine,” he said, heaving a sigh. He knew when he’d been beat, and he’d been beat the moment this pair walked into his life. “But make a note that I’m only doing it under duress.”
She chuffed a soft laugh. “Don’t worry. I’m beginning to realize you won’t do things any other way.”
* * *
“Geez, Dad. Have you been here the whole damn day?”
Harrison dropped to the barstool next to his father, his shoulders heavy with exhaustion. He wasn’t the only man to do so; a dark bowling alley bar might seem a strange watering hole to some, but in their town of four thousand, it was the best place to be after a long day of work.
Well, technically it was the only place to be, but Harrison wasn’t about to quibble over the details. Especially since he, unlike every other blue-collar worker unwinding after a long day, lifted a Pomeranian puppy out from under the flap of his jacket and perched her on his lap.
“Really, Harrison?” his dad asked, shielding his pint glass as if fearing puppy contaminants. “You brought her with you? To a bar?”
“That’s how it works,” he said. He turned his attention to the bartender, an energetic, outspoken woman who could pass for fifteen or fifty, depending on the lighting. The dingy bar fluorescents softened her to somewhere in the thirties. “And before you say anything, Meg, Bubbles is a service animal, so you can’t kick us out. See what her vest says? I need her to save my life.”
“Save your life?” she echoed. “From what? A squirrel attack?”
Next to him, his dad guffawed. “Fat chance of that. My money’s on the squirrel.”