“Well, that’s it, I’ve lost my mind,” I muttered as I dragged my gaze off his arms, and up to his chest, where it stopped, my brain just kind of grinding to a halt altogether.
Clothilde and Frau Blucher stood on their hind feet, their little paws on his legs, and whined to be picked up.
What were the odds, I asked myself, of meeting in one single day two men who were clearly displaced male models? The man before me had one of those chests that you want to touch, all manly bulges and swoops of muscle and tendon and warm, sleek flesh visible even through his nice, normal cotton shirt. I enjoyed watching those muscles move when he bent to pick up the two pugs, tucking then both into one arm, and fondling their respective ears with a large, masculine hand.
I liked his hand, too. It looked…sexy.
“If you continue to stare at my chest in that fashion, I will be forced to agree with you,” the man’s voice said, finally penetrating the haze of lustful bemusement that had me in its grip.
“Hmm?” I shot a look at his face. He was frowning. Dammit, he was even more gorgeous than Gregory. Although this man was as dark as Gregory was blond, he had eyes that I realized with a start were violet. “Just like Elizabeth Taylor.”
His gaze raked over me. “You are a very pretty woman. No, more than pretty. And yet, you have red hair and green eyes. Thus, although you’re quite attractive, you do not look like Elizabeth Taylor.”
My face turned pink with mingled embarrassment and pleasure at the compliment. “Thank you, but I have strawberry blond hair, not red. There’s a difference. Besides, I never said I looked like—Terrance, down! We do not get busy with people we have just met, especially when said people jump out and try to scare us to death.”
“I did nothing of the sort.” I watched his mouth for a few seconds before forcing myself to look into his eyes, those smoky violet eyes ringed with the thickest black lashes I’d seen outside of a mascara commercial. He had high cheekbones, with sharp, angular planes to his face, a thin, autocratic nose, and lush lips that made my knees feel like they were made of water. “For the love of the gods, woman, will you stop staring at me like I’m the last piece of pot roast in the pan?”
“Oooh, pot roast,” I said, my mouth watering. “Nice metaphor.”
“It’s a simile, actually.”
“Damn. I always get those two confused. Regardless, it was a good one.”
He made a little gesture with the arm holding the pug girls. They groaned in happiness. “I’m hungry. It was the first thing that came to mind. Also, I like pot roast.”
“So do I. You don’t find many people admitting that these days, what with everyone eating leaner and healthier cuts of meat, but I always say that you can’t go wrong with a good piece of pot roast.” The incongruity of discussing pot roast with a stranger in the middle of the woods didn’t strike me until much later.
“Agreed.”
Silence fell around us, at least so far as speaking went. He continued to stare at me, one hand absently fondling the pug girls’ heads. I watched him with an avidness that I was hard put to explain, even to myself.
“You’re looking at me that way again. You will cease doing so now.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. Sorry. You’re the second male model I’ve seen in a couple of hours. I should go buy a lottery ticket, because clearly, my luck is riding high right now. Terrance, no means no! I don’t care if he likes pugs, it’s still rude to attempt to romance someone’s ankle without their express permission.”
“I do not like dogs,” the man said sternly, glowering at Terrance when I tried tugging on the leash. It didn’t work. I had to pry him off the man’s ankle.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you do.”
He sighed heavily, like it was just so much trouble to speak. “You might be a lovely woman who is clearly allowed to have her own way far more than is good for her, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow you to dictate to me. I said I do not like dogs, and I don’t, and telling me I’m ridiculous because of that is unacceptable.”
I pursed my lips and looked pointedly at the girl pugs snuggled in his left arm, their faces turned up to his, expressions of adoration filling their bulgy little eyes.
He looked down at them, visibly startled. “How the hell did they get there?” Before I could answer, he glared at me. “You did this!”
“Huh?”
“You thrust them upon me when I wasn’t looking!”
The girls wiggled in bliss, their back legs kicking as they tried to lick him.
“How on earth do you thrust pugs on someone when they’re not looking? It’s not like they’re notes you can tape to someone’s back!” Honestly, the man may have gorgeous eyes, and a model’s body, and well-intentioned, trustworthy arms that I suddenly wanted to feel about me, pulling me tighter against his body while his wickedly delicious lips did erotic things to me…Drat. I lost my train of thought. Oh, he may be all that and a wedge of cheese, but that didn’t mean he had the smarts of an Einstein.
His glare hitched up a notch. I noticed that his right hand, apparently unbeknownst to him, had moved up to scratch the girls under their chins. “You magicked them here.”
“You are seriously off your rocker. Here.” I set down Terrance and held out my arms. “If you’re done petting the dogs, I will take them back.”
He looked somewhat horrified to find he was still holding them, and quickly shoved them at me. “I’ve told you, I do not like dogs. I was not petting them. And I will thank you to keep your dog magic to yourself from here on out!”
The two girls sighed sadly when I put them back on the ground, and tightened the leashes to keep them from jumping him again.
“You just keep telling yourself that, buster.”
“My name is not Buster.” He cleared his throat, and pinned me back with a look that was all business. “I will ask you again—what are you doing with Lenore Faa’s dogs?”
“Do you know Mrs. Faa?” A sudden realization smote me. The man must be one of her friends, or even her family, and was no doubt lurking in the shrubberies to watch how I did with the pugs. No wonder Mrs. Faa didn’t feel compelled to follow me herself; she was counting on her handsome, if slightly annoying, friend to guard her dogs’ well-being. I’d do the same thing if I were an elderly woman living out in the woods in an RV, and were trying out a potential dog nanny.
“Why are you refusing to answer my question? It’s a simple one, and I’ve asked it twice. Are you abducting the dogs?”
“No! I’m just walking them, honest!” I said quickly, trying to focus on my job. If this man was a friend of Mrs. Faa, then I’d better watch my p’s and q’s. Which annoyed me because he was clearly not playing with a full deck. “She asked me to take them out so they could stretch their legs a bit.”
His eyes narrowed again. “The grandsons had care of the dogs. Are you working for one of them?”
“Nope. I only know Mrs. Faa and Gregory.”
“But you admit to knowing Gregory Faa?”
“I just said that, yes. You know him, too?”
I was surprised, but I suppose it made sense. Why wouldn’t the two most gorgeous men I’d ever seen know each other? Maybe there was a “looks like a male model” club that they belonged to.
“Why do you insist on answering every question with another question?” he asked, looking as annoyed as he sounded. His lovely purple eyes raked me over with another look, pausing to focus on my now bared arm. “Do you have some dragon blood in you? Is that how you magicked those annoying furballs into my arms?”
“Right,” I said, de-snagging my gauze shirt in order to put it back on. I gathered the dogs to me, and edged around the man. “I’m not going to say you’re outright crazy—”
“You already have. You said I was off my rocker,” he pointed out.
I took a deep breath and continued on. “I won’t say it because that would be rude, and I really need this job, but you, sir, need to seek some sort
of professional help. I’m going to walk these dogs, and I will warn you if you try to hurt either them or me, I will scream my freaking head off, and I have a very big pair of lungs.”
His gaze dropped momentarily to my chest. “Yes, you do.”
“Those aren’t my lungs, and you know it. Now, shoo. I have dog-walking to do, and I can’t do it while your chest is right there tempting me.”
He glanced down at his own chest in surprise, an act that allowed me to finish sidling past him and make my escape.
“If you are stealing the dogs, I am obligated by law to arrest you,” he called after me.
“Are you a cop?” I asked, pausing to glance back at him.
“I am a member of the Watch.”
“The what, now?”
“You’re speaking in questions again.” He was back to looking annoyed. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
The words that followed were bellowed loud enough that nearby birds squawked and fluttered away. “Woman, you are trying my patience!”
I smiled. “Could you be any more obtuse?”
He took a deep breath, and much as I enjoyed how that action showcased his chest, I felt the time had come to move on from the clearly unbalanced—if hunky—man.
“So, he’s a cop, huh?” I murmured to the dogs as we proceeded down the path. “A sexy male-model cop. Who’d have thought, eh, pugs?”
Jacques paused at a stick and piddled. Terrance flung himself onto a fern with a lusty grunt. Clothilde suddenly put both front paws on my legs, and clearly demanded to be carried.
“Oh my god, you are so incredibly cute,” I told the little dog, and, unable to resist her bulging eyes, picked her up and tucked her under one arm. Immediately Maureen and Frau Blucher begged to be picked up, and before I knew it, I was staggering through the woods on a narrow path with three pugs tucked into the front of my tank top, while the other two were stuffed under my arms.
“Somehow,” I told the pugs as I stopped by the side of a stream to catch my breath, “I imagined the phrase ‘take the pugs for a walk’ meant that you guys would be doing the actual walking. Oh, how beautiful!”
The trail I’d been on petered out into a black basalt bank along which a little stream ran. The rocky bank looked as if some giant potter had slapped down chunks of clay, roughly shaped, but beautiful against the clear, sparkling water. A few ferns clung desperately to the rocks, while a smattering of small white and yellow wildflowers poked up from the cracks in the rock. The sun beat down with mellow July warmth, taking from the air the bite of chill that was pronounced in the deep shade of the woods.
“This is so lovely. OK, everyone out! We’re going to have a little romping fun here.” I unloaded my shirt and herded my charges along the bank to where a tree had toppled into the water, leaving a long stretch of trunk lying out of the stream, at the perfect height for sitting. “Look, water! Who wants to go wading? I’ll sit here and you guys can splash around and have some fun.”
The pugs, unhappy to have been removed from their comfy transport, clustered around my feet and shivered pathetically.
“Pfft. You don’t know what you’re missing.” I stepped over the pugs and, pulling off a sandal, stuck my foot in the stream.
Immediately, I lost all feeling in my toes.
“OK, so it’s a bit chilly. I would like to point out that you guys have fur coats on, and it probably wouldn’t be that cold to you. Certainly a dip in the cold water would do your overactive libido some good, Terrance. Terrance? Where are—no! Bad pug! Clothilde does not want to do that with you, and besides, that’s her head. Oh, for pity’s sake…”
I plucked the randy pug from where he was annoying Clothilde and, a bit desperate to cool his ardor, stretched out along the length of the tree trunk so I could dangle him over the stream and let the water wash over his legs. If it seemed too cold for him, I’d forgo letting the pugs wade in the water. “Stop squirming or I’ll drop you. Now, see, the water isn’t really that cold, it just seems a bit chilly because we’re in the nice warm sun—”
“If you’re going to drown the little bastards, you’re going to have to do more than get their feet wet,” a masculine voice said from behind me.
It’s hard to whirl around while you’re lying prone on a mossy tree trunk that is reclined into a small but burbling stream, all the while dangling a pug over the water, but I managed to not only accomplish such a move but keep the amorous Terrance from falling into the water. I was rather proud of that last fact.
“Who the hell are you?” I snapped before thinking better of such a thing, clutching Terrance tightly to me as the other pugs stood in an unhappy mass on the bank. None of them paid any attention to the man who emerged from the way I’d just come, which told me either they were so annoyed at being near the stream that they didn’t care if strange men popped out all over the forest, or they were familiar with him, and his presence wasn’t an exciting event in their lives.
“My name is Andrew Faa.” He stared at me like the name should have meant something to me. He wasn’t bad looking—I assumed he must be related somehow to Gregory, since he bore a fair resemblance—but unlike the dashing, kind Gregory, this man’s attitude prickled down my skin like nettles. “You must be the mahrime.”
“My name is Kiya, not Mahrime.” I struggled to slide down the tree trunk without getting any splinters in my butt. “Are you related to Mrs. Faa?”
“She’s my grandmother.” His cold blue eyes rested briefly on the dog on my arms. “Are you going to drown them or not?”
I gawked at him, outright gawked with my mouth hanging open (again). “You are kidding, right?”
He said nothing, just turned around and started down the path. “My grandmother is waiting for you. She doesn’t like to wait on anyone. Stop playing with the little bastards and get back to her.”
I bristled at both his tone and inhuman attitude toward the adorable pugs. “Puggies, heel,” I said, snatching up the leashes from where I’d secured them on a bit of the tree’s root. “I am so going to tell your mom what her grandson said. I don’t care if tattlers never prosper, he was serious when he asked if I was going to…no. I can’t even say it. What a jerk.”
The pugs and I marched down the path (if you could call five pugs—joyous at having escaped wading in a stream—frolicking and leaping about one as “marching”), muttering to myself about the cruel man we’d just met. We got lost twice, paused to rescue a deceased raven from Terrance’s advances, and had several exciting adventures with assorted leaves and sticks before we managed to burst free of the fir trees and arrive back at the old mill clearing. “If I could drown anyone, I know who I’d pick,” I finished before stopping next to Mrs. Faa’s RV to untangle the pugs from my legs.
I’m not an overly shy person, but when the group of people who were clustered around a picnic table in the center of the mill yard turned en masse and looked at me, I was overcome with a sudden desire to bolt.
There were four men—one the obnoxious Andrew Faa—and two women (both of whom held a child in their respective arms), and two toddlers playing quietly nearby.
“Go away,” one of the men said loudly, turning a craggy face with an unbearably proud expression on it toward me, grandly gesturing toward Eloise as he did so. His voice was deep and rich with something it took me no time to identify as pure malice. “Your kind is not wanted here. Leave before we force you away!”
“That will be enough, Vilem.” The razorlike voice of Mrs. Faa emerged from the group of people, followed shortly by the woman herself. The people—presumably her family members—parted like the Red Sea, an act I thought was due to respect for her until I saw her use a knobby cane to smack the legs of whoever was impeding her progress. “The girl is here on my authority.”
“But, Mama!” The sallow-faced man named William turned to frown at her. “She is mahrime!”
“Actually, my foster mom is Presbyterian, but I don’t see what that has to do with t
he price of tea in China,” I said, allowing the pugs to pull me over to where Mrs. Faa had seated herself on a wooden lawn chair.
She cooed to them for a few seconds, her arthritic hands patting each dog as she asked them if they had a good time. “I have engaged Kiya to attend to my darlings for a few months, until we go to Scarboro,” she finally said, leaning back in her chair. I unhooked all the leashes and, with a murmur, replaced them where they hung on a couple of pegs just inside her RV.
“But, Mama—”
“She will stay here with us, so that she may take care of my darlings as they deserve.” Mrs. Faa cut across her son’s protestations. She pursed her lips and added, “Unless you have changed your mind, and wish to take over that task yourself?”
William snarled something under his breath that I was willing to bet wasn’t at all what one should say to one’s elderly mother, and turned his glare to me. “Stay away from the women,” he snarled, jabbing a finger toward the two women who were still clustered together, wary looks on their faces.
“I beg your pardon?” I gasped in surprise.
“You are mahrime. Unclean. I will not have the women and children tainted by your presence.” He shot a fast, nasty glance at his mom before pinning me back with a look that should have stripped the hair from my head. “Remember what you are here to do, and stay out of our way.”
Before I could respond to the not-so-thinly veiled threat in his voice, he turned and stormed off to the RV at the far end of the semicircle, Andrew following him.
I glanced at the women and men who remained behind. They stared back at me with hostility. “I am not unclean,” I told them. “I shower every day. And I love long bubble baths. I might look a little grubby now, but that’s because I had three pugs stuffed in my shirt, and was lying on a log, and Terrance kept trying to get it on with my ankle, and he has dirty paws. So that ‘unclean’ slur is just totally bull.”
“My son is volatile,” Mrs. Faa said, waving a dismissive hand toward William’s RV. “You will not be distressed by him. I will now take my nap.”
Time Thief: A Time Thief Novel Page 4