Courtney wore some sort of silky pants that showed off the sexy shape of her rear and a cropped t-shirt that exposed just a hint of a toned abdomen.
Cold shower, buddy, he silently threatened himself.
Courtney was babbling something to Harvey and the dog was watching her, listening to her as if she were the most fascinating person in the history of the world. His head leaned on one of Courtney's sexy thighs and she absently gave him a scratch under his neck.
Right then, he figured he'd pay about a million dollars just to trade places with the dog.
"You're a sick man," he murmured to himself. Obviously he needed to get back into the dating scene. But not with Courtney.
"A salt-water aquarium isn't for everyone, you see," she told the dog. Apparently she hadn't seen Tyler yet.
"But most of the world's aquatic sea life lives in salt water. Which makes for a more flexible arrangement. I'm expecting you to guard this aquarium while it's here and make sure that no one hurts the little fellows once I put them back in the aquarium. How do you feel about that as an assignment?"
Harvey woofed politely, as if agreeing to try the job out for size.
Tyler couldn't help laughing.
Courtney jerked her gaze toward him, then froze. "What?"
Her slight movement pushed Harvey out of his bliss zone. The dog stood, sniffed at Tyler, and growled.
It wasn't just him. Tyler had gone through enough obedience trainers to know that the dog misbehaved for everyone. Everyone except Courtney.
"Easy, boy. He's your friend, remember."
Harvey backed off, but Tyler recognized suspicion when he saw it, and the dog was definitely suspicious of Tyler's motives. Well, he couldn't blame the animal for that. He was suspicious of his motives too.
"I was just reminded of the time I offered my sister a job at the plant," he explained. "I think Harvey is more interested in your assignment than my sister was in hers."
"I thought you said Amanda lived out of town."
"My other sister, McKinsey. She lasted for two days, distracted all the workers, lost a ten-million-dollar order, and then left without notifying anyone." Since then, she'd become a full-time shopper. Fortunately, Tyler could afford to support her hobby. It was cheaper than keeping her on at the plant.
Courtney gave Harvey a quick pat on the head and he quieted down, snuggling closer to her, pressing his body against her chest, her breasts.
"Harvey and I have been talking about what kind of role he should play in this household," she told Tyler. "As you mentioned, one traditional role for a dog is to guard. But also, a golden needs to retrieve. So we'll have to figure something along those lines."
He nodded. "Retrievers are hunting dogs, aren't they? I'm afraid I don't have time for much shooting these days." It was another hobby he'd put aside after his father had died. Like most of those old hobbies, he didn't mind losing it. What he was doing with his life now, rebuilding Philadelphia's industrial base, meant a lot more to the world and to him than any rich-kid recreations.
She nodded, then rolled herself to her feet in a single flowing motion that involved undulating parts of her body in ways that he was painfully certain he'd remember in his dreams--if he ever got a chance to sleep again.
"You were saying you could cook. So what's for dinner?"
He led Courtney into his oversized and pristine kitchen. It was one room that Harvey hadn't destroyed yet.
Harvey pushed past them and opened the refrigerator with his nose.
"Hey, I haven't seen him do that before."
"Harvey is smart," Courtney claimed.
"Yeah. But he hasn't been that kind of smart before. Are you training him to terrorize me even more?"
Harvey nosed a package of steaks. Looked like the animal had tastes similar to Tyler's.
"I'll throw on a couple of sirloins and make a salad. Unless--you aren't a vegetarian, are you?"
She shook her head. "Confirmed carnivore. I sometimes feel guilty about it, though."
He turned on the broiler, set three steaks in it, and got out the salad fixings.
"What can I do to help?"
"Do you want to open a bottle of wine? A red would be nice."
"Where is it?"
"Oh, the pantry." He gestured to the door at the end of the kitchen. "Just grab whatever looks good."
* * * *
Just grab whatever looks good. Now there was a dangerous statement. Because Tyler was what looked good in those faded jeans and soft, flannel shirt, his hair still damp from his shower.
"There have to be a million bottles in here," she forced her mind back to business. "How am I supposed to know which one to pick?"
"They're organized by type. Merlots, Pinot Noirs, Zinfandels, you know. It's hard to go wrong with steak."
Easy for him to say. She picked a bottle randomly and carried it out.
"Ah, a Saint-Emilion. Good choice." He gestured toward a small torture device on the counter. "Let's let it breath while I finish the steaks and salad."
He reached into the broiler and flipped the meat.
She decided that the torture device was actually a cork remover of some kind and maneuvered the bottle under it.
"You have any idea how this works, Harvey?" she whispered.
The dog came over and studied the cork remover, but he cocked his head at it, clearly as confused as she was.
Well, there was a lever. She gave it a yank.
The pop sounded almost right--almost like a cork being yanked out of a bottle.
It turned out that closies didn't count in cork removal. The glassy tinkle that came next gave her failure away. That and the purple flood of wine all over the white tile countertop.
"Oops."
Tyler turned around too quickly and got tangled up in her efforts to mop up the ensuing mess.
"Sorry," she said. "You did tell me not to touch the appliances."
"Hey, don't worry about it. I've got more wine."
Well, yes. Obviously. He had thousands of bottles of wine in his so-called pantry. But she'd noticed the price tag on the bottle she'd broken--after she'd already shown it to Tyler, of course. Days when she made two hundred and twenty dollars, she celebrated. And she'd just broken a bottle of wine that Tyler had paid that much for.
If she needed any more reminding that they came from two different worlds, a multi-hundred dollar bottle of wine was plenty.
Tyler managed the second bottle himself. From what Courtney could tell, he did the same thing to the torture device that she had. The difference was, in his case, only the cork came out. He poured, served up the salad and steaks, and led her into an informal breakfast area. Informal for him, anyway. The nook, as he called it, was larger than her entire office suite.
While they ate, Tyler entertained her with stories about returning heavy industry to Philadelphia. She couldn't help noticing that he avoided every chance to talk about his family. Unlike her own family, who couldn't carry on a conversation without scheming up ways to save Pete from himself.
It had to be, she realized sadly, that Tyler simply didn't want her to know that much about his personal life.
* * * *
Courtney woke up to pitch-blackness.
She glanced at the clock-radio by her bed and saw it was two in the morning. So, what had awakened her?
Harvey's low baying answered that question.
Just for the one night, she'd agreed to let Harvey sleep in her rooms. Despite his nap, Tyler still had shadows around his eyes and Harvey had started howling the moment he'd been separated from her. So she'd brought him into her suite, along with his crate, which Tyler claimed he'd never been able to get the dog into before.
Harvey had trotted right in for Courtney. The crate was his cave, his retreat.
But sometime, during the night, he'd gotten up, opened the door to her room, and headed out to guard the mansion.
He'd obviously found something to guard against.
And she
intended to protect the dog. She grabbed her robe, draped it over the extra-large t-shirt she wore to bed, and stumbled out toward the hall.
* * * *
Harvey wouldn't be alerting to Tyler. He might bark at his master, but this was different. He was a guard dog who'd discovered an intruder.
Courtney grabbed the phone, dialed 9-1-1, and hurriedly explained her status to the police dispatch clerk who answered.
"Where are you now," the clerk asked.
"Heading down the hall," she answered. "I've got pepper spray."
"I've dispatched a unit. Go back to your room. Don't do anything rash."
"And let Harvey get hurt? I don't think so."
That perked up the 9-1-1 operator. "Who is Harvey? Is there a child in the home?"
"Harvey is a golden retriever. Mix, not purebred."
"Oh, god. What is it about people and their dogs?" The dispatcher's voice dropped a notch, became brutally condescending. "I'm sure your dog will be safe. And he'd want you to be safe, too."
Courtney knew better than to hang up on the operator despite her increasing frustration with the advice the woman was giving her. As if the operator had any clue whether poor Harvey, who was simply doing his newly assigned job guarding Tyler's oversized estate, was safe.
As Courtney got closer to the center of the disturbance, Harvey's voice drowned out the dispatch clerk's instructions.
A hint of moonlight stole past a thick drapery and outlined Harvey's golden coat in silver.
He raised his head to howl again, and deliberately pointed a paw at--something. Something large, moving, and standing on top of a table.
Courtney edged closer--and collided with something large, moving, male--as she discovered by accident--and naked from the waist up. She lost hold of the phone but, fortunately, kept a close clutch on the pepper spray.
There was more than one of them.
She shot the pepper spray instinctively, aiming toward the home invader's eyes.
"Oww. What the hell?"
She recognized Tyler's sexy voice--even though it had tightened up some in reaction to the pepper spray in his eyes. She'd sprayed an ally rather than an intruder.
"Sorry, Tyler." She whispered her apology. Somewhere she'd read that it's impossible to get direction from a whisper. She hoped so, and she also hoped the burglar didn't have a gun since she was now out of pepper spray. Despite his noise, Harvey was more likely to love a home invader to death than he was to bite the creep.
"Courtney?"
"Shh. There's someone on top of the table."
She told herself to release the tight grasp she held to Tyler's bare chest. The instructions were pointless, though. She could no more let go of him than she could walk to the moon.
A hammering came from the door. "Police. Open up."
Tyler sounded impatient. "Crap. Somebody called the cops."
Some gratitude.
"Tyler. This dog attacked me. I insist that you destroy it."
Courtney recognized the burglar's voice although it took her a moment to put it in context.
It didn't take Tyler that long. "Mom? What the heck are you doing here at three in the morning?"
That was enough to make her drop her hands off Tyler's strong chest. She'd really done it this time. She'd covered her employer with pepper spray and called the cops on his mother.
Courtney didn't hear if Eve answered her son's question because the police chose that moment to smash through the door and come charging in, guns drawn, flashlights shining narrow blades of light through the darkness.
"Everybody down on the floor."
"Officer, this is--"
"We'll sort it out once you're down on the floor." The cop's voice was high-pitched with excitement. "Move."
Courtney's knees gave out. She'd never faced the police before and they scared her.
"Down boy." She signed to Harvey as she collapsed. She'd never forgive herself if the dog got killed because she'd assigned him the task of guarding the house.
Tyler took a moment longer but another shout from the lead policeman and the snick of a shotgun shell being chambered convinced him to forgo any macho testosterone strutting.
He ended up on top of her.
"Dammit. Can't see. I've got pepper spray in my eyes." He started to wiggle off of her when the policeman shouted again.
"Stay dead still."
Tyler froze.
Courtney heated up.
Her washed-thin robe and t-shirt provided precious little protection from his male touch.
His naked torso burned her wherever her skin touched it.
Without conscious volition, her hand started to move to trace the hard muscles of his stomach.
She stomped down that motion, but she did let herself savor their moment of contact. It wouldn't mean anything to Tyler, of course. The police were forcing him to stay still. But a girl was allowed to fantasize.
One thing she was certain of. Tyler might not have planned this, but being stuck on top of her wasn't a disappointment to him. Not physically, anyway. He was fully engorged. And the cotton fabric of his pajama pants did nothing to disguise the hardness of his erection as it pressed against her body.
Oh, yes, a girl was allowed to fantasize, and Tyler provided Courtney with all of the major ingredients.
* * * *
The sun had peeked over the horizon by the time Tyler finally persuaded the cops that it had been a false alarm. For a miracle, they didn't even ticket him.
As soon as the police let them off the floor, he'd sent Courtney back to the guest suite to change into something decent. She'd distracted the cops with her naked legs--but she'd distracted him even worse.
He poured another cup of coffee for himself, Courtney, and his mother, then led them into the dining room. Even for a cup of coffee, his mother always insisted on the formal china and the formal dining room. Not for her was the casual breakfast nook.
"Are you going to explain why you decided to break into my house in the middle of the night?" It wasn't the first time he'd asked that question. It might not even be the fifteenth. But she hadn't given him a real answer yet. It wasn't like her. Their pattern was, Eve called and Tyler responded. It might not have been a perfect relationship, but it was the relationship they'd built together, roles they'd played since his father's fatal accident when he'd been forced to become the male in their household, the provider.
"You know that dog attacked me," Eve responded, again not answering his question. "I know that Amanda loved him but really. An Atwood should have a purebred; a show quality animal."
"We're not talking about my dog," he reminded her. "We're talking about you. And your decision to break into my house. You could have been cut on the glass when you smashed that window."
"All right, I'll tell the truth." She paused briefly. "I was curious about the woman. You normally don't allow anyone else to answer the phone and I thought she might be special. I hadn't realized she was just a servant."
Courtney stiffened ever so slightly and put her coffee down on the table just a bit too hard.
"Courtney is a pet psychologist who has agreed to help Harvey deal with his behavior problems," he insisted. "She's not a servant and she's not a girlfriend."
His mother waved a hand at his correction. It figured. She thought of anyone who worked for a living as being a servant, completely disregarding the fact that only his own work kept her membership current in Philadelphia's upper crust.
"I didn't recognize her voice, but her accent was definitely not ours. I was concerned that you might be slumming. Even lower class people have feelings, Tyler, darling. I know you wouldn't hurt one on purpose. Look how nice you are to that animal. But you can be a bit insensitive at times."
He felt one of those times coming on in a hurry. "I think you should leave, Mother."
Eve looked at her untouched coffee cup. "But I haven't--"
"Now."
He called a taxi, handed the driver a fifty-dolla
r bill, and sent his mother home. He'd hear about it later, but he simply didn't want to deal with her now.
Courtney was on the phone when he came back, but she set it down abruptly.
"I'm sorry about that," he said.
"Mothers can be protective. I completely understand."
"She didn't know what she was saying."
"Look, Tyler. I'm here to help with Harvey. While I'm here, I'll be seeing my clients, working with your dog, and working with you to help your dog. That's it. I'm not here to steal you away from whatever debutantes your mother has lined up for you. Because, you know what? She's right. I'm not in your league. You went to Harvard, I went to community college, then California State of P.A."
"That's total crap."
He grabbed her, pulled her sexy body against his, and kissed her.
Chapter 4
Kisses like his should be illegal.
Courtney's legs turned to distant rubber things when Tyler's lips met hers. She had to drape her arms around him to support herself.
She clearly instructed her mouth to stay shut--but her body continued to disobey and her mouth, opened to accept his probing tongue as if it had overruled her brain.
Her body molded to his, soft breasts against the hardness of his chest, the rigid firmness of his arousal against the moist fire between her thighs.
Tyler knew what he was doing. His tongue explored her mouth, sought out and captured her own, teased it, fenced with it, then somehow convinced it to follow into his own mouth.
He tasted of coffee and fresh strawberries. His warm, male scent filled her nostrils like a drug, distracting her senses as he traced a strong hand down her spine, pressed her hips even more closely against his excitement. The shadow of a beard on his unshaven face brushed against her skin and set it on fire.
Tyler's male presence and his kiss washed away conscious thought like a tidal wave washes away a sandcastle. The only thing that mattered was the now. They were male and female, yang and yin, two parts of a whole. She needed to come together with him more than she'd ever needed anything in her life.
In an impetuous and unplanned move, she reached through his robe and seized the swollen manhood that had so teased her when he'd landed on her during the police raid.
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